Grace Chapel Bible Ministries

worship Call 1194 Saul wares out His Welcome - 2024/12/06

Summary: In these passages, we see the dramatic transformation of Saul, who becomes Paul, after encountering Christ. His immediate proclamation of the Gospel highlights the purpose of divine encounters, and the response of the early church sets a framework for the mission of believers.

Duration:: 34m
Broadcast on:: 06 Dec 2024
Audio Format:: other

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> Welcome to worship call with Bible teacher Buzz Lulbat. Buzz is the pastor of Grace Chapel Bible Ministries located in Duncan, South Carolina. This ministry is dedicated to the verse by verse teaching of God's word and discipleship programs aimed at strengthening the faith of God's people. Now here's today's message. >> We can be pretty up on our doctrine, on our Bible study, on our theology. We can, as I often said, pull out the Bible and Bible verses as quick as Matt Dillon can draw a gun. But all of that is all of our Bible study and all about theology and all of our doctrine, that of itself does not equate to worship. But it must be equated to the person that we worship. Paul saw was, saw he had, he had the theology, he had the doctrine, he knew his Old Testament scripture. But it meant nothing until he associated with the person of Jesus Christ and that he is God. This is the sixth day of the week in God's created order, the sixth day of the 12th month, 2024th year of our Lord, and this is another fine day in the Lord. Father in heaven, we thank you for another day. We thank Heavenly Father for your word that opens the spirit, that opens our eyes to your word, that we may come to know it, that we may be tutored by it, that the Holy Spirit that teaches us and guides us. I pray Heavenly Father for those in the sound of my voice that they will, that you will place within each of us a hunger, a desire, a something that cannot be shaken, to know your word and to know your word is to know the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, in whose name we pray. Amen. In these passages we see a dramatic transformation of Saul who becomes Paul. After encountering Christ, his immediate proclamation of the gospel highlights the purpose of divine encounters, the people that we should meet, and the response of the early church sets of framework for the mission of believers. Remember that Acts is the foundation, the foundation of the church. Nothing changed, where there has been a change over the years with the attitude of Christians in the church is because people have moved it. If you want to go back to see what we as Christians should be at our mindset, we go back to the book of Acts. This should be, first of all Saul receives his sight back, and let's go back to our passage. And let's go back to Acts 20. There we go. Acts wait, and immediately he begins, let's back up just a little bit, shall we? And immediately after Ananias came, I'm going to back up just a little bit more. Okay, here we go. But the Lord said, "Go," he's talking to Ananias here, "go for he is a chosen instrument," speaking of Saul, "of mine to bear my name before the Gentiles and the kings and the sons of Israel, for I will show him how much he must suffer for my name's sake." So Ananias departed and entered the house, and after laying his hands on him, said, "Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you were coming has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit." And immediately there fell off his eyes, sampling like scales. I would call this the first recorded cataract surgery. I think probably the only cataract surgery. Okay, so we have spiritual cataracts, and here it is, those scales fell off the eyes, and he regained his sight, and he got up and was baptized. And he took food and was strengthened. Paul not only regained his physical vision, but also a new spiritual insight. Now for several days, he was with the disciples who were at Damascus. And immediately he began to proclaim in synagogue, saying, "He is the son of God." The important point here, first of all, what's the preaching? What's going to be the preaching? What's going to be the proclamation? And the proclamation is the fact that he is the son of God. You can preach, as we started out, you can preach all day long. Application, you can preach at what is proclaiming application, by the way. You can talk about how God loves us. And you can go through your points of theological points, points of doctrine in here and there. And you can get so periodically astute, but once again, let me emphasize. All the Bible doctrine in the world, and all the theology, and all these things equate to zero nothing as far as worship unless that doctrine is connected with the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And who is the Lord Jesus Christ? You can't just say that he was a good teacher. Jesus was a good teacher. I've heard that before. He was a good moral teacher, sad that they nailed them on the cross. Muslims, even unbelieving Muslims, also believed that there was a Jesus. There is no problem knowing that there is a historical Jesus. You can't deny it. There's all kinds of evidences to tell us historically. You just do the research. Knowing that Jesus is a historical figure. That's not going to get you over to line folks. It's knowing that he is the Son of God. Got a quote here. I've read this before but stands to be C.S. Lewis. A quote from C.S. Lewis from his book, "Mirror Christianity." I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about him. I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher but I don't accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things that Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on a level of a man who says he is a poached egg or else he would be the devil of hell. You must make your choice either this man was and is the Son of God or else a man or something worse. You could shut him up for a fool. You could spit at him and kill him as a demon or you could fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. So the question is to you as and to any one of us is the same question that Jesus asked Peter. And it is a very important question. Who do you say that I am? Who do you say that I am? And it comes down to here now. You see Paul Paul is going to be Paul but Saul takes his theological learning. It wasn't false. You know I see this in myself and all the doctrine and all the theology and all the doctrine that I've learned over years really did not change my life until I quated that until I quated all of it with that personal relationship with the Lord. I was more in love with the doctrine than I was in love with the person. A person with the Lord. And now here it is that Saul was a believer. He believed in God. Like a lot of people today say a believe in God. And oh I believe in God. Oh I believe in God is a good thing and all that. And this was exactly where Saul stood. He believed in God. He went through all his rituals. He went through all of his schooling to study all this doctrine and theology. But now he comes face to face with the reality of the Christ. And it was the spirit that opened up. He was filled with the spirit. You cannot know anything apart from the spirit learning and teaching the human spirit. The Holy Spirit teaching human spirit. And he was filled with spirit. He was baptized. So therefore his heart was opened. The eyes of his heart. This is what the Bible means by he who has an ear. Let him hear. Spiritual hearing. Their spiritual hearing. Their spiritual eyesight. That you cannot even know. You can know things of the Bible. You can know. And you can be a great theologian. And you can be an unbeliever. Again. What's the difference? A theologian. Doctrine and theology and all that can lead you into an ideology. Ideologies. Concepts. Things like that. But once again. And that's not worship. Worship only happens when you equate your theology. Doctrine and that to the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. So rather than a sword that is strapped to Saul's side to as a weapon that he uses. He's going to now yield the word of God. The sword of the Lord. Which is the sword of the spirit. And he'll declare Jesus as the son of God. So I'll preach the message. And let's see. Come back to our passage. And immediately he began to proclaim. This is preaching. He's proclaiming now. He's preaching. And caruso. Caruso. And this is to publicly announce religious truths and principles. While urging acceptance and compliance. I often thought about for some time. And while back I pondered. The difference between preaching and teaching. There was a lot of emphasis with growing up spiritually on the teaching part. And I've heard people talk about preaching. Are they the same thing? Is preaching and teaching? When you teach, are you actually proclaiming? Are you? So that's a boil down to. And what I've come to understand. Okay. So to teach means to distribute information. To instruct on a given subject. To teach and agree to the Daskalas. And it is necessary that if one is to be a disciple. A disciple is not preached to. A disciple is taught. He's instructed. A disciple that one needs to be instructed. If you're a disciple, you need to be instructed on the principles of Bible doctrine or theology. To be a student means strict academic discipline. Preaching on the other hand is a proclamation. It's a heralding of a good news. And evangelists may gravitate more to the preaching. Heralding and preaching calls for a burden. It calls for a decision. It calls for a demand upon the heart. The preaching may involve the emotions. It may involve the... It calls for a verdict, a response to the message that he preaches. It demands for it. Teaching is a systematic outline of God's outlaying of God's word. And it's the teaching that it's the teaching that... It's the teaching that is systematic outline of God's word. It is the teaching that transforms. Preaching doesn't transform. Preaching only calls for a burden. It only calls for a decision to be made. Whereas teaching is a systematic outline of the word. And it is the teaching that transforms over time under teaching and under the... Again, strict academic discipline, it is teaching that changes the heart. Preaching can move you emotionally, but it is teaching. What we have today in our churches is a lack of... There may be churches that are held heralding. There are churches that people come to expect an excitement. They want to leave with a skip in their step. They want to leave with some type of... caught up emotions. Excitement. And the thing is, I remember an evangelist, the one who's heralding, may produce that. But the teacher, and under teaching, there is the idea of sitting down and learning. What Paul was doing here, he was preaching. And the preaching, the word, was the word of God. So a few points of doctrine, I put this up on screen, but number one. Preaching demands a response, a decision averted. That's preaching. Teaching demands academic discipline. Preaching can stimulate the emotions. Teaching promotes growth. And the response or change in the believer is over the course of time. Short or long depending upon how disciplined you are to take in God's Word. I.E. to sound Bible doctrine may not always be. The heart has to be trained to receive God's Word. The person must be disciplined to sit down and listen. Verse by verse, line upon line, passage by passage. And the change will come over time. Guarantee it. Guarantee it. As long as that focus is right. What was Paul's message that Jesus is God? The message. So the preacher calls for a verdict and teaching says open up your Bibles. And let's learn about Jesus. So he was preaching in the synagogues saying he is the Son of God. And the synagogue is a congregation of Jews. A synagogue is a congregation. For all those who continue to be amazed. And this word for amazed is ex-estim, ex-estimy. And it calls someone to be astonished by a, to be practically overwhelmed. That should be mind-blowing. This is a mind-blowing thing. They were astonished. They had heard the news of Saul. They knew what kind of person this was. Here is another argument for Christianity. How does someone, overnight, who was the enemy of anyone, any follower of the way, who hated Christianity so much, or the name of Jesus so much, that he would indiscriminately just mess men, women, and, and sentence them to death. Good gracious. But all of a sudden, overnight, he's out there proclaiming the same Jesus to be God. And they were beside themselves. They were amazed, not at Saul, but at God. This was truly a miracle. For instance, wouldn't it get your attention if the starch atheist, like Richard Dawkins, if Richard Dawkins sometimes came out on, you know, on, on, in public and said that Jesus is God. I mean, this man spent his whole career saying that there is a, saying that the universe, it talks about the Big Bang and all this and all this, and the Nine God. And all of a sudden, Richard Dawkins comes out and starts, overnight, says there is a God. Stephen Hawkins, I believe Stephen Hawkins is dead now, but Stephen Hawkins, another atheist, would come out and say, you know what, everything that I've ever learned was wrong in such a way that it dismissed God. And this would astonish, this would, this would just blow our minds. And so, or George Soros, pick whatever your political, liberal political person is. Because as far as I know, every one of them are godless heathens, peggings, pick whatever you want and, and all of a sudden they stand, stand behind a podium and say, you know what, God exists. Jesus is God. So he was saying, this is, they were saying that this is not he who in Jerusalem destroyed those who called his name, is it? And who had come here for the purpose of bringing them bound before the chief priest. This can't be the one, could it? And he persecuted all who called upon the name of God, and now he is heralding the name publicly. He's not, listen, Saul isn't just in the shadow saying, hey, secretly saying, hey, you know, I do, I do really believe in Jesus, but I can't really bring it out because that would be politically incorrect. I would offend some people. No, he was publicly out there proclaiming that name, Acts 9.22. But Saul kept increasing in strength and confounding the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that this Jesus is Christ. How does he prove that Jesus Christ? How do we prove to someone? He said, sit there and you can agonize over the fact that how do I, what do I say? And what can I say? What can I bring to the table that? Because there are those loved ones that we want that are still unbelievers. And friends that, what is it that I can say that they can believe? How was he proving that Jesus is God taking, just is doing the same thing that Jesus is doing when he, on the road to the mass, are when Jesus, on the road to Damascus, the resurrected Christ, were walking with the two to the road to a mass. And he went over Scripture. He equated, listen, he equated the Old Testament Scripture, what we call Old Testament, the Hebrew canon, that's all they had, they didn't have the New Testament, they had the Hebrew canon, the Tanakh, the Torah, the writings, the prophets. And he was taken through Scripture, taken through what they already knew and associated with the historical person of Christ. He was probably going, he could go over the seven beats, this is what they met. He could go over the Lamb of God, he could go over the different things of substitutionary atonement. And for those people that say that the Old Testament has no relevance to, for today, for the Christian, for the postmodern church, they are attacking the Bible, they are attacking the truth and they are attacking the gospel. Because all Scriptures God breathed and you can, you can take a person through out Scripture and you can open their eyes to the truth, to a wow, you know, I really learn this first by John Cross. When he took us through the Scripture, if you ever get a chance or the opportunity of watching those videos, these 11 hour series go like road to Emmaus, you can get it on a good seed, you can do a Google on that and excellent book, it gives you a 11 hour walk through the Bible from God to the cross. Another resource that really helped me a lot to see this was Charlie Claus frameworks. That takes you through event to event to event and it certainly lays out. Even to an unbeliever, maybe somebody who knows the Bible a little bit about the Bible. But this is what Paul was doing. He would take them, his argument would be taking them back to Scripture to what he already knew. He was putting his theological, his theology, his doctrine, his Bible study. He was putting it all to use his schooling and all that was calling that out. See it wasn't wrong, but he was bringing it into the perspective of who Christ is. Acts 9, 23. When many days had laps, the Jews plotted together to do away with him, but their plot became known to Saul and were also watching the gates day and night so that they might put him to death. Many days, maybe months and years, Paul may have avoided -- it looks like it does. It looks like Saul avoided Jerusalem. I think if he went back to Jerusalem, there would be too many enemies there to that were looking out for him. I mean, he used in today's vernacular, some of you understand it. He dissed the religious establishment, those that he was loyal to. He turned their backs on them when he started preaching Jesus as God. And so the enemy was going to be in full force when he returned to Jerusalem. So I think he spent, when he said many days, I think these many days may have been months or even years, Galatians 1, 15 through 18, but when God, who had set me apart even from my mother's womb and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his son to me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles. I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood nor did I go to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away to Arabia and returned once more to Damascus. Then three years later, I went to Jerusalem. So here Paul says in his letter to Galatians, it was three years that he was traveling. I went up to Jerusalem to become a coinet with Cephas and stayed with him for 15 days, but I did not see the other apostles except James and the Lord's brother. There is a point of application that we see in this as we finish off today. What happened to Saul was what God did. It's what God did to open the eyes of Saul to cause his scales to fall off. See we share in the gospel with others and we may think that and we may think because somebody did not accept Christ or they're rejected of it, sometimes we think, well maybe I didn't present it correctly. Maybe I did something wrong and maybe that, well you see, understand this. While we are to disciple, while we are to teach, salvation is of God. It is the Lord and we do present the gospel. We are the mouthpiece of the Holy Spirit that presents the gospel and it is the Lord that opens the eyes apart from the Lord opening the eyes to the gospel. We'll never know so our salvation is an act of God. It is a miracle of God. It was a miracle when it happened to Saul. It's a miracle for every one of us that the Lord opened our eyes that when we received through our irrigate the message of Christ, we were able to respond. Which tells me this, our duty is not only as Christians to share the gospel with others, the good news that Jesus Christ provides eternal life for all those who trust and import and to walk them to the cross. But our duty is also prayer, prayer for the unbeliever, prayer that God may open the eyes of their hearts, that they may see the gospel for what it is. That Satan will be put aside that all the forces of darkness that is working on this individual can be pushed aside and that this person may be able to see the light. So if you do not set aside, what I'm saying is by principle, don't set aside prayer and the gospel as being separate. Use them together, prayer is a weapon, is a powerful weapon and if God opened the eyes of Saul, he can certainly and does open the eyes of those whom we are bringing in and giving the gospel to. Father in heaven, thank you for this opportunity this morning of fellowship in your Word. We pray heavenly Father that God the Holy Spirit will continue to motivate us to live the Christian life, to share your word, to share your gospel claim and for us to become teach and become serious Bible students, disciples taking in your Word and maybe heavenly Father we don't understand everything right off. But let us understand that this is your Word. Understand that the Bible is your Word, it's your communication to us and that while we may have some challenges from time to time learning and even with the flesh that is an opposition to it, let us have a Father discipline ourselves to take in your Word to growing grace and the knowledge of our Lord, say, with Jesus Christ and whose name we pray. Amen. All right, it's another fine day in the Lord, keep your armor on, keep fighting a good fight of faith, Lord, Willensburg, God wrapped your pain and we'll be back here in the Sunday morning. All right, we'll see you then. Thank you for joining us. You can hear this message again as well as previous lessons and get note by visiting us online at www.gchapel.org. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .