Transcript

The following is a true story: Roger Simms, hitchhiking his way home, would never forget the date: May 7. His heavy suitcase made Roger tired.

He was anxious to take off his army uniform once and for all. Sticking out his thumb to the oncoming car, he lost hope when he saw it was a black, sleek, new Cadillac. To his surprise the car stopped. The passenger door opened.

He ran toward the car, tossed his suitcase in the back, and thanked the well-dressed man as he slid into the front seat. “Going home for keeps?” the man asked.

“Sure am,” Roger responded. “Well, you’re in luck if you’re going to Chicago.” Roger said, “Not quite that far. Do you live in Chicago?” He replied, “I have a business there. My name is Hanover.”

After talking about many things, Roger, a believer, felt a compulsion to witness to this fiftyish, apparently successful businessman about Christ. But he kept putting it off, till he realized he was just thirty minutes from his home. It was now or never.

So, Roger cleared his throat, “Mr. Hanover, I would like to talk to you about something very important.” He then proceeded to explain the way of salvation, ultimately asking Mr. Hanover if he would like to receive Christ as his Savior.

To Roger’s astonishment the Cadillac pulled over to the side of the road. Roger thought he was going to be ejected from the car.

Five years went by, Roger married, had a two-year-old boy, and a business of his own. Packing his suitcase for a business trip to Chicago, he found the small, white business card Hanover had given him five years before.

In Chicago, he looked up Hanover Enterprises. A receptionist told him it was impossible to see Mr. Hanover, but he could see Mrs. Hanover. A little confused as to what was going on, he was ushered into a nice office and found himself facing a keen-eyed woman in her fifties. She extended her hand. “You knew my husband?”

Roger told how her husband had given him a ride when hitchhiking home after the war. She asked “Can you tell me when that was?”

He said, “It was May 7th, five years ago, the day I was discharged from the army.” She probed, “Anything special about that day?”

Roger hesitated. He wondered if he should mention that he shared the gospel with her husband. Since he had come so far, he thought he might as well take the plunge.

“Mrs. Hanover, I explained the gospel to him. He pulled over to the side of the road and wept against the steering wheel. He trusted Christ that day.”

Sudden, explosive sobs shook Mrs. Hanover. Getting a grip on herself, she sobbed, “I had prayed for my husband’s salvation for years. I believed God would save him.”

“Where is your husband, Mrs. Hanover?” Roger asked. “He’s dead,” she wept, struggling with words. “He was in a car crash after he let you out of the car. He never made it home on May 7th. I thought he never found Christ.”

In this message, we’ll be looking at another surprising and dramatic conversion, the conversion of Saul of Tarsus.

Like Abraham’s call was a watershed moment in Scripture, so too is the salvation of Saul on the Damascus Road. It resulted in a monumental change in God’s dealings with mankind, and thus it is a major event in the Bible.

Acts 22:1-5: “Men, brethren, and fathers, hear ye my defence which I make now unto you. (And when they heard that he spake in the Hebrew tongue to them, they kept the more silence: and he saith,)

“I am verily a man which am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, yet brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers, and was zealous toward God, as ye all are this day.

“And I persecuted this way unto the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women. As also the high priest doth bear me witness, and all the estate of the elders: from whom also I received letters unto the brethren, and went to Damascus, to bring them which were there bound unto Jerusalem, for to be punished.”

Paul was in Jerusalem here following his third apostolic journey and he had been walking around the temple grounds.

Because of the knowledge of Paul’s ministry among the Gentiles, and believing he was teaching things contrary to the Jews, the law, and the temple, when some unbelieving Jews saw him in the temple, they incited a riot against him.

They had seen Paul in Jerusalem with a Gentile from Ephesus named, Trophimus, and they supposed that Paul had taken his Gentile friend into the inner courts of the temple, and they accused him of this falsely.

The city was full of Jews who were there for the feast of Pentecost. When this accusation was made against Paul, the crowd of people in the temple became enraged, because it was absolutely prohibited for Gentiles to beyond the Court of the Gentiles.

The city was then thrown into an uproar and Paul was seized by this enraged mob and drug out of the temple area and the temple doors were shut behind them. Acts 21:31 then tells us that “they went about to kill him” and they began beating Paul.

Roman officers and soldiers then ran into the crowd and saved Paul’s life, pulling him away from the infuriated mob, putting him in chains, and bringing him to the nearby barracks. As they were about to take Paul into the barracks, he asked the chief captain if he could say something to the crowd, and this Roman officer gave Paul permission.

Standing on the stairs leading into the Roman barracks, Acts 21:40 states, “Paul stood on the stairs, and beckoned with the hand unto the people. And when there was made a great silence, he spake unto them in the Hebrew tongue, saying.”

The shouts subsided and the mob calmed down. And that brings us to Acts 22:1.

This is the first time in Acts that Paul has given a personal account of his own conversion. This account in chapter 22 is a first person, “I” account, whereas, Luke’s historical account in chapter 9 was a third person, “he” account.

Three times in the book of Acts, Paul’s conversion is recorded in Acts 9, 22, and 26. The Book of Acts is not a long book, so it is extraordinary that a book of this length would repeat the SAME incident three times.

Saying it once means that it is important because everything in Scripture is vitally important. Saying it twice kicks it up a notch and means that the Holy Spirit is revealing to us something very significant.

Saying it three times means that God is really trying to get our attention, and is stressing that this event is especially noteworthy in the pages of Scripture. And not only that but Paul wrote about his conversion in his epistles too!

Because this conversion marks a significant change from God’s dealings with Israel to God’s dealings with the nations, from the dispensation of the law to the dispensation of grace, from the twelve apostles of the kingdom to the one apostle for the Body of Christ, the Holy Spirit recorded Paul’s conversion three times in the transitional Book of Acts.

Genesis 12 recorded the call of Abraham which was the beginning of God’s program with Israel in raising up one great nation to be a blessing to all the other nations and that she had a future hope in the Promised Land.

But after God temporarily suspended that program after Israel’s fall, Acts 9, 22, and 26 record the raising up of Paul to be the apostle to the nations for a program in which God is saving individuals from all nations by grace through faith alone in Christ and making them members of the Church, the Body of Christ and giving them a heavenly hope.

Now, it makes you stop and wonder that if we had just gotten beaten up by an angry mob that was trying to kill us, and if we got rescued, would our first thought be, like Paul, to try to reach these people for Christ?

But Paul fervently loved his countrymen, as he wrote in Romans 10:1: “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.”

Speaking in the Hebrew to try to reach the Jews in Jerusalem, Paul said, “Men, brethren, and fathers, hear ye my defence which I make now unto you.”

After just being assaulted by this crowd, Paul, in grace, addressed his audience warmly and respectfully: “Men, brethren, and fathers.”

When Paul wrote, “hear ye my defence,” the word “defence” is translated from the word, apologia. We get our word apologetics from it. The word means a well-reasoned statement or argument, to present evidence or compelling proof.

His defense was about explaining the reason for the change in his life due to his experience on the Damascus Road and why he then went to the Gentiles.

When the people heard Paul speaking in the Hebrew, verse 2 says that the Jews became even more quiet than before and paid even closer attention to what he had to say.

Paul then began by relating his manner of life before his conversion. Those who stirred up the mob had been “Crying out, Men of Israel, help: This is the man, that teacheth all men every where against the people [Jews], and the law, and this place [the Temple]” (21:28).

Paul defended himself by declaring that “I am a Jew.” Paul then piled up his Jewish credentials and showed how he had lived an exemplary Jewish life.

Paul stated that “he was a Jew, who was a native of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia. Tarsus was a city in the region of Cilicia in southeastern Asia Minor in what is modern Turkey.

So Paul gives the fact that he was a Jew born outside of the land, but then he added that “yet [he was] brought up in this city” of Jerusalem. Paul had been nurtured and educated spiritually in Jerusalem.

And who had educated and trained him was significant: Gamaliel. Paul had a well-known and highly esteemed teacher. Gamaliel was one of the most prestigious rabbis of the day.

Acts 5:34 describes this man as: a Pharisee…a doctor of the law, had in reputation among all the people,” or held in respect by all the Jews.

All of the Jews listening that day in Jerusalem knew exactly who Gamaliel was and this further established Paul’s credibility with this audience.

As a student of Gamaliel, Paul had been educated “according to the perfect [or strict] manner of the law of the fathers.” Paul’s Jewish training was impeccable.

Paul received extensive training in the law and Paul was saying that his training in the Jews’ religion was strict. He had been trained to be a strict legalist, to follow the letter of the law without wavering and to the smallest detail.

And as a result, Paul said that he “was zealous toward God.” His training had translated into his life and he had a great zeal to live for God and by His law and to defend it.

Paul said he was zealous toward God and then he added, “as ye all are this day.” This is interesting because Paul complimented the mob that had just tried to kill him.

Paul did not blame them for what they had done to him. Instead, he pointed out that in his former zeal toward God under the law, he would have done the same thing!

Out of his zeal, he had “persecuted this way unto the death.” The mob had tried to kill him, but his zeal had surpassed theirs. He’s saying, “You tried to kill me, but I succeeded in having many put to death.”

Those of “this way” are those who believed in and followed the One Who is “THE WAY, the Truth, and the Life.”

Paul had believed that these people were a great threat to the purity of the Jews’ religion, and so he did everything in his power to stamp them out. He militantly defended his faith.

He had those who believed in Jesus Christ put to death and he filled the prisons with them. He arrested and delivered not only men, but women, into prison.

And beyond that, the high priest and the Jewish religious elders could bear witness to his zeal and the thoroughness of his methods. Because he went to them to receive letters of authorization to go to far off Damascus in Syria, to extradite to Jerusalem those who believed in Jesus Christ, to have them imprisoned, beaten, or killed.

Paul’s speech to the crowd was basically this: “I was just like you all, and even more so, until I had an encounter with the risen Christ. Christ met me on the road to Damascus and my life was changed forever.”

Acts 22:6-10: “And it came to pass, that, as I made my journey, and was come nigh unto Damascus about noon, suddenly there shone from heaven a great light round about me. And I fell unto the ground, and heard a voice saying unto me, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And I answered, Who art thou, Lord? And he said unto me, I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecutest.

“And they that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid; but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me. And I said, What shall I do, Lord? And the Lord said unto me, Arise, and go into Damascus; and there it shall be told thee of all things which are appointed for thee to do.”

Paul now recounted that remarkable day on the road to Damascus an event that was a major turning point in history and in God’s dealings with mankind.

As Paul approached Damascus, his long journey was nearly at its end. And Paul was near his journey’s end in more ways than one! His journey in life as an unbelieving persecutor was also near its end.

As he drew near Damascus around noon, without warning, a great light suddenly flashed from heaven and shone all around Paul and those traveling with him. The light was more brilliant and glorious than the sun at its height at noonday.

When the sun was at its brightest, the Son, S-O-N, in His glory, shined even brighter. And the power and intensity of this light caused Paul to fall onto the ground.

And this light was designed not only to awaken Paul’s attention, but to signify the enlightening of his understanding with the knowledge of Christ.

Paul experienced what he wrote in 2 Corinthians 4:6 about salvation, that it’s about God giving “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” And this verse is exactly what Paul experienced in his conversion on the Damascus Road.

One author wrote, “Before he encountered Christ, Paul had been…a wild-eyed, young zealot. He marched through the countryside like a general demanding that backslidden Jews salute the flag of the motherland or kiss their family and hopes good-bye. All this came to a halt, however, on the shoulder of a highway…That’s when someone slammed on the stadium lights, and he heard the voice.”

Paul saw Christ’s glory and then he heard His voice. And the voice said to him, “Saul, Saul.” The Lord knew Paul; He knew his name, his background that we just looked at, and everything he had been doing in his persecution of the saints.

This repetition of Saul’s name also recalls the Lord’s attempt to get the attention of young Samuel when “the LORD came, and stood, and called as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel answered, Speak; for thy servant heareth” or is listening (1 Sam. 3:10).

Between the bright light and the repetition of his name, the Lord wanted Paul’s attention and for him to listen to His words very carefully.

The Lord asked him, “why persecutest thou Me?” because to persecute the people of “this Way” was to actually persecute “the Way,” or Jesus Christ.

Before Saul was made a saint, he was made by Christ to see himself as a sinner, a great sinner, and a sinner against Christ. It’s been said that “A humbling conviction of sin is the first step towards a saving conversion from sin.”

Lying prostrate on the ground, surrounded by that great light, hearing those words “Why persecutest thou Me?” Paul wondered, “Who is the Me?”

And so respectfully, he asked, ‘Who are thou, Lord?” He didn’t believe in Jesus Christ or that He had risen from the dead. And so the Lord’s response had to have shocked and shaken him, when Christ said, “I am Jesus of Nazareth, who thou persecutest.”

Paul had been struck down by a bright light, but this revelation coming from Christ would have been like a “lightning” strike to his soul. And Paul believed it. He believed in Christ and that He was risen from the dead at this moment.

Remember, Paul is in Jerusalem where Christ was crucified. The lie was made known on resurrection day and afterwards that the disciples came by night and had stolen His body.

Paul here was making sure that his Jewish audience knew that “Jesus of Nazareth” Who died on a Cross IN JERUSALEM is absolutely alive, risen from the dead!

Saul’s theology was turned upside down in a moment! From being zealous to God through the law, now his zeal was suddenly turned toward Jesus Christ and living for Him.

Paul’s question “What shall I do, Lord” shows his conversion. His life went from proudly doing what he felt was right in going to Damascus to stamp out those who believed in Christ, to a complete about-face and humbly submitting to Christ and asking the Lord what He wanted to do and where He wanted him to go.

Paul’s conversion shows the transforming power of the gospel. As it’s been said, “Paul went from persecuting Christ to praising Christ. He went from plotting against the saints to preaching Christ to the saints. On the Damascus road he went from death to life; from bondage to liberty; from blindness to sight; from futility to forgiveness.”

The Lord told him, “Arise, and go into Damascus; and there it shall be told thee of all things which are appointed for thee to do.”

The Lord told Paul to continue down the Damascus Road, and to go into the city. He went there not now as God’s adversary but now as one of His saints and servants.

Paul’s salvation was entirely by grace. God saved the chief of sinners by grace because God’s dealings with mankind were changing from law to grace.

So God saved a man who was zealous for the law, who had been viciously persecuting the saints of God, and saved him by His grace, and sent him out as the apostle of the nations to proclaim the grace and peace that God is revealing to the world today.

Acts 22:21-22: “And he said unto me, Depart: for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles. And they gave him audience unto this word, and then lifted up their voices, and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth: for it is not fit that he should live.”

As Paul continued with his testimony before the crowd in Jerusalem, he told them how he had been blinded by the glory of the light and was led by the hand into Damascus.

There Ananias came unto him, and addressed him as family, calling him “Brother Saul” and commanded him to receive his sight.

And then God used Ananias to tell him the things which had been appointed by God for him to do (v. 10): “The God of our fathers hath chosen thee, that thou shouldest know his will, and see that Just One, and shouldest hear the voice of his mouth. For thou shalt be his witness unto all men of what thou hast seen and heard.”

Paul was a chosen vessel of God, that Paul would know His will regarding God’s will and plans and purposes for the nations under grace in light of Israel’s fall.

And just like Paul saw the Just One and heard the voice of His mouth on the Damascus Road, this was to continue as Christ would appear to him going forward to reveal His gospel and message of grace for today.

And then Paul was to take this message of God’s grace as the apostle of the Gentiles and be a witness “unto all men” of those things which he would see and hear from Christ.

Then Paul told the crowd about a time that he came again to Jerusalem, three years after his conversion. While he was praying in the temple, that they were next to at that very moment, he fell into a trance and heard the Lord commanding him to leave Jerusalem quickly, because the people would not receive his testimony concerning Christ.

But it seemed incredible to Paul that his own people would refuse to listen to him because he thought the Jews would be struck by the radical change in his life.

He thought of himself as the perfect one to bring the gospel to his fellow Jews since they knew what a zealous Jew he had been, and how he had imprisoned and beaten the followers of Christ, and how he had even been an accomplice to the murder of Stephen.

But then he had been saved and transformed by the risen Christ and all that changed.

But Paul said that the Lord would not permit him to stay and repeated His command, “Depart: for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles.”

Acts 22:22 says, “And they gave him audience unto this word.” When Paul said the word, “Gentiles,” it was like a spark in a powder magazine, and the crowd exploded in rage.

Paul had made it very clear that it was God’s plan that he go to the Gentiles, but the mention of the Gentiles was the “last straw.”

They saw Paul as only an apostate from the law, a traitor to his nation, who alleged a vision from heaven and a trance in their temple as his defense in God flinging open the door of faith, salvation, and divine worship to the uncircumcised, sinners of the Gentiles.

They would not hear another word, and believed that it was not fit for Paul to live.

God sent Paul “far hence unto the Gentiles,” because that would be his field of labor, now that God had changed His dealings with mankind.

The Damascus Road was a monumental event, because by it, God began a new dispensation, started a new Church, the Body of Christ, and He raised up His spokesman of grace and apostle to the nations.

And we should each praise God for this dispensation of grace which continues to this moment and will continue until the Rapture, because it is a day of salvation.

Each person who is saved today is saved like Paul, by the grace of God through faith alone in Christ. And then, by grace, we have been blessed with all spiritual blessings and given an eternal inheritance and hope in Christ in heaven.