Acts 9:3-19 And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven:… Damascus still stands with a population of 135,000. It was a gay city of white and glistering architecture; its domes playing with the light of the morning sun; embowered in groves of olive, and palm, and citron, and orange, and pomegranate; a famous river plunging its brightness into the scene — a city by the ancients styled "a pearl surrounded by emeralds." A group of horsemen are advancing. Let the Christians of the place hide, for they are persecutors; their leader, as leaders sometimes are, insignificant in person — witness Napoleon and Dr. Archibald Alexander. But there is something very intent in the eye of the man, and the horse he rides is lathered with the foam of a long and quick travel of one hundred and thirty-five miles. He cries, "Go 'long" to his steed, for those Christians must be captured and that religion annihilated. Suddenly the horses shy off and plunge, until the riders are precipitated. A new sun had been kindled, putting out the glare of the ordinary sun. Christ, with the glories of heaven wrapped about Him, looked out from a cloud, and the splendour was insufferable, and no wonder the horses sprang and the equestrians dropped. Struck stone blind, Saul cries out, "Who art Thou, Lord?" And Jesus answered him, "I am the One you have been chasing. He that scourges Christians scourges Me. I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest." From that wild, exciting, and overwhelming scene there rises up the greatest preacher of all the ages — Paul, in whose behalf prisons were rocked down; before whom rulers turned pale; into whose hand Mediterranean sea captains put control of their ship wrecking craft, and whose epistles are the avant courier of a resurrection day. I learn from this scene — I. THAT A WORLDLY FALL SOMETIMES PRECEDES A SPIRITUAL UPLIFTING. A man does not get much sympathy by falling off a horse. People say he ought not to have got into the saddle if he could not ride. Here is Paul on horseback; a proud man riding on with government documents in his pocket; a graduate of a most famous school in which Doctor Gamaliel had been a professor; perhaps having already attained two of the three titles of the school — Rab and Rabbi, and on his way to Rabbak. I know, from his temperament, that his horse was ahead of the other horses. But without time to think of his dignity he is tumbled into the dust. And yet that was the best ride Paul ever took. Out of that violent fall he arose into the illustrious apostleship. So it has been in all the ages. You will never be worth anything for God and the Church until you are somehow thrown and humiliated. You must go down before you go up. Joseph finds his path to the Egyptian court through the pit into which his brothers threw him. Daniel would never have walked amid the bronzed lions that adorned the Babylonish throne if he had not first walked amid the real lions of the cave. Men who have been always prospered may be efficient servants of the world, but will be of no advantage to Christ. II. THAT THE RELIGION OR CHRIST IS NOT A PUSILLANIMOUS THING. People try to make us believe that Christianity is something for men of weak calibre, for women, for children. Look at this man. He was a logician, a metaphysician, an all-conquering orator, a poet of the highest type. I have never found anything in Carlyle, or Goethe, or Herbert Spencer that could compare in strength or beauty with Paul's Epistles. I do not think there is anything in Sir William Hamilton that shows such mental discipline as you find in Paul's argument about justification and resurrection. I have not found anything in Milton finer than Paul's illustrations drawn from the amphitheatre. There was nothing in Emmet pleading for his life, or in Burke arraigning Warren Hastings, that compared with the scene before Agrippa. A religion that can capture a man like that must have some power in it. Where Paul leads, we can afford to follow. I am glad to know that Christ has had in His discipleship a Mozart and a Handel in music; a Raphael and a Reynolds in painting; an Angelo and a Canova in sculpture; a Rush and a Harvey in medicine; a Grotius and a Washington in statesmanship; a Blackstone, a Marshall, and a Kent in the law; and the time will come when the religion of Christ will conquer all the observatories and universities, and philosophy will, through her telescope, behold the morning star of Jesus, and in her laboratory see that "all things work together for good," and with her geological hammer discern the "Rock of Ages." Oh, instead of cowering when the sceptic talks of religion as though it were a pusillanimous thing, show him the picture of the intellectual giant of all the ages prostrate on the road to Damascus; then ask your sceptic who it was that threw him. Oh, no! it is no weak gospel. It is a glorious, an all-conquering gospel; the power of God unto salvation. III. THAT A MAN CANNOT BECOME A CHRISTIAN UNTIL HE IS UNHORSED. We want to ride into the kingdom of God just as the knight rode into castle gate, on palfrey beautifully caparisoned. We want to come into the kingdom of God in fine style. No crying over sin. No begging at the door of God's mercy. No, we must dismount, go down in the dust, until Christ shall, by His grace, lift us up, as He lifted Paul. IV. THAT THE GRACE OF GOD CAN OVERCOME THE PERSECUTOR. Paul was not going, as a sheriff goes, to arrest a man against whom he has no spite. He breathed out slaughter. Do you think that that proud man on horseback can ever become a Christian? Yes! There is a voice from heaven uttering two words, "Saul! Saul!" That man was saved; and so God can, by His grace, overcome any persecutor. The days of sword and fire for Christians seem to have gone by; but has the day of persecution ceased? No. That woman finds it hard to be a Christian while her husband talks and jeers while she is trying to say her prayers or read the Bible. That daughter finds it hard to be a Christian with the whole family arrayed against her. That young man finds it bard to be a Christian in the shop when his companions jeer at him because he will not go to the gambling hell or the house of shame. But, oh, you persecuted ones, is it not time that you began to pray for your persecutors? They are no prouder, no fiercer than was this persecutor. God can, by His grace, make a Renan believe in the Divinity of Jesus, and a Tyndall in the worth of prayer. John Newton stamped the ship's deck in derisive indignation at Christianity only a little while before he became a Christian. "Out of my house," said a father to his daughter, "if you will keep praying"; and, before many months passed, the father knelt at the same altar with the child. V. THAT THERE IS HOPE FOR THE WORST OFFENDERS. It was particularly outrageous that Saul should have gone to Damascus on that errand. The life and death of Jesus was not an old story as it is now. He heard parts of it recited every day by people who were acquainted with all the circumstances; and yet, in the fresh memory of that scene, he goes to persecute Christ's disciples. Oh, he was the chief of sinners. No outburst of modesty when he said that. He was a murderer. And yet the grace of God saved him, and so it will you. There is mercy for you who say you are too bad to be saved. You say you have put off the matter so long. Paul had neglected it a great while. You say that the sin you have committed has been amid the most aggravating circumstances. That was so with Paul. You say you have exasperated Christ, and coaxed your own ruin. So did Paul; and yet he sits today on one of the highest of the heavenly thrones. VI. THAT THERE IS A TREMENDOUS REALITY IN RELIGION. If it had been a mere optical delusion over the road to Damascus, Paul was just the man to find it out. If it had been a sham and pretence, he would have pricked the bubble. And when I see him overwhelmed, I say there must have been something in it. And, my dear brother, you will find that there is something in religion in one of three places, either in earth, or in heaven, or in hell. (T. De Witt Talmage.) Parallel Verses KJV: And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven: |
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