Grace Community Church, Arlington, TX

The New Testanent has 27 books and 13 of them were written by the Apostle Paul. But before we can rightly understand those Epistles, we need to know some about the Apostle Paul. This morning, we will look at his conversion.

One of the most sobering passages in the Bible tells us that there are going to be many who will be shocked and horrified to find out that they were never really saved.

Jesus said that many who thought they were going to heaven will be locked out. Notice that these false converts do have a measure of spirituality. They were probably very confident that they were saved and going to heaven. Yet they weren’t. They were deceived.

The enemy has corrupted the preaching of the true gospel, and that is why so many are deceived. Instead of preaching the good news that sinners can be forgiven and made righteous in Christ and escape the wrath to come.Many have settled for a gospel that implies that God’s primary purpose is to solve our problems, make us happy, fill our emptiness, and rescue us from the hassles of this life.

Is that the message that is preached in the Book of Acts and resulted in this powerful, victorious church? No!

Let me illustrate the difference between the message being preached by many today with the message that was preached in the book of Acts.
*Parachute illustration

Many modern-day evangelist’s appeal says, “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and he will make you happy and improve your flight.” The sinner responds, and in an experimental fashion, puts on the Savior to see if the claims are true. And what does he get? The promised temptation, tribulation and persecution. He finds life is still difficult and even more so.

So, what does he do? He takes off the Lord Jesus, disillusioned and even embittered. And you have another backslider.

When a sinner understands the horrific consequences of breaking the Law of God, he will flee to the Savior in genuine repentance, solely to escape the wrath to come. The reason the second passenger has joy and peace in his heart is because they know that the parachute is going to save them from certain death.

We must make sure that we are preaching the true gospel. If we want the results that we see in the book of Acts, then we need to preach the same message that we see them preaching in the book of Acts, which is the same message Jesus preached.

They were told to repent. Now, in order to repent, you need to know what you are repenting from. To repent is to turn away from sin. Turn away from self-centered sinfulness.

So, in order to repent you must know that you have a sin problem. And you must know the consequences of not repenting, which is the judgment to come. It is appointed once for a man to die and then comes judgment.

In today’s evangelism, many are asked if they want a better life. If they want Jesus to make them happy. They are not told that they have sinned against a holy God and judgment awaits them unless they repent and flee to Christ.

So, they aren’t converted and saved because they have not repented. Have you been truly converted? Have you repented and believed and fled to Christ as your Savior and Lord?

Let’s look at what a true conversion is supposed to look like. Saul’s experience on the road to Damascus is the most famous conversion story in church history.

Saul was a bitter opponent of Christ and His church.
Acts tells us of Stephen’s martyrdom that “the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul” (7:58), and that “Saul was there, giving approval to his death.” (8:1), and that then “Saul began to destroy the church.” (8:3), making a house-to-house search for Christians, draggingmen and women off to prison.

Now, Luke resumes Saul’s story by saying that he was still breathing our murderous threats against the Lord is disciples (9:1). The self-appointed inquisitor then left Jerusalem, armed with written authority to the Damascus synagogues that, if he found any disciples, he might take them to prison.

If we had met Saul as he left Jerusalem and had told him that before he reached Damascus, he would have become a follower of Jesus, he would have ridiculed the idea.Yet that is what happened.

In this account, we see God’s intervention into reaching Saul. But what we don’t see is what was going on up to this point inside of Saul.

According to Paul’s own later narrative before Agrippa, as he retells this story, he points out that Jesus said to him:

The implication is that Jesus was pursuing Saul, prodding and pricking him, which it was “hard’ even painful for him to resist. What were these goads, with which Jesus had been pricking him, and against which Saul had been kicking?

One goad was surely his doubts. Subconsciously, he could not get Jesus out of his mind.

It is likely that Jesus and Saul were contemporaries and even close to the same age. It is probable that they both visited Jerusalem and the temple at the same time, and very likely that their eyes met on more than one occasion.

Saul probably heard Him teach, heard of his miracles, character and claims, together with the persistent rumor from many witnesses that he had been raised from death and seen.

Another goad would have been Stephen. We know that Saul was at his trial and his execution. He had seen with his own eyes both Stephen’s face shining like an angel’s (6:15) and his courageous non-resistance while being stoned to death (7:58-60). He had heard with his own ears Stephen’s eloquent speech before the Sanhedrin, as well perhaps as his wisdom in the synagogue (6:9-l0), his prayer of forgiveness of his executioners, and his extraordinary claim to see Jesus as the Son of Man standing at God’s right hand (7:56).

Saul could not suppress the witness of Stephen. There was something inexplicable about those Christians-something supernatural, something which spoke of the divine power of Jesus.

Another goad was Saul’s bad conscience. For although he could claim to have been faultless in external righteousness, he knew that his thoughts, motives, and desires were not clean in God’s sight.

He was kicking violently against the goads of Jesus, and it was hurting him to do so.His conversion on the road to Damascus was the climax of a long, drawn-out process in which the Hound of Heaven had been pursuing him. The stiff neck of the self-righteous Pharisee bowed. The ox had been broken in.

And Saul’s responded with two questions:Who are you, Lord? And What shall I do? (22:10)

He is ready to do whatever the Lord wants him to do. That is one of the marks of a true conversion.

When Ananias went to him, he was praying and fasting. His prayers probably included worship as he poured out his soul in praise that God should have mercy on him.

Still today, the first fruit of a true conversion is always a new awareness of the fatherhood of God, as the Spirit enables us to cry Abba, Father, together with a gratitude for his mercy and a longing to know, please and serve Him better.

Ananias addressed him as Saul, my brother. They may well have been the first words which Saul heard from Christian lips after his conversion. He was received as a member of the family.

He was baptized. You will see in all three of these conversion stories that they are baptized.The book of Acts knows nothing of unbaptized believers. Have you been baptized since truly repenting and believing in Jesus as your Savior and Lord?Those truly converted are glad to go public and make a public confession through baptism.

Then it says that Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus. He knew that he now belonged to the very company which he had previously been trying to destroy.True conversion always issues in church membership.

Every new convert becomes a changed person,
Newly related to God
Newly related to the church, as a brother or sister
Newly related to the world, as a witness

If these three relationships-to God, the church and the world-are not seen inprofessed converts, we have good reason to question the reality of their conversion.