Your Enemies Aren't Enemies Yet

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[0:00] Our sermon text is from Acts chapter 9, verses 1 through 6. And just a few words of introduction. This is the story of Saul. And we know him later as St. Paul. So Saul changes his name to Paul, not here in this story, but later on in his life. But he goes by Saul, so I'm going to refer to him as Saul. But when I say Saul, just think of the one we always call St. Paul, because that's his more common name. So we'll talk about Saul. Saul, this is not the first mention of him here in chapter 9. He actually appears at the end of Acts chapter 7 in the story of where St. Stephen is stoned to death by an angry mob of people for basically preaching the truth about what human rebellion against God looks like. And that made him very unpopular. And it says, before they killed him, the killers took off their cloaks and laid them at the feet of Saul. So in other words, Saul was kind of watching their stuff while they went off and killed Stephen. So he was kind of, in a way, he was complicit with it. And then at the very beginning of chapter 8, the one before this, it says, Saul was one of the witnesses to what happened, and he agreed completely with the killing of Stephen. So he was complicit in a way because he helped the people watch their stuff while they killed Stephen,

[1:15] and he thought it was good. He agreed with it. So we get the sense that Saul is a true believer in the cause of eradicating anyone who falls, Jesus. He was upset about people following Jesus. He thought that needed to stop. He approved the killing of Stephen, and he is, we'll see in our reading, he's taking it a step further. So let's go to our reading from chapter 9, Acts chapter 9, 1 through 6.

[1:45] Meanwhile, Saul was uttering threats with every breath and was eager to kill the Lord's followers. So he went to the high priest. He sent letters addressed to the synagogues in Damascus, asking for their cooperation in the arrest of any followers of the way he found there. He wanted to bring them, both men and women, back to Jerusalem in chains.

[2:13] As he was approaching Damascus on this mission, a light from heaven suddenly shone down around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Who are you, Lord? Saul asked. And the voice replied, I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting. Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this word, and we ask that you would add your blessing to it. In Jesus' name, amen.

[2:49] Well, I want you to think about this passage for a little bit. Saul's angry, right? Right? Breathing out murderous threats against all the followers of Jesus. And it makes me wonder where all this anger comes from. Like, why are they so angry at the Christians? Have you ever thought about that? Like, why? What's making them so upset? So here's this small group of people. They happen to believe that their leader was killed and then raised from the dead. And they probably weren't the first people to have said that either, right? And they preached about his resurrection, and they start teaching other people all the things he taught them. This is what the apostles were doing at Pentecost and beyond, right? And my question is, what's interesting? What's in there to make people like Saul so angry, right? Or what made the crowd so angry that they wanted to murder Stephen? And I think that question is a little silly in a way because that's me looking at scripture with a worldview that's used to tolerating different opinions, right? I have a worldview, hopefully, more or less, that says, oh, you know, if other people have different ideas than me, that's okay. Like, I don't need to stamp them out, right? Do you get what I'm saying?

[3:55] Unless you're really... a terrible reactionary person or an extremist on one or the other, you don't look at people you disagree with and go, oh, we got to end them. You just go, oh, live and let live, right?

[4:06] So these days, for example, and this brings back an old story that some of you know I like to tell. These days, if someone says, well, we don't eat food at all. Do you know who I'm talking about now? We don't eat food at all. We just get all our nutrients from breathing air. Remember these people?

[4:25] The breatharians. This was about eight years ago. They're like... And they picked this moment right between Christmas and New Year when the media cycle was kind of low, and they somehow got themselves on the center stage of America for like 15 minutes or less, you know, less than 15 minutes of fame. But it was enough. And they were really skinny, you know, and he was like... You know, this guy's breathing in all this air, and he's like, I'm getting all my proteins and my vitamins and my fats and my carbohydrates just from the air I'm breathing. You know, he's really skinny. And I thought, these people are really stupid, but, you know, I'm not... I don't want to murder them or anything. I mean, they're just people, right? And I don't say, let's exterminate them. And I say, well, that's quaint. I hope it works out for them. I'm kind of curious to see if the next video is like kind of surfaces on the Internet and it's them in the corner of a McDonald's, you know, like they're actually famished and they're like, oh, they... Somebody saw me do that. But they're not harming me. You know, as far as I can tell, you know, if they...

[5:28] And now if they said, well, we're breatharians and we have an armed camp in the middle of Texas and we're going to take over something, then maybe something, you know, I'd be a little worried about. But they're not bothering me, really. I just like to make fun of them a little bit. Sorry.

[5:44] I don't need to defend any ground from them. And you know what? If it's true that you can get all your nutrients from breathing, then they've really discovered something interesting and we should listen to them. But if it's not true... And this is the point. It kind of plays itself out. If it's not true, they're just going to get really, really hungry, you know, and eventually they'll eat or a friend of theirs will call 911 and, you know, take them to the hospital for IV fluids because it's ridiculous, right? So I don't need to fix this. I don't need to defend against it, right? And actually, this, what I would hope is sort of an enlightened, mature view of how to handle differences of opinion was actually present in...

[6:24] Actually, I don't know. Right? Right? pretended to be someone great. About 400 others joined him, but he was killed, and all his followers went their various ways. The whole movement came to nothing. Do you see where this is going? Like, nothing ever happened. He said he was really something, but nothing happened. After him, at the time of the census, there was Judas of Galilee. He got people to follow him, but he was killed too, and all his followers were scattered, right? This is kind of the logic here, right? So Gamaliel says, so my advice is, leave these men alone. Let them go. If they are planning and doing these things merely on their own, it will soon be overthrown. But if it is from God, you will not be able to overthrow them, right? You may even find yourselves fighting against God. Doesn't it make sense, right? Let it be. Right? And in this case, so the council agreed with him, right? And they let them go.

[7:55] But there's little footnotes in scripture every now and then that kind of give you pause. They said, let's let them go, but let's flog them first. So I don't, you know, I'm a little stuck there because I'm like, okay, that was nice to let them go, but not without a good flogging first. Let them know that they were really in trouble, but we're going to let you go. Okay. So that's, I guess, that's how the world was, right? There's a lot of violence that we don't, you read the Bible and you don't realize how much violence is, really, under the surface of a lot of it, okay? And people use violence to kind of make their points, right? So what changed, right? Gamaliel's words didn't really last when you think about it, right? It lasted for about one chapter. But then in chapter seven, they find Stephen, they kill him. Chapter eight, Saul approves of it. Chapter nine, now Saul is traveling abroad to go gather up Christians to bring them back to Jerusalem. They're not, they're not content with wiping all the Christians out of Jerusalem. They need to go to other countries now, right? And, and bring them back in chains, right? So how did this wise word of Gamaliel, and I would even say prophetic words of Gamaliel, get lost? And I think this is a problem

[9:05] in human history is that wise people aren't always listened to, right? The crowd can get his blood up and they don't listen. They don't want to listen to wise counsel when they're angry, right? People, and at the core, people don't like change, right? They don't, they really didn't, right? They perceive it as a threat to the order that's benefiting them. So if you really want to get someone angry, challenge their traditions and challenge their culture and challenge their religion. You will lose a friend instantly if you do that. You won't even have a friend in the first place, but you'll make an enemy on the spot, right? And I would say though, that any culture or religion that's secure in itself doesn't need to be threatened by a challenge like that, right? In fact, it might even welcome a challenge as a way to evaluate itself and grow and improve. And so, you know, I think that's a really good example of how we can improve, okay? So a really secure culture or religion or tradition would say, oh, we can absorb these challenges to our way of thinking because that sharpens us. But people don't, don't count on that happening. All I'm saying is that could happen, but I would say also don't count on that happening. Don't count on that happening. And it didn't happen

[10:09] here, right? The world doesn't always work that way. Wise people are in short supply and they aren't listened to in the pivotal moments of history. And I think this is the tragedy of human history, is those wise counsels in very few cases ever really sustained themselves. Instead, things moved in the direction of populism or nationalism or mob rule, and then history is full of that, right? So the choice for the mob and for Paul or Saul, I should say, was either try to destroy this new movement of Christ followers or follow Gamaliel's advice, live and let live, let it play out. If God isn't for it, it'll melt away. And, if God is for it, you won't be able to stop it. You won't be able to stop it if God's for it. And you'll be setting yourself up in opposition to God. And that's actually what Jesus says to Paul on the road to Damascus, right? Saul's heading to Damascus. He's going to put more Christians in chains. He struck blind and he hears a voice. And the question from Saul is, who are you? Who's doing this to me? This is pretty powerful. You see, I'm going to put more Christians in chains. You're going to put more people in chains. Right? Right Right six verses. We gloss over what happens in a verse, which was the erasure of a whole lifetime

[11:52] of a direction going in one way. And let me put it this way, right? His whole world's being turned upside down. He thinks he's doing the right thing. In fact, he says this later in the scripture. He says, I was zealous because I thought this was the right thing to do. I thought I was supposed to be doing this. He thought he was doing the right thing. He suddenly has been told that you're doing all the wrong things. Your whole life is going in the wrong direction, right? And I think of it as like he's standing on this beautiful and ornate and lush rug that he's been standing on all his life. And this rug gives him this unfailing sense of who he was. And then in a moment, the rug was pulled out from underneath him and he lands in a heap on the hard ground. You know what I'm saying? Like, it really is like the rug was pulled out from him. Everything he thought he was, everything he thought he was, he was pulled out from him. And he's standing on this beautiful and ornate and lush rug. He thought he should be doing. In a moment, in a moment, like in just 10 seconds, he's told, you're going in all the wrong directions. You got it all wrong. And he might have been thinking, okay, I was wrong about all this, right? The Jesus I thought was fake is real. It's all real.

[13:03] The Christians were telling the truth all this time. The Christians were telling the truth. I mean, doesn't that, have you ever had a moment like that? It's tough for us. Now think about it. Have you ever had a moment where you thought somebody was really wrong?

[13:19] And then some conversation or some evidence came into your life and you're like, oh shoot, they were right all along. They were telling the truth all along. I had it wrong. And that's hard. And only a truly humble and secure, I would say secure in themselves person would absorb that in that moment and go, okay, I need to change, right? But I think an equally probable outcome is somebody's own self-esteem. And I think that's a really important thing. Right I did this to the Christians, now Jesus is going to do this to me. How does he know that Jesus isn't just as violent as him, right? But this is where we see the difference. This is the kernel here. This is where things change. Jesus doesn't do to Saul what Saul has been doing to the Christians, right?

[14:29] What does Jesus do to his enemies? What does he do to the ones that are persecuting him and killing his followers? Does he kill them? No, right? Jesus says, pray for your enemies. And he changes his enemies into friends, right? That's what Jesus does. And not only that, in Saul's case, he was changed into more than a friend. So Saul is not just like, I'm going to turn you from an enemy into a friend. He was changed into a servant. Because what does Jesus say? He says, now, this is the final thing he says, now get up and go into the city. And you will be told what you must do. Not only am I your friend now, that part is kind of implied, but you're my servant now. You're working for me. Now you work for me. It's kind of like when one mob takes over the other mob, but these aren't mobs.

[15:15] In Chicago, like, now you all work for us, right? No. Saul, now you will be told what you must do. And I have many tasks for you to do. And so Saul goes into Damascus. And that's a different story of what happens there. It's also very beautiful, right?

[15:34] So from there, Saul begins to change. And eventually his name becomes Paul. It's not exactly because of this, but he does sometimes a name change, both in literature and in the scriptures are a sign that something internally has changed. So you remember that Jacob's name got changed to Israel, right? And Peter's name got changed, or Simon's name got changed to Peter in a way. So that happens other places. Do you remember Ruth's mother-in-law changed her name? There's a few other cases like that. That's kind of a fun. Side Bible study is people who change their name in the Bible. Saul changes his name to Paul eventually. But Saul begins to change. And he's changing from a person who tried to destroy the church to someone who became really one of its most important thinkers. And I would say one of the most effective missionaries and most important missionaries that the church ever had. And it's good to remember the other side of this is it didn't happen overnight. This wasn't an instant change. If Jesus is going to change us, it doesn't happen instantly. There's still... There's still the old self. Saul understood this, I think. After this time in Damascus, he went away into the wilderness for three years.

[16:45] Saul went away for three years. And he spoke to the Lord there. He learned. He learned what he had to say to everybody else. I think he had to purify himself out there. He had to prepare himself for what was next. And so God had a lot of work to do on Saul as he was out there in the desert for three years. And so he was examining himself, figuring out. And I think one of the questions he might have been asking himself out there was, why did I turn so violent?

[17:14] Why was violence the answer to this? Why was I doing that? Right? And so it paid off, though, because he needed a reset on that. And in future missionary journeys, he had to suffer for Jesus. He had to suffer punishments from other people. So here's his list in 2 Corinthians 11. This is what Paul says about all the things that he suffered as a result of following. Jesus. He says, He can't count the number of times he'd been flogged, which is crazy, because flogging was terrible. And faced death again and again. Five different times the Jewish leaders gave me 39 lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods. None of these sound fun. I'm trying to think which one is better. They all sound awful, right? Once I was stoned. Not the way you're thinking. Not in the fun way. Not unfunny. Not in the fun way. And I don't know if it's fun or not, because I've never done that. I'm trying to. I'm not a goody two-shoes. It just never interested me. Okay? Three times I was shipwrecked. Once I spent a whole night and a day adrift at sea. I have traveled on many long journeys. I have faced dangers from rivers and from robbers. And he goes on and on and on. Right?

[18:24] What did he do when he was beaten in a town? Did he like say, I'm going to destroy this town? No. He loved that town. His biggest anguish, actually, what he says. Worse than all the beatings, was the anguish that somebody might not come to know Jesus as Lord. He had this zeal for even the people that beat him up. Right? So God had to turn him into somebody like that. It took three years to turn him from a violent person into somebody who could absorb violence and continue to love. Isn't that amazing? So that's how one person was changed. Saul was changed to Paul and all this happened. Right?

[19:07] So, Martin Luther King Jr. talked about when they had a protest, a nonviolent protest, this is the important part, it was a nonviolent protest, they had to prepare themselves first. They couldn't just go straight to the protest. They had to examine themselves. They had to prepare themselves for the reality that they might get hurt. And they were. They were beaten. They had to prepare themselves that they had to decide to love the ones who were going to hurt them. And they had to decide that in advance. That was the only way it was going to work because otherwise they would become violent in return and the movement wouldn't work.

[19:42] Only nonviolence was going to win against violence. We understand how this worked. And it worked because the cameras were rolling and people all around America were watching going, they're getting beaten up and they're not fighting back. What's going on? Why do these people who are opposed to them hate them so much? And it exposed all that. Right? Exposed all that to the, just to this bright light. One of his most famous sermons called, Loving Your Enemies, Dr. King preached this, Returning hate for hate multiplies hate.

[20:15] Adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that. You know, I think you know all about the Bible. You know already what this means for us. Because you might be asking, what does this mean for us? Do I have to do anything today? Yeah, yeah, a lot. Actually, as it turns out, this one's a deep call on us. It's not some obscure story from the corner of the Bible. Oh, he changed. Well, that's cool. Guess what? God wants this for you. He really does. He wants it for me.

[20:53] One thing I will say though is, is just going back to what Gamaliel said. If God is for what we are doing as believers, as a church, then it'll flourish. Perhaps not immediately. Not right away. But in the end, it will. As long as we're faithful and we listen to the promptings of the Spirit. So that gives me great comfort. Because we may want to do all sorts of things. And if the Spirit tells us to do it, then I think God will make it happen in time. So we just have to be faithful. We don't have to be responsible for all these outcomes. OK? And I think that's very comforting.

[21:22] But the other thing, and I think this is the main point, is it means that you don't actually have any real enemies in this world. Did you know that? You don't have any real enemies in this world. These are only real enemies. They're people that aren't your friends yet. That's what they are. Every person in this world that you may perceive as an enemy is just a friend that hasn't turned into one yet. And that's a great way to look at the world. This is true in the life of the church, but it's got to be true in our personal lives too. And honestly, I'm not thinking of the breatharians now because they're kind of silly. But I can think of other people who are truly bad people in the world. The breatharians are just like a circus act. The truly bad people in the world that I want God's justice to land on. The people who kill. The people who start wars. People who do all sorts of terrible things. And there's hope that God and His justice will both either punish them or forgive them, and that's out of my hands. But I have to be open to someday, somehow, that that person could change. God can make it happen. And that's the other thing to remember is that people can change, and they do change. But something like that's almost always supernatural.

[22:31] It's Jesus reaching into Saul's life. To turn him into Paul. We can't change other people. Good luck trying. That's really a hard thing to do. You can change yourself, but you can't change anyone else. This is true of your wife. So on Mother's Day, you know, you can't change your wife. Good luck. You can't change your husband. Only they can change themselves. You can't change your children. They have to change, right? You can have boundaries and things. That's all important. But you can't change other people.

[22:55] God can change people. The Spirit can inspire people. The Spirit can move people. The Christians who are being collected up by Saul. Saul, they could plead with him not to do it, but that wouldn't do anything. There was too much rug for him that he was still standing on. He couldn't do that. Only Jesus could stop Saul in his tracks and change him into Paul, right? So our final prayer. What's our final prayer in this? As hard as it is that God would do to us what he did to Saul, be careful what you pray for.

[23:24] Ask God to do for us what he did for Saul. Change us. Turn us from his enemy into his friend. Set us on a path of servanthood to him. Go into the town. There are many things that you need to do, right? We want God to pull out the rug when we're too comfortable or too territorial. We want God to do that for us and to turn us from an enemy into a friend so that we can go out and do the same in the rest of the world. Let's pray.

[23:51] Father, thank you again for your servant Saul. Lord, this is tough, but we ask for you to do for us what you did for him and for us to do for you. And for us to respond in the way that he did too. Amen.