Dave Christensen 1930 Rusty Service

28 DEC 2008
Paul, the Persecutor

 Introduction

 (Start with a movie clip from ROTJ of Vader taunting Luke and then their lightsaber battle
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ending with Luke standing over Vader ready to kill him)

 Can you imagine what it must have been like to be Luke at that moment?
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Live ■ Vader has done nothing but hunt down, arrest and kill his friends for years.

 He has even hunted and fought Luke on several occasions.

 And now Luke has the chance to stop it all.

 But, he has a decision to make.

 Does he kill someone who is defenseless and throw away everything He

believes, or does he continue to follow his beliefs even though it might get him

killed?

 This is the kind of hard question that comes up when we face persecution.

■ As believers, it is not of matter of if, but rather, when we will endure persecution for our

faith.

 How do we react when we are persecuted?

 What will the lasting results of those reactions be?

 Tonight we will begin a short series that looks at the life of Paul in Acts.

■ Paul, in this case however, is not the persecuted.

 Rather, he is the persecutor.

 As we study these verses describing the life of Paul as a persecutor, we will learn

something about how the results of our actions can have eternal effects.

First we see Paul as...

 The Persecutor of One (Acts 7:58 – 8:1)

 Paul is first introduced to the reader as an aside.

■ After one reads through the arrest and sermon of Stephen, Saul is mentioned as

somewhat of an overseer of the execution.

 As we know, Saul is the original name of Paul.

 For the sake of continuity and to help quell confusion, let's refer to him only as Paul

from now on.

■ Quite literally in the middle of the stoning of Stephen, Luke decides to mention that

Paul was there.

 He tells the reader that the men, who were stoning Stephen, laid their coats down at

Paul's feet.

 This action tells us several things.

■ First, Paul was present in some type of leadership role.

 It is obvious by there actions, that the other men respected him.

 He also is there, but doesn't seem to be getting his hands dirty.

 There is a definite feeling that Paul is in charge at some level.

■ The other thing that this tells us is that Paul was completely involved in the

persecution of Stephen.

 It is not as if he was someone who was standing in the back as part of the

crow.

 He wasn't a passerby, who just stopped to look.

 He was up front and everyone could see that the other men were laying

their coats at his feet.

■ While it may seem that Paul is just making a cameo appearance here, Luke is

making sure that we know that Paul, the man we are about to read so much

more about, was in charge at the execution of Stephen.

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  Just in case we missed Paul's brief appearance in chapter seven, he is immediately brought

up again in chapter 8.

■ After the two verses describing Stephen's death, Luke makes a very similar point about

Paul's role.

 Paul was there in the capacity of witness.

 A witness is someone who can give reliable testimony.

 Not only was here there, he completely agreed with what had happened.

 Just in case someone might get the idea that Paul was just going along with the

crowd, Luke makes it clear that was not the case.

 Paul is undoubtedly all for the persecution and execution of Christians on an

individual basis

 What is interesting to consider is what in not written.

■ What was Paul thinking when he heard the sermon.

 Did he doubt his position at all?

 Did he wonder, “what if this Stephen guy is right?”

 While we will never know this in our life here on earth, we do know that seeds were

planted that day.

 When Paul did become a believer, he was no doubt able to apply what he had heard

from Stephen for the first time.

Not only was Paul the persecutor of one, but he was also...

 The Persecutor of Many (Acts 8:1-3) (On PowerPoint along with text)

 In these next verses we learn that Paul didn't just persecute on an individual basis. Rather,

he was actually very broad in his persecution.

■ The setting here is that the persecution in the church became so bad that the believers

began to be scattered all through out Judea and Samaria.

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  Of course, as we now know, this persecution did have a bigger purpose.

 The church was commanded to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth and they

needed to be scattered in order to accomplish this very important purpose.

 It is in the midst of this we get another glimpse of the type of man that Paul was.

■ First, he was completely thorough in his persecution.

 The text tells us that he went everywhere to destroy.

 Paul wanted to wipe Christianity of the face of the earth even if he had to do it

single handily.

■ Second, he was extremely determined to accomplish his task.

 We learn that he was going from house to house.

 Many men would have settled for only catching those who were meeting

together.

■ Paul, however, left no stone unturned in his search for believers.

 Third, he was absolutely ruthless.

 Again most men would have probably only thrown the male believers in prison.

■ They were the heads of their households and those truly responsible

according to the law.

■ Paul didn't want to take the chance that the women would teach their

children.

 One has to wonder how many children were orphaned by his actions.

 Again, though, what is interesting about this passage is what we cannot possibly know.

■ Paul was unknowingly exposing himself to as many believers as he possibly could.

 How many testimonies did he hear?

 How much did he learn about what Jesus taught?

 How many examples of pure faith did he witness?

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  Did it have an effect on him at that time?

■ While we cannot know any of this, we can assume again, that he must have reflected

back on all of these experiences later on, when he converted.

 The persecutor of many was certainly influenced by the many he persecuted.

While Paul persecuted the one and the many, he intended to become...

 The Persecutor of the World (Acts 9:1-2) (On PowerPoint along with text)

 Now we learn that Paul was not satisfied with only wiping out the believers in Judea. He

wanted to take his actions world wide.

■ Paul's hatred against the believers seems to have only grown worse at this point.

 That he was uttering threats with every breath indicates that this hate had completely

consumed him.

 While before, he was satisfied to oversee execution and arrest believers, now he is

eager to kill them.

 One, must wonder, if Paul was losing it after persecuting so many, yet seeing their

faith continue top prevail.

 It must have driven him to the brink to hear that after all his work, this “church” had

continued to grow and spread.

 So, he decides to do something about it.

 Paul gets permission to take his show on the road.

■ He is now going to Damascus with documents to compel the Jews there to help him in

his quest.

■ Paul wants to repeat what he did in Jerusalem and Judea in Samaria. Again, he plans to

arrest both men and women and cut off the church at the first generation.

 Perhaps, what is most interesting in these verses is that there is an interesting parallel being

developed.
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 ■ We known that Christians are commanded to be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria

and to the ends of the earth in Acts 1:8.

 Paul is now following that same plan in his persecution.

 He has persecuted in Jerusalem and Judea already.

 Now he is moving on Samaria and the ends of the earth.

■ It is amazing to see how God used the character traits that already existed in

Paul to accomplish His plan later on.

 Paul didn't develop a global vision after he was saved.

 He already had a very global world view.

 Instead that already existing world view was simply redirected.

The persecutor of the world became the missionary to the world.

Application and Conclusion

 So what does this mean for us here today?

Go  How does Paul's appearance in a leadership capacity at Stephen's stoning have anything to
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do with us?

 How does his persecution of the many and even of the world have anything to do with us?

■ Well, actually I have found two things that spoke to me.

 First, I realized that my perspective when being persecuted has to change.

 There is no possible way that Stephen or any of the others could have ever known what Paul

would become.

■ Never in their wildest imagination, could they have predicted that Paul would convert.

 Yet, we know that he did convert and he must have reflected back on them.

 When I am being persecuted, I need to remember that I really don't know if the person who

is after me will ever be converted.

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 ■ I can't write them off.

 That means I have to make sure that I continue to live my life according to God's

standards regardless of what happens to me.

 I can never give up and I can never quit on Jesus because the effect on my accusers

may be disastrous.

 Its interesting that Luke had just that same experience with Vader.

■ Luke holds onto his beliefs and while at first, the consequences seem horrible, the
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effects of his decision have great eternal effects.
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 Let's take a quick look at those effects.

(Show clip of Vader saving Luke from the Emperor and their final moments together)

• There is also another thing that I learned from studying Paul the persecutor

• Second, I have to be so careful not to become a persecutor.

 Here we see a man that we know was attempting to please and glorify God, but doing just

the opposite.

■ Am I any better if I unjustly accuse a fellow believer in the name of Jesus?

 Even if I disagree with someone, I may very well be wrong.

 This means that I cannot ever get to the point where I act in persecution against a

believer or anyone else.

 What about you?

 Does this passage strike you the same way?

■ If so are you willing to keep yourself pure when persecuted?

■ Will you purpose yourself to not persecute another?

■ Or will you also enable or even become a persecutor of one, many or the world?