Summary:

The Lord asked Ananias to go see Saul, who was persecuting Christ’s followers unto the death (Acts 9:10-17).  That was perhaps the hardest test of faith in the Bible, but Ananias was able to pass it because he was “a devout man” (22:12).

“Devout” is the adjective form of the word devoted, which means to take something that is yours and say it is the Lord’s (Lev. 27:16, 21).  That’s what Ananias did with himself before his hardest test of faith came.  That’s how he passed it.  Your hardest test may be yet to come, but you too can pass it if you devote yourself to the Lord in advance like he did!

Saul was “praying” (11) like you probably were right after you got saved.  I hope you never stopped!  Paul had to write “pray without ceasing” (I Thes. 5:17) because when grace believers learn God isn’t answering prayer in the miraculous manner in which He used to answer prayer, some of them cease praying.  Paul didn’t, and neither should we!  God still answers prayer through His Word working in His people.

A “vessel” (v. 15) is something you put things in to carry them from one place to another.  Your blood vessels carry life-giving blood and oxygen to the furthest extremities of your body so you can have life.  The Lord chose Saul to carry His name to the Gentiles so that they might have eternal life.

That means the Lord was calling Saul to a different kind of ministry than that to which He called the twelve, who were not sent to the Gentiles (Mt. 10:1-6). The Lord didn’t say that because He didn’t like Gentiles.  He planned to use the Jews to reach the Gentiles!  That means in time past Israel was God’s chosen vessel to bear His name before the Gentiles.

But when the Jews refused to be the ambassadors that God sent them to be among the Gentiles, He allowed them to be “swallowed up” of the Gentiles (Hos. 8:8), and instead they go “among the Gentiles” as His prisoners in Babylon instead of as His ambassadors.  God would have been pleased with them if they’d have obeyed Him, but when they didn’t, they became “a vessel wherein is no pleasure.”

God eventually let them out of Babylonian captivity.  But when He tried to use Israel to reach the Gentiles in the New Testament and they responded by rocking Stephen to sleep, that was the last straw.  God chose Saul to be His new chosen vessel to bear His name to the Gentiles.

But when Acts 9:15 mentions the Jews last, that means God is now reaching us Gentiles first and using us to carry His name to the Jews.  But His plan to use Paul and us to carry His name to the Gentiles was different from His plan to use the Jews to do it in many ways.  We see one very important way in Verse 16 when the Lord told Ananias that He’d show Saul how great things he’d have to suffer for Him.

When God used the Jews to reach the Gentiles, any suffering they had to suffer was of their own making!  God told them that if they obeyed Him that He’d protect them from sickness and their enemies.  But the Lord promised Saul—and us!—that we will suffer for Him (Acts 14:22).  But after all that the Lord suffered for us on the cross, it’s a privilege to suffer for Him to get the truth of the mystery out to the rest of the Body of Christ as Paul did (Col. 1:23,24).

The filling of the Spirit back then (Acts 9:17) empowered men to be able to speak in tongues (2:4) and heal the sick (5:15, 16).  But today it empowers us to thank God in “all things,” and empowers wives to submit to husbands and children to submit to parents and servants to obey their masters (Eph. 5:18-6:5).  That’s way more powerful!

Saul was baptized (Acts 9:18)—but not for the remission of sins (cf. 2:38).  We know he was saved before he was baptized, after he called Jesus “Lord” (Acts 9:6 cf. I Cor. 12:3).  Ananias asked him to be baptized because that was the only message he knew.  The new program of salvation without baptism wasn’t revealed to him, it was revealed later to Paul!

To make it so Saul could kick back with the disciples he’d come to kill (Acts 9:19) God had to change the nature of that “wolf” to get him to lay back with those lambs (cf. Isa. 11:6).  God can still do that today in the most violent of men.  He’s the answer to all the violence we’re seeing lately!

This sermon is also available on YouTube: Ananias Passes the Test! – Acts 9:10-19

Summary:

Saul wasn’t just slaughtering God’s people and “threatening” to kill more of them.  He was “breathing out” threatenings and slaughter (9:1).  What’s the difference?   Breath is God’s gift (Acts 17:25), a gift that gives life (Gen. 2:7).  But what you breathe out is what you do with the life God gives you.  That means Saul lived to threaten and slaughter the Lord’s disciples.  But after he got saved, he lived for the Lord (Phil. 1:21).  You should use your breath to also! (Ps. 150:6).

Of course, Saul thought he was living for the Lord when murdering the saints (Acts 23:1).  He thought they were heretics who deserved to die (John 16:2).  This is another thing that made him a type of the antichrist (Dan. 8:24; Re. 13:4,7).

He probably would have become the beast if God hadn’t interrupted prophecy with the mystery.  Psalm 27:12 talks about breathing out cruelty, which sounds like Saul, but we know that’s a passage about antichrist and his followers because Psalm 27:10,11 matches the Lord’s description of the Tribulation (Mark 13:12-14).  This is kind of like how John the Baptist would have been Elijah if Israel had accepted the kingdom (Mal. 4:5; Mt. 11:12,14).  They didn’t, so another Elijah will rise in the Tribulation.

And Saul would have been the antichrist, but now another will arise.  I say all that to assure you that Antichrist won’t be doomed to be the Antichrist.  It’s like how the prophets predicted someone would betray the Lord, but it didn’t have to be Judas.  And the prophets also said there’d be an antichrist, but the man will likewise choose to be the antichrist.

Saul persecuted believers in Jerusalem so thoroughly they all left (Acts 8:1-3) so he got authorization to slay them in Damascus (9:1, 2).  That’s another type of the antichrist.  Saul got his authority from the high priest, antichrist will get his from Satan (Rev. 13:2).  Saul persecuted those of “that way” (9:2), i.e., followers of the Lord Jesus (John 14:6 cf. Acts 19:9, 23).

The “light” Saul saw (9:3) was brighter than the sun (26:13).  Saul knew that could only be God (cf. Ps. 104:1,2).  That explains why he fell to the earth (9:4) like Ezekiel did (Ezek. 1:28).  As we’ll see, the “voice” Saul heard belonged to the Lord Jesus, who didn’t ask why Saul was persecuting Him, He asked why he was killing His disciples (9:4).  That’s because God takes it personally when you kill His people (Isa. 63:9; Zech. 2:8) and the Lord did too (Mt. 25:40).

So Saul knows the light is God, and he knows he’s been persecuting the followers of Christ, so he’s figuring out that the “God” he’s talking to is Christ.  But he asks just to be sure (9:5).  God told Moses His name was “I am” (Ex. 3:14), and now 1500 years later He gave His full name: “I am Jesus.”

“Pricks” (9:5) were the sharp goads (Jud. 3:31) Jews used to prick oxen to get them to go where they wanted.  Saul knew the prophets well enough to know that their description of Israel’s Christ matched Jesus, and God used that to prick his conscience.  But Saul didn’t want to believe the lowly carpenter was his Christ so he kicked against the pricks.

Men always “trembled” (9:6) before God (Hab. 3:2, 4, 16).  But why was Saul also “astonished” (9:6) to learn Jesus was Christ if he’d suspected it all along?  He was astonished that the Lord had spoken to him tenderly instead of in wrath as Psalm 2:5 said he would!  The Lord revealed He was sending him to the Gentiles with a new message (Acts 22:15-18).

He told him to go to Damascus where Ananias would tell him what to do (9:6), but not why.  Ananias told him to be baptized for salvation (22:16), but Saul was already saved on Damascus Road (Acts 9:6 cf. I Cor. 12:3).  The Lord wanted him baptized so the disciples would believe he was saved (Acts 9:26,27). Saul wasn’t saved under the kingdom gospel.

Saul’s henchmen heard the voice (9:7) but not the words (22:9 cf. John 12:28, 29) for the mystery was only given to Paul.

Saul was blinded by the light of the Lord’s glory (9:8, 9 cf. 22:11).  But to save a blasphemer like Saul (I Tim. 2:12, 13) God had to introduce a whole new world (Mt. 12:31, 32), a world the prophets knew nothing about—the world of the dispensation of the grace of God.  The mystery (Eph. 3:1-3).

This sermon is also available on YouTube: Saul’s Threatenings and His Conversion – Acts 9:1-9

This sermon is also available on YouTube: Philip the Missionary – Acts 8:26-40

Summary:

If you’re wondering what kind of “sorcery” (v.9) was available to men in Bible days, that word is first used to describe men who were able to do legitimate miracles (Ex. 7:10,11; 20-22; 8:6,7).  And when Verse 9 says Simon not only did them, he gave out that he himself was “some great one,” that makes him a type of the antichrist (II Thes. 2:3, 4, 9).

Antichrist hadn’t come yet back then, but I John 2:18 said there were “many” antichrists, and Simon was one of them.  The “last times” were interrupted by the dispensation of grace, but Simon is giving us a picture of what the world will look like after the Rapture when God restarts His prophetic clock and guys like Simon start running around again working miracles and claiming to be some great one—just like the Lord predicted (Mt. 24:3-5).  And you know how those false christs will “deceive many” don’t you?  The Lord went on to say he’ll use “great signs and wonders” (Mt. 24:24).  And all those false christs will be types of the antichrist.

When everyone in Samaria “gave heed” to Simon (v. 10), that’s a type of how everyone in the world will wonder after the beast (Rev. 13:3; 17:8).  When Acts 8:11 says Simon be-witched them “long time,” that exact phrase is used to describe the three years the Lord was with the 12 (John 14:8,9)—the same amount of time the Antichrist will bewitch people during the first half of the seven years of Tribulation.

When Acts 8:12 says all the Samaritans believed the gospel, that’s a picture of the “multitudes” that will get saved in the Tribulation (Rev. 7:9, 14) despite being bewitched by the antichrist—just as the Samaritans believed despite being bewitched by Simon!  When it says they believed “the things concerning the kingdom” that Philip preached, that’s even the same gospel they’ll believe in the Tribulation (Mt. 24:14).

Now you know that’s a different gospel than what we preach, for when the Lord sent the 12 into the world to preach it, He told them that people had to be baptized to be saved (Mark 16:15,16).  That was true under the kingdom gospel that was preached at that time.  That’s why “both men and women” were baptized (Acts 8:12).  I say that because Jews were also baptized to make them priests (Ex. 19:6; 29:4) and only men could be priests.  But men and women needed to be saved!

Tribulation Jews will be motivated to go into all the world to preach the gospel because they’ll be running from persecution (Mt. 24:9, 14)—just like Simon was (Acts 8:1-5).  Saul was a type of the antichrist and Philip was a type of the saints who will flee him and go to places like Samaria to preach the gospel.  The Lord told them to flee to the mountains (Mt. 24:15) and Samaria has mountains (Amos 3:9).

But how can Simon be a type of a false christ if he believed and was baptized (Acts 8:13)?  Well, he didn’t believe to the saving of the soul (Heb.10:39), he believed like the men who saw the Lord’s miracles (John 2:23-25).  Simon saw Philip’s miracles and saw they were greater than his, so he wanted to infiltrate the church to learn how to do them.

You see, he was making money doing miracles. That’s a type of how false teachers will infiltrate the church in the Tribulation “having covetous practices” (II Pet. 2:1, 14).  But eventually those false christs will learn to make money as Balaam did (II Pe. 2:14, 15), by turning on Israel (2:3).  Evidently there will be a bounty on the heads of believers in the Tribulation, and those false christs who infiltrate the church will collect it. And we’re seeing all this pictured with Simon.

Jerusalem sent apostles to Samaria (Acts 8:14) because Samaritans in the past had believed on Israel’s God but refused to acknowledge the headquarters of Israel’s God in Jerusalem (John 4:9, 20).  So when these Samaritans in Acts 8 believed they too had to recognize the authority of Jerusalem.  That’s why God sent them apostles.  He wouldn’t give them the Spirit (v.15-17) till they got it from Jerusalem’s apostles.

This was important since Samaria got saved out of order before Jerusalem (Acts 1:8), something that might have tempted them to think God moved His headquarters to Sam-aria.  The 12 had to sanction this change to God’s “Jerusalem first” policy, just as God later had them sanction it when the Gentiles got saved out of order under Paul (Gal. 2:9).

Video of this sermon is available on YouTube: The Aftermath of the Samaritan Revival – Acts 8:9-25