The Transformed Life, Part 3
Acts 9:17-19
This morning we come again to the 9th Chapter of Acts in our study, and I'd like to ask you to turn there in your Bible if you will. We're studying through the book of Acts. We find ourselves in the 9th Chapter. We're dealing with the subject the transformed life and this is part two or part three really perhaps if you consider the first nine verses of the chapter as part of the whole transformed life of Saul and certainly it should be considered. We come then to this account of the conversion and the transformation of the man Saul of Tarsus.
Now last week, we began to study verses 9-31 as a unit. And we called it the transformed life. For in these verses, we see the features of the transformation that took place in the life of this man as a result of his encounter with Jesus Christ. We introduced our study last week by talking about the fact that the world cannot really bring about transformation. Anything the world does in terms of change is superficial. It never really gets to the heart of the issue.
The only way a man can really be transformed is when his inside is changed, when his nature is changed. And that is accomplished alone by the power of God through faith in Jesus Christ. That alone recreates men. We look around our world, we see all of the world, the plagues that blight our society and cultures of the globe and we've tried everything, ever conceivable kind of government reform economic policy and program, etc., etc., with really no effect at all and in fact, as the Bible says evil men continue to grow worse and worse.
Now, I think everybody admits that we need to be changed, but they don't admit as to who is able to affect that change. We believe that men must be changed. The only way they can be changed is through Jesus Christ Himself. They must be changed to live in harmony with this world. They must be changed to be able to exist in God's forever world. And that change comes about only in Jesus Christ. And when Jesus was on the earth, He was committed to the real ministry of transformation. He was not interested in starting outside reformations for all of the things that He saw, there may have been political solutions. There may have been economic solutions, but He offered none. There may have been some very just revolutions, but He led none and yet Jesus Himself did more to change the world and the men in it than any man whoever lived. He did more to bring love and peace and joy and justice and equity into a world than anybody whoever lived. And He did it by never doing anything to society structurally, but by only changing the hearts of individual men and that's the crux of the issue.
And so our message to the world, the message of this church, and the message of the word of God is that men must be changed and only Christ can do it. It's interesting too that the result I think of changed men, can be a changed world. You study history, you that are students of history you know a little bit about the fact that the historical reform periods of the world have normally followed times of spiritual revival. Now Paul spoke about his transformation in Ephesians 2:1-10. And the transformation also of the Christians at Ephesus and other places.
And he said "you one time were in darkness, you were dead in sin, you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power, the spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience. You operate on the basis of the lusts of the flesh, the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and you were by nature the children of wrath." That's a pretty bleak picture. Then he invades that bleakness with a statement "but God who is rich in mercy for His great love wherewith He has loved us." And then he goes on to talk about how Christ has made us alive.
And the transformation is complete in verse 10, when he says, "For you are His masterpiece created in Christ Jesus unto good works." From all the darkness and the sin and the death of the first three verses comes a whole new creation in verse 10. And the transformation in the middle is an encounter with Jesus Christ by faith. That's the message that the Bible offers to men. Now this transformation occurred in the life of the man Saul of Tarsus. And Acts Chapter 9 records for us the character of the man before and after. And incidentally, only five percent of what we know about him was before or maybe less, 95%, at least, is after.
But from the five percent we know about him before his conversion, he was a horrible character. There's no question about that. He was cruel, he was hostile, he was strong-willed, he was zealous for his own opinion and if you didn't agree with his opinion he'd just assume kill you as look at you. He was self-sufficient, independent, inflexible, angry persistent, crusading, unloving, etc., etc. He was everything that a very unpopular, despised individual would be. But on the Damascus Road something drastic, something dynamic, something divine happened to this man.
And it occurred when he confronted Jesus Christ face to face. And at that moment he submitted his will to Christ. Under the crushing power of the sovereignty of God, he had little choice. But he did have enough choice to at least do it. He rejected his self will, the little potentialities of self will set aside and he accepted the will of God. Now we can only stretch our imagination and probably then we'll run into walls on it to try to understand what this transformation meant. To study the prior life of Saul, as we have, and find out that he was reeking havoc in the church and he was dragging women and children and Christians' out of their homes and he was putting them in jail and he was torturing them and all of the horrible things he was doing. And that he was working for the Sanhedrin and the politicians of Israel and he was hating Christ and hating Christians.
And then to imagine that in a split second, in an instant of choice on the Damascus Road, that whole thing was flip-flopped in exact opposite is absolute beyond our imagination apart from an understanding of the divine miracle of Salvation. Because he exchanged everything. All the old things he hated, he all of a sudden loved. All of the old things he loves, he all of a sudden hated. Everybody he used to serve, he stopped serving and everybody he used to be designing his plans against he was in service to. Everything completely changed. And that's how conversion operates.
Christianity is not an addition to your life. It is a transformation of your life. Once heard a man say, you know, being a Christian is like putting a new suit of clothes on a man. I said that's wrong. It's like putting a new man in a suit of clothes. It's not superficial. Christianity is not a patch up. It's not a repair job. It's a transformation. And that's what happened to this man. You say well, I...psychoanalysis couldn't bring that about, that's for sure. You say resolutions couldn't bring it about. No, there's only one thing that could change a man that fast, that drastically, and that's a divine miracle. And you see, if God created him in the beginning, then it's no problem for God to do another job on him. And that's exactly what the Bible is talking about when it says, "if any man be in Christ, he is a," what, "new creation." Not a patch up job, he's a new creation.
And the change that went on this man's life was far greater than the ugly cocoon, you know, from which bursts the rainbow winged butterfly. Now this chapter records the transformation for us and it gives us and gives to every man hope, every man's sick of himself and sick of his world. It gives to us the pattern for the transformed life. We saw that there were seven of these basic features of the transformed life. The first one was faith in the Savior. The transformed life begins with faith in the Savior. This is where the transformation must take place. When a man, now watch this because you'll misunderstand everything if you don't get this point. When a man puts his faith in Christ at that moment he is totally transformed. It is not process, it is a moment miracle.
However, that is his positional transformation before God. That is his new creation. From there you have six other things that take place in the practice transformation that follows the positional one. It's like a child who's born in an instant and when you look at a baby, you don't say well the baby will be all right in a few years because he'll grow an arm and he'll grow a leg and he'll grow an ear. But all the parts aren't there. No, no. When the baby's born, all the parts are there. It's a total creation. It's only a matter of growth within the framework of what it already is. You see? It doesn't add on anything hopefully.
And so you see, the first one was the creation. It was a perfect creation in Colossians 2:10, "You are complete in Him." There aren't any lacking fingers or toes or anything. Paul was created a new, whole creation. But then there were some experiential things that needed to take place. There was a process of growing and developing and the change continue to go. I'm a different person as a Christian now than I was ten years ago. Aren't you? Well, sure. There's a transformation in a practical experiential sense that's an ongoing thing from the moment of salvation. And yet salvation is complete.
And so to begin with, he exercised faith in the Savior and that's where the transformation begins. I don't care what you believe or what kind of religious feelings you have apart from faith in Jesus Christ, you're not a new creation. You're the same old thing and you're not fit to live in this world because you're against the grain even of the way God created this world. That's why there's so much sorrow and pain in the world and you'll never make it into God's eternity, because you cannot exist in His eternity unless you're a new creation.
Do you realize that if you're a Christian, you've already been recreated for eternity? The big change is over. Death for you is just an incidental. The biggest change has already happened. You're fit for heaven right now. There will, however, be a few things sluffing off as you go. All right, so to begin with then the transformation begins on basically the principle of faith and the Savior. We've been through that. Secondly, the point that we brought up was fervor and supplication.
The transformation was apparent in the life of Saul because he began immediately to pray fervently. Fervor in supplication. We saw that from verses 10-12. Verses 1-9 was faith in the Savior. 10-12, the end of verse 11, just as a note, it says, "For behold he prays." He spent three days blind without anything to eat and anything to drink, and he prayed just the whole time in communion with Jesus Christ. And I told you last week that I believe somebody who's truly born again into God's family wants to talk to God. He cries out to God for his needs like a newborn baby cries for milk and for care and for love, so does a believer.
To say that somebody's a Christian, but has no desire to pray is a contradiction in terms. A Christian is one who is dependent upon God. Is one who is moved into the atmosphere of God and he just breathes God. He breathes God. That's communing with God. Prayer is the first proof of transformation. If you really have come to know Jesus Christ, conversing with God is part and parcel of your existence. The third thing we saw about the transformed life was faithfulness in service. We saw through verses 13 through the first of 17 that Saul, as is every Christian, was saved for one thing and that was to serve God.
Verse 15, And Ananias said to him... "The Lord said to Ananias," I should say, "go thy way for Saul is chosen vessel unto me to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings and children of Israel." Verse 16 says he'll suffer for it. So the Lord said to Ananias, you go tell him that he has been saved to serve me. No Christian is ever saved to loaf. No Christian is ever saved to go to a monastery and lock himself in. No Christian is ever saved to be a hermit or a recluse. There's no such thing as a salvation unto secrecy. We are saved to get involved in what God is doing to serve Him. And that's exactly what we see in the life of Saul. He knew it from the very beginning. He was right on the Damascus Road. He hit the dirt and looked up and said, "Lord what wilt thou," what, "have me to do?" I mean, you're not saving me for nothing. You're saving me on the basis that you've got something for me to do.
We went into this last time. But it's amazing to me, you know, how few of us understand that God only uses transformed people to do His work. You hear people say well, he's not a Christian, but he's serving God in the best way he knows how. No, he's not. You don't serve God unless you come to Christ. You say what about all the people all over the world who think they're serving God. Well, that's very clear. The New Testament says this. "The Gentiles sacrifice unto demons," 1 Corinthians 10. What they think is God is only Satan's mask. And Satan looks like God when it gets them through His benefit. And he'll even look like Christ when antichrist comes.
And so it is that people who do not know Jesus Christ are not serving God. They might think they are, but they're serving Satan. He only uses transformed people to do His work, but uses all of the transformed people. Every Christian has spiritual gifts, right? Everyone is given opportunities for ministry and service. That's what salvation is all about. And once you become a Christian, service becomes everything, becomes everything. I mean, you know going to the job is simply a means of sticking food in your mouth, clothes on your body, having a house, and keeping your car running and adding a few nice little luxuries that God is gracious enough to supply. Really the issue is serving Christ, that's the issue.
Now Saul when he was, of course, active in the Lord's work from time to time had financial problems and he resorted to doing what he did best, that was making tents. And I imagine knowing the kind of a guy he was that he made good tents. And so apparently from time to time when the financial need came up, he made tents and made his living that way. But I'll promise you one thing folks, when the history books are all done and closed and you pick them up and read them, you don't read about Saul the tent maker. He is not world renowned as a tent maker. What you read about is Paul, the apostle of Jesus Christ. But he spent a lot of time making tents, but that's not the issue. That's what I closed with last week when I read 1 Corinthians 4, which says, "Let a man so account of us," what, "as stewards of Jesus Christ." Ministers of Jesus Christ. Stewards of the mysteries of God.
In other words, we ought to be known as oh yeah, such and such who serves Jesus Christ. That's the real crux of the issue. All right, so there we have basically the first three points in the transformed life, faith in the Savior, fervor in supplication, faithfulness in service. Now we come fourthly, and the review is over to the great practical key to this, the filling of the Spirit, the filling of the Spirit. In Acts Chapter 9, verse 17, this is introduced to us. "And Ananias went his way and entered into the house and putting his hands on him said brother Saul, the Lord even Jesus that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest," and he reminds him that it was, in fact, Jesus that he met on the Damascus Road, Ananias has reached him. And you remember that God sent Ananias to him as he's seated there blind in Judas house. He says, "hath sent me that thou mightest receive thy sight." First of all, He sent Ananias to have a miracle to receive his sight, and be filled with the Holy Spirit.
Ananias was God's messenger, and he came to tell Saul that he would not only receive his sight, but that he would receive the filling of the Holy Spirit. This then is the next step in the transformed life. Immediately upon salvation the believer receives the Holy Spirit. But the transformation comes about visibly, remember now, the positional transformation takes place at salvation, but the visible transformation before the world begins to take place when the believer yields to the Holy Spirit, the filling of the Spirit.
Now we've talked about this many times. If you have questions on it, there are studies available on tape on this subject that you can fill in the gaps with. I'm just going to briefly review it and then hit it from a different angle. But the Holy Spirit, this is a footnote to begin with. The Holy Spirit here I think is bestowed upon Saul. Then a step further he was filled with the Holy Spirit, but let's back up to his receiving the Holy Spirit because it's interesting. The Holy Spirit was bestowed here upon Saul without the laying on of the hands of the apostles. In every other occasion in the book of Acts when a new group of people received salvation, they never received the Holy Spirit until the apostles come and lay hands on them, whether it's the Samaritans, the Gentiles, or the disciples of John. In each case they were saved and then the Spirit they received when the apostles laid hands. Why? Because the apostles were the representatives of the church. They were the authority. And so in a very real sense, God wanted to make sure that all of these other groups, be they Samaritans and Gentiles or Jews realized that they were under the authority of the apostles.
Second point, there was a natural break between the Jews and the Samaritans and a worse one between the Jews and the Gentiles. And had the Samaritans received the Holy Spirit all on their own and the Gentiles all on their own you would have had three churches and they never would have gotten together. So God in His marvelous plan wanted to make the body one made sure that they all received the Holy Spirit in the same way with Jews present at the hands of apostles so that there was only one church. And Peter goes running back Jerusalem and says you g