Preaching Christ – Acts 9:10-22

According to what I have learned, in 1990 the ten largest denominations in the United States,

claimed to have 167,000 churches, and that number didn’t include our little congregation.

I would guess that after14 years of growth, and if we added all those churches which are not members of the ten largest denominations,

there must be at least 300,000 churches in the United States today.

If the members and pastors of all those churches could be surveyed, we’d find a variety of reasons for the existence of each of those churches.

Many of those churches would talk about their particular variety of evangelism.

Some would say that their purpose is to help people in need, either socially or spiritually.

Others would talk about their communities and their desire to right social wrongs.

Some would say that their goal would be to propagate their unique doctrines.

We would probably hear a hundred different reasons for the existence of all of those congregations.

In fact it’s chic these days for churches to spend weeks designing their special “Statement of Purpose.”

As Baptists we are supposed to find our purpose and definition in the pages of the Word of God.

It is one of our doctrines that “the Bible is our only source for faith and practice.”

So how does the Word of God describe our purpose is a church?

I think that we see a glimpse of it here in this Scripture.

When Ananias questioned the Lord’s wisdom in sending him to visit the persecutor Saul,

God replied, “Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and Kings, and the children of Israel.”

Each and every saint of God has been given his or her own unique gifts to use for the Lord’s glory.

And not only do we have different gifts, but the exact ministry of each of us is a little different.

Not every man is called to be an apostle; and not every woman is called to be the wife of a missionary.

But. . . . every Christian is in a sense a temple of the Lord.

We are vessels – containers – carrying the Holy Spirit around in our hearts and souls.

And we also possess the gospel, which we are suppose to spill upon our neighbors.

It is a duty of every one of us therefore to purge ourselves from sinful things, that we might be “vessels unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master’s use, and prepared unto every good work.”

Collectively, as made up of many Christians, we might think of our church as a case or carton of many of these sanctified vessels.

The Holy Spirit is a part of this church and this church service this morning.

And our church has been given the commission to “go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.”

So our purpose as a church is essentially the same as that of Saul:

Our church is a “chosen vessel to bear the name of the Lord before the Gentiles, Kings and even the children of Israel.”

There are great many avenues to take in carrying this out, both individually and collectively:

We can speak to our neighbor over the fence, and our co-worker over our sandwiches.

We can carry our Savior to that distant cousin through letters and phone calls.

We can share the message of Christ via letters to the editor.

We can encourage the teaching and preaching ministry of our church.

We can do it again by supporting missionaries who are doing the same thing in other places.

We can witnessed one-on-one, and sometimes we can preach to thousands.

Some of the saints of God can do all of these, and others might have a very small sphere of influence,

but large or small, this is our duty and commission.

After the Lord saved Saul of Tarsus, he was equipped and sent out to became a great preacher of the gospel.

And he took his job very, very seriously.

He said, “For though I preach the gospel, I have nothing to glory of: for necessity is laid upon me; yea, woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel.”

And, “I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise. So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel . . .”

Comparing verse to verse, when the Lord said that Saul was “a chosen vessel to bear my name before the Gentiles, and Kings, and the children of Israel,”

He was saying that this man was called to be a preacher.

And immediately – the Bible word is – “straightway, he preached Christ in the synagogues that he is a Son of God.”

As a church of the Lord Jesus Christ, this is one of our highest responsibilities – to preach Christ.

As Saul later said, “the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness;

but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom you not God it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

And so we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block and unto the Greeks foolishness.”

Keeping Acts 9 before our hearts this morning, let’s notice four things about preaching Christ:

It begins with a PREACHER, but its PURPOSE is the Saviour,

And in reaching that purpose there should come PROOF and PASSION.

Obviously, preaching always begins with the PREACHER.

When we turn on the radio, many times we have no knowledge about the person behind the voice.

In such a case we are confined to the words and the emotion that we might hear in that voice.

In television, advertizing agencies spend lots of money hiring famous people to voice their ads, because subliminally, the viewer’s minds sometimes recognize the voice and associate good things to the product.

In television programs you can spot the villain by the look on his face, the sound of his voice, or even by his clothes.

Back in the 50’s and 60’s the good guys always wore white hats, and the bad guys had black hats.

It was only when the story-teller wanted to trick us did he have them change those hats.

But then the next week the man who was the villain, was on a different show as a good guy.

That’s because they were only actors.

Despite the fact that there are a great many very good actors in the ministry, generally speaking, the message cannot be disassociated from the person who is doing the preaching.

In some ways this was a help to Saul – and in other ways a hindrance.

“And straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God.

But all that heard him were amazed, and said;

Is not this he that destroyed them which called on this name in Jerusalem,

and came hither for that intent, that he might bring them bound unto the chief priests?”

My guess would be that among the Christian members of the church in Damascus,

Saul became another ear and a faithful disciple, learning as much as he could about his Saviour.

But as a former leader and teacher in the synagogues of Jerusalem, he was courteously and curiously received into the synagogues of Damascus, at least for a while.

If he wasn’t asked to stand to expound the scriptures, he asked for that opportunity,

And whenever he was given the privilege he openly declared that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.

But obviously that was a message very different to what he had been preaching only weeks earlier,

and this made people sit up and take notice.

He didn’t have to publicly describe his background and history to this crowd, because everyone knew.

He might have done so, but it wasn’t necessary for him to describe his conversion.

The revolution in his heart was as obvious as the nose on his face.

For some of those Jews, it destroyed the credibility of Saul’s message.

But for those who were really thinking, it greatly enhanced what he was saying,

because it screamed out that he was not the man that he had once been.

This man had been born again.

I get a couple of religious publications which talk about the ministry and how to “best serve Christ.”

The one that I received last week was describing how today’s most successful church leaders are much different from the church leaders of a generation or two ago.

They don’t call themselves “pastors” but prefer “church leader” or a host of other terms.

They don’t have preaching services, but rather conversational discussions with their congregations.

Some don’t say that they have Sunday services any more but “Weekend Talks.”

And church membership has been replaced by “spiritual partnerships.”

Everything about some of these men is different from the past and often times from the Bible as well.

They have given up suits and ties for causal clothes.

Sometimes they enter the pulpit unkempt and unshaven.

Their illustrations aren’t verbal, but physical, like riding on a live donkey.

They’ve given up Bible terms like “conversion” and “the new birth” having replaced them with “allegiance to God’s kingdom,” and “a personal relationship with God.”

Years ago words like “repentance” left their vocabulary, because it was just too offensive.

In fact there are a lot of these men who don’t even use the words “Lord” or “Saviour.”

When these men take the stage, to deliver their weekend talk, they preach a message before they ever open their mouths.

Many of these men are popular, and some of them are excellent communicators.

But even though I would like to have that said of me some day,

I don’t want to preach the same NON-VERBAL SERMON that they are preaching.

But when I stand up here, I want to be known as the servant of God, before being the friend of man.

It seems to me that some of these people are trying to disassociate themselves from the God of the Bible in order to lead their neighbors to who-knows-what and away from who-cares.

It seems that these “church leaders” are deliberately trying to look like over-paid actors between gigs, rather than looking like servants of God.

I think that they preach the wrong message before they ever open their mouths.

After his first visit or two, when Saul of Tarsus walked into any of the synagogues of Damascus,

he was immediately recognized as an ambassador of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The average Jew may not have liked that, but that was who He was.

And Saul knew that it was essential that he behave in a manner which reflected that position.

If he ever had used profanity, it certainly couldn’t be a part of his vocabulary now.

If he ever had ever worn Bermuda shorts, they couldn’t have been worn into the Lord’s church or even the old synagogue now that he was a servant of Christ.

Saul was now a representative of the Holy God, and he was trying to bring men to the Lord.

He was not necessarily a friend of those sinners, trying to humble the Lord and bring him down to them.

Preaching begins with the preacher.

And there is no escaping that fact.

The obligation laid upon that preacher is be the very best prophet and ambassador that he can be.

Not just in his words but in everything about him.

But of course the PURPOSE of gospel preaching is centered in Christ Jesus.

“And straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God.

But Saul increased the more in strength, and confounded the Jews which dwelt at Damascus, proving that this is very Christ.”

I would be the last to say that our preaching has to be the Lord Jesus and the gospel, in every message.

But I will say that our preaching has to be Biblical.

That means that not only SHOULD we preach a whole range of spiritual subjects, but that I am OBLIGATED to preach and teach those subjects.

Later Saul would say: “ALL scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”

And, “I have not shunned to declare unto you ALL the counsel of God.”

If I had time to prepare, and you had ears to hear, we could have Bible lessons and messages every day for the rest of our lives and still only begin to master the Word of God.

But clearly, the message to the lost (excuse me the “unchurched” ) has to begin and end with the gospel.

Did you know that even the word “gospel” is falling into disuse among the neo-evangelical churches today.

But “the gospel” is precisely what the lost need to hear.

“Brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; by which also ye are saved,

For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;

And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.”

And who exactly is this one Saul called “Christ?”

For the unsaved Jews to whom He was speaking, Saul made a little spiritual and intellectual progression:

The subject of his sermons was Jesus, Who is the Christ, and this Christ is the Son of God.

“And straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God,

and he confounded the Jews which dwelt at Damascus, proving that this is very Christ.”

Just as Ananias had done before him to these same Syrian Jews . . .

And just as Stephen had done in Saul’s hearing before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Senate . . .

And just as Stephen had done in Saul’s home synagogue in Jerusalem . . .

And just as Peter and the other apostles had been doing in the temple and the rest of the synagogues of that city. . .

Saul took the Old Testament scriptures and demonstrated how they were speaking of Jesus of Nazareth, who was lately crucified down there in Jerusalem.

The Old Testament prophesied about the birth of Christ, and this Jesus fulfilled those prophesies.

Those scriptures spoke about the life, the ministry and the message of Christ, and Jesus’ life matched the outline that the Bible proscribed.

Those scriptures predicted the death of Christ, and Jesus of Nazareth died as it was predicted.

And then there was abundant proof that this Jesus had arisen from the grave.

He was seen by dozens of His disciples after everyone knew that h had died and been buried.

In fact He was seen by well over 500 different people.

And, I don’t know if Saul was giving this part of his testimony yet or not, but even Saul had seen and heard the living Jesus.

This man was telling these Jews, just what Peter had confessed – “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.”

Saul wasn’t trying to make those people feel bad.

Nor was he merely trying to educate them.

He was doing his best to convince them that the Saviour was Who He claimed to be.

And that the people to whom he was preaching desperately needed this Saviour.

Saul, Christianity’s newest preacher, was preaching Christ and the gospel.

And he was doing it with PROOF.

“Saul increased the more in strength, and confounded the Jews which dwelt at Damascus, proving that this is very Christ.”

The American judicial system, like most others in the world, is predicated – is built – on the necessity of proof.

Is proof the same thing as argument?

Is it proof the same thing as an abundance of evidence?

Is it logic, dispute, instruction or blustering?

To prove something is to gather enough evidence to demonstrate that it is absolutely true.

The Greek word in verse 22 is quite rare in the Bible, being found only twice.

It means to “bring things together in a convincing fashion.”

And that was what Saul was doing with the facts about Christ Jesus.

I will grant that there is a great deal about the Lord, both the Father and the Son which we could never know if they hadn’t been revealed to us in the pages of the Word of God.

But that was the purpose of the giving of the Bible – to reveal God to man.

But once that revelation is accepted, we have all the evidence we need to know the things that we need to know.

Despite being Heavenly and spiritual, Christianity is not illogical, silly or senseless.

When what the Bible authoritatively declared is accepted as fact, those facts can be placed side by side to prove the doctrines which we teach.

For example, if history, the daily newspaper, and observation don’t make it clear enough, the Bible proves that all men are sinners and in desperate need of deliverance.

The Bible says that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.”

It says that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”

It says that “God looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

It says that we are “all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.”

And it declares that the wages of our sin is death.

And so “as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”

It also declares and proves that Jesus Christ is the Saviour that sinners need.

As I’ve already said, the Old Testament scriptures, which were fully accepted by those Jews,

Foretold the place and the coming of the Messiah, the Christ.

It described in some detail different things about His life.

And it prophesied His death in exquisite detail.

Along came Jesus of Nazareth, who fulfilled all the prophesies which touched on these things.

Because most of the Jews had their eyes on other prophesies about the Messiah, which have yet to be fulfilled, they totally rejected what He had fulfilled.

And Saul had been one of those Jesus-rejecting Jews.

But by the grace of God his eyes had been opened, his heart was opened and so was his mind.

Virtually over night, or at least within 72 hours, all of those scriptures fell into place in his mind.

There was no doubt to his now honest heart that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah, and that He was the infinite Son of God.

And now when he visited those Jewish synagogues, he could prove, not only argue, but prove that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour of sinners.

And he did so with PASSION.

“And straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God.”

And he “confounded the Jews which dwelt at Damascus, proving that this is very Christ.”

Biblical preaching, the kind of preaching of which the Bible says “that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe” is by its very nature excited and passionate.

If, as the Bible says, “there is only one name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved,”

And if all have sinned, coming short of the glory of God and in desperate need of salvation,

Then there ought to be a passion in the presentation of that good news – that gospel.

When Saul preached Jesus among those Jews, proving that is very Christ, he did so in a fashion that confounded those people.

They were bewildered, they were confused when they compared their suppositions to the proof of God’s Word.

They didn’t know how to respond except to counter-attack the truth the way that Saul had been doing down in Jerusalem.

25 years ago, a man invited a Baptist preacher to visit with him and his Jehovah’s Witness teachers.

The Baptist was just a kid, fresh out of Bible school and as green as spring grass.

But he was prepared with lots of Old Testament scriptures and lots of prayer.

When the Jehovah’s Witnesses showed up, that young Baptist just started unloading scripture after scripture, not giving the heretics a chance to respond.

After 30 minutes of passionate exposition and compounding, the confounded false teachers beat a hasty retreat without saying a word.

That is the sort of thing that I picture coming from the highly excited Saul, formerly of Tarsus, now a citizen of Heaven.

Biblical preaching contains an excitement and passion flowing out of the truth and need.

It often contains instruction and exposition, but it does so with urgency and enthusiasm.

Yes, the preacher’s voice sometimes get’s high pitched and a little exuberant, but it’s the passion.

Yes, he might get red in the face, and perspire a bit, but no more than a rabid fan at a close ball game.

Forgive him, if you think that he’s going too far, but he firmly believes that the truth is worthy declaring.

He believes that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that He will some day come “in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

He believes that an eternal soul is worth fighting for, even though you may not see its eternal value.

Preaching Christ means pleading for the truth.

And the truth is: “he that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.”

The truth us: “he that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.”

If Saul was here today, he would plead with you to see that Jesus is the Christ, the Saviour of sinners.

He would tell you that you are a sinner in need of Christ Jesus.

He would tell you to repent of your sins and to humbly surrender to Christ the Son of God, the Saviour.

How would you respond to his passionate appeal?