Reading
Dispersions one 3 to 24. I pray that God our father, the Lord Jesus Christ, will be good to you and give you peace.
Jesus gave himself for our sins to free us from this evil world we live in. This is what God the Father wanted. The glory belongs to God forever and ever. Amen.
A short time ago, God called you to follow him. He called you by his grace that came through Christ.
But now I am amazed at you. You are already turning away and believing something different than the good news. Really, there is no other good news, but some people are confusing you and want to change the good news of Christ.
We preach to you the good news. So if we ourselves are even an angel from heaven preaching something different than the good news, he should be commended. I said this before, now I say it again. You have already accepted the good news.
If anyone tells you another way to be saved, he should be condemned. Do you think I am trying to make people accept me? No. God is the one I am trying to please. I am trying to please.
Am I trying to please men I want if I wanted to please men, I would not be servant of Christ. Brothers, I want you to know that the good news I preached you was not made by men. I did not get it from men, nor did I. Nor did any men teach it to me. Jesus Christ showed it to me.
You have heard about my past life. I belong to the Jewish religion. I heard the Church of God very much and tried to destroy it. I was becoming a leader in the Jewish religion. I did better than most other Jews of my age. I tried harder than anyone else to follow the old rules. These rules were the customs handed down by our ancestors.
But God had special plans for me even before I was born. So he called me through his grace, that I might tell the good news about his son to the non-Jewish people. So God showed me about His son.
When God called me. I did not get any advice or help from any man. I did not go to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was. But without waiting I went to. I went away to Arabia and later went back to Damascus.
After three years I went to Jerusalem to meet Peter and stayed with him for 15 days. I met no other apostles except James, the brother of the Lord. God knows that these things are right and not lies.
Later I went to areas of Syria and Cilicia in Judea. The churches in Christ had never met me. They had only heard this about me. This man was trying to hurt us, but now he is preaching the same faith that he once tried to destroy. And these believers praised God because of me.
This is the word of the Lord.
Saul's background
Well, the Apostle Paul was on a journey. It started when he was born. He was a really great Jewish man, but he also spoke Greek, really well educated in religious things and in the philosophies of the Greek society. And he was a Roman citizen, which meant that he had lots of power, but he was particularly zealous. And that means excited and passionate and actually starting to get quite angry and even violent to defend the church, to defend the Jewish religion from the new Christian church.
Early training and zeal
He started off as a young man, learning all he could from a rabbi called Gamaliel. And he also learnt how to be a tent maker. And he was used to journeys, and he was very good on ships, but his life became heavier and heavier. He knew that God wanted people to know him, to know God, and he didn't know how to make sure that that happened well. He was born not called Paul, but called Saul and known as Saul. He actually takes center stage in the book of acts, not as a goodie, but as a baddie. He is fighting against the church, people who believed in Jesus, people just like you and me from all kinds of backgrounds. Paul was so concerned that these new people who trusted in Jesus instead of the Torah of Moses and doing all the proper things in the temple, were actually such a threat that he stood by while some of them were murdered. And he tried to do more of that himself.
A heavy burden
So when we first meet him, Saul is a bad guy, carrying a very heavy burden. And it's hard to know whether he's a good guy. That's kind of become bad because he's carrying such a heavy burden. Or whether he just really feels a deep anger about the evil in the world, and he's going about it the wrong way.
The Damascus encounter
Well, he's on a journey. And then in the book of acts, chapter nine, something happens. Jesus, the risen Jesus, appears to Saul. A blinding flash comes down from heaven. Saul's basically knocked off his horse. His journey stops. And Jesus speaks to him and says, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads. That means it's hard for you to carry this burden, and you're going about it the wrong way. He realizes that he has been going entirely the wrong way, and about God's business entirely the wrong way. And in fact, he's been carrying things that are entirely the wrong things to be carrying. And so as he meets Jesus, he suddenly becomes free to leave the things that he's carrying behind.
Burden #1: Human approval
So let's have a look. Oh, is that acting? It's hard to know. Let's have a look at some of the things that the Apostle Paul was carrying, and what Jesus sets him free from when he meets him. Well, what have we got in here? Woof! It's pretty full. Ah, the first thing we. Oh, boy. The first thing that Paul was carrying around was human approval. Now, I made it look terrible on purpose. It's all part of it. Human approval. You see, he had. And he tells us this in Galatians. He had been really quite famous amongst the people, in his circles. You know what it's like when you've got people who believe something and you kind of are the one that's enacting it. You know, you're the most passionate about the thing that the people in your circle or your echo chamber are really passionate about. And so they tell you you're good and you do the same thing even more, and then they tell you you're good and it's just this cycle, and you never know whether you're going to be able to continue to carry it.
Why approval is a burden
Well, he says, I was advancing in Judaism, this Jewish religion, beyond many of my own age, among my people, and I was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers. He was well educated. He was a Roman citizen. He was able to think and speak and write. But this human approval was actually a burden that was weighing him down, because it stops you being able to see what's really true. You and I might know that from the playground, from the party, from the workplace. It's really hard to be able to see what's true, when all you really want is the approval from the people around you. And it can be hard to choose the right thing, too.
Choosing God's approval
Well, when we get to Galatians one, Paul says this. Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings or of God? Am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people? I would not be a servant of Christ. So that's the first thing he gets to put down, or human approval. He knows that now that Christ has appeared to him, he can't live for what people say about him. He has to let it go.
Burden #2: Fighting bad things
What's the second thing? Are. Well, this is tricky. This one says the next burden was how to fight bad things. You see, Paul, like you, and I felt that the world was sometimes not as it should be. In fact, it was often not as it should be. And he calls it this. He calls it the present evil age. And what did he do? Well, he was zealous for God. And so he went around trying to use violence and threats and manipulation and government to try and get Christians in trouble or actually killed. He was trying to fight what he thought were the bad things in the world with violence, persecution, exclusion and manipulation.
Jesus is God's plan to rescue
But in fact, what he learnt when Jesus showed up. Was that Jesus was the one and I'm reading now. Who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father? Jesus was God's plan to fight bad things. Now, sometimes in the playground, or the party, or the library, or the family, or the workplace, we're not sure how to fight bad things. Sometimes we want to actually fight. Sometimes we want to tear people down with words. Sometimes we want to exclude people and make sure that whatever they do, they don't get to be at the center. When you get a bit older, you try certain things, like aligning yourself. Maybe in a really black and white way with a particular political agenda. Maybe you think, if only I just have a beautiful house and I shut the door, then I can fight bad things in that way. But Paul realized that Jesus was the only way and was God's intended plan to fight bad things. And you know what also he learnt was that bad things are in him as well, not just other people. That I'm part of it, that you're part of it, that there's never such a thing as you bad me good. And so he had to let it go.
Arabia: reset and rethink
Well, his bag was getting a little bit lighter, and he decided that he would head off. And we read in our passage that he. He goes to Damascus. And if you read acts, you know, he has ministry with a person called Ananias. Then there's a little gap and he heads off. Acts doesn't tell us about it, but here he does. He heads off to a place called Arabia. Now in Arabia, he's doing a reset, a rethink, because he's met Jesus and he hasn't changed from being a Jewish person. What he's realized is the Messiah has come. All God's promises. Everything that he was trying to defend actually have been fulfilled. And so now he has to go back and say, Lord, where did I go wrong? Where did we all go wrong? Your people. And so he kind of goes back to Arabia. Like a prophet of the Old Testament. And lets God reset him. He studies the scriptures. He allows Jesus to show him exactly all the things that he's longed for, how they are fulfilled, and who can take part in them. Because he hasn't just been turned into a Christian, he's been given a commission to go to. Hmm. Well, just a special people.
Good news for all people
You see, he now realizes that God's plan. In Jesus is for all people everywhere. He thought that there was only one
