Three Great Questions
INTRODUCTORY WORDS
When Saul of Tarsus was stricken down to the ground by a great light, he heard a voice saying, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?"
Saul had thought that he was fighting for, and not against, God. He had his misgivings as we taught in our last message; he had the goads which pricked him, but he sought to cast them all aside. He tried to consider himself a hero, fighting the good fight, for the faith of his fathers. The fact is that Saul found mercy because he fought in ignorance and unbelief. He was educated, to be sure, but he was ignorant withal. He thought himself fighting for the faith. but he fought in unbelief.
God smote Saul to the ground with a light that shone brighter than the sun. When the Lord spoke, and said, "Why persecutest thou Me?" Saul did not reply that he was fighting men and not God; for Saul knew that back of all his fierceness against the saints, was the hatred of his heart against the Christ whom they professed to love and to follow.
He was, in reality, fighting against Christ. Could he have gotten Christ before him in tangible form, he would have set himself against Him, as the Jews had done but a short while before.
National Israel had rid herself of the Man of Galilee, the Worker of Miracles, the Teacher of truth, the One who claimed to be God. They had succeeded in crucifying Him, and had seen Him buried. To be sure they knew that He had come forth from the grave, and they knew that He was reputed by eyewitnesses to have ascended up in a cloud into Heaven; but they felt at least that He was gone. Thus they thought that all that was left to rid the earth of His memory and might, was to rid the earth of His followers.
To this task, Saul had set about, dedicating himself to the extinction of the Christians. Now Saul, the star persecutor, was himself stricken down by the Lord. He trembled and he was astonished by what occurred. He distinctively heard the voice from Heaven. The voice was filled with agitation, as is seen in the repetition of the word, "Saul." The voice said, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?"
I. THE GREAT QUESTION WHY PERSECUTEST THOU ME? (Acts 9:4)
Before we precede with our message, we would like to ask this same question of all those who reject or despise the Lord? "Why? Why? Why do you persecute the Lord Jesus?"
The Son of God came down from above, He came forth from the Father; He came with salvation and blessing, with redemption and restoration, for His people. Why was there no room for Him in the inn? Why was He despised and rejected of man; a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief? Why was He a man from whom men turned away their faces?
Can the attitude of the men of His own day be explained? He came into the world, and the world knew Him not why not? He came unto His own, and His own received Him not why not?
Why was it that the people of Nazareth led Him to a brow of the hill on which their city was built, intent on casting Him off unto His death? Why was it that they went about to slay Him? Why did they wag their heads and cry, "Crucify Him, Crucify Him"?
"Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?"
Let us hesitate a moment. Why do men today persecute Him? Why do some deny Him as God? Some, as Virgin Born? Some, as the Way, the Truth, and the Life? Why do men of today refuse to acknowledge His lordship? Why do they reject His mercy and spurn His grace?
The answer to this question must make a display of the deceitfulness and the wickedness of the human heart. It must reveal that men have minds darkened with unbelief. It must show that men are under satanic power and dominion.
Shall we spurn the One in whom we live and move and have our being? Shall we cast out the One who is the Author of every good and perfect gift? Shall we crucify the Lover of our souls?
The Lord Jesus was the essence of all that was pure, and lovely, and holy, and good. He came, a light in the darkness. He came with life, for those dead in sins. He brought a blessing and not a curse. He went about doing good, and not evil. He healed the sick, cured the lame, gave sight to the blind, and He even raised the dead. He multiplied bread and fishes. He taught as no man ever taught; spake as no man ever spake. Why, O Saul, didst thou persecute Him? Why, O man of twenty centuries later, do you persecute Him?
Surely the God of this world hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving, lest the light of the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ should shine in, and convert them. Surely men are lovers of self, more than lovers of God. Surely all men, like sheep, have gone astray.
II. THE GREAT RESPONSE WHO ART THOU LORD? (Acts 9:5, f.c.)
Months before Jesus Christ had said to His disciples, "Whom do men say that I the Son of Man am?" They said, "Some say that Thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the Prophets." This answer fell far beneath the facts, and it utterly failed to satisfy the Master. Most men would be delighted to be likened to earth's greatest and best among men, but not so the Christ.
Then said the Lord Jesus, "But whom say ye that I am?" Peter, without hesitancy replied, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God." No sooner had Peter spoken, than Christ said, "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in Heaven."
On another occasion Christ said, "What think ye of Christ? whose Son is He?" They say unto Him, "The Son of David." Jesus then asked them, "How then did David, in spirit, call Him Lord?"
Here lies the battleground between orthodoxy and het-erodoxy "Who art Thou, Lord?" This is the greatest of all questions, and upon its answer the whole of Christianity stands or falls. If Christ is Lord, and Saviour, He must be "the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father," God made manifest in flesh.
If Christ was a mere man, claiming oneness with the Father, equality with God, He was the greatest of impostors, and the nation of the Jews should have rejected Him.
There is one thing we delight to behold that is the open mind of Saul, as he cried, "Who art Thou, Lord?" Saul had gone to great length in persecuting the One whom he verily thought was a fraud. He had, however, begun to fear that he was fighting against God; and now with the light from Heaven shining full upon him he sought for truth.
Would that men everywhere would ask themselves this question? Who is the One the Christians worship? Would that all Jews of today would go to the bottom of this same question who is the Christ of the believing Gentiles?
Would that modernists would cease from human misgivings and surmisings, and discover who is the One they persecute? Modernists may be sincere, even as Saul was sincere; but they have not allowed themselves to weigh the facts concerning Jesus Christ.
"Who art Thou, Lord?" Have we proofs sufficient to warrant us in saying, with dogmatic certainty, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of God, and God the Son?"
That Saul believed he had such proof no one can doubt. His after ministry, with its toil and testings; its preachings and persecutions settles that. No man ever moved Saul from his convictions that Jesus was the Christ. He knew whom he had believed. He lived in the glow of an undoubting faith. The persecutor, prayed; the disbeliever, believed; the hater, loved.
What was the supreme proof that wrought so great a change in Saul? What was the light that dispelled his darkness? He who had rejected Christ and fought Him with all the ardor of his soul, received Christ and immediately served with a passion and power that proved the sincerity of bis new faith. What wrought the change? What satisfied the mind of this student of Gamaliel; this youth set in his prejudices; this young man entwined in the meshes of Rabbinical lore?
Was Saul suddenly turned by some magical wand from the fierceness of the lion to the meekness of a lamb? Did Saul's whole make-up, his ambitions, his conceptions, his faith in the Jews' religion, his very being, meet with a sudden collapse, by reason of some strange hallucination that gripped him in the way?
We wot not.
Saul was not in his dotage. Saul was not of the nature to succumb to some strange fear, or to yield to some weird and imagined vision.
Saul was not of the stamp and fiber to easily cast overboard all the cherished hopes of his being. He was a young man with a set jaw, a determined course of action, an unmovable ambition.
Beside all of this, Saul's after-life proved that his reason had never been dethroned; Saul never was accused of being a dreamer, led on by vague visions of fancied fables. He was a sane, plodding, practical preacher of facts for which he was willing to die, if need be. People who heard him acknowledged his learning. People who followed him never slurred at his sincerity. People who touched his inner life, never doubted the reality of his faith.
Saul of Tarsus, afterward known as Paul the preacher, was a. man mighty in word and in deed. He was a reasoner out of the Scriptures. Whatever any one may say of him no one ever pronounced him a mollycoddle, or a jellyfish.
Now let us answer our question What changed Saul of Tarsus? What overthrew the conceptions of a lifetime? What halted a career?
The answer is positive, undeniable: Saul believed that Jesus was God, his Saviour. Saul was convinced that Christ was as all that he claimed. Saul acknowledged that Christ, the One crucified, and buried, was NOW risen and seated at the right hand of God.
That this is true we know. However, we know more we know that through a long and varied experience, Saul never changed from his faith of that first hour. He never showed so much as the shadow of a turning. The new faith and trust; the convictions concerning Jesus Christ which came to Saul on the Damascus road, never left him.
Had Saul merely had an hallucination, the hallucination would have worn off; had Saul merely been scared and swept away by his emotions, that scare would never have led Paul through years of ardent toil for Christ; through travels unreached by any of his day.
We who dare to doubt the genuineness of Saul's faith, should follow the footsteps of Saul's sufferings.
Let us mark some of the things which befell Paul, and some of the things he suffered:
"Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one.
"Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; "In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; "In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.
"Beside those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches" (2 Corinthians 11:24-28).
There is but one conclusion: Saul of Tarsus saw Christ, and believed. Saul of Tarsus saw Christ as risen from the dead, as ascended, as seated at the Father's right hand. He saw Him and acknowledged Him as God.
Before that same Christ, and with a faith as sure, and as serene, and as sane as was Saul's, we bend the knee, and, worshiping, we crown Christ as Lord. We accept Him in all the glory that marks His person, and in the honor that is given to His Name.
III. THE GREAT RESULT WHAT WILT THOU HAVE ME TO DO? (Acts 9:6)
What other question could have been asked? If Christ is God, and our trust is in Him what else can we do, than to seek to work His will, walk in His way, and obey His Word?
What wilt Thou have me to do? This is the cry of every newborn soul. Saul of Tarsus, on the Damascus road, demonstrated that faith works, Faith in Christ is not a nerveless, spineless, mental assent. Faith is a living, pulsing, working affiance of the heart.
No man can believe in Christ with Saul's kind of faith, and remain an inactive, inert imbecile. To know Him is to trust Him; and, to trust Him, is to serve Him.
If a man says he has faith, and he hath not works, can that kind of a faith save him? We say not. God has said, "Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone."
"As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead."
Saul cried, "What wilt Thou have me to do?" In other words, Saul acknowledged Christ. He professed his faith in Christ not with the signing of a creed, or by the uttering of a form of words, but he professed his faith by signing up for service.
"We live in deeds, not words,
In facts, not in figures on a dial."
In these years of our maturity we have sought to weigh things. We have come to the conclusion that churches have lowered the bars to get members. We ask of would-be "joiners," Do you believe in Jesus? Beloved, "the devils also believe, and tremble." There is not a boy, not a girl in our Sunday Schools, who has not always believed in Christ, so far as intellectual assent is concerned. They are raised to "believe" in Him.
Saving faith is a far deeper thing. Saving faith includes the assent of the mind, the intellectual fact of Christ; but saving faith involves the affections of the heart. Saving faith is the putting on of Christ; it is making Him Lord; it is following in His footsteps.
Saul heard Christ saying, "I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest." What did Saul do? Did he say, "I am wrong; I see my mistake; I acknowledge my error; I am convinced that Thou art God"? All of this Saul would have gladly done. However, Saul did far more. In effect Saul said, "I am ready to count all but loss for Thee, O Christ." "I see Thee raised, exalted, seated, and I am ready to serve under Thy banner 'What wilt Thou have me to do?'"
We do not say that all believers will serve as Paul served; we do say that all will serve. Following Pentecost, there arose a great persecution, and all the Christians were scattered abroad, and they all went everywhere preaching the Gospel.
O that we had another era of old-time heart-gripping faith in Christ. A faith that creates missionaries, and martyrs; a faith that stirs souls to testify, and makes the prayer-meeting a love feast; a faith that makes men willing to give, and to go in the service of the Lord.
There are some who may think that the preacher is verging toward salvation by works. Cast away your fears, I am merely teaching salvation by a faith that works.
Let me give you a few verses we penned the other day:
By grace through faith, and that alone,
I'm saved, from sin set free;
Not by the works that I have done,
Salvation came to me.
Saved not by works, but I will work,
Because I faith Him so;
No task evade, no duty shirk,
True faith must work, you know.
It is by grace I'm justified,
No boasting do I know;
My soul in Christ is satisfied,
Peace doth my heart o'er-flow.
He died, I live, I trust His grace,
Near by His Cross I stand;
He sighed, I sing; I take ray place,
Yield Him my heart and hand.
Saved not by works, but I will work,
Because I faith Him so;
No task evade no duty shirk,
True faith must work, you know.
Thus it was that Saul believed, and believing, he asked, "What wilt Thou have me to do?" Thus it was that when Saul was called by the grace of God, immediately he preached the Gospel. The Churches in Judea heard that "He which persecuted us in times past now preacheth the faith which once he destroyed."
How rapidly did things transpire. In answer to Saul's cry, "What wilt Thou have me to do?" the Lord gave response, "Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do."
"The men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man. And Saul arose from the earth; and when his eyes were opened, he saw no man; but they led him by the hand, and brought him into Damascus. And he was three days without sight, and neither did eat nor drink."
Thus it was that God left Saul alone in utter darkness to think through his experiences. That darkness of eyes, seemed to speak to him somewhat of the cost that his new faith might entail. What happened during those days? We may not know, but we do know that he learned to pray. These things we will study in our next address.