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Christ Community Chapel is a church in Hudson, OH, that invites people to reimagine life because of Jesus. Learn more about us at ccchapel.com.
Acts 9:1–19
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 he found any belonging
to the way men or women,
he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.
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.
But rise and enter the city,
and you will be told what you are to do.
The men who were traveling with him
stood speechless, hearing the voice,
but seeing no one
saw, rose from the ground,
and although his eyes were open,
he saw nothing.
So they led him by the hand
and brought him into Damascus.
And for three days he
was without sight, and neither eight
nor drank.
Now there was a disciple
at Damascus named in Annius.
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 is seen in a vision.
A man named Ananias come in
and lay his hands on him,
so that he may 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 upon your name.
But the Lord said to him, go, for
he is a chosen instrument of mine,
to carry my name before the Gentiles
and kings, and the children of Israel.
For I will show him how
much he must suffer
for the sake of my name.
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.
And immediately
something like scales fell from his eyes,
and he regained his sight.
Then he rose and was baptized,
and taking food
he was strengthened.
Hey everybody, welcome to.
My name is Joe.
I'm one of the pastors here,
and I'm glad you've come.
All right.
This is the seventh week of our ten week
series.
In the book of acts,
we're calling this room for more.
We're actually taking a closer
look at the beginnings
of this phenomenon we call the church.
And it really is pretty amazing.
In acts chapter one, the church starts
with a handful of peasants
with no money, no education, no power.
And by acts chapter 28, Christians
have spread all over the Roman Empire.
There's a church in every major city,
even in Rome,
and there are some Christians
who are in the household of Caesar.
I mean, it's amazing.
Both this week and next week,
we're going to
hopefully get insights into the power
of this worldwide movement.
You just listen to the story
of the conversion of Saul of Tarsus,
probably the most famous conversion story
in all the Bible, and I say conversion,
but it was actually more than that
because the transformation was so complete
that it actually changed his name
from Saul of Tarsus
to Paul the Apostle.
Paul would write in a letter to the church
in Corinth years later.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ,
he is a new creation.
The old has passed away.
Behold, all things have become new.
Christianity makes an extraordinary claim
that a relationship with Jesus
doesn't just make your life better,
it makes you new.
And no one understood
that better than Paul.
The title of this message is
The Church is Transformational.
And here are the three points
that I want to use to
just guide our our time.
Transformation happens
when the process becomes a moment
when God becomes the real God,
and finally when you become the real you,
when the process becomes a moment,
when God becomes the real God,
when you become the real you first
the process becomes a moment.
I'm really glad this isn't the only
conversion story in the book of acts.
I mean, just last week,
Zach covered the Ethiopian eunuch
who actually was converted
while reading the Book of Isaiah.
Much less dramatic.
The reason I'm glad this isn't
the only conversion stories,
because it's so dramatic.
I've actually had people
use it to tell me, to explain to me
why they are not a Christian.
They'll say, I need what Paul got.
I mean, if if I saw a bright light
and Jesus spoke to me in an audible voice
and knocked me to the ground,
I was blind for three days.
Then I become a Christian. Right?
And what they're doing is they're not just
justifying why they're not a Christian.
They're also explaining to me
why they're never be a Christian
because they're actually saying, listen,
I've told God what I need.
If he doesn't give it to me, it's
not my fault.
It's his fault. Right.
But in any conversion,
there's always a process.
And then a moment, it's
almost like marriage.
You know, marriage is a process.
First you form a relationship,
you start to get close,
and then you finally fall in love.
You may not know when you fell in love,
but then comes the moment
when you get married.
Like, you might forget
your anniversary date, but you always know
that at one point you weren't married
and now you are married.
That's the moment
you went with conversion.
It's the same. There's always a process.
And then a moment, you know,
we read about Paul
and it seems like
his conversion is so dramatic
and so sudden
that there's no process, that at one point
he is breathing threats and murder
and trying to kill Christians.
And the next moment he is converted
and become a Christian himself.
But there's always a process.
This is
a this is a happening place right now.
All right.
And for Paul,
the the the process was one that started
both the Holy Spirit
working inside and outside.
First, when I say
the Holy Spirit was working inside,
when you start this chapter, chapter nine,
you realize that Paul is super hostile.
I mean, more hostile the most.
Something is eating him up
and gaining ground,
and he is desperately trying to handle it
right.
He is anything but content.
He is angry.
He is frustrated. He is unhappy.
His soul is unhealthy to the point
where it's leaking
to stuff that he doesn't even like.
It's fascinating to me that later on,
after his transformation,
he would write in Philippians that he had
learned the secret of being content.
This is what he says.
Not that I'm
speaking of being in need for.
I've learned in whatever situation
I'm in to be content.
I know how to be brought low,
and I know how to abound in any
in every circumstance.
I've learned the secret of facing
plenty and hunger, abundance and need.
I can do all things through
him who strengthens me.
I have met a lot of unhappy people.
People are unhappy
with their relationships, people
who thought their lives would be different
than they actually are.
You probably have two.
You might be one of them.
And one of the things
that happens in that discontentment
is that God
is doing something inside of us.
I mean, that's
you can get to the point where you don't
even like yourself most of the time.
That's exactly where I was as a sophomore
in college, right
before I committed my life to Jesus.
I tried to fill myself up with everything
that would make a college kid
happy, and instead of filling up,
I became empty, right?
So there's this process of becoming less
and less
content with who you are
and what you are becoming.
But there's also usually,
if you're in the process of God,
drawing you to himself is also something
that happens on the outside.
We have an experience that surprises you.
Someone acts in a way
you don't expect them to act in a way
that you find difficult to kind of ignore.
For Paul, that was the death of Stephen.
Like he was there when Stephen was stoned
and he watched Stephen acts.
Chapter seven will say that
when Stephen was dying,
his face became like the face of an angel,
that he had peace,
that he died with grace,
that at the very end he said, I see Jesus.
And that messed Paul up in a good way.
I got an email a couple of weeks ago
from a guy who said,
I don't go to your church.
I'm not sure I believe in God,
but I'm asking you
if you will meet with me,
because this is what he said.
Because I went to a funeral
at your church.
It happened to be the funeral
of a young woman named Sarah.
Sarah was in her 30s.
She was three young children.
She died of cancer. Pretty tragic.
This guy came to the funeral
expecting it to be tragic.
He did not expect her husband, Jesse
to stand up,
eulogize his wife in a beautiful way.
But talk about her
hope and a talk about her faith.
Talk about her joy, and at the same time,
talk about his faith, his hope, his joy.
And it has met this guy up in a good way.
So much so that he would email a pastor
he doesn't know
and say, would you please meet with me?
Because I'm finally open to the idea
there may be a God because something
has been happening in him
and something happened outside of him.
When Paul is talking about his conversion
and acts chapter 26, he quotes
Jesus as saying to him during that time,
is it
hard for you to kick against the goads?
A goad was a sharp stick
that shepherds would use to to poke
sheep, to keep them from going deeper
into danger,
to get them to go
where they want them to go.
Jesus is saying to Paul,
that's what I've been doing to you.
I've been leading you.
That's what sometimes that's what
it feels like to be in the process
that God has for you.
There's a discontentment, there's an
anger, frustration, maybe even confusion.
And then you see somebody
who has something in their life
that you don't have, and you begin
to wonder if that's possible for you.
That's the process.
But there's also always a moment
when you finally say
yes to Jesus,
when you surrender, when you tap out.
This is what it says in verse
20 of chapter nine.
It says, and immediately Paul proclaimed
Jesus in the synagogue, saying,
he is the Son of God, right?
If you say,
I've always been married, you're wrong.
Saying you've always been a Christian is
like saying, you've always been married.
You haven't been.
If you're here right now and you feel like
maybe I skipped that step of a moment,
I feel like
I believe in Jesus,
but I never surrendered that.
You should do that right here, right now.
You know, to tell Jesus.
Jesus, I'm sorry I skipped that step.
I need to ask you.
Will you be my savior?
Will you forgive me?
I give myself completely to you.
You need a moment.
Transformation happens
after conversion and conversion.
There was always a process and a moment.
That's the first step.
Second thing that happens
with transformation is God becomes
the real God.
When God gives the Ten Commandments,
the first two are about him.
He says, don't have any other gods
before me.
And number two,
don't make any idols, right?
An idol is a made up God.
It's a God that you you fashion
that makes sense to you.
And I think people do that
all the time to God.
I'm. I talk to people
and they'll say, you know what?
I can't believe in a God that would
send people to hell for any reason.
I believe in a God that loves everybody.
That that that is okay
with how everybody lives.
I just believe in that God.
And there's a
there's a great verse in first John
that says, God is greater than our hearts.
If you have an idea of God in your heart
and that God never disappoints
you, never surprises you,
never disagrees with you, then chances
are you have a made up God.
You're like an imaginary friend,
an AI god, right?
And and that God cannot save you, right?
It drives me crazy that it seems like
sometimes we treat God like he's Mr.
Potato Head.
Remember that, Mr. Potato Head?
You could take off the nose
and put on one with with a mustache.
It's like we we pass God around
and we say, oh my God is like this.
My God doesn't have this kind of knows.
He's got angry eyes. Whatever. Right?
It's crazy.
I've met people for the first time
who said, oh,
they seen me like on, you know,
I don't know, on screen somewhere.
And they say, I thought you'd be taller.
And I go, okay, that's right.
But nobody ever comes up, comes up to me
and says, you're not my Joe.
I'd be going, no,
there's only there's only the real Joe.
There's no there's no like your Joe.
Like I am what I am.
That's what God is.
Paul thought
he knew exactly what God was like.
He was sure enough for him.
Listen, he had been.
He had memorized the thing called
the shama, probably before he could read.
And the Shema, two verses
in the book of Deuteronomy.
This is what it says.
It says Hero Israel,
the Lord your God is one,
and you shall love the Lord your God.
The reason Paul hated Christians
is because
Christians said
that Jesus was more than a man.
That Jesus was
the Son of God, was God Himself.
And he proved that by the resurrection.
And Paul could not understand that at all.
And then Jesus showed up.
What's interesting to me
is that when Jesus shows up with Paul,
he knows what Paul's
problem has been with him,
and he doesn't explain the Trinity.
Jesus doesn't go, hey, Paul, it's okay.
We are one essence in three persons.
I'll just go through this with you
so you'll understand.
No, he just says I'm alive.
Paul.
That's enough.
And it was.
Paul probably had a bunch of questions,
like he had tons of questions
about what this meant,
but the fact that Jesus was resurrected
meant that Jesus was who he said he was,
and that changed his whole idea of God.
And God became the real God.
You know, one of the things
I always try to remind myself
when I'm talking with people
is that when somebody in a process
of trying to understand God,
they can get lost in weeds.
There are a lot of weeds they can get lost
in, you know, evolution or creation.
They can be lost in the weeds
in the Old Testament
and some of the things that happened
in the Old Testament that can get lost
and the problem of pain and suffering.
And I always want to get them
to the resurrection, just say, hey,
you need to decide,
did the resurrection happen or not?
That's the question.
Everything else is weeds, right?
And I try to remind that's where I go,
because whether you realize it or not,
there are different times
with pastors where things are where,
where God confuses me.
When somebody dies who's young like Sarah,
that bothers me.
And I write my journal.
God, I don't understand you.
Sometimes I don't understand
why you don't intervene
when it seems like you should intervene.
I don't understand this right.
And I'm in danger of trying to take God
and make him so that it's okay.
He's okay in my heart,
and I don't let him be the real God.
And so I then I go to the resurrection
and I end up saying,
Did Jesus resurrect or not?
If he resurrected,
everything else is weeds.
Listen, if you're rejecting Christianity,
make sure it's not because of the weeds.
Make sure you look at the evidence
for the resurrection.
And even more than that, if you are going
to be intellectually honest,
you need to not only look at the evidence
for the resurrection,
you also have to come up with
an alternative theory on what happened,
because something happened to Jesus
and something happened to all
his followers that transformed them,
then transformed the world,
including Paul.
And they all pointed to the power
of the resurrection that did it.
Okay, so the first thing
transformation happens
when a process becomes a moment.
Secondly, when God becomes the real God.
And third is when you become the real you.
And this is
maybe my favorite point of this message.
You know, chapter nine starts out
with this saying, But Paul, still
breathing threats and murder
against the disciples of the Lord,
went to the high priest, asked him
for letters to the synagogues at Damascus.
So if he found any belonging to the way
men or women,
he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.
Okay, it starts out he is just angry.
He's hateful, he's trying to murder
Christians and everything.
And then by verse 20,
he meets the resurrected Christ.
He becomes a Christian.
And then from chapter nine
all the way to chapter 28,
he becomes the main character
of the whole book of acts.
And what's fascinating to me
is this the same mouth that was spewing
threats and murder becomes
the mouth that tells thousands of people
about the love of Jesus, the same feet
that we're going city to city
trying to persecute
Christians became the feet
that would take him from city
to city, planting churches, the same mind
that was formerly forming arguments
against Christianity became the greatest
theological mind the world has ever seen
in favor of Christianity.
This is my point.
God transformed Paul,
but he didn't, like,
destroy Paul's personality.
What he did was he.
He took Paul
and he redirected everything about him.
He repurposed Paul, right?
He still he didn't waste Paul's past.
I Paul was educated.
God used his education.
Paul was passionate. God used his passion.
Paul was courageous. God used his courage.
Paul was relentless.
God used his determination.
That's my point.
Sometimes people will look at something
that what I do
or what Pastor Zach does and they think,
oh man, I could never stand
in front of a crowd and give a sermon.
So I can't really be used by God.
And you're wrong.
You're wrong.
God doesn't start from scratch
when he transforms you.
He uses what?
What do you love?
Do you love sports? Do you love gardening?
Do you love art? Do you love music?
What are you good at?
Are you good at at details?
Are you good at?
I don't caring for kids.
Are you good at strategic thinking
or good at working behind the scenes?
God takes you and then repurposes you.
I remember talking to, you know,
we have a great band.
I mean, everybody's amazing in our band.
And I was talking
to one of the guitar players.
I don't know, just maybe six months ago
because he was playing all the time.
And I was asking him and he's really good.
And I said,
how long have you been playing guitar?
And he said, oh,
I've been playing guitar since I was ten.
And then he said this.
He just offered this.
He said, you know, Joe,
I played my whole life
and I played in all kinds of bands
growing up and,
and then I, but I never really realized
until I started playing here for worship.
This is what I was made for.
And I was going on.
Yeah, absolutely.
He might never be able to stand up
and preach a sermon, but what he does,
it's like God has taken his gifts
and his passion and his love
and repurpose them for his glory.
That's what God can do for you.
Like the the power of the church
that swept through
the Roman Empire,
this phenomenon called the church.
It happened because people
were being transformed like a process
became a moment in every person's life
where they said, Jesus is my Lord.
Jesus is my Savior.
God became the real God.
Who's that stubborn
fact of the resurrection
where people believe that Jesus is who
he said he is because he resurrected
and they were convinced of it,
and then people became the real them,
the way God created you
with the same passion, same love,
same gifts,
but repurposed, redirected for his glory.
You will never feel more like you
than you when you're in that place.
After being repurposed
and transformed by God for his glory.
Did you pray with me,
father in Heaven, to come to you?
And I'm so grateful
for the story of of Paul.
I'm grateful
that you don't just make our lives better,
but you can actually make us new.
Repurpose. Redirect it.
I pray for every person here
that you help us
all to be so transformed by you
that we will actually feel more
at home in our own skin,
that we will realize that we are exactly
who you made us to be, for
your glory to be used for you.
Thanks.
Thanks for giving us a wonderful Savior.
We pray this in his name. Amen.