What would you do if you discovered that everything you thought you knew how life works was wrong? Say you wake up one morning, and the sun’s rising in the west. You go out to the garage to go to work, and instead of your car sitting there you have a unicycle. You get to work, and instead of shirts and pants everyone’s wearing wrestling singlets. You go to get your paycheck, and instead of giving you money, they pay you in spam. You’re in some sort of bizarro world, and you don’t know how you got there or what’s going on. Everything you count on as fixed in your life is suddenly different.
If you can imagine that, then you know how Saul felt in our reading from Acts for today. He had decided he knew exactly who God was and how he could best serve God. Then, suddenly, he found out that everything he had decided was totally wrong.
Saul is the person who later in the Bible is referred to as Paul, sometimes the Apostle Paul. He became the first and greatest Christian evangelist. Paul wrote about half the books of the New Testament. Without Paul, the course of Christianity would’ve been very different, if it had even survived at all.
At the time of this story, though, Paul is still Saul. Saul was a well-known figure to Christians, too, but for a very different reason. Saul was the leading persecutor of Christians. He was a Pharisee, part of the group that opposed Jesus the most while Jesus was alive. Now that Jesus was gone, they were trying to stamp out those followers of Jesus who were still around, the apostles and any they’d converted. Saul was the main one who was doing the stamping out. He went to the high priest himself to get permission to go to Damascus, arrest any Christians he could find, and take them back to Jerusalem to be thrown in prison.
The thing to remember about this is that Saul was not an evil man, at least not in his own mind. Now, maybe you hear that and say, “But he was persecuting Christians. Surely that’s a bad thing to do, right?” Well, yes, it is. What I mean, though, is that Saul never had the intent to do evil. He was not sitting there thinking, “What’s some really bad thing I could do today? I know! I’ll persecute some Christians!”
That was not it at all. Saul was trying to serve God. He was Jewish, and he was very serious about following his Jewish faith. The thing is that he was so serious about following his Jewish faith that he had put following his faith ahead of following God. He could not see that what Jesus and his followers were doing was following God. Instead, like a lot of the other Pharisees, he decided that what Jesus had done, and what Jesus’ followers were now doing, was wrong. He decided it was a violation of Jewish law, which is another way of saying he decided it was a violation of God’s law. So, he also decided that it was his duty, as a follower of God, to put a stop to it.
What Saul was doing was wrong, no question about it. But it was not done out of an evil intent. Saul just did not understand. He did not understand who God was, he did not understand what God wanted, and he did not understand how to follow God. The reason Saul was doing these bad things was the Saul did not understand that he did not understand.
Until. Until he’s on the road to Damascus, and a light comes down from heaven, and he hears a voice say, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
Can you imagine what was going through Saul’s mind when he heard that? Can we even begin to imagine it? Persecute God? What did that mean? He loved God. He worshipped God. He was doing everything he possibly could to serve God. How could he be persecuting God? God must’ve made a mistake. But how could God make a mistake? God cannot make mistakes. So he must be persecuting God. But what had he done to persecute God? He was doing everything he could to serve God. God must have made a mistake. But God cannot make mistakes. Round and round his thoughts went, in much less time than it takes to say them, until he falls to the ground and says the only thing he can think of to say. “Who are you, Lord?”
“Who are you, Lord?” Saul had decided exactly who God was. Saul had decided exactly what God wanted him to do. Now, in an instant, he discovered that everything he had decided was wrong. He had no idea who God was. He must’ve been scared to death.
Saul is told, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.” Saul opens his eyes and discovers he’s blind. He has to be helped up and led into the city, and he sits and waits for three days, not having any clue what’s going to happen to him. He does not know if he’s ever going to regain his sight. He does not even know if he’s going to be allowed to live. There’s nothing he can do but sit and wait and see what’s going to happen next.
Of all the selection stories we’ve looked at in this series, Saul’s has to be the strangest one. Saul, the leading persecutor of Christians, was selected by God. He was about the least likely person in the world to have been selected by God, but he was.
That’s strange enough, but that’s not the strangest thing about Saul’s selection story. The strangest thing is this: nowhere in the Bible do we read where Saul is told what God has selected him to do. We did not read this part of the story this morning, but here’s what happens. A disciple named Ananias is told by God to go to Saul. Ananias says to him, “Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”
That’s all Saul is told. He’s not told to go and do something heroic, the way Moses and Joshua were. He’s not told to give a specific message to the people, the way Isaiah was. He’s just told that he’ll be able to see again, and that he’ll be filled with the Holy Spirit.
As we’ve been looking at these selection stories, we’ve been talking about what God may be selecting you or me to do. As we do that, sometimes we might envy people like Moses and Joshua and Isaiah. They got a specific message from God. They were told by God, “Here’s what I have selected you to do.” They were scared of it, but at least they knew exactly what God wanted them to do.
There are a lot of times when you and I don’t know that. I mean, yeah, we know the generalities of it. We’re supposed to love God and love our neighbor. We’re supposed to give and we’re supposed to do things for people and all that. We know all that stuff.
That’s all fine and everything, but it’s not very specific. I believe there’s something specific that God selects each of us to do. If that’s true, then it’d be really helpful if God would let us know exactly what it is. Sometimes, God does. There’s an awful lot of the time, though, when we’re in the position Saul was in. We know there must be something God wants us to do, but we don’t know what it is.
When that’s where we are, then I think what we need to do is pray for what happened to Saul to happen to us. I don’t mean the going blind part, obviously. What I mean is what Ananias said to Saul. Ananias did not just say that Saul would be able to see again. Ananias said that Saul would be filled with the Holy Spirit.
That’s how Saul knew what to do. That’s why we read about Saul going into the places of worship and preaching that Jesus is the Son of God. That’s why Saul went to Jerusalem to join with the apostles. That’s why Saul, when he was known as Paul, went on his great missionary journeys. He did not receive a specific message to do that, at least as far as we know. Saul was filled with the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit told Saul that this was what he needed to do.
That’s what we need to pray for. We need to pray that we’ll be filled with the Holy Spirit. If we’re filled with the Holy Spirit, if we’re open to being led by the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit will tell us what we need to do and where we need to go. The Holy Spirit will lead us in the direction we need to go, if we’re only willing to follow.
Saul had decided for himself what God wanted him to do. Then, he found out that what he had decided was completely wrong. Then, though, he allowed himself to be filled with the Holy Spirit. He opened himself to being led by the Holy Spirit. Once he did that, he no longer had to make decisions about what God wanted him to do. All he had to do was follow where he was being led and leave the decisions up to God.
That’s true for us, too. We don’t need to make the decisions about what God wants us to do. All we need to do is allow ourselves to be filled with the Holy Spirit. When we are, God will show us where to go and what to do. All we need to do is follow where we’re being led, and leave the decisions up to God.
No comments:
Post a Comment