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 must be pruned if it is to grow well, because only when the weak branches are cut away can the sound ones blossom and bear more fruit. It may seem a waste to cut a branch, but unless it is cut, it will rob the tree of its nourishment. Are there branches in your life that serve no purpose? However important some part of your life may seem to you, if it cannot bear fruit, you must cut it away without hesitation. The world today is spiritually clouded and confused. In such a world, if we do not keep the word of truth at the center and discern fully between good and evil, we cannot enter the Kingdom of God. Bear that in mind, and I hope you will hold fast to your faith.
I will preach on Paul in two sermons. After he received Christ, the apostle Paul turned his life completely around. Once he had been born again, he came to see that salvation is in Jesus Christ alone. That realization moved him to lay down his own righteousness in earnest, and it brought him to the spiritual maturity of knowing that it is God’s will for all people 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 days of Unleavened Bread, as was the custom of the Jews of the Diaspora. Keeping the feast, Paul would likely have thought of Jesus, who became the Passover lamb, and watched the faith of the Jews, who guarded the law as they guarded their own lives. A feast kept after he had received Jesus Christ must have felt different to him. He too had once believed that living by the law was true faith, and now, as he preached the gospel, the change in himself probably gave him much to think about. Remembering how Jesus Christ had appointed him an apostle to the Gentiles, he probably also resolved to fulfill his calling well.
That Paul took five days to cover a two-day journey shows how hard he labored to reach those who were waiting for him, though the weather was very bad. Paul gave his best in the circumstances he was given and strove beyond his strength. The first day of the week means Sunday, the day after the Sabbath. At first the early Christians gathered on the Sabbath along with the Jews, but here we find them worshiping separately on the Lord’s Day.
Because he had to leave Troas the next day, Paul went on teaching late into the night. Many had gathered in the upper room, and Eutychus, who had come to worship after a full day’s work, sat in the window listening to the word until he sank into a deep sleep and fell from the third story.
The raising of Eutychus after his fall from the third story, recorded in Acts 20, shows that Paul had a remarkable power given by God. Why did Luke go to the trouble of recording how Eutychus dozed off and fell out of the window? He would have written it down less to tell us about Eutychus, who nodded off and fell, than to pass on the faith of the apostle Paul, who brought him back to life. As a physician, Luke, who wrote the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts, was probably the first to examine Eutychus when the young man hit the ground, and in his medical judgment he would have pronounced him dead.
But Paul said that Eutychus was still alive, and he went on preaching the word and breaking bread with the believers until daybreak. Sure enough, when day came, Eutychus was restored to life, just as the apostle had said. The spiritual eye that sees life in someone who to all appearances is dead was the same power by which Jesus saw life in the dead Lazarus. Those who believe in Jesus Christ can say with confidence that there is life in one whose life has been cut off.
Life is in God’s hands. So, just as Paul entrusted Eutychus to God and went on preaching the gospel, we must proclaim the truth to a world shut up in darkness and trust that God will work. If we write off the people of the world as hopeless and never preach the gospel to them, they may truly remain unsaved forever. But if we preach the gospel in the faith that God will never put his people to shame, they 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.
Scripture calls Paul by two names: Saul is Hebrew and Paul is Greek, and after his conversion he was mostly called Paul. He was of the tribe of Benjamin, born in Tarsus of Cilicia into a family of such wealth and standing that it held Roman citizenship. He was circumcised on the eighth day and brought up under strict teaching in the law, so he held to the law more zealously than others of his age.
Even after hearing Deacon Stephen set out in detail the atoning work of Jesus Christ, Saul thought Stephen deserved to be stoned to death. When the dying Stephen prayed that the Lord would not hold this sin against them, Saul’s anger toward Jesus only grew. What he could not have known then was that one day he himself would die making the same confession as Stephen. Saul rejoiced from his heart at Stephen’s death, and convinced that persecuting the church so zealously was loyalty to God, he stood at the center of the persecution of Christ.
He was on his way to Damascus to arrest more Christians. How could he seize still more of them and wipe out this Christian faith? That was his only thought. The more the Christians spread, the more the Jews stood to lose their privileged position. That made Saul anxious and impatient, and he would not let up.
As a Pharisee trained in the law, Saul took great pride in belonging to the chosen people. To him the Christian faith seemed to be presuming to challenge the Jewish nation, the temple in Jerusalem, and the law itself. For that reason he believed that persecuting Christians was the way to be loyal to God. The Jews would not even speak the name of God lightly. When Jesus told them that he was the temple, that he was the Son of God, and that he was Lord of the Sabbath, they were enraged, and he was put to death on a cross at their hands. Remember that, and Saul’s fury becomes easy enough to understand.
On the road to Damascus a strong light shone from heaven, and a voice said, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Why do you torment me?’ He was asking, we may suppose, why Saul persecuted his saints so relentlessly. Saul was racing to Damascus out of loyalty to God, and for him, Christ appearing in a blazing light and a voice must have come as a tremendous shock. Stunned by the light and the words, Saul heard Christ tell him to go into the city; he opened his eyes, but he could see nothing.
As Saul ran to persecute Christians, God closed his physical eyes for a time, so that he could not even see the world that had exalted him. The strong light of Jesus Christ shut his greedy eyes, shut the eyes that were bound by the law, and shut the eyes of a wicked servant of Satan who had persecuted the saints. When the believers heard that Saul, who had been coming to arrest them, had gone blind, they were likely overjoyed, convinced that God had protected them. Through this event they experienced the marvelous work of God.
In that darkness, where he could hold on neither to the world that had been his strength nor even to his faith in God, Saul must have thought long and hard. If it was true that Jesus Christ was alive, then what had he been loyal to all this time, and why had he persecuted the Christians? He was likely overwhelmed by a flood of emotions. Since he had never once imagined that he would come to acknowledge Christ, he had been able to insist that his actions were right, and he had felt no pity even as he watched Stephen die. At the time he could not understand why Stephen had prayed to the last with a face like an angel’s. But the moment he met Christ and realized that the Jesus who had carried the cross was the Savior, Stephen’s faith made sense to him.
God asked Ananias, ‘It is true that until now he has persecuted the saints, but in fact he is my vessel, chosen from the start to carry the Lord’s name to the Gentiles, to kings, and to the children of Israel. So pray for him, that his spiritual eyes may be opened.’ God could have healed Paul’s eyes without the prayer of Ananias, but he asked Ananias in order to bless the devotion with which Ananias had served the gospel all along, for God always accomplishes many things through a single event.
If you were Ananias, what would you do? If God commanded you to pray for Saul, who had been throwing your brothers in the faith into prison and killing them, would you obey with joy? Would you pray, knowing that once his eyes were opened he might kill your brothers again?
I think I know how torn Ananias must have been when he heard God’s word, and I felt for him. He prayed for Saul, the man who had killed Stephen and was throwing the saints into prison, simply because God had commanded it; and as I watched him, I thought that here is the example of how far we must go in obedience. Had Ananias refused to the end, God would have opened Saul’s eyes himself or through someone else he had empowered. But Ananias had a faith that put obedience ahead of his own feelings. Later, as he watched Saul preach the gospel, Ananias likely realized that God, as ever, does not see as people see, and gave thanks.
Yet here we meet a God whom we, being human, find hard to understand. The God who saw Stephen’s precious faith, unwavering to the end as the stones struck him, and who stood at the throne to welcome him, is the God we know and serve. But it is hard to understand a God who calls Saul, the man who killed Stephen and persecuted the church, and then has one of his own saints heal him. Saul killed believers like Stephen, who did not spare their lives for Jesus Christ. Can you understand this God, who calls such a man and heals him?
If God meant to use someone as wicked as Saul to preach to the Gentiles, he could simply have spared a man of strong faith like Stephen and used him instead. To human thinking, after all, a long life for a man as full of faith as Stephen would be of far more use to God than Saul. People think it much better to have a Stephen, full of faith, give himself to God’s work than to repair a wicked Saul and put him to use. That is why we cannot understand it when the kind-hearted die young or meet with hardship.
We think that good people and people of faith ought by all means to prosper, to be healthy, and to see their problems solved as they wish. If someone falls short of this standard, we would be quick to judge that they are suffering because of sin, or to say that believing in God is no use.
But if God worked according to human thinking, you and I could never be saved, because you and I are sinners who nailed Jesus to the cross. People can never understand the God who created heaven and earth, the God who did not stop the first man and woman from eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, the God who allowed his own people to live as slaves for 430 years, the God who made his Son bear the cross. Salvation rests wholly in God’s sovereignty; we must never, then, be quick to say that this or that person can or cannot be saved.
Ananias knew this mystery. He obeyed God’s command, understanding that it was the work he had to do. You too must not hold back your obedience until you understand. When the word says go, go; when it says stand, stand.
Saul met Christ at Damascus, and when his eyes were opened through the prayer of Ananias, he became convinced that Christ was the living God. Until then Paul had been wrong about Jesus, but once he met Christ face to face, he did not hesitate for a moment to receive him. Paul had thought that keeping the law strictly was faith. Now a new faith was born in him, that Christ is the one who fulfilled the law, and he resolved that whether he lived, he would live for the Lord, and whether he died, he would die for the Lord. That resolve held to the very end, when, under the tyrant Nero’s persecution of the Christian faith, he was beheaded for trying to convert Nero’s concubines. So it is that the moment we meet the Lord, we come to a faith that gives up our 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 had now been born again through faith, but he had owned and enjoyed a great deal in this life, so that was the first thing he had to break with. Those who believe in Christ must be sanctified, and we have to begin with the effort to cut ourselves off from whatever we enjoyed and leaned on in human terms: pleasures, habits, people, surroundings. Because Paul’s parents and brothers had not forgiven him for becoming a Christian, he would lose not only the wealth and power he had enjoyed but even the last shred of his dignity. If you stood where Paul stood, forced to choose between the world’s power and Christ, what would you choose? The fear of having less would keep the decision from coming as easily as people imagine. But only when we first lay down the world we relied on for strength can we have a vessel of spiritual authority able to hold once more the world we gave up. If you do not rely wholly on God, then even when God blesses you, the vessel you hold may not be able to bear it and may break. Knowing this, Paul showed God an unwavering faith so that his spiritual vessel would be large and strong, and though hardship and the refiner’s fire lay ahead of him, he did his utmost to live by the word. The world says you must own much to be honored, while the church teaches that we must die and let go, and the conflict this stirs up will be fierce. Yet because the world is like a mist that vanishes when the sun comes up, the church tells us that only when we cast off a sinful heart can we receive the glory of God.
What if you cling to the world because you cannot let go of your greed, and then, when you meet God, all of it turns out to be mist? Only yesterday Paul was persecuting those who believed in Jesus, but after he received the Lord he became convinced of the truth, and his thinking and conduct changed completely. Those who do not turn as Paul did, but hesitate halfway, will meet Satan’s mockery and God’s wrath, and they will lose the eternal home they would return to. The knowledge of the law with which Paul had persecuted Christians became a tool for persuading the Jews, and the family and status that had been his pride became a means of preaching the gospel to the Romans. Paul knew that the knowledge of Christ stands on a higher plane than knowledge of the law and is truth itself, and that is how he could count as loss everything he had once held as strength in the world.
When we grasp the word of Scripture and meet the God who works by grace, the learning of the world that we once held in such high regard will look like mere elementary lessons. This is because secular learning has no answers, while the truth does. Do you believe that the word you now know is the real truth? Then I hope you will count as refuse, as the apostle Paul did, everything you have thought of as strength until now, for the sake of Christ. Paul confessed that for Christ he would throw away the earthly things he had enjoyed as refuse and give himself to Christ with his whole life. That confession must become yours.
In Acts 9:27, Barnabas took Paul to the apostles and told them how Paul had met the Lord on the road to Damascus, what the Lord had done for him, and how, right after meeting the Lord, he had preached boldly in Damascus in the name of Jesus. When God entrusts someone with a ministry, he always prepares fellow workers. In every one of the prophets and disciples we see the same thing: God helped them bear the work of the gospel alongside good companions.
God gave the apostle Paul several good fellow workers as well. Some preached the word at his side; others went into prison with him and, persecuted together, sang praises and encouraged him. There were those ready to give Paul their own eyes when his were ailing, and there were those who supported him with their means all his life so that he could give himself wholly to preaching.
Among those who helped Paul become a minister of the gospel, Barnabas was a fellow worker of fine character. If it would extend the Kingdom of God, he was ready at any time to take a lowly place and serve anyone at all. Respected for caring for the poor and serving others, Barnabas stepped in as mediator to settle the disciples’ suspicions about Paul. The disciples doubted that Paul, who had killed the saints, had truly been converted; Barnabas persuaded them and made room for Paul to preach the gospel freely, and his faith and character were remarkable. People are not used to welcoming as a comrade someone who has taken what was theirs or done them harm, so accepting Paul would not have been easy. For anyone who holds office in the church, as for Barnabas, what matters most is first to understand what God wants and then to lay aside one’s own thinking. Jesus himself set himself aside and obeyed God. It is not right for us, who were saved by his precious blood, to insist on our own ideas.
As Paul did missionary work for Christ, he came up against Elymas the sorcerer, a false prophet. Elymas worked tirelessly to keep Paul from preaching the gospel, and he lied to keep the proconsul from accepting 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.
Filled with the Holy Spirit, Paul rebuked Elymas sharply and pronounced a curse on him: he called him a son of the devil and an enemy of all righteousness, and declared that unless he ceased to pervert the right ways of the Lord, the hand of the Lord was on him and he would be blind. Under Paul’s curse, Elymas went blind. Yet even as he worked such a miracle, Paul declared that it was the Lord’s hand that would judge this servant of the devil, thus exalting Jesus above himself. This shows that Paul had been born again through the word.
Wherever Paul went, his power was such that a mere handkerchief of his laid on the sick drove disease away, and yet he never put himself on display. Paul proclaimed only the Lord, so much so that even now there is no personal record of him; he lived for the Lord and died a martyr.
For working to block the gospel, the false prophet Elymas was left blind for good, unlike Paul, whose eyes had been opened by the grace of God. In the same way, the Lord himself disciplines with his own hand those who hinder the gospel and persecute his servants. Those who obstruct the work of the Lord will meet the second death, so never, not even in your dreams, persecute those who preach the gospel or stand in the way of the church.
When Paul was living in the world, he was sure his own faith and judgment were right. But when he saw the power of the Lord, who disciplines Satan, at work with him, he gladly offered his life to the God who had rescued him from darkness. You too must have known, in your own life, the love of God, who pours out his grace on you. From now on, let us serve him faithfully with a faith that gives that love back to him. May you hold, as the apostle Paul did, a faith that runs to the very end for the Lord, who protects you with a love that never changes. I ask this of you in the name of Jesus Christ.