Today we reach the end of a small series of three meetings between Jesus, on the one hand, and, on the other, a Rogue Trader (Zacchaeus), a Loose Woman and – today – a Religious Fanatic.
One of the most famous meetings in history must have been that which occurred on 10th November 1871 on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, when the American reporter Henry Stanley finally came face-to-face with the Scots missionary David Livingston, of whom there had been no accurate news in Europe for the previous five years. He greeted him with those famous words, “Dr. Livingston, I presume?” The point of that somewhat banal greeting was a story that had been circulating at that time of two missionaries who had met on a jungle path in a remote part of Africa and had simply tipped their hats to one another and walked on – because they had never been introduced to each other. And Victorian etiquette insisted that you did not speak to those you had not been introduced to. So Stanley was at great pains to greet Livingston in an appropriate manner for two men who had not been introduced to each other, lest Livingston refused to acknowledge him, and Stanley’s two year search should come to a disappointing conclusion – “Dr. Livingston, I presume?”
You may have had a not dissimilar problem in life. How to address someone we’ve never met before – perhaps someone we particularly want to impress? Maybe someone of the other sex, perhaps it’s someone we are hoping may become our future father-in-law or mother-in-law? And we think: What should I call them? What would be appropriate? Well that issue of how to address someone lies behind the passage we are looking at together now – because if I am going to meet God, what do I call Him? How should I address Him? But we will return to that in a moment
First we must set this passage in its context. Paul, the early Christian missionary, had been imprisoned and had appealed to the highest tribunal available to him as a Roman citizen: to appear before Caesar himself in Rome. The Roman Governor Festus had agreed to that request, and now needed to write a report to Caesar about Paul’s case. And so Festus had seized the opportunity of an official visit by the local Jewish puppet-king, Herod Agrippa II, to bring Paul out from his prison cell and find out a bit more about him. Paul, as we can see from verses 2 and 3 of Acts chapter 26, was delighted at the opportunity – particularly to speak before an educated Jew like King Agrippa.
We are going to consider the first 3 sections of what Paul said in his own defence.
1) The Difference between Religion and Faith (vv 4-8)
“The Jews all know the way I have lived ever since I was a child, from the beginning of my life in my own country, and also in Jerusalem. They have known me for a long time and can testify, if they are willing, that according to the strictest sect of our religion, I lived as a Pharisee” (Acts 26:4, 5).
Paul had had the strictest religious upbringing. He had been brought up as a Pharisee. But that strict religious observance had not brought him into a living relationship with God. There will be those here today who know just that same experience – baptised in infancy, sent to Sunday School, brought up to go to church, to say prayers, to read the Bible, to be confirmed, to try to be good – but no living relationship with God.
Paul does not condemn his upbringing. But he makes it clear that it needed to lead to something more: “And now it is because of my hope in what God has promised our fathers that I am on trial today. This is the promise our twelve tribes are hoping to see fulfilled as they earnestly serve God day and night. O King, it is because of this hope that the Jews are accusing me. Why should any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead?” (vv. 6-8). The Jews in general, and the Pharisees in particular, had two great hopes: (1) that God would intervene in human history and (2) that there was life after death. In the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead Paul believed that those two hopes had come together. It showed that Jesus was the Messiah, God’s intervention in history, and that there was life beyond the grave. And Paul was amazed at his fellow Jews’ reluctance to accept that. While the religion he had been brought up in was very different from the faith he had discovered as an adult, he believed the one should lead to the other, because Jesus is the logical conclusion to sincere religious enquiry. The fact that Jesus is alive and that Christian faith offers a living encounter with a living God distinguishes it from every other religion. Sadhu Sundar Singh, a convert to Christianity from Sikkhism, was once asked what he had found in the Christian faith that he had not found in any other of the world’s great religions. He replied simply, “Jesus Christ.”
We can illustrate it with these simple diagrams:
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To the human predicament (what has been called ‘that fatal self-interest and moral perversity that soaks our world with blood and tears’) there are only three basic solutions:
a) The solution of self-help, climb your way out by your own efforts – by keeping a moral code or by following religious observances: Islam, Jehovah’s Witnesses, cults. The figure on the right might represent the Prophet Mohammad:-
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(b) Change your state of mind, so that it no longer seems to be a predicament: Buddhism, New Age Cults, Eastern Religion. Here, the figure on the right could be Prince Gautama, the Buddha:-
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c) God has come Himself in the Person of Jesus Christ to save us.
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The other religions are saying, in one way or another, “Do!”: “Do this or that, and you will live (or you will attain enlightenment).” Christianity alone says, to us in our human predicament, “Done!” Jesus has done it for us. The puzzle in all this is that so many misunderstand the Christian faith as though it were the first or the second of those two ways. Rather than a living relationship with God it becomes Churchianity, do-goodery, try-to-be-goodery, or escape from reality – a sort of cop out. So that someone can be a clergyman, can be a bishop, and still be unconverted. The 18th Century clergyman John Berridge wrote this quaint epitaph for his own gravestone:
HERE LIE
THE EARTHLY REMAINS OF
JOHN BERRIDGE,
THE LATE VICAR OF EVERTON,
AND AN ITINERANT SERVANT OF JESUS CHRIST,
WHO LOVED HIS MASTER AND HIS WORK,
AND AFTER RUNNING ON HIS ERRANDS MANY YEARS
WAS CALLED TO WAIT ON HIM ABOVE.
the gravestone continues:
READER,
Art thou born again?
No salvation without new birth!
I was born in sin, February 1716.
Remained ignorant of my fallen state till 1730
Lived proudly on faith and works for salvation till 1754 *
Fled to Jesus alone for refuge, 1756
Fell asleep in Christ, January 22nd, 1793.
I think we can safely assume that he did not provide the details of that last line himself!
(* In the meantime he had become ordained and Vicar of Everton.)
Notice that he had been a vicar for five years before he got converted – the difference between religion and faith.
But if it’s a puzzle how people can try to dress themselves in Christian clothes without ever meeting Jesus Christ (what I’m calling The Difference between Religion and Faith), there is a greater puzzle, which we must also consider.
2) The Hostility between Religion and Faith (vv 9-11)
“I too was convinced that I ought to do all that was possible to oppose the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And that is just what I did in Jerusalem. On the authority of the chief priests I put many of the saints in prison, and when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them. Many a time I went from one synagogue to another to have them punished, and I tried to force them to blaspheme. In my obsession against them, I even went to foreign cities to persecute them” (vv. 9-11).
When Paul first heard about Jesus Christ, and His resurrection from the dead, Paul did not accept Jesus, he opposed Him: “I too was convinced that I ought to do all that was possible to oppose the name of Jesus of Nazareth.” To oppose the name of Jesus would be to argue against what was said about Jesus by His followers – which is exactly what I found myself doing. Someone explained to me that if I was going to become a Christian, the first step was to admit that I was not a Christian already. That for me was, I think, the hardest step. With all my experience of the outward trappings of Christianity (and I had had plenty in my life), it was very hard to admit that the inner reality was missing. It just wasn’t there, it wasn’t real inside. Now why did I fight against admitting that, and oppose those who were telling me about it?
Well, while sincere religion can (and should) lead to faith, it will require the religious person to call Jesus “Lord”, to hand over control to Him; and that we are most reluctant to do. Our religion can be a way of keeping us in control of our own lives, while we make a token gesture towards God. We sing in a church or a chapel choir perhaps, or attend the odd church service, or we do the odd good deed: just enough, we think to ourselves, to keep God happy and allow us to go on living our own lives in our own way.
There is a natural tendency to recoil from bright light, is there not? I know this may not be a particularly student-friendly illustration, but there will be those among us who had the experience this past week (before the clocks, mercifully, went back last night) of getting up in the dark. And our eyes winced as we switched on the light after the alarm clock went. The Engineers and the Nat. Scis. may perhaps be familiar with this (you Arts students ought to try it sometime).
When Paul first heard about Jesus, he winced and turned away from the light and tried to put it out. But the light would not go out. Nor could he escape from it. If you’ve ever flown westward on a long-haul air flight overnight (say from the UK to the West coast of America) you may have had the experience of the dawn catching up with you as you flew. Perhaps in the middle of the in-flight movie you peeped under the blinds and saw the grey light just coming on the wings of the aircraft from behind. Dawn takes a long, long time to come when you’re flying West. But it always does come: the sun catches up sooner or later, however fast the Boeing 747 is. And so it was for Paul. He’d turned his back; he’d gone with all his energy away from it – but the light was catching him all the time.
3) Overtaken by the Light (vv 12-15)
“On one of these journeys I was going to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests. About noon, O King, as I was on the road, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, blazing around me and my companions. We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic, ‘Saul, Saul [that was his name at that stage – he was later renamed Paul], why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’ Then I asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,’ the Lord replied” (vv. 12-15). “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.” Then I asked, “Who are you, Lord?” “I am Jesus, who you are persecuting.” The goad was the pointed stick they used to control a young ox. Saul, we know, had watched Stephen martyred a little while before; and his conscience had been at work ever since. Deep within he knew that what he was opposing so vehemently in his life was actually good. I’ve talked to many people like that. They argue strongly against the Christian faith, but you can see even as you talk to them that they know it’s the best thing they have ever encountered in life. All the time the light was catching up with Saul.
Notice that the moment of conversion was the moment of recognition: “Who are you, Lord?” “I am Jesus.” Recognising people is so important in life. One trivial story: a woman was woken late at night by a telephone call. and her sleepy and rather grumpy, “Hello!” caused the caller to pause for a moment before she rushed breathlessly into a lengthy explanation: “Mum, this is Sarah and I’m terribly sorry I woke you, but I’m going to be very, very late home. The car’s got a flat tyre, it just went down while we were in the cinema. Please don’t be cross with me, it really isn’t my fault.” Well, since the woman didn’t have any daughters, she broke in, “I’m sorry, but I think you must have got the wrong number. I don’t have a daughter called Sarah.” “Gosh!” said the caller in an awed tone, “I knew you’d be angry mum, but I didn’t think you’d take it that badly!” But failing to recognise the voice of Jesus is a lot more than a mere misunderstanding. It is not that we need light to see Jesus by, in order to recognise Him. It is that Jesus is the light by which we see everything else.
When Paul heard the answer to his question, he knew Jesus is alive. If this voice addressing him was Jesus then Jesus is alive. And that fact opened the door to an entirely new life for Paul. Look at the last verses of our passage – Jesus speaking: “Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen of me and what I will show you. I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.” (vv. 16-18). It was a door opening into a new world for Paul – where there would be relationship with God “. . . I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen of me and what I will show you . . .” (v. 16), where there would be a divine purpose to Paul’s life from now on. “I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God.” Suddenly Paul was no longer trapped in meaninglessness and in time. The Christian faith opens a door at the other end of life, so it does not just end in senility and futility. How does it end? “ . . . from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.” One Christian at work was asked by his boss if he’d work on Sunday, and he said, “No.” The boss said, “We’ll pay you double time.” The Christian said, “No, I’m sorry. I want to go to church.” So the boss said, “What do you get paid for going to church?” And the Christian said, “Well, to be honest, the pay is not great. But the retirement benefit is out of this world.”
Jesus was not offering Paul an easy life. Paul’s life got much tougher from this moment on. You can read about it in other parts of the New Testament. But Jesus was offering Paul a reason for living from now on. Do you have that – a reason for being on this earth? And He was offering him more than that: He was offering him a place in heaven. He was opening a window at the other end of life. Is your life going to end in futility and senility? Or is it going to be a way into eternity? That’s what the Christian faith offers: a living relationship with God now and a place with Him after death.
But if we are going to meet Him, then we are going to have to call Jesus “Lord”. “Who are you, Lord?” “I am Jesus.” That’s the sticking point for some of us. Stanley thought long and deep in order to address Livingston appropriately, on the banks of that African lake. Have you and I ever thought how we should address God? We don’t call Him “Chum”, or “Pal”, or “Friend”, or even “Great Spirit of the Earth, Wind and Fire” or something. We call Jesus “Lord” and we give Him back control of the life that He first gave us – that He gave you and He gave me. It was never ours in the first place although we’ve behaved as if it was.
I want to ask you as I close this morning, whether you have come to that point – of acknowledging that you are not a Christian (that was such a hard step for me) and that there was something here that you have not yet encountered – something present in the lives of other people you knew who were Christians. And then ask of that Person to be Lord, and to take charge and to take control.