What might God be calling All Saints to? - Acts 9:19b-25 Sermon | Anglican Church Prescott

Saul was uniquely equipped for the calling God gave him.

Text: Acts 9:19b-25

As we look at the newly converted Saul, we see him enjoying the fellowship of those he had intended to kill, but the true nature of his calling is quickly revealed. He immediately starts teaching in the synagogues. This shift is incredible, but underneath it, we realize something else: Saul was uniquely equipped for what God had called him to.

Saul trained under Gamaliel, who we briefly met in chapter 5, a teacher of the law who was held in honor. This was like attending the most academically rich and theologically sound seminary of our day; he had permission to teach in the synagogues. Then the scales fell from his eyes, he was baptized, and given the Holy Spirit. Because of this equipping, he was able to reason and prove that Jesus is the Christ.

It is incredibly encouraging to know that God uniquely equips his saints for the tasks that they have been called to.

Cleaned up Sermon manuscript:

Father, you perfectly prepared and uniquely equipped Saul for the calling into which you brought him. We see him this morning proclaiming and proving that your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, was and is the Messiah.

We pray that we, too, would know how you have uniquely equipped us for this season—to live for your glory in this place—and that we would be a people who proclaim the gospel in season and out of season, to your glory.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be always acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Please be seated.

When someone has been coming to All Saints for a few weeks, I try to sit down and have a cup of coffee with them. I hope I have done that with all of you who are regular attenders. I want to get to know you, learn how to pray for you, and hear what you are looking for.

Five or six years ago, I had one of these conversations with someone who has since moved away. They told me, “This isn’t the first time I’ve visited All Saints.”

I said, “Oh, that’s nice.”

They replied, “Well, no.”

Their first visit had been perhaps ten or fifteen years earlier. As they were leaving, they saw a minister arguing with someone in the parking lot. I don’t think they meant a physical fight, but now that I think about it, I’m not entirely sure. I’ve heard stories.

But then their life changed, and they decided to give All Saints another try. What they experienced the second time was different: a place of peace, comfort, and the gospel.

I said, “Thanks be to God—and I’m sorry that was your first experience.”

I do not tell you this story because I am an amazing leader. I’m not. I don’t tell it because I am a particularly good pastor. I’m not. I tell it because of the one promise I have made and intend to keep until the Lord takes me home or sends me somewhere else: I will preach the gospel in season and out of season. That is the promise I make to you. The promise I ask from you is that, when I fail—and at some point I will—you will remind me of the gospel.

Because we have intentionally made the gospel paramount in this community, it has changed us. We have moved from a place where it was apparently acceptable to fight in the parking lot to a place where we seek reconciliation, love one another, and proclaim Christ. His gospel is central to what we do.

I tell you that story because this morning we meet someone whose life was turned upside down and fundamentally changed when he was confronted by Christ and his gospel.

Last week we met Saul. Luke painted a picture of the pre-conversion Saul as something like a raging beast. We used the image of a javelina going after the trash: thoughtlessly destructive, driven by the flesh. That is who Saul was before Christ confronted him on the road to Damascus.

By the end of last week’s reading, he was a man in submission to Christ. It was a massive, fundamental, and incredible change.

This week’s reading begins halfway through verse 19—halfway through a thought—but it opens with a new picture of a new man: “For some days he was with the disciples at Damascus.”

Last week we saw Saul crushed and humbled. It was like the feeling that comes when you have been terribly angry and finally take a deep breath: the anger drains away and leaves you deflated. That is part of what we see here. But we also see a totally new man, sitting with new friends and enjoying something brand new to him: communion and fellowship with his fellow believers.

Just think about how incredible that is. These are the people Saul came to destroy. These are the people he intended to ravage—and now he enjoys their fellowship.

Only God can do that. This is the power of the gospel, my friends.

We have seen a glimpse of that power in our own community. We are gathered by grace. We seek to be a church in which the gospel is central.

We do not know exactly what those days looked like, but Saul seems to be enjoying the ordinary life of Christian fellowship. He breaks bread with the disciples. He laughs with them. He encourages them, and he is encouraged by what God has done for them. The script has been completely flipped: the man who came to destroy them is now strengthened by them.

This is a small glimpse of what fellowship is meant to be for you and me as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Fellowship is not just delicious doughnuts and Folgers coffee. Fellowship is hearing and being encouraged by the Word of God. Fellowship is gathering around the Lord’s Table and partaking of Holy Communion. Fellowship is sharing one another’s joys and rejoicing with those who rejoice. Fellowship is sharing one another’s burdens and calling each other back, again and again, to the gospel of grace.

That is the work of every Christian: to remind one another of the depth and breadth of Christ’s love for us—that he has died for us and made us new.

What Saul enjoys in this first verse is what you and I are invited into every single week.

But we often make a mistake when we think about salvation. We imagine that salvation is simply for us—or, to put it more pithily, that it is a “get out of hell free” card. But that is not what salvation is for. Deliverance from hell is a benefit of salvation. Knowing Christ and walking with him is a benefit of salvation. But the central purpose of salvation is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. It is the restoration of what we lost in the garden.

Your salvation points beyond you. It declares that there is a God who created the universe and is re-creating you. There is a God who loves you more deeply than you can possibly imagine.

That is what your salvation is for.

And that is what Saul does here. He wastes no time: “Immediately he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues, saying, ‘He is the Son of God.’” He does not waste time because he has been equipped for precisely this mission.

The title he uses is fascinating. This is the only place in Acts where someone explicitly calls Jesus “the Son of God.” It is a bold claim about Jesus: Christ has fulfilled all that God has promised.

In the Old Testament, sonship in relation to God is often associated with Israel. Israel was called to be a blessing to the nations, yet Israel frequently took on the baggage of the nations instead of blessing them. To proclaim that Jesus is the Son of God is to proclaim that Jesus has fulfilled Israel’s calling and all that God has promised.

We hear an echo of this in this morning’s Gospel reading. Jesus heals a man who is deaf and has a speech impediment. At the end of the passage, the people are “astonished beyond measure,” saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”

They marvel because making the deaf hear and the mute speak is what the Messiah would do. The healing raises a question: Who is this man who has come among us? Could he possibly be the Messiah? Is he really the Christ?

Saul answers: Yes. Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus is the Son of God.

The reaction of the people in Damascus is natural. It is probably how we would react if someone notorious and frightening suddenly became a Christian:

All who heard him were amazed and said, “Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem of those who called upon this name? And has he not come here for this purpose, to bring them bound before the chief priests?”

What they see is fundamentally contrary to who they expected Saul to be. Saul came equipped with a mission to destroy the Church. He intended to crush it, and he had the credentials to do so. He stood by and approved Stephen’s killing. He ravaged the Church in Jerusalem—an astonishingly dark word, describing the way an animal tears something apart. He carried authorization from the high priest to find the believers in Damascus, bind them, and drag them back to Jerusalem for trial.

That is who Saul was.

And now he proclaims that Jesus is the Son of God.

That is what the gospel does. That is what the gospel has done for our church. That is what the gospel has done for you. God transforms us and makes us unrecognizable, because Saul—and you and I, and everyone Christ has touched—is made new in him.

And if you have never heard this before, this is what Christ invites you into. If you feel sorrowful, broken, or crushed by the world, Christ makes you new. If you are overwhelmed by your sin and the effects of sin, Christ washes you and makes you new.

This is the invitation of the gospel.

But do you know who was not surprised by Saul’s transformation? God. God was not remotely surprised, because he had been preparing Saul for this mission his whole life:

Saul increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ.

We probably know more about Saul than any of the other apostles. We know about his preparation. We know who he was before his conversion and who he became afterward. He was a “Pharisee of Pharisees,” a rising star in the Pharisaical community. He had studied under Gamaliel. He was not simply an average man whom God called; he was on his way to becoming someone important in the Pharisaical world. He had the finest education and was uniquely qualified for the mission to which Christ called him.

When the Holy Spirit converted Saul, God was not beginning his preparation. God had been preparing him his whole life.

About a year ago, perhaps a little less, I asked a question whose answer seemed obvious: Who is missing from our church?

We all know the answer. We are, generally speaking, very old. No offense—I love you all. But we do not have many children, and we need children if our ministry is to continue. So we wrestled with the question: How do we bring children into the Church?

About three months ago, however, I realized that perhaps we had been asking the wrong question.

A better question is this: Whom are we uniquely equipped to serve?

Every church has a life cycle. At some point, every congregation will ask, “Who are we missing?” But I want to encourage us—and our friends visiting from other Arizona churches this morning—not to begin with, “Who are we missing, and how do we get them?” Begin here: “Whom are we uniquely equipped to serve?”

God prepares every Christian to minister in the particular place and circumstances in which he has placed them. But this morning I want to focus especially on whom I believe All Saints is uniquely equipped to serve. If you disagree, that is all right; we can have a conversation. I do not claim certainty. I am telling you what I have seen, what I think, and what I have begun sharing with others.

I believe we are uniquely equipped to serve families like mine—and, particularly, children like Sam.

I say that for two reasons.

First, you have me. I do not say that arrogantly. I did not plan to have a child with Down syndrome. I did not plan to spend much of the past three years driving to Phoenix and sitting with Sam in the hospital. None of that appeared in my life plan.

But I know something of the joy and grief of living this life. By God’s grace, he has given me an ability to minister to people walking a similar road. The joys and griefs Julie and I have heard from other families mirror our own. That is a particular kind of preparation.

The second reason is you. You have loved us very well.

I told someone this week that I am not always the pastor I want to be. Sometimes I have to sit at my child’s bedside, and I cannot be here to love and serve you. I do not want to be absent, but sometimes I have to be. You have borne that with us. You have rejoiced with us, prayed for us, and prayed for Sam.

None of us planned for this. But all of us have learned to love one family living in this situation. And if you can love one family well, I assure you that you can love another—and many others.

I believe the Lord has uniquely equipped All Saints to minister to families of children with special needs. I want to encourage you to pray about that, because it is a good and beautiful calling, if indeed it is ours.

How do we make room at the table—mentally, spiritually, and physically—for these families? We have some good ideas beginning to take shape. I pray that God will bless them and open the right doors.

You might immediately think, “That sounds hard.” Yes, it does. You might think, “That does not seem like something I can do, or something we can do.”

But think about Joseph. God prepared him his whole life—and even in this morning’s Old Testament reading, his preparation is not complete. Joseph was an arrogant little brat. God humbled him, buried him, and brought him up as a new man. God placed him before Pharaoh to interpret a dream. But even that was not the final purpose of Joseph’s preparation. God was not merely preparing Joseph to save Egypt; he was preparing Joseph to save Israel.

Joseph could not possibly have dreamed that plan. It was the Lord’s work.

Think about Moses: “I stutter. I cannot do this, Lord.” God answered, in effect, “Take Aaron with you, and I will give you the words.”

David was the runt, and God raised him up to be king. It was not David’s work. It was the Lord’s.

Or read the calling of Jeremiah in the first chapter of his book. Jeremiah says, “I am young, and I do not know how to speak.” Amen, Jeremiah. But God tells him to go.

You are not called to equip yourself. That does not mean you do nothing. It means that God equips you—and God receives the glory for the work to which he calls you.

Long before Christ named Saul his chosen vessel, God was preparing him for the mission. God uniquely equips his saints—and he has uniquely equipped us—for our calling.

We often make another mistake. Scripture contains deeply comforting words, and they are meant to comfort us. But we sometimes imagine that, because God comforts us, we are always supposed to be comfortable.

The comforting words of Scripture are given to sustain us when we are uncomfortable.

The Church is not meant to be our little country club. It is not meant to bend itself around our comforts and preferences. It is not meant to become a gospel ghetto, shut off from the world.

The Church is meant to be a hospital for the hurting, a school in which we grow in Christ, and a lighthouse for those facing shipwreck.

All three callings are uncomfortable. We have spent a great deal of time in hospitals. They are not pleasant places. But if you have a heart attack or break your leg, a hospital is precisely where you want to be. You do not go there for a vacation.

School is hard. You are asked to grow, learn, and be strengthened.

And read sometime about nineteenth-century lighthouse keepers. Their calling was lonely, difficult, and frightening, with waves crashing over the lighthouse.

These callings are hard—but they are good.

Whatever God is calling us to—whether it is what I have articulated this morning or something I have not yet seen—will challenge us. It will not always be comfortable. But if I have missed the particular calling and God reveals another, glory be to him.

The work will be hard, but it will be good, because we will be walking with God. He will already have prepared the way and equipped us for it.

That is exactly what happens to Saul. The end of this passage is almost comical:

When many days had passed, the Jews plotted to kill him, but their plot became known to Saul. They were watching the gates day and night in order to kill him, but his disciples took him by night and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a basket.

It is not clear how long Saul had been in Damascus, but it did not take long for him to discover the cost of following Christ.

Last week, when the Lord told Ananias to go to Saul, Ananias essentially replied, “I’m good. I do not want to talk to that man.” But the Lord told him, “Go, for I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”

Only days later, Saul is already suffering for the name of Christ. Yet he has been equipped for a purpose that is not simply to suffer, but to proclaim Christ to the nations.

We have a dear friend who pastors a church in Sedona. It is a very different church from All Saints, but in one of the last sermons I heard him preach, he spoke about their congregation’s unique calling. It had never really occurred to me that this was a question I needed to ask.

He said, in essence, “We are a small church, but thousands upon thousands of people pass through our little town every year—and many of them are total pagans. We occupy a unique position: we get to preach the gospel to these people. Perhaps a seed will be planted and we will never know what happened. And that is good.”

He saw the calling for which God had uniquely equipped his congregation.

We, too, are uniquely equipped.

So I want to challenge you: Let us not fear the discomfort. Let us not be afraid because the work seems too hard. Let us rejoice, because I did not equip us, and you did not equip yourselves. God has already been at work, and he will continue whatever good work he has prepared for us.

Let us pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are the God who calls people like Saul and makes them new—the God who destroys the raging beast within and makes men and women who are submitted to you. We pray that we would know that same transforming grace.

As we look toward the future of this church, show us how you have uniquely equipped us. Whatever you have called us to—whether it is this ministry or another—give us wisdom and strength. Teach us to trust that you have uniquely equipped us, not for our glory, but for yours.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.