Sermons
Paul, A Chosen Instrument to Bring Light to the Nations
Paul, A Chosen Instrument to Bring Light to the Nations
Acts 9:10-15
Introduction:
1. The account of Paul’s Damascus Road experience is recorded here and in Acts 22:6ff and again in Acts 26:12ff.
2. Often as we think about we focus on his becoming a Christian. We may note that in Acts 9:6 where the Lord said, “Get up and enter the city, and it will be told you what you must do.” Then it is pointed out that Ananias told him what he must do in Acts 22:16. “Get up and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on His name.”
3. Now, while all that is true, in some ways it misses the point of the text. Note Acts 22:10 Paul relates how the Lord told him to “get up and go into Damascus, and there you will be told of all that has been appointed for you to do.” Is this a statement about what Paul needed to do to be saved or about his being appointed to be a witness of what he had seen and heard? Note what Ananias said in 22:13-15.
4. Now notice what Paul says the Lord had said to him on the road to Damascus in Acts 26:15-18 and how he interpreted it to King Agrippa in 26:19-23.
5. This Damascus Road experience is not so much about Paul’s conversion as it is about his commission.
6. But there are some interesting dynamics here that I would like to call to your attention involving light, blindness, sight, the opening of eyes and movement from darkness to light.
Discussion:
I. Saul is on his way from Jerusalem to Damascus when “suddenly a light from heaven flashed all around him” (Acts 9:3; 22:6).
A. In Acts 26:13 he says it was at midday. “I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun,
shining all around me and those who were journeying with me.”
1. This is a striking experience. It is midday. The sun is at its peak performance and this
light is brighter than the sun.
2. It is so bright that it damages Paul’s eyes to the point of blindness.
3. Apparently God miraculously healed him through Ananias three days later.
B. The images of dim eyes, darkness and light are prominent in Scripture.
1. People with insensitive hearts to the word of God are described in Isa. 6:10 as having
“dim eyes.”
2. God had spoken light into existence in the beginning and saw that it was good (Gen.
1:3).
3. The image of light being associated with God’s revelation, God’s truth, insight, and
spiritual enlightenment permeates Scripture.
a. There was a lampstand in the temple.
b. Psa. 119:105 says, “Your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light to my path.”
c. Prov. 6:23 says, “The commandment is a lamp and the teaching is light.”
d. Isa. 60:1ff says, “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has
risen on you. For behold, darkness will cover the earth and deep darkness the
peoples; but the Lord will rise upon you and His glory will appear upon you. Nations
will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.”
e. In the N.T. Jesus presents Himself as the Light of the world (Jn. 8:12) and in John 9
heals a blind man. He seems to use the Festival of Hanukkah (aka. The Feast of
Dedication; The Festival of Lights) as an occasion to do this (Jn. 10:22). (Hanukkah
was a commemorative celebration of the rededication of the temple after the
Maccabean revolt in the 2nd century BCE.)
B. So, what happened in Acts 9 is set against this historical backdrop.
II. It is also set against the historical context of the commissioning of prophets.
A. Isaiah saw the glory of the Lord before being commissioned to take God’s message to the
people (6:1ff). This involved a revelation of sin and the magnificent forgiveness of God (5-
6).
B. Moses had seen a bush blazing with fire, representative of God’s presence, before being
commissioned to go to God’s people in Egypt (Ex. 3).
C. Ezekiel too saw something representing the magnificent glory of the Lord before he was
commissioned to go to the people (1:26-2:1ff).
D. In light of all this, it is easy to see Acts 9 as God commissioning Paul as a prophet sending
him to the people.
III. This is the interpretation that Paul himself gives to his commission and his work.
A. Read Acts 22:12-15.
B. Read Acts 26:15-23.
C. This is the interpretation he gave in Acts 13:47 in Pisidian Antioch when he turned to the
Gentiles after the Jews had rejected his message.
1. He sites Isa. 42:6-7.
2. And Isa. 49:6. Cf. Isa. 2:2-3; 9:1ff; 51:5; 60:1-3.
IV. Others had seen this same light.
A. Simeon sited these texts in Lk. 2:29-32 when Jesus was brought into the temple for
circumcision.
B. Zacharias saw the light in Lk. 1:78-79. But like Paul he had been blinded. He had
questioned the word of the angel who had spoken to him.
Conclusion:
1. Paul is a chosen instrument to bring light to the Jewish people and to the Gentiles.
His own eye-opening experience has catapulted him into a mission “to open the eyes of the blind, that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Jesus” (Acts 26:18).
2. Paul says that he has joined the mission of Jesus (Acts 26:23). He was the first “to proclaim light both to the Jewish people and to the Gentiles.”
3. Do you see the light? Then “repent and turn to God, performing deeds appropriate to repentance” (Acts 26:20).
4. Why do you delay? Arise and be baptized and wash away your sins calling on His name (Acts 22:16).
5. Or as Paul said, “Awake, sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you” (Eph. 5:14; cf. Isa. 26:19; 51:17; 52:1; 60:1).
