6-8-25 Study of Acts Chapter 9:10-17 The Transformed Life Part 3

➡ This Bible study focuses on the transformation of Saul into Paul in the Book of Acts, emphasizing that true change can only come from within, through faith in Jesus Christ. The world can offer superficial changes, but only God can alter our inner selves, our “DNA”. Despite attempts at societal reform, evil continues to grow, and the only way to find peace is through salvation and sanctification. The study concludes that Jesus, who brought more change than any other, did not alter the world’s structure, but will do so upon his return as prophesied in the Book of Revelation.
➡ The text discusses the transformation of society through Christian doctrine, suggesting that the world is under the influence of evil forces, but can be changed through spiritual revival and alignment with God’s teachings. It emphasizes the importance of individual transformation, using the example of Paul from the Bible, who went from being a cruel and hostile man to a follower of Christ after a divine encounter. The text suggests that such transformations can lead to a changed world, not in its structure, but in its behavior. It also warns against false apostles who claim to have a personal relationship with Christ but haven’t truly experienced his life, death, and resurrection.
➡ The text discusses the concept of transformation in Christianity, emphasizing that it’s not a superficial change but a complete overhaul of one’s life. It begins with faith in Jesus Christ, which leads to an immediate, divine transformation. This transformation is not just a one-time event, but an ongoing process of growth and development, referred to as sanctification. The text encourages self-assessment to ensure that this transformation is taking place, as it’s a crucial part of being a Christian.
➡ This text emphasizes the importance of faith in Jesus Christ and the transformation it brings. It suggests that being a Christian means being a new creation, ready for eternity, and that this change is marked by fervent prayer and service to God. The text also highlights that every Christian has a role to play in God’s work, and that serving Christ should be the main focus of a Christian’s life. It concludes by stating that worldly occupations are just means to an end, and the real purpose is serving Christ.
➡ The text discusses the importance of serving Jesus Christ and not just focusing on our jobs. It talks about the transformation of life through faith, fervor in prayer, and faithfulness in service. The text also discusses the filling of the Holy Spirit, as seen in the story of Saul in the Bible, who received his sight and was filled with the Holy Spirit. This filling of the Holy Spirit is seen as the next step in a transformed life, which begins visibly when a believer yields to the Holy Spirit.
➡ Being filled with the Spirit means allowing the Holy Spirit to control and empower your life. This control and power can be refilled through prayer and study, which is like recharging your spiritual energy. It’s about making the choice to follow the Spirit’s guidance in your decisions, big or small. When you’re filled with the Spirit, you’re driven to act, not just meditate, and your actions show your spiritual maturity and faith.
➡ The text discusses the power and control that comes from being filled with the Holy Spirit, according to Christian beliefs. It emphasizes the importance of submitting to God’s will daily and the consequences of not doing so. The text also explains that being filled with the Holy Spirit doesn’t mean losing your individuality or talents, but rather refining them and using them for God’s purposes. It uses the example of Paul, who was a natural leader and used his leadership skills to spread Christianity.
➡ The text talks about a man who was disciplined, persistent, and had strong convictions. He used his willpower to pursue his goals, no matter the cost. His determination and discipline were admired by the Holy Spirit, who refined these qualities for God’s glory. Despite sometimes causing trouble due to his inflexible convictions, his self-sufficiency, independence, and boldness allowed him to spread his beliefs and establish churches, demonstrating that these traits can be used for good when guided correctly.
➡ The text talks about a man who was bold, pragmatic, and a crusader for his beliefs. He was motivated by his faith and despite facing numerous challenges, he never gave up. He was also known for his long speeches and his ability to keep going, even when others might have given up. His life serves as an example for others to follow, showing that determination and faith can help overcome obstacles.
➡ This text is a prayer asking for guidance, forgiveness, and healing. It expresses gratitude for spiritual growth, the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, his resurrection, and the victory it brought. The prayer ends with a thank you for the ability to pray in Jesus’ name.

All right, all right, we’re. Good morning. We’re. This is our Sunday morning Bible study. We’re in the Book of Acts. We happen to be in the ninth chapter of Acts, studying the, studying the introduction and, and life changing events of Paul. This goes hand in glove with our study of Ephesians now and we’re into the third part of looking at Paul’s transformed life and how it relates to us as the church. Now remember that we are the church, so when we look at Paul in this venue, we’re actually looking at us as well as individuals. So just need to make sure that we understand that so we can actually, we can actually apply this properly.

So we’re coming back into the Book of Acts and we come to this account of the conversion and the transformation of the man called Saul. Ataurus Tarsus. I’m sorry. And last week we began to study verses 9 through 31 as a unit and we called it the Transformed Life. For in these verses we see the features of the transformation itself and how it took place in the life of Saul as a result of his encounter with Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus. Now we’re introduced to, to the study last week by talking about the fact that the world cannot really bring about any transformation.

It can bring you total chaos. And you might think you’re transformed, but there’s absolutely nothing that this world can do to transform you as an individual upon birth any differently than how you were born. In Ephesians 2, we, we know that we were born with the demonic spirit. We’re born controlled by the prince of the power of the air. And our total focus of life is on chaos, that which the matrix is built on. So anything this world does in terms of change is superficial. Now we know that basically this, the, the demonic spirits in this world can change.

We find that in scripture and we see it in real life. In scripture, the angel troubled the waters and the first who entered the waters was healed. That was a superficial healing, but in nonetheless the individual was healed of the affliction that they had when entering the water. But it was not a cure. It was just a, a healing process of a period of time. Now it never really gets to the heart of the issue when we look at this at, from a world point of view. The only way a man can really be transformed is when his inside is changed, when his nature is changed.

And, and you should be able to understand that by looking at how we’ve had our biological education in, in all of this, because it is the DNA that has Changed. And your DNA controls who you are and it controls how you look, what your hair is, how your teeth look, are they white, are they yellow? It controls all of that. And your life’s processes and what you do in life alters that DNA which changes you now. And this is accomplished alone by the power of God through faith in Jesus Christ. Because the only way you can truly be changed is through your inner self.

That alone recreates who we are. We get a new body, we get a new nature, we get all these things new upon salvation. And the only way we can do that is through the transformation process that God gives us upon salvation. So when we look around the world, the plagues that, that blight our society and cultures of the globe, we’ve tried everything, every conceivable kind of governmental reform, economic policy program, vaccines, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, with really no effect at all. And in fact, as the Bible says, evil men continue to grow worse and worse.

We see that because the empires in the historical review of the Old Testament history, every empire that conquered the, the previous empire grew more evil all the way up to the Roman Empire, which was disbanded and created all of the governments that we have in this world today. So I, I think we all can admit that we need to be changed, but we don’t admit as to who is able to affect that change. And the problem with that is because of our teaching in both formal education and in the church now we believe that men must be changed.

We know that, okay, women, you try to change men all the time, it doesn’t work. And then you try to change women all the time and that doesn’t work. There’s only one person in this universe that can make that change and it’s Jesus Christ. So the only way that we can be changed is through Jesus Christ himself. We must be changed to live in harmony with this world. Now that might be a dichotomy that you can’t really fathom just yet. But the only way you’re going to have peace in this world is through this sanctification, the salvation and sanctification process.

You will not have peace any other way. You must be changed to be able to exist in God’s forever world. It didn’t say earth and it didn’t say heaven. It said forever world. So that means the hell in this earth called the fallen state the world. If you’re going to be wreck, if you’re going to have peace in this world, you have to be reconciled to God because he’s the only one that can provide peace in evil. You can’t do it. And that change comes only through Jesus Christ. So when Jesus was on the earth and again there was a point in comment and I, I think Sam made it, but I can’t really remember about.

And I’ve always said you need to, you need to always listen to each individual word in scripture to get its meaning. And, and you need to pay really particular attention in scripture as the verses shift from earth to world and earth to world. And don’t put in your mind that when it talks about one, it’s talking about it’s actually two environments. So when Jesus walked this earth, remember no evil was in him. So therefore he was a heavenly spiritual being walking in this fallen state of sin. So he would, he, while he was in this world was living on earth.

You got that? That’s a, that is a distinction that you need to have. So he was committed to the real ministry of transformation. He was not interested in starting outside reformation for all of the things that he saw. There may have been a political solution, but that wasn’t his time. There may have been an economic solution, but he offered none because it wasn’t his time. There may have been some very just revolutions, but he led none. And yet Jesus himself did more to change the world than the man in it, than any other man who ever was lived.

Now the reason why it wasn’t his time is because he couldn’t change those things of this world until what he was resurrected. Because it was only in that resurrection that victory was that was obtained over this world. So he couldn’t change those things in his ministry because he had not received his glorify fine body. And when he did that, then he, he said, okay, now I’m going to work through man, I’m going to work through my 12 apostles and I’m going to bring in another apostle. On now call Paul to deal with the church because that was the mystery of how this world was going to end.

We’re in the last dispensation age of this world. Call the church. So Christ gave the charge to his apostles to what? Start in Jerusalem, go to Judea, go to Samaria, the uttermost parts of the earth. Okay. And teach the gospel. The gospel had two parts. Remember, it was a part of faith based salvation. And the second part was to remove the evil out of this world and put them into hell to allow Christ Church to take over the world. Okay, now we’re doing, we’re getting into this tomorrow night in a big way. In the sub stack.

Because what we’ve done is we’ve unleashed all of those. Those gods that the 12 apostles put in their place in hell. We’ve unleashed them throughout history, and they’re alive and well today. Okay? So he did more to bring love and peace and joy and justice and equality into a world than anyone else, whoever, who’s ever lived. And he did it by never doing anything to society structurally. Why? It wasn’t he. He doesn’t control the world. Okay, who’s in charge of this world? Lucifer. What is the system of this world? It’s the matrix. That’s the structural component of the world that Christ did not touch and will not touch until he comes again in the book of Revelation.

At that point in time, he destroys the structure. And he puts in his structure, which is the same structure that the apostles put in when he gave them their great commission. And then he sits on the throne, okay, on the mercy seat in Jerusalem, and rules the world for a thousand years. At that point in time, he will structurally change the world. But this world will never be restructured. I want you to get this. It’ll never be restructured underneath Christ because he’s not the ruler of this world. So when we think about what’s going on in today’s society and we’re seeing this restructure take place, it’s a restructure like the apostles did, by putting the Christian doctrine in place, by removing the evilness from the society.

But the structure is still under Lucifer, and that you should also put together because you know at the time when it is the right time, which this is, wasn’t the right time. At the time when it’s the right time, a new world order will take shape. There’ll be one government, one religion in this world at some point in the future. So what he did, which is exactly what we have been doing for years, he changed the hearts of individual men. Okay? Hearts, mind, okay? Mind is the heart. Okay? So we have been reawakening people to the truth.

And that becomes a revival of sar. Of such to the knowledge of what is the truth. The truth, Jesus Christ. Where does the truth come from? The Bible, what’s going on in society today? Everybody’s talking about Christ, even on mainstream media. Okay? So you’re seeing this insurgence of what took place by the apostles in society today. Now, that’s the crux of the issue. That is the issue we face when we unleash evil, when we unleash these gods after they were put in their place. We allowed society to go back to paganism and it wasn’t the time for that to occur in mass.

And that’s the reason why we’re get going through a Ribanet reconstruction in today’s society. So the message to the world is this. The word of God is that men must be changed and only Christ can do. Is interesting that the result of changed men can be a changed world. It didn’t say earth in scripture. It says it that there will be a changed world. Why? Because the, the, the world will shift in its behavior. What you’re learning in Ephesians, your conduct, okay, how you should walk the world would change in that fashion without changing the structure of the world.

Now if you study history, you, you buffs like I am, you know a little bit about the fact that the historical reform periods of this world have normally followed times of what Spiritual revival world is cyclical, okay? So the world have normally followed times of spiritual revival, reforms, the awakening, the spiritual revival in this time that causes the reforms to take place that we’re going to see, and we have started to see, come about as we’re calling this the reset. But what we’re, what we’re doing is replacing this world in alignment with God in God’s time frame.

Now, Paul spoke about his transformation in Ephesians 2:1 10 and the transformation also of the Christians at Ephesus and other places. He said, you one time were in darkness. You were dead, dead in sin. Okay? That’s what it said in Ephesians 2. You walked according to the course of this world, according to the Prince of the power of the air. You walked in accordance to the Matrix system. Remember, we’re dealing with two systems. We’re not dealing with anything more than a system of the Matrix and a system of the heavenly spiritual world. That’s the two systems.

All of this other mess, this racism and, and all these conditions that people try to get you to, to believe, you know, oh, you have, you have a problem in society because the bus was late, okay, Type thing, all right? All of these ideologies, that’s the matrix getting you to conform, to control. So you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that worketh in children of disobedience. You operate on the basis of the lust of flesh, the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and you were by nature children of wrath.

Now that’s a pretty bleak picture of our lives starting out, but some are still there. Then he comes on, and he invades that bleakness with this 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 of chapter 2 of Ephesians when he says, for you are his masterpiece. Now, a masterpiece doesn’t form overnight, and a masterpiece has to work with the Master. That’s your sanctification, guys, if you’re not working with Jesus Christ, for him to educate you in knowledge and wisdom of the Scripture by revelation so that your walk with him is as close as you can ever get it, which means that you’re walking worthy in Ephesians to your calling.

Okay, it’ll never take place. The masterpiece has to work with the Master, but because the Master in creates us unto good works, which means that we take on the nature of Jesus Christ as we talked about on Thursday, the nature of Jesus Christ that basically at the heart of our life is love. From all the darkness and the sin and the death of the first three verses comes a whole new creation in verse number 10 or Ephesians 2. And that transformation in the middle is an encounter with Jesus Christ, by what 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. Okay, this is important because Paul is the worst of the worst and becomes the best of the best for the church, which is an example of each one of us. Now, Incredibly, only about 5% of what we know about Paul was before or maybe even less. 95% is after. We know very Scripture gives us this snapshot of Paul and tells us basically he came from Tarsus, he was a Pharisee, he went to the best schools, he had the best teachers, he knew the law.

I mean, he gives us a little bit about that, but it doesn’t go into great detail, but it gives us a lot of detail after his transformation because he is what we need to become after salvation. Because what Paul says is, you need to be like me as I am like Christ. So he tells us that the way that he has been positioned in this transformation process and the creation of the church, church is the example of what we need to be like. So the 5% 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 as soon kill you as to look at you. He was self sufficient, he was independent, he was inflexible. Oh, think about all of these things that were saying, words that apply to you, your self assessment, okay? He was independent, he was inflict, he was inflexible, he was angry, he was persistent, he was crusading, he was unloving, etc. Etc. Etc. He was everything that a very unpopular, despised individual would be.

He was like a person. When he, when you, you saw him walk on the street, you would go to the other side of the street and you didn’t, you definitely didn’t want to be at night while he was on the street because you never knew what was going to happen. So that’s the type of individual Paul was. But on the Damascus road, as we read, something drastic, something dynamic and divine happened to him. And it occurred when he confronted Jesus Christ face to face. Now you recall in last week, he had to do that to become an apostle.

That was a requirement set forth by Christ is you must know me personally to be an apostle. Well, that ought to tell you that those people of today that cause themselves apostles are not true apostles. They might, they might use that word to say that they have been sent because that is what Hebrew, that’s what the Greek word means. Apostle is to be sent. So they might be using that to say they’re being sent to somewhere, which is just another word for calling. But they can’t be apostle because they have not had a face to face understanding and encounter with Jesus Christ.

You got to know him and you’ve got to know him in a way that goes through his life, his, his crucifixion, his death, his burial, his resurrection. You’ve got to be there through all of that in order to be called an apostle. So at that moment he submitted his will to Christ under the crushing power of the sovereignty of God. He had little choice in the matter predestined, you have little choice in the matter of your life. You don’t own it. But he did have enough choice to at least do it. That’s the free will choice.

Think going back in the Old Testament, go back to Esther when Esther was asked to go in front of the king, blah, blah, you remember, call that story. And she says, oh I’m not, I’m not one of you Jews anymore, I’m an uppity up person in, in this hierarchy of the king’s empire and I can only go to him if he calls upon me. And what did her cousin say? Look, Esther, God puts you in that place, he’s going to take you out. If you don’t do it, you’ll find somebody else and you’re going to have a problem.

So you have no control over your calling. You have no control really over your life of the calling. If you make a choice to go against that, then there is accountability. So what Paul did was reject his self will, the little potentialities of self will set aside, and he accepted the will of God, the sovereignty of God. Now we can only stretch our imagination so far and probably then we’ll run into walls by not being able to find answers in the scripture past a portion of this. So we need to try to understand what this transformation meant, to study the prior life of Saul as we have, and find out that he was wreaking 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 split, blocked in exactly the opposite direction can be absolutely beyond some of our imagination. So apart from an understanding of the divine miracle of salvation, okay, we will not understand the process of transformation in the process of exchanging everything. Remember we walked through the exchanging process of transformation in Ephesians where you, in chapter four, where you got rid of the old and put on the new, right? So we talked about that.

So all the old things he hated, he all of a sudden looked. Now how can you go through that change immediately without Christ? You deal with, you dealt with it with your children when you try to teach them and, and then all of a sudden the light bulb goes off, but they still go back and do the old things. And then they come back, say, oh, I did it again, oh, I did it again type scenario. How could you go from, from instantaneously being one way to instantaneously being 180 degrees opposite? You can’t do that unless it’s with divine intervention.

All of the old things he loves, he. He all of a sudden hated everything he used to serve. He stopped serving and everything he used to be designing this, his plans against, he was in service too. Everything completely changed. And that’s how conversion operates. Self assessment time. You need to look at your own life before and after that is self assessment. If those things that you did before you still love, you need to question your salvation. Because you’ve already learned that you go from old to new and you’ve already learned that you’ve exchanged one to another.

That’s by scripture. That’s not by, you know, Jim’s philosophy. That’s what the scripture said. You’re going to go from this to this. And if you haven’t gone from that to current newness, then you need to question your salvation. Christianity is not an addition to your life. It is a complete transformation of your life. Now, a man once said being a Christian is like putting a new suit of clothes on a man. Well, 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 is a transformation. And that’s what’s happened to this man called Saul. Well, now this chapter records the transformation for us and it, and it gives us big rep, actually gives to every man hope that every man sick of himself and sick of this world to be able to be transformed. It gives us the pattern for a transformed life. Now, we saw that there were seven of these basic features of the transformed life. One was faith and the Savior. The transformation life begins with faith in the Savior. That is where the transformation must take place. Because without faith, you don’t, you can’t receive the gospel.

You’ve got to have the foundation of the fact that you believe in what you can’t see. When a man. Watch this because you’ll misunderstand everything if you don’t get this point. When a man puts his faith in Christ at that very moment, he is totally transformed without a second of process time. It’s not a process. It is a moment miracle. Now what is that miracle? It tells you that as soon as, by faith you’ve accepted Jesus Christ for who he was or who he is, sorry, and his transformation of himself through the death, burial and resurrection to a glorified state gave him victory, then we immediately know because Scripture tells us that we receive what the Holy Spirit.

That is the transformation. And it’s instantaneously. However, this is his positional transformation before God. This is his new creation. From there you have six other things that take place in the practice transformation that follow the positional one. All right, all right, let’s look at this again. Salvation is the first step in transformation. That step is a positional one. It takes you out of this world and puts you into Earth put you on earth, heaven in heaven, okay? And at that point in time, the process is this. You receive the Holy Spirit, you’re now a citizen of heaven, not of this world, okay? You’re given a passport to live in this world.

From heaven, you’re told how to live in this world. In Ephesians, you’re told. You’re told how to conduct yourself. In Ephesians, this. This first step of faith in salvation repositions you from the world state into a heavenly state. And that only happens through salvation. The transformation that follows is one of practice. What’s that mean? That means sanctification. The transformation that follows is a process of joint responsibility, yours and Christ. Christ is already given his side of it. You have to give your side, which is sanctification as a process. Now, it’s like a child who’s born in an instant.

Well, some of you had children born in an instance. Others, you had days of labor. Sorry about that. But anyway, that’s the way it is. 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 or he’ll grow a leg or grow an ear, but all the parts aren’t there. That’s not how this works. When a baby is born, all the parts are there. Now, I’m not going to get into a rabbit hole by birth defects here, okay? A baby is a creation of God, regardless whether they got birth defects or not.

And what he’s trying to say here is, a baby comes out whole. Oh, it’s a total creation. It’s only a matter of growth within the framework of what is all. What it all is already there. It doesn’t add on anything, hopefully. All right. It all comes out as it should be at one time. So you see, the first one was the creation. It was a perfect creation. In Colossians 2:10, you are complete in him, right? There aren’t any lacking fingers or toes or anything else. Paul was created a new whole creation, just like you were in your salvation.

But then there were some experiential things that needed to take place. There was a process of growing, right? Salvation’s a seed. If you don’t grow that seed, then you can’t grow. So there was a process of growing and developing, and the change continues to go. I’m a different person as a Christian now than I was, say, 10 years ago. Definitely a different Christian than I was 45 years ago. All right? And you should be as well. So if you can’t see that in your self assessment. You, you got to go back and question your salvation, okay? Scripture tells us everything changes.

There’s a transformation in a practical, experiential sense. That’s an ongoing thing from the moment of salvation. And yet salvation is complete. In other words, you got your ticket home. Salvation gives you your ticket home. How you spin that home time is based upon your transformational process. And so to begin with, the exercise, faith in the Savior. And that’s where the transformation begins. Now, I don’t care what you believe or what kind of religious feelings you may have. Some of you come from various backgrounds in this family and that’s fine. But I want to say this. Apart from the faith in Jesus Christ, you are not a new creation.

So whatever you’ve learned in all of those religious conditions, new age theory about enlightenment, blah, blah, blah, blah, you’re not safe unless you become a new creation by faith in Jesus Christ. Salvation doesn’t happen. It’s not osmosis, it’s not by, you know, anybody’s laying on hands in this worldly exercise of religious order. You can’t go through rituals and get it. You can’t go walk on hot coals and think that you got Tony Robbins faith. Okay? It’s not. It doesn’t happen. You’re the same old thing. And you’re not to live in this world because you’re against the grain.

Even the way God created this world. Now, that’s why there’s so much 1 9, but I couldn’t get the 53 in, so 03 01. That’s, that’s the reason why there’s so much pain and sorrow in this world. And you’ll never make it into God’s eternity because you cannot exist in his eternity unless you’re a new creation, can’t elevate yourself. You can’t do anything. There’s only one way and one way only, and that’s faith in Jesus Christ. Now, do you realize that if you’re a Christian, you’re already been recreated for eternity? You got your ticket right. You’re already recreated for eternity.

The big change is over. Death becomes just an incidental thing because salvation provides your ticket home eternal life. So therefore this physical death is just incidental to your overall eternal eternity life. The biggest change has already, has already happened. So you’re fit for heaven. You got your airplane gear on, you’re fit for heaven. You’re ready to fly. Now there will, however, be a few things sl slowing you down as you go. So we begin, then the transformation begins on basically the principle of faith and the Savior. Now we’ve been all through that. We’ve talked about that many, many times.

I know we’ve talked about it at least three sessions. So you get it from all kinds of directions. So 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. Matter of fact, he spent three days doing that without eating or drinking anything. Fervor in, in supplication. We saw that from verses 10 through 12, verse verses 1 through 9 was was faith in the Savior. Verses 10 to 12 was this fervor in supplication. At the end of verse 11, just as a note, it says, for behold, he prays.

He spent three days blind without anything to eat or anything to drink. And he prayed just the whole time in communion with Jesus Christ. Now we talked about last week that I believe somebody who’s truly born again into God’s family wants to talk to him. On your self assessment, if you don’t want to talk to him, you better look at your salvation because that’s the number one thing of salvation is you want to talk to him and, and through that you want to do in prayer. Because prayer is the highest form of what worship. The Bible makes an analogy like a newborn baby Christ 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. A Christian is one who’s moved into the atmosphere of God. Oh, that’s key. The air that you breathe is the atmosphere. And oh by the way, it has a vibration point too. He breathe God that’s communing with God. I want you to think about this. You’re born with a demonic spirit. You’re born controlled by the prince of the power, error and, and you’re disobedient and you’re full of chaos, but yet God still allows you to breathe him.

Why you ever thought about that? Why foreign if you really have come to know Jesus Christ, conversing with God is part and parcel of your existence. The third thing we saw last time was about the transformed life with faithful in faithfulness and service. We saw through verses 13 through 17 that Saul, as in as every Christian must be, was saved for one thing and that was to serve God. Now verse 15, here comes Ananias. 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 the kings and the children of Israel.

Verse 16 says he’ll suffer for it. Remember a couple things here. Whatever you put out in this world, you’re going to get back. Good or bad, loving or hateful, you’re going to get it back. And think about this. Saul is chosen vessel unto me to bear my name. That’s Christ before the Gentiles. That’s the people, faith and the kings and children of Israel. That’s the pagan government. So you see right here that, that Paul is going after two things. He’s going after the Gentiles and he’s going after the government. So the Lord said to Ananias, you go tell him that he has been saved to serve me.

No Christian is ever saved to love. You can’t be a couch potato. You can’t not be out doing God’s will. No Christian is ever saved to go into a monastery and lock himself or herself up. Think of the Catholic Church getting this. Can’t go lock yourself up. No Christian is ever saved to be a hermit or a recluse. There’s no such thing as salvation into secrecy. We are safe to get involved with 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 says, lord, what will thou what have me to do? I mean, you’re not saving me for nothing. You’re saving me on the basis that you have got something for me to do. I want you to think about that. Your name was written in the Lamb’s Book of life before what the foundation of the world. You were predestined. You were called. It wasn’t on the basis of your good looks and it wasn’t on the basis that you could be saved and lay in the bed or on the couch and do nothing.

Now, I want you to think about social reform here. There is something for me to do. Christ didn’t doesn’t give himself to you for you to do nothing. He gives himself unto you for what good works. Those of you who want to just pay everybody by the government, your tax dollars, should understand that is not God’s principle. So if you want to understand the salvational transformation process, you got to change your mindset to social reforms because you yourself can’t change you unless you understand that concept. You Gotta get out of this world and understand who Christ is.

Now we went into this last time, 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 first. You say, what about all the people all over the world who think they’re serving God? Well, that’s very clear in Scripture, in the New Testament says this, the Gentiles sacrifice unto demons. They’re going to look like Christians. First Corinthians 10. What they think is God is only Satan’s mask and Satan looks like God when he gets them through his benefit.

Remember, he is. He’s the bright and morning star. He was. He’s the best looking angel that God ever created 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. This is Christ, but he uses all of the transformed people. Every Christian has spiritual gifts. Everyone is given opportunities for ministry and service. That’s what salvation is all about. And once you become a Christian, service 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 for you. But 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. Remember, that’s what he did as a craft. 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, when his history books are all done enclosed and you pick them up and read them, you don’t read about Saul the tent maker. He is not a world renowned tent make them. What you read about is Paul, the apostle of Jesus Christ, but he spent a lot of time making tents. Are you getting what I’m saying here? That’s what I closed with last week when we read First Corinthians chapter 4, which says, Let a man do.

Let a man. So account of Us what? As stewards of Jesus Christ, ministers of Jesus Christ, stewards of the mysteries of God. Now, in other words, we ought to be known as what Such and such who serves Jesus Christ, not what job we do. That’s the crust of the issue. Our service is to ourselves. And that’s how we portray ourselves to others. That’s all they know. And if that’s all they know, how can you be serving Christ? Okay, so we’ve gone superficially over or reconstructed? Reconstructed over the three points we talked about last Sunday in the transformation transform life, faith in the Savior, favor of our a fervor in supplication and faithfulness in service.

Now we come to the fourth, and the review is over for now. And we’re going to get into the other practical keys. And the next key is the filling of the Spirit in Acts, chapter 9, verse 17. This is introduced us. And Ananas went his way and entered into the house and putting his hands on him. That’s Saul said brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus that appeared unto thee in. In the way as thou, Camus, which is on the Damascus road. And he reminds him that it was in fact Jesus that he met on the Damascus road.

Ananas had reached him. And you remember that God sent Ananas to him as he’s seated there blind in Judas’s house. And he says, has sent me that thou, Midas, receive thy sight. First of all, he sent Ananias to have a miracle to receive his sight and he and be filled with the Holy Spirit. Remember that John and Peter had to go to Samaria to see the process of Philip. And in doing so, the only way that the people could receive the Holy Spirit was the praying and laying on the hands by John and Peter, right? Because they were still in the dispensation prior to the church.

Well, so, so are we here. Paul has not yet been completely transformed. He’s not so so. And Ananias is working on behalf of God to lay on hand so Paul could receive the Holy Spirit in that dispensation. Once Paul had received the Holy Spirit in that dispensation, the dispensation of the church began. And the complete shift of the dispensations in the book of Acts had now taken final shape. 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. We just, we talked about that earlier, but the transformation comes about visibly. Remember now the positional transformation takes place at salvation. But this visible transformation before the world begins to take place, when the believer yields to the Holy Spirit and the feeling of the Holy Spirit takes place. Now, we’ve looked at this as well, many times in many different directions. And if you have still have questions on the. This immediate trans. The immediate receiving of the Holy Spirit, I would ask you to go back and look at the several discussions that we’ve had on that subject and, and sort of bring yourself up to speed.

But the Holy Spirit, just as a footnote, begins with the Holy Spirit here, I think is bestowed upon Saul because Ananias, working on behalf of God, like John and like the rest of the apostles did in the fulfill in the fulfilling of the Holy Spirit into someone’s life, had to lay hands on Saul because Saul was a Jew and he was in that dispensation period. Then a step further, he is filled with the Holy Spirit. But let’s back up to his receiving the Holy Spirit, because I think that becomes very interesting for us. The Holy Spirit was bestowed upon Saul without the laying on of hands of the apostles.

In every other occasion in the book of Acts, when a new group of people receive salvation, they never received the Holy Spirit until the apostles came and laid hands on them. Whether it be 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 representation representatives of the Church. They were the authority of the Church. And so in a very real sense, God wanted to make sure that all of these other groups, be they Samaritans, Gentiles or Jews, realized that they were under the authority of what? The Church, the apostles.

Why? Because when the apostles were given their great commission, they not only went out and taught the faith to individuals, but they rid the government of the evil pagan gods. So these groups had to understand that when the apostles came into their area, they were completely responsible to the Church. Where is our government responsible to the Church today? Not why, because we’ve lost our way. They didn’t lose their way. We just gave it back to them. 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, like we do now in the Church and the Gentiles all on their own. You have had three different church groups, three different religions. And they would never have gotten together to create what one church in Christ. Christ is the head of the church. You don’t have Jews ahead of a church or a Gentile ahead of church. And Samaritans head of their church. Religion does not exist in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So God in his marvelous plan wanted to make the body one the church, make sure that they all received the Holy Spirit in the same way.

Consistency with the Jews present at the hands of the apostles. So they so that there was only one church. And Peter goes on running back to Jerusalem and says, you guys will never believe it. They’ve got the same gift as we have. And that’s exactly what God wanted them to say. So that there was only one church. But in the case of Saul, it’s very interesting, there are no apostles present. Why? Principle number one. Saul was in no way under the authority of the apostles. You got to hear me. He was in no way under the authority of the apostles.

Why? Because he himself was what? An apostle. And so God does not subject Saul to other authority. All the apostles, their authority structure came directly from Jesus Christ. So had got Christ required Saul to go under the authority of the other apostles. Then he would not have the same authority as those apostles did because he would be underneath their authority and not the authority of Jesus Christ. You may say he’s out of due season. That’s correct. He’s. He’s in the wrong dispensation. Yes, but he had to be because the church had not yet come to be.

He’s an equal to the other apostles. Therefore the only the other apostles are not necessary to bring the Holy spirit to him. Second point. In John 15:16, Jesus said to the apostles, you have not chosen me, I have chosen you. That’s what he says in Ephesians about us. He choses that he chooses us. He predestines. He calls us. He writes our name in the land book of life. Before we were ever born, he did the same to the apostles. He says, I have ordained you that you should go forth. Who appointed the apostles? Jesus Christ himself.

And so here you have Saul being confronted by the Jesus on the Damascus road, appointed by Jesus with a commission to the apostolate. And who gave the Holy Spirit to the apostles on the day of Pentecost? Jesus himself, who said, when I go to heaven, I’ll send what my spirit back. And therefore on this day Jesus him helps himself, does the commissioning, the saving and the sending of the Holy Spirit in the case of Saul, so that he fits the pattern of the apostle. That’s the reason why all of the reasons or the capability or not capability, all of the conditions to become apostle cannot be met today because they didn’t have a single relationship at one time in the day of Jesus Christ.

That’s reason why later on he says, I am an apostle appointed by Jesus Christ. And he says that several times throughout scripture to make sure that everybody knows that just like the other apostles, Paul was appointed by Jesus Christ. So just that little footnote to show why it is that he received the Spirit in a different way. Now, in addition to receiving the Spirit, he is to be filled with the Spirit. Okay? When you are saved, you get the Holy Spirit, you receive the Holy Spirit, and in that instant you’re completely full because he did. The Holy Spirit doesn’t halfway fill your heart up.

It gives you one, one big bomb of the Holy Spirit and you’re completely filled at that moment. Now, it’s one thing to have something, and it’s something completely different to be filled with it again and again and again and again. Because the Holy Spirit is like a gas tank. It rises and falls with input, right? You use it up and you refill it by what, sanctification? So he is now to be filled with the Spirit. Now let me just give you a quick definition of this and then I’ll show you some. Something that’s really beautiful to see how the Holy Spirit operates in the Spirit filled life.

But to begin with, the filling of the Spirit is a common term in Acts. Says that a lot in Acts. It’s also a common term In Ephesians, Ephesians 5, 18, where it says, every believer is to be. Is to be bing. Is to be being kept filled of the Spirit. That’s the moving the gas tank up. All right? To full. This is the part of the transformed life. It means two things. It means control and power. Okay? When you need to exercise control and you need to, to have the power to exercise that control, you use your guess, you use the Spirit.

Now if you need, if, if, if you need additional control and power and you’ve already used a large portion of the Holy Spirit up, you got to refill yourself. And you do that through sanctification. You got to study, you got to pray, you got to do this stuff, you got to feed that seed, you got to continue to feed that seed. Now, I think of it this way. You walk into a room and just like Christ when he was walking down the street and he says, somebody touched me because why he felt an energy of him leaving himself.

I have gone into rooms, and I’m sure you have too, where I feel like coming out of it, I am drained, number one. I don’t want to be around anybody else because I can’t deal with them. Okay? I got to have a rejuvenation. Time to recharge my jets. All right. That’s what we’re talking about here. The filling of the Spirit is a question of control and power. Now, as an individual who’s a Christian, you have a choice. You can run your own life or you can yield to the control of the Holy Spirit. As we’ve been saying a lot in our studies, your life is made up of nothing more than decisions.

You either do what you want or you do what the Spirit wants. Now, if you’re mature, you and the Holy Spirit want the same thing. And that’s the definition of spiritual maturity. When there’s no conflict in the two wills. I’ve always said the first per. The first person you should talk to on any. Before any decisions made. What the Spirit always ask guides. I don’t. Little, little decisions, doesn’t matter. Little big, whatever. You get in a habit of talking to the Spirit. And then when those big things up, you can seek out the Spirit on a much more hearty level.

But to begin with, you can only do what your desires say or you can only do what the Spirit of God says. The feeling of the Spirit is simply controlled by the Spirit. And whenever there is control, there is power. You have no power in this world unless you have control. And you can only control this world by the one who has the authority to control. Therefore, if you feel like you have no control and no power in what’s going on in your life, that’s probably true. Why? Because you’re not filled with the Holy Spirit. The term fulfilling, which is used in Ephesians 5:18, is the same word that is used for wind that fills the cells of a ship and it moves the ship along.

Okie dokie. Wind. What is wind? It’s air. What’s air? It’s God’s breath. So what he’s saying here is this. The word fulfilling is God’s heir. Every time you breathe, you’re breathing in God. If you’re obedient. Think of this, the process. If you’re obedient, living correctly in God’s standards, with. With all of the sins being completely forgiven, you’re. You’re living, you know, a sanctified life. The only thing you need to do is breathe. Because in every breath God refills the Holy Spirit with the revelation of who he is. There’s no such thing as being filled with the Spirit and sitting around are being filled with the Spirit and sitting in the corner somewhere meditating.

Meditation’s good. That’s prayer. But to do it all the time means that you’re not of service to God. Your service to yourself. That is not what the feeling of the Spirit is. The feeling of the Spirit always empowers for some kind of what activity. It’s getting you ready to do something. So it’s a question of yielding to the Spirit, who then empowers you. The Spirit is there. It’s a question of obeying him, his will. That’s the filling of the Spirit. And in every case where individuals were filled with the Spirit, they begun to do something. Your adrenaline is at its max.

Isn’t that interesting? If you just go through the Book of Acts and study it like we’re doing, which you can see, unless it’s a boring discussion, it’s a fantastic study because it gives you everything. To understand what Ephesians is telling you to do, you can do a little study in your own mind on the filling of the spirit. Acts 2, 4. They were filled with the Spirit and began to speak. Of course they did in verse 14. But Peter, standing up with the 11, lifted up his voice. Spirit filled people don’t sit around, they do something.

In chapter four, verse eight. Then Peter filled with the Spirit and and was all away he goes, preaches a sermon. And in verse 31, and it says, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and they spoke the word of God with boldness. And you come over to chapter six, verse eight. And Stephen, full of the faith and power, where did he get the power? Verse 5 says it was from the Holy Spirit. And what did he do? He did great wonders, miracles among the people. And later on, of course, we see him preaching in Samaria.

And Stephen in chapter 7, verse 55, being filled full with the Holy Spirit, looked up to the heavens, saw the glory of the Lord and Jesus standing on the right hand of the God and said, and away he went. Whenever there’s a feeling of the Spirit in a life, something happens. And you can usually tell the non Spirit filled Christians because they do nothing. In fact, do you realize it is so hard to tell a Christian who is not filled with the Holy Spirit from an unsaved person that sometimes only knows God? Why? Well, listen to this.

Your position on transformation. What’s that? Salvation. Your positional transformation is a fact. That God is aware of. The only way I can ever know you have really been transformed is when I see it expert, expert experientially in your life. So if there’s nothing happening in your life, what did I talk about? The only way I know a Christian, true Christian is by the fruits. If you’re producing no fruits, I have no way of knowing whether you’re saved or not. Same thing God. God may know you’re saved, but I may not have that famous idea because I see no fruits.

Ever had, have you ever had anybody say to you this? Pray for us so and so and so and so. And you say, well are they Christians? Guys, I want you to really think about this. You can pray for non Christians, but the first thing that God has to do is get them safe to interact with them. So if you don’t even know whether they’re Christians or not, you might be praying just on dead ears. What did Christ do in his healing process? First he saved the soul. He went to the heart and allowed the heart to heal the body.

We want to do the complete opposite. And this person might come back says well I don’t know for sure. And then they said why? Because they are either there, they are of either are not spirit filled and indistinguishable from unsaved people. Now if they’re unsaved, only God knows. And that’s why so many times people say but you think so and so and so and so are saved. I don’t have any idea about that. You ask me do you think it, do you think I’m truly saved or can you tell me how I’m truly saved? I said well you know the only way I can send you to John first John, let you do self assessment or I see the fruits of your life and I can tell you from the fruits of your life the only way you’re going to produce those fruits is through salvation.

That’s scripture. So I can’t tell you whether you’re saved or not unless I see the fruits. So God is the only one with factual positioning to know whether or not you have been positionally transformed. Why? Because it’s obvious they’re not visibly transformed. So the filling of the Spirit then is that which is really yielding in my life to the control of the Spirit which always results in what power we had dominion when Adam was here. Adam gave the two keys away to Satan. Upon transfer TR transgressing against God in the garden, Christ came and got those two keys.

He didn’t give them back to Mankind, he gave him back to his government. So the only way that we get power is through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And if we are saved? Saved. You have dominion, power over this world. Only by the control of the Holy Spirit. You shall receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you. Dunamis Dynamite. You’ll be literally exploding sticks of dynamite. But some Christians are deads. The reason is because they’re not filled and controlled. If you’re controlled, you have power. And it’s the responsibility, you see, of the child of God to submit to the will of God not only at the point of salvation or on a once for all basis.

That means just getting your ticket. But every day I die daily. Every day. Remember what Paul said, I die first. Corinthians 15. What, daily crucify himself? Every day. Every day. Every day. Just crucify my will, crucify my ego and do what the spirit wants. That’s being filled with the Holy Spirit. Now you might say, how can you define it further? Well, let me try a different way. Let me define it by an opposite. So you can sort of get the, get the picture here. The opposite of being filled with the Spirit is first. Thessalonians, chapter 5, verse 19.

Quince. Not the Spirit. To Quince, the Spirit doesn’t mean you remove him from your life. Because once saved, always said no. You can’t do that. The quincing means you say no to him. You don’t get him involved with you. You don’t first seek his advice before making a decision. You say no to the spirit. When you say yes to the Spirit, you’re filled with his control and power. When you say no, you’re filled with the self, with self and no power. So you’re either filled or quenching. That’s it. There’s no in between. There is no fence to ride here.

There’s no subjectivity to individual decisions. I’m going to ask on this one and I’m not going to ask on that one. You, you either are filled or you’re quincing. You can’t do both. And you go through your whole life that way. The Christian at all times is either filled with the spirit or quincing the spirit. Now to put it in a positive sense, to be filled with the spirit is to always live submissive to the will of Christ. Paul even said in Romans 8:36, Listen to what he has to say here. For for thy sake we are killed all the day long.

We are counted as sheep for the slaughter. In other words, I’M so committed to your will, Christ’s will. If I need to die, so be it. And he did, by the way. So being filled with the Spirit is a question of control which ushers in power. Now, how does the Spirit fill life relate to transformation? Remember, we’re on the, the practice side of this, not the positioning. We’re already positioned. Now we’re practicing transformation. You got to stay with me on this. It’s going to be very simple but very practical. Whenever the Spirit of God comes into a life of a Christian, there, there’s a little process that he began, must begin to do.

You don’t sit on your backside and you don’t start servicing God. We talk about transformation. Now we’re not necessarily saying that he just completely rips up everything you were and throws it away and starts from scratch. That’s not what happens. You know, a lot of people afraid of that. That’s what I wanted to have happen in my life, but it never did. So I just said screw it, all right? And went on about my way to be later come to, to the knowledge of really what this is to make it all work. Now in that tape, in the discussion.

Sorry, I, I meant to write the actual discussion down and I didn’t. So I can’t mention that tape. In that discussion that we did on the will of God, I mentioned the fact that the kid who came to me and was afraid, who talked about this individual, he was, he was a well known individual and he was afraid of God’s will. He thought God wanted to break both of his legs and make him play a flute. They just, he just thought that God was angry with him in so much that he was not doing his will and he thought he was just going to be a flute player.

And you know that God is just in the business of just ripping you apart and replacing you with some kind of thing. Now my conversation with this guy, I said that’s not how it works. God gives you your talents at birth. He expects you to feed those talents that he’s given you to their fullest perfection. And he gives you gifts. Yeah. And those gifts supplement your talents. But there’s this idea that everything you, you are gets jammed down some sovereign drain. And everything God wants you to be is, is redone. And you might not like it, that isn’t so.

There are two things that happen when a person comes under the control of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit filled life. First of all, there are some things the Holy Spirit sorts out to be retained. In other words, he Does a house cleaning. Remember, Christ sets in your heart as his home. You’re his temple. So the Holy Spirit does some house cleaning. There are some things about you that are good enough to hang on to. Even things about your character and your personality. Saul had a few of those. There are other things that are worthless and he just chucks them all together.

He wants them out. So the process of transformation of the Holy Spirit is the process, number one, of refining what’s useful and eliminating what isn’t and replacing it with what is to begin with. Look at Saul. Just for the sake of understanding this, this point, God refines certain things that he already had. First of all, think of it this way. He was a leader, wasn’t he? Well, he was a leader by nature, a talent. Some people are leaders, some people are followers. That’s the talent that God gave you at birth. Now that’s just the way they’re made.

They’re just some leaders. And he was a leader by nature. People followed him. He led people everywhere he went. Matter of fact, he had an entourage. He was a groupie, hey, groups of people to follow him. So is Christ, by the way. He had a whole bunch of people trailing him around on this crusade of his. He had a natural instinct, a natural active motivation that trapped other people in his causes. Yeah, it’s trimming of branches, house cleaning. He was a leader. He would have been a great leader. If it have never been a Christian, why he would have fit very nicely in a governmental position.

God didn’t necessarily save him and say, now I’m going to give you poor lonely followers some leadership ability. Oh, he was born with it. He inherited much of it. And it was refined as he grew up. And when God transferred him, God realized that’s something to hang on to. So the Holy Spirit had the work of not eliminating leadership, but of refining it. Masterpiece. And so he took all of that energy of leadership and all of that ability to get people to fight his cousin causes and he turned it towards Jesus Christ. And everywhere Paul went, he led.

It’s hard enough to begin a work in one church, but to, but to fun to found dozens and dozens of churches. This is what Paul did. He found churches, dozens and dozens all over the world and make them all go. You’ve got to have some kind of leadership ability. And remember, he was rooting out the pagan gods at the same time. And he had it. And the Spirit has simply refined it. You see, the Spirit is in the business of redirecting the strengths of that are already there within Us as well as adding new things. Another thing that Paul had as characteristics that I think is a terrific one is he had strong willpower, he had boldness.

He didn’t back down. He was courageous. I imagine he was some kind of guy. You couldn’t talk out of anything. Matter of fact, Christ or, or the Holy Spirit tried to talk him out of going into what, Jerusalem or Rome. I’m sorry, Rome. Okay. Oh, it’s Jerusalem. Anyway, so he said, don’t go there. And Paul says, no, I’m going there. And when he went there, he got thrown in jail, okay? So everybody was trying to warn him not to do it, not to do it. And he was so headstrong that he just went anyway. Now he, he was, he was disciplined and he could discipline himself to do something and this will couldn’t be changed.

And I like the fact that he was decisive. I like that fact in, in a lot of cases to the individuals in this group, because you guys have become bolden. You’re not wishy washy anymore, okay? He never stood around fumbling, trying to make up his mind. He just set his face and. And bang, he was off. He was very decisive and very disciplined. Now that’s strong willpower. And the thing is, he usually accomplished what he was chasing. And you know, the Holy Spirit looked at him and saw that willpower and said, that’s to be retained. That’s what, that’s what the house cleaning is.

The Holy Spirit goes inside. If he looks at everything about you and says, okay, here’s, here’s a file cabinet and a trash can. I’m going to put this stuff in the file cabinet. We’ll come back to it. And I want to throw these things away. And when I’m done purging these two, then I’m going to come back to the file cabinet. We’re going to take one thing after another after another, and we’re going to refine it. That’s a valuable commodity. We can use that. And that. And it was that turned toward Jesus Christ. And there was never anyone or anybody pursued Christians with more of a vengeance than that man.

But there was never anyone, anybody who pursued God and God’s will any more than that man either because he had that kind of drive and discipline. In First Corinthians says this, now know ye not that they who run in race. Chapter 9, verse 24. Run, all but one receiveth the price. So run that you may place. Is that what he said? So run that you may win. You don’t want to Place you want to obtain the crown. Every man that striveth for the master, he is temperate in all things. He’s disciplined. Temperate means discipline. Discipline your body, he says, why? Because you want to be pure.

Purity is the number one element learned in Ephesians, chapter four. You’ve got to watch what you do because you’re going to be disciplined. So Iran, he says, not as uncertainty. So I fight. So fight I not as one that beateth the air. I. I air, guys. Air. That’s air. God, I’m not. I’m not one. As one that beateth the air. In other words, I’m not one to beat his God, okay? I’m not a shadow boxer. I bang the opponent right on the chops and I even keep my body and bring it into subjection. That’s discipline, guys.

I mean, this guy used that strong willpower to decide discipline himself and to set his direction and go there. And nothing stopped him. Another thing about him that the Spirit of God polished off and retained was his persistence. And this fits right on the heels of the other one. Nothing stopped him when he set his mind to it. He chased it down, no matter what it cost him. And I go back and in this thing about him going to Jerusalem. And I always thought of the time when he went, go to Jerusalem. And everybody along the trail kept saying, don’t go, don’t go.

And where did he go? He went to Jerusalem. It never slowed him down. He says, I’m ready to go to Jerusalem. And he took off for Jerusalem. And God turned that around. And what did he say? I pressed towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Jesus Christ. He said that in Philippians, nothing stopped him. Persistent. What a great quality. The Spirit refined it and used it for the glory of God. He had another quality that I think is also as good. He had a strong, inflexible conviction. Now, they were all wrong, of course, prior to his salvation, because his conviction was to go kill the Jews.

But he was so strong on his convictions that he was hostile before and after. After he got saved. The strength of his condition. Convictions, convictions was the genius of his ministry. Got to think about that. It gave him the drive. He stood his ground. Nobody pushed him. He didn’t give in on his theology. He didn’t accommodate anybody. He went into places like the Bull in a china closet and tore up everything. And when people started hassling him about what he believed, he said, like it or lump it, take it or leave it. If you don’t like it, leave in so many terms.

And he created riots everywhere he went. If you, you don’t see all of that in the Bible in detail a lot, but if you go into the historical books of the, of the original Jews in the, in the first century, this is absolutely true. Almost everywhere he went he created a riot. And the riot was good and evil. It wasn’t about what we see today in the streets. He was overthrowing the pagan gods and people didn’t like it. You know, that kind of inflexibility is great when it comes to conviction. Once in a while it got him into trouble, like the incident in Acts 23, because it shows his humanness and it just shows you what kind of guy he was.

He was so strong and so inflexible, headstrong, determined. He got himself into trouble. I’m just going to read this to you. And Paul earnestly beholding the council, okay, now he’s talking to the Sanhedrin. He looked at these men, you know, he was so bold. Anyway, he just looked at all of these leaders in Israel and he said, this man and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day. They were already indicting him. You know, the fact that he was really a blasphemer of God. He says this, I’ve lived before God in good conscience.

And the high priest Ananias commanded them that they stood by to smite him on the mouth. Somebody whacked him in the mouth. Then said Paul unto them, God shall smite thee, thou wideth wall. The kind of lost his cool for for cities thou to judge me after the law and commandeth me to be smitten contrary to the law. Boy, he really let the guy have it. And somebody says, revise thou God’s high priest. Then Paul says, I knew not, you know, didn’t know it was the high priest part says, thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people.

Oh, sorry about that. So, you know, this kind of conviction and flexibility and hostility got him into trouble, at least on that occasion and a few times more. But it was also his genius. Think of yourself. Righteous indignation, the ability to take your anger in the direction towards Jesus Christ and let somebody have it in an un vengeful manner. That feels good. There’s something to be said for somebody who believes something and lives and dies for it. And that’s what Paul did. Another thing about him that the spirit of God didn’t eliminate, but only refined was his self sufficiency and his independence.

He was a, was a Terrify independent guy. Anybody who would just march off and evangelize in unknown terror territory all alone and just have a great time doing it is independent. Now you know, in Acts 17 chapter he arrives in Athens. Athens is the center of all kinds of anti God religions. All, all kinds of world philosophies and cultures and all kinds of stuff going on. He’s one little lonely guy and you think he’d go hide somewhere in obscurity and pray for reinforcements. What he does, he bursts out in the middle of town and he starts having public debates on the street.

Pretty soon he finds his way to the or pegas on Mars Hill and he starts preaching to everybody. And to whom he is preaching? The educated people of the world. Oh my gosh. And what’s he telling them? You people don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t understand that this unknown God is none other than the only God. And he tells them the truth. You say he’s kind of a bold guy. You better believe it. Self sufficient, independent. He said, I’m going over there. And he’d just take off. So we’ll see later in our study of, of Paul.

He was so persistent in Jerusalem that finally the disciples packed him up and hauled him off to, to Saria just to get him out of there. They were tired of him. Well, they were tired of him because he was showing them up. But they dumped him off there and they put him on a boat and sent him to Tarsus. You know what he did? He founded churches all over Tarsus, Salisha. He went everywhere. Founding churches all by himself. He just took off. Completely independent, completely self efficient. Do you realize the number of churches he started versus the number of churches, the total 11 and did.

Yeah, paste them all. Combine. He had a little hassle with the, with a guy who came along with him, John, Mark didn’t like him, sent him home. Very independent. Well, that’s a commodity that the spirit of God can use. Because you see, to do the kind of thing he needed to do, he had to be independent. Oh, children, children. Independence of children. Sometimes it’s a good thing and sometimes it’s a bad thing. A free spirited, free will child that’s independent causes parents nightmares. But at the end of the day, if you teach them right, all of that stuff is used for good at the end of the day.

And so God simply refined and polished that characteristic. He had another characteristic that I actually love and that was his boldness. He was brash. He would just say anything to anybody. And I had an Aunt that did this, oh my gosh. Didn’t matter where you were, who’s around, or the environment. If she had something to say and it didn’t matter how she said it, she said it. Sometimes I just wanted to go be a mouse in the corner. Have you met, ever met anybody like that? I mean, you just kind of go, oh no. They just walk up to anybody and say anything.

Have you ever had anybody that shares Christ like that? You know, they go up to a tree and just, you know, let me just talk to the tree. That’s interesting, by the way. Well, he had that kind of boldness. He just said what he thought and he in the face of the Christ hating Jews, God used that ability. God polished off his boldness in Acts 22. He went into the face of those Christ hating Jews and he started preaching at them right in Dream Jerusalem. And it got so hot that they started a riot. He was bold.

He defended himself boldly before Tullius and Agrippa and Felix and probably before Nero. And another thing about him the Holy Spirit used was he was a pragmatist. Everything had to be utilitarian. He never wasted any motion. Everything he did was cut and dried. He was the master of using his time and his talent. No wasted effort. And I’m gonna tell you something, God uses that. Can you ever think back to in your life and look at those days and chart up the wasted motions that you did? Another thing about him that God retained was he had a spirit of a crusader.

He was always fighting a great cause. He was always chasing after some impossible accomplishment. And that’s exactly what God wanted because he was a crusader from the word go. When he got into the ministry of Jesus Christ, bearing Christ’s name where he wasn’t named. And then he was a motivated man. Oh, and I want to tell you, God wants motivated people. If you want to read about motivated him, just go to second Corinthians, chapter five. It’s all there. The love of Christ motivated him. The second coming of Christ motivated him. The final and glorious work that Christ could do in changing a life motivated him so.

So much so that he was beaten within an inch of his life time after time after time. But he just kept getting up and continued doing what he did. After had been left for dead from being stoned, he stood right up and preached again. Packed off, preached again. Another characteristic he had, and we don’t very often think about that God would use it and that was he was long winded and liked to talk, which of course is a wonderful characteristic to some people if they’ve got something good to say. Transparent here. My mother talked non stop, but she talked about anything and everything.

If she wanted to have a great conversation, it was, it was nice conversation to have with her, but she just rambled and it got to the point that I learned to tune her out. She could be talking all along and I didn’t hear a word she said until she threw something at me to gain my attention. I looked over and said, what was this for? You’re not paying attention to me. Okay, well, I still have that issue sometimes. Today with Misty last night on the couch was one. We were watching a movie, it was a great movie and she was talking and I was so engulfed in the movie that I listened to the first two words and didn’t hear the rest.

And oh my gosh, I should have listened. And God really uses this. Okay, this is one he didn’t discard and I’m so glad he didn’t. The spirit just refined it a little bit. But you know, when he went to Ephesus, he preached all the time, all day, for all the years he was there. In Acts chapter 20, we find how God used it. I know he loved to talk even before. He was probably involved in debate after debate after debate. But in chapter 2020 of Acts and verse seven, we have a most interesting occasion when God used his long winded characteristics.

It says on the first day of the week when the disciples came together to break bread. Now this is interesting. Paul preached unto them, oh, this is ready to depart on the next day and continue this speech until midnight. So he preached what, almost two days non stop to the disciples. No, no, you’re not laughing about that. And there were many lights in the upper chamber where they were gathered together and they sat in a window. A certain young man named Eucharist began falling into deep sleep while Paul was preaching. And it is true that if you go too long, some people do not off, it just happens.

And as Paul was long preaching, the Holy Spirit even acknowledged that he sank down with sleep and fell down from the third loft and was taken up dead. So even Paul preached people to death. All right, they fell asleep, fell out of windows. But do you think that deterred Paul? No, he’s only on point two in his sermon. And there was four points and he said it was in the second day. And so Paul went down and fell on him and embraced him and says, terrible not yourselves, trouble not yourself, for his life is in him.

God gave him power to heal the the man, he brought him back to life. Then what happened when he therefore was come up again? In other words, he was. He was brought back to life. What do you think? They all marched back up to the third floor again? No, had breaking bread and eaten and talked a long while, even till break of next day. So he departed, they went back to the second set and they went on from midnight to dawn. So he brought this guy back to life, went down to. To the floor, brought him back to life.

They all went back up to the third floor and he kept preaching. They might ought to rejoice here because in verse 12 and they brought the young man alive and were not a little compelled, not, not. And we’re not a little comforted. But here’s a characteristics of a man that God even used to bring about a miracle. One guy said, that gives me the right to preach long. And somebody replied to him and said, well, when you can raise him from the dead, you can do that. So first of all, then God refines certain characteristics. The second thing that God did was eliminate certain others.

Clearing the house. Now you see, this is part of the spiritual life. When a person is spirit controlled, the spirit is refining, just like you’ve seen him do in the transformation of Saul. Not only is there refining, but there’s some elimination. You know, there are some things in our lives that are absolutely worthless. And so those are just totally discarded and replaced by other things. And those things we see. Okay, we’re going to stop here. We’ve looked at post life in three different directions. We got one more to go to get it all down in perspective for us to move forward.

I hope this is helpful to you. Any comments or questions, points. Yes, well, this kind of ties in with yesterday, what you were talking about on the sub stack and you used the word masterpiece. Yeah, well, we have piece. I’m going to do an analogy on this. It’s H5408 and H5409. That’s to divide, disassemble, fragment. So that takes us completely out of God’s mindset. But then we have. We do peace. We’ll go to H7965. That’s Shalom. That’s completeness, that’s soundness, that’s peace. So pay. We need to really look at how these words are being used in scripture.

You know, it’s volunteering and thanks of a peace offering as well. And that’s H8002. So thank you for this lesson. Welcome. Anything else, guys? Just we use Paul as, as our example One thing that I did many, many, many years ago is I did my self assessment and then I. I did one on Paul and I overlaid it on mine to see how close I was. Shocking. Shocking. Anything else, guys? Okay, let’s pray. Father, thank you for this morning again getting into your word. Thank you for giving us the example that you’ve given to us in a man that transforms every individual’s life, gives us a baseline that we each can match to in our own life and see the actual very presence of yourself in his life and how we need to use that as an example for ours.

Father, we ask that you be with us for the remainder of this week as this world continues to change in front of our eyes. And may we see that the glory of God in it and receive the peace and joy and understanding that you’re in control. And Father, we ask continue to open our eyes and hearts to the wisdom and knowledge of your scriptures and the revelation you give us in in our worship of you and administering growth to the salvational seed that you’ve given us. Father, we ask that you continue to forgive our sins as we may.

Ask forgiveness and provide health and healing is is needed comfort as the heart is broken. And Father, may we continue to look upon you in all things, asking your Holy Spirit for guidance before we make a single decision. Thank you for your son. Thank you for the death on the cross. Thank you for the burial and resurrection and the victory that came with that. And thank you for the ability to go home, ask all these things in your son’s name.
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