It is good to be gathered together in the name of our Lord Jesus. And to have this burden for this message before us is a wonderful thing.
I do not suppose we could say there are three people in the Bible who are better known than Abraham, Paul, and Jesus. So all of us could probably preach these messages. As a matter of fact, Kenny preached half of mine tonight.
But we are very thankful for the richness that we have in brothers and sisters whose hearts have been before the Lord, studying His Word and hungry in this time. I do believe, despite the fact that we are all familiar with these people and with what the Lord has done, that the Lord can touch our hearts afresh and send us on our way, reviving His work in the midst of the years.
We would like to turn tonight to the passage that is our conference theme passage, Acts 26. We want to begin at the beginning in Paul’s Christian life, as he meets Jesus. You know that he gives his testimony several times, and here, to King Agrippa, he tells the story again.
Let us begin in Acts 26:12.
While so engaged as I was journeying to Damascus, with the authority and commission of the chief priests,
at midday, O king, I saw on the way a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining all around me, and those who were journeying with me.
And when we had all fallen to the ground,
I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew dialect,
“Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?
It is hard for you to kick against the goads.”
And I said, “Who are You, Lord?”
And the Lord said, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.
But get up and stand on your feet; for this purpose I have appeared to you,
to appoint you a minister and a witness not only to the things which you have seen,
but also to the things in which I will appear to you;
rescuing you from the Jewish people and from the Gentiles, to whom I am sending you,
to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light,
and from the dominion of Satan to God,
that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me.”“So, King Agrippa, I did not prove disobedient to the heavenly vision,
but kept declaring both to those of Damascus first, and also at Jerusalem,
and then throughout all the region of Judea, and even to the Gentiles,
that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds appropriate to repentance.
For this reason some Jews seized me in the temple and tried to put me to death.
So, having obtained help from God, I stand to this day testifying both to small and great, stating nothing but what the prophets and Moses said was going to take place:
that the Christ was to suffer, and that by reason of His resurrection from the dead He would be the first to proclaim light both to the Jewish people and to the Gentiles.”
Our Father, we come to You tonight at the beginning of this conference. We thank You already for the grace that has brought us together for this time. We thank You as You are strangely warming our hearts while we are worshiping, reuniting with brothers and sisters, talking, and anticipating. Oh, we thank You for Your many mercies to us, new each day.
And now, Lord, we need a special mercy as we have gathered together this evening with tired bodies, spirits that are willing but flesh that is weak. Would You refresh us by Your presence? And so grant us a renewed hunger for Your Word, that we may be attentive in this short time we have together.
O Lord, help us. Increase our capacity, increase our faith, increase the grace of obedience. We pray all these things depending upon You, in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
We believe the Lord will grant us an open heaven as we talk about these matters of vision, because it is not a doctrine. It is the reality of the presence of the Lord Himself. This is always the fountainhead of all that really proceeds in life in this matter of Christian service.
Our brothers will be sharing on the life of Christ and the life of Abraham. For me, I am going to share on this matter of the life of Paul. I would like to do it by looking at the impact, if you want to put it that way, of the heavenly vision in the three stages of Paul’s life.
Paul’s Christian life can roughly be divided into three stages of eleven years. I would like to see the impact of this heavenly vision in each of these three stages. That will be the background of the three messages that I give.
In each of these stages, I have felt the Lord put into my heart a paradoxical phrase that describes something of the impact of this heavenly vision that Paul had.
The first stage—the first eleven years—was the period of preparation, spent mostly in Tarsus, back home as a growing Christian. I want to speak of this heavenly vision as the qualifying devastation. In those preparatory years, this heavenly vision of Christ Himself was a qualifying devastation.
Then there were eleven years of his most fruitful activity and service, before his imprisonment and other things, when he went from place to place. His travels were legend, and what he did was amazing. During that time, I am going to focus on this matter of his heavenly vision producing eccentric originality. Of course, I will have to explain that, because it does not seem to make any sense. It is a little paradoxical, but you will understand as we take it up.
Then there were the last eleven years before he was martyred, mostly spent in prison—waiting, and waiting—in suffering and limitation. In all three of these stages, we are tempted to be disobedient to the heavenly vision. But in that final stage, those years of suffering, I see that this vision of the Lord Jesus gave Paul what I am going to call an inexhaustible emptying.
May the Lord help us make sense of those things.
Now, the first devastating, qualifying vision that Paul had—there is a lot of testimony about this. Paul’s encounter with the risen Lord devastated his life, and we have ample record of that in the Scriptures.
Whenever Paul got one shot to preach the gospel, he shared his own testimony of how the Lord met him and arrested him there on the road to Damascus. We have a number of places in the record where Paul mentions, time and time again, the devastating impact of the vision of Jesus as he stood before Him. This seems to be the very core of his gospel testimony.
By way of reference, as we are introducing Paul tonight, there are two passages that give us any indication at all concerning his age. In Acts 7:58, at the martyrdom of Stephen, the men who were about to stone Stephen laid their coats down before Saul, and he is called “a young man named Saul.”
Most Bible scholars say that by “young man” they meant that Paul was around thirty years of age. The letters he received to harass the churches would not have been given to a teenage boy. Some believe Saul may even have been a new member of the Sanhedrin, proving himself. But, anyway, about thirty years old marks the time when he was saved.
Then we come to Paul near the end of his life. In Philemon 1:9, as he is appealing to his friend concerning Onesimus, he says:
Yet for love’s sake I rather appeal to thee, being such a one as Paul the aged, and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus.
If the years, as Bible scholars count them, are correct, this is approximately thirty-three years later. Paul is now over sixty years old, his body obviously beaten and worn by his years of service and all that he had been through. “Paul the aged,” he calls himself.
We are going to look at this heavenly vision between these two periods of time.
How would we describe the young Paul, the young man whom we find on the road to Damascus? In 1 Corinthians 9:25, Paul describes spiritual life and motivation:
And every man that striveth in the games exerciseth self-control in all things.
Now they do it to receive a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.
At the point where it says, “every man that striveth in the games,” the King James Version uses a wonderful phrase: “Anyone who is striving for the mastery.”
If anything describes the young man Saul at this time in his life, here is a man striving for the mastery. He wanted to master the things that were on his heart.
This matter of being a Pharisee was not, I am sure, a matter of reputation, power, or position for Paul. It was a passion. He had a desire for mastery in his life that was driving him on.
You know that the Lord, in the Gospels, treats the Pharisees quite harshly. The reason is that the Pharisees were zealous, but for the wrong reason.
Now, we know from other Scriptures that the Lord loves zeal—zeal for the Lord. That was the very spirit of Elijah: zeal. Even in Revelation, as He speaks to the churches, He says to the Laodiceans, “Be zealous therefore, and repent.” The Lord loves zeal.
But the Pharisees, and certainly this young man Saul, had misplaced their zeal. It was a zeal for self-approval, self-salvation, and self-righteousness. It was a zeal for mastery, but not a zeal for the Lord.
Although among the Jews and among the sects of the Jews they were the most desirous to follow the Lord, still they had a zeal without knowledge—a zeal for self-justification in their lives.
Paul had this zeal to the point of obsession. Obsession is a real problem among God’s people. Obsession is zeal gone wrong.
Especially those who are most zealous and most desirous to serve the Lord face the possibility of obsession. Here is the process: somebody starts pursuing the Lord, but they lay hold of a thing that works—something that gives them a place of power, makes them feel justified or holy, perhaps loved, or gains a following.
In pursuing the Lord, when you run upon this thing that works, you willfully lay hold of that thing instead of the Lord. What happens in the process of time is that you become obsessed with this thing, until that which started out right becomes completely wrong.
Obsession is a misplaced zeal that has left the Lord and now embraces, grasps, and follows after a thing. Isaiah the prophet talks about it, and Jesus talks about it. Obsession brings blindness to reality.
It is all explained when you watch Saul—obsessed, striving for the mastery. Now he has found a thing that works: persecuting these people of the Way. It has given him a mission, a purpose, new energy, and an outlet for zeal. He is bounding about, getting letters from the chief priests, going about doing his job in this kind of obsession. It feeds upon itself and feeds upon itself.
In Acts 9:1, we find this little phrase:
But Saul, yet breathing threatening and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest.
That is obsession. Reality has been left. There is a blindness of passion that is driving and feeding upon itself. Only the Lord can break this kind of obsession.
In 1 Timothy 1:12-16, one of the many places where Paul shares testimony concerning the beginning, he says:
I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that He counted me faithful, appointing me to His service;
though I was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: howbeit I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief;
and the grace of our Lord abounded exceedingly with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.
Faithful is the saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief:
howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me as chief might Jesus Christ show forth all His longsuffering, for an ensample of them that should hereafter believe on Him unto eternal life.
Here Paul talks about his obsession as ignorance—not unwitting ignorance, but willful ignorance in unbelief, blind ignorance. Yet the Lord showed mercy. He knew my obsession. He knew my state. The Lord came to me.
Paul explains that the Lord showed mercy to him because He wanted to use him as an example. There was nobody worse than me, and if the Lord could save me, here is a trustworthy statement: He can save anybody.
Paul testifies at the end of his life concerning the things that were real to him at the beginning of his life.
Let us go back to Acts 26 and come to the actual moment when he meets the Lord on the road. Let us see what this young man meets.
After the bright light shone from heaven and he fell to the ground, Paul says:
I heard a voice saying unto me in the Hebrew tongue, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me? It is hard for thee to kick against the goads.”
I do not know how you hear these words, but I do not sense in these words what I thought as a young Christian. I thought Jesus was getting back at him: “Oh, you are persecuting Me,” really scaring him to death.
But I have realized since then that Jesus does not play games with people, especially people who have a heart. These words are tender words. There is a little hurt in these words.
These are the first words Paul ever heard from the Lord. The Lord was condescending and kind enough to speak to Saul in Hebrew. Has the Lord ever spoken to you, called your name, in your own dialect?
Here we see the heavenly vision: it is the love of the Lord.
Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?
Such tender words, such loving words, yet they struck Saul at the very soul.
Paul, despite all his obsession, had as his greatest desire someday to stand approved before the presence of the Lord. Surely this was his end. His whole life was given to this: “I want to stand approved in the presence of the Lord.”
Now here he is, with the glory of God forcing him to the ground, in the very Shekinah presence of God, and he hears rebuking words: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” Instead of approval—correction.
When Saul was struck by this loving One who was speaking to him, there must have been some light in that little phrase: “It is hard for you to kick against the goads.” How Paul was humbled by such a statement. He thought to himself, “You mean I have been kicking against God all this time, and I thought I was serving Him?”
That is the very nature of obsession. The worst part about when somebody is obsessed is that they get used by something. Saul had been used by blind obsession to persecute these people, and now this heavenly voice is saying, “You have been kicking against Me.”
Saul must have had compunctions of guilt in the middle of the night. His conscience was hurting him. He wondered about Stephen. He saw the countenance of an angel on Stephen’s face. He began to think and doubt—all those inner, secret things, even those drivings and blind energies of his. They were all on the wrong track.
“It is hard for you to kick against the goads.” What a fool—to kick against God Himself.
No matter what our background is, maybe very different from Saul’s, I think we all have to testify that, when the Lord shows up to us, this is often our reality: we have been kicking against the Lord. The things to which we have been so dedicated have been on the wrong track.
What a devastation—fighting against the Almighty.
This picture has to be a picture of Jacob wrestling with God at the river. Here is Saul: wrestling, wrestling, unrest. The Lord says, “It is hard for you to kick against Me, is it not?” It is just like Jacob. You cannot win. Why are you kicking against God?
So Saul was found out. Just like Jacob, he asked the question, “Who are You, Lord?”
We have to keep in mind that Paul was hardly ready for the answer. Probably he thought this was either the Shekinah glory or perhaps the angel of the Lord. “Who are You, Lord? What is all this that You are saying? It is too much for me to comprehend, but I sense the light, and I know it is divine. Who are You, Lord?”
When the Lord said, “I am Jesus,” those three words were a devastating undoing from which Saul never recovered.
I am Jesus.
Everything fell to the ground. His theology fell to the ground. “Who is this divine Presence?” “I am Jesus.” “What has my life been about?” It is all wrong. “What has my theology been?” It is all wrong.
Everything in Saul’s life, in those three words, fell to the ground. Devastation—that is what I am saying.
There are all of us, of course, who think we are right all the time until we are dealt with otherwise. But there are certain people with a temperament that must be right all the time. Their passion for self-justification will even cause them to lie or blind themselves, even as the apostle Paul.
“I must be right.” Saul certainly had that kind of temperament, do you not think? If ever we see a man in Scripture who had to be right, it was Saul. Here he was completely wrong—dead wrong.
No extenuating circumstances. “But you see, I did not see that. I did not know. My theology—Gamaliel never told me.” No, no, no. The whole thing was dead wrong. Every part of your life, dead wrong. All your pedigree that was gained—lost.
Paul would have been crushed under the weight of that realization, except that I would testify to you tonight that these words were spoken with such love that Paul did not die.
There was such mercy in, “I am Jesus whom thou art persecuting.” There was such a depth of love that Saul, though completely wrong, completely exposed, and completely worthy of condemnation and death, somehow found the grace to say:
Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?
It is like Joseph in the Old Testament. At the moment his brothers realized who he was, he spoke to them by name and said, “I am Joseph. I am Joseph.” His brothers backed away. They could not say anything. They were exposed, guilty, and afraid.
Joseph had to spend the next few minutes saying, “No, no, no. Listen, please. Come to me. Come to me. Let me tell you. You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” He had to explain so that his brothers could even breathe again. They were so fearful in the presence of this second one to Pharaoh.
I would suggest to you that Saul, there on the ground, could not breathe until finally, somehow in the light—now, I do not know whether love was measured in His voice; to this day, we do not actually know—did Saul see the face of Jesus? Could it be that in that face he saw such mercy that he was able not to die, but to say, “What would You have me to do?”
What else could he say?
It is interesting, is it not, that many years later, near the end of his life, Paul writes in 2 Timothy 2 concerning an obsessed man. What do you do with brothers who are obsessed with a teaching, a doctrine, or an experience? They are blind in their beliefs, and it is wrong doctrine. How do you deal with them?
Paul says that we should deal with them with utmost patience and mercy.
In 2 Timothy 2:24-26, he writes:
And the Lord’s servant must not strive, but be gentle towards all, apt to teach, forbearing,
in meekness correcting them that oppose themselves; if peradventure God may give them repentance unto the knowledge of the truth,
and they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him unto his will.
Sometimes I fear that we do not understand the mercy of Jesus. He understands the hearts of people. Sometimes people have this problem with obsession, or people who have a great heart for the Lord have simply gone wrong somewhere.
The Lord tells Timothy: “You be gentle. You be patient. Share the truth and pray for them. Only God can lead them to repentance and a knowledge of the truth, and take them out of the bondage they are in.”
We can bark, yell, accuse, excommunicate, and do all kinds of things. But Paul remembers, perhaps, back there on the road, when there was really no excuse to let Saul live another day, and the Lord showed patience and mercy.
Lord, what would You have me to do?
This began the first eleven years—the years of preparation, as we might call them. The basic watchword of those first eleven years was, “Wait, and I will tell you what to do.”
Paul was a well-tuned engine, and the Lord told him to idle for eleven years.
In this testimony to King Agrippa, Paul goes on and tells what the Lord told him, but he is telescoping the events to be economical with time before the king. Actually, he said, “Lord, what would You have me to do?” And the Lord said, “Go to Damascus, and it will be told you what to do.”
Not knowing what to do, except that he could not see, Saul was lifted up by his companions. They did not know what was happening, but they sensed something life-changing had taken place. They helped Saul into the city, and the Lord made him wait.
Three days and three nights in darkness: fasting, praying, waiting. Nothing. No voice. Nothing. A lot of thoughts: “Who is this Jesus? How did I persecute Him? How could I be so wrong? What is He going to do now? What is going to happen? What should I do?”
Nothing, nothing, nothing. Silence, silence, silence.
The heavenly vision had to arrest him and take the initiative over if his life was going to count for God.
Saul had to be taught to wait. He waited three days, and then, unexpectedly, he heard from the Lord again. It was not a voice from heaven. It was a man he did not know. A presence came into the room, and the man came up and said, “Brother Saul, the Lord has sent me, that you might be healed and that you might be filled with the Spirit.”
The next thing Paul knew, he looked up and could see. It was Ananias, whom he had never met and perhaps had on his list. Undoubtedly, he was one of the righteous men in the assembly.
Saul arose, was baptized, took some food, fellowshipped with the saints in Damascus for a few days, and waited. Then that waiting stretched into a few years in the desert. Waiting, waiting. His biological clock was ticking. He was thirty years old, then thirty-one. The juices were all there.
Wait, wait, wait.
Finally, he got a chance to go down to Jerusalem and wanted to meet the saints. The saints were all hiding from him. Barnabas alone had the courage to listen to his testimony, embrace him, and bring him to some brothers.
But he was there only a little while. Then he started going into the synagogue and immediately got in trouble. The apostles had a word for him: “Go back. Go back to Tarsus and wait.” Another eight years. Just wait.
“But wait—on the road, Ananias clarified for me that I have some calling to go out and testify.” Wait, wait. Eleven years waiting, waiting to sort out the devastation that had taken place in his life.
He had more problems than just wrong doctrine. We do not realize the depth of our fallenness. He had to be devastated and then reconstituted—body, soul, and spirit.
Even his body had to be marked by a new countenance, beginning from the spirit within. His whole soul was devastated in this time, and he had to wait on the Lord and discover the new creation.
He waited before the Lord, waited before the Lord. Not only did he have wrong doctrines and a wrong understanding; he was eating from the wrong tree. This man knew how to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil like no man. He was a genius. The Lord said, “Wait, wait, wait, wait. No, no, no, no.”
It was total devastation. The whole thing had to be brought down—the whole superstructure.
Needless to say, the outside of Saul was completely ruined. The Hebrew of the Hebrews; his Phariseeism; his training under Gamaliel—Gamaliel would be absolutely offended by this. His parents—what would they say? His career as a Pharisee was over. His ministry of going about with letters and persecution was done. His whole outward life—all that was gained to him—had become loss.
That was just the outward devastation. It was really the inward part that was so crushing to Paul. He had to wait for all of these things to be transformed.
We could spend a lot of time talking about that, and next time we will share some things that happened during this period. But we need to point out the vital principle and lesson of this whole matter.
Real vision is devastating.
Real vision releases a work of the cross in our lives that continues through the first stage, the second stage, and the third stage of our lives.
We do not go through a time of discipline and restriction for a little while, then take off and set our lives free, doing whatever we want. Paul was arrested by this vision, and that arresting was an arresting of the cross laid upon Paul that never left him for the rest of his life. He was devastated.
And it was a qualifying devastation.
I know it is tragically true: there are many people who say they have vision, but they have none of the marks of Jesus, nor His cross. Those who serve the Lord and say, “Oh, I have a vision,” may be following somebody else’s vision.
Do you have Paul’s vision? I hope you do not say yes. The whole point is not for you to have Paul’s vision. That is not original at all; that is secondhand stuff.
Do you have a vision of the Lord Jesus in glory? That is what undoes us. We may have heard some teaching about heavenly vision and subscribed to it, but that is not it at all. That will not devastate you.
But when you see the Lord Jesus Himself, it releases this work, this action we call the work of the cross. It is a devastation, and, of course, a reconstitution on the other side, because resurrection always follows this kind of devastation.
So many servants claim to have vision, but their souls manifest overconfidence, pride, and a willingness to divide, fight, and conquer.
But I think you will agree, those who have studied the Word well enough, that Paul, from this day on, had a limp for the rest of his life.
I know some of his accusers charged him with being bold in his letters while, in appearance, he was a small fry. Many kinds of things were said about the apostle Paul. But when you study the record carefully, when accusations were made directly against Paul, Paul did not react to them.
It was only when those accusations confused and hurt the saints that Paul had anything to say about his detractors. He was a man who had the limp for the rest of his life.
When it came down to a sort of battle of the apostles, as he writes about in 2 Corinthians, he had to say, “I apologize. I do not have that kind of confidence, moxie, and pride. I do not go around boasting and stuff. Let me boast about the foolish things I have done,” he says, “because I cannot do that other thing.”
Really, a servant of God is not safe until there has been some real work of the cross done in his life. There are so many who know truth, doctrine, and experience. They have experience. They are good men, good women.
But unless the cross has undone them substantially at the center of who they are, then what they do in the end will not add to God’s purpose. There has to be this real work done in their lives.
We cannot speak to those who say they have vision but do not evidence any cross in their lives. We have to leave that to the Lord. But here is the more fearful alternative:
It is possible to truly have seen and been apprehended by a heavenly vision, and yet disobey.
“I did not prove disobedient to the heavenly vision.” The statement itself means that it is possible. It seems inconceivable, because such a heavenly vision would seem to affect a person’s life so deeply. How could they ever disobey?
It is true that a heavenly vision arrests. It is true that a heavenly vision devastates. But even a heavenly vision of the Lord Himself is not irresistible.
When the issues of the cross start bearing heavily on a person’s life, that becomes the point at which we want to disobey. When the cross comes down hard, or relentlessly in the second stage, or after years of service in the third stage, the temptation is to disobey the heavenly vision.
It is possible to have really seen something and to walk away from it.
The cross does get hard to bear. Sometimes we get offended by that cross, begin to despise it, murmur about it, or faint under it all the time. We can faint so much, murmur so much, and collapse so much that I truly believe the Lord will actually lift it off us.
But we will lose the work it was doing.
In the end, the cross that this vision lays hold of in our lives must be received. There must be willingness on our part.
The Lord can only arrest and devastate us for so long before He waits for us to say, “Yes, Lord, I have been devastated, but devastate me with Your devastation.” There has to be some kind of response back to the Lord, or it is not the cross.
Are we willing to allow the Lord to continue, to continue to work?
I fear many of us qualify as murmurers in the wilderness—murmuring, fainting, sighing, and all that sort of thing. The Lord sort of lifts His hand and says, “Okay.” He is not satisfied, but sometimes we are satisfied with living at a level somewhere between what the Lord had for us and taking the easy way.
There is something unique in the way Paul expresses this phrase to King Agrippa. He says, “I did not prove disobedient to the heavenly vision.” The New American Standard puts this word prove in there, and when I looked at the Greek, there is reason for that.
Simply put, “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.” But in the original language, there is this proving that is a factor in the statement Paul makes.
First of all, when he says, “I did not prove disobedient to the heavenly vision,” he is implying that the Lord is out ahead of him and the initiative is out of his hands. He is being led, as it were, by this heavenly vision. He is following something—a train, a way, a life opening before him.
It is really not his initiative or his decision, but he has gone along and followed as best he could over the years. “I did not prove disobedient to the heavenly vision.”
Second, I think this phrase suggests that the Lord had saddled him with this vision, bridled him with this vision, and brought him under restraint by this vision. So now, as he ministers, whether to Gentiles or Jews, he is always under this restraint.
Over the years, he did not throw off those restraints in some kind of false, released liberty—a very popular phrase among ministries today: “Be released.”
But in Paul there was never that kind of release of body and soul, just to say whatever and do whatever. There was always a harness, always a bridle, always that restraint which comes under true vision.
“I did not prove disobedient to that heavenly vision.”
Third, this is a simple, modest statement. Today, in our self-affirming world, people like to say, “I was obedient to the heavenly vision.” Paul would never say that.
There is a modesty in saying, “I was not disobedient.” Why? Because it implies there were times in my life, if I could speak for Paul, when I was not quite sure of the way to go. There were times when I was at the end of myself and my rope, and I did not really know what the Lord had. There were times when I grabbed the initiative, but thankfully the Lord overruled.
“I would say, over my years, not that I am perfect or walked the perfect course, but the Lord has laid hold of me in such a way and been so faithful to me that ultimately I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.”
That is a statement made in modesty and reality. Who is obedient to the heavenly vision? That would imply you did everything just right. No, sometimes the way was not clear. Sometimes he was tempted at the end of himself.
In 2 Corinthians, Paul implies that when he got to Troas and a wide door opened for ministry, he was so bothered about Titus and the Corinthians that he said, “I cannot stay here and preach the gospel.” He implies that it was sort of a failure, but the Lord turned it into triumph.
“I did not prove disobedient to the heavenly vision.”
Paul was tempted to be disobedient to the heavenly vision, and you and I are tempted in the same way. It all has to do with the cross and its various workings in our lives. The Lord knows how to undo the things that need to be undone.
Let us mention those three stages of Saul’s life as we finish. He was tempted in all those stages to be disobedient.
In the early stage, what was the temptation? So many things. But here was this turbocharged engine, this doer, mover, shaker, energy-filled, focused person who could take charge of things. He would have been a great man if he had never been converted. He would have been a great man among the Jews; there is no doubt about it.
What did the Lord do with all that energy? Here was his cross: Wait.
Paul had such a grasp of Scripture, even as an early Christian. Imagine him sitting in the synagogue in Tarsus, listening to old Joe Blow struggle to read the Hebrew, misinterpret a few things, come up with a good point, sing a song, and go home. Paul says to himself, “I could have preached around that thing for hours.”
He was a man ready to go, and the Lord would not let him go for eleven years. There was a thoroughbred in the Kentucky Derby gate that had to stand in the gate for eleven years.
There is a cross in saying, “Yes, Lord,” taking the lesser point and the lesser part, and doing what the brethren tell you to do. Oh, this is a cross—the patient waiting years.
Then, talk about a temptation to be disobedient to the heavenly vision when you are finally released, as we would say. Eleven years later, there in Antioch, praying together with the brothers, the Lord said, “Set apart for Me Saul and Barnabas.” Paul was set apart.
Oh boy, it was like putting a new battery in him. He was ready to go, to race across the world. He had plans. “Oh yeah, Barney, let’s go to Cyprus first, then we’ll go up there. I have plans to get to Rome.”
Then that big saddle came down on top of him and said, “No, not that way.”
Paul says, “I want to go. Let’s go preach in the marketplace of the world.” “No, go to the synagogues.”
By this time, his mind had been infused with enlightened Scriptures. The man was just looking for a place to preach. But the Lord held him back, and he had to go in a certain way, a living way. He had to learn it.
He had to learn how to submit to Barnabas on that journey. Oh, that is tough. Sure, Barnabas was older, but Paul was smarter. There were all kinds of opportunities for Paul to say, “Sure, Barnabas, you do that and I will carry the luggage.”
The Lord has His way, you know. Even in those times of fruitfulness, he was never without temptation.
Then, of course, when he was in jail all by himself and all his friends had left him, he began to wonder, “Is it worth it? Should I just do something for myself? I could say a few words and get out of this place. I do not need to be dogged by these Judaizers. I could just say, ‘Oh, it is okay, do that,’ and be free.”
So easy, so easy. The way is so easy to be disobedient to this heavenly vision. Saul could not do it, but he was tempted.
The qualifying devastation.
I just want to encourage brothers and sisters here tonight. We will not speak any longer. I know it is a long journey getting here, but there is much to think about in this.
I am encouraged by the fact that I believe I know some brothers and sisters here in all three stages of this life of Paul, who have a heart to serve the Lord and have seen something of the Lord.
There are some here who are, I am sure, chomping at the bit. I love to watch young people. They have so many options, and they do not know what to do. “Should I be a doctor or a lawyer? But wait, first I want to go to Africa as a missionary. Then I have to learn guitar, but then I am going to…”
They have so many options, so many things. Then they really see something of the Lord, and the Lord starts to cramp their style.
They have to wait. They go to a fellowship, and the fellowship has a small-f fellowship. They have to wait. Just be faithful. They can already preach better than the brothers. The youth group is better than the adult group. They have to wait, wait, wait.
I would encourage those who are in that stage of waiting and waiting with two things.
The cross has to do its work, and it has to do a more substantial work in you and me than we first believed. But where the cross can truly do its work, in the end His life can truly flow out like rivers of living water.
Will you let Him do His work, bear that cross, submit to those people, wait patiently, and accept all that is involved? Wherever there is a cross, there is going to be resurrection release. How precious it will be that you waited for the Lord’s time.
Many of our young people are tempted. I see it in New York. There are churches all over the place just looking for anybody who can spell. If you are intelligent and love the Lord, you are prime material. There are always little calls going out for youth ministers, and you can jump into something early like that.
I am sure the Lord will use you. Or why do we not wait and see what the Lord has for you?
Can I encourage you also with this? It was during these first eleven years that Paul was taken in ecstasy up to the third heaven, where he saw things not lawful for him to repeat.
When we talk about waiting and the working of the cross, there is something bittersweet about the cross. Under the discipline, there are also moments of sweetness, preciousness, intimacy, and wonder—things where the Lord tells you secrets and tells you not to tell another person.
It was during these first eleven years that Paul saw these things. So do not be discouraged. Wait for the Lord. See what He has for you, and the Lord will raise you up if you are faithful and use you.
But first: the qualifying devastation.
I am sure there are some people here who are running the race, perhaps running well, but who have run into a lot of frustration and circumstantial problems that have made your ability to run difficult.
I would like to challenge you, knowing how difficult our lives are in this world: if the Lord could speak to you, would He say, “It is hard for you to kick against the goads”?
I honestly believe that if the Lord does not goad us, we will all go right into the world. Prosperity, job promotions, the desire for house and home and security, and one thing and another lead us right out of His purposes for us.
I pray that those who really have a heart to serve the Lord will not allow anything. If there is something the Lord is poking you about and poking you about, recognize the Lord in those circumstances and frustrations. Do you think it is just your circumstances? Is the Lord not trying to get at something here?
We have the truth of the Scriptures to tell us that the Lord actually sends out people in His good time—some at a young age, some in middle years, and some in older years.
Recently I was reading some of C. T. Studd’s biography. He did his most fruitful work when he was over the hill. He was broken from his years of missions in China and India, and he really should never have gone to Africa. His doctors told him, “You will never come back. You will not make it. The trip is too tough. Your heart is too bad.”
I think he had already had heart attacks and real problems with his heart. He said, “No, the Lord told me to go. I am going.”
My, what a revival they had in the Congo. He found his home. He found his life. If I am not mistaken, he was over sixty at that time, and he found a new beginning.
Only the Lord knows how to move us about. Only the Lord knows His timing.
Could we ask the Lord to give us an open heaven, so that if we have seen something of the Lord, He might refresh that vision? When we see that vision of the Lord, may we once again hear the love behind the words. If the Lord brings rebuke to us, may we hear the mercy behind the rebuke.
The Lord loves His children who have a heart for Him. We are such foolish people.
I must say, to my own hurt, I have been used by other than the Lord to cause division and hurt problems—my own blindness, my own folly.
Oh, that there would be people who have seen the Lord, been captured by His love, treat other people mercifully, and allow the Lord to do this devastating work that is so necessary to qualify them for service.
Today we have a simple remedy, you know: “I want the Lord to slay me in ten minutes.” We have such services. You can come up after a meeting is over, somebody can tap you on the head, you can fall down and be slain by the Lord, and stand up ten minutes later. I have heard people testify that the Lord called them to a ministry, sent them out, and took care of all their problems.
That is sort of the instant-slay market we have in our mentality.
But who is willing to be slain by the Lord for life? To be slain by His love, His mercy, and a vision of His face—and, for the rest of our lives, to be slain.
That, I believe, is the Bible view.
If we would be servants of God and serve not only in His kingdom but in His purpose in this generation, then we need to see the glory of the Lord as He truly is.
We also need to take the cross that such a vision has inherent within it and allow that cross to do its work. We find in the end that we are part of His purpose and are adding something to what His desire is for.
How the Lord desires His people. Oh, that we would come to Him, see afresh that vision that He captured us with even in the early days, and allow His work to be revived.
Let us pray.
Lord, we pray that You would revive Your work among us. I am constrained to believe that there are many dear brothers and sisters here who have seen a vision of the Christ of heaven. We have seen a vision of the corporate Christ, a vision of the universal Christ, a vision of the Christ of glory.
I do believe that You have given us, by Your Holy Spirit, such revelation of who You are. O Lord, but now the proving.
Lord, as You lay Your devastating work upon us—undoing us, exposing us, taking away those confidences that we previously had, taking our gains and putting them in the liability column—O Lord, would we still follow You?
Again, I am constrained to believe there are those here even this weekend who, as foolish, as mistaken, as obsessed, and as stubborn as we have been, more than anything want Your heart and want one day to stand approved in Your presence.
So, Lord, if that means today that we need to stand in Your merciful rebuke, then Lord, rebuke us. And Lord, if it means that we have been kicking against Your goads, then tell us; then we will cease.
Lord, show us again that all that is happening to us is Jesus. Oh, speak to us of Yourself.
We need not some kind of vision that is merely a pattern of outward things. We need again to go to the fountainhead and see the love of God that would arrest a sinner such as I and show mercy, in order that we may be a useful vessel in these days.
Help us, Lord—all of us. Teach us, speak to us, show Yourself to us in these days. What a marvelous time we will have in Your presence.
We do believe, and we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.