6-22-25 Study of Acts Chapter 9:10-17 The Transformed Life Part 4

➡ This text discusses the transformation of Saul of Tarsus, who later became known as Paul, as described in the book of Acts in the Bible. Saul, a zealous Jew and persecutor of Christians, had a life-changing encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, which led him to become a passionate follower of Christ. His transformation serves as a blueprint for all who undergo a spiritual change, demonstrating the power of surrendering one’s will to Christ. The text emphasizes that this transformation was not superficial but deep and permanent, turning Saul from a fierce opponent of Christianity into one of its most influential advocates.
➡ This text discusses the spiritual transformation that occurs upon salvation, according to Christian beliefs. It explains that when one accepts salvation, they become a new creation, experiencing a change in their thoughts, behaviors, and even their spiritual DNA. This transformation begins at salvation but continues throughout one’s life as they strive to live in accordance with their faith. The text emphasizes the importance of self-assessment, prayer, and faith in Jesus Christ in this transformation process.
➡ This text discusses the relationship between humans and God, emphasizing the importance of faith, prayer, and service. It suggests that people often approach God out of fear, but true connection comes from accepting God’s love and guidance. The text also highlights the transformative power of faith, suggesting that when we commit to serving God and communicating with Him, we become spiritually fulfilled. Lastly, it emphasizes the role of the Holy Spirit in guiding our actions and decisions, and the importance of yielding to this guidance for a fulfilling spiritual life.
➡ The text discusses the transformation that comes with Christian faith, emphasizing that it’s a gradual process guided by the Holy Spirit. It suggests that God refines our good traits and replaces negative ones, leading to personal growth. However, it warns against expecting instant changes or doubting the process due to lack of visible progress. The text encourages believers to trust in God’s timing and yield to His will for a smoother transformation journey.
➡ This text emphasizes the importance of faith and yielding to the Holy Spirit in one’s daily life. It suggests that even after becoming a Christian, one may still struggle with negative traits, but through faith and daily surrender to the Holy Spirit, transformation is possible. The text also highlights the importance of fellowship with other believers, studying God’s word, and avoiding sin. It concludes by encouraging Christians to separate themselves from worldly things and focus on their spiritual growth.
➡ The text emphasizes the importance of living a Christian life focused on holiness and not associating closely with those who engage in sinful behaviors. It encourages Christians to share their faith and transformation with others, using the example of Saul who immediately began preaching about Christ after his conversion. The text also highlights the fear of being unable to speak for Jesus, urging Christians to overcome this fear and share their faith boldly.
➡ The text discusses Paul’s dedication to spreading the teachings of Jesus Christ and his fear of anything that could tarnish his reputation as a follower of Christ. It emphasizes the importance of the term “Son of God” in referring to Jesus, explaining that it signifies his divine nature and not a lesser status. The text also highlights that Jesus, as the Son of God, is the only one who can interact with a sinful world. Lastly, it argues that personal testimonies should not overshadow the importance of teaching about who Christ is.
➡ Christianity is not a subjective experience, but rather it’s based on historical facts that happened long before our time. It’s about believing in the redemption process that started with the birth of Christ and ended with his ascension. This belief helps us live life in this world while preparing for the next. Lastly, the transformed life through Christianity results in fearlessness, even in the face of suffering.
➡ This text discusses the importance of active participation in life and religion, rather than isolated study. It emphasizes learning through experiences and interactions with others. The text also explores the transformation process of salvation and the importance of understanding individual sanctification. Lastly, it mentions the significance of biblical books like Zechariah and Ezekiel in understanding prophetic knowledge and the ongoing conflicts in the world.

Okay. We are continuing in Acts, and I am. I’m going to pray before we start today, so bear with me here. Father, we thank you that we are now can approach your truth in Scripture. What a joy it is that we can come to you as a family and look at your Word. And what a privilege it is to not only do that, but meet like we’re doing here, to be able to open up the Word and understand the truth about what you’re telling us. And, Father, we welcome the Holy Spirit. We’re in your presence this morning, and we ask that you fill us with your power and you live inside of us.

Help us consider carefully the privilege that is ours in this endeavor to set our hearts to learn. May we hear with spiritual ears. We pray the Spirit of God would be our teacher. Keep this human voice from error. May only that which is true and from thee be spoken by this and their Son’s name. All right, we’re going to continue in our study of Acts. We’re going to conclude the subject matter of the transformed life of Paul in our study of Acts, chapter nine. And as we have gone through for the last three weeks and in today, this is the study of the transformation of Saul of Tarsus.

And because of the character of this man and the nature of his transformation, he says, for us, what is a pattern for the transformed life that can really be followed by each one of us? In other words, the reason why we’re staying on this topic for four weeks is because this is your blueprint. It gives you the blueprint of the man that God put in place to be our apostle, to teach us. And he uses his life as the example. So the characteristics that we in his life become really the features of all transformed lives that God is transforming.

When Lord. When a gentleman by the name of Lord Nelson, those of you who are older would probably recall this name. When Lord Nelson reported to the British Admiral Admiralty the great victory over the French fleet in the Battle of Nile, in his report, he said, this victory is not a large enough word to describe what has happened. And when the Apostle Paul spoke of that which he had enjoyed through Jesus Christ, having been saved and redeemed and transformed even the greatest of all victory words, the word conqueror was inadequate. And so he said, in which really does justice to the Apostle Paul.

All his life he had been in battle only before the Damascus road, it was a losing battle. After the domestic Damascus road, it was a winning battle. So much so that he is more than a conqueror. This man is transformed. He is 180 degrees change from that which he was now. As we talked about, we know little about him prior to all of this, but we know enough to put together some pieces to see what the transformation was like. This is important because none of us know all of us in detail, but we know us in detail and we know what we were doing before salvation and what our transformation should be like after transformation.

This is your self assessment. Before the scene on the Damascus road that we encountered here in chapter nine, we know he was Saul of Tarsus, which is a city in Sicily, a city of academics. He was a Hebrew of the Hebrews. He was also a Roman citizen. He was a pupil of Grammalia. And that means he had studied at the feet of the. The finest Jewish scholar in the world of his day. He was taught the best of the best. He was, was not only taught by the best of the best, he was a student of Jewish tradition.

Why is that important? Because Jewish tradition played a big part in the Jewish face. He was a man who was all wound up in a passionate clinging to the hopes and expectations of Israel. He wanted Israel to be Israel and not Israel to change. Oh my gosh, what’s going on today? Okay. His expect expectation of Israel was the law, not Christ, not the church. He was like other Jews looking for the Messiah and the kingdom that he would bring. In other words, he was just like the Jewish leadership that rejected the Messiah at the time that Stephen was doing his dialogue when right before he got stoned by Paul or Saul of Tarsus.

This I believe was a sacred hope within him, as it was with every zealous Jew. Zealous. Take that word, write it down and study it. Zealous is Zionist in its finest. Zealous. They do not back down. They want the law to be what they follow. And they built a whole religion around it called Zionism. Zionism was created by the cabal. And we studied a long time ago when we looked at this and we’re probably going to hit a point again. Anti Semitism is not, is not an acclamation of, of destruction to Israel. It’s a, a view of destruction to the cabal.

Because the anti Semitism should be anti Shimonism because that is who the Jewish nation is, not the state of Israel, the Zionist. So what they have done is use the law of duality of wor to create a social focus on making sure that the system, the matrix, protects the cabal with these terms like anti Semitism. And so when he was traveling, preachers began to announce to him and to the rest of the world that a. A carpenter from Nazareth was the Messiah. This man began to convulse in antagonism. He actually went off the deep end. So much so that he began a one man war against Jes.

This Jesus of Nazareth. Now in Acts chapter 29, reflecting back a bit, he said, I sought to do many things to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. In the next verse, he begins by saying which things I did. He became a great persecutor of the heresy connected with Jesus. His mind literally smashed to pieces the thought that this man was the Messiah of Islam. Jesus was not. Okay, so let’s go back. The. One of the reasons why Jesus was not accepted as the Messiah was he was not the type of man that the Jewish tradition hoped he would be.

Remember, he didn’t come back to destroy the Roman Empire as the religion wanted to do. He came back in a meek and humble way to establish this prototype body and the system of salvation, to go to heaven. That was his purpose. His purpose wasn’t to come and destroy the Roman Empire. That’ll happen when he comes again. But his purpose was to establish the holy righteous system of salvation and governmental control. And, and the Jewish leadership rejected that because they felt that they were being persecuted by the Roman Empire and they wanted justice. And so he fought.

And it was a hard, very, very hard fight. It hurt and there was guilt, but he did it anyway. And he did it without success. But after the Damascus road, he continued to fight. Only his battle switched and he became more than a conqueror. And it wasn’t just a temporary change. It wasn’t superficial. It was a very deep, long, total and forever change. He no longer righteously fights against Christ in his message, but he takes up for Christ and the Gospel. He no longer on the side of Satan and evil, fights the light, but he is on the side of the light which fights Satan and evil.

He completely changed. That is how your transformation ought to have been. In one day, one single day, matter of fact, one single moment in one, in that one single day, the history of the whole world was changed. One man. And you say you can’t do anything. That change happened immediately on Saul’s recognition that Jesus was Messiah, Accepting that he was immediately transformed. The blasphemer became the preacher of Christ’s love. The hand that wrote in anger, the execution paperwork for Christians now writes in love and tears. The letter of redeeming of. Of the love of God in Christ.

The heart that beat with thirst for the blood of Christians now desires that the Blood of Christ be applied to every heart for s just completely changed. And it happened in a single moment. From a volatile, energetic, dynamic enemy of Jesus Christ, persecuted blasphemer came the greater part of the New Testament, came the noblest statements of Christian theology, came some of the sweetest songs of God’s love. And he became the most saintly, heroic person who ever named the name of Jesus Christ. What a transformation, guys. And because of that, he serves at the greatest and classic example of the power of the resurrection and the greatest illustration of Christian life.

That’s the fruits their self assessment. And he sets for us the living and permanent pattern for the transformed life. Now the feature set which is which characterizes him in the 10th chapter are applicable to every transformed life today. He is the pattern for our transformation. It all began on the road up to Damascus. When he surrendered his will to Christ, he was broken. He was recreated a new man. That’s what happens upon salvation. You get a new creation. You become a new creation. According to scripture, that means your DNA changes. That means your thought pattern changes.

Everything about you goes opposite. And that was the beginning of his transformation. Now transformation begins there. It doesn’t end there. It ends when you have completely been sanctified in Christ, you get that transformation starts upon salvation. You get everything new. It’s up to you to take that newness and make it a full transformed life. God gives you the start, but you have to do it. Now. We’ve studied this for several weeks, guys, but it’s so important that we have spent the time on it because you need to, you need to now come to the point of your self assessment.

Getting into chapter five of Ephesians this week. You’re going to now make the change. Okay? And if you’ve not made that change, you need to evaluate your own salvation. And we found at the very beginning that there were to be seven qualities of the transformed life. We’ve already discussed five of those in the last three weeks and we’re going to discuss the the last two today. First of all, the transform life begins with the faith in the Savior. Now in verses 19 of Acts chapter 9, that is what we learn on the Damascus road. Saul fire breathing, moving towards Damascus to bind Christians and prisoners and haul them off back to Jerusalem.

Who was confronted face to face with the blazing glory of Jesus Christ. Remember, he was not blinded other than by the light. And having been confronted with Jesus, he fell on his face. He couldn’t stand. The power of the presence of Jesus Christ in your life ought to Be one that you are basically falling on your face. You are so humble to have his presence in your life because he is the total protector and provision provider that you ought to completely surrender to his power. And through the circumstances of conversation at that point, he believed. And having believed, he yielded to Jesus Christ and said, lord, what wilt thou have me to do? That should be your focus of your life.

If it’s fully transformed, they can’t see me, right? So at that point, the transformation took place. Now we’re going to go through a little history, just the background history to get us up to so that the last two points can make sense of the first five. The transformation, the recreation, the new birth that occurs at the moment of salvation is in fact an actual miracle that takes place in a moment. That transformation could not have taken place without Jesus resurrection. You got that? That’s the moment that this, this host body system, this prototype system was complete.

It was ready to move into the church, which was the secret. It was the mystery, right? And so he was a. He was changed that fast. So are you. Because the scripture says at the time of salvation, in that very moment, the Holy Spirit comes inside of you and makes you a new creature. There’s no time delay. So let’s think about this. If in your salvation process, you, you didn’t feel very much of anything, oh, you might have felt some emotional experience because you were actually understanding that you were a broken person and need help or whatever.

But if you didn’t come out of that by seeing a major difference in you, the question is, did you actually receive the Holy Spirit because you feel the change in accordance to Scripture? So if you didn’t feel the change in accordance to the Scripture and you have not begun to transform your life in sanctification to become sanctified in Christ, I doubt very seriously even said Saul was recreated by faith in the Savior. The transformation took place. This was the p. Positional transformation. What is that positional? It means that Christ has set you up to be transformed.

He’s given you all of the newness of life he’s giving you if you were actually received the Holy Spirit, he’s given you all the support system and the Teacher to walk you through your transformation process. So this is the position, positional process of transformation, getting you ready to be transformed. That was the change in his nature. That was the change in his standing before God. And that’s what gave him new capacities, the spiritual gifts, the gift of the Holy Spirit. And all that happened at that moment. That moment changed His Entire nature. Then a rapid fire succession came six other features that were the practical features of the outworking of that inner transformation.

God sets you up. You have to now do the practical side. And so while saying that salvation is a momentary total transformation that is true in terms of a man’s nature, that is true in terms of what God does in this process. Then it takes a while for the practical changes to reach your life and the living pattern of your life. And if you’re not doing the practical transformation steps sanctification to become sanctified in Jesus Christ, then I would question your entire salvation. So one of the positional one is positional and the remaining are all practical.

One is guide the other you the first changed the nature and his eternal destiny and the series that followed it changed his living patterns and his effect on the world. Your your transformation and your fruits. But to begin with transformation starts with faith in the Savior. Putting your faith in Jesus Christ to be who he claimed to be and to have done what the Bible claims that he did. It is simple faith in a historic person and in a historic redemptive plan. Secondly, and immediately upon the hills of that faith experience came the the fervor in supplication.

One of the characteristics of a believer is that he prays that he communes with God in this new life. He lives in an atmosphere of the presence of God and he breathes the year very air of God. What did I say? The what you take into your system to grow provide you what is called by medical terms oxygenation is really God himself. The life is in the blood. Think about that scripture. The life is in the blood. What is life? It’s got what is in the blood. Oxygen is what we saw. This air that you breathe is not man made.

Now it’s less pure because of sin due to the flood. But it’s still the air of God. A believer who is transformed in his nature will find the first reaction to be prayer. I want you to pick up on this. Your daily walk should begin, continue and end in prayer. The desire to commune with a God he has just met. And that’s exactly what happened. Remember he did that for three days, beginning in verse 10 and three, verse 12. We find Saul in the house of Judas at the end of the street called called Straight street in the city of Damascus.

And he spends three days blind, without eating or drinking, praying, communing with God and Christ. We find in Romans chapter 8. Just to add a dimension to this, we have the indication that prayer is the natural response to a new Birth had this conversation with a group of people this past week on newborns, spark of life. We got on the topic. In Scripture it says that basically the spark of life is provided to the female that creates the a newborn from a sea. So the conversation went on about when does life begin? And it traveled. That traversed down a point of looking at the blood and the fact that the life is in the blood.

And if the spark of life occurred, that means what? That you had to have some mechanism to allow that blood flow from the mother’s womb to get to the seed in order to have this park of life. And I says, that is the heartbeat. So conception happens as soon as God grants the spark of life. That’s the reason why Christ says, do not. It’s do not touch one of these children. They’re all mine. Why? Because he created them. In Romans 8:14, it says, for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.

So we want to just pull this phrase out. Sons, Sons of God, verse 15. For ye, that is ye who are sons of God, have not received the spirit of bondage. Again, to fear. In other words, before man becomes the Son of God, he approaches God in fear and trepidation. You are coming to guide because you were broken and you want help. And the only thing that you can feel is the hope that he’s going to do that. Are you hearing what I’m saying? The hope. He’s going to do that. Why do I say hope Is because he.

He determined whether or not you were going to be saved to go to hell before the creation of the world. You don’t know that. You don’t know that. So when you come to him for salvation, you have. You’ve got to be at the point of brokenness that is fearful for your life and interpretation to the outcome of your eternity. Men approach God in kind of a fearfulness, not really having the right to approach God anyway. Because why you’re separated from God. Until God accepts your request to enjoin with him, he’s going to call you near to him all the time.

It’s whether or not you’re listening and whether or not you act upon it. But if you don’t act upon it, he says, okay, no problem. Do you think we do not have the right to approach God because we fear what God might do to us? I want you to. I want you to concentrate here. When you come to God for your salvation, you have to be broken. You have to understand. You fear him for what he is going to do to you and putting you in hell. You fear for how this life in this kingdom of heaven on this earth is going to treat you in a lot of ways.

We come to God because we’re, we’re physically, physically exhausted from combating this world without even the idea of. That’s really not what caused it in the first place. In fact, around the world, religion is basically built on complete fear. Look at every religion out there. It’s based upon a doctrine of man to instill fear in people, to hold them in a congregational setting in order to do one thing, and that’s to make money. So man approach God out of fear. When a man becomes a son of God, he is no more an alien. Oh, this is scripture, guys.

Alien is defined by what, a guy in a blue suit that you know, runs around with weird looking grayness or, or anything like that? No, it says that alien is the man that is against God. Think about it. Yeah, he is no more a stranger. He’s no more an outsider. Something else happens, we receive the spirit of adoption. He becomes a what? We become a son and he becomes, I have a father now. What, what’s this saying? To be a child of God means you receive the spirit of adoption, which means you cry out in a personal way to God.

One of the first characteristics of salvation is prayer. Part of being adopted into God’s family is the immediate knowledge that you have access to his presence as a child. He says, come to me as a child. That’s the only way you’re going to get to me. And you cry in response, father. And so what we see here is the same thing. And as in Luke chapter 11, verse 1, where Jesus having chosen his disciples in meeting with them, and this is what they said, lord, teach us what how to pray. The first response into salvation is your desire on a continual basis to commune with God.

Now another part of my conversation with this group last week was, well, what about prayer? You know, prayer is a means of communication. But prayer is not the only way to communicate. God wants a relationship. Think about your relationship with your spouse or your children. Instead of talking to them, you pray. You pray to them. No, Communion means you’re 100% in conversation with Christ all day long. Prayer is a form of that. Meditation is a form of that. Sitting there and having a conversation as though he’s sitting next to you, which he is, is another form of that.

So the disciples ask Christ how to teach them pray. You see, the first cry of a new life is for su sustenance. Okay, I want to fill this hole that I have. And the only way I’m going to fill this hole is talk to somebody. Women, you do this all the time. You have circles of communication of women’s clubs on specific outcomes of your life. Instead of turning to the master that has the right points of reference, you turn to a fellow female that gives you man’s point of view and their opinion. That’s not truth, guys.

And so prayer follows immediately on faith and, and the Savior. The third thing we’ve talked about is we’ve already seen in faithfulness in service. The transformed life involves a commitment to serve. You’re safe to serve, by the way, as the phrase goes in scripture. As Paul says, lord, what will thou have me to do? Right on his lips. Immediately after he, he acknowledges Jesus Christ for who he is and becomes a transformed natured individual, the next thing out of his mouth is, what are you going to want me to do now? Go back to your own salvation.

You’re, you’re a teenager. You accept Christ as your Savior. There’s really not much more that you can do other than continuing your education and get ready for whatever it is. But the majority of teenagers don’t even ask what their calling is so that they can make sure that their education goes along with us. If you’re an adult and you get saved, you’re working a very high power job, making tons of money, big fancy house, family, and you, you have salvation coming to your life. You never ask, what do you want me to do? Because you don’t want to change.

Did you have salvation? The next thing that Paul did, after receiving the Holy Spirit to transform his nature, he asked, what will thou have me to do? In verse 13 to 17, Ananias came and said, you’ve been saved to do what? Do this. And he told them what he was supposed to do. You’re going to go and you’re going to preach and that’s going to be your commission. Do you even know what your commission is? They even sit down and ask God what might be as part of your transformation. In the practical side, that is a requirement.

That’s not an if then statement. The transform life involves faithfulness in service. It involves a commitment of your life to do the thing which God calls you to do. To use your spiritual gift to accomplish what God designed it to do. Restricting your service. Hear me out. Is restricting your transformation picking up what I’m putting down? You need to get lost in the Lord’s service and you will be a changed person. So the Transformation life involves faithfulness and service as well as fervor in supplication and faith in the Savior. Then the great practical key comes to play here and the one we spent a lot of time on last week, which was the filling of the Spirit.

The keys to practical life is the filling of the spirit in verses 17 and 18. At the end of 17 it says he was filled with the Holy Spirit immediately upon salvation. If the salvation is true and the Holy Spirit comes into you, you’re 100 full because he gives you everything new. That means your spirit is 100 new and it’s full, it’s fully charged. You need no gas station. What you do after that determines whether or not you continually be filled or not. The filling of the Holy Spirit means that the Spirit of God controls you.

We saw this last week. When you’re controlled by the Holy Spirit of God, then you’re going to see something happen in your life. I said, look at your self assessment by the fruits that you bear. Trying to live your life without the Spirit of God is trying to live with an engine but no ignition key. Remember Ephesians 1:20? That’s running on eight cylinders. That turns the engine on. That is the key. If you’ve not accomplished that, you’ve got a sluggish engine or maybe no engine at all. He’s there. He’s in the center. He’s the one that directs your every decision.

He’s the one that directs your every action. You’ve got to find out how to turn it on. And that is to yield to the Holy Spirit of God, to submit yourself. The apostle Paul, all his life and throughout all his ministry from the time he was Saul, right here in the house of Judas, lived a life under the control of the Spirit of God. So there were times, of course, in any believer’s life when he wavered from that. We’re sinners, we’re going to waver from that. But that was the commission and the commitment of his heart.

Remember, Luke says, strive to be like Christ. Strive, sanctify, be transformed. So he began at the start to do the bidding of the Holy Spirit. Oh, bidding of the Holy Spirit. Where’s that in your life? Do you do the bidding of the Holy Spirit? Meaning he’s. He’s in control and he directs and he makes your decisions for you. He. He does all of the things necessary for you to live this physical life experience. Are those decisions your. Now the filling of the Spirit of God is a very simple thing and we’ve gone over it many Times before the Spirit lives within every Christian.

That was what Christ’s resurrection provided for the church. Being filled with him is yielding to him and letting him control you. That and that’s that all it is? That’s all it is. We you look at the Old Testament. God’s control and protection was in a physical form. The what? Cloud by day, fire by night. His army showed up, fought with everybody. And when Christ came, all of that changed. Because now all of that fire and brimstone and protection and everything is yielded inside of us. It’s not above us, it is inside of us and it’s all around us.

And accidentally in your life you either are controlled by yourself or by Him. That’s the only option you have. You need to figure it out. It’s that simple. The Christian life is not complicated. They want you to think it’s complicated because they want to control you. They want you to come back to the well to seek their advice in a man controlled religion in order to hold you captive in a society of their church corporate building in order for you to atone them with money that you think you get helped with. And the only thing we got to do is just submit to the Spirit.

If the Spirit doesn’t control the church, you have no church. And incidentally, the Spirit filled life moves by definition, but he’s gone back out and moves by definition. Watch your field. You go now. We saw in the feeling of Saul that God then having filled him, refined him, remember that’s the practical transformation process, refining him. We talked about the fact that he had leadership. Oh he had all kinds of great gifts. Leadership, strong willpower. He was self sufficient, he was independent, he was self disciplined. He was an extremely motivated man. He had some kind of persistence that just never died.

He was kind of inflexible in his convictions. He was very practical, he was very bold, courageous. He had a lot of great qualities. The spirit of God didn’t eliminate, he only refined them. That’s part of a spirit filled life self assessment moment here. When you look at your attributes of your life and you that you see that some of those attributes are just overbearing to others and even maybe yourself. Those probably are the great traits that God is trying to mold because that that is the process of defining you. You’ll find that the good things that, that you possess, God will never eliminate.

He’ll only refine. So you don’t even need to fear to do anything that of God’s will. You don’t ever need to fear to be filled with The Holy Spirit, he’ll eliminate the bed. He cleans house, right? He comes and he comes into your heart and it says, what? That’s my home. So he’s going to clean it up or he’s going to go dormant, will refine that which is usable. And secondly, in the case of Saul, he did eliminate some things. For hatred, he gave him love, for pride, he gave him humility, for meanness, he gave him gentleness.

And for relentlessness, he gave him peace. So he did some replacing as well. But he changed him. And then he became effective. The Spirit filled life. Then, when yielded to the Spirit, the Spirit of God begins to change and to refine. Now, I want to add a footnote here that I think is very, very important because I want you to be clear on this. Many Christians, and this is a very practical thought, many Christians are reluctant by some strange reason to really believe that they are being transformed. I want you to get that you have a condition that you want to be transformed.

You do not seek to understand the practical steps in doing transformation, but you think you’re being transformed anyway. That’s not true. People have said, well, I’m a Christian, but I don’t see the changes. I don’t see God doing anything. I have the same old pattern. I see the same old thing. I can’t get over the hump and I can’t get over what is happening. And they become very discouraged. And you know what happens? They fail to believe God for the work that he is doing. You’ve always said, you know, most, most good parents, when they’re trying to raise their children, always say, look for the good things.

Don’t look at what? They don’t look at the bad things. Because if you dwell on that, that’s what you’re going to become. The, the children don’t really understand that, but that’s what parents are trying to do. Go and find the good things about what’s going on and, and focus your attention on that. That is exactly how the transformation process works. You should be seeking out what God is doing good in your life. Dwell on that. And as you dwell on that, by the law of attraction, more is going to come, more change is going to happen.

Then to not believe God is sin, get that too. To sin is to eliminate the filling of the Spirit. Oh, you just went dry. You can’t find the gas station. You’re on the side of the road with an empty tank, and you’re trapped in a vicious circle of your own unbelief. If you don’t believe you can’t get filled. Chicken and egg. It’s got to happen. You got to have the belief to understand that you’re going to be filled with the spirit. If you don’t have that, then you’re not going to get filled, you’re going to run out of gas.

You must believe God for the process of change and expect. Not that it’s an overnight thing, it’s not. I mean, you know, we change in a physical sense, but we don’t see the change, do we? No, we don’t. Typically you, you don’t wake up the next morning after salvation and say, oh my Gosh, I look 30 years younger. Oh, you don’t wake up and say, boy, that aching pain that I had yesterday and I got saved last night, I should have that aching pain go away today. That does not happen. Only when we’re just brought face to face with it.

Thanks to photography. Okay, you can get, you know, some funny and hilarious things if you are working inside of the Holy Spirit in your life. You know, you have all outdated clothes and you don’t have any wrinkles and you have lots of hair and lots of wonderful things and it’s great. And you know what happens? Oh, I changed. I’m getting old. It’s only because you’ve brought face to face within and now not because you can see the process. The process of change is not perceptive. You will either believe that the process of Christian maturity is meaningful, imperceptible.

And will you not doubt God because you don’t see drastic things happening every moment of your life? This is a step by step process. You don’t sprint from the start. The people who live their Christian life trying to see one great giant zap from God every so often don’t ever grow anyway. Do you understand that you got to live daily on the diet of the Word of God and you will grow. That’s how babies grow, right? And Scripture makes the analogy of a new Christian as a baby who seeks the milk of their mom. As you live daily on the diet of the word of God, you will grow.

However, you won’t even perceive it because it’s such a gradual process. And you know, one of the reasons that Christians doubt the transformation very often is that because as you grow, you become infinitely more sensitive. Sensitive to what? Sin. We’ve talked about this. When you, when you understand the process and you’re, you’ve raised your knowledge base and now you’re higher accountable, when you sin, it actually becomes devastated to you. Consequently, you Think you’re worse than you used to be. Why? Because you’re still sinning? I’m not supposed to do this. Whoa, let me reality check here. You sin when you don’t even know it.

You got to let God have the privilege of changing you at his own pace and realize that when he changes your whole nature, when he does the work of what? Recreation, Your new creature, that’s instantaneous, that’s a whole new miracle. That’s bang and it’s done. But changing you into the image of Christ, Be like Christ, think like Christ. Think like the mind of God by changing you into that image of God while you’re still got the cruddy flesh that you have and that I have takes a little more time. He’s got to redirect your highway. The highway you spent years putting trucks on.

You got to give God the time to do it. Don’t disbelieve him for the process you were created in Christ into. What? Got to think about this. Words mean a lot of things. You were created into Christ for good works. That means you’re going to do be in working processes like Christ. Now let God have the right to take his time to do that. And incidentally, the faster you yield, remember this is you. The faster you yield, the easier it’ll be. Now, we’ve talked about this many times. I’ve talked to other people many times. Some of us he moles, some of us, he takes a chisel and chips away that process.

Whether or not he has to chip a little bit or whether or not he can take and mold you out a new clay is completely up to you. You can either go fast or you go slow. It depends upon your position in the allowing of the process of God to change you. Let God change you. Don’t disbelieve God for the change. Just yield to the Spirit. Accept what’s going on in your life has changed and yield on a day to day basis. I die daily. Paul says I’m yielding to God every day. What do you want me to do? Believe God for it? Because if you don’t believe him for it, you’re sinning.

If you’re sinning, you’re eliminating the filling of the Holy Spirit and you’re trapped in what? A car that’s dead on the side of the road in a vicious circle. 2nd Corinthians 5:17 says this. All things will become what new. But the all things has to do with the nature of man, with the recreation of that which is his nature and his capacity in Christ, that’s the positioning. God says, okay, you really truly saved. I’m going to position you in me. That allows you to start. Now you got to get across the starting line. It doesn’t mean that the minute you say you’ll never lose your temper or you’re perfect from then on.

Absolutely not. Friday was a good example of that for me. All right? Nobody should have been around me on Friday. Of course not. You know, a Christian with a bad temper or a man with a bad temper gets saved. And you know what you have? You just got a Christian with a bad temper. And when something happens to trigger the bad temper, the bad temper is going to come out. Take for example, a fear prone Christian. And the reason why I bring this up is because this partic, this particular situation comes up more often than anything else.

Okay, a fear proned individual. Now he gets, let’s say, let’s walk through this. He gets saved. He spent all of his life worrying about everything and all his life doubting everything. He is so insecure. He’s got negative thinking clear through him. Nothing positive going on in his life. He looks at everything from the dark side. It’s just completely negative thinking, negativism, anxiety about everything. And it gets sick. He desires to get filled with the Spirit, so he yields to the Spirit. He then begins to think negative. He says, well, I’m not changing. I wonder if the Spirit’s really there.

I wonder if God loves me. I wonder if things are going to go, what’s going to go on in my life? What happened to this individual? The mental attitude is filling in and he’s back in a vicious trap. He is gone to an out of gas car. He has no more spirit. He believes God even when filled with the Spirit. Some people feel insecure. They feel insecure even when they’re under the control of the Spirit because they can’t believe God is true. They understand who he is. Atheists understand that. They understand who he is, but they don’t understand that he, being the one true God, can do the things that he tells us he can do.

And you can’t give up. Let him take his time at his own pace and as you yield to him to make the changes. Now I’ve changed. I’m still changing today. Matter of fact, I can’t believe he got me over Friday and I can’t believe my wife is still here. But I can see that change. But I know it’s true because I believe it’s true. What are we talking about in Ephesians? An Attitude, a conduct, how you do those things. You want to what, be pure? You want to think on the positive side of what scripture is telling you.

When you go to the negative side, what are you doing? You’re attracting all the negative things too. You, therefore you’re sinning. And when you sin, you can’t be filled with the Holy Spirit. Therefore you’re going to go into this vicious cycle that you’re going to be locked on the side of the road, feeling trapped. You can’t go anywhere. You got to look at the Christian life in a very practical way. You see, it’s by faith that we live it anyway. Why can we believe God for salvation and yet we can’t believe God for the things of our lifetime? Why can you believe God for providing you eternal life and protecting you and providing to you in the eternal life? But you can’t allow him to take charge here.

We can’t believe God for the little things that come and go in our life. We don’t really believe he’s changing us. That’s the problem. We’ve got our life so messed up that we don’t take the time to sit down and see the blessings. Let me put it practically. I’m going to give you four little simple steps to trust in the Spirit filled life. Number one, make the feeling of the Holy Spirit a priority. Every day I die daily I’m being. I’m going to yield to God. I mean, you’ve got priorities. Of course. Number one is to get up and make sure you get your breakfast, go to the bathroom, comb your hair, whatever that is.

And to get to work on time, meet your appointments, do whatever’s going on. You establish priorities. Why don’t you establish the number one priority in your life being filled with the Holy Spirit one day at a time as the absolute priority. Second, in your life is developed a keen, sensitive sensitivity to sin. Look for it, be sensitive to it and avoid it. I mean, what are our priorities? Sometimes we get our priorities so misdirected. The spiritual priorities bring up the rear. But the priority of the Spirit filled life and the sensitivity to sin must be first.

Third thing, study the word of God, okay? It’ll do both things for you. It’ll fill you with the Spirit and it will clean you up. And fourth, don’t grieve the spirit or quench it. Consciously avoid that. Consciously avoid anything that would grieve or quench the Spirit. Now if you begin to think like that, you begin to think positively about the filling of the Spirit and your desire will not be to grieve him and then believe God for the changes and you’ll see the change in your life. And then there’s one more as an add on that we that we saw about the transformation transformed life was fellowship with the saints.

It’s characteristic of a believer that he desires fellowship with other believers. Now this has got to be part of our life. I mean we’re all here, right? This is fellowship. Even though this is a teaching of sorts, this is still fellowship. And we commune with the Holy Spirit while we’re doing this. Why? Because the second highest form of worship is to study His Word. The first form of. Of. Of the highest form of worship is prayer. So we love the fellowship of the saints. There’s nothing like it. I can tell you that over the last two weeks we’ve been with believers and it’s been a marvelous time leading up to all kinds of things going to that went on it that in the.

In all of our lives to position us to a point of understanding that we’re all there for each other. There’s nothing like it. The world knows nothing about joy and the love that is ours in Christ. There is no human relationship apart from Christ that is anything like it. This is real true love in Christ. Among his children, brothers and sisters. The world talks about love and it’s has signs about love. Oh this unconditional love fest. But I think Christians are the only ones who have the capacity to give the kind of love that is absolute ultimately in the terms of the human experience.

Because it’s all for the what the right reasons. And so what happened to this man as we indicated in verse 17 to 19, Saul, as he fell into the fellowship of the believers, he was baptized. He was called Brother Saul. He spent some time at the end of verse 19 in certain days and his whole life did a flip flop. The people he used to work for and like became his enemies. The people he used to hate and tried to kill, he fell in love with. And he writes to the Romans and says I can’t wait until I get there so I can love you a while now.

Can you imagine the leadership of the Jewish church and the Roman leaders getting this letter from him? Who said who? What’s that? Who’s done what to Saul? And he writes to the Philippians and says we did a blessing to my heart. I’m sorry you did a blessing to my heart. I think about you all the time. I long for you and the tender mercies of Christ. I’ve just got to get where you are in love. And he does that all the way through the New Testament. Those are the same people who he was out breathing fire against.

God transformed him. And when he entered into the fellowship of the saints, believe me, that is a glorious kind of existence because that means that you’re in true fellowship with Christ to live among the saints. And I believe that God expects us as Christians to be separated. Separated, Christian from the things of this world. I already said that. God says, don’t let the thing. Don’t associate yourself with the world. Don’t love the things of this world, you know, don’t conform to this world. Now, I’m not saying that we never are to contact people who aren’t safe, obviously, because we’re to go to preach the gospel, just like Paul’s commission was.

We’re all teachers. Well, listen, as I read and you interpret it yourself, First Corinthians 5, 9 says this, I wrote unto you an epistle not to company with fornicators. Well, that’s pretty clear. Those are people involved in sexual sin. Now, that’s pretty practical for our lifetime today as well. Corinthians were in a kind of a social society that we’re in today. And that’s a rampant thing. Matter of fact, in some cities you can just go, and it’s on the side of the street. Don’t company yourself with fornicators. You can’t really explain that away. It’s very apparent what he, what he means, yet not together with the fornicators of this world or with the covetousness or the extortioners or the adult adulterers.

For then must he needs your needs, called a brother. Be a fornicate, fornicator, covetous or an idolater, a railer or a drunkard extortioner with such in one. And don’t even have lunch with them. That’s what it says. You’re to minister to the world. You are not to associate. He said, first of all, I told you once before, don’t fool around with those kinds of people. And now I’m telling you the same thing again. If you guys even calls himself a brother in Christ, don’t fool around with him. Why? Okay, this might be worth a quarter to you or maybe a nickel and cup of coffee.

I don’t know. The Christian life is a tender plant that can exist fruitfully only in an atmosphere of holiness. I want you to get what I just said. Your operation, your life as a Christian can only operate when you are in an environment of holiness. Now, does that happen when you associate with members of the world? Not Christians? No. You’ve taken yourself into what, a position of a sinful nature, a sinful environment. You’re not conforming to Scripture. The Christian life is a tender plant that can exist perfectly only in an atmosphere of holiness. That does not mean we don’t evangelize the world.

We minister them. It means we don’t run with them. We don’t associate with them. We don’t fellowship with them. We don’t have dinner, we don’t have breakfast. We don’t have lunch. We don’t go play games. You don’t go to the beach. You don’t do those things. It doesn’t mean that we don’t love the world. It means we don’t make our company with them. We belong to Christ in the body. We are members of one another. Here’s the concentration of our. Our ministry and of our life. So the transformed life involves those things. Now, we’ve seen five parts of the transformed life.

Part one had to do with your nature. Then next four had to do with your character. Then these last two will be how you affect the world. The first one had to do with your nature dot the next four with your character. The last two with your effect of the world. Now these are terrific. The sixth one, fervency in speaking. Now, I think it is a. This is a characteristic of a transformed life that you can’t hold back. Talking about your transformation. Why? Because you’re new. You’re now living positively. You’re now going in a different direction.

That is holiness. You’re now getting blessings that you never got before. It’s beautiful sitting around and you don’t get tired of talking about your transformed life. It is something that is just enormous. And that’s something. What it’s like when the transformation takes place, it just kinds of happens. And you kind of talk about it. Matter of fact, you can’t stop talking about it. Should be on the. Should be the first thing out of your mouth because that’s showing the world the gospel. And that’s what Saul did. Saul didn’t know the meaning of the word tomorrow. He was now.

He was in the present. He was only now. And everything he did was now. In fact, you know, most of the people that he worked with spent all their life trying to keep up with him. You know, somebody like that, energizing buddy, they just go, go, go, go, go. And you never know when they’re going to quit. Look at verse 20. What’s the second word? In that immediately, straight away he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he’s the son of God. You say, wait a minute. He is. He has been. He hasn’t been to seminary. Right.

He’s not a guy in the right school. You want to know something? That man could preach Christ from the day he was saved. Why? Because he knew the Old Testament as well as anybody around. He was, had the best school of the Old Testament. He had the Jewish tradition down and by intact. And all he needed was the key to unlock the box to let it out. And Jesus was the key. All he needed to do was meet this person called Jesus Christ. And everything that he ever knew in the Old Testament was fulfilled in an instant.

He had an education before he got saved. And all it came into meaning on the Damascus road. You see, that’s what’s so wonderful about any Jewish person who comes to Christ. They automatically step into a kind of knowledge that they even that even I don’t know why, because I am not. I have not been educated in the Old Testament like they have. They not only have the Old Testament, they’ve got their traditions, they’ve got their history that they teach. At the same time. It takes me years. Well, it’s taken me years just to get to this point.

I don’t have half the knowledge base that they have. That’s the reason why I like my Jewish friends so much, even though they’re not saved. But I love a great conversation in ministry about the history of Judaism. When Christ unlocks the, the lock on Judaism, everything comes forth. That’s exactly what happened to Saul. Jesus Christ was the key and it was unlocked and he began to speak and he never postponed anything. Scripture says he immediately preached Christ in the synagogues. Now when he got to those synagogues, he came with letters to persecuted Christians. Remember, that’s what he got from the Roman Empire and the leaders of the church to give him the authority to go, you know, take out the Christians.

And they gave him his chance to speak. And he got up and preached Christ. Can you imagine the shock that hit them? Oh, look at deception last night. I’m going to give you these letters that came from the Roman Empire and the Jewish leadership. And I’m going to talk because you’re the synagogue, okay? You’re. If they’re their condition, I’m going to give you these pieces of paper that shows what I am going to do. And then when I get up to the pulpit, I’m going to do a 180 gun. That’s what he did he used their system to do what? Destroy their system.

He was a great speaker. He could dispense the gospel in Romans like a lawyer stating evidence in a series of masterful arguments in a courtroom. Or he could say it simply to a jailer when he simply said, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt what be say. Or he could do it simply and quietly, or he could do it beautifully, with, oratorically, and he could do with it with gentleness and love. Or he could put it on fire and thunder and brimstone like he’d never heard it. But he spoke. He spoke everywhere. And nobody ever, at any time, any place turned him off.

Why? Because of you speaking the truth. Some of us have a hard time opening our mouths, sharing our testimony, ministering to the world. Why you don’t believe. In fact, you know, he had one fear that haunted him all his life. From the time of his salvation, he had one gnawing fear that haunted him. And that fear was that sometime, somehow in his life, he would be unable to speak for Jesus. That was his fear. He didn’t fear, man. He didn’t for what they were going to do. He didn’t matter what. What they were going to say.

You guys heard me talk about this. I could care less what anybody thinks. I could care less what anybody says. Why? Because they can’t approach me. They only approach those that think like them. And I can’t. I don’t want to associate with them. Why? Because they’re hurting the brethren. Scripture says if you’re a Christian, you don’t hurt the brethren, you uplift them. So when that happens, why should we be concerned with it? You know, most Christians have a fear that haunts them all their life. And the fear that they might have. To do what? Speak. It’s so sad, guys.

The greatest fear that gripped his great heart was that in his preaching of Christ, he himself might become a castaway, a broken vessel, married, married, marred by sin, useful, useless, corroded. To be set aside that he could not preach for Christ. And that scared him. He wanted more than anything to preach Jesus Christ. And he didn’t want anything to stain his life and render him unable to do it. Okie dokie. Self assessment. Paul’s fear was a mindset. A mindset that he would get himself into a situation in this world that would stain his ability to be looked upon as a follower of Jesus Christ.

Here’s your mindset. Who’s controlling you now? This would be great if every Christian had that kind of fervency. Can you imagine what would take place if that happened? Let’s go back and look at the word immediately. It’s a great word. It’s used 35 times in the Gospel of Mark. And you know, Mark is one that presents Christ as the servant of the father. You know, an. An obedient servant only operates on the basis of one word, immediately. And that’s the way Saul operated. He operated immediately. There was no delay in what God was asking him to do.

And when he did it, so many people stand around doing absolutely nothing. He was told he just moved up. And he went to the synagogues, to the Jewish leadership first, the ones that basically he knew were going to be against what he was teaching because he was. He wanted to change the synagogues to the church and not to. And from the Jewish law. There were multiple synagogues in Damascus. The Jews were a lot like the Baptists, by the way, in my little hometown here, 26, 000, I think we’ve got maybe what, 50 Baptist churches. Unfriend believable.

They divided up into all sundry and diverse fellowships. And so they were all over the town, everybody suited for everybody’s particular attitudes. And he hit them all. And he got there and his speech was that he is the Son of God. I still can’t believe it’s shocked. It must be on the synagogue leadership. Once he turned the tables on them when he got it to pulpit to speak. Already he’s not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, not what his message. Notice one little footnote. It says he preached Jesus. The best manuscripts have Jesus there and they.

And that seems certainly to be what he would say, that this Jesus is the Son of God. Now the term Son of God is very important. This designates Christ as deity. Now remember in scriptures lower S on the Son of God means the. The magistrate, the angels, typically the fallen state and the capital S are the believers. This Jesus the man is God, you say? Well, does the Son of God mean that he’s less than God? No, of course not. Matter of fact, we had this conversation in the last two weeks too. So you’re going to get to.

Because it’s very fundamental to understand the cross. Son of God. Now stay with me a moment as I just almost lost my train of thought. I’m gonna, I’m gonna give you another footnote here. Son of God is an incarnate title. That’s a key word. Incarnate title. It means that God, okay, being Jesus is not called the Son of God before his incarnation. He’s got to come here. He’s got to be the prototype. He’s got to get resurrected and he’s got to be glorified in heaven. All of that has to take place for us to have the life of salvation.

Jesus is God. He is the very God of Gods in human flesh. He is only called so Son in the sense that as the second Person of the Trinity, he came to earth, a nature of God himself. Remember, God is Christ. God impregnated Mary, a virgin, had a child named Yeshua that was half God, half human, 100% God, 100% man. He’s the Son in the sense that he was born form. He is not a Son in terms of rank, as we typically have been taught in the Trinity. He’s not less than the Father. He’s only a Son in an incarnate sense.

He’s the only one that can interact with a sinful world. Before His Incarnation, he was God, the second Person of the Trinity. The title Son belongs to his incarnation, and I show that to you. In Luke 1:35 it says, and the angel answered and said unto her, mary, the Holy Spirit shall come unto thee. The power of the Highest shall overshadow thee. Therefore also the holy thing which shall be born of thee. Watch here. The future tense shall be called the Son of God. Now, the Holy Spirit chose the verb very carefully. It’s still a future designation at the time of the promise.

He doesn’t say the Son of God will be born. He says a child will be born and he shall be called the Son of God. Verse 32 says the very same thing in the instruction that the angel gave. There it simply says, shall be called the Son of what? The highest. Now watch here. And the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of what his father, David. Now, he’s a son in the sense that he’s the Son of David. He came from David’s line, both sides, mother and Father. He’s a Son in the sense that he’s the Son of God by service.

Now, he’s not a Son in the sense of inferiority to God the Father in any way, shape, form, or what? Now, I only say this because you you’ll run into some people who deny that he is God, but because he’s called the Son of God. Now, I’m going to stop here and I’m going to go to what we talked about last week. Who spawned with the people, who was on the cross? You ever ask yourself that question? Who was actually on the cross? Scott himself. God himself was on the cross, God himself left the body of the incarnation of himself, the Son.

At the time that the Son cried out to the Father and at that time the Son cried out, not saying father, Father, God, God, why have you forsaken me? He represented God as a separation from himself at that moment in time. That separation of God from the sun was the point. The very moment that the sins were placed upon him, the sun, that separation of God from the body was, was the signification of what happens to our life when we die. Our spirit goes away. That’s what God did on the cross. He completely left the Son to die.

Because we know him in his incarnation. We call him Jesus, but that’s an incarnation name as well. We call him Christ. Well, that’s an incarnation name as well, but it’s his calling. So he began to preach that he is the Son of God. Paul says he was the Son of God. And boy, I imagine he unlocked that Old Testament and it was exciting to him. And that’s how he became known his whole life as a preacher of Jesus Christ. You know, if I never knew anything more about John the Apostle than what I know from the last two verses of his gospel, it’d be enough to endure him to me forever.

I love what it says. This is the disciple who testifieth of these things and wrote these things. Wouldn’t you like to be known as the guy who always talked and wrote about Jesus Christ? Now let me add one more note. I want you to notice something else immediately. He preached and he preached that Jesus is the Son of God. Now that this leads us to just a tangent that I’d like to share with you. I want you to notice that the content of his Kirkma k e r y G M a are his proclamation. That was, that’s what the Greek word means, was a detach or teaching doctrine.

He didn’t give his testimony. He had a testimony that wouldn’t quit. I mean, he could have rung them in with just his testimony. He could have told of the stories that would stand their hair on end. Why? Let me tell you what he did to this and this Christian and why we threw them in here and we did this. In other words, he had, he had stories of stories and he could have gone on and on and on. He could have given a super colossal testimony. Then he could have said, let me tell you about what happened to me on the Damascus road.

And he could have gone through the whole thing on the Damascus first. Now there’s something wrong with your testimony. It’s just that your testimony is relative inconsequential in terms of the importance of the presentation of who Christ is. Okay, speaking, let’s go over this. There’s nothing wrong with your individual testimony except it focuses on you a knot on the importance of the presentation of who Christ what is. What do I always say? You need to know who you are and you need to also know who Christ is in order to be sanctified in him. Your testimony as a supplement is fine.

Your testimony as a witness itself isn’t any good at all because it’s got to be more than that. All good teaching and witnessing is doctrinal and really, you know, the church has gone overboard on people’s testimonies and people’s experiences. And we have created what I’m afraid is almost a subjective approach to Christianity. We’re focused more on us and not him. Subjectivism is a curse that man has had to live with for a long time, ever since the Garden of Eden, matter of fact, when man sand immediately God started looking for man and man started looking at man.

He ran in the garden, said I’m naked, I better get myself covered. Man became man centered or subjective. God’s always been looking at man. Man’s always been turning inside. And man creates religions that are totally subjective. It’s all experiential. And even today the cultured philosopher, philosophy and philosophical men of the world have found an expert exponential religion. The leap of faith, the upper story, the higher calling, the elevation of life. But religion is subjective, but not Christianity. Romans 10. Faith comes by hearing a speech about Christ. Faith comes by hearing a speech about Christ, not a subjective analysis of what’s going on in me.

Now it’s all right to talk about your own experience in certain context and it’s all right to include your testimony in terms of presentation, but never to the exclusion of the actuality of what the presentation of Jesus Christ, the gospel. Now later on in the book of Acts we’re going to learn on two occasions Paul goes backwards and picks up his testimony very briefly and very concisely, which only simple, simply says that this is what I was and this is what I am now. But Jesus is in the middle of it. Christianity is not a subjective experience.

Let me put it another step. Salvation is basically a non experiential fact. Christianity is based on something that didn’t happen in your experience. It happened 1900 years ago. It happened before you were ever born. It happened outside the experience of every Christian, of every sinner, of every man who ever lived. Christianity is based upon historical fact of God’s redemptive history. That whole process of the incarnation of Christ to his ascension was the redemptive history. That was the culmination of this prototype system that was the establishment of a salvational process to be reconciled back with God to give us the ticket to go home.

And it created the. The practical experience of living life in this world so that we could remove ourselves from this world to live as the citizen of heaven, which we’re called to do. It is only a matter of believing in that historical fact that redeems you and I. It’s outside of yourself. It’s not subjective, it’s objective. Now, the religions of this world don’t buy that every. Everything is subjective. Okay, And I could go on and on that a moment, but I’m getting close on time. I want to pick this up and get to the last point, the last thing.

The transformed life results finally in fearlessness, in suffering. Naturally, when you confront the world like we’re supposed to do, all that life, God, a godling will suffer persecution. You’re going to get it. And you. And he got it in verse 23. And after many days were fulfilled, the Jews took counsel. To do what? To kill him. This thing has switched so fast. It’s almost shocking to stay up with in Paul’s life when you get the. The veracity of his life itself. He comes to Damascus to concursions. A few days later, the Jews are after him. That’s the way his life went.

You could characterize his life of courage. You can characterize his life in one little phrase. It’s at the end of Acts 20:15, it says he thanked God and took courage. He gets ready for a battle and he’d say thanks to God for winning the victory already before I even enter it. Because what you promised it would be that way. You took charge, you took courage and went in. At the end of the book of Hebrews, there’s a terrific statement, the last part of verse 5 in Hebrews 13. I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee the promise of the Lord.

Then he says this so that we may boldly say, the Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me. Now that’s kind of the way Paul lived. What was he afraid of? Not really afraid of anything. Verse 23. They took him his counsel to kill him. But they’re lying in weight was known by Saul. And they watched the gates day and night to kill him. The city was. The city was walled and the gates were the only way in and out. So they guarded the gates and. And they were going to try to kill him when he tried to get away.

Now notice a little statement in verse 23. It says after many days. Now this is a quite interesting little three word statement. Let’s just back up and pick that thought up. After many days is a statement that perhaps is misleading because in the literal Greek it means sufficient days and denotes a time of considerable duration. In fact, some lexicons would say that it means a time of two or three years. So that there was a period of time between verses 22 and 23 of a period of a few years. Now we wonder what is Paul doing in those years? And we find out that in Galatians 1:17 I said, Bible’s a code book guys.

You got to read the whole Bible to understand what’s going on. He says after his conversation, neither went I up to Jerusalem to them who were apostles before me, but I went into Arabia and returned again unto Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to St. Peter and abode with him 15 days. So it is very likely that he began preaching in Damascus, then he moved for a while over to Arabia and I believe he preached there too. Some say he went to Arabia just to be taught of God. Well, I’m sure he did that because he needed to get.

You need to get brought up to speed and. But I know that the best kind of training goes on when you’re ministering at the same time. Ah, key guys, you want to sit back and you want to get trained before you begin to do anything. You need to start moving in the direction of teaching, ministry, ministering to the world at the same time you’re teaching yourself. So he was in Arabia for a while and then he came back to Damascus. And having come back to Damascus, he started preaching again and then they sought to kill him.

So there’s probably between verse 22 and 23, approximately a three year interval when he spent time in Arabia and in Damascus and ex incidentally this persecution that is the beginning of the fulfillment of chapter nine, verse 16, when Ananas told him he was going to suffer many things for Christ. And indeed he did. One last footnote. What was he doing in Arabia? God sent him there, no question about it. But there’s several things to consider. That part of the world had an Arabia that’s a little different than what we know as Arabia today. Go to, you got to go to historical maps, it’s much north of that and it is called Nebatan Arabia.

And it’s very little likely that at this particular time in history, that place had exactly, exactly included the city of Damascus. According to some ancient maps and geographical indications, Damascus would have actually been in what was known as Arabia. So that Damascus would be a city on the very frontier of Arabia, which would be to the east of it. Now, it was ruled by a king by the name of Eritas. That’s indicated to us in 2nd Corinthians 11:32. It tells us that Veritas, it says in that same verse, had put a governor in Damascus and put a garrison to guard the city.

Now that’s very interesting. Eritus lent his soldiers to the Jews to catch Saul. Now, why. What does Ertis care about Saul? Why does he want to give a garrison of soldiers to stand at the gates to capture Saul? Now, scripture doesn’t give us the answer to this, but it is, it is so unbelievable that it’s laid out this way in scripture. I gotta, I gotta byline here. This is my opinion. Somewhere in Saul’s past, he has irritated Eritas to the point of wanting him captured. Saul had one thing about him that irritated all kinds of unbelievers.

That is, he everywhere went preaching Christ. That’s why I say, when he was in Arabia. And I can’t believe that for three years he said anywhere and didn’t preach. I think he was barely through one lesson before he was out the door. And the Holy Spirit was probably saying, hang on, Paul, I got one more point. Before you leave, I got one more point. Go back, Paul, one more point. Go back. And he was gone, preaching Christ all over the Arabian territory. So much so that Eratus was just as irritated as the Jews were, so that they came together to try to get rid of the guy.

It points up to one great track. We’re going to stop here. And that is that. I think training is absolutely the greatest when it’s the in incruciable of experience and ministry. To isolate, to train people in a monastery is absolutely absurd. I learned this when I was around the world. I said, why do you do this? Why are you sitting in here chanting, eating, meditating, making sure that no insects are killed. Why are you doing this? Well, that’s what our religion says that we do. Oh, all said right there. Got it. So to isolate, to train people in a monastery is absolutely absurd.

To even train people in a seminary, detached from any kind of total activity within the framework of the life of the body of Christ and the church is just as observed as well. Our lessons are learned when they’re learned, being broken down over lies and people and circumstances so that we can find out whether they work or not. You got to get off the couch. Okay, we’ve concluded now the study of Paul’s transformed life. We’re going to get into chapter 10 next time we’re together and begin to look at his ministry, the type. Okay, his ministry itself, his personal ministry, and the focus on the salvation of the Gentiles.

But the example that is laid out and the last four weeks discussions on Paul’s life is our example of how our transformed life should be in points. I got one, Jim, about transformation. I was wondering if that had anything to do with. In Zechariah 2, where they talk about the measuring line that is our inheritance of our transformation of the city of Jerusalem. Expanding symbolic. You’re. You’re spot on. On. On your positioning of your analysis. Zechariah 2 provides us a symbolic feature of becoming sanctified in Christ. And he uses the expansion of your mind and the concept of Jerusalem.

All right, thank you. That’ll help with my studies. Zechariah is a tremendous book. It’s my. It’s. It’s almost it. I almost put it up there. It’s like Ezekiel’s number one, Zechariah is number two. And then you can get into understanding Daniel and Revelation pretty good. So when we get out of our Ephesians study, and I’m working on that now, and get into chapter four of Revelation and then get out of chapter four going to Daniel, we’ve got to bring in Ezekiel and Zechariah in that process to get a full understanding of what we’re being told. It’ll be a fun study.

Anything else, guys? Sure. Okay, let’s pray. Father, thank you for a great time of fellowship together this morning. Thank you for the. Your word. Thank you for giving us an understanding of how the transformation process of salvation has to work. Father, we ask that you just continue to open our hearts and minds to the understanding of our individual sanctification process, leading us through revelation of you into our individual lives so that we may understand that which you are teaching us, so that we may progress in the manner of the relationship with Jesus Christ as you so command.

Father, be with this world. Continue to be with those who are in positions of authority. May you continue to show your presence in the outwardly showing of why things are being done the way they are. I thank you for putting at the center of our nation’s response last night yourself and I think you brought forth that in the, in the nation’s address to the people. And I also want to thank you for allowing Trump to show a bit of emotion in that regard. Father, give us a sense of security, give us a sense of peace and enjoy and give us a mindset that allows us to understand this is you.

This war with Israel and Iran is biblical. This is not the end of all wars. This is not the war against Israel. This is a subset of a war that you have described for us. And we appreciate the understanding of the prophetic knowledge from that because we can take from that and learn history. God be with us today. Watch over those that are hurting. We ask special blessings for those that had surgery, those that are sick, those are trying to heal, recovery, working through, working through this physical body and getting us back to whole. Give us the mindset to understand that basically the pain that we suffer is not of you.

I ask that you continue to work with body. Specifically give him the inward focus of the fact that your presence as we shared over this week as he had surgery on Tuesday, humor God’s love and the ability to think differently. So, Father, as you go, bless us today. Give us time with the family. I feel the need of doing that. Then, Father, thank you for given us of sins. Thank you for giving us the ability to ask for that. So, Father, we ask all these things in your sins.
[tr:tra].