Perhaps so, but I am not as confident of this as I once was. Then the proconsul believed when he saw what had happened, being amazed at the teaching of the Lord (Acts 13:6-12). Jesus was alive and not still in the grave! And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest, Chapter 9. It may be that Sauls conversion was the instrument God used to convert these followers of Saul, so that they really were his disciples, in a two-fold sense. You will be unsuccessful in everything you do; day after day you will be oppressed and robbed, with no one to rescue you (Deuteronomy 28:28-29). These two shocking deaths served as an example to the body of Christ that God hates hypocrisy. A resource for the whole church from Luther Seminary. Peter Restores Tabitha to Life. Without Ananias prayer, Saul spends the rest of his life as a blind man wondering what his life might have been. Saul, like Stephen, was a Hellenistic Jew. 141 Compare this voice with that in John 12:29. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Now they grope through the streets like men who are blind. God struck Ananias and Sapphira dead for hypocrisy While their penalties seem extreme to us today, God judged them guilty of sins so serious that they threatened the very existence of the early church. Blaiklock, for example (pp. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to his death (Philippians 3:7-10). 10 i There was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias, and the Lord said to him in a vision, Ananias. He answered, Here I am, Lord. 11 The Lord said to him, Get up and go to the street called Straight and ask at the house of If the blinding of Saul was a major turning point in his life, so was the blinding of Bar-Jesus. Encourage and rebuke with all authority. Did God Judge Ananias and Sapphira for the same sin? He trusted that Christ had a future purpose for Saul (verse 15) even though Sauls past as he knew it seemed to point toward a different future. God then used this man to further His purposes in launching the career of the most influential of the apostles. There is no more appropriate conclusion to our message than the words of the apostle Paul, which immediately follow those above, and which aptly express the response of the Christian to the wisdom, the grace, and the sovereignty of the God who has saved us, and who works all things together for His glory and for the good of His chosen ones: Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! The first is this: every saved person must have a personal conversion experience. Say to them, This is what the Sovereign Lord says. 5 And whether they listen or fail to listenfor they are a rebellious housethey will know that a prophet has been among them. 28 Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him. My names sake". At first, I thought this was unique with Saul. The account records their sudden deaths after lying to the Holy Spirit about money. Your sun will never set again, and your moon will wane no more; the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of sorrow will end (Isaiah 60:20). I. Howard Marshall summarizes the problem in these words: Nevertheless, we obtain a different impression of things from Galatians 1:16-24, according to which (1) Paul did not confer with men after his conversion nor go to the apostles in Jerusalem, but (2) departed to Arabia and then returned to Damascus; then (3) three years later he went to Jerusalem for a visit lasting a fortnight during which he saw only Peter and James, and at this time he was unknown by sight to the churches of Judea; thereafter (4) he went to Syria and Cilicia. That Luke would narrate this conversion three times is testimony to the importance he attaches to it. (9) On the road to Damascus, Saul did far more than to see a bright light and to hear a voice from heaven. Luke 3:22), it expressed his unique relationship and fellowship with the Father. Ibid. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. We know that Paul was not instantly a biblical scholar or a seasoned apostle. Just as Saul seemingly had hatred toward Christ-followers, how do you think a Christ-follower like Ananias felt toward Saul? . Three times in the Book of Acts it is reported, the first time in the third person (he) by Luke (Acts 9:1-31), the second time in the first person (I) by the apostle, as he spoke to his Jewish unbelieving brethren in defense of his ministry (Acts 22:1-21), and the third time, again in the first person, as his personal testimony to King Agrippa, Festus, and Bernice (Acts 26:1-23). Just as Saul was stopped short by his blindness, so was Bar-Jesus. The light of a lamp will never shine in you again. The people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned (Matthew 4:16). The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it . He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. Third, these discrepancies may well have been evident to the writers, who did not see fit to remove or explain every problem. 4He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?d 18 According to what they have done, so will he repay wrath to his enemies and retribution to his foes; he will repay the islands their due. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, 10 but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. >zZ0y^C{tg AT this season we are called upon to think of foreign missions. * [9:36] Tabitha (Dorcas), respectively the Aramaic and Greek words for gazelle, exemplifies the right attitude toward material possessions expressed by Jesus in the Lucan Gospel (Lk 6:30; 11:41; 12:33; 18:22; 19:8). What happened to Straight Street since then? Amen (1 Timothy 6:16). 4 Then he fell to the ground, and heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul,why are you persecuting Me? 5 And he said, Who are You, Lord? Then the Lord said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. And desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women, he The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". ACTS 9:27 27 But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles. Who has saved us and called us to a holy lifenot because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. WebThats when Ananias heard a word from the Lord. Thus, his opposition to Christ and His church took on a missionary spirit. 1 What is the significance of the story of Ananias and Sapphira? We can learn more about his life in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, and we can still read some of the letters he wrote that have been collected into the Bible, such as Galatians, Ephesians and Philippians. They too rebelled against God and forsook His word and persecuted His prophets. It was due to the intervention of Barnabas, a man who would prove to be a lifetime friend of Paul, that the apostles risked a meeting with him and then granted him the freedom to associate with the saints in Jerusalem. WebThere was no indication in Jesus words that Ananias was going to give Saul the Holy Spirit. Hd7/`l@TM0h#`C2 +u-AsQ3j++&?Fu7_[1_?a^J> This silence is instructive, in my opinion. What was Ananias role in Sauls conversion to Christianity? It was time for Saul to ponder what he had seen and heard. By submitting your email address, you understand that you will receive email communications from Bible Gateway, a division of The Zondervan Corporation, 3900 Sparks Drive SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546 USA, including commercial communications and messages from partners of Bible Gateway. From the fact that three different accounts of Sauls conversion are recorded in Acts, we know this event had to play a crucial role in the expansion of the church. Saul Visits Jerusalem. How do you write a good story in Smash Bros screening? It was the most powerful piece of artillery in the Jewish camp that was suddenly turned round upon them. A. T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1930), III, p. 123. My names sake" (Acts 9:16) even before his ministry began. (Acts 9:17) and that Saul was to "be filled with the Holy Spirit" (Acts 9:17). A( ) Ananias is obscure. 17So Ananias went and entered the house; laying his hands on him, he said, Saul, my brother, the Lord has sent me, Jesus who appeared to you on the way by which you came, that you may regain your sight and be filled with the holy Spirit. There may well have been a long time between Sauls conversion and his arrival at Jerusalem. We can overcome our fears if, like Ananias, we trust that Jesus is directing the preaching work, Let us not fail to respect the individuality of the conversion experience and to deal with people in the light of their individuality. Sauls conversion is a watershed event, catapulting the gospel to the Gentiles and to more distant places. Stat two things God told Anaias concerning Saul Briefly describe what happened during Anaias' meeting with Saul. With this backdrop in place, the preacher can now focus on two movements of Ananias part of this story: his vision and conversation with the Lord (verses 10-16) and his laying hands on Saul leading to Sauls baptism (verses 17-19). Ancestry, Pharisaic training, Hellenistic education, were fused by it into the character which the Holy Spirit formed and fashioned over the fourteen years of training. Saul was not seeking God. Saul was saved in spite of himself. Perhaps Ananias and Sapphira got caught up in a band-wagon effect. What is remarkable about the Lord's directions to Ananias? It is here in Acts, for the first time, that Saul is called Paul. The words, Brother Saul must not have come easily to Ananias. Salvation is a revolution, not an evolution. What Ananias didnt know is that Saul met Jesus on the road to Damascus.
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