The Transformed Life, Part 2
Acts 9:10-17
In Acts Chapter 9 we study really the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. We're going to follow the subject the transformed life from verse 10 through verse 31. Now we'll never be able to cover all of that. We'll get to about verse 17, but it really is one unit and we see in it the characteristics of a transformed life. Now that's a very interesting subject, the subject of transforming people. And that's really what this world is endeavoring to do. Recently Phyllis Diller, whom you all know, the comedian had a very expensive facelift. And at the particular interview that I happened to watch, she said that it transformed her life. I don't know about that. I do know it transformed her face. I don't know what it did for her life or what it will do in the long-run.
Once in a while I hear people say well, you know I got a new job and I'm a new man. Or you know I had a financial problem and it's answered and I got a windfall from a great aunt who passed on or whatever and boy it's a new life. And you hear this very frequently. Somebody who was sick and they're healthy and it's a new life. They've been transformed. Television says if I use certain products I'll be a new man with a transformed life. Some people think that when they fall in love that transforms them. It does for a while. And you know, Madison Avenue is forever selling products that are geared to transform us. And we aren't stupid, we all know that these are hopelessly superficial all of this that we've talked about is.
And that brings us to the real question and the real question is can anybody be really transformed. Is it even possible. Can you actually take a bad man and make him a good one? Can you take a sinful woman and turn her into something lovely? Can a shattered broken relationship be put back together as good as new or even better. Can the incurable be cured? That's the question. And psychologists and psychiatrists and counselors have in our society been given the assignment of transforming people. And they're doing frankly a miserable job, hopeless. And even in their textbooks, it's interesting if you ever get a chance to look at a psychology textbook or some kind of an advanced textbook along that line, you'll find in many of them an introductory statement to the effect that this is only a so-called science and none of the cures which are connected to it can honestly be connected to it on a positive basis any more than they could be connected just to the passing of time and the changing of circumstances, which is quite an admission.
In fact, changing human behavior is a seemingly impossible task. And most psychological problem people are chronic. You get them over one neurosis and they'll get another one, it's inevitable in most cases. Somebody else comes along and says well, it's education that transforms. If we could educate people we can change our society. We can get rid of crime. We can get rid of this and this. And so we educated people and now we have smarter criminals and psychotics with BA's.
You know? And yet everybody still is pressing the issue of transforming people. We have everything from shock treatment, which is stark and risky and ultimate and desperate to the kind of positive gentle urgings of Norman Vincent Peele and the power of positive thinking, all the way down to the children's version, which is the little train that keeps saying, "I think I can. I think I can." And guess what? He does. Everybody wants to change behavior.
I had a friend, I think I might have told you about this some time back, we wanted to change a...get into a seminar on changing behavior and so we went to this particular seminar and he paid $500.00 and when he got there they gave him a coin. They said this coin will change your behavior. It was one they had particularly designed and it had a kind of a relief thing that you could rub I in your fingers. And they told him to find everything he didn't like about himself and write a reverse positive statement. Like if he was unorganized, he was say I am amazingly organized and then every time he touched the coin in his pocket, two or 300 times a day he'd repeat that statement and pretty soon, he'd convince himself that he was organized.
Now, they told people who didn't love their wives that all they had to do was say I'm madly in love with my wife. Write that statement, memorize every time you touch the coin. I'm madly in love with my wife. I'm madly in love with my wife. And if you did that long enough, guess what? You'd throw the coin away. No, you'd be madly...you'd be madly in love with your wife. And you know what? It doesn't work. It's fine and dandy as an approach, but it doesn't change anybody's behavior. And then somebody came along and said well society needs to reform people so we have a sophisticated prison system which is not just incarceration, but it's reform. And we talk about reformatories. And we talk about rehabilitation, but the majority of them go back. And of the ones who don't go back, we wonder whether its real reform or whether it's only a fear of having to go back into a place that they don't want to go back into so that they restrict what is...what would be their normal behavior.
And we're promised if people were economically better off that we would be able to change them and so we moved in with the affluent 60's and 70's and we reached the apex of riots, revolutions, killing, and everything else. And then B. F. Skinner comes along and he says, we can only transform men by controlling them like an animal, genetically controlling the children they produce, brain control and then the movie Clockwork Orange comes along, it says it won't work. And so everybody's worrying about how we're going to transform people. How are we going to change them into what they have to be to preserve themselves. Is the world really doomed? Are we sentenced to a full existence of hate, lust, murder, rape, violence, robbery, war, psychological disease, and psychosomatic illness? I mean, is this it? Just because this man can't change, you can't resist the flow of his nature, the bent of his person.
I mean, can't we transform man somehow? God has something to say about it and if you want to go to the book of Jeremiah and kind of linger there for a minute, we're going to see some verses there that are important. Jeremiah 13:23, very interesting verse listen. This is what God says about people being transformed. "Can the Ethiopian," Jeremiah 13:23. "Can the Ethiopian change his skin?" Here's a better one. "Or the leopard his spots? Then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evil. God says that it is against your very nature to change. A leopard by sitting in a corner and thinking about removing his spots doesn't do it. An Ethiopian by determining that he would rather have a different kind of skin doesn't accomplish it.
And a man doing anything and everything to try to alter what he is, is unsuccessful. Listen to it again. "Then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evil." Only if the leopard can change his spots and the Ethiopian his skin. And that can't be done. And so man cannot really change what he is says God. Will a new deodorant soap do it? Will a new deodorant soap transform us like they say? Listen to Jeremiah, he knew all about deodorant soaps. You didn't know that did you? Jeremiah 2:22, listen to what he said. "For though thou wash thee with lye and take thee much soap, yet thine iniquity is marked before me saith the Lord God."
Soap doesn't do it. Very superficial. You say I know what will change the world, love. Love baby, that's the little phrase, right? What the world needs now is love. Saw a little film deal on that last night. The answer is love. That such a superficial answer at that point. It's like one guy said it's...you know, I love you humanity, it's people I can't stand. And that's a very common reaction, but Jeremiah said something about whether we can just really count on all of us loving our neighbors and all of this brotherhood of man thing. Jeremiah 9:4, listen to this. "Take heed everyone of his neighbor." You know what he says? Watch out for your neighbor. "And trust not in any brother for every brother will utterly supplant and every neighbor will walk with slanders and they will deceive everyone his neighbor and will not speak the truth. They have taught their tongue to speak lies and they wear themselves out committing iniquity."
You know how to really get bilked every time you turn around? Just start loving everybody with complete blissful trust. You'll get wiped out. Believe me, this world is full of con men. Everybody that talks about love doesn't do it and it's very cheap to talk about it. You say well, if you can't really love everybody and have all this brotherhood thing, if you're going to go around watching your brother because he's going to try to supplant you, move in and take what you have, maybe then what we need to do is have firmer laws and correction methods and we've got to strengthen our prison system and discipline. That's fine, that's all right, but Jeremiah had something to say about that. Back in Jeremiah Chapter 2, verse 30, he said this and here God is actually doing the talking.
Verse 30 of Jeremiah 2, "In vain have I smitten your children, they received no correction." God said, I tried correction and that didn't do it. Soap doesn't transform you. Love isn't really a commodity that you can even use. It's foreign to human kind in its real honest depth. And even rules and discipline and chastisement and punishment doesn't seem to do a whole lot. You say I guess B. F. Skinner's right. I guess the only way to transform people is to smash them. Is to just crush them, you know. Crush out all their personality and all...you make them a nut in the cosmic machine and nothing more. Solomon had something to say about that.
Listen to what he said in Proverbs 27:22. This is a great verse. Listen to it. "Though thou shouldest crush a fool in mortar among grain with a pestle," have you ever seen a mortar and a pestle? It's used to crush things, a little stone thing and today if you go into a chemistry lab or something you'll find one out of steel, metal. Listen to what he said. "Though you crush a fool in a mortar among grain with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him." You're not going to get rid of a fool, you're just going to have a crushed one. You can't press upon man a crushing debilitating experience and expect to turn him into something wonderful.
There is no outside force that can change man. None. You know why? Man doesn't have an outside problem. What kind of problem does he got? An inside problem. And if you're going to get at transformation, you're going to get at from the inside. It isn't facelift. It isn't soap. It isn't superficial lovey dovey brotherhood. It isn't any of these things. It's not prison. It's not genetic controls. It's got to be inside. And that's exactly what Jeremiah hit on in Chapter 9, verse 1.
Listen to what he said. "Oh that my head were waters and mine eyes a fountain of tears." He's really sad about the state of people. "That I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people. Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men that I might leave my people and go from them. I'd like to go out to a cabin in the woods and just cry. He was so broken. Here's why. "For they are all adulterers and assembly of treacherous men. They bend their tongues like their bow for lies, but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth for they proceed from evil to evil and they know not me saith the Lord."
That's the problem. Jeremiah went on to say in Chapter 17, verse 9 "The heart of a man is deceitful above all things and," what, "desperately wicked." Now Isaiah really hit it on the head in Isaiah 1:5. "Why should you be stricken any more? You will revolt more and more." Listen, here's the problem. The whole head is sick and the whole heart weak. You see that's the problem. We cannot transform people on the outside. It's got to be something again on the inside. You say well, is there anybody that can do that? There is. God can do it can't He.
And you see this is where the word of God moves in in 2 Corinthians 5:17 and says "If any man be in Christ he is a new creation, old things pass away behold all things become new." God is in the business of transforming people. God is in the business of doing that. And we come in Acts Chapter 9 to just one of those people that God has done this for and his name is Saul. Now, Saul, just let me give you what kind of a guy he was. Just let your imagination run over these thoughts. First of all, he claimed to be the world's worst sinner, right? Now we know we sin, but I doubt whether any of us would announce to our friends that is the characterization of us.
But he claimed to be the world's worst sinner, and he really had a lot of things to support that claim. He lived his life to hurt, to injure and if need be, to kill people who disagreed with him. In fact, by his life he blasphemed God and he made good people who loved God suffer torture. He was a bad man, very bad. He as a man who was the hireling, to make it worse, of dirty politicians. He worked for the crooks in Jerusalem. He was very, very evil. His name was Saul of Tarsus, but you know something? That man was absolutely, totally transformed, totally transformed. And it was superficial, it was deep.
Listen to what the same man said to a group of Christians in a little city called Thessalonica. The 1st letter, the 2nd Chapter, verse 1. "For yourselves brethren know our entrance in unto you." Now can you imagine this fire-breathing Christian hater arriving what you're going to be like? "You know how we came unto you? It was not in vain, but even after we had suffered before and were shamefully treated and as you know at Philippi we were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention. For our exhortation was not of deceit or uncleanness or guile. We were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel. Even so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God who tests our hearts. For neither at any time used we flattering words as you know, nor cloak of covetousness. God is witness. Nor of men sought we glory, neither of you nor yet of others when we might have been burdensome as the apostles of Christ, but we were gentle among you as a nursing mother cherishes her children."
You say how did he get tender all of a sudden? Listen to this. "So being affectionately desirous of you." He used to hate them. He used to want to kill them, now he loves them. "We were willing to have imparted unto you not the gospel of God only but our...also our own souls because you were dear unto. We just love all you wonderful Christians." Same ones he was killing if need be not too long before. I love this. It says in verse 11, "As you know, how we exhorted and encouraged and charged everyone of you as a father does his children." You see, here's a change. This man is a whole new man. Something drastic has happened in his life. At the end of the first...well, in the middle of the 1st Chapter of Philippians, verse 18, he says, "Notwithstanding everyway whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached and in that I do rejoice ye and will rejoice."
Now all of a sudden this person who hated Jesus Christ is rejoicing when He's preached. He was absolutely and totally transformed. In fact, the Christians fell in love with him. When he left Ephesus they fell all over him and cried like babies because they loved him so much. Now what in the world could change a man like that? Only Jesus Christ, only God, because God gets at the heart of the issue. Now, as we look at Chapter 9 of Acts, we're going to see the characteristics of this man's transformed life. And I think really what is a pattern for all transformed lives, this is one of those chapters that gives for us some great insights into the basics of the Christian experience. It's not a...it's not a far out kind of thing or an obscure doctrine that you're going to be finding here. It's just some basic root, first floor, bottom shelf kind of stuff. But it's so important.
There are seven ideal characteristics of a transformed life. The first one is faith in the Savior, faith in the Savior. Now that is in the first nine verses and we covered that last week. We're not going to go into except to just bring it back to our attention. We know that this transformation in the life of this man came when he put his faith in Jesus Christ. We know that. We know the apostle Paul was on his way to Damascus to kill Christians. That's exactly what he had in mind. And on the way, the Lord Jesus Christ stopped him in the middle of the road to Damascus just prior to coming to the city. He fell on his face. At that point Christ revealed Himself to him. He saw Jesus Christ in blazing glory. At that point, he believed that Jesus was who He claimed to be. The Messiah who had died and risen and was alive and he put his faith in Jesus Christ and the transformation took place on the Damascus Road.
And Paul said to Timothy, "I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who hath enabled me in that He counted me faithful," full of faith. "I believed, putting me into the ministry who was before a blasphemer, persecutor, injurious, but I obtained mercy," verse 14, "and the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus." He said, I was changed because of Christ Jesus. It was the grace and the mercy and the hope and the love and the faith all wrapped up in Jesus Christ that changed my life. Transformation then comes by faith in the Savior. There never will be a transformed life apart from Jesus Christ. You can fiddle around with the superficialities but you're never going to get at the issue unless you change a man's heart and his heart is only changed by Christ Himself.
Only God could say to the prophet Ezekiel, "I'll take out the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh." I'll put my Spirit within you. Only Jesus could say Nicodemus, here's how to be born all over again. I can change you. I can create a metamorphosis. You hear about the word in the New Testament regeneration, new creation. That's all it means. The new birth, only in Jesus Christ. And this man Saul of Tarsus was changed in that moment. He became a new creation. He who was dead in sin because alive to God. He who was insensitive to divine truth begin to taste that God is good. He who was blind began to see. He who was in darkness stepped into blazing light. He who did only evil continually began to do and have a desire to do good. He who wasn't sure what the questions were now had all the answers. The hell bound became the heaven bound, the rebel became the son.
And it all happened in an instant on a Damascus Road. Some people say salvation is a process. I say that's wrong. Salvation is an instantaneous miracle. The process of conviction only leads up to the instant miracle. So if you're looking for a changed life, the only place you'll ever find it is by personal faith in Jesus Christ. Now that's where Paul began, the transformation took place. That was the positional transformation. He was a new man. Then there became some practical things that needed to be adjusted as he went and the transformation continued.
Because you see, the transformation then is a process of being conformed to Jesus Christ and that'll finally be complete when we see Him face to face. All right, we won't say any more about that because that's very familiar and very basic. The transformed life begins with faith in the Savior.
The second point, fervor in supplication. Fervor just means energy, passion, drive. Supplication means prayer. I believe that one of the characteristics of a truly born again saved individual is prayer. I don't think prayer is just a requirement. I think prayer is a response to salvation. Do you get the difference. I don't think that prayer is something you have to beg Christians to do. I think that if you're really born again, you do it. Now, I think you need to encourage Christians to do it more than they do it. But I believe that a true Christian can be determined on the basis of fervor in supplication.
Now the narrative here leads up to this and it's so beautiful. Saul is now blind. He was blinded by the sight of Jesus Christ. He was going to go into Damascus breathing fire. He goes in there blind and all he can see is the blazing sight of Jesus Christ before him like a man who stared at the sun and can't see anything but the sun no matter where he looks. And he sees only Jesus Christ and somebody's leading him by the hand he's stumbling around and he goes into Damascus and he finds his way to the house of a man by the name of Judas not Iscariot, but some Judas we don't know anything about at all, so there's no point in speculating and he goes to that place and the Bible says in verse 9 that he stayed there for three days and he didn't eat and he didn't drink. For three days he just stays there. The Lord told him to go there and wait and that's exactly what he does and he exists in a solitary blindness without food, without drink.
And I really know what was happening in those days. Those were days when he concentrated on Jesus Christ. Those were days when the shock of the transformation began to settle in his brain. He began to understand what had happened so rapidly and so dynamically. Now as he's sitting somewhere in this house of Judas on Straight Street, meanwhile God is beginning to move on the heart of another man who is going to go to him and pick up the ministry that needs to be accomplished in his life and that's where we begin in verse 10.
As God is dealing with another man on the other side of town. "And there was a certain disciple at Damascus named Ananias." That's different than the Ananias who was executed by God in Chapter 5 for lying to the Holy Spirit. "And to him said the Lord in a vision," now Ananias, God gave him a vision. And the Lord just said this, " Ananias," isn't that interesting. And listen to what he said. "And he said behold I am here Lord." I mean, he obviously knew that was not the voice of Mrs. Ananias or of any of the little Ananiases running around. He knew it was God.
God moved and maybe...and maybe in a dream situation, maybe God just brought it across his attention. Maybe there was something with physical eyes that he was able to see. We don't know. But nevertheless, God said, "Ananias." And he knew who was talking. You know, I love somebody who's listening for the voice of the Lord. You know, some Christians God could say John. Huh? Who's that? Because the least person they expect is God. Ananias lived in communion with God apparently to the point when God spoke he was ready. Some Christians are listening to the myriad voices of the world and when the still small voice of God comes they're not ready to hear it. But Ananias apparently walked with God and so when God talked Ananias who was speaking.
Anyway, He said, "Ananias." And he said, "Behold I am here Lord." Now here's Ananias and we don't know anything about him except in Chapter 22, verse 12, it tells us that he was a devout Jew and he had good reputation. He was a devout Jew who had now believed in Jesus as Messiah. And I just think, and I may be wrong, but this is a risky guess, but it may well be that Ananias was a leader, if not the leader of the church in Damascus. That he was a primary kind of person there. And in fact, when all the records are done and we get to heaven it may be that if we chat with Ananias we'll find out that it was really him that Saul was after. That he was the head guy that Saul wanted to get at.
Which then brings an interesting flavor to this whole thing. Ananias appears very suddenly and he disappears very suddenly, but it's a beautiful thing to see how God just picks his chosen instrument. He just had Ananias created, saved, and living in Damascus just to go over there and minister to the infant Saul when he was born into the kingdom. Ananias was the right guy. God determined that and eternity passed. Set it all up, moved on Ananias, put the whole thing together. I love the sovereignty of God. I like to see God doing things from His end. That's a securing doctrine people. That's a securing doctrine.
God is very selective in choosing His people to do His tasks. Everyone of you, listen to this, everyone of you as a Christian has a specific, what should I say, specific gifts, specific ministries that the Spirit of God has designed for you to carry out within the framework of God's master plan. And you know, it's only as you're available that those things come to fruition. The willing people are the used ones. And Ananias was willing and he got used.
So Ananias is one of the forgotten heroes if we...we always say we owe the conversion of Paul to the prayer and the testimony of Stephen, I think we also owe the conversion of him to, let's put it this way, the service and brotherliness of Ananias. He fits in there. Well, listen to the command that came to him. "Lord here I am. What have you got?" The Lord said unto him, just get what his reaction must have been. "Arise, go into the street which is called Straight and inquire in the house of Judas, for one called Saul of Tarsus." And you can imagine what Ananias thought at that point. Is He kidding? This isn't really God is it? Who is this?
You sure you know who you're talking about? Saul of Tarsus. This man's reputation followed him everywhere. He didn't even...and there was no statement about Saul's had become a believer, which may not have changed the situation anyway, because that would have been so incredulous he likely would never have believed that either at that first contact. He didn't know Saul. He didn't know Saul had been blinded on the Damascus Road. He didn't know that his life was transformed. He didn't know he was now a Christian, didn't know anything.
Told him to go to the street called Straight. Just a historical note, Damascus is ancient city. It had a street that ran right straight through the middle of it from the eastern gate to the western gate, straight about three miles long. It's still existing today. The street's called Straight there, it's called Darbal Mospakeem, different name of course. But it's still there and the street called Straight, at one end of it was the house of Judas. Today some people say that there's a spot where that house was and supposedly a closet where Saul was praying for those three days, but that's conjecture.
Nevertheless, told him where to go. We don't know anything about that Judas as I said. The end of verse 11, he has a footnote. "For behold he prayeth." He's over there in Judas' house praying. Now Judas was probably another Christian and God had set that thing up, which we don't know about. The text says nothing about that. But Saul is over there praying in Judas' house. Well, this is too much. I mean, you know, this vagers your faith. Have you ever thought of the worst enemy to Christianity in your life and then just written him off? That's one guy God will never get. That's terrible to do that. I'm sure that these Christians hadn't even thought to pray for Saul of Tarsus. And here he is over there, God's got a hold of him. He's down at Judas' house and he's praying. What a shock.
You say, what's he doing there again? He's praying. That's why I say the second thing in the transformed life is fervor in supplication. Do you know what Saul spent three days doing? What? Praying. You know what prayer is? Prayer is just communication with Jesus Christ isn't it? Communication with God and all alone for three days. The only thing he could see in front of him very likely was Jesus Christ. The shock of what happened on the Damascus Road preoccupied his thoughts with the things of Christ. He just spent three days in communion with Christ, that's prayer.
And I believe this people. I believe that somebody who is really born again, somebody who really comes to Jesus Christ finds himself lost in communion with Him. Now it's not just going around mumbling prayers. And it's not formally getting on your knees or folding your hands or saying grace at the table. It's just this constant kind of life flow and communion with Christ. Now this isn't the first time Saul prayed. It's just the first time he got through. He used to pray like a Pharisee depending on his own self-righteousness. Now he prays like a broken contrite sinner depending on the mercy of God. But he's praying, he's talk