Sermons 2025

Text: Acts 9:1-22

(1) Resistless conviction that “Jesus whom he persecuted,” now speaking to him, was “Christ the Lord.” (See on Ga 1:15, 16). (2) As a consequence of this, that not only all his religious views, but his whole religious character, had been an entire mistake; that he was up to that moment fundamentally and wholly wrong. (3) That though his whole future was now a blank, he had absolute confidence in Him who had so tenderly arrested him in his blind career, and was ready both to take in all His teaching and to carry out all His directions. (For more, see on Ac 9:9). 

Blind rage to Physical Blindness to Physical/Spiritual Light

Outline

1.    Saul blinded by rage
i.    We blinded by our sins
2.    Saul literally blinded by our Lord
i.    TBTG that He does not literally blind us!
3.    Why? Turn into His instrument
i.    Made us His people in Baptism, strengthens through HC, that we can be His people.

Sermon

Christ is Risen!
He is Risen indeed! Alleluia!

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

My dear beloved flock, the text for our meditation today is the First Lesson from the Acts of the Apostles, chapter nine verses one through twenty-two.

Boys and girls, I pray that you are doing well today.  Do you like the sun? The sun can be really bright sometimes. Many times, it can be so bright that it hurts our eyes as well as our bodies. Some people have even died because they were out in the sun too much. In our lesson for today, we hear of Saul, you would know him better as Saint Paul, He was blinded by our Lord. Why was Saul blinded? How does Jesus use Saul as well as us today? Ponder those questions as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.

1.    Saul blinded by rage

In 1976 Bruce Springsteen recorded a famous song on his album, Greetings from Asbury Park. That song, Blinded by the Light. In our text, Saul is blinded by more than just the light. He is blinded by pure intense and zealous rage. He has taken his intense zeal for the law of God as taught by the Pharisees and turned it against those people who call themselves Christians. He is constantly threatening punishment, even death, for them. Saul’s fury was no passing outburst but enduring. Like other indulged passions, it grew with exercise and had come to be as his very life-breath, and now planned, not only imprisonment, but death, for the heretics. Saul goes to the High Priest and asks him for letters, “that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. ” Bound for trial to the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem all the way from Damascus, around 150 miles away, far outside of the Sanhedrin’s jurisdiction and authority to possibly face the same trial and death as our Lord.

I pray that none of us have been as blood thirsty as Saul was. Yet, Saul’s zeal goes to show just how far our sinful nature will go in the pursuit of something that it deems as good. How many of us have put time, effort, and energy into a wide variety of activities, only to find all of that effort simply tossed aside when something else comes by? We are enticed into thinking we need better cars, better electronics, better. We put all of our effort, all of our resources into getting bigger and better things. How has that worked out? We think that we are doing good by doing this, but it is vain and gets us nowhere. A chasing after the wind. 

Sometimes, like Saul, we fool ourselves sometimes into thinking that we are doing what God really wants us to do. Saul thought that he was doing God’s work by persecuting those who believed differently than himself. Many Christians fall into this very same trap of pride and sin when they think of themselves as better than those around them. When someone comes into church wearing tattered jeans, a bright pink mohawk, and covered in tattoos, how would we treat them? I pray that we would treat them kindly and welcome them with open arms. Yet, many people would have the same reaction as Paul, ‘Really Lord, they are so different! Why are they here? Why are they wearing that? Do they not have anything better to wear?’ It even happens on a daily basis. We are blinded by zeal then we think that we know better than our teachers and do not do our homework. When we mistreat friends and loved ones because they did something that we did not agree with. We puff up our pride and think ‘Certainly, I would have done things a whole lot differently. I would not have made the same serious mistake as them.’ Yet God was about to take Saul’s misplaced zeal and put it towards the use of His kingdom.

2.    Saul literally blinded by our Lord

It took an act of God to convert Saul. On that road to Damascus, the Lord Jesus appears to Saul. He reveals that in persecuting the Christians, Saul is persecuting the Lord Himself! “I, I am Jesus, whom thou, yea, thou art persecuting!” That charge, that accusation of persecuting is thus driven into the soul of Saul to the hilt. Here was the revelation, not only of Jesus, who with one stroke swept away all the lies Saul had believed about him as a mere man, etc., but also the revelation of what Saul was engaged in: persecuting this glorified Jesus in his disciples: “I—thou!”  Saul is literally blinded by the light of our Lord. He is led into Damascus and there eats or drinks nothing for three days. His physical blindness personifies how blind Saul’s heart really is inside. For all of His supposes good works, for all of his zeal, His fearful sin lay heavily upon him, and the Lord permitted it to crush him for three days.  Shut off from the world, blind, abstaining from food, with no one to help his soul’s distress, his proud self-righteousness was conquered, and there remained only a sinner in the dust who ever after felt himself chief of all sinners. 

Thanks be to God that He does not likewise cause us physical blindness because of our sins. Though we would well deserve it, God in mercy does not do it. Though like Saul, our sins should weigh just as heavy upon us. We should be crushed, our souls in pure distress, when we consider our sins against God. All those times when we have misplaced our own zeal. Gone after the things and pleasures of this world, rather than focusing on the things that God would have us do.  It should crush us into the dust.

3.    Why? Turn into His instrument

Why does the Lord so crush Saul as well as us? That we may put our zeal to the best use as His chosen instruments. As the Lord tells Ananias when he complains about going to Saul. But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. 16 For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”  Ananias goes and Saul is healed. Something like scales fall from his eyes. He is baptized and then refreshes himself with food and drink. Saul does not delay in doing the work that God has given him to do. He stays a few days with the disciples in Damascus then immediately he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.  Saul’s unique purpose is that he was chosen by God to carry His name before Gentiles and kings. Saul was the one who would spread the Gospel to those who had never heard it before. In order to do this, he was blessed with a unique zeal. The same zeal and passion that had once been used to persecute Christianity God now uses it for His glory, to preach and proclaim the Gospel to people far and near.

We likewise are God’s instruments. God has chosen us solely by His grace, the same as He did Saul. God has called us through the waters of Holy Baptism. He has cleansed us with water and the Word. God places His name upon us and calls us His dear and beloved children. He takes great sinners, cleanses us, and give us the great task of proclaiming Jesus as the Son of God to the world. 
To this end, God has made all of us unique. He has given us a wide variety of gifts. Whether it be that you are good at speaking, good at playing a musical instrument, good with accounting and numbers, good at curing the human body of illnesses and sicknesses. Every single one of us is unique and special in our vocations, the roles that we currently are in in life. If you are a student, then you have the work and purpose of studying and getting good grades, of witnessing your faithfulness by obeying your teachers and others in authority. If you are a parent, you have the work of raising your children in a Christian way, and helping them to grow in the Christian faith. If you have a spouse, you have the work of caring for one another, of loving and treating each other in a kind Christian way, of modeling for others what a marriage founded upon Christ looks like. As Christians, all of us have the duty and purpose of spreading the Gospel to others, in whatever shape that takes in our daily lives.
Conclusion: Thanks be to God that He uses one as zealous as Saul, not for persecuting His church, but for strengthening it and growing His kingdom. Help us, likewise, dear Heavenly Father, that we may be so zealous for Your kingdom and to use our gifts and skills, for Your glory and the praise of Your name. Until that day when we will likewise see Your Son shining in all His Glory.
 

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
He is Risen Indeed! Alleuia!

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard, and keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.