Well, who doesn’t love a good comeback story? Right? Those are always interesting. And show of hands here real quickly, who loves, uh, who loves baseball here? Any, any baseball fans here this morning? Okay, so we have some, you know, there’s a baseball team in Arizona. Did y’all know this? They, they’re called the Diamondbacks, right? Um, it’s part of my getting acclimated to Arizona. I did a little research. I’m like, okay. I need to know about the sports teams, right? So I dug into the history of the Diamondbacks and they, they were an expansion team in 1997 and in just their fourth year in the league, they go to the World Series, right? And talk about a comeback. You know those, those Yankees, they were winning the World Series. And then in the seventh game, the Diamondbacks Comeback and win the World Series. Now, that’s a comeback story, right? If you like sports. Well, I have a comeback story I want to share with you this morning. That’s, uh. Of more importance than that, and that is the story of Saul who would become Paul. Of course, the most important comeback story we have in the history of the world is that of Jesus Christ who returned to life from the dead, who would go on to appear to more than 500 people as and just read for us. And over the past several weeks, we hear victory have been talking about this in a series we called Eyewitness News. You know, dun, dun dun. I got to be a news anchor one week. Yay. Um, but we’re going through this series and we’re talking about places where Jesus, the resurrected Jesus appeared to people. And today we’re gonna talk about what happened when he appeared to Saul. So picture this, there’s this guy who goes by the name Saul, and for the earliest Christians, you and me of his day. This was the most hated guy there was. This man literally held the codes for a group of men to stone, Stephen to death. Stephen was the first martyr in the Christian Church, and Saul, as he was known then at the time, would go to the magistrates and he would get arrest orders written out for people like you and me who were worshiping and following Jesus to be arrested, to be pulled from their homes and put in prison. I mean, this wasn’t just a hobby for Saul. Saul was passionate about how he thought he was serving God. So I wanted you to join me this morning in, in Acts chapter nine, and we’ll read about part of Paul’s story, his encounter with Jesus. And it really is a story of a man who was blind to salvation. He was blind to what the truth was, and he was given sight in which it changed his entire life. Beginning in verse one, in Acts chapter nine, we read this from Luke, 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 that would’ve been those following Jesus Christ, 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 saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And he said, who are you Lord? And he said, I am Jesus, who you are persecuting. Now there was a disciple by the name of Ananias and Damascus, and the Lord said to him in a vision, 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 Ananias departed and he entered the house and laying his hands on him, he said, brother, saw 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. This is the word of our Lord. Let us pray. Good and gracious. Father, you bring your grace and your mercy and. To so many unexpected places and to so many unexpected people, it’s good for us to be reminded how forgiving you are, how you extend that love and grace and mercy. The people who we would consider well past salvation, oftentimes those people we consider far gone are ourselves. So open our hearts this morning to hear the truth of your word, to to know the Holy Spirit and the power that works to open our eyes to salvation, making us blind. No more. Father, we pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen. Amen. So here we have the story of Paul, or like I said, he was more known as Saul at the time. And as a reminder, Paul would go on to write most of the New Testament, most of what we call the New Testament. Many of those letters in his in, in his name are written by him after the time he met Jesus on the road to Damascus. But that wasn’t the Paul that the Christian world knew at the time. You see, Luke introduces Saul by saying that he was breathing threats and murder against Christians of his day. I mean, to put that in a modern perspective, Saul wasn’t just on Facebook talking about how he didn’t like some people. No. Saul was actively pursuing people in real life who were faithful followers of Christ, and he had been operating in the Jerusalem area. And as the Christian movement grew some 150 miles plus and continued to grow outside of Jerusalem, so did Saul’s passion to see these people arrested. So Paul or Saul at the time goes to the magistrates and he says, we’ve gotta do something about this. And he gets legal documents that allow him to go into these. Different communities and arrest Jews who were preaching the crucifixion and the resurrection. So he thought he was genuinely serving God by going around and putting people in prison. If you could think about this for a moment, he was going around and murdering and, and arresting people like you and me. Now, it’s hard to have grace for somebody like that, right? If there was ever a time in life when there was somebody we knew of that was beyond the point of salvation, beyond the point of saying, God, I want you to save this person.

It was salt. But then it gets interesting because on his way to Damascus, after. Being on that road for a while, suddenly outta nowhere, a bright light shines. And we’re not talking about a street light coming on, we’re talking about a blinding light that comes up. And it was so dramatic at the time, it knocked Saul and his group of people that were with him at the time, completely to the ground, and Saul was blinded and he hears a voice calling out to him using his own name. Saul. Saul, why are you persecuting me? And confused. He asked, well, who are you Lord? And the answer he got would rock his world because the answer was, I am Jesus whom you’re persecuting. Now let’s think about this for a minute. Saul was convinced that Jesus Christ was dead. That the person who had been teaching and preaching for three plus years in this area that had so many followers was no longer alive. And in this moment on the road to Damascus, his world changed because the whole reason that Saul was going around and arresting people was because this possibility didn’t exist. That this Jesus couldn’t still be alive. And here he was talking to him. Saul was not only spiritually blind, but in the moment thereafter, he was physically blind as well. And in this moment, I want to stop and make our first point, and that is without the power of the Holy Spirit, we are blind to the truth. We’re, we’re like Saul and that we understand something logically, but we don’t see it. We don’t, we don’t understand it in our hearts. Saul was a really intelligent person. He was, as he would relate or write, a Pharisee of Pharisees. He knew the legal, the legality of the Old Testament by heart. Saul had things memorized, and then he knew what the Jesus followers of his day believed, but he didn’t believe it. You see, the difference is Saul had not had an encounter with Jesus Christ. The power of the Holy Spirit had not enlightened him, had not opened his eyes to the truth of the cross. He would later go on and write that the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. He knew this because he was foolish as he was one of those who were perishing, and he thought that the cross was silliness. The problem was that the Holy Spirit had not opened his eyes yet. In second Corinthians chapter four, Paul writes this, 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 the 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 Christ. Paul says. Without the Holy Spirit, you will not understand it. You will be blind to the truth without the power of the Holy Spirit to open our eyes. We are blinded to why Jesus Christ matters. Saul, like I said, he knew what the early believers believed. He just didn’t believe them. He didn’t believe it. He couldn’t comprehend it. It was logical. He could understand it. This is why we see so many people today that can quote Scripture, but live a spiritually blind life because they have not had an encounter with the Holy Spirit. There was no spiritual connection to Jesus Christ. There was no spiritual connection to his word, but that was about to change. You see, as Saul encounters Jesus, Jesus blinds him physically. Now he is no longer just spiritually blind. He’s physically blind and Jesus tells him to go into the city and wait for his instructions, and now suddenly saw the man with a plan to arrest. People who didn’t agree with him, no longer had a plan.

He was helpless. He had to be helped into town. He had to be helped into a house he could not even see to feed himself, and he waited three days while God was preparing another man. To intervene, and this man’s name was Ananias. And I want to talk about Ananias for a minute because I think there’s a valuable point to understanding his story, and that is this. Picture yourself, you’re a faithful follower of Christ. You believe that God still speaks to you. And God in this situation reaches out to Ananias and he says, Saint Ananias, I got a job for you to do. And an said, absolutely God, I’m your man. What you need me to do? It was like, well, I want you to go down to Damascus and I want you to find this guy named Saul and I want you to lay hands on him. I want you to pray over him and, and Nice is like, no, God, you got the wrong guy. Sorry. Because I know who that Saul guy is. He’s arresting people like me. I’m not going anywhere near him. We’ve been here before, right? Like I know for myself later in life, as I was coming back into church after becoming an adult, I said, yeah, God, I’ll go to church. I’ll go, I’ll go sit in a pew, I’ll go see what it’s all about. And you know, you go to church and you sit in a pew and you listen to somebody speaking for an hour and you, you sing the words and you, you say the creeds and you go home and then next week you come back and you do it again. And the whole time God’s like, you know, I got a little more for you to do here. You know, he is kind of poking you. Maybe somebody comes up and taps you on the shoulder and says, Hey, can you help us usher this week? Hey, what about joining a small group or. How about leading a, a ministry group or you know, how about joining the choir? And you’re like, wait a minute, God, I didn’t sign up for any of this Now I just said I would come set in a pew, but God says, no, no, I’ve got a bigger plan ’cause I’ve got some work for you to do. If you just trust me, if you just have faith that I am going to put you in a place that’s going to grow your faith. This’s gonna make you stronger. That’s gonna help you trust and walk deeper and closer with me. You see, we don’t know much about an Ananias after this, but I can guarantee you this. After he walked into the belly of the beast, the man who was persecuting people like him, and he laid hands on him and he prayed and he saw Paul’s change. I guarantee you an’s faith was deeper. And you know there’s a lesson there because we too can be like that. We step out in faith and we trust when God’s poking us. You know when he’s coming over and he is saying, Hey, I need you to do this for me. It might be risky, but it might be worth it. Why you say, well, that’s, that’s the power of the gospel. That’s the power of the Holy Spirit taking us from being spiritually blind to being blind. No more. We see this when Ananias walks up to, to Saul and he says, brother, and lays hands on him and sas.

Scales fall from his eyes and he gets baptized and he, he starts eating again. But this is the biggest change because Saul comes from Paul and he becomes a preacher for Jesus Christ. I don’t want you to miss this point. This man was just a arresting people who believed in Jesus Christ, and in that encounter with the Holy Spirit, he became a preacher for Jesus Christ. The lost man was suddenly saved. The blind could see physically, yes, but more importantly spiritually. Talk about a comeback story, guys. I mean, those Diamondbacks had a pretty cool story, but I like Paul’s story better that, and I’m not that much of a baseball fan, but you know, that’s neither here nor there. But it’s important for us to understand what makes this possible. And that’s our second point this morning. Our second point is this, that the power. The raised Jesus Christ from the dead as the same power that saves you. I think we forget about this sometimes. We look at Easter and we see this miraculous salvation story of Jesus Christ coming out of the tomb. He did what he said he was gonna do, and it was more than we understood it and it was miraculous, and it brings us salvation and we think, man, that’s some power right there. Right? You know, God really threw it in high gear and we got on down the highway, but that’s the same power that brings you to salvation in Jesus Christ. It’s the same power that resides within you as you sat here in this moment. It wasn’t like God used nitrous to raise. Okay, now I’m too many car examples. Right. Let me back up. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. It wasn’t like God used superpower to raise Jesus from the dead, and he only gave you regular power. It’s the same power of the Holy Spirit. Look, Paul talks about this right later on, Paul and I, I’m skipping a little ahead here for just a moment, but stay with me later on. Paul writes about this. He says, the incomparably great power for us to believe. Is the same power that raised Christ from the dead. It’s not just inspirational language guys. This is the actual power that describes what happens to us when we are no longer spiritually blind. When we are resurrected from dead people. Yes, without Christ, we’re dead people to eternally alive. I wanna step back for just a second. I want to talk about the change we saw in in, in Paul. As you’re well aware, I keep saying Saul and Paul, well, just to, to make sure everybody’s on the same page. Saul of Tarsus, Pharisee, Jesus gives him a new name. He changes his name to Paul. There’s some Christian history we won’t get into there, but the big part is it’s the same person, but we like to think of Saul as Precht and Paul as Post Christ. Okay? So what happened is he became Paul. Well before he was a res religious zealot. Think about in your own timeline, in your own history, how often have you turned on the news and you’ve seen some religious radical person doing something horrible to somebody else in the name of their religion? And I’m not talking about just being ugly online, I’m talking about, I’ve seen some horrible things.

I always think of the Middle East. I don’t wanna pick on those people, but this is the kind of religious zealot. Saul was, and yet his encounter with Jesus Christ completely changed his life. He thought he was doing God a favor by arresting the people that were promoting Jesus Christ, that were living by Jesus Christ that believed in Jesus Christ. If God can save him, God can and will save anybody. There is no one outside of that resurrection power. It is the power of the gospel. There’s five things I wanna mention to you this morning. Five attributes or traits that identify the power of the gospel. Let’s share those real quick. Impartial. The power of the gospel is impartial. It does not matter who you are or what you’ve done. The Holy Spirit doesn’t stop at the door and check to see whether you’ve been a good boy or you know, like Santa Claus at Christmas. The power of the gospel is unlimited. No amount of usage of the Holy Spirit will exhaust it. No one is too far gone. No one is too far away from God for the Holy Spirit to reach them. And this is my favorite right here. It’s available. The Holy Spirit is at work today. The power of the Holy Spirit is at work in God’s word today. The power of the Holy Spirit is at work in you and me today. It’s personal. You notice when Jesus talked to Saul, he didn’t say, Hey you. He called him by name twice. Saul Saul. God knows your name. The Holy Spirit knows your name and is transformational because not only did Saul receive the Holy Spirit, but he did not be remain Saul. He became a new person. He raised him from a dead person to a live eternal Christian follower. The transformation that that Holy Spirit has the power to transform. Into a new creation. Think about this for a minute. Saul didn’t just become a better Pharisee. He didn’t learn to do his job better. He didn’t suddenly become a more morally living character. In fact, later on, Paul would, himself would write about the struggles he still faced with with sin in his own life. He was very open about that. He said, I didn’t become perfect. I became a new creation. He wasn’t morally improved. He was completely remade. I. He would say later on, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come.The old is gone. The new is here. This should give us an incredible amount of hope because no matter where we are in life, no matter what we’ve done yesterday and the moment before we walked into this room today, the moment we encounter the Holy Spirit, we are made new. That also goes for all the people that we know, that we pray over. All the people in our lives that we wish and we pray and we hope that they would suddenly hear the word of the gospel. The power of the Holy Spirit can save them as well. So when you think anyone is outta reach, remember what happened to Saul. So now we have received the power of the Holy Spirit. I wanna talk about real quick the last part of this, and that is.

What changes when we are blind? No more. When we have been spiritually awakened to the power of the Holy Spirit? Well, number one, we see ourselves clearly. We recognize that we were spiritually dead. We weren’t just confused about what was going on in the world. We were just unaware we were dead. We didn’t understand. That we deserved God’s judgment, but, but now we do. We admit that we cannot save ourselves and we see our former blindness for what it was, and that was rebellion against God. But ultimately, we’re amazed by His grace. We don’t take pride in a decision that we’ve made to follow Jesus. That’s not even right, but we are in all of the grace. That he’s extended to us because we know how far gone we are. Number two, we see Christ clearly. We don’t just see Christ as a good teacher or a moral example, but we see him as the risen Lord and Savior. He is the fulfillment of all God’s promises and he is the only way to be in a right relationship with God. And three, we see ourself, or I’m sorry, we see others clearly. Go back to Paul for just a moment before he encountered the Holy Spirit. Look how he treated people, those he didn’t agree with. He sought them out to arrest them. He stood there as one was murdered. He was ugly. He was demolishing. He didn’t see them as people. He saw them as objects that needed to be removed, issues that needed to be handled. People who needed to be eliminated. He didn’t see them as people to love, but when the Holy Spirit opened his eyes, everything changed. This is from Paul’s writing. This is what he says changed in his life. He became all things to all people in order to save more. He began to feel a great sorrow and anguish for the lost people. He was willing to suffer anything for the sake of the gospel, and his entire life became about the urgency to get the message of Jesus Christ to the people who were dying without him, and he couldn’t stay silent about what God had done in his life. Paul understood that time was short. He knew that every day people die without knowing Jesus Christ. He knew what Jesus had done in his life, how he had had the power of the Holy Spirit had saved him. That’s what drove him to plant churches. It’s what drove him to train leaders. It’s what drove him to write those letters that we still read today and we share among with one another that we pour over. And then through those words of God, we receive the Holy Spirit. And when we look back at this story, we can see there’s probably. There’s been times in our own life when we were spiritually blind, when we ignored those around us, when we refused to share a good word with our neighbors, or with a stranger or with a coworker, or perhaps we were too afraid of what somebody might think about us if we shared our faith with them, or maybe we felt ill-equipped to even tell someone why I believe in Jesus Christ. But we don’t have the luxury of staying quiet about our faith. We can’t wait for the perfect moment to share. We need to be intentional, not just hopeful. It’s one thing to step back and say, man, I really hope those people meet Jesus one day. No. And the power of the Holy Spirits in our life, the Holy Spirit drives us to want to be the one to tell them about Jesus Christ.

And we see that today’s opportunity is another day that we have a gift from God in order to share the power of the gospel. And finally, when we look at the world, we don’t see that the issues surrounding us, whether they’re political or cultural, whether they’re social issues, we don’t see them as needs for reform, but we understand what’s really going on and that there’s a spiritual war going on. And we know that the only way that those things will get fixed is through the power of the Holy Spirit. The only way things in our life become any different is through the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul never got over being chosen as an instrument of God to reach people with the power of the gospel. Every Christian, every Christian, including every one of us sitting here this morning. It is not just saved from something. We are saved for something and we have the same power that raised Christ from the dead, helping us along the way, transforming us into new creations every day. Every day we hear the gospel message. Every day we’re born anew. If God could save the chief of sinners, those are Paul’s words, not mine. He can save anyone, including that person that you’ve given up on, including that family member who seems impossible. The coworker who mocks your faith. Yes. Even that guy who cut me off in traffic yesterday, the same resurrection power that rose Jesus from the dead is alive and available today. The question is, will you be God’s instrument to bring it to them? Let us pray. Father, we thank you for your everlasting love, for never giving up on us, for always chasing us down and forgiving us. Your power. The power of the Holy Spirit help us Father to believe deeper, to live more trustworthy, and to to live out our faith each and every day. To grow in the power of the Holy Spirit so that more people can know Jesus Christ and experience new eternal life. In Jesus’ name, amen. Amen.