Acts 9:1-5 And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest,… With this paragraph the landmark of the history changes. The conspicuous figure of Paul is seen, and is not again lost to sight till a certain Lord's day morning dawns on the Isle Patmos. The differences that exist in the life and lot of various men often awaken thought in those who think enough, oftener envy or murmur in those who fail to think enough. It is a 'notable token of the character of such envy that, when excited, it is almost invariably in those instances which show differences of worldly lot or providential circumstance. But amid all the differences that might legitimately surprise, none can for a moment compare in intrinsic significance with that which gave, still gives, ever will give, undying renown to Saul - that he is, and is set forth as the type of conversion. He stands before us as remarkable in many ways - as an apostle; as a writer of many Epistles, ever studied, never wearied of; as a first missionary to the Gentiles, and most bold preacher of the gospel; as the planter and settler of so many primitive Churches far and wide; and as a man of such endurance and of so many hairbreadth escapes, that men would say for the one he had an iron constitution, for the other he wore a charmed life. But he is most known, he is apparently most intended to be known, by just what belongs to his conversion. The tale of Saul without his conversion (which he repeats within our knowledge twice for himself, how many times more we cannot say) would be an instance, and in the intensest form too, of the play of 'Hamlet' without Hamlet. Would that there were those, and many of them, who, coveting "the best gifts," coveted this unworldly distinction - the thoroughness, the conspicuousness, the ever-enduring practical results of such a conversion! But how unusual is this ambition! The prominence given to the conversion of Saul cannot mean less than this, that it is a sample. Yet is it not put where it is to stand there in solitary unique grandeur, inapproachable, but that it may be approached, studied, reproduced. Let us look into it at the moment of its crisis, the moment when such unwonted words started to the lips of Saul, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" I. IN THIS QUESTION IS FOUND THE OUTSPOKEN CONFESSION OF PAST DARKNESS, IGNORANCE, MISTAKE. Conversion reveals to a man, not only many other very important things, as time goes on, of which he had never dreamt, but it surprisingly persuades him of this to begin with - that he does not know something which he thought he did know perhaps thought he knew particularly well. What an astonishing thing to hear Saul asking, of all other questions, such a one as this, "Who art thou, Lord? 'This is a great point to gain. Saul had thought he did know this, and knew that Jesus was not one to be called his "Lord" or "Lord" at all. 1. He had put his own idea and his own impression on Christ; but not the right ones, and of the right he was ignorant and destitute. How many do this! No name, perhaps, better known to them than the Name of Jesus, no nature less known or more mistaken. It is the darkness which belongs (1) to nature; (2) to willful neglect and habit. 2. The very wrongness of those ideas and impressions were the measure of the persistency with which they were held and the intemperateness with which they were expressed. Paul afterwards tells us this "I verily thought with myself that I ought to do many things contrary to the Name of Jesus of Nazareth," and he developed his "thought" into the acts of violent persecution. But when Saul utters the cry of the text it is because he is just beginning the escape - the escape of his life, the escape for his life - from that long dark mistake, that native delusion and ignorance. And afterwards he does not excuse his wrong "thought," but condemns himself with deepest contrition as "the chief of sinners." Saul was utterly in the wrong before his conversion; and is not every one else utterly in the wrong until his conversion? What a solemn responsibility this one thing is in life, to make up the mind how to think, to speak, to act towards Christ! II. IN THIS QUESTION IS FOUND THE EVIDENCE OF THE AWAKENING OF A NEW AND KEEN DESIRE. 1. Past darkness and mistake (specially in proportion to its moral blamableness), not only may incur the deep-settled habit, but they generally do so. They strangle, till they kill, anything like a natural healthy desire for real light, real knowledge. They seem to be able to go to the length of destroying the power for its further use on earth. Then what a power it must be that is needed to speak life, strength, use again into that palsy! 2. The one unvarying testimony of Scripture witnesses to one great silent Power, alone able "to create a clean heart, and to renew a right spirit" within man. It is that great Power which wakens again in the deep disused of human nature the keen desire to know, the relish of true knowledge, the thirst for light and love and the liberty of Christ. As on that day so eventful Saul journeyed in hot haste over the hot sands to Damascus, but with raging heart hottest of all, a new future is opening for him, for a new future is opening in him, ere yet the echoes of his brief question die on the air. When in the intolerable blaze of that bright light that passed the brilliance of the noonday sun he fell to the earth, and when the heavenly voice of the risen One twice summoned him, "calling him by his name," it may well be that, if there were anything to waken after too long sleep confessed, it now should "hear and live." And it was so. Some power has reached and touched the vital germ within, yet unextinct, and it owns to the sudden impulse. There is no more genuine evidence of God's mighty Spirit being savingly at work than when every hindrance, every excuse, every delay, falls back, and you press on simply to ask for Christ. Then human nature's want, sin, misery, are arrived at the door of Heaven's infinite wealth, happiness, willingness. Keen is the force of human appetite and keener the edge of passion; keen are our worldly desires and keener our mad wrath; but keenest of all and ever conquering is the force of the desire to know Christ, when it is the Spirit of God who puts it into the heart and kindles its flame. And does not this sample-conversion history guide us most closely to see what are the Spirit's real ways with our natures, which need first obstructions removed, and thereupon force and life restored? The treatment shall be such as reveals to him who experiences it at one glance the world of darkness and error and sin that has been so long within, but close upon that tells him of new, strange, and blessed life astir within also. III. IN THIS QUESTION IS DISCERNIBLE THE HUMBLED AND ALARMED SELF TURNING ]ROUND AND BECOMING REALLY READY TO EXERCISE A SIMPLE, DEEP TRUST. HOW many 'hope" they are ready "think" they are ready, have some sort and some amount of "wish" to be ready, but of whom all the truth is, they are not really ready to trust Christ! They are not really ready to cast themselves on mercy, nor to acknowledge that "this is the work they have to do," namely, "to believe on him whom God hath sent." They are not yet really ready to believe that salvation is to be had by trust and not by any other way; by trust in Christ, and trust illimitable. Yet is there no surer, no safer article of all our faith. And healthy life and fruit are only where faith is rooted in Christ, and root to finest tendril and branch to finest twig do all derive their nourishment and their sap from him. So Saul's question and the sharp, direct method of it signify then, evidently enough, both the hopeful and the trustful state into which he had come, or was ready immediately "by the grace of God" to come. Men sometimes ask a question indifferent to its answer; they sometimes ask a question for the sake of the merest information; they sometimes ask a question for some critical purpose or to block a question waiting on themselves; but this question was none of these. This is like a question indeed. Angels listen to it, and listen to its answer too, to ring out Heaven's wild "Amen. Jesus listened, and a soul was saved. Travel, then, the circle of the earth and the world" and "the heavens," and there is not a question we could address to any or all of them which could equal the momentousness of thin, when, at last turning to Christ, a man asks, "Who art thou, Lord?" To Jesus Saul had borne himself ever so proudly, as many, many do now - their will ungiven to him, their trust flitting everywhere else but not settled on him, their love and allegiance unyielded to him; and when he, even he, asked, "Who art thou, Lord?" it meant the coming down for ever of pride. So the confession which we have seen to hide here, and the keen desire we have seen to bud forth here, led to the utter renunciation of self-trust, and to the simplest and most entire trust in Christ. None can ask this question for you; you must ask it yourself. None can answer it but Jesus, and he will answer it. - B. Parallel Verses KJV: And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest, |
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