Our sermon text this morning comes from Acts 9 verses 1 through 19. Now Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest, and asked for letters from him to the synagogues of Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the way, both men and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. As he was traveling, it happened that he was approaching Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him, and he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And he said, Who are you, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting, but get up and enter the city, and it will be told you what you must do. The men who traveled with him stood speechless, hearing the voice of seeing no one. Saul got up from the ground and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing, and leading him by the hand brought him into Damascus. And he was three days without sight and neither ate nor drank. Now there was a disciple of Damascus named Ananias, and the Lord said to him, Inevision, Ananias, and he said, Here I am, Lord, and the Lord said to him, Get up and go to the street called straight and inquire at the house of Judas for a man named, for a man from Tarce named Saul, for he is praying, and he had seen an a vision of man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight. But Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard from many about this man how much army did to your name's Jerusalem, and here he has authority from the chief priest to bind all who call on your name. But the Lord said to him, Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine, to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel, for I will show him how much he must suffer for my name's sake. So Ananias departed and entered the house, and after Lankan's hands on him said, Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road by which you were coming, has sent me so that you may have gained your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit. And immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales, and he regained his sight, and he got up and was baptized, and he took food and was strengthened. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Let's pray together. Father, I prompted to pray now for Richard and Barbara Warner, who are worshipping in Balexy this morning, and serving hurricane victims. We miss them, and thank you for their service and their willingness to sacrifice. Thank you for the reality of the communion of your sins, so that we are in every sense united to them this morning, as we worship over this work. Would you be with them in such a way that they would have their strength renewed and be empowered for your service there? And that we pray that same ministry of your Holy Spirit in the lives of our deacons and the other men who will accompany them as they bring tangible evidences of the goodness of the gospel for distribution into the hurricanes. Father, we believe in the ministry of your Holy Spirit, and we believe that as we stand to get under this word of yours that we are utterly dependent upon his ministry, for us to have any saying understanding of this word and for it to drive home into our hearts at a level and death where it would bear fruit for your glory and be part of your great work of kingdom restoration through Jesus Christ. So we ask you now to come with power through your Holy Spirit to make the word which you inspired and preserved in your singular care and providence over many centuries to make it live now in this room and in the lives of all who are here. I pray for a special ministry of the Spirit upon the hearts of those who are as yet unleaving that you would through him shine the light of the gospel of the glory of Jesus Christ in their lives so that they would leave believing on him alone for their salvation the morning. I pray in Jesus name. Amen.
The Lord Jesus literally explodes into view on the road to Damascus for Saul and the shock waves, if you think about Saul's life, the shock waves from that supernova, if you will, of his self-disclosure, of the Lord self-disclosure, bring about tremendous upheaval in Saul's life. If you think about it, there's just an amazing concussion of implications that spins itself out, that spreads out through Saul's life and they changes him. It upsets a long-established structures of thought in Saul's life and patterns of conduct, doesn't it? It is a complete dislocation of virtually everything that Saul used as a guideline in his life. Now, it is real easy for us to look at Saul's encounter with the Lord Jesus on the road to Damascus and to put it in the bin of things that are totally unique and beyond our reach. I don't know anyone, for example, who was converted through the visible appearing of the glory of the ascended Lord. But Saul was,
I would imagine that most of you were not converted in that way. I don't have to imagine it. I'm pretty sure. And so the question becomes, what do we do with Saul's conversion and its power? I believe that despite its uniqueness, the upheaval and the dislocation that flow out of Saul's conversion are really a lot more like a microcosm of all Christian experience than we're probably inclined to think about it first. And that's really what I want to spend our time on this morning. For every Christian, every Christian is a child of revolution. Every Christian, a child of revolution, and every Christian knows Jesus Christ as the greatest of all subversives. He exists to bring up heaval into the lives of his people. Do you know him as an overturner? Do you know him as a revolutionary? Or is he tame to you? Well, I thank God for Acts 9, and I thank God for the way that it destabilizes my stability. And it overturns my spiritual comfort zones and pushes me to think about the really shocking agenda of Jesus Christ in the world. To be reminded again that he is master, that I don't manage his grace and I don't manage his glory. He is my master. He is your master. Does he grab you as a master should? Well, there are three themes. If I'm right about my thesis that every Christian is a child of revolution, I'm going to unpack that for us this morning. There are certain themes, three themes of the revolutions of the revolution that Jesus Christ brings into Saul's life. Three themes that we see there that are generally applicable to every Christian life. And so there's a lot for us to gain as we study Saul's example. And those three themes, we did the first one last week. And the first theme of revolution is Jesus Christ really shocking love for his church that he makes plain in his self-disclosure to Saul and the road to Damascus. Remember, we looked at how when Jesus confronts Saul, he identifies himself as the primary victim, if you will, of Saul's persecuting violence against the church. And we were shocked when we actually paid attention to what Jesus said. Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? I am the one whom you are persecuting. And we reflected together on how that should revolutionize our understanding of the church, our identity as a church and our posture towards the church. How can you possibly be indifferent to the church of Jesus Christ when he himself says, I identify so closely with her as my bride that how you relate to her is how you relate to me. How could you possibly think that the Christian life would make it as an available option to be disengaged from the church when Jesus declares such things to be true about his love for his bride? That is a revolution, a revolution, but this week I want to talk about two more aspects of what is so stunning about his disclosure of himself to Saul. And that is the first that Jesus discloses himself as the Lord of sovereign grace, which is the great theme of Saul's conversion and every conversion and certainly that Jesus discloses himself as the Lord of sovereign glory. You can tell that word sovereign is going to be important this morning. Now I want you to think about I'm going to explain what sovereign grace is and what it isn't. But let's think back to our Lord's earthly ministry. Everybody was always trying to manage the grace of Jesus Christ, weren't they? The scribes and the Pharisees. They wanted to manage his grace. They thought it was outlandish that he would interact with prostitutes and in a way that didn't condemn them, with tax gatherers and in a way that didn't condemn them and with the catch-all phrase that I take great encouragement from sinners. Great, outlandish grace and the scribes and the Pharisees were absolutely scandalized by that. They were trying to manage his grace. So he's saying, hey, hey, hey, hey, not them. Ah! Right? Let me manage it away from those people and toward me. But it wasn't just them, right? It was the disciples too. They were trying to manage his grace all the time as well. Do you remember how they scorned his willingness to engage the Samaritan woman in conversation? They were trying to manage his grace. How about in the temple? When children are singing Hosanna and singing praises to God and they and the Jewish authorities say, hey, she goes kids up. There's a temple
when the disciples got really upset that the children were coming to Jesus to be blessed. They say, no, you have more important things to do. Let us manage your grace for you and redirect it to where it can be more efficiently applied. And Jesus doesn't broke any of that, does he? My grace won't be managed. My grace is sovereign. I decide who receives it. It is not to be controlled. It is not to be manipulated. It is not to be organized by you or by me. Jesus declares that his grace is sovereign. So it's not surprising to me. In fact, it's very helpful in encouraging that when he discloses himself to Saul, he does it in a way where he re-asserts the sovereignty of his grace. Sovereign grace is grace that cannot be managed, that will not be managed. Sovereign grace is truly and actually grace. It is true to say that there is that it's redundant in the sense of the testament to say the phrase sovereign grace because grace is not a reward for something perceived or evaluated in the recipient. Do you know that? Grace is not a statement about the recipient of grace. State grace is not a response to a value in the recipient of grace. It is retident in the giver. Grace can never be claimed as something that is earned or something that you're entitled to. Grace, sovereign grace is free and free means free. Free means you don't pay anything to get it. You don't do anything to earn it. Nothing about your performance or the failure thereof can deprive you of it. It's free. That means free. Let me say it again. You don't give anything to get everything. Do you know that Christian? You can't give anything to receive everything. All grace extended through Jesus Christ is sovereign grace. William Temple said this, I love this quote, the only contribution I make to my own redemption is the sin from which I must be delivered. Isn't that the case in Saul's life? Just think about how evolutionary Jesus is sovereign grace here is in Saul's life. How do you account for his conversion by the way? How do you explain it? You've got to deal with this. I'm not going to let you out there look on this. How do you explain this? Well, option one, which I'm sure some of you share, is that Jesus in his majestic sovereignty at the Father's right hand looked and saw it. Saul was improving, right? I mean the screams and the tears of Stephen were haunting him. The screams and the tears of the mothers who were pulled out of their house and separated from their children and put in prison had made an impact on it and he had seen enough violence and he was really very half-hearted about what the High Priest had commanded him to do to go to Damascus and to root the Christians out there. Yeah, that's a good theory. The problem is the tech won't let you go there because he's going to Damascus still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. Saul was not improving. Saul was not getting smarter. Saul was pulling the ultimate violent Jonah, right? Which is to go in exactly the opposite direction that he should have been going. So that option won't work. Saul was not progressing. He was not softening and his anger. How about option number two? The Lord Jesus, his sovereignty, as the Son of God, before history, before the universe is created, he takes the lens of his omniscience and he looks down the corridor of history and he says, hey, I recognize that Saul one day will be my greatest apostle. Therefore it's very important for me to meet him on the road in Damascus so that I can hand the baton to him and he can become an apostle. Is the way you explain Saul's conversion, the fact that the Lord saw that he would be an apostle one day? That's the way many people explain it, but you know that just doesn't work because the Lord hadn't intervened. Sovereignly, what else would he have seen when he looked through the lens of his omniscience down the corridor of history? He would have seen violence. He would have seen the hatred of Christ. That doesn't work either. So what's left? They're two that are left. The third one is maybe Jesus just wasn't fully informed about Saul. Maybe Jesus was ignorant. The opposite of knowledge. Maybe he just, he was had a rosier assessment of Saul then Saul actually deserved. Is that going to work? That doesn't work from the text either. Why? Saul, Saul, look at how much knowledge there is. Why are you persecuting me?
That doesn't work either. Where you left? You left with sovereign grace. You left with Jesus fully informed from before the foundation of the world, completely contrary, completely contrary to everything Saul deserved from him. Jesus, for his own good pleasure and his father's glory, showed Saul mercy instead of the wrath that he deserved to receive. That's the explanation for Saul's conversion. Does the text allow you any other understanding of his conversion at all? None. Jesus, and once you hear this, Jesus chooses Saul and not the other way around. Any hint of the contrary in this text? None whatsoever. Jesus chooses Saul and not the other way around. Saul's record is replete with crimes against Jesus. His will is bent, full bore on the destruction of everything that Jesus stands for, and in that very intersection of the opposition against Jesus, Jesus discloses himself graciously to him and wins him to self. It's an amazing thing to reflect on that Jesus takes this guy, Saul, who was the lead wolf. He was the head wolf, and he not only makes him a sheep, he makes him a shepherd. He was the wolf ravaging the church, my friends, and he brought him in and made him a sheep, and then he said, and because you were such a wolf and you have experienced the power of my grace, you are now qualified to shepherd the sheep as an apostle. That's not a promotion that Saul earned. He earned the opposite, didn't he? Well, let me address unbelievers for a minute, because I hope you're paying attention to the way the Lord Jesus dealt with Saul, because there's a lot for you to learn that is wonderful news. Because Jesus's sovereign grace is meant to bring about a revolution for those who are outside the church. It proves, Saul's conversion proves that as the Lord of sovereign grace, and my unbelieving friend means that neither you nor anyone else can manage it or control it. Jesus is bent on subverting all bases for human pride and human despair, and so I want you to take a good look at the one to whom Jesus reveals himself here. Saul of Tarsus, the arch enemy of Jesus, the arch enemy of Jesus' people, the one who, and if you really put weight down on what Luke describes, the martyrdom of Stephen was like, the one who enjoyed hearing the breaking of Stephen's bones as he would own to death and the crushing of his skull, who watched that and was happy that it was happened. The one whose life was so barren that there was absolutely nothing in him, right, to commend him to God. There was nothing in him to commend him to God, and everything that was in him condemned him before God. That how far away he was from a good standing with God, and yet even this wolf was given grace to lie down with the lamb, even this wolf. So my unbelieving friend, you have no right when that story, when Jesus is disclosing himself and is dealing with Saul, and that way you have no right this morning to sit there and either think or say to yourself that in some way I have committed such sins and have such a record that there is no way that I could ever find a reception gracious as Saul found a reception at Jesus' end. No right to say that on the basis of Saul's encounter with Jesus Christ. Jesus just took that away from you. No right to say that you didn't know that he was the savior for the worst of sinners. Do you have a record like Saul's? No, you can't say that you're not good enough. That won't get you off both. You can't say that you're so bad because first Timothy 115, the promise I think that drove Paul's life, it's a trustworthy statement that deserves full acceptance, full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world of save sinners. That is just as true for you. Do not flatter yourself at the expense of the Lord of sovereign grace, right? Don't flatter yourself and think you're somehow worse off than Saul. You're not. So that means that every obstacle for you between you and coming forward to Jesus Christ today and receiving Him as your Lord and Savior, it's all gone. There are no excuses. There is no there's no lack of provision for all of your needs. Friends, He knows exactly who you are. Ignorance is not one of His personality traits, okay? Go with me to Romans chapter 5. And you're sitting next to somebody you don't recognize from the church, the manual people, we'd add Bible out and show them Romans 5, okay? Help them. Don't let anybody not be looking at the scriptures right now. This is proof that the gospel is for sinners, right? And that God is not in some way naive about who we really are. For while we were still helpless at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly, okay? Any any naive illusions about our identity there? None. For one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for the good man, someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love to us in that while we were yet sinners. Christ died for us. See, that sovereign grace, sovereign grace that acts contrary to what we deserve. Sovereign grace that isn't contingent upon our improving to the point where we become worthy receivers of it. That's not the story of Romans 5, 6, 8. It's contrary to who we were. God gave us His best in His Son. The kingdom of God is a welfare state for everyone. Now, there's also a revolution that sovereign grace brings inside the church that's very much on display in this passage, that I hope will upset some of our own apple carts. See, I'm believing friend, the grace of Jesus is not to be managed by people on the inside of the church any more than it is to be managed by people on the outside of the church. So I hope you'll listen now to what I'm going to say to myself and to the other believers in this room because it's very clear from our text that Jesus's grace continues to scandalize people who are Christians. It scandalizes the already converted just as much as it scandalizes the unconverted. When Jesus tells Ananias to go find Saul of Tarsus, the infamous Saul of Tarsus, notice that Ananias doesn't just say, okay, look at verses 13 and 14. Ananias answers the Lord, says, Lord, I have heard from many about this man how much harm he did to saints at Jerusalem. And here he has authority from the chief priest to bind all who call upon your name. Now, why does he say that? How is that a response to what Jesus has commanded him to do just two verses earlier to go find Saul? Well, it's Ananias's way of saying, are you sure? I mean, are we talking about the same guy? We're talking about public enemy number one. That's all of Tarsus. Are you sure? Because I don't have a category for that kind of grace. I do not know how to process such radical kindness. I do not have a category for that, Lord. And what is Jesus saying?
Get up and go. Go. He is a chosen instrument of mine. I picked him. That's a scandal. Friends, do we remember where we started? Do you remember where you started in the Christian life? How well do you remember your foundation in the Christian life? Do you remember your beginnings? Have you? Was the last time you actually took a look at your real spiritual resume? Not the polished up imposter that you bring to church with you. But I'm talking about the real one, okay? I hope you read the Bonhoeffer quote at the beginning of the bulletin. Dare to be a sin when you come in here. You can't have fellowship with anybody if you're not, right? Because the rest of us are sinners. But when's the last time you looked at your spiritual resume and you thought about the roots of your joining to Jesus Christ? What was like? How triumphant were you? How much were your spiritual accomplishments appreciated by God? How obedient were you? How wise were you? How attentive to his word were you? Friends, let me honest with ourselves. Let's remember where we began. Conversion is not the triumph of our powers of deduction. Go to Ephesians 2 with me. Can you keep us in Paul so that we'll see that there was a huge impact of Paul's conversion on his ability to communicate the theology of grace. He doesn't talk about any of these things as though we were a stranger to them, right? Ephesians 2 starts out with his great reminder that we were dead in our trespasses and sins, right? We walked and we lived out sin. We were like spiritual zombies. We were the walking dead, alive to sin, but dead to God, okay? And then there's this awful description of how we're trapped, right? We were children of wrath by nature, even as the rest. And if it ended there, that would be a very sad story.
But notice the transition from verse 3 to verse 4 in Ephesians 2 doesn't begin with but we, but we, it begins with but God. Now notice what God does here. Despite of the truth about who we are, this is a template that perfectly describes Acts chapter 9. But God being rich in mercy, notice that because here, because of his great love with which he loved loved us, that means while we were still sinners with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ and raised us up with him and ceded us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus to the end. In order that in the ages to come we might show off, wrong? In the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. See Paul knows the grace is some grace and he knows that people in the church need to be reminded of that just as much as people outside the church because we forget it. We let that precious truth slip through our fingers. Why is it that any of us is alive today in Christ? What's on the other side of that because? Is it something we did? Is it something you did? Is it something you're becoming? Is it something that you've accomplished? No, not at all. So all of your spiritual trophies and everything that you think decorates your spiritual resume just put it in the dust. Because that is not the basis for anyone's acceptance with God, not yours and not mine. See none of us became Christians by managing the grace of Jesus Christ, somehow being obedient enough to compel his favor. None of us stays Christians by managing the grace of Jesus Christ. If I go to enough things, if I do this, if I do this, if I do that then I'll be okay. Friends it's utterly out of your control and that is good news. What exactly was the strength of your soul's resume when you came to the Lord Jesus? Was there a single thing on that resume that he reckoned in you besides your sin that compelled his response to you? Is it any different today? Honestly. When I ask you a question like that in the middle of a worship service, you know that you're supposed to say from the deepest level of your soul, no, absolutely it's no different today, but that's not how any of us lives. We live as though there were a booster that we needed to add almost every day by our performance. And it is so good to be reminded through the lens of Paul's experience that the grace of Jesus Christ is sovereign grace. We never manage it from the beginning of our Christian life to the very end. It is a gift 100%. It's free. It's available to any who will receive him. And we don't control it. Friends, the most horrific thing you can believe about the Christian life is that in some sense it is your resume, your competence that established you in any way before God, that in some sense you would be living as a disciple of Jesus Christ and the brightness of the Father's smile upon you would be a function of how well you had polished your own soul. God's favor toward his people, we learn again through Saul's experience, is not calibrated to our performance. Please, please don't live believing that it is. Saul reminds us that it isn't thank God for his kindness to remind us again. And so we really ought to be full of repenting over our attempts to present God a resume that would win his favor, a resume of our making and not Jesus Christ. This is the only one that gains his access. So throw it out. Throw it out. Jesus doesn't just disclose himself as the Lord of sovereign grace but also the Lord of sovereign glory on the road to Damascus. And this is also a revolution. I mean quite literally, right? This is a disclosure of his glory. I mean he pills back the veil as it were and there's this blinding light and we learn more about it than the later chapter of Acts when Paul gives his testimony to other times. But it's enough for us to see right now that it was so overwhelming that Saul fell to the ground and was blinded, right? A glory so intense that he was overwhelmed, so amazing and overpowering that it kept him silent basically for three days. Well, it's good to remember that that's who Jesus is right now. Right now that's who he is. This is not some kind of worked up manifestation of additional power. That's who he is. He is the Lord of sovereign glory whom we serve. And just as we don't manage his grace, we don't manage his glory either. You don't manage the glory of Jesus Christ. Now there are two applications I want to talk about from that principle. And they both involve upheavals. Remember I said that Jesus is a great subversive. He brings about revolution in the life of each one of his children. His grace does that because it says you can't give him anything, can only receive it. So he gets all the glory. It's at his initiative. It's not because of accomplishments. It's against your accomplishments. But his glory also brings about some tremendous upheavals and there are two I want to focus on. The first is when Jesus's glory is disclosed in a person's life when we come to know him as our Lord, that breaks the world's authority to set the agenda for our lives. Here's what I mean by that. When Jesus disclosed his glory to Saul on the road to Damascus, he proved two things. First, that he was not an imposter Messiah. I mean he was alive. Contrary to what Saul had believed up to that point, he was alive. I'm not an imposter that proves. But there's a related thing that he proves to Saul and to us this morning. And it is that the world was totally wrong about him. See, the world was making a judgment about the worth of Jesus Christ when it crucified him, wasn't it? It was saying on the cross, you are worthless. You are the lowest life to be valued. And we emphasize that statement by crucifying you. And God, we learned through the disclosure of the Lord's glory, reversed that erroneous right, didn't he? He overturned the world's bad judgment when he raised Jesus from the dead and put him in the highest of places. The world tried to put him in the lowest of places. But Jesus in glory is now in the highest of places. And so what that tells you immediately is that about the most important thing in the universe, the world was totally wrong. Now, how many of you watched the confirmation hearings with the with the Jedroppers? Oh, good. Good. I love that. Now, how many of you know that that was going on? Okay, okay, good. That's much better. How would you feel about him if when he was sitting there in front of the senators, somebody had said, well, you know the constitution provides such and such. And he'd look bolder and said, constitution. I wasn't aware of a constitution. Now, what would you think about him then? You would think this is the last guy you should put on the Supreme Court. I mean, right? He would be totally unqualified because you would never want to entrust the care for something so important to one who was ignorant about its value. My friends, the world in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the world is shown to be wrong about what really matters. The world, and I want you to hear this, the world doesn't have a clue about what matters. That's what the crucifixion and the resurrection demonstrate. The world does not have a clue about what a life worth living actually is. The world does not have a clue about what a worthwhile marriage looks like or worthwhile kids or what a meaningful job looks like. Doesn't have a clue if it was wrong about the most important thing ever before it. Why would we ever trust it with things like our identities, our sense of satisfaction, our sense of well-being? Friends, the world doesn't have a clue. So don't listen to the world's agenda for your life. Don't let the TV be the channel for information to come in that tells you what you should look like, what you should own, how you should spend your time. The world is unqualified to give you advice like that, see the cross. Friends, that's why Paul says with such triumph, may it never be, may it never be that I should both accept in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ through which I have been crucified to the world. And the world has been crucified to me. The world does not set the agenda for my life. Thank you because I don't like the world's agenda quite frankly. It never brings contentment. I'm either too fat or have too much gray hair or don't perform well enough. See the world's agenda is exactly the opposite of the gospel. They are not compatible. The world says, Mike, earn your way. Prove your worth. The gospel says, you can't, you can't. Mistakes are fatal in the world. They are the foundation of grace and the kingdom of God. The second upheaval involves what it means, okay, if the world doesn't have authority to set the agenda for my life, then who does? Sounds like I'm being liberated. And you are. But liberation does not come in the form of you or me being able to set the agenda for our lives. The revelation of Jesus's glory is the Lord of sovereign glory establishes his authority to set the agenda for our lives. And that's freedom. Friends, if he is that mighty and that glorious, then he has absolute authority over my life. Absolute total no questions asked, right? Not only does Jesus's sovereign glory overturn the world's authority, but sovereign glory of Jesus overturns my own attempts to be the authority to set the agenda for my life. There's a cost to discipleship and it was a glorious Wednesday morning this week when the men in the men's discipleship group. We were working through a lesson in the curriculum on this very theme of discipleship and the pounding demand of Jesus Christ to get into our hearts that to be his follower means to be a self-denier again. Does that sound compatible with the world? Not at all. I mean, that's not a compromise that you can make, right? There is a cost to being a disciple and his sovereign glory reminds us of that. It means that he now sets the agenda for your life. He set it. You don't negotiate with him. You don't bargain with him. You don't push him off into a corner friends. I may want to be silent about my faith. I may want to avoid a conversation with an unbeliever because I'm just too tired right now. But he says, for whoever is ashamed of me and my words of him will the son of man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the Holy Angels. That's Luke 926. I may want to keep Sundays free. I may want to go on my boat but he says, do not neglect the assembling of yourselves together. I may prefer to harbor a grudge against the one who has wronged me. But he tells me to love my enemies. He sets the agenda. I don't. I may prefer to do a thousand things besides study his word and to pray. But he tells me to abide in him and that I live by every word that proceeds out of his father's mouth. I may prefer, and this doesn't apply to me. To date and marry a non-Christian. It did, at one time, apply to me. But he declares I must not. I may prefer not to tithe but he tells me that every dollar I hold is actually his. I may prefer a life without trials. I do prefer a life without trials. There's no may about it. But he tells me, do not faint under my father's corrections. Rejoice in the certain fruit of righteousness, which he is bringing forth from these trials. Friends, there is a cost to being a follower of Jesus Christ. He gives you everything for nothing. And then we'll give him all that we are as a response to his grace. It doesn't earn his favor, but that is a response to that favor. And when he discloses himself to Saul on the road friends, he lets know what the Christian life is about and it's hard. Let's pray. Father, no. I pray for the ministry of your Holy Spirit again that the seed that has been scattered will find good soil under your good providence in mercy. And that even this morning you would make some alive who were dead. And for us who are already your people that you would strengthen us in the service of the Lord so majestic in his grace and in his glory that we would leave all and follow him. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.