Introducing Paul: Why God Stopped the Prophetic Clock

Welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a 30-minute walk through the Scriptures, teaching in-depth Bible truths that change people's lives. Now, here's your host, Les Feldick. Good evening. Once again, it's good to see everybody, and we'll just go right back and pick up where we left off last week. For those of you watching on television, again, we'd just like to thank you for bringing us into your living room, and we trust that you can be part and parcel of our classroom experience. Now, if you'll turn with me to Acts chapter 7, and remember last week we were talking about the Old Testament prophetic program, how that over and over the Old Testament laid it out that at the particular prescribed time Christ would come, he'd be rejected, he would ascend, the Holy Spirit would come down, then would come the seven years of tribulation, then Christ would return and set up his kingdom. But as we showed through all those verses, we know that historically now that didn't all happen. There was nothing that was part and parcel of the tribulation, and that after the Holy Spirit came down, the Old Testament program just came to a halt, God's time clock stopped, and now we're going to try and show you, coming through the book of Acts, and again, this is not an in-depth study of Acts, as those of you who have been with me will realize, but rather we're just showing you that the last part from the tribulation on will be shoved out into the future. It is still future. And in that interim, God has, by way of the working of the Holy Spirit, been calling out a people for his name. Now, in order to pick that up just a little bit, let's jump into Acts chapter 7. And remember, this is about seven or eight years after Pentecost. Peter and the eleven have been preaching their hearts out to the nation of Israel, knowing that they could never go out into the ends of the earth and preach the gospel until Israel had first been converted. But Israel is not converting. Israel is going more and more in the opposite direction. But now, in chapter 7, Stephen, who is not even one of the twelve, he's rather one of the seven deacons that are appointed by the twelve to take care of the mundane things of, you remember, the widows that were not getting their fair share and so forth. But Stephen is pointed out in this chapter as a man full of the Holy Spirit. Over and over it tells us that he's a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit. Well, he brings Israel to the place of realizing that all of their history, God has been preparing them for the coming of their Messiah, and they missed it. And so he just comes down hard on them. And if you'll come down, oh, to verse 52, where he accuses the nation now, and remember, he's talking only to the Jew, and he says to the nation of Israel, I'll leave in 51, Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, do you always resist the Holy Spirit? As your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the fathers have not your fathers persecuted? They have slain them who showed before the coming of the just one. We went through this in one of our classes last week. Someone brought up the question about the unpardonable sin, and I always tell people, don't worry about the unpardonable sin. That has nothing to do with us in the Gentile age. That was God's dealing with Israel, because, you see, when God sent Israel the prophets, what'd they do with them? They killed them. And then, according to the parable that Jesus gave of the husbandman who let out his vineyard, you remember? And then the father said, or the husbandman said, well, I'll send my son, and surely they'll listen to him. And what'd they do with the son? Well, they killed him. That was the rejecting of the father, they rejected the son, and now what are they going to do with the Holy Spirit? Well, I think that in this Acts chapter 7, Israel is having the opportunity now to listen to and come under the influence of the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, and what do they do? They stone him. That's Stephen. So you come down now, and Stephen is approaching Israel by way of the work of the Holy Spirit, and he says, they have slain them, in verse 52, who showed before the coming of the just one of whom now you have been the betrayers, and what's the word? Murderers. I mean, it's as plain as you can put it. They killed him. They murdered him. Verse 53, you, is implied, who have received the law by the disposition of angels and have not kept it. Now verse 54, and when they, the Jews of his audience, when they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed on him with their teeth. But he, and here it comes again, being full of the Holy Ghost, of the Holy Spirit, looked up steadfastly into heaven and saw the glory of God, and he saw Jesus standing on the right hand of God. And he said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God. Now we always think of him as what? Seated at the right hand of God. But the Jew also knew that if he was anywhere's, he was to be seated, and for him to be standing, that implied that he was ready to return. Because the Old Testament spoke of it, that he would sit at the Father's right hand until his enemies were his footstool, and then one of the Psalms says to the nation of Israel that he would arise. In other words, he would stand, and then he would be ready to come and deal with his people. And the Jew caught it, see? And so when Stephen says, I see him standing on the right hand of God, then, when they heard that, they cried out with a loud voice, stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord, cast him out of the city, and stoned him, and the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man's feet whose name was Saul. Now we're going to see a change of operation. And here he's introduced as the persecutor of these Jewish believers, and he's been heading it up, a terrible persecution. It was so vicious that you come down into Acts chapter 8, verse 1, where it says, And Saul was consenting unto his, that is, Stephen's, death. And at that time there was a great persecution against the church. Now we have to be careful how you use that word church. The Greek word is ecclesia, and all it means in the Greek is a called-out assembly. And so what you have to learn to do is use the word according to its setting in the text. Is it talking about, for example, at Ephesus when they went into the amphitheater and they had a mob rule and said, Great is Diana of the Ephesians, great is Diana of the Ephesians? Well, the same word was used. They were an ecclesia. Now they weren't a religious group, they weren't a godly group, they were an ungodly. It was a riot, but it was called an ecclesia, which would be now translated church. There it was just simply called an assembly. Paul, no, Stephen, Stephen in his chapter 7, he speaks of Israel as being the church in the wilderness. Well, now you know the church wasn't on the scene when Israel came out of Egypt, but what was Israel? A called-out assembly. And so always be careful. Now when you get into the actual church age and what we call the church, Paul almost always identifies it as the body of Christ, which is the church, or the church, which is his body. You see the difference? But now this assembly, of course, is the Jewish believers at Jerusalem, and it's rightfully called a called-out assembly, but it's the word ecclesia. And so now verse 3, finishing it, "...as for Saul, he made havoc of the assembly," or these called-out Jewish believers, "...entering into every house and hailing men and women, and committed them to prison." In other words, Saul was just so intense on stamping out anyone who was following this Jesus of Nazareth. And why? Well, Saul was a tremendously religious man. He had been, you remember, taught at the feet of Gamaliel, the greatest rabbi of the day. And Saul of Tarsus honestly, honestly thought that Jesus was an imposter. He was a blasphemer. And the best thing that could happen to Israel was to have everything connected with Jesus stamped out and put out of memory. So he was what we would call today a religious zealot. He was a fanatic to the extreme, but he thought he was doing his God a favor. Now the reason I'm painting that kind of a picture of Saul of Tarsus is because we're going to see in chapter 9, and I guess we can turn to it now, because all I wanted to show you in chapter 7 and 8 was the introduction of this man who is going to literally turn the world inside out. In fact, I was encouraged that one of our national news magazines, I think it was U.S. News and World Report last summer, had a lead article on some of the men who had been most influential in changing the direction of human history by one way or another. And believe it or not, one of the men that they listed, some of you read the article, was the Apostle Paul. And they gave Paul the credit for being the instigator or the beginning of Christianity as we know it. Now most will just say, well, Jesus was the one who started Christianity. Well, Jesus is the foundation of it, no doubt. But who built upon that foundation? Well, the Apostle Paul. And so I was encouraged, at least there's a few people starting to recognize that Christianity would not be where it is tonight had not it been for the Apostle Paul or Saul of Tarsus. All right, so now this religious fanatic trying to stamp out anything that had anything to do with Jesus of Nazareth, we meet him now in chapter 9, on his way to Damascus. Verse 1, And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest, and desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues. Now you see, this is all Jewish. Gentiles didn't worship in the synagogue, or maybe an occasional proselyte, but they weren't very many. And so it's still all Jewish. And so he wants to go to Damascus where he can bring those Jewish followers of Christ in his earthly ministry and in his messiahship, and bring them, it says, bound to Jerusalem. Verse 3, As he journeyed, he came near Damascus, and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven. And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? Now remember, God is sovereignly working to interrupt his Old Testament program in order to make room to call out a bride, a Gentile bride, for the Son. Now that's why we're taking all these references, and we're taking the time to digress from the book of Genesis for a few weeks, and we'll be going back to it. Now verse 5, And he, that is Saul, said, Who art thou, Lord? Now I hope I'm not doing violence to Scripture, and I certainly don't think I am, when I say that there was only one Lord so far as a religious Jew of Christ's day, and who would that have been in the Old Testament? Well Jehovah, wasn't it? Now I like to think that Saul of Tarsus, religious fanatic that he was, when he saw that intense light come from above, from heaven, as it says, and heard the voice from heaven, who'd he immediately naturally think it was? Well Jehovah, that's the God that he knew intricately, he thought. That was the God he thought he was serving, was the God of Abraham, Jehovah. And so I like to think that Paul, or Saul, we'll call him that, when Saul saw all this happening, he just cried out, Who art thou, Jehovah? And now look what Jesus answers, or Jehovah, if you please, and Jehovah said, I am who? Jesus. Now, can you get just an inkling of how Saul must have felt when he heard the very person that he thought was a blasphemer and an imposter, and somebody that he had to stamp out, tell him that he's Jesus? Oh, I think Saul, just as we know he did, he just melded, he was converted on the spot. And he said, verse 6, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? No more argument, no debate. He suddenly realized that he was dealing with that Jesus that he thought he hated, and recognized him for who he really was, the Jehovah of the Old Testament, and that's why I'm always teaching back there. Never lose sight of the fact that Jehovah, that God the Son in the Old Testament, is Christ in the new. There is no difference in their personality. The only difference is he has become flesh, he has become, as Paul says in Colossians, the image of the invisible God, but it's the same person. And Saul sees it, he has no argument, and his immediate response is, Lord, what would you have me to do? All right, now you know the rest of the story, but now I want you to come down to verse 10, where there was a certain disciple of Damascus named Ananias. And to him, Ananias, the Lord said in a vision, Ananias, and he said, Behold, I am here. And the Lord said unto him, Arise and go into the street which is called Straight, and inquire in the house of Judas for one called Saul of Tarsus, for behold, he prayeth, and hath seen in a vision a man named Ananias coming in, putting his hand on him, that he might receive his sight. Then Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard by many of this man how much evil he hath done to the saints at Jerusalem, to the Jewish followers of Christ. And here he has authority from the chief priest to bind all that call on thy name. But the Lord said unto him, Now watch this. This is before Saul even has come out of his temporary blindness. And the Lord tells Ananias, verse 15, Go thy way. In other words, don't argue with me, Ananias. Just go do what I tell you. Go thy way, for he, Saul, is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before, who? Gentiles. See? Now, if you have any idea of how the Jew felt about Gentiles, turn with me, if you will, to chapter 22. Maybe we've done this in a previous program, but I'm sure very few would remember it. So if you'll turn to chapter 22 just to get an idea of how the average Jew at that time felt about Gentiles. Now you want to remember, the Jews were steeped in all this. They were steeped in the covenant God gave to Abraham. They were steeped in the law that God had given to Moses. And even though they didn't understand much of it, yet they did realize that they were a chosen covenant people, and that the Gentiles had no part in that relationship. All right, now in chapter 22 of Acts, if you'll come down to verse 17, where Paul, as we now call him, is addressing again a tremendous Jewish crowd there in Jerusalem. And he's explaining as best he can to his Jewish cohorts how that God had showed him who Jesus was, and he rehashes again his conversion experience. And now he comes down to verse 17, and he says, And it came to pass, that when I was come again to Jerusalem, even while I prayed in the temple I was in a trance. And I saw him, that is, Jesus, saying unto me, Make haste, get thee quickly out of Jerusalem, for they, the Jew, will not receive thy testimony concerning me. But Paul says, I responded by saying, or yeah, I responded to the Lord by saying, They know that I am present, and beat in every synagogue them that believed on thee. And when the blood of thy martyr Stephen was shed, I also was standing by and consenting unto his death, and kept the raiment of them that slew him. But he said unto me, Jesus now responds to Paul, Depart, get out of Jerusalem, for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles. And now look at the next verse. And they gave him audience, they listened to him, unto this word. What word? Gentile. And when he as much as breathed the word Gentile, they lifted up their voices, and they said, Away with such a fellow from the earth, it's not fit that he should live. Now that was the mentality of the Jews of that day. And see, they weren't all that far wrong. We'll look at a verse in Ephesians. I haven't got time right now, but we're going to be looking at it in, if not this program, the next one. So come back with me, if you will, now to Acts chapter 9. Acts chapter 9. Now, of course, Saul ends up under the roof, I think, of Ananias. And verse 17, Ananias went his way and entered into the house, and putting his hands on him, he said, Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared to thee in the way as thou camest, hath sent me that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Spirit. And then verse 18, immediately there fell from his eyes that had been scales, and he received sight forthwith, arose, was baptized, and that was, of course, right in line with the Jewish program that began with John the Baptist, you remember. And then he received food. And now verse 20, and straightway he preached Christ where? In the synagogue. He didn't go out into the Gentile marketplace and approach Gentiles. He goes to the synagogue. He's still Jew only. And he goes to the synagogues, and he preaches Christ that he is the Son of God. Now watch it carefully. He preaches Christ as the Son of God who died for me and rose from the dead. It's not what it says, is it? Well, that's what a lot of people think it should say. But does Paul or Saul here know anything of a gospel based on death and resurrection? No. Now, just to show you how this was in perfect alignment with that which has been on the scene now ever since Christ's first appearance, or even John the Baptist, go back with me to Matthew's Gospel, chapter 16, Matthew 16. And now we've had Christ almost finishing His three years of earthly ministry. The twelve have been with Him almost constantly. And it's about time to go up to Jerusalem and be approached for the crucifixion. But now they're still up there in the area of Caesarea Philippi, north of Jerusalem. Verse 13, And so when Jesus came to the coast or the borders of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am? Verse 14, And they said, Well, some say you're John the Baptist, some that you're Elias, others that you're Jeremiah, one of the prophets. But he saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Now watch it, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, who died for me and rose again. No, that's not what it says. So what does he know? That Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God, period. That's all they know. Now, was Jesus satisfied with that answer? Of course He was. That's all that they could know up to that time. Now read on. And Jesus answered and said, Blessed art thou, see? He doesn't upgrade Him for not knowing. He fully agrees with His answer, and He says, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. Now if you'll come on over to Acts once again. This time stop at chapter 8, and this, of course, is taking place before Saul's conversion in chapter 9, and that's an important fact to remember. Now in Acts chapter 8, Philip has been up to Samaria, he's been preaching that Christ is the Messiah up there, and then the Holy Spirit directs him down to the south in Gaza, and he runs across this Ethiopian eunuch who has been to Jerusalem to worship up there in verse 27. And then verse 29, the Spirit, that is the Holy Spirit, said unto Philip, Go near and join thyself to this chariot. And so Philip ran thither to Him, and heard Him read the prophet Isaiah, and He said, Understand this, for thou readest. Now you all know the account, how that Philip explained to this Ethiopian eunuch who Isaiah was talking about. But come all the way down to verse 35, where it says, Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same Scripture, and preached unto him Christ crucified. No! See, that's what I want people to see. We assume so much. He doesn't preach Christ crucified. Now when you get into Paul's writings, what does Paul say? But we preach Christ crucified. But see, here the hand can't do that yet. It hasn't been revealed as gospel. And so Philip, in perfect accord with even what Peter understood, that Jesus was the Christ, Philip opened his mouth and preached unto him Jesus. And then you come down to verse 36, the eunuch said, See, here is water. What doth hinder me to be baptized? And Philip said, If thou believest with all thy heart, thou mayest. Now look at his confession of faith. And this eunuch answered and said, I believe. But what? That Jesus Christ is the Son of God, who died for me and rose again? No, that he is the Son of God. Period. And that was their profession of faith. They understood who Jesus was. Now come across to chapter 9, and I imagine our time's just about gone. Now come into chapter 9 once again. And here Saul of Tarsus has now received his sight, he's been baptized right in accord with all the rest of them. And then it says in verse 20, And straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God. Period. Now, could God let Saul of Tarsus, or Paul as we'll later know him, go preach that message? Why, of course not. That wasn't going to be the gospel for the Gentile. And so now what happens? Well, we have to pick it up, well, we can go on a little bit further here. In verse 21, All that heard him were amazed, and said, Is not this he that destroyed them who called on this name in Jerusalem? And they came hither for that intent, that he might bring them bound to the chief priests. Now see, it's all Jewish language here. But verse 22, Saul increased the mourn strength, and confounded who? The Jews, who dwelt at Damascus, proving, that is, from the Old Testament now, that this is verily the Christ. But what is Paul or Saul leaving out? Anything concerning the crucifixion and resurrection. He's just simply proving that this is the promised Messiah. All right, now look how God sovereignly enters in. He can't leave Saul there under those circumstances. And so after many days were fulfilled, the Jews took counsel to do what? To kill him. Now what is old Saul going to have to do? Well, he's going to have to escape, and you know what happened. Verse 24, There laying await was known of Saul, and they watched the gates night and day to kill him, lest he would try to leave the city. And so then in verse 25, the disciples took him by night, and led him down by the wall in a basket. And he has to flee. Now I've only got a minute left, so we're going to have to pick it up again next week. Where does Saul go? Well, you would normally think that since the twelve had been with Christ for three years and knew Jesus and his ministry intricately, wouldn't that have been the logical place to go? Wouldn't it have been logical for Saul to go back to Jerusalem and say, hey, fellas, fill me in. Tell me everything you know about the Christ so I can go out and preach. But does he? No. The Scripture makes it so plain that's the last place that he would have gone. But where does he go? He goes down to Mount Sinai in Arabia. And we don't want to even get started on that in this half hour, we'll pick it up in the next one. But we're going to see that Saul of Tarsus providentially is removed from Damascus. He's not permitted to go to Jerusalem in the twelve, but he goes down to the desert, he goes down to Mount Sinai, and we'll see in Galatians. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick. Through the Bible is a partner-supported ministry. If this program has been a help to your study of the Scriptures and you'd like to see others enjoy the teaching, your support would be greatly appreciated. Write to us at Les Feldick Ministries, Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, OK 74552, or call 1-800-369-7856. Remember, all programs are available in printed form, audio cassette, and videotape. Be sure to tune in next time to Through the Bible with Les Feldick.