A LOOK AT YOUR CONVERSION

Religion

Acts 9:1-19
Christian conversion is defined as “An inward change in a person toward God, wrought by the Holy Spirit, making Jesus Savior and Lord of that person’s life.”
This declares that the way to the Father is through the Son by the leading of the Holy Spirit.
Today, we are going to study the conversion of the Apostle Paul. It is the most dramatic conversion recorded in the Bible. Although we thrill to the story, we are sometimes concerned that our personal conversion was nothing like Paul’s.

There is no stereotype for a single Christian conversion for people come to this experience in various ways. The end result is just as valid as the Damascus Road experience but we get there by different means. I will list six different types of conversion.

First, there is the DRAMATIC CONVERSION. This is the kind of conversion that the Apostle Paul experienced. Many others have stories that are similar to his and they encountered Christ through a vision, a dream, a life and death situation, or another type of supernatural encounter.

Secondly, there is the PROCESS CONVERSION. This means that the conversion happened over a period of time – weeks, months, or even years. One experience led to another. One insight led to a deeper understanding until the person became a believer without ever knowing exactly when it happened. This is how I was converted at age 14 and made my profession of faith and was baptized.

Thirdly, there is the INTELLECTUAL CONVERSION. This is when a person has strong intellectual questions about the validity of the doctrines of the Christian faith. This is a process also, but comes about through study and discussions. It usually culminates in a Divine revelation assuring the validity of Christian truth. The person just begins to know what is truth. This is how C.S. Lewis was converted.

Fourthly, there is the MYSTICAL CONVERSION. Some people have the soul of a poet and can see deep spiritual meaning in the ordinary events of life. They will sense God speaking to them through a personal experience which will lead them to the Cross.

Fifthly, there is the RELATIONAL CONVERSION. A person grows up in a Christian home, attends a Christian church, and is mostly around Christian family and friends. This person hardly remembers a time of unbelief because the beauty of the Christian faith was always known and experienced. What this person does remember is the time of professing personal faith and being baptized.

Finally, there is the INSTANT CONVERSION. This kind could have elements of each of the other types but is typical of revival crusades. A person hears the gospel, becomes under conviction, and is ready to profess faith in Christ. This was Billy Graham’s conversion experience at age 16.

Now we study our text describing the dramatic conversion of Saul, the persecutor of the church, into Paul, the herald of the gospel of Christ. There are five elements in his conversion experience.

I. HE WAS DISTURBED IN HIS SPIRIT. “Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples.” (v.1).

It was the witness of the deacon, Stephen, that began to disturb him. He was the officer in charge of the stoning of Stephen. You remember that Stephen had spoken before the Sanhedrin. He was there in defense of his witness for Christ. He told them that there was a new way to worship God since the death and resurrection of the Messiah, Jesus. The Temple with its Priestly system, and sarcedotal sacrificial way of pleasing God was no longer needed. The Lamb had been slain once for all. As you can imagine, the religious rulers did not like what they heard and they cupped their hands over their ears and shouted for him to stop speaking. Then they turned into a mob and dragged Stephen out of the city and stoned him to death. Taking charge of this event was Saul. See him standing smug with his arms folded across his chest shouting, “hit him again.” At his feet were the cloaks of the witnesses. (7:58) By Jewish Law the stoners were the ones who had witnessed his crime. They were furious! After the death of Stephen, Saul “began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off men and women and put them in prison.” (8:3)

Presently, he was on his way to Damascus which was 160 miles away to search out the synagogues there to find any Christians that had fled Jerusalem because of the persecution. As he rode along he could not get out of his mind the courage, the message, the powerful affect that Stephen had on him.

II. HE WAS OVERCOME BY A DIVINE POWER. “As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (vv.3,4).

Suddenly, a light flashed around him. This was the glory of the risen Christ brighter than the noonday sun. The people in Saul’s traveling caravan saw the light and heard the voice but did not see who was speaking. Saul was not just persecuting the church he was persecuting Jesus. When the church is persecuted today Jesus takes it as personal to him. “Who are you, sir?”

The thing that is so dramatic about this is that Jesus came personally to Saul. But you know that when we come under conviction of our sin, it is the Holy Spirit that comes personally to us. We are hearing that Jesus is appearing to people today in visions.

III. A NEW WAY OF LOOKING AT JESUS. “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting…” (v.5)
What? Who? Can you imagine how those words must have struck him? He was on a rampage because of the blasphemous lie that the Christians had committed saying that the crucified Jesus was now alive and ascended to the Father in heaven. Now this “lie” was alive and confronting him with flashing light like lightening and speaking to him just as Moses had heard the voice of God. But he could not see him for he was blinded by the light and shaken by the voice. He was to see Jesus in a new and living way.
In Philippians 3:5-11, he tells us how he came to see the one who was speaking to him: “If anyone thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eight day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.”

But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ – the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.”

IV. A NEW WAY OF SERVING THE LORD. “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.” (v.6) Saul wanted to be a Rabbi and serve God in the leadership of Israel. He was sent by his family from Tarsus in Cilicia to Jerusalem to study in the Rabbinical seminary. One of the reasons he became a persecutor of “The Way” was to defend his traditional faith and rise through the ranks and become a leader. Jesus knew this and went after his choice for the missionary to the Gentiles who had unique qualifications: he was a man who was a Jew, a Roman citizen, a trained Rabbi, a language specialist, a profound intellect, and a possessed a zealous spirit. This was the one he had chosen to be the founder of churches, the writer of letters that were to become scripture, and the one who would take the gospel to the then known world.

In Damascus, God spoke to Ananias and told him to receive Saul. He said, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name to the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.” (vv.15-16).

Ananias placed his hands on Saul and he was filled with the Holy Spirit. Immediately, the scales fell from his eyes and he could see. He got up and was baptized.

God would not waste all of Saul’s preparation before his conversion for service. He would now give him a new way to serve and a new heart with which to empower it. It is the same with us. The Lord will take our education and skills and turn them for his usefulness in the Kingdom.

I Timothy 5:15-17 expresses how he felt about his new way of serving his Lord: “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – of whom I am the worst. But for this very reason I was shown mercy so in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life. Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen

V. A NEW WAY OF BEING RELIGIOUS. “At once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God.” (v.20) During his time in the house of Judas on Straight Street (v.11) he was blind and did not drink or eat anything for three days. After he regained his strength, he headed for the same synagogues to which he had papers from the High Priest in Jerusalem to arrest any believers in the Christ to proclaim to them that he now knew the Messiah as his own. He told them that he had been wrong and that Jesus was indeed the Son of God.

He was transformed from a lover of the Law to loving the Person that the Law foreshadowed. Listen to how he expressed this new insight in Romans 8:1-4: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of Life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.”

And so these five elements of Saul’s conversion most likely have been your experience too: being disturbed in your spirit before conversion, overcome by the divine power of the Lord, you found a new way of looking at Jesus and serving him, and a new way of being religious. If you experienced these things, you have had a true conversion.

Dr. George W. Truett told of the conversion of evangelist R.A. Torrey: “Did you ever hear Dr. R. A. Torrey, the far-famed evangelist, tell what an awful unbeliever he was when he was a young man; how he went to the deepest depths of infidelity and scoffed at everything—the Bible, Christ, God, heaven, hell, immortality—everything like that? His mother yearned after him, and pleaded, prayed for him. Finally, he said to his mother, “I am tired of it all, and I am going to leave and not bother you anymore, and you will not see me anymore!” She followed him to the door, and followed him to the gate, pleading and praying and loving and weeping, and then, she said her final word: “Son, when you come to the darkest hour of all, and everything seems lost and gone, if you will honestly call on your mother’s God, you will get help !” Deeper down he went. Finally, in a hotel room, unable to sleep, wearied with his sins, and wearied with his life, he said, “I will get out of this bed, and I will take the gun there and end this farce called human life!” As he got out of his bed to do that awful thing, his mother’s words came back to him: “Son, when your darkest hour of all comes, and everything seems lost, call in sincerity on your mother’s. God, and you will get help!” And he fell beside his bed, and said, “Oh, God of my mother, if there is such a Being, I want light, and if Thou wilt give it, no matter how, I will follow it.” He had light within a few minutes, and hastened back home. Greeting him, his mother exclaimed, “Oh, my boy, I knew you were coming back. You have found the Lord. God has told me so!”
PRAISE BE TO HIS NAME!

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