Acts 9

Acts 9:3-7:
As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked. “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.” The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone.

Saul is blinded by the magnificence of this appearance of Christ, and his physical blindness allows him to see himself truly. He finally recognizes his own powerlessness and weakness, and accepts his blindness in humility. Before commissioning Saul to take the gospel to the Gentiles, God tears down his reliance on his religious zeal. Only after being brought to a position of abject humility is Saul ready for the uplifting gospel of Jesus Christ. “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6). --Justin Holcomb

There’s nothing wrong with catchy ways of expressing a conclusion based on careful consideration. In fact, Jesus was a master at using short, pithy statements (known as aphorisms) to drive a point home. Sloganeering in the hands of the unskilled, though, tends to be a sloppy business. The kernel of truth is lost beneath a pile of misleading chaff.
Many slogans are not answers, but clever dismissals. No careful work has been done to justify the verdict. Let me explain.
One truism I’ve heard regarding the problem of God’s sovereignty versus man’s freedom goes something like this: “God is a gentleman. He won’t tamper with your free will.” The statement has a ring of truth to it, and as a slogan it has populist appeal. Yet, more often than not, the statement is like a roof hanging in mid-air; the more demanding foundational work needed to support it simply has not been done. For example, this maxim is vulnerable to a couple of simple observations. First, the Scripture doesn’t make this particular claim about human freedom. It doesn’t even imply that God is a gentleman who won’t interfere with our lives. To the contrary, there are a number of biblical examples that indicate just the opposite.
Take Paul on the road to Damascus, for instance. He was in total rebellion against God. He dragged Christian men, women, and children into prison and even presided over executions. Paul was, in his human will, an enemy to the cross of Christ. So God knocked him off his horse on the Damascus Road, blinded him, then spoke to him like thunder from the sky (Acts 9:3-7). Was God tampering? It looks like it.
Consider poor Nebuchadnezzar. God had him chewing grass with the cows in the fields of Babylon for three years until he finally looked heavenward, came to his senses, and gave God the glory (Daniel 4:28-37). Was there any divine pressure here? Seems like it to me.

When Saul met Jesus on his way to Damascus, he was shocked! He at last had a direct line with God in heaven. What would he learn? What revelation would he get? In fact, he was told nothing. Nothing except, “Arise, and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do” (Acts 9:6). He was instructed by heaven to be instructed on earth. Saul, later Paul, learned his first Christian truth, that believers are not a sack-full of random elements, but a living body, the church, and God did not allow him to bypass it. “Go into the city!” Jesus made sure of his earthly linkage. Paul went and humbly submitted to the treatment of others. He took the right direction from the beginning of his Christian life, and to him the church of his fellow-believers became strength and wisdom, as he to them. The result is history – glorious history! “Go into the city!” is also God’s word for us TODAY. --Reinhard Bonnke

Acts 9:10-16:
Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” He answered, “Here I am, Lord.” The Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. At this moment he is praying, and he has seen in a vision a 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 evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.” But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name”

Ananias is told that he must encounter this Saul and bring him into the faith through baptism. It is understandable that Ananias would be quite skeptical over Saul’s conversion. After all, Ananias has heard of Saul and what he had done to the church in Jerusalem. What if this is a ruse; a trick of Saul's to infiltrate the church in Damascus in order to arrest the leadership and bring them back to Jerusalem? Just as Saul, Ananias is awakened from the routine of his life and called upon to be part of something larger, something that will change the course of Christianity.

Most commentators focus on Saul in Acts chapter nine, which is understandable. He is by far the most famous and most influential of the two men in our story. But it is unfortunate that often Ananias in neglected. He is a critical part of Saul’s conversion. He not only initiates Saul into the Christian faith, but it will become his job to convince the Christians in Damascus that Paul’s conversion is indeed real and that this former persecutor and now be trusted as a fellow disciple. -Alan R Bevere

Acts 9:31:
So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.

"I’m not against strategic plans. I’m for them. They have their place, as a matter of wise stewardship. But they cannot generate the astonishing outcomes described in the book of Acts.
I remember hearing Michael Green at the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in 1974. He asked us, Why don’t we see anywhere in the book of Acts a man-made strategic plan for evangelizing the world? His answer: They didn’t have one.

What then did they have? Two things, for starters: the fear of the Lord, and the comfort of the Holy Spirit. In the fear of the Lord, they were teachable, they were humble, they were listening to the gospel, they were open and grateful and easily bendable. They did not have a spirit of self-assurance. They were eager to learn and grow and change in any way the Lord wanted them to.

In the comfort of the Holy Spirit, they were gladdened, they felt forgiven, they were reconciled to God and reconciling with one another. They saw their sins and failures, but they also saw the far greater reality of Jesus crucified for them. To put it in a secular way, they couldn’t believe their luck.
Openness in a know-it-all world, comfort in an angry world – that ancient world simply could not resist these heaven-sent powers. So the church didn’t just grow, it multiplied.

Those early churches had no master plan for their future. But they were walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, and it worked.

Church growth takes planning. Let’s do it. But church multiplication takes miracle. Let’s be open to what only God can do.
--Ray Ortlund

The Hebrew verb yare can mean “to fear, to respect, to reverence” and the Hebrew noun yirah “usually refers to the fear of God and is viewed as a positive quality. This fear acknowledges God’s good intentions (Exodus 20:20). … This fear is produced by God’s Word (Psalm 119:38; Proverbs 2:5) and makes a person receptive to wisdom and knowledge (Proverbs 1:7; 9:10)” (Warren Baker and Eugene Carpenter, The Complete Word Study Dictionary: Old Testament, 2003, pp. 470-471).
The Greek noun phobos can mean “reverential fear” of God, “not a mere ‘fear’ of His power and righteous retribution, but a wholesome dread of displeasing Him” (Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, 1985, “Fear, Fearful, Fearfulness”). This is the type of positive, productive fear Luke describes in the early New Testament Church:
“Then the churches throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and were edified. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, they were multiplied” (Acts 9:31, emphasis added). -Mike Bennett; Life,Hope&Truth