The Real Jesus

What happens when someone encounters the real, authentic Jesus? Saul, an infamous oppressor of Christians in the first century had his life turned completely around after an encounter with the real Jesus for the first time (instead of the false view he had had of Jesus previously). Jesus changes everything.

Note: This transcript was auto generated and may have errors. 

[00:00:00] Well good morning. We’re going to talk about change today. And I know that’s hard for some of you. I know some of you struggle with change. And I can prove it with one picture. You ready? Yep. Woo! Sam! You struggling? There’s nothing wrong with that old flag. I. I grew up with that flag, and it’s perfectly fine, right? Yeah, I grew up in Wisconsin. I’m not quite as attached, but, you know. Anyway, um. It’s okay. It’s okay to struggle with change. It’s all right. But we do have to accept that change is a part of life. So, uh, I’m curious what you think your. The era of your life in which you experienced the most change was, you know, what do you think that might have been? Some people, um, would argue that maybe it was like the first year of your life, right? My three month old son is now twice as big as when he was born. He’s on track to weigh £7.5 trillion by age ten. Right? Oh, man. That first year of life, babies just grow and they double in size. It’s amazing in such a short time. It’s interesting. Maybe for you it was something different. Maybe it was your you know, your first year of marriage was the year you changed the most, or your first year of of college or your, you know, maybe middle school puberty hits like a truck. You know, things like that. Um, maybe it was the first year you had a grown up job.

[00:01:24] Or maybe, I don’t know, you used to have thick, long, luscious hair and. And now you don’t. And things have changed. I don’t like how much you just laughed at that, but that’s fine. That’s fine. You know, as as I was reflecting on this, um, I would argue that probably the thing that actually causes the greatest change in our lives tends to be based on relationships. You know, maybe it’s when you met your wife or, uh, when you lost a parent, when you had a baby or when you started choosing your best friends, whatever it might be. And so today in our passage, we’re going to see a big change happen in the life of Saul of Tarsus. You just heard the passage read, of course. And and it’s going to change basically everything about who he is. And it’s all predicated on one thing. It’s predicated on Saul having met the authentic Jesus personally. That is what changed all the things. And so, um, what we’re really getting at here today is that meeting the real Jesus can change everything. So in acts nine we read about one, you know, one of these incredible life change, life transformation stories, probably the most profound one in all of the New Testament, because it has, you know, a miracle and drama and intrigue and, uh, all of these interesting things, these fascinating juxtapositions. And it’s really the origin story of this spiritual giant we know as Paul.

[00:03:04] Of course, he changes his name later. It’ll change a lot about Saul. It’ll change, you know, his views on Christians. It’ll change his view on Jesus. Certainly. It’ll change his view on on sin and the direction of his own personal mission. And, you know, ultimately, it’ll change everything he knows about Jesus. And and because it changes everything he knows about Jesus, it’ll change everything he knows about basically everything. Because meeting the real Jesus can change everything. So we’re going to hop back in to Acts chapter nine. I’m just going to go through it verse by verse. So if you have a Bible out or on, you can follow along if you’d like or I’ll have it up here. So starting with verses one and two. But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if you found any belonging to the way men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. So the first thing we see here in acts chapter nine, if you if you had been sort of reading along in acts, you’ve mostly heard about Peter to this point and Peter’s ministry and the things he’s doing. Um, after the ascension of Jesus and, and chapter nine is a marked shift where the focus now is on the ministry of Paul. We’ll still hear from Peter.

[00:04:27] It’s not the Peter’s not effective or doing things anymore, but that’s just how the book is structured. And, um, but this passage, you know, of course, here gives us the setting and the key character in this story, this Saul of Tarsus and, and what he was trying to do. And so he’s an enemy of the followers of Jesus, who at the time would have referred to themselves the movement as the way. That’s what they would have called themselves. And so, basically, he’s on a manhunt to arrest these followers of Jesus. Now, it refers to some letters in here. And what this it’s just a complicated political situation going on. So Damascus wasn’t in charge of itself. Damascus was at the time, under the rule of the Parthians, and the Parthians didn’t want to deal with the day to day oversight of Damascus, so they outsourced it to Jerusalem and specifically to the Sanhedrin, to the ruling council, um, of the Jewish people in, in Jerusalem. And so, Saul, he needed the permission of these overlords to do his work to capture, arrest, uh, Christians. That’s what he was working toward. But what’s probably indicated here in these first couple verses as well, is that Saul is a pretty powerful and prominent person in the Jewish ruling elite, and we know this because he has direct access to the high priest. And we know this because he’s given a lot of latitude to do whatever he needs to do in Damascus.

[00:06:01] He’s working without supervision here. And so what that tells us is that, you know, um, he’s excelling from his standpoint, the things he’s trying to accomplish in life, he’s he’s kind of killing it, you know, um, he’s that’s a bad choice of words for Saul. Okay. Um, he the point is, he’s a really good Jewish person, and he’s playing the game really well. That is, until this fateful walk to Damascus. And then everything changed. And so we see that starting in verse three. Now, as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him, and falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And he said, who are you, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Okay, so it’s easy to read it, but imagine what it would be like. I mean, he’s walking down the road, a couple of travel companions, and then there’s this blinding bright light that happens, and a voice from nowhere has something to say to him, and he asks him this sort of fateful question why are you persecuting me? And this phrasing is really interesting, isn’t it? Because, um, you know, uh. From Paul’s perspective, Jesus is he’s gone. You know, he’s he had been put to death on a cross. And as far as you know, Saul was concerned.

[00:07:30] That was the end of it. You know, he he didn’t have to go after the leader of this movement of the way, because that had already been taken care of. Saul, at this point had shifted his attention to not going after the leader, but in trying to snuff out the smoldering wick of this perverse movement from his perspective. He’s going after Jesus’s followers, right? His disciples, not after Jesus. But this right here is an important reminder about the reality of sin. And here’s what I mean. You know, in Matthew 25 when Jesus is talking about, um, you know, the final judgment, he he gives these really difficult words. He says, whatever you do for the least of these you’ve done for me and whatever you’ve failed to do for the least of these, you’ve failed to do for me. And there’s a similar implication here. What is going on here is Jesus is saying, why are you persecuting me? Because whatever you do against his followers, you do against him. The voice is saying that that he. And of course we know that it’s Jesus speaking because it tells us that is being persecuted. But but how can Saul persecute a dead man? Well, because what you do to the followers of Jesus, you do to Jesus too, and what you do to God’s children, you do to God too. And so, um, that should really humble us. That should really humble us. Because, you know, when we sin, it is first and foremost that we are sinning against God.

[00:09:16] Sure, maybe you lied to your friend or your spouse or your sibling or whatever it was, and you wronged that person, and so you owe them an apology and restitution. Maybe. But that lie that you told is first and foremost an affront to God. His goodness and the price of sin he paid on the cross. When we sin, we do not just sin against a person, but against God himself. Similarly, Saul wasn’t just attacking the people of God, he was attacking God. And in this sense they are one and the same. And we should remember that when it comes to our own sin. Now here, Saul. Full of purpose and direction and clarity. He suddenly confused. Everything gets turned upside down and I suppose you know, just a blinding light by itself would be a little disorienting. And he doesn’t know who’s speaking to him, and he he doesn’t know what this voice is. And so, so he he sort of says, you know, who are you? Because he doesn’t know. And and here he does use he says, who are you, Lord? But just to be clear, this isn’t him. Um, acknowledging the deity of Jesus at this moment, he doesn’t know who it is he’s using Lord like one might use, sir. Like, who are you, sir? Who is saying that? Right. And he’s confused. This is, you know, it’s respectful, if not reverent.

[00:10:46] Um. But think about all that Saul must have been processing here is as we get to the end of verse five. Bright light, booming voice from nowhere, he says, who are you? And the answer comes back. The shocking answer I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Whew. That changes a lot, doesn’t it? Changes a lot for Saul because, you know, um, among other things, Saul thought Jesus was dead. Like he just thought he was wasn’t there anymore, you know? So Saul knew a lot of things about Jesus. I’m sure of it. I’m sure he was aware of Jesus’s growing popularity. What, before he died, that he no doubt would have been aware of Jesus’s growing following and Jesus’s miracles. Saul had been aware of what he perceived to be his blasphemous teachings. He had been aware of the way that in his mind, anyway, Jesus had been insulting their good Jewish traditions. This Jesus was a big problem, but the problem had been neutralized. Jesus was dead. There was a whole big thing that happened and Saul was around for it. But there’s this big change that’s happening now because Jesus is alive, and knowing and understanding that Jesus is alive today can change a lot, can’t it? Saul, at least beginning in this moment, if not necessarily entirely at this moment, suddenly was able to call into question everything he thought he believed. And everything that he was fighting for. He has this sudden realization, perhaps, that that the followers of Jesus were right after all.

[00:12:39] Everything he had been fighting for turned upside down. And this simple conversation I’ll albeit, you know, remarkable and miraculous, was unraveling all of his hate for these so-called Christians, although I doubt it went away in an instant, but also all of his belief about who God is and how he reveals himself to the world. So you got to remember, you know, Saul wouldn’t have thought of himself as a bad guy. Saul was doing what he thought was right. You know, he grew up through the ranks of the Jewish synagogues and the Jewish political system. He very likely believed his actions seemed to suggest that he believed that he was defending God and defending his faith. He was trying to honor lineage of David and Moses and Abraham. He he thought that the followers of the way were an abomination of the faith he had inherited. He thought they were blasphemers. He thought all of that until he met Jesus face to face. Miraculously, forcefully. But something big happened, and when it did, it started to change everything. Because meeting the real Jesus can change everything. The verse. The passage continues in verse six, but rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do. I would guess based on the context of the text, Saul was a little bit of a control freak. Do you know what I mean? Like he was a man who liked power, and I don’t think he was often told what to do.

[00:14:23] And so here’s Jesus immediately asserting his authority. And I don’t know, maybe Saul is fine with it, but, um, because, you know, Jesus had demonstrated pretty quickly his power and that it was real. And I would imagine that if somebody showed up in a bright light and a booming, disembodied voice, you would maybe do what it said to for no other reason than being afraid of what would happen if you didn’t. But still. Jesus tells him to go into the city and wait for instructions. You know, Saul wasn’t used to taking all these orders. He was clearly highly ranked in the Jewish elites. He was given a lot of latitude with his hunting down of Christians. He had worked with the political authorities to get permission to do what he needed to do. He’s well connected. He is not used to being told to just go and sit and wait to be told what to do. This is not Saul’s usual way of operating. But here’s the thing meeting the real Jesus can change everything. Uh, some of you control freaks felt that inside of your. It’s fine. It’s okay. God is good. The passage continues in seven. The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. Saul rose from the ground, and although his eyes were opened, he saw nothing.

[00:15:43] So they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. And for three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank. So an interesting point of this narrative is that it includes witnesses. It includes people who heard and saw what Saul also heard and saw. There were other people with him, you know, they saw this miraculous Jesus thing happen, and they could confirm and corroborate the story. It wasn’t just, you know, some bad fish that Saul had eaten or something. Something real happened here. And then we get this additional detail that Saul had been made blind. And this was clearly, you know, a demonstration of God’s power. We can see that plainly just from the text. But we can learn more about this through Paul’s retelling of this story later in acts 26. This this narrative actually gets told three times in the book of acts, um, once here, once in 22 and once in 26 and in 26. As Paul is retelling the story of his own conversion to the King of Agrippa, he he gives us a little bit more detail about the symbolic nature of what this is. And this is, of course, is an important thing to remember. When we’re approaching Scripture, we need to let Scripture interpret Scripture whenever possible. It’s a really important hermeneutical approach. And so here’s what we see in acts 26. Uh, this is, you know, Paul retelling it to the king of Agrippa.

[00:17:17] So at the beginning of 16 here, he sort of speaking God’s voice, Jesus’s voice to him. 16 but rise and stand upon your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me, and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles, to whom I am sending you, to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me. So what is it that God’s wanting to do here through this miracle? Well, Jesus used this miracle, this supernatural moment with Saul, to highlight and amplify this idea that Jesus made Saul blind and then helped him see again to show exactly what needed to happen for the Jews and for the Gentiles. And I think the reason we actually see both things happen is because the Jews had at one point seen God clearly became blind to it, and God wanted them to be able to see again. And the Gentiles were always blind to it and needed to have their eyes opened to it. And so we see both of those things. They needed both of those groups, the Jews and the Gentiles needed to grow in understanding of who Jesus was, that he was actually Messiah and Savior.

[00:18:44] He wasn’t just some guy who had some interesting teachings. They needed to embrace the full picture of who Jesus was. And just like Saul, reject the false narratives about him. They also needed to repent of their sin, that they needed to turn from darkness to light. They needed to turn away from the power of Satan and instead turn toward God. And if they do, they will be forgiven of their sins and sanctified in Christ. And this is the gospel. This is the good news that frees all of us from sin and shame. So what happens to Saul here is sort of a map. It’s a it’s it’s a way to follow it. This is what it looks like when someone meets the real Jesus. When that relationship engages their life, things begin to change. Life purposes begin to change, relationships begin to change. And so if Saul is going to go to the world and explain, you know, what this change is and how it happens, then as God’s chosen instrument, then it needs he needs to experience it first so that he can explain it to others. Now, at this point in the narrative, of course, uh, in acts nine, Saul hadn’t gone through this whole transformation yet. If he were butterfly, he would be in chrysalis stage. That’s sort of where we are. Um, he’s in the middle of the transformation. Uh, and there’s this pause.

[00:20:17] Right. He goes to Damascus. Yes, but not at all in the way. Or for the purpose for which he was planning. He spends three days without eating or drinking. We don’t know why. Maybe it’s fasting to try to seek God’s will or something, but, um, we don’t know for sure something is happening, and a lot has changed. And the reason is because Saul is starting to understand that an encounter with the authentic Jesus can change everything. So once we get all that, then of course we get a new character in the story, we get Ananias. And so so let’s let’s read about that. Um, now, there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, Ananias. And he said, here I am, Lord. And the Lord said to him, rise and go to the street called straight. And at the house of Judas, look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. For behold, he is praying, and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight. But Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints at Jerusalem. And here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on your name. But the Lord said to him, go, for he’s a chosen instrument of mine, to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel.

[00:21:42] For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name. So there’s a difference here between Saul and Ananias. We’re supposed to see this juxtaposition that Ananias already was a follower of Jesus. He’s described, of course, as such in verse ten. And there’s this special assignment for Saul and for Ananias in the way that we get this, of course, is through a very particular form of communication that we see throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament. We see visions being used to communicate special messages from God to his people. But this particular one is a special kind, actually, even among visions, it’s a double vision. It’s where two different visions work together to reveal God’s plan. We’ll see it again in the next chapter of acts, in acts ten between Peter and Cornelius, the same thing happens. So, um, nonetheless, though, here’s what we have. We have Ananias, and I’m just going to throw this out there. I don’t think this is how Ananias thought he was going to be spending his day that day. I don’t think that was what he was expecting. And he gets this. He gets this vision. And part of it is about this infamous man who was well known by Ananias for his persecution of Christians. And the instructions were interesting because God basically just says, I’ve already told him you’re coming.

[00:23:16] You’re going to lay hands on him and pray for him and he’ll receive his sight. And here this has got to be interesting information for Ananias, right? He’s doing some quick calculating here. You can kind of see the hamster wheel. They probably didn’t have hamster wheels in the ancient world, but just go for it. Uh, he’s the hamster wheel turning, and, uh, here’s what he knows. I mean, he knows this guy. He knows his reputation, and he knows that this man is a threat to the Jesus movement. And from what he had heard before, because it probably would have come up. Saul wasn’t, you know, blind. And so Ananias is probably thinking, ah, so, God, um, wouldn’t it be kind of helpful if this guy was blind? Like, wouldn’t it make it harder for him to chase us down and arrest us and murder us and stuff? Wouldn’t that be kind of a good thing? Um. And God’s like. I mean, yeah, but go anyway. I mean, it’s basically the message. Um. And I don’t think Ananias thinks this is the kind of person he should be helping. This isn’t the kind of person that God should be blessing. This is the kind of person that, frankly, deserves to be blind for all that God or all that he has done to the people of God. But God’s super clear here. He says you need to go anyway. I was trying to think of an equivalent here, and I don’t know, this is a perfect, uh, comparison, but I’m going to use it anyway.

[00:24:55] Imagine being an American born Christian living in Afghanistan in 2004, and God comes to you and says, I know where he I know where Osama bin laden is. I want you to go put your hands on him, pray for him, and you’re going to heal him. I would not raise my hand for that assignment, would you? Not something I would have been super interested in doing. And so I think we just need to pause here and reflect on this, because it could be easy to overlook or ignore. This kind of call to the Christians. Sometimes God commands, and not necessarily just through visions, friends, I mean just even through His word. Things that are difficult, you know, things that are socially inconvenient or interpersonally awkward or physically demanding or emotionally draining. Sometimes God calls us to those things. And here’s the thing none of those reasons are reasons to not go where the ministry is. And we really have to be honest with ourselves about this, that we’re told not to do things if they’re sinful sometimes, but we are not told to not do something because it is hard. The follower of Jesus doesn’t get to make that distinction. Only obeying when something is easy to obey isn’t really obedience at all. So. From here we move to verse 16, which is very interesting. He says, for I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.

[00:26:37] That’s a very interesting thing to say, because it seems like Ananias is going to reduce his suffering. There’s an interesting parallelism here. Ananias is going to go directly to this particular place with this person, who is probably pretty dangerous, who could cause Ananias to suffer. And why will God tells him why? So that you can show him how much he needs to suffer in the future for being obedient. To Ananias. His credit. He obeys and goes where God had instructed him to. And he did that. He did what he was asked to do. And maybe he was not without fear. Maybe he was not without hesitation. But he did go without refusal. And this is the kind of biblical example that makes me think not enough, not enough of us name our sons, Ananias. You know what I mean? Verse 17. So Ananias departed and entered the house, and laying his hands on him, he said, Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road by which you came, has sent me, so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit. So Ananias meets Saul. Make sure to affirm Saul’s vision and the way the two visions work together for God’s good purposes. Saul had seen the light and heard the voice on the road, and so had his companions. But this is yet another bit of corroborating evidence.

[00:28:16] To support that. This really was something and someone supernatural that made this thing happen. And Aeneas knew what had happened to Saul on the road. And the only way he could have known is if God had told him in a supernatural way. And so Ananias then explains further that he was sent to help restore Saul’s sight and to fill him with the Holy Spirit. And what God is doing through all of this is he’s engaging Saul at a heart relational level, and he is showing Saul exactly who he Jesus is. That Jesus is present and active in the world. Having engaged with both Saul and Ananias, he’s shown Saul his power by removing his sight. Yes, and he will show him even greater power by giving it back. And he does all that. Despite the fact that blindness would likely have been a just outcome for all that Saul had done. You know, Jesus is showing his goodness and grace and mercy by by showing Saul this incredible enemy of Jesus, a mercy of regaining his sight in a fairly short amount of time. Jesus is confronting and unraveling all of Saul’s incorrect assumptions about Jesus, and he’s replacing them with who he was. He was replacing them with the real Jesus. And friends, I think we have an obligation to the world to do the same thing, because we all know that the Christian reputation in America does not line up with who Jesus is.

[00:29:50] And so I think we each have responsibilities to in love, in mercy, in care, in compassion, in generosity. We have an obligation and an opportunity to show people who the real Jesus is. There’s an interesting comparison here, actually, when we think about what Saul knew and didn’t know about Jesus. See, Saul knew quite a few things about Jesus, actually. He knew, for example, that, you know, Jesus was Jewish. He knew who where he was from. He probably knew who his father was. Saul knew some of Jesus’s teaching. He had heard about some of his miracles. He even knew that Jesus was growing in popularity and power. What he didn’t know. What Saul didn’t know was that Jesus was actually the Messiah. And missing that part means you miss it all. To not understand that key fact about Jesus means that the picture somebody has of Jesus, oh, he was a good teacher. Oh, he was a moral man. Oh, he was helpful. He was a political and social revolutionary. If that’s all we think about who Jesus is, then we don’t understand Jesus at all. Saul’s incorrect, partially correct view of who Jesus was changed nothing. It wasn’t until he encountered the real Jesus that everything changed. And we see it in this dramatic scene. It says. And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes and he regained his sight. So Saul’s encounter with Jesus changed so much.

[00:31:34] In fact, it changed his sight completely two different times. It says something like scales, right? Fell from his eyes. Now I just as an aside, I have always thought that this phrase was super cool. Something like scales, right? If I ever start a Christian boy band, totally going to call it that, said, that last service already had one offered for somebody to join. So, you know, keep believing it could happen. You never know. But I was reflecting on this and thinking, you know, there are lots of ways God could have performed this miracle. You know, he could have just made it that he couldn’t see. And then he could see. He could have made it kind of cloudy and then not cloudy. There’s all kinds of ways God could have expressed his power and authority in this way, but I was thinking about how lizards shed their scales at a particular time. It’s when they’re growing and changing. And here is where. What’s happening to Saul in this moment? He’s having this incredible growth, this incredible change in his life. And so he rubs his eyes and something like scales come off of them, and we see that he’s becoming a new creation, that something special is happening here. And so he responds to this change in a significant way. Then he, Saul, rose and was baptized and taking food. He was strengthened, and for some days he was with the disciples at Damascus. And immediately he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogue, saying, he is the Son of God.

[00:33:01] And all who heard him were amazed and said, is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem? Of those who called upon this name? And has he not come here for this purpose, to bring them bound before the chief priests? But Saul increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ. So we see this incredible turnaround, you know, for Saul, it’s so stark, it’s so significant. It’s the the kind of conversion I refer to as like a light switch conversion, like it was off and now it’s on. Like my conversion was a little bit more of like a dimmer switch situation. Took a little while to get there, but this is more of a light switch situation. And and so, um, he responds immediately. He gets baptized in the name of Jesus. And if you haven’t been baptized and you’re a believer, you should you should do that. We can talk about it. And he starts telling everybody there the exact opposite of what he had been saying before. You know, he’s confirming the belief of the Jesus followers that he was persecuting. He’s sharing his powerful testimony, and God is is beginning to strengthen his ability. Uh, when it says he’s getting stronger, it doesn’t mean he’s getting like, you know, swole. It’s like he’s getting stronger and his ability to share and influence people.

[00:34:17] And, um, and he’s preparing for what we know in hindsight with the, the beauty of history that he becomes, you know, Saul becomes this religious, cultural and social revolutionary. He changes the entire world. The butterfly has emerged. So as we round the bend on this passage here, I want to turn to reflection. See, Saul had this encounter with the real Jesus, and this relationship changed him. And these are just some of the significant ways he was changed. He he went from a Jesus hater to being a Jesus proclaimer. He went from seeing to being blind. And then, you know, seeing again he he went from spiritually blind to spiritually seeing. And can I just point out, um, there’s a significant difference between being physically blind and being spiritually blind, because the person who’s physically blind knows he’s blind, and the person who’s spiritually blind has no idea that they’re blind, and that’s way more dangerous. He went from focused on the Jewish people specifically to focused on the whole world. And maybe the most interesting one. He went from searching for Christians to persecute them, for believing the gospel, to searching for non-Christians to liberate them with the gospel. And that’s pretty cool. Friends an incorrect view. A partially correct view of Jesus can lead to spiritual disaster. It led Saul to be a persecutor of the followers of Jesus. It leads people today to be Jesus ignores Jesus deniers and people who are totally cool with Jesus being their Savior, but not at all okay with Jesus being their Lord.

[00:36:03] And I would just say all of those options lead to spiritual disaster. A correct view of Jesus can change everything. Meeting the real Jesus can change everything for you too. Hopefully the story of Saul should make it very clear that there is nothing you have ever done. Nothing you’re currently doing that God’s grace cannot overcome. There is no one beyond the reach of God’s grace. If God can turn Saul around, he can turn your life around, too. If Saul can be forgiven a literal murderer of Christians, a literal enemy of Jesus, then your life can be turned around too. And if Saul’s incorrect view of Jesus can be changed, then yours can be too. So in conclusion here, I just I’d like to read some words that. Saul, who becomes Paul, later writes to his protege Timothy. And what Saul is doing here is he’s writing about the change in his life when he met the authentic Jesus. But because of God’s mercy and his abundant grace poured out on him, and because of his immense patience for him, he’s now something completely different because Jesus can change everything. And so as you read this or hear this, read and follow along on the screens, I would just say this reflect on God’s goodness, the ways that his engagement with your life has changed you, and the grace he has extended you.

[00:37:50] Here’s what Saul writes to Timothy. He says, I thank Christ Jesus our Lord. Who has given me strength, that he considered me trustworthy, appointing me to his service even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man. I was shown mercy because I acted ignorance and unbelief. The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy that in me the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life. Now to the King, eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory forever and ever. Amen. Let’s pray together. Lord, um, our story may not be as dramatic as Saul’s. And yet, when we’ve chosen any other god, any other idol, we’ve chosen something other than you. And it makes us the worst of sinners. Let us be humble because of our need for you, our need for your grace and your mercy. Let us choose love. Instead of disobedience. Let us come to you, humbled by our sin and grateful for your grace and mercy in our lives. We love you and we praise you in Jesus name. Amen.