It'll be in Acts, chapter 91 18. So we're in this series. We've been in it for a long time now. And it's called It's All About Jesus. And the point is, looking throughout the entire Bible, from the Old Testament through to the end of the Scriptures in the New Testament, and looking at the fact that everything in the scripture is talking about Christ, not every single word or every single verse, but on just about every single page of Scripture, there's something that points us to Jesus Christ, either preparing the way for him, proving the need for him, prophesying of his coming, talking about who he would be.

And it was like a roadmap that was giving clues for what to look for now. In the moment when Jesus was alive on the earth, there were a lot of people that struggled with that. When Jesus was there and presenting himself as the Messiah, the Son of God. A lot of people, they disagreed with that. They said there's no way.

Some of them, it was because they were too stuck in their religious traditions. Now, folks, hear me. We have religious traditions in our midst that sometimes we open the Scriptures and we read them. And if we have an open heart and if our minds are willing to accept the truth and the reality of God's word, we might look at some of our religious traditions and realize that we were told something that was wrong, whether it was by a pastor in the past. Maybe sometimes I get it wrong.

That's why when you look in your sermon companion sheet or on the backside, there's a section for notes. And on one of them, it's like, I think the pastor got it wrong here. Although not on today's. Because we don't have a Sunday school class afterwards. But usually that we have Sunday school afterwards.

Today we have our welcome lunch afterwards. But that Sunday school class is a time where it's just kind of an open discussion, where we're like, hey, what is it that you learned? What is it that you need to learn more about, from whether it's today's or just some other part of where you've been studying in scripture? And where is it that maybe you think, like, Pastor Nick got this one wrong? Sometimes it's just because I slip up and say something the wrong way.

And sometimes it's because I just get an idea about the Scripture and I'm like, I don't know. Like, in a couple of weeks, we're going to be talking about a guy named Philip. And Philip, a lot of scholars tell us there's two Phillips, one that was Philip the evangelist and one that was Philip the apostle. And there's two different guys. And I wrote in the guide, and I still kind of mostly believe this, that I think it's the same guy.

And I go through why I believe that. But I'm also aware that there's going to be a day where I probably like, nah, it was two guys. I was wrong. I got it wrong. You know, I don't know.

That's one of those things where I'm like, I have a belief on it. Nobody's going to, like, miss out on heaven, you know, if I get it wrong, it's just kind of like, I don't know. So we can argue about that and that's fine. But there's religious traditions that a lot of people have that so many times are untrue, and they get us off track. And there were people in the time of Jesus that had their traditions that kept them from seeing the truth.

They kept them from seeing that Christ was the Messiah that they had hoped for. Today we're going to be looking at this guy named Saul. You know him through most of the scripture as Paul. He was an apostle, although he hadn't been with Christ like the other apostles had been throughout his ministry. He was made an apostle by Jesus Christ.

And we're going to look at that story today about how that unfolded. But before I get there, I want to back up to 1400 years before Christ. So, like, we're in the 2000s now, you know, like 3400, 3500 years ago, almost long time ago.

There was this time when the Israelites, the people of God, had been slaves for 400 years. 400 years they'd been slaves in Egypt. And God led them out with his miraculous, mighty right hand. And he brings them out of Israel and he leads them up against an impossible scenario. He leads them to this water that they cannot cross.

They don't have boats. They're not good swimmers, you know, like, this isn't. They're not getting there. They got their possessions, they got their kids, their animals. They're stuck on top of that.

Pharaoh, even though he'd been through the wringer, he lost everything. His firstborn son was killed. All these things have happened, and it's God using it to push him to. To release his people and do the right thing. Even though all that's happened, Pharaoh now regrets his decision.

And he's like, I just lost, like, my free labor. I gotta go get him back. So he chases after them. He chases after them with his Army. And they can see the dust cloud behind them.

You know, they can see the water in front of them. They're like, thanks a lot, Moses. Pharaoh's coming to slaughter us. You know, I don't even know Pharaoh had a plan, but here it is. They're up against this.

And God's like, listen, I brought you here to show you the. That I can do what you see as impossible. I can make it happen. So God separates. He moves the waters apart.

There's a wall of water on both sides. You might have heard people say, like skeptics that say, oh, well, sometimes you see there's this wind, and what it does is it blows the water back and it made a dry area. The problem is the Bible doesn't say that the water just swept away partially. It says that there was a wall of water on both sides. Sides.

When you hear skeptics trying to disprove the word of God, check it out for yourselves, guys. Read the word of God and be like, what does it actually say? It doesn't say that there was a wall of water over here, that the water just piled up. It says there's a wall of water on both sides. They walk through on dry ground.

God made this happen in a way that nature can't explain. And as they cross through on dry ground, they're like, this is great. It's scary. It's great. I don't know if there were fish that could swim up against the edge of it, you know?

And they're like, huh? This is new for me, too. I don't know. But there they get through. Pharaoh's army is like, do we follow?

They're like, yeah, go ahead. And they follow. And God's like, no, here's why. He had told Moses, those Egyptians that you see today, you'll never see again. You'll never see them again.

I'm going to take care of this in a miraculous way. The waters wash in, washes them all, drowns them all out. Their chariots have gotten stuck in the mud. Their wheels start falling off. I don't know if they hadn't followed their PM guide for maintenance, you know, like, I'm not sure, but the wheels are falling off.

They get stuck in the mud, and then the waters fall back over them. And God protected his people. Now as they're journeying, the people began to lose faith in God. They had faith in God. They've seen him do this stuff that nobody could imagine or dream.

And yet now they're starting to lose faith in God because they Hit some difficult times that they couldn't see their way through. They hit this time where they're hungry. Whoever has made bad decisions, when you've gotten hungry, I'm a little bit hungry right now. You know what I'm saying? Like, we gotta be careful what we do when we're hungry.

They get hungry, they get thirsty, they start grumbling and complaining. I'm getting events out of order. But they have all these times where they're like, what are we gonna do now? Moses. Moses goes to God.

He's like, God? I'm not going to say it, but these people are saying, what are we going to do now? And I kind of have the same question. And God's like, just watch, you know? And so God keeps taking care of them and providing for them, and this goes on and on.

But the fear of God falls on the nations nearby where they are traveling. Not just because they're a large migrating group of people, you know, that probably wants to settle down somewhere. And everybody's like, not in my backyard. We have those people today, we call them NIMBYs, by the way. N I M B Y Not in my backyard.

Especially when you want to do stuff like ministering to homeless people or something like that. They're like, oh, that's great. Yeah, there needs to be a shelter. Hey, we're going to take that spot right there and we're going to build one. They're like, oh, no, that's right next to my house.

Or that's across from a school, or, you know, oh, no, we can't do that. Not in my backyard. The Israelites had this, like, national case of nimbyism. Not in my backyard. Nobody wanted them around.

And there's this guy. He's the king of the Moabites. He gets allied with the Midianite people, and they start worrying that the Israelites are going to edge in on their territory, take their resources, maybe even slaughter them and just kind of move into their cities. So he comes up with this plan. He's like, I'm not ready to just go and slaughter all of them.

Although in theory, it would have been easy. They had just been slaves. They didn't have weapons. They weren't fighters, they weren't soldiers. This was not an intimidating people by training or by equipment that they carried.

They didn't have war horses and chariots. They should have been an easy mark. But what does this guy do instead, this king? His name is Balak, B A L A K Balak. He finds a guy that you can Basically pay him to put a curse on someone.

I don't know what our current equivalent of that is. I guess maybe a shaman that does voodoo or something. Shamans probably don't do voodoo. Whatever. Anyway, I don't mess with any of them.

But somebody that does voodoo, like, hey, can you put a hex on? Can I pay you to curse them? That's the kind of thing that's going on here. Now, this is great story. It's in numbers.

It's like numbers 22 through 25. That's a book in your Bible. It's like the third one, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers. It's the fourth one, isn't it? I already got it wrong.

I saw a video. I think somebody sent it to me. It was talking about, like, people are like, the world's really bad today. He's like, you know when it was really bad, like way in the beginning, like in Genesis, he's like, the third person murdered the fourth one. He's like, there was one time when 25% of the people on Earth were murderers.

You know, like, that's not good odds. You know, you had a 25% chance of getting murdered if you were one of those first four people. Yeah, it was great. So anyway, in numbers 22 through 25, there's this great story of King Balak summoning Balaam. And it's a great story because he goes, he sends some guys and they're like, hey, King Balak wants you to come visit him because he wants to pay you to put a curse on these people.

This Israelite, this horde or army of swarm of people is the way he viewed them. And Balaam says, well, let me talk to God about that. And he talks to God, and God's like, don't go with them. So he says, sorry, guys, not going to happen. He'll pay you a lot of money.

No. So they go back and Balak's like, why didn't you bring the guy? And they're like, he wouldn't come. He's like, okay, you know what? I'm going to send more important people than you.

It says he sent more impressive people, more important people, as emissaries, offers him more money and gifts. And they go to him and he's like, listen, I got to talk to God. You guys stay here overnight, You've been traveling, Let me talk to God. So he talks to God and he's like, yeah, sure, go ahead, go with him. Now, I don't know if God was being, like, sarcastic, like, oh, sure, go ahead.

You know what? This time it's okay. He offered you more money. And I know what was going on here. Like, it took me years to read between the lines.

Balaam at first was offered a sum of money, like his normal fee. And he's like, hey, God, can I do it? He's like, no, you can't do that. These are my people, you know, you're not going to put a curse on him. And then they come back and offer more money.

He's like, God, it's a lot of money. Can I please do it? He's like, sure, go ahead. But only say what I tell you to say. Now, Balaam, he heads on his way with them.

He's riding his donkey. And this is a hilarious story. He's riding his donkey down this road and the donkey like just kind of veers off the path. He starts beating the donkey. It gets back on the path.

He's like, okay, that was weird. He keeps going. Then there's kind of this narrow area and the donkey like goes around and crushes his foot against the wall. He gets mad, starts beating his donkey again. And you know, they just keep going.

Finally, the donkey has been seeing something that Balaam couldn't see. It's the angel of the Lord with a drawn sword with ready to strike Balaam down. Now we're reading. If we're reading this and we're thinking, why? What has he done wrong?

Because he says the Lord is angry with him. Because God knew what was in Balaam's heart and he was ready to be like, okay, God gave me permission. I guess I'm going to go do what I feel like doing anyway, I'm not going to listen to God. I'm going to do what I want to do. And in his heart he had intentions of going and doing whatever it took to get the payday.

So he goes on his way. The third time, the donkey, the angel of the Lord is in this narrow place where there's like a rock wall on either side. And he wouldn't be able to, the donkey wouldn't be able to get around him. So the donkey just lays down in the road. Balaam just starts relentlessly beating the animal.

God allows the animal to speak. This is great. I love this story. I put in my note, like something not to say. I'm not going to say, I'm not going to say it.

But the donkey, he made a joke out of Balaam. You can figure out what I wanted to say. But anyway, so he says, why did you beat me? These three Times he goes, because you made me look like a fool. Now he's engaging in this conversation with the donkey, you know, And I don't know if the other people with him could hear what the donkey was saying or if they just heard bleeding.

Now they hear him having a conversation with him. I'm not sure, but it's a hilarious picture. And he's like, why have you done this? And the donkey's like, how long have we been together? Like, you've been riding on me for a long time.

Have I ever done this? He's like, no. He's like, why do you think I'm doing it now? Now then God opens Balaam's eyes. He can see the angel there with the sword.

Oh, sorry, I forgot one line. That's hilarious. He said, if I had a sword, I would have stabbed you with it by now. He says this to the donkey. He's like, I would have stabbed you if I had a sword instead of a riding crop, you know?

And then he sees the angel with the sword. He's like, oh, shoot, you saved my life, buddy. Thanks, girl. You know? And so then God tells him, like, only say what I tell you to say.

So Balaam shows up, he talks with Balak. He's like, hey, man, I can only do what God tells me to do. He's like, okay, that's fine. They go and they're like, see, look, here's the people. We're up high on this mountain, we can see them all.

So he says, build seven altars, offer seven sacrifices, and then I'll listen to God. And then God gives them a blessing to give to the Israelites. So he blesses them. And Balak's like, didn't. Didn't I tell you to curse them?

You gave them a blessing. He's like, what if I bring you over here to this mountain, we can see him from a different angle. Maybe God will let you curse him. Then three different times they do this. And God will never let Balaam say anything negative about the Israelites.

He won't let them curse them. He keeps blessing them. And then he even just keeps giving him some stuff for free. He's like, oh, and on top of that, by the way, I see your destruction at hand. I see this nation's destruction at hand.

And he just gives him some free. Like, he ends up cursing some of these nations because he says that God's judgment on them is coming. Now, it seems like the story ends there at first because Balaam goes home, he doesn't get the Paycheck. But he's done what God's told him to do. Doing the right thing is always the right thing.

No matter what the outcome is, doing the right thing is always the right thing. Except if we keep reading the Scriptures and we look in a few places, just a couple chapters later, we see something going on. And then we see this in Revelation. I believe it's in chapter two. It talks about this as well.

That Balaam didn't stop there. He still wanted that payday. He finds a loophole. We're good at finding loopholes. We're really good at finding loopholes.

He says, well, I can't curse them, but I can. He's talking to King Balak. He says, I can teach you how to lead them astray. Take some of your women and let them seduce the men. Guys, sometimes we've made that a little too easy.

Getting seduced by ladies has gotten a lot of guys in trouble.

And let the women seduce them and then tell them, hey, I'll be happy if you worship my idols. If you worship the gods that I follow and kind of just subjugate second place, your God Yahweh, just kind of move him into a second or third place role. And if you kind of idolize me and worship the idols that I worship, everything will be good and we'll be happy together. And so they start leading the people of Israel astray by having the Moabite women seduce them. Now, this angers God, and he actually sets a plague in place that begins to destroy the people.

The scripture tells us that 24,000 of them died as a result of this. And this was God's judgment on their behavior, the things that he had specifically told them not to do. And then there's this one guy. Well, Moses calls an assembly together, and he's saying how, we've got to stop this. We've got to undo it.

And in the middle of that, while he has a sacred assembly called, there's a man that, in direct defiance to all that, brings in a Moabite woman. No kids in here, right? I want to be careful here. He brings her into his tent. It says.

It doesn't say exactly what's going on. It lets you draw the conclusion quite readily. But it does say that a man goes in named Phinehas, takes a spear and stabs it right through the two of them, through the back of the man, and into the stomach of the woman. And right then, the plague stopped. Wow.

God gives him, like, props for this. He says, good job, Phineas. Phinehas was the son of one of the priests. Because Phineas, Phinehas had zeal, zealousness for the word of God, he stood and said, God is dishonored by everything we're doing here, and if this is what it takes to put a stop to it, I'm going to be the one that stands firm and stops it. Now, that mindset, I believe, dwelt in a young man named Saul in the year in the mid-30s A.D. saul was this man that he had grown up.

He was a Roman citizen, which carried some great honor in those days. He was a Roman citizen, wasn't allowed to be beaten, or certain punishments, especially crucifixion, were not allowed for Roman citizens, except for the highest levels of treason and things like that. Roman citizenry came with a lot of perks and benefits. And Saul of Tarsus, that's the town he lived in and where he was from. Saul of Tarsus was a Roman citizen from birth.

A lot of people had to buy their citizenship, but Saul was born that way. It got him out of a few pickles. In fact, one of the coolest ones that I was just kind of studying yesterday was when he got arrested in Philippi, the city of Philippi. And that's another cool story for a future date. But he got arrested in Philippi.

They beat him, they put him in jail. God sends an earthquake that breaks them out of jail. It's a really cool story. They go and meet with the jailer, save him, bring him to Christ, baptize him and his whole family. And then the rulers, the magistrates say, all right, hey, bring those guys out that we arrested last night.

And Saul says, you punished us without a trial, and we're Roman citizens. And they were really scared when that happened. Now, I used to think, like he was just pulling his, like, get out of jail free card, you know, literally. But that wasn't it. What he was doing was the Roman jailer at the time when the prison doors had broken open.

He knows that that is a dishonorable thing and that his honor is at stake, and the only way out of it is for him to actually kill himself with his sword. That would be actually an honorable out in that situation, and it would also save his family from the dishonor. And so, because he thought he was going to lose all of his prisoners that were under his charge. But Paul said. He is named Paul at this time.

Paul says, no, we're all still here. We haven't gone anywhere. The jailer came trembling before him on his knees and said, sirs, what must I do to be saved? I think he meant, what must I do to be saved from the punishment of Rome? But Paul says, no, here's what you need to do to be saved.

Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you and all your household, and be baptized. And so what I think Paul did when he pulls out the Roman citizen card later when they want to release him, or was he just basically saved the jailer from any repercussions from perceivingly failing at his job, because he's like, you guys put us in jail improperly and he took care of us. He did the right thing when the magistrates didn't. It was beautiful. It was quite a ploy and a play by Paul.

He was great at these things. It was amazing. He could have told that at the beginning. But God had a divine appointment for Paul to reach this jailer and his family. And so he allowed himself to go through the beating and the imprisonment and the suffering, knowing that he would be able to reach somebody out of that suffering.

Amen. So back to the beginning of his story. Saul was there. We talked about last week where they stoned a man named Stephen for his witness and testimony of who Jesus Christ is. Saul was standing there giving his approval to the killing of Stephen for his faith.

Saul says he was a Pharisee, but he wasn't one of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council that gave the death sentence. So Saul held their coats. He was like the coat check guy, because you really got to have free range of motion, you know, when you're going to be throwing rocks at somebody to kill him. And so they can't have their coats on, so they would strip them off. Saul's keeping their coats.

They're throwing rocks at Stephen until he's dead. And Saul is there, like, yeah. And this was a catalyzing moment in his life where he said, somebody has to stand up and stop this thing, this thing called the Way. What we know is Christianity. Those who are following Jesus Christ, he viewed as a good Hebrew religious young man who had come through the training as a Pharisee, one of the most uptight religious groups of their day.

He had been trained as a Pharisee under a guy named Gamaliel, who was like, well respected by everyone else in the religious club there. And Saul was ready to go make his mark on the world. And what he ends up doing is saying, all right, I know what needs to happen. Just like back in the day when the Moabite women were coming in and when that guy brought the girl into his tent, and Phinehas stepped in and stopped the plague. I've got to stop the spread of this plague.

I'm going to go out and arrest these Christians. I'm going to drag them back wherever they flee, whether they leave Jerusalem and go far away to other cities. I'm going to chase them down, and I'm going to drag them back with letters of authority from the priests that I can bring them back to stand trial for being traitors to the Jewish faith. And so that's what his goal was. That's what his mission was.

He believed it was a divine mission. Saul believed that he was doing God's work. There are a lot of people that have been led astray by this, a lot of cult leaders that have said, you know what? All the religions are bad. I'm going to go and I'm going to start my own.

And then they do that, and they think, this is what God's told me to do. No, he didn't. You misunderstood something somewhere along the way. And so Saul, he gets these letters of authority. He's headed to a town called Damascus, kind of up north, and he's headed up there.

And then all of a sudden, he's got traveling companions with him and helpers, because it's hard to arrest everybody and drag them back to Jerusalem by yourself. So he's going up there. These are people that have left. They've left Jerusalem because of the persecution that happened at the moment when Stephen was killed. So the same thing that catalyzed Saul's fervor to go off and chase down these Christians was the same thing that had caused them to flee and to scatter.

He's like, no, you don't. You're coming right back and standing trial for what you've done. And so he's on his way. He's headed out to Damascus to arrest these people and bring them back. And all of a sudden, there's a bright light.

Bright light. Like, we don't have bright enough lights in here to mimic it. But my daughter turns them on in the mornings, and she's like, what's the sermon about? It's like, well, it's Saul's conversion. She's like, okay, we're going bright yellow light.

So that's what our. Our little lighting over here is on the spotlights. And that's our theme, you know. So he sees this bright light. It blinds him.

He can hear a voice now. Only he hears the voice. And that's why I got to thinking about Balaam with the donkey that maybe no one else heard, with the donkey talking. They just heard donkey noises, and Balaam heard words. Nobody else hears it.

They just hear this rumbling. But it's the voice of Jesus talking to Saul. Saul hears the voice. He can't see him because he's blinded by the brightness of Christ. Christ has shown up in his fullness of his glory, his heavenly glory.

And that blinded Saul. And so he says to him, he's like, saul, why do you persecute me? He's like, tell me who you are, Lord. Now, Lord is a word. In the Greek, it would have been kyrios, which simply means like somebody that's kind of in charge over you, somebody that has authority over you.

He recognizes that anybody that can appear to him on the road that bright has some kind of authority over him or he owes some kind of respect to him. So he's like, who are you? Who are you, Lord? Jesus drops a bombshell on him. He says, well, I'm Jesus.

You know, the guy that you're persecuting.

The guy that you're persecuting. Saul hadn't thought that he was persecuting Jesus. He didn't believe in Jesus, really. He thought he was just a dead guy. He.

He thought he was persecuting people or attacking people. And Jesus says, no, you're attacking me. Let's read that story. In Acts, chapter nine, we're going to read verses one through 18. Meanwhile, Saul, still breathing out threats to murder, the Lord's disciples went to the high priest and requested letters from him to the synagogues in Damascus.

He's an angry guy, by the way. He starts out so angry.

Some of us have dealt with anger by the way. I feel led to stop here for a second. I don't want to pass this up. I don't know who somebody's dealing with anger in your life. I got to tell you, there's hope for that.

There's hope that you don't have to live every day angry with someone, angry with yourself, angry with God, angry at whoever messed you over in the world. There's hope that you don't have to live with that anger in your life. Amen.

Saul's breathing out anger, murderous threats. He got letters to go to Damascus so that if any. If he found any who belonged to the Way, either men or women, he could bring them as prisoners to Jerusalem. As he was going along, approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, and Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

So he said, who are you, Lord? He replied, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But stand up, enter the city, and you will be told what you must do. Now the men who are traveling with him stood there speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. So Saul got up from the ground, but although his eyes were open, he could see the nothing.

Leading him by the hand, his companions brought him into Damascus. For three days he could not see, and he either ate nor drank anything. Now, there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, ananias. And he replied, here I am, Lord.

Then the Lord told him, get up. Listen. How direct, by the way, the instructions of God are to him. Like God knows what's going on. Listen to this.

Get up. Go to the street called Straight. And at Judas House, look for a man from Tarsus named Saul. Listen, for he is praying. He has seen in a vision a man named Ananias.

Come in, place his hands on him so that he may see again. You hear the irony in that? It's a man that is blind, but in a vision he can see. It's a man that with his physical eyes he's blind, but spiritually, he's. He's now seen for the first time with clarity.

Amen. Now he says he's praying. He's seen in a vision a man named Ananias. Come and place hands on him so that he may see again. God knows what's going on.

He's very explicit here. What's Ananias do? He argues with God. He tells God, there's something you don't know. God.

Have you ever tried to tell God the things he doesn't know? The things you think God's not aware of in your life? He says, lord, I have heard. I've heard from many people about this man, how much harm he's done to your saints in Jerusalem and here. He has authority from the chief priests to imprison everyone who's calling on your name.

But the Lord said to him, go. Whose Bible has a comma there? Whose has a period? I don't know which is appropriate. I think it should be an exclamation point.

Go. Like, did I stutter? I said, go. Go. Why?

Because this man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before Gentiles and kings and the people of Israel. For I. Oh, listen to this. We don't like this part. I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my Name. So Ananias departed and entered the house, placed his hands on Saul and said, I love this redemption here.

Immediately he calls him brother. He says, brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you came here, has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit. Immediately, something like scales fell from his eyes and he could see again. He got up and was baptized. And after taking some food, his strength returned.

There's so many things in there that I love about this. First of all, who's Ananias? Like, we don't get a whole backstory on this guy. We don't know if he thought he was something important, you know, if he was one of. He's one of the believers in Christ.

But we don't know if he was a leader in their gathering. We don't know if he was just like a foot washer, a servant guy. We don't know. But Ananias, he's going about his day one day, and God gets ahold of him. He's like, I've got a job for you now.

Go. Where he starts giving him explicit instructions. He's like, God, you don't understand. That's a bad dude. He's out to get people just like me.

God said, no, no, no. I've selected him. He's going to preach the gospel to the Gentiles. Nobody's been doing this yet, by the way. They've only gone to the fellow Jewish people.

Nobody's gone and preached to the Gentiles, to the non Jews. Nobody's gone and shared the gospel of Jesus Christ as hope for the Gentiles. They thought he was the Jewish Messiah, the Jewish king, and that he was only good for the Jewish people. And he's like, no, my gospel is for the entire world. And so Jesus is telling Ananias here.

He's like, go. This is my chosen instrument to bring the gospel to the Gentiles and the kings of this world. And to the Jews as well, by the way. I think Saul, he was focused so much on the Jewish people. They were his brothers.

He would do anything for them to recognize Christ as Messiah after this. And he spent so much of his time literally being fought against by his brothers that he cared for so much about. He loved them so much, and yet they kept messing up his plans every time. And finally he says, okay, I'm going to shake the dust of this town off my feet, and I'm going to go to the Gentiles. Now in a couple different cities, he Rented a lecture hall and just daily he would teach there for all who wanted to come and listen.

And they had a great growth out of that. And so God tells Ananias, he says, he's my chosen instrument to bring the good news to all these places and to the kings of the earth and all of this. But also I've been showing him how much he will suffer. And I said to you as I was reading it that we don't like that. We don't like that verse because we think, what if he chooses me for suffering?

John Piper, a well known pastor, defines suffering as the removal of anything that formerly caused you pleasure or joy, something that you got some kind of satisfaction or enjoyment out of, that is taken away from you is what you consider suffering. I've shared before, one of the most everyday things that would be that way is when my air conditioning cuts out. If it quits working. I'm suffering in Florida. I do not like sitting in that heat.

You know, it's a bad deal. Some people, it might be any other number of things, like whatever it is that you are counting on and relying on so much. It might even be a relationship, a loved one. It might be any number of things. And if that thing goes away, you're like, you're in suffering, you're in misery.

But we got to wonder, what did Jesus mean about Saul? Like, what kinds of ways was he going to suffer? Well, later, as he's known by Paul in the later years, he goes through all kinds of ways that he's suffered. He's been beaten, stoned, like, not the weed kind, like throwing rocks at him. You know, he's been beaten and stoned.

I always feel like in this era we've got to clarify that somebody's gonna hear it, be like, oh, I like this a whole lot better. You know, this is a great group I've joined. But no, like, so he's, he's been beaten, he's stoned, he's been shipwrecked multiple times. Like he's like the Titanic, you know, except there was room for him on the door too, you know, instead of like. Yeah, and so, like, he's been bitten by poisonous snakes.

He's been, you know, locked up in jail. He's been persecuted, ridiculed, all these things over and over and over again. So many times he says, why do I go through this? He's like, I do it for you guys. I do it so that I can continue sharing the gospel with you.

And if Christ has given me that lot in Life. If he has given me that suffering, if he has ordained me to suffer, then I will suffer. Because there's a time in Philippians where. And I'm going to close with this verse in a little bit, but there's a time in Philippians where he says that I want to fill up within me the sufferings of Christ. I want to be identified in his death.

I don't think he was trying to do any kind of penance, trying to make up for the things that he had done wrong in the past. But I do believe he was saying, like, if Christ has called me to suffer, then on God I want to suffer to the most. I want to suffer as much as possible up to and including the way Christ died. If I can die with him, then I can truly identify with him in his death. I want to be found completely in Christ.

I don't want any vestiges of Paul left in me. I. I want Saul to be gone. And when people look at me, I want them to see Jesus Christ. So he says, if I have to suffer, then by God I'm going to suffer because he'll get me through that. And then he would tell the people, he says, listen, because he's in jail at this time.

Fast forward to the future when he's writing to the Philippians. He's in jail and he's talking to them and he's saying, I don't know which way it's going to go for me. I got a trial date set up after I appear before Caesar. Remember, God said he's going to bear witness before the kings of the earth. He's going all the way to the top here to share the witness of the Gospel with the Caesar of Rome.

And as he's going there, as his time approaches for his trial, he says, guys, I don't know. He's writing this letter. He's like, I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know whether I'm going to die or whether I'm going to get released. It's going to be one or the other.

He says, if I die, I'm with Christ, and that is far better and above anything else that this earth has for me. And I'm excited to go there. If I get released, then it's a benefit to you guys because I'll be able to come see you. I'll be able to hang out with you and teach you, and it'll be a benefit to you guys. He says, either way, I don't care, because to Live is Christ, and to die is gain.

That was Paul's philosophy on life. And I think it started because he knew his calling. He knew from these moments when he was blinded, sitting in the house in Damascus on Straight street, he knew that God had ordained him for suffering. And so he said, okay, then, now the one that I've been persecuting, now he's the one that I will be proclaiming. And as I proclaim him, if it means that I suffer, then I suffer.

Because if that's what my Savior wants me to do, then that's what I'll do. So many of us don't want to suffer. We're Americans. We have the American dream. We have freedom.

We have religious freedom, where we say, you can't stop us and praise God for that. And yet we wouldn't know what to do if actual persecution came. We talked about this last week that Jesus said, it will show up. So far in America, we haven't seen persecution for our faith. We've had opposition, but we haven't been persecuted for our faith in this country.

And if we are, then I don't think many of us would be ready for it. And so the challenge last week was that we would prepare ourselves for the big thing like that, and then also for the small areas of our life. Say, like, am I committed to following Christ no matter what happens or how unpopular it might be in our daily walk?

But some of you have been given suffering. Some of you have been going through suffering right now. Some of you are asking in these days, why God? Why me? And if you're not, you might have those days in the near future.

In those moments, God is doing something within you.

He's preparing you for something. It doesn't mean that he necessarily sent bad things your way, although the things that we consider bad, God might not see them as bad. The troubles the scripture tells us the troubles that we're going through now are light and momentary. Even the biggest things that you are experiencing on this earth are light and momentary. In the light of eternity, like in the big picture scope of things, the eternity scope of things, what you're going through right now feels like the biggest thing possible.

And. And yet it's the smallest thing. In light of eternity. The hope of glory that we have in Jesus Christ is something that there's nothing on earth that compares with. And so as we go through these momentary sufferings and struggles on this earth, we recognize that God is doing something big in our lives.

He's preparing us for the hope of glory. Our Eternity with Christ Jesus. Saul knew. He was convinced he was convicted of the mission that God had given him. And I've got to tell you that God has a mission for you and a job for you.

He has something for you to do on earth that makes a difference in eternity. He has something for you to do on this earth that has an impact on the lives of people that right now are headed down the path of destruction. They're headed to death and hell. And he wants them to be adopted into his family and brought alongside of other believers as you disciple them and teach them the ways of Jesus Christ. Christ Jesus has a plan for you, just like he did for Paul, for Saul.

So I want to read a verse to you from Philippians 3 as we wrap up. By the way, Saul, Paul, between him and Luke that we're reading the Book of Acts. Luke wrote that. He wrote the Gospel of Luke, and he was a traveling companion of Paul's. Sometimes in the Book of Acts, he'll say, we did this, we did that.

And then later he'll just say, they did this. Those were times where Luke was traveling with Paul and he got to experience these things firsthand. Between the two of them, they wrote over 50% of the new Testament. But Paul, in this letter to Philippians that I referenced, he writes, I'm going to look at verse 4 through 14. Bear with me as we read these verses.

They're fantastic. He says, if someone thinks he has good reasons to put confidence in human credentials, I have more. This is Paul talking. He says, I was circumcised on the eighth day from the people of Israel in the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews. I lived according to the laws of Pharisees in my zeal for God.

Remember, just like Phinehas had the zeal for God back in the days of Moses, Saul Paul was saying, I had zeal for God. How I persecuted the Church. I believed that it was a poison that was spreading and I had to put a stop to it. In my zeal for God, I persecuted the Church according to the righteousness stipulated in the law. I was blameless.

But these assets I have come to regard as liabilities because of Christ. More than that, I now regard all things as liabilities compared to the far greater value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, indeed, I regard them as dung that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not because I have my own righteousness derived from the law, but because I have the righteousness that comes by way of Christ's faithfulness, a righteousness from God that is in fact based on Christ's faithfulness. My aim is to know him, to experience the power of his resurrection, to share in his sufferings, and to be like him in his death. And so somehow to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Now that I have already attained this, that is, I have not already been perfected, but I strive to lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus also laid hold of me.

Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have attained this. Instead, listen to this. This is what we call holiness, by the way. Instead, I am single minded, forgetting the things that are behind, reaching out for the things that are ahead. With this goal in mind, I strive toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Amen. It continues on from there. It's my favorite book of the Bible for the past few years, Philippians. The things that he once thought were a gain to him, that were assets to him, he realizes that unless they draw him closer to Jesus Christ, they're lost. They're taking it away.

They're pulling him farther from Christ. He's like, if that's the case, I don't want anything to do with it. I want to get rid of anything that's a distraction, anything that pulls us away from Christ, anything that doesn't draw me closer to Christ, I'm getting out of my life, folks. That's a good rule to live by. If it doesn't somehow draw you closer to Christ, then do you need that thing?

Do you need that thing? Now, My questions to you just kind of have one thing. What things in your life are dragging you away from Jesus? What things are keeping you from gaining more of Christ? What things are keeping you from having your focus on Him?

Because remember when Saul was laid up there in Damascus? He spent three days fasting and praying. He didn't eat or drink anything. And he's praying. And Jesus tells Ananias, go, because this man prays.

And when he prays, God says, I'm going to talk to him. So many things are drawing our focus away from God that we don't even take the time to pray anymore to focus on him and say, lord, what do you want for me? What do you want me to do? But when you pray, when you devote to God and you push those other things aside and you say, lord, it's me, and you expect God to talk to you, but God doesn't just push through all the noise every time. Sometimes he does.

There's a lot of noise around Saul when he's on the road. And God pushed through all of that. He blinded him. Listen to God before you get blinded by the light. You know, like, invite the light in.

Say, lord, just teach me and show me what you want to do. And remember this. Forgetting those things that are behind you. Your past, your sins, your failures, all the things that are in the rear view mirror, you got to let them go. You got to let go of those things because God doesn't hold them against you any longer.

And no man or woman has the right to do the same. Let those things go. Focus on what's ahead, knowing that God is saving you now and that he's calling you to the light of his glorious future. Amen.

Sam.

Sa.