Paul (1)
17From Miletus he sent to Ephesus, and called to himself the elders of the assembly. 18When they had come to him, he said to them, “You yourselves know, from the first day that I set foot in Asia, how I was with you all the time, 19serving the Lord with all humility, with many tears, and with trials which happened to me by the plots of the Jews; 20how I didn’t shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, teaching you publicly and from house to house, 21testifying both to Jews and to Greeks repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus. 22Now, behold, I go bound by the Spirit to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there; 23except that the Holy Spirit testifies in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions wait for me. 24But these things don’t count; nor do I hold my life dear to myself, so that I may finish my race with joy, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to fully testify to the Good News of the grace of God. 25“Now, behold, I know that you all, among whom I went about preaching God’s Kingdom, will see my face no more. 26Therefore I testify to you today that I am clean from the blood of all men, 27for I didn’t shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. 28Take heed, therefore, to yourselves, and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the assembly of the Lord and God which he purchased with his own blood. 29For I know that after my departure, vicious wolves will enter in among you, not sparing the flock. 30Men will arise from among your own selves, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them. 31Therefore watch, remembering that for a period of three years I didn’t cease to admonish everyone night and day with tears.
A tree has to be pruned if it is to grow well. Only when the branches that are not growing well are cut away can the sound branches flower and bear more fruit. However much you begrudge cutting a branch, it must be cut, or the nourishment is taken away. Are there perhaps branches in your life that are not needed? However important a part of your life it seems, if it cannot bear fruit it has to be cut away without hesitation. The world right now is spiritually very muddied. In a world like this, keep in mind that if you cannot put the word of truth at the center and discern good and evil whole, you cannot enter God’s kingdom; and keep your faith.
I will preach on Paul in two parts. The apostle Paul turned the direction of his life completely around after receiving Christ. After experiencing being born again, he came to see that Jesus Christ alone is salvation. This understanding became the occasion for him to let go of his own righteousness in earnest, and he grew spiritually into knowing that it is God’s will for everyone to be saved.
Acts 20:6-7
6We sailed away from Philippi after the days of Unleavened Bread, and came to them at Troas in five days, where we stayed seven days. 7On the first day of the week, when the disciples were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and continued his speech until midnight.
Luke and Paul kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread according to the custom of the diaspora. Keeping that feast, Paul must have thought of Jesus, who became the Passover lamb, and must have seen the faith of Jews who keep the law like their own lives. A feast kept after receiving Jesus Christ would have felt different to him, and his mind must have been full of the change in himself — he too had thought that living by the law was the true faith, and here he was preaching the gospel. Thinking that Jesus Christ had appointed him apostle to the Gentiles, he must also have resolved to carry that calling well.
That Paul took five days over a distance of two days is evidence that the weather was very bad and he worked to get there for the believers who were waiting. Paul did his utmost in the circumstances given him, and worked beyond his strength. The first day after the Sabbath means Sunday, the day after the Sabbath. You can see that the earliest believers gathered on the Sabbath along with the Jews at first, and were now worshiping separately on the Lord’s Day.
Paul had to leave Troas the next day, and so he preached late into the night. Many believers had gathered in the upper room, and Eutychus, who had worked all day and come to the service, was sitting on the windowsill listening; he fell fast asleep and dropped from the third floor.
Look at the event in Acts 20 where Paul restored Eutychus after his fall from the third floor, and you see that Paul held an astonishing power God had given him. Why did Luke go out of his way to record the affair of Eutychus falling out of a window while dozing? Luke would have recorded it out of a wish to tell not so much of the Eutychus who dozed and fell as of the faith of the apostle Paul who restored him. Luke, who wrote the Gospel of Luke and Acts, was a physician, so when Eutychus hit the ground he was probably the first to examine him, and in his medical opinion he would have pronounced him dead.
But Paul said Eutychus was still alive, and preached the Word and broke bread with the believers until daybreak. Eutychus, of course, came to life at daybreak, just as the apostle Paul had said. The spiritual eye that sees life in a Eutychus who plainly seems dead was the same power as Jesus seeing life in the dead Lazarus. Being able to say with assurance that a person whose life has been cut off is alive is possible for believers who trust in Jesus Christ.
Life is governed by God, and so, just as Paul entrusted Eutychus to God and preached the gospel, believers must preach the truth to a world shut in darkness and must believe that God will act. If believers decide it is hopeless and do not preach the gospel to the people of the world, those people really may never be saved. But if they preach the gospel with the faith that God will never put believers to shame, those people too will receive Christ.
Acts 9:4-5
4He fell on the earth, and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” 5He said, “Who are you, Lord?” The Lord said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.
In the Bible Paul is called by two names; Saul is Hebrew and Paul is Greek, and after his conversion he was mostly called Paul. Paul was of the tribe of Benjamin, and he was born in Tarsus in Cilicia into a family with wealth and standing enough to hold Roman citizenship. He was circumcised on the eighth day and was raised under a strict education in the law, so he held a faith that kept the law more closely than his contemporaries.
Saul heard Stephen the deacon explain in detail the work of atonement in Jesus Christ, and still he thought it right that Stephen should be stoned to death. When Stephen prayed as he died that the Lord not charge this sin against them, Saul’s fury toward Jesus grew all the greater. But at that time he cannot have known that one day he would die making the same confession as Stephen. Saul rejoiced sincerely at Stephen’s death, and, thinking that persecuting the church this zealously was loyalty to God, he stood at the center of the persecution of Christ.
Saul was on his way to Damascus to arrest still more Christians. His only thought was how to arrest more Christians and wipe this Christian religion out. The more the Christians spread, the more the Jews lost their vested position, so Saul was in a hurry and would not stop the persecution.
Saul was a Pharisee who had studied the law, so his pride in being one of a chosen people was enormous. Christianity looked to him like a challenge to the Jewish people, to the temple in Jerusalem and to the law, and so he thought persecuting Christians was the way to be loyal to God. To Jews who would not even speak God’s name carelessly, Jesus said that he himself was the temple, the Son of God and the lord of the Sabbath; and when you see that furious Jews executed him on a cross for it, you can understand Saul’s fury well enough.
Then, as he traveled to Damascus, a strong light shone from heaven and a voice came: ‘I am Jesus, whom you persecute; why do you torment me?’ It would have meant, why do you persecute the believers so relentlessly? Christ appearing in a strong light and a voice to a Saul who was racing to Damascus out of loyalty to God must have been a great shock to him. Saul, dazed by the strong light and the words, heard Christ tell him to go into the city; he opened his eyes and could see nothing.
Saul had been racing off to persecute Christians, and God closed his physical eyes for a while, so that he could not even see the world that had exalted him. The strong light of Jesus Christ closed eyes that had been greedy, closed eyes that had been bound to the law, closed the eyes of a slave of wicked Satan who had persecuted believers. At this the believers, hearing that the Saul who had been coming to arrest them had gone blind, must have been overjoyed, thinking that God had protected them. Through this event the believers experienced God’s astonishing work.
Saul must have thought a great deal in a darkness where he could hold on to neither the world that had been his strength nor even his faith toward God. If it were really true that Jesus Christ is alive, what had he been loyal to all this time, and what had he persecuted Christians for? Every feeling must have crossed his mind. He had never once imagined he would come to acknowledge Christ, and that is how he could insist his conduct was right, and could watch Stephen die without even thinking him pitiful. He had not understood then why Stephen prayed to the last moment with the face of an angel; but the instant he met Christ and came to see that the Jesus who took up the cross was the savior, Stephen’s faith made sense to him.
God asked Ananias, ‘It is true that he has persecuted believers until now; but in fact he is my chosen vessel from the beginning, to carry the Lord’s name to Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel, so pray that his spiritual eyes may open.’ God could have healed Paul’s eyes without Ananias’ prayer, and he went out of his way to ask Ananias in order to bless the devotion with which Ananias had been loyal to the gospel. God always does several things with one event.
What would you do if you were Ananias? If God commanded you to pray for the Saul who had been putting your brothers in faith in prison and killing them, would you obey with joy? Would you pray, knowing that if his eyes opened he might kill your brothers again?
I felt sorry for Ananias, because I think I know how torn he must have been on hearing God’s word. Watching Ananias pray for the Saul who killed Stephen and imprisoned believers, and pray because God commanded it, I thought this is exactly the model that shows how far believers must obey. If Ananias had refused to the end, God would have opened Saul’s eyes himself or through some other person of power. But Ananias held the faith that obedience comes before his own feelings. Later, watching Saul preach the gospel, Ananias must have seen that God really does see with different eyes than a human being, and given thanks.
But here we meet a God who is hard for a human being to understand. The God who saw Stephen’s precious faith, refusing to betray him to the end as he was stoned, and stood at his throne to receive him, is the God we know and serve. But the God who calls Saul, who killed Stephen and persecuted the church, and then has a believer heal him, is hard to understand. Can you understand this God, who calls and heals the Saul who killed believers like Stephen, believers who did not spare their lives for Jesus Christ?
If he meant to use a wicked man like Saul as an evangelist to the Gentiles, he could simply have used a man of good faith like Stephen and not let him die. To human thinking, a man full of faith like Stephen living a long life seems far more useful to God than Saul. People think it far better for a Stephen full of faith to devote himself than to repair a wicked Saul and use him. That is why believers cannot understand why a good-hearted person dies early or meets trouble.
We think that good people and people of faith must always live well, must be healthy, and must have their problems solved as they wish. And if things fall outside this standard, we judge that they suffered because of sin, or say easily that believing God does no good.
But if God worked according to human thinking, you and I could never be saved. You and I are the sinners who hung Jesus on the cross and killed him. A human being can never understand the God who created the heavens and the earth, the God who did not stop them from eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the God who allowed his own people to be slaves for four hundred and thirty years, the God who had his Son take up the cross. So salvation is wholly God’s sovereignty, and we must never say carelessly that this person can or cannot be saved.
Ananias, who knew this secret, obeyed God’s command, and he knew it was his own work to do. You too should obey not only when you understand, but go when the Word says go and stand when it says stand.
Saul met Christ in Damascus, and when his eyes were opened through Ananias’ prayer he became certain that Christ is the living God. Paul had known Jesus wrongly until then, but once he met Christ himself he did not hesitate for a moment to receive him. Paul, who had thought that keeping the law thoroughly was faith, gained the new faith that Christ is the one who completed that law, and resolved that whether he lived he would live for the Lord and whether he died he would die for the Lord. That resolve carried through to the moment he was beheaded for trying to convert the concubines of the tyrant Nero to Christianity during Nero’s suppression of the faith. That is how, the moment you meet the Lord, you come to hold a faith that gives up your own life.
Philippians 3:7-8
7However, I consider those things that were gain to me as a loss for Christ. 8Yes most certainly, and I count all things to be a loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I suffered the loss of all things, and count them nothing but refuse, that I may gain Christ
Paul was now born again in faith, but he was a man who had owned and enjoyed a great deal in worldly terms, and he had to cut that off first. Believing in Christ should mean being sanctified, and that begins with working to cut off the pleasures, the habits, the people and the circumstances you have humanly enjoyed and leaned on. His parents and brothers would not forgive Paul for becoming a Christian, and that is why he would lose not only the money and the position he had enjoyed until then but even the least of his pride. If you stood where Paul stood, having to choose between worldly power and Christ, what would you choose? People fear having less, so the decision will not come as easily as you think. But only by putting down first the world that had been your strength can you have a vessel of spiritual authority large enough to hold that world again. If you cannot lean on God whole, then even when God gives you blessing the vessel you hold may not bear it and may break. Paul knew this, and to make his own spiritual vessel large and strong he showed an unchanging faith, and did his utmost to live by the Word even with suffering and fire ahead of him. The world says you can only be exalted if you own much, while the church teaches that you must die and must let go, so the conflict will be sharp. But the world is like mist that vanishes when the sun rises, so we are told to let go of a sinful heart, because only then can we receive God’s glory.
What if you cannot let go of your greed and are clutching the world, and then, when you meet God, all of it turns out to be mist? Until the day before, Paul was persecuting Christians who believed in Jesus; after he received the Lord, assurance about the truth came, and his thinking and his conduct changed completely. Anyone who will not turn as Paul did but hesitates in the middle will meet Satan’s mockery and God’s wrath, and will lose the eternal home they were to return to. The knowledge of the law with which he had persecuted Christians became a tool for persuading Jews, and the family and standing that had been his boast became a tool for preaching the gospel to Romans. Paul knew that the knowledge of Christ is on a higher level and is the true truth, higher than the knowledge of the law, and that is how he could count everything he had taken for strength in the world as loss.
Once you grasp the word of scripture and meet the God who works by grace, the worldly learning you had thought so advanced will look like elementary lessons. The reason is that worldly learning has no answers, while the truth does. Do you think the Word you now know is the true truth? Then, like the apostle Paul, may you count as refuse everything you have thought of until now as strength, for Christ’s sake. Paul’s confession — that for Christ’s sake he would throw away as refuse the worldly things he had enjoyed and devote himself with his whole life — must become your confession.
Acts 9:27 shows Barnabas taking Paul to the apostles and telling them how Paul had met the Lord on the road to Damascus, what the Lord had done for him, and how boldly Paul had proclaimed in the name of Jesus in Damascus right after meeting the Lord. When God entrusts a ministry he always prepares fellow workers. Look at every prophet and disciple, and you see that he always helped them carry the work of the gospel together with good fellow workers.
The apostle Paul, too, was granted several good fellow workers. There were fellow workers who preached the Word alongside him, and fellow workers who went into prison with him, were persecuted with him, and sang and encouraged him there. There was a fellow worker who offered to give Paul his own eyes when Paul’s eyes hurt, and a fellow worker who supported him materially all his life so that Paul could do nothing but preach the Word.
Among the people who helped Paul be born again as a worker of the gospel, Barnabas was a fellow worker with a fine character. He was ready at any time to take a low place and serve anyone at all, if it would extend God’s kingdom. Barnabas, respected for caring for the poor and for his service, stepped in to mediate and resolve the disciples’ suspicion of Paul. The faith and character of a Barnabas who persuaded disciples doubting that the Paul who had killed believers was truly converted, and who made a place where Paul could preach the gospel freely, are remarkable. People are not used to accepting as a comrade someone who took what was theirs or did them evil, so accepting Paul cannot have been easy. Like Barnabas, the most important thing for an officer of the church is to grasp first what God wants and to let go of one’s own thinking. Jesus himself gave himself up and obeyed God, and it is not right for us, saved by Jesus’ blood, to insist on our own ideas.
While Paul was doing missionary work for Christ, he met a false prophet and magician, Elymas. He interfered endlessly to keep Paul from preaching the gospel, and lied to keep the proconsul from receiving it.
Acts 13:10-11
10and said, “Full of all deceit and all cunning, you son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, will you not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord? 11Now, behold, the hand of the Lord is on you, and you will be blind, not seeing the sun for a season!” Immediately a mist and darkness fell on him. He went around seeking someone to lead him by the hand.
Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, rebuked Elymas severely and cursed him: son of the devil, enemy of all righteousness, if you will not stop making crooked the straight ways of the Lord, the Lord’s hand is upon you and you will be blind. By Paul’s curse Elymas went blind. Even while working a miracle like this, Paul proclaimed that the Lord’s hand would judge him, a slave of the devil, which is why he lifted Jesus higher than himself. From this we can see that Paul had been born again through the Word.
Wherever Paul went he held the power to drive disease away merely by laying down his handkerchief, and even so he never made anything of himself. To this day there is so little personal information about Paul; he proclaimed only the Lord, and he lived for the Lord and was martyred.
Elymas was a false prophet whose work was to block the gospel, and so, unlike Paul, whose eyes were opened by God’s grace, he became a blind man who would never see again. In the same way, the Lord’s own hand disciplines anyone who hinders the gospel and persecutes the Lord’s servant. Anyone who hinders the Lord’s work meets the second death, so you must never, even in a dream, persecute a believer who preaches the gospel or hinder a church.
While Paul lived in the world he thought his own faith and his own judgment were right. But watching the Lord’s power to discipline Satan at work alongside him, he gladly gave his life to the God who had pulled him out of the darkness. You too will have experienced the love of a God who gives grace in your life. From now on, may you be loyal in a faith that gives that love back. And may you own a faith that runs to the end, as the apostle Paul did, for the Lord who protects you with love as constant as this. I ask it of you in the name of Jesus Christ.