'And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking
unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why perseoutest
thou Me! it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.'--ACTS xxvi.
14.
'Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?' No. But
God can change the skin, because He can change the nature. In this
story of the conversion of the Apostle Paul--the most important thing
that happened that day--we have an instance how brambles may become
vines; tares may become wheat; and a hater of Jesus Christ may be
changed in a moment into His lover and servant, and, if need be, His
martyr.
Now the very same motives and powers which were brought to bear upon
the Apostle Paul by miracle are being brought to bear upon every one of
us; and my object now is just to trace the stages of the process set
forth here, and to ask some of you, if you, like Paul, have been
'obedient to the heavenly vision.' Stages, I call them, though they
were all crowded into a moment, for even the lightning has to pass
through the intervening space when it flashes from one side of the
heavens to another, and we may divide its path into periods. Time is
very elastic, as any of us whose lives have held great sorrows or great
joys or great resolutions well know.
I. The first of these all but simultaneous and yet separable stages was
the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Of course to the Apostle it was mediated by miracle; but real as he
believed that appearance of the risen Lord in the heavens to be, and
valid as he maintained that it was as the ground of his Apostleship, he
himself, in one of his letters, speaks of the whole incident as being
the revelation of God's Son in him. The revelation in heart and mind
was the main thing, of which the revelation to eye and ear were but
means. The means, in his case, are different from those in ours; the
end is the same. To Paul it came like the rush of a cataract that the
Christ whom he had thought of as lying in an unknown grave was living
in the heavens and ruling there. You and I, I suppose, do not need to
be convinced by miracle of the resurrection of Jesus Christ; but the
bare fact that Jesus was living in the heavens would have had little
effect upon Saul, unless it had been accompanied with the revelation of
the startling fact that between him and Jesus Christ there were close
personal relations, so that he had to do with Jesus, and Jesus with him.
'Saul, Saul! why persecutest thou Me?' They used to think that they
could wake sleep-walkers by addressing them by name. Jesus Christ, by
speaking His name to the Apostle, wakes him out of his diseased
slumber, and brings him to wholesome consciousness. There are
stringency and solemnity of address in that double use of the name
'Saul, Saul!'
What does such an address teach you and me? That Jesus Christ, the
living, reigning Lord of the universe, has perfect knowledge of each of
us, and that we each stand isolated before Him, as if all the light of
omniscience were focussed upon us. He knows our characters; He knows
all about us, and more than that, He directly addresses Himself to each
man and woman among us.
We are far too apt to hide ourselves in the crowd, and let all the
messages of God's love, the warnings of His providences, as well as the
teachings and invitations and pleadings of His gospel, fly over our
heads as if they were meant vaguely for anybody. But they are all
intended for _thee_, as directly as if thou, and thou only, wert in the
world. I beseech you, lay this to heart, that although no audible
sounds may rend the silent heavens, nor any blaze may blind thine eye,
yet that as really, though not in the same outward fashion as Saul,
when they were all fallen to the earth, felt himself to be singled out,
and heard a voice 'speaking to _him_ in the Hebrew tongue, saying,
Saul, Saul!' _thou_ mayest hear a voice speaking to thee in the English
tongue, by thy name, and directly addressing its gracious remonstrances
and its loving offers to thy listening ear. I want to sharpen the blunt
'whosoever' into the pointed 'thou.' And I would fain plead with each
of my friends hearing me now to believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ
is meant for thee, and that Christ speaks to _thee_. 'I have a message
from God unto thee,' just as Nathan said unto David. '_Thou_ art the
man!'
Do not lose yourselves in the crowd or hide yourselves from the
personal incidence of Christ's offer, but feel that you stand, as you
do indeed, alone the hearer of His voice, the possible recipient of His
saving mercy.
II. Secondly, notice, as another stage in this process the discovery of
the true character of the past.
'Why persecutest thou Me?' Now I am not going to be tempted from my
more direct purpose in this sermon to dwell even for a moment on the
beautiful, affecting, strengthening thought here, of the unity of Jesus
Christ with all the humble souls that love Him, so as that, whatsoever
any member suffers, the Head suffers with it. I must leave that truth
untouched.
Saul was brought to look at all his past life as standing in immediate
connection with Jesus Christ. Of course he knew before the vision that
he had no love to Him whom he thought to be a Galilean impostor, and
that the madness with which he hated the servants was only the glancing
off of the arrow that he would fain have aimed at the Master. But he
did not know that Jesus Christ counted every blow struck at one of His
servants as being struck at Him. Above all he did not know that the
Christ whom he was persecuting was reigning in the heavens. And so his
whole past life stood before him in a new aspect when it was brought
into close connection with Christ, and looked at as in relation to Him.
The same process would yield very remarkable results if applied to our
lives. If I could only get you for one quiet ten minutes, to lay all
your past, as far as memory brought it to your minds, right before that
pure and loving Face, I should have done much. One infallible way of
judging of the rottenness or goodness of our actions is that we should
bring them where they will all be brought one day, into the brightness
of Christ's countenance. If you want to find out the flaws in some
thin, badly-woven piece of cloth, you hold it up against the light, do
you not? and then you see all the specks and holes, and the irregular
threads. Hold up your lives in like fashion against the light, and I
shall be surprised if you do not find enough there to make you very
much ashamed of yourselves. Were you ever on the stage of a theatre in
the daytime? Did you ever see what miserable daubs the scenes look, and
how seamy it all is when the pitiless sunshine comes in? Let that great
light pour on your life, and be thankful if you find out what a daub it
has been, whilst yet colours and brushes and time are at your disposal,
and you may paint the future fairer than the past.
Again, this revelation of Saul's past life disclosed its utter
unreasonableness. That one question, '_Why_ persecutest thou Me?'
pulverised the whole thing. It was like the wondering question so
unanswerable in the Psalm, 'Why do the heathen rage, and the people
imagine a vain thing?' If you take into account what you are, and where
you stand, you can find no reason, except utterly unreasonable ones,
for the lives that I fear some of us are living--lives of godlessness
and Christlessness. There is nothing in all the world a tithe so stupid
as sin. There is nothing so unreasonable, if there be a God at all, and
if we depend upon Him, and have duties to Him, as the lives that some
of you are living. You admit, most of you, that there is such a God;
you admit, most of you, that you do hang upon Him; you admit, in
theory, that you ought to love and serve Him. The bulk of you call
yourselves Christians. That is to say, you believe, as a piece of
historical fact, that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came into this
world and died for men. And, believing that, you turn your back on Him,
and neither love nor serve nor trust Him nor turn away from your
iniquity. Is there anything outside a lunatic asylum more madlike than
that? 'Why persecutest thou?' 'And he was speechless,' for no answer
was possible. Why neglectest thou? Why forgettest thou? Why, admitting
what thou dost, art thou not an out-and-out Christian? If we think of
all our obligations and relations, and the facts of the universe, we
come back to the old saying, 'The fear of the Lord is the beginning of
wisdom,' and any man who, like many of my hearers, fails to give his
heart and life to Jesus Christ will one day have to say, 'Behold, I
have played the fool, and erred exceedingly.' Wake up, my brother, to
apply calm reason to your lives while yet there is time, and face the
question, Why dost thou stand as thou dost to Jesus Christ? There is
nothing sadder than the small share that deliberate reason and
intelligent choice have in the ordering of most men's lives. You live
by impulse, by habit, by example, by constraint of the outward
necessities of your position. But I am sure that there are many amongst
us now who have very seldom, if ever, sat down and said, 'Now let me
think, until I get to the ultimate grounds of the course of life that I
am pursuing.' You can carry on the questions very gaily for a step or
two, but then you come to a dead pause. 'What do I do so-and-so for?'
'Because I like it.' 'Why do I like it?' 'Because it meets my needs, or
my desires, or my tastes, or my intellect.' Why do you make the meeting
of your needs, or your desires, or your tastes, or your intellect your
sole object? Is there any answer to that? The Hindoos say that the
world rests upon an elephant, and the elephant rests upon a tortoise.
What does the tortoise rest on? Nothing! Then that is what the world
and the elephant rest on. And so, though you may go bravely through the
first stages of the examination, when you come to the last question of
all, you will find out that your whole scheme of life is built upon a
blunder; and the blunder is this, that anybody can be blessed without
God.
Further, this disclosure of the true character of his life revealed to
Saul, as in a lightning flash, the ingratitude of it.
'Why persecutest thou Me?' That was as much as to say, 'What have I
done to merit thy hate? What have I _not_ done to merit rather thy
love?' Paul did not know all that Jesus Christ had done for him. It
took him a lifetime to learn a little of it, and to tell his brethren
something of what he had learned. And he has been learning it ever
since that day when, outside the walls of Rome, they hacked off his
head. He has been learning more and more of what Jesus Christ has done
for him, and why he should not persecute Him but love Him.
But the same appeal comes to each of us. What has Jesus Christ done for
thee, my friend, for me, for every soul of man? He has loved me better
than His own life. He has given Himself for me. He has lingered beside
me, seeking to draw me to Himself, and He still lingers. And this, at
the best, tremulous faith, this, at the warmest, tepid love, this, at
the completest, imperfect devotion and service, are all that we bring
to Him; and some of us do not bring even these. Some of us have never
known what it was to sacrifice one inclination for the sake of Christ,
nor to do one act for His dear love's sake, nor to lean our weakness
upon Him, nor to turn to Him and say, 'I give Thee myself, that I may
possess Thee.' 'Do ye thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and
unwise?' I have heard of wounded soldiers striking with their bayonets
at the ambulance men who came to help them. That is like what some of
you do to the Lord who died for your healing, and comes as the
Physician, with bandages and with balm, to bind up the brokenhearted.
'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?'