The Boldness of Victorious Joy

 “But I thought that you were on our side!”

(Acts 9:26-30, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, February 19, 2012)

26 And when he had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples. And they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple.

When we last left Saul of Tarsus, he was being lowered down in a basket from a window in the city wall of Damascus. It was in that region that he was teaching in the synagogues that Jesus was the Messiah and the Son of God. During his earlier time away from Damascus he developed a reputation as a man who needed to be silenced. The local political authorities and many Jews who disagreed violently with Saul, were plotting to kill him, but he had evaded their murderous intentions.

The controversy between Jesus-receiving Jews and Jesus-rejecting Jews was not only raging in Damascus. It had been going on since 30 AD in the city of Jerusalem. Saul's arrival there was his return to the place where he had left from so many months before. He left Jerusalem as an official representative of the highest religious authorities on the Jesus-rejecting side of the debate. He came back to Jerusalem as a representative of the highest authority in the Jesus-receiving churches, the reigning King, Jesus Christ Himself.

He attempted to join the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem, but all the people were afraid of Him. They knew the dangers they faced from Jesus-rejecting Jews. Stephen was dead. Many had fled from Jerusalem because of the persecution that broke out at that time. Saul had been a key figure in that persecution. How could they trust him?

27 But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles and declared to them how on the road he had seen the Lord, who spoke to him, and how at Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus. 28 So he went in and out among them at Jerusalem, preaching boldly in the name of the Lord.

Because of the powerful grace of the Lord, people can change. Saul was a new man with a very different sense of calling. Someone had to see that, and Barnabas was the man. Barnabas is not someone we focus on much. We read about him first in Acts 4:36-37, “Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas (which means son of encouragement), a Levite, a native of Cyprus, sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet.”

One of the most powerful things that Barnabas ever did for the Christian movement was to have the courage to believe that the change that had taken place in Saul's life was real, and to act upon that conviction by becoming Saul's advocate with the existing Christian community in Jerusalem. He told them Saul's testimony. He told them that Saul was obeying the highest authority in the church in His new mission. He told them about Saul's bold preaching in the name of Jesus at Damascus. Saul's suffering for Christ there had become an important proof of the genuineness of His message.

Barnabas was used by the Lord in a very important way at that time, just by opening doors for Saul in this vibrant church that was all over Jerusalem and had spread from Jerusalem to so many other locations through the persecution that Saul had once been a part of. The persecutor had now joined the persecuted. That's a very powerful story. More powerful still is the good news of Jesus that Saul was now boldly preaching.

29 And he spoke and disputed against the Hellenists. But they were seeking to kill him.

Saul quickly ran into trouble with a group called here “the Hellenists” that he had once been associated with. The Hellenists were Greek-speaking Jews from outlying territories who were living in Jerusalem and were zealous for Pharisaic religious traditions. This group had opposed the preaching of Stephen.

Remember that a crisis between Greek-speaking Jews and Hebrew-speaking Jews had been averted earlier by the appointment of Spirit-filled deacons who made sure that poor widows were being cared for regardless of what language they spoke. The way that this dangerous controversy about caring for widows had been solved made a difference to many people in Jerusalem, and a great number of the priests came to faith in Jesus Christ. Nothing infuriates enemies like the success of those they are against. To now have one of the Hellenists' greatest persecutors return to Jerusalem on the other side of a murderous debate was enough to make them want to kill him.

30 And when the brothers learned this, they brought him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus.

When do you stay and die like Stephen, and when do you leave secretly to live on to fight another day like Saul in Damascus? This is something that requires that the Lord lead the church. We do not face these and many other dilemmas alone. We count on the fact that there are others in the church who can help us to navigate the mysterious path of God's providence.

These brothers in the church in this case became aware that a group of Hellenists were seeking to kill Saul. They brought him to the coastal city of Caesarea, there to leave for his hometown of Tarsus, on the southeastern coast of what is today Turkey. That may have felt like an unfortunate detour, just as the earlier persecution of Jesus-receiving Jews in Jerusalem was certainly a great inconvenience and difficulty. But then we remember that at that earlier time, those who were scattered, preached the Word everywhere that they went.

That Word, the receiving of it and the preaching of it, needs to be the passion of the church in every generation. The message of the Suffering Servant Messiah can be easily lost by the church within just a few years while we concern ourselves with everything else that seems to be of critical importance. It is the Word and Spirit of God that changes a Jesus-rejecting man into a Jesus-receiving and Jesus-obeying man. The whole church has an interest in seeing that such men in every generation get a hearing, that they know how to preach boldly, that they know when to move on to the next place of service, and that they know when to stay and face death.

The Man that we serve is the One who set His face for Jerusalem even though it alarmed His disciples. They knew that Messiah-rejecting Jews had only recently been trying to kill Him there. They would have been happier if He had stayed up in Galilee. But He knew better. We need Him to lead the church in every age. And through it all we need to care more about His message and His kingdom than we do about our own comfort and convenience.

His determination to be faithful has given us the best testimony about the power of Spirit-directed righteous suffering ever known to humanity. We are not trying to throw our lives away, but we do want to offer them up as living sacrifices. Without that kind of suffering love for Jesus and the Word, the church is something very different than what it is supposed to be. Without a community of faith that believes in the power of costly love and in the presence of divine direction from the King, there is no real church.

1. How did the Jesus-receiving Jews in Jerusalem react to Saul at first after his return from Damascus?

2. What was the value of Barnabas' ministry on this occasion?

3. Who were the Hellenists, and why was Saul disputing against them?

4. Who made the decision that Saul should be sent off to Tarsus? How are we to know when to leave and when to stay when we are facing opposition to our faith?

OT Passage: Psalm 97