Years ago we had this outreach event for the teens, where we were going to take them to Disneyland. The point of the outreach was to make new contacts with teens that had been adamant that they would never come to the church. We told the teens that they had to pay full price for their ticket if they wanted to go, but if they got a friend to go, then they would only pay half price, and their friend would be free. In the end, one new teen came, the rest just paid full price for their ticket. So, we’ve never done a trip like that since, because it didn’t achieve it’s intended goal of outreach.
But the trip almost got canceled the day we were supposed to leave. Josh and Gabe, two of our teens that had graduated and were at college in Phoenix, were on their way to go with us. They were going to help lead music at the two worship times. They were about 40 miles outside of Quartzsite, when their car tire blew out and their vehicle flipped. When we first heard the news we were going to stop everything and focus on the situation, but Gabe told us they would be fine, and that we should go. So we went. A few years after that, and Josh was sitting in the front seat of the church van as I picked up teens for Wreck Night. We were out on the road to Rainbow Acres, when I took a curve. Josh grabbed the handle and put his hand on the dash, and just started saying “J! J!” To him it felt like I was taking the curve too fast. I realized that he was still dealing with his experience from that accident.
That car wreck changed Josh and his interaction with driving. Which is should. Anytime we have a wreck, whether that be a vehicle accident or a relationship wreck, we should go away from it changed. And that’s what we’re login to be talking about for the next several weeks.
Too often in our relationships with God, we don’t realize that we’ve been in a wreck. Jesus’ does’t come into our lives as an add on to them, but rather to tear down the walls and chains of sin. And if any of you have ever done any remodeling, demolish has to occur, before the renovations can happen.
So for the next five weeks, we’re going to look at five people of Scripture and learn from their encounters with God. From each of these encounters, we’ll walk away with an understanding of what God desires from his people and how his wrecking work works. Because we have a tendency to think that our relationship with God is a give and take. If we give God something like our cussing, he’ll let us go on lying. If we give God our alcohol, he’ll let us go on gossiping. If we give God our adultery, he’ll let us go on swindling. In the modern church, it can even look like, if I give God my heart in salvation, he’ll heap blessings of possessions and fame on me.
So in the next few weeks, we’ll see the call of God on the the lives on people in Scripture and where that call took them. In doing so, we’ll see the path that God calls us to in our lives. To begin this series, let’s open to one of the most famous calls in all of Scripture, the call of Paul in Acts 9.
As we open up to Acts 9, here’s a brief summary of where we are in the Scriptures up to this point. Jesus has been crucified and raised back to life. He spent time with his disciples and then returned to heaven charging them with the carrying of the Gospel to the ends of the earth. The disciples began this work after receiving the Holy Spirit. And though thousands began to accept Jesus as Savior, they began to encounter hostility. Floggings and imprisonments followed their preaching. Hostilities grew until Stephen was martyred for the faith.
This death, marked the beginning of a persecution that would swell and rescind throughout the next several centuries. The main antagonist of this early persecution was Saul the Benjaminite who flew into this persecution with holy and righteous anger for Jesus being equated to God. But his acts didn’t last long, and his encounter with the Risen Jesus is one that has been talked about throughout Church history. Let’s read together that first encounter.
“1 Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. 3 As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’
“5 ‘Who are you, Lord?' Saul asked.
“‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,’ he replied. 6 ‘Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.’
“7 The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. 8 Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. 9 For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.”
God used this encounter with Jesus to shape the New Testament and our understanding of who he is. Paul’s life is completely and utterly wrecked. No facet of it remained intact as it was before.
From Paul’s words throughout his writings we see this complete transformation. From Romans 7 we get this, “21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord (21-25)!”
From 1st Timothy 1:15, Paul writes, “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.”
From 1st Corinthians 15:9 we read, “For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.”
And from Ephesians 3:8 Paul writes, “Although I am less than the least of all the Lord’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ…”
From Paul’s encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, he recognizes just how far he was from God. Paul recognizes how utterly wretched he was. And he puts this forth in his letters, recognizing that it is only because of Jesus that his wretchedness was fixed. That even in the presence of the saints, who esteem him as a great teacher and evangelist, he is still the least and most undeserving of them all. Why? Because he fully understands how great and glorious God is and how utterly not he is.
This is something that we can miss in our calling from God. We read and quote John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
And we think that God just loved us. We are so special that God loves us. And don’t get me wrong, God does love us, we are special to him, but this can so easily fall into the category of, “well I’m special, therefore God loves me.” It’s a self building, rather than Christ building, attitude.
And I see this in worship songs, both old and new. When the “I” of the one singing becomes the subject of the verse instead of the God who is being sung to, we have fallen into the deception of God must love me because I am so great. There’s a song entitled “My Testimony” that doesn’t even get to who God is until the chorus, which comes after two verses of what we have done or what we have experienced.
This “I” type of focus comes about because we don’t include the verses after John 3:16. John 3:17ff read, “17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.”
It’s the condemned state that we are in and God’s great love and compassion that seeks to bring us out of that condemned state as to why the Father lovingly sends the Son. Paul states it this ways Romans 5, “6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! 10 For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! 11 Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
It’s not me at all in the equation. I have done nothing in my own power to receive Jesus, and I do nothing in my own power to live in relationship with him. God has done everything to get me to this point. And this is the wrecking that we must recognize, I am wretched without Jesus and I rely completely on him now. Marika, my wife, made the point that this isn’t a natural response. And that’s the point, it’s God’s supernatural work that achieves all things.
So what are we called to do by Paul who recognizes his wretchedness? First, Romans 10:9-13, for, “9 If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. 11 As Scripture says, ‘Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.’ 12 For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, 13 for, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’” We must first enter into the relationship with God, by accepting we are sinners and accepting his free gift of salvation.
Next, Romans 12:1-2 reads, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
Romans 6:11-14 states, “11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13 Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. 14 For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.”
And we could go on and on, but the core of Paul’s encounter with Jesus, as relayed to us through his writings, comes from Galatians 2:20, “20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
From our first look at someone who encountered Christ, sets the foundation on what we must understand about our relationship with him. It’s this truth, there was nothing about us that warranted God’s love, it was his goodness and love that saved a wretched sinner like me, and now through the power of the Holy Spirit, we are called to throw off my old self and put on the new person I am in Christ.
We cannot hold onto the illusion that in some way we was good enough for God, or that now we can barter with God for things. No, we was saved in a wretched state that offered nothing of value to God, yet he was good and loving and saved me out of that wretchedness, calling me his child. And now we walk his path on his terms, submitting to his will and not my own.
This truth does’t feed into our desire to be recognized for our achievements, and it doesn’t feed into our desire for possessions, but it does recognizes the reality we’re in, and the only way for us to move forward. Without Christ we are nothing and our lives will end in nothingness. Yet with Christ, we are truly found, because we walk in our true creation, which is God’s life bestowed upon us.
This is a wrecking ball to the illusion of the self-gratification, self-absorption, and self-centeredness that we can so easily fall into. It’s a tearing down of the illusion that we can so easily create, that we am somehow worthy of God’s love. No, God is worthy of honor and glory and power, because he loves the wretched, and calls the weak things his beloved. And when we embrace this truth of Scripture, now we can truly see my worth, because it’s found no where else except in Jesus. And he becomes our everything, with his praise flowing off of my lips for his great work.
My challenge for you this week is to come before God and ask him to seek any selfish desires, any self-righteous mindset, and thing that would say God needs me; confess it recognize and remember the wretched state you were in before Christ, and praise him that he is good and loving because he saves you from it. Then seek after him to move by his Holy Spirit to beat down the old selfishness, to present you as a living sacrifice and instrument of godly work. Not by your own power but in submission to God’s power at work in you.
God desires his people to be his. To be led and directed as he so chooses. Let us then walk as the Spirit leads, upon the Word of God, into the work of God, for the glory of God. Amen.
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