Greetings

Greetings everyone! Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, and welcome to Wednesday’s edition of EDiBS. I hope your day is off to a great start, and I hope even more that our study time in God’s Word will be a blessing in your life over these next few minutes. Our reason for coming together each day never changes: we always want to gather for the purpose of growing in the grace and knowledge of our Savior, who loves us and gave Himself for us. Today we continue on with our look at Acts 9, so let’s take a moment and go to prayer as we begin

Prayer 

Lord Jesus, thank you so much for showing us your power and authority through your life and ministry. Thank you for living the life that we were unable to because of our sin. Thank you for taking the penalty of our sin upon yourself through your death on the cross, and thank you for your victorious resurrection, which we share by faith in you and your finished work. Please teach us today. In your precious name we pray, amen. 

Getting Started 

As we get started today, Saul is up and around again. His sight has returned, he’s taken some food for nourishment, and significantly, his first order of business upon rising has been to be baptized. Given this radical change in his life, what now is his focus? That’s our focus for the day!

Acts 9:20-30

20Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus. At once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God. 21All those who heard him were astonished and asked, "Isn't he the man who raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who call on this name?And hasn't he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priests?" 22Yet Saul grew more and more powerful and baffled the Jews living in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Christ. 23After many days had gone by, the Jews conspired to kill him, 24but Saul learned of their plan. Day and night they kept close watch on the city gates in order to kill him. 25But his followers took him by night and lowered him in a basket through an opening in the wall. 26When he came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he really was a disciple. 27But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles. He told them how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord and that the Lord had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus. 28So Saul stayed with them and moved about freely in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord. 29He talked and debated with the Grecian Jews, but they tried to kill him. 30When the brothers learned of this, they took him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus. 

Leighton Ford, a pastor and evangelist who for many years was associated with Billy Graham and his work (and who happens to be Billy’s brother in-law), wrote a book back in the late 1970s called Good News is for Sharing. In preparing for that book, he talked to a lot of people about sharing their faith, and what he found over and over again is that for most people, the Fear issue was front and center. Here’s how he described it in his writing: 

“What makes people hesitate to share their faith? Here are some of the fears that have been mentioned to me:

• “I'm afraid I might do more harm than good.”
• “I don't know what to say.”
• “I may not be able to give snappy answers to tricky questions.”
• “I may seem bigoted.” 
• “I may invade someone's privacy.”
• “I'm afraid I might fail.”
• “I'm afraid I might be a hypocrite."

Perhaps the most common fear, however, is that of being rejected. A survey was given to those attending training sessions for the Billy Graham crusade in Detroit. One question asked, "What is your greatest hindrance to witnessing?" By far the largest group, at 51 percent, were people whose biggest problem was the fear of how the other person would react. None of us likes to be rejected, ridiculed, or regarded as an oddball. 

As we come to God’s Word today, I’m going to make an obvious statement, and the only reason I’m taking the time to do it is so that we can all be bowled over by the sheer, in-your-face amazement surrounding it: Saul, up until recently known and feared by Christians everywhere as the henchman of henchmen, as the bogeyman of believers, has in three days’ time become a completely changed man. He who believed nothing of the claims of Christ and who worked with the whole of his strength to eradicate the movement that heralded Christ as Savior is now one who is completely, unalterably, 100% sold out to Jesus. It’s fascinating: the Chief persecutor of the Christian Church is very quickly — in fact, immediately, as the text indicates — turning into the chief missionary for the Christian Church. What’s more, as bold he was in decrying Jesus as anything approaching divine, he is now tenfold as bold in declaring Jesus to be God and Lord. 

What’s the point today? The point is that for Saul, there is a complete absence of fear — fear of any kind — in this new life of his, which is nothing short of astounding. Rejection, ridicule, and insults mean nothing to him. Not even death threats can put a dent in his resolve. His comportment and disposition, in fact, is the precise opposite of what Leighton Ford describes when he talks about the most common barrier to people sharing their faith in Christ.  

The one question we have to ask in the face of it is the simple one: Why?

Wrapping Up

As we wrap things up for the day, why would a man formerly hostile to the Gospel — a deeply learned, very bright, highly respected man of power and influence, by the way — suddenly become a champion for that same movement?  Why would he literally throw away one life, a life of privilege and esteem and comfort, to embrace something that would bring him nothing but trial, taunting, torture, and worse? We all know the Sunday school answer: it rises from his experience on the road to Damascus. Yet the Sunday school answer, though certainly true, is too easily spoken and too quickly put to bed by most of us. It keeps us from delving into what my dear seminary professor, Dr. Jack Preuss, always called “the question behind the question.” That “question behind the question,” as it were, will occupy much of our time as we continue forward with the life of Saul…soon to be renamed Paul…and the answer we arrive at in our studies will do more than inform and fortify our knowledge of Scripture. More important by far is that it will transform and fortify our hearts.

Do join in next time as we continue, everyone — I’m eager to go deeper together, and I’ll look forward to seeing you soon to do just that. Have a great day, and the joy of the Lord be your strength!