All right. The title of our message today is Blind No More. And it’s interesting when we talk about being blind and, and the story we’re gonna delve into is, is from Saul, or we better know him as Paul and he had an interesting comeback story. Now, who in here is a a fan of baseball? Anybody a fan of baseball here? This after or this morning? Yeah, kind of. All right. So do you know there’s a team here in Arizona named the Diamondbacks? Have you heard about this team? Okay. I’m new to Arizona, so bear with me. All right, so when I got to Arizona, I researched the sports teams and I found out that the Arizona Diamondbacks, did you know, they had a huge comeback in 2001. Apparently they were an expansion team in 1997. Okay? For you guys who don’t enjoy baseball, I’m sorry, bear with me for a moment. But anyways, 2001, they were four years in the league. They go and they play in the World Series to the New York Yankees. Ugh. Game seven. The series is tied three to three, Arizona’s down and they have back and they win the World Series. One of the earliest expansion teams to do it. That’s a pretty good comeback, right? The story we’re gonna talk about today is got an even bigger comeback. We’re gonna talk about Saul becoming Paul, and he does it all through the power of the Holy Spirit. Of course, the biggest comeback in the history of the world is that of Jesus Christ, who rose from the dead, who came back from the dead, all through the power of the Holy Spirit. Join with me as we look at Acts chapter nine. This morning, we’re gonna look at an abbreviated version of the story of Saul’s conversion to Paul. Beginning in verse one, Luke writes, but Saul still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. Went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus so that if he found any belonging to the way men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now, as he went on his way, he approached Damascus and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him and falling to the ground. He heard a voice say to him. Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And he said, who are you, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom you’re persecuting. Well, now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. And the Lord said to him in a vision, an Ananias, and he said, here I am Lord. And the Lord said to him, rise and go to the street. Called straight and at the house of Judas. Look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. For behold, he is praying. So Ann Ananias departed and entered the house and laying his hands on him, he said, brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road by which you came, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit. And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes and he regained his sight. Then he rose and was baptized and taking food. He was strengthened. Let us pray. Good and gracious. Father, you are so awesome and so good, and it’s wonderful that you’re here this morning to remind us that you bring about salvation in places that we never imagined. It’s good for us to be reminded how forgiving you are, how you bring your grace and mercy. To people that we often would overlook or worse, not want to receive it. Oftentimes those people are ourselves. Well be with us this morning and open our eyes to see the power of the Holy Spirit work in our lives and in the lives of others.

Feel this place with your presence. Father. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. So here we have the story of Paul, or he was better known as salt at the time, but just. So we’re all on the same page. Paul wrote most of the New Testament, obviously through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, but Paul wrote many of the letters. We know, Romans, Galatians Corinthians, all those many letters in the New Testament were written by the Apostle Paul and many wonderful, great tidbits in there too, right? But at this point in time in Paul’s life, he was known as Saul. And Saul was not quite so friendly to Christians at the time. In fact, Luke just described him in the first verse says, breathing out, murderous threats against Christians. Guys, put this in perspective, you and me. If Saul was here today, he would be trained to arrest and or kill us. This is the Saul that Jesus encountered on the road to Damascus that day. This is not the Christian person we read about in much of the New Testament. And so Saul was very, very, very adamant that his religious beliefs were more important than anything else. He was the Pharisee of Pharisee, which just basically means he knew the Old Testament front and back. He had it memorized. He knew what he was talking about, and he believed what he knew was right because he had not encountered the Holy Spirit. He knew it so much that he even stood there as they stoned Stephen, holding the jackets of those who were throwing stones at Stephen, killing him. It would be like if you were to see a Christian friend of yours being beat up and bullied and kicked and beat to death, and you stood there and watched and did nothing. This, this is Saul. This is the person that Jesus meets on the road to Damascus, which. Incidentally, it was about 150 mile journey going from Jerusalem to Damascus. And the issue the, at the time, the reason Saul was going to Damascus was because Christianity was spreading. People were telling the story of Jesus Christ. People were coming to faith. The church was growing and Saul saw that as a bad thing. So he goes and he gets a letter from the religious people at the time the, the legal magistrates. That authorizes him to walk into churches and arrest men and women. Think about this for a moment. This man who professed God as his, as His God was walking into homes and tearing families apart. He had not encountered the Holy Spirit. He had not encountered Jesus Christ in his life until he does. He meets him on the road to Damascus and Saul falls to the ground. He’s blinded by this light, and we’re not talking about somebody turning on a street light. This is a bright light, like the sun coming up in the middle of the night, so bright that it knocked the entire group to the ground, and he hears a voice. Saul. Saul, why are you persecuting me? Confused. Saul says, who are you, Lord? And this, this answer rocks his world and changes his life forever. Because the answer was this, I am Jesus who you’re persecuting. Now, think about this for a moment. The reason Saul was going around and arresting people and killing people in the name of you, his God was because he was so sure that Jesus Christ was not alive, and suddenly he was talking to him. Now that is a turn of fate. That is a complete different direction than what Paul had believed. He had believed up until that time that these people were worshiping a dead person.

Saul was not only spiritually blind, but Jesus blind seemed physically as well. And here we find the first point in our encounter with Paul and the Holy Spirit this morning, and that is without the Holy Spirit, we are blind to the truth. This is as real for Saul as that day as it is for us. Today, Saul had not believed Jesus Christ was resurrected. He considered him just a man dead and gone. His followers, a bunch of people causing a disturbance distracting from the truth of his religion. In fact, later on, Paul would write that the foolishness or the cross was foolishness to those who were perishing. Paul knew that because he was one of those people that thought it was foolish. And here’s the reason why. Because the power of God had not yet illuminated Paul’s life. That is to say that the Holy Spirit had not revealed a truth to Paul. If we look in Second Corinthians chapter four, we’re gonna find Paul talking about this. He writes, the God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see the light of the gospel for God, who said, let light shine out of darkness, made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Jesus Christ. The God of our world, the God of our age, the God that rules our life when we are outside of Jesus Christ has us blinded for those who do not believe in Jesus Christ, just because the Holy Spirit has not opened their mind to it yet, that God has not revealed this yet, and we see it in the actions of Saul. I mean, he could understand it from a logical standpoint. He wasn’t a dumb man. He was really smart, really intelligent. But he, he hadn’t had that Holy Spirit encountered with the word of God, yet he was spiritually blind. But that changed in immediate, in the immediate aftermath of his interaction with Jesus, his life changed all was the man with the plan. Saul was the man who knew what he was doing, and yet. He’s now blind and he needs men to help him find his way to Damascus. And for three days he doesn’t eat or drink. He can’t see, he can’t bear to feed himself. The man who was walking into groups of people and killing them, arresting them suddenly was feeble. And meanwhile. God was preparing another man. He was preparing Ananias for his role in this and this, this is story of Ananias is fun to look at because I can reflect upon being an Ananias in my own life. You might be able to share this as well in your own. But let’s look at that story for a moment. God says to Ananias, he says, Hey, Ananias. And Anani said, yeah, God, Anna. And I said, I got a job for you to do and Anna. And I just like, sure, yeah. Sign me up. What you got for me? I’m gonna go like restore a site to somebody. And Anna and I. Was all excited, right? And God is like, okay, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to go over to the cus I want you to find this man named Saul and I want you to lay hands on him and I want you to pray over him. And I is like, wait a minute, God, do you know who that guy is? He’s arresting people like me. He’s killing people like me. You want me to do what? No thank you. See, I can reflect on this in my own life because I remember coming back. Into church as a, as a young adult. And I remember having those conversations with God where I was like, you know, I believe, and God’s like, well just go to church. So, you know, I got my family, we went to church on Sunday morning. I sat in a pew. I get up and leave and we wouldn’t do anything with God until next week. But then there was that nudge and God just saying, Hey, I want you to go talk to this person. I want you to go join this small group. I had a friend of mine that was at the church at the time, and he kept inviting me to a small group.

He’s like, you should come. You should come be with us. And I’m like, God, I don’t wanna do it. That, no, no, no. They might make fun of me. I don’t know that much about you. But regardless, there was this push and pull between me and my life and my faith. And at the same time, Ananias is called in the same place because you know what? He’s not sure that he trusts God quite that much, but he does it. He does this. He walks up to Paul Saul at the time. He lays his hand on his shoulder and he says, brother, can you imagine a man who wants you dead or arrested? You walked up to him and you put your hand on him, and you called him brother. That is the power of the gospel. That is the life changing power of the Holy Spirit at work in someone’s life. You see, God was showing anani in that moment that if you trust me, when you, when you walk in faith, when you believe in the Holy Spirit and the power of the Spirit has in your life, I can take you into a deeper relationship, something grander than you’ve ever experienced with me, because I can tell you right now, Ann Ananias left that encounter even more certain about his faith with God. Because he had trusted him in a moment where he had nothing else to hold onto. But this brings me to my second point this morning, and that is what could possibly give us this kind of power? What could possibly make such a big difference in our life that we’re willing to walk up to someone who wants to harm us and tell them about Jesus Christ if in fact us telling them about Jesus Christ might actually make ’em harm us. Right. Now we probably don’t live in that world. We probably don’t have to debate day in and day out, whether or not if I share my faith, somebody’s going to arrest me. But it points out a bigger point and it, it means more to us when we think about it in this sense. And that is the power that raised Jesus Christ from the grave is the same power that saves you. Not only is it the same power that saves you, it’s the same power that lives with inside of you right now. Whether you were baptized as an infant and you lived your whole life as a Christian, or you’re new to the faith, it’s the same power that opened the grave and bros. A dead Jesus Christ back to life is alive and at work in you. Think about back to Saul for just a moment. Saul’s change was complete. He was a completely new person. Saul didn’t become a better Pharisee. Saul didn’t become a, a better person to track down other people. He didn’t suddenly start giving more to charity. We’re not talking about life improvement here. Saul became an entirely new person here. I wanna share with you just a couple thoughts on this, right? Saul was the chief enemy of Christians. He was the worst of the worst. He was the person leading the charge to arrest the people. He had religious conviction behind what he was doing. Think about this. In your lifetime, you’ve probably witnessed somewhere on a news channel or somewhere in your life. Somebody doing something in the name of their religion to affect somebody else horribly. I can remember some stuff out of the Middle East when I was younger, how people would, and they still do today, kill people based on their religious beliefs, thinking they’re doing God a favor by harming somebody else.

This is the person that Jesus Christ saved with the power of the Holy Spirit. If that is possible, it is possible for anybody to be saved. It is possible for the Holy Spirit to be at work in your life. The Gospel’s power is so unique and so powerful. I wanna share with you five things about the Hot Gospel’s. Power, one that is impartial. The power of the Holy Spirit does not care what you are or who you’ve done what I said. That backwards, what you’ve done are who you are. Go back to Saul as our example again. The man was the worst of the worst. Throughout history, there’s been plenty of stories of people that were just terrible, terrible people, and yet they come to faith in Jesus Christ. Okay? The Holy Spirit is impartial. It’s unlimited. No one is too far gone. Even at the last moment, I think of the man on the cross next to Jesus in the last very moment of his life, the Holy Spirit. Springs about salvation. This is my favorite right here. The Holy Spirit is available. The Holy Spirit is at work today in our lives. In the Word of God’s. In God’s word that we read in scripture today, the Holy Spirit is personal. Jesus called out to Saul, his name Saul. Saul is transformational. It makes you a completely new creation. Paul would later write that if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come, the old is gone, and the new is here. Just remember, if you ever thought you were too messed up for God, or if you thought that you’ve messed up too badly to come back to God, or if you’ve ever had somebody in your family that you think they’re too far gone for God to even save them, the power of the Holy Spirit will work in their lives. What happens when we become spiritually awake? When we are blind? No more, when we see three things clearly. One, we see ourselves clearly. We recognize that we weren’t just confused, such as Paul. He wasn’t just confused, he was spiritually dead. And we understand much like Paul wrote about later, that we deserve God’s judgment, that we couldn’t save ourselves, that our blindness. Was rebellion against God and then we wind up being amazed by the grace of Jesus Christ. We don’t take pride in the decision we made. We set back in a at how much God loves us. Two, we see Christ clearly. We understand that Christ isn’t just a good moral teacher, but he’s our risen Lord and Savior. And not only that, he’s the fulfillment of God’s promises from the beginning of time, and he’s the only way that we can live in a right relationship with God. And three, we see others clearly. For Paul, he would later write. I became all things to all people in order that son may be saved, he would begin to feel great sorrow and anguish for those who were lost. He was willing to suffer anything for the gospel, and his life became solely about the urgency to get the message of Jesus to those who were dying. He couldn’t stay silent about what God had done. His vision had changed about how he saw others, and Paul understood that time was short, that we don’t have the luxury of staying silent about our faith, that we can’t wait on the perfect moment to share. We need to be intentional, not just hopeful about bringing the news of Jesus to other people behind every political issue or. Cultural conflict or social problem, but there’s a real spiritual issue at play that the ultimate solution to the world’s problems aren’t reforms, but the gospel of Jesus Christ Hall never got over being chosen to be God’s instrument to bring about salvation to others. And he understood that as Christians we’re not just saved from something, we’re saved for something God could save Paul from being the person he was.

He can save anyone, including the people that we give up on, the people that sometimes run amuck, the people we don’t agree with. And it’s important for us to understand that as we go about our daily lives, that God is intentionally putting people in our path for us to interact with, to share our faith with, because we too carry the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. The same resurrection power that raise Jesus from the dead. The only question is, will you be God’s instrument to share it with them? Let us pray. Father, in your Holy Spirit, you have provided great power, power to raise us from the dead. Father, help us to not live dead, but to be alive and passionate as Paul was about sharing our faith with others, about living out the gospel message of seeing your love for other people, that you are not longing for anybody to be lost. But for all people to come to the grace of Jesus Christ. Father, as we go about our week this week, be with us. Remind us that in all things, the Holy Spirit is with us. God, that you travel with us. In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.