Let’s say that I was visiting at your house sometime this week,
And as I walked through your yard, I picked up a common-looking stone.
All of a sudden I remembered from my high school geology class, that this stone was made of a mineral which indicated that there was gold nearby.
What if we ran inside and got on the internet and verified that what I suspected was true.
And then we went back outside, and when we knew what we were looking for, we found more of these stones all over your front yard.
Let’s say that we took some of these stones to a geology student at Washington State University, and he agreed with our preliminary conclusions.
And then he took our pile of stones to one of his professors, who said that without a doubt, there would be a lot of gold close to the place where our stones were found.
With all that information and evidence, how likely would it be you’d permit a backhoe to tear up the lawn in your front yard?
This morning, I brought to your attention that shortly after his salvation, Saul began confounding his country-men about the Lord Jesus.
In fact, he began proving that Jesus is the very Christ, the eternal Son of God.
Out of their own front yards, out of their own scriptures, Saul proved that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ.
I wonder how many of those Syrian Jews believed the evidence and plowed up the front yards of their long-standing theology?
Saul had the samples assayed at the office of the Old Testament, and proved that this was the richest gold-strike ever known to man.
How many of those Jews eventually believed the evidence and were born again as Saul had been?
Certainly if there were any, it was not because of the logic of Saul, but by the grace of God.
And yet, the ministry of Saul was still a part of the plan and purpose of the Lord in reaching them.
Now let’s shift gears just a little and look at evidence of another matter.
Tonight’s message is the sequel to last Sunday night’s message.
And what a healthy child he appeared to be.
Immediately he became a praying man, and a man filled with the Holy Spirit of God.
Saul, humbly accepted the ministry of the man of God and began to actively serve the Lord.
And my purpose is just the same that it was last week:
And if they aren’t, then we should try to discover why they aren’t.
And when they are finally taken to the assay office of the Lord, it will be found that they are not gold, but wood, hay and stubble.
It has nothing to do with an earthly human priest,
And I’m not really talking about confessing our sins one to another.
It should be acknowledged, confessed, forsaken and completely forgiven.
And then was Saul certain days with the disciples which were at Damascus.
How do you think that things went there in the middle of verse 19.
was it a couple of days later that they were introduced to their former enemy?
Saul may have been responsible for the stoning of some of the kin of these people.
And perhaps some of these people had been citizens of Jerusalem who had fled their homes because of this very man.
Acts 8:1 says, “And Saul was consenting unto his [Stephen’s] death. And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judaea and Samaria, except the apostles.”
Had some of those people fled even beyond Samaria unto Damascus and even to Antioch?
He must have had to display genuine humility and absolute meekness.
I wonder if any of those saints got in the flesh and vented their anger against him?
If they did, I can assure you that he felt and accepted every blow as a man thoroughly guilty of every charge.
And then there was another kind of confession as well.
Try to imagine the emotion that he felt when he walked into the first synagogue of Damascus and asked to address the people there.
Here was a man who had been on his way to the top of Jewish politics and religion, and much of that rise was on the backs of the saints that he had been arresting and executing.
And now he stood before his own Christ-hating countrymen, confessing to them that he had been wrong.
He took every opportunity to preach Christ to them, but a part of those sermons was the declaration that he had been a fool.
Saul had been a man filled with the very common Pharisaic tendency of arrogant self-righteousness,
but overnight it was knocked right out of him by the power and grace of the Almighty.
He joyfully stood beside the hated Christians, and started down the road that was called “the way.”
Turn to Matthew 10:28 and think about how these words now fit so snugly into the life of saint Saul:
Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.
Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.
Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven.
But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.
For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.
He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.”
But their laying await was known of Saul. And they watched the gates day and night to kill him.
Then the disciples took him by night, and let him down by the wall in a basket.
And when Saul was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples: but they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple.
But Barnabas took him, and brought him to the apostles, and declared unto them how he had seen the Lord in the way, and that he had spoken to him, and how he had preached boldly at Damascus in the name of Jesus.
And he was with them coming in and going out at Jerusalem.
And he spake boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus, and disputed against the Grecians: but they went about to slay him.”
A person might think that Saul was displaying cowardice in his escape from Damascus and his flight from Jerusalem, but I don’t see it that way.
Let’s say that after his conversion, Saul chose to become a meek and silent student of Christ.
Let’s say that he became one of the average saints, who never opens his mouth to witness for the Lord.
How diligent would the authorities have been to have him killed?
There would have been talk about it, but there wouldn’t have been the same urgency as what we are seeing here.
Saul was hated and hunted for the rest of his life, because he refused to be silent.
Judging from the scriptures, I would guess that he recounted the testimony of his conversion at every opportunity.
And everywhere he went, the Jews quickly hated him and often tried to kill him.
There were even Jewish death squads which followed him from place to place.
As we read from Galatians last week, some time his conversion and baptism he was led of the Lord down into Arabia.
“Arabia” is a word which describes a very large area.
But while he was there the Lord taught him a great many things.
After graduation, he didn’t go to Jerusalem, but rather returned to Damascus.
When I was a little boy, long before I really knew anything about the gospel, my parents brought a copy of this book home.
I don’t know what happened to that first copy, but I found this in a used book store a few years ago and I just had to buy it for sentimental reasons.
I’m sure that it was at the insistence of the disciples, and not at the request or demand of Saul.
I think that he would have been happy to stay in Damascus and to die there, but there were wiser heads on some of the other shoulders.
So after he “escaped” he turned to Jerusalem, longing to be with some of the venerable saints of God.
“And when Saul was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples: but they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple.”
Immediately after leaving his home church, he looked for the fellowship of another church of like faith and order.
Naturally, at first he was not well-received, even though a great length of time had passed since he had last persecuted those people.
It took the loving work of Barnabas to convince the church to receive him, despite the letters of recommendation that he probably brought from Damascus.
Don’t you wonder what it was in Barnabas which encouraged him to intercede for Saul?
Did Barnabas have relatives in Syria who had been writing to him about Saul?
I don’t know.
Yes, he longed to preach the gospel to some of his old partners in unbelief, but he also wanted to meet Peter, John, Andrew and James.
Unfortunately all of the Apostles by this time had either died or left, with the exception of Peter and James.
But he was in town only a couple of weeks, 15 days, before he was encouraged or forced to move on.
I wouldn’t be surprised if his heart yearned to embrace some of the other apostles and early disciples.
But now they were brethren, and he probably wanted to hear from their lips that they had forgiven him.
Almost before he got his luggage unpacked he was surreptitiously brought to Caesarea and put on a ship to sail to his home town of Tarsus.
Have you ever thought about the fact that he was to duplicate this same trip from Jerusalem to Caesarea in almost the same circumstances a few years later?
After his third missionary journey he came to Jerusalem, where he was arrested.
When some of the Jews plotted a suicide attack against him, he was whisked away by the Roman army.
But that is a story to which we’ll have to return some other day.
It was undoubtedly with mixed emotions that Saul sailed from Judea toward Cilicia.
His fellowship with nearly all the rest of Christianity was broken for a very long while.
How his heart much have ached for Christian fellowship.
But on the other hand, there were probably kin folk and childhood friends who needed to hear the truth about the Messiah.
At this point Saul was apparently an unofficial missionary to Celicia.
And that points out another evidence of his conversion:
But Saul increased the more in strength, and confounded the Jews which dwelt at Damascus, proving that this is very Christ.
And he was with them coming in and going out at Jerusalem.
And he spake boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus, and disputed against the Grecians: but they went about to slay him.”
When the Bible says that Saul was “coming in and going out with them,” it means that he was doing what he could to be with the ministers of the church in Jerusalem.
He went back to the synagogue of the Libertines where he had debated with Stephen, but now he was preaching what Stephen had preached.
He went with the saints as they went into the temple to serve the Lord there.
He may have visited the fatherless and widows, to whom Stephen had been ministering before he was murdered.
It appears that Saul was doing whatever he could to serve and please the Lord.
And these things were all indicators and evidences of his conversion.
How many of these sorts of things can be found in your life?
You need to serve your Saviour.
You need to actively serve the Lord, for your own sake as much as for Him.