Well, either way, I'm happy to be here today. I was actually supposed to be working. That's where my wife is right now. We're but we're both working this weekend, but I decided to take off because I'd rather be doing this. And so I, you know, was like, you know what? Forget it. I'm putting in leave. And I really appreciate what Steven was just saying about how much we're doing here at Madison Church. Not only this past week did we finish up the Nehemiah Justified Anger seminar for the few of us that were participating in that, but the Losure Center, I feel like almost half the church was participating in some way in the Losure Center event. And I think that's really incredible. On top of that, we had four small groups meeting over the course of this week. And I cannot say enough about my small group and just the level of just intimacy and vulnerability and camaraderie and friendship that we've been building over these past few weeks. It really has been a lot to me. And I'm looking forward to this upcoming week too. It's just been really great. And then the, yeah, coming up, definitely the Christmas drive next, we're always doing something here, and I think that's important. It's important because we're acting like a community. We're growing together, we're trusting one another, we're learning to communicate with each other, to be vulnerable with each other, and to recognize a need in the local community and then contribute towards that. That's what we're called to do. And so I'm I'm really thankful to be part of this church and doing that. So uh as we kick off today, you know, as we were just talking about, I'm gonna be, I'm actually a little, I'm a little afflicted by the nature of today's passage. And it's kind of interesting because we're talking about Saul on the road to Damascus, and that's kind of a popular story. Jesus comes before Saul in a bright light and says, Why are you persecuting me? And then Saul turns around and becomes one of the greatest Christian writers, apostles, leaders in the church that we've ever seen. And so you say, Well, Kyle, why are you afflicted? That seems like such a good story. Why are we concerned at all about that? And I think that it's because over the past couple of weeks, as I've been looking at this passage, I've been starting to read from the other Christians' perspective as this all came about. And I don't think I've ever really done that before, but but hang with me for a second because you mean to tell me that a guy who supported the murder of Stephen, who was setting out to go and arrest other Christians in in Damascus, somehow is now a Christian, and I'm just supposed to believe that. I'm supposed to trust this guy. I don't want to undersell this. Saul wasn't just a lost soul, he was a legitimate enemy of the church. And then all of a sudden, everything changes. That's a little confusing. How do we come to this? How do we sort through this? And it actually reminds me of a Christmas story. Maybe it's too early to start about talk about Christmas. I don't know. We'll see. Well, I'll try it this way. You'll you'll catch on real quick. It actually reminds me of a Dr. Seuss story about a character named Mr. Grinch in Hooville. And I say that because there was this character named Mr. Grinch who keeps stealing all the gifts on Christmas Eve. And eventually, Mr. Grinch has his own conversion. And we're told that Mr. Grinch's heart grows three sizes in one day. But if I was a citizen of Hooville, if we really think about it, I might just be a little skeptical that this wasn't another Mr. Grinch trick. Had his heart truly grown three sizes? Or were we putting our town in great risk by allowing Mr. Grinch unfettered access based on his word alone? Why do we just trust this guy? And I think the situation becomes all the more serious in a society today where we see spiritual abuse become rampant. It seems like every couple of weeks we hear another story or a podcast about a local pastor or a politician being called out for their mistreatment of their congregants or their constituents. It doesn't seem right that we just blindly trust someone because they said they saw Jesus. It's almost like a way to hide behind accountability. But for some reason in today's passage, Jesus didn't reject Saul. Jesus called him. And we have to acknowledge that a little bit. And then through this one courageous act of obedience from this other character named Ananias, Saul's life was transformed. The future of the church was forever changed. Both Saul and Ananias are going to lean into the spirit, disrupting their lives and what they thought they knew. And that gets at the heart of the series that we're talking about right now. And I think that this story matters greatly as we look at ourselves and we challenge how we see other people. It might even give us great hope that God transforms some of the hardest hearts of our time. We might find hope in that right now. And that's the flow I want to go through today. I want to ask ourselves essentially three questions. How does God challenge our identity or disrupt our identity the same way he challenged Saul's? How does God ask us to treat one another as we repent and change together? And how do we find hope as a people for our collective future when we feel like we are also vulnerable, especially right now, in this moment in time? So let's kick off. I want to first look at how God disrupts our identity the same way that he disrupted Saul on the road to Damascus. And we'll do that by jumping into Acts chapter 9. We'll start in verse 1. Start, it says this. Meanwhile, Saul was uttering threats with every breath and was eager to kill the Lord's followers. So he went to the high priests. He requested letters addressed to the synagogues in Damascus, asking for their cooperation and the arrest of any followers of the way, or Christianity, as it was called, he found there. He wanted to bring them, both men and women, back to Jerusalem in chains. That's what he wanted to do. And as he was approaching Damascus on this mission, a light from heaven suddenly shone down around him. He fell to the ground and he heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Who are you, Lord? Saul asked, and the voice replied, I am Jesus, the one who you are persecuting. Now get up, go into the city, and you will be told what you must do. The men with Saul stood speechless, for they heard the sound of someone's voice, but they saw no one. Saul picked himself up off the ground, and when he opened his eyes, he was blind. So his companions led him by the hand to Damascus. He remained there blind for three days and did not eat or drink. So here in the story, we pick up in about 36 AD, so about three years after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, we see that Saul is a Pharisee. He actually calls himself later the Pharisee of Pharisees. And we've talked a little bit about Pharisees. You've probably heard us talk about that a little bit over the past few months. But I want to highlight just quickly the Pharisees were this hyper-conservative religious political movement. Hyper-conservative religious political movement. And what they wanted to do was get the populace to adopt their piety. They were trying to get all these holiness rituals from the temple integrated into everybody's daily lives. If they're doing this at the temple, we got to be doing it in our lives too, so that God will bless the nation of Israel. That was the logic. And so Paul is actually going to call himself out for this in Galatians 1. So if you're really interested in the story of Paul and his conversion, go read Galatians 1 and 2 because he details it. He kind of goes through it and talks about it a little bit. And so just throwing up verse 13 from Galatians 1 on the screen, this is Paul talking. He says, You know what I was like when I followed the Jewish religion? How violently I persecuted God's church. I did my best to destroy it. I was far ahead of my fellow Jews in my zeal for the traditions of my ancestors. And I'm highlighting that word zeal there because it tells us a little bit about this logic. Just as a little bit of a learning point, a little bit of an aside, the first zealot, that's kind of what we hear, that word, zeal, in the Bible actually comes from the Old Testament in Numbers, chapter 25. And in that moment in time in Israelites' history, they were in the wilderness. And they start drifting from God because they're struggling. What they start doing is get very ingrained into the Moabite culture. In fact, they start adopting Moabite gods. And so God was punishing the nation a little bit for their idolatry. And then we hear about a man named Phineas being called full of zeal. It's that same word, the zealot word. He goes as far as to violently remove Israelites who had chosen the Moabite life in order to save the nation as a whole. He did all that to save the nation in his mind. And that's why I tell you this, because in Acts 9, Saul is a person who saw Jesus in this moment in their time as a distortion. He thought that people were being misled by this person named Jesus. He thinks he's actually driving out idolatry and saving the Israelites as a nation until he meets Jesus. And I think we can certainly call that a holy disruption. Because he's been, he realizes that he's been part of a movement whose passion for God has actually murdered the very one God sent to fulfill the entire storyline. And you can see that, that it would just wreck your entire worldview, your ability to even think about how you discern truth. It would wreck your identity, this moment when he is stopped on the road to Damascus. Because he realizes that he was not only wrong, but he was actually violently opposing the very God he claimed to love. Identity, funny enough, was the topic that we talked through at our small group this past week. It was a phenomenal conversation about identity. And it's been a good opportunity for me to think back through ways where I have seen my identity shaken and rattled, where I've been confused about my identity, where I think I'm on the right road, only to realize I'm chasing an identity that cannot give me life. And in this moment on the road to Damascus, God challenges Saul's identity. He asks Saul, why? Why are you working against me right now? Why are you doing this? And I think that's what God still does with us is he meets us right in the middle of our own certainty when we think we have figured it out, or when we think we've figured out what is finally going to make us whole. If I just get on this path, if I just get on this promotion, position, etc., if I just hit that finish line, then I'll be whole. We convince ourselves of that. And then when God disrupts our plans, sometimes it feels blinding. It feels like we have scales on our eyes, and it feels like we can't see what our path forward should be. But I want us to hear this Jesus didn't strike Saul down and blind him because God wanted to destroy him. That's not why God did that. God met him on the road to Damascus to call him, to commission him. It's a completely different way of looking at it. God's entire intent was to make Saul new. And God offers us that same reconciliation. It's not just one of correction, but one of reclamation. God reclaims our story, our identity in the life and work of Jesus. And it's in that disruption of our identity that we find peace and that we find life. It's only in Jesus. That is where identity lies. So if God first disrupts our identity, secondly, as we move forward, God calls us to see others the way he sees them. That's the second part of this. So let's continue our story here. We're going to learn about Ananias. Acts chapter 9, verse 10. Now there was a believer in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord spoke to him in a vision, calling, Ananias. Yes, Lord, he replied. The Lord said, Go over to straight street to the house of Judas. When you get there, ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul. He is praying to me right now. I have shown him a vision of a man named Ananias coming in and laying hands on him so he can see again. But, Lord, exclaimed Ananias, I've heard many people talk about the terrible things this man has done to believers in Jerusalem. And he is authorized by the leading priest to arrest everyone who calls upon your name. But the Lord said, Go, for Saul is my chosen instrument to take my message to the Gentiles and to kings as well as to the people of Israel, and I will show him how much he must suffer for my name's sake. So Saul went and found, or so Ananias went and found Saul. He laid his hands on him and said, Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road, has sent me so that you might regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit. Instantly, something like scales fell from Saul's eyes, and he regained his sight. Then he got up and was baptized. So as we pause here, we immediately recognize Ananias' hesitation. His faith and his identity are being challenged in this moment by God. His notion of faith is subjected to its own version of holy disruption. Lord, Saul is arresting people. Why are you asking me to help someone that could hurt me? Better yet, and I think we can all relate to this, God, why are you using someone who persecutes you? Why did you choose them? That's not the way it's supposed to go. And honestly, I think that's an important question to ask. That's what I've been struggling with this week. And I think it's far too easy for us to blindly accept someone at their word and then put someone in charge of vulnerable populations again, put them back in danger. And I do just want to pause for a second and look at a couple ways Saul walks through legitimate repentance as he is accepted by the church as a life renewed. I'll put all four reasons up on the screen right now, but just bear with me as I walk through it really quickly. First things first, we know Saul's repentance is legitimate because he confessed and repented. So as we heard earlier, Paul's going to fast for three days. He's shaken up by this experience on the road to Damascus. Now, not only does that disrupt his identity, but in the early church, fasting was actually a preparation for baptism. So it was almost like a time that people took to say, hey, I am taking this very seriously. I want to do this. And we actually hear Paul say just now, right after, that he's immediately baptized. And then when he retells the story in Acts 22, he's going to talk about this legitimate confession as well. Now, as we move to the next point, Saul proclaimed a new message, aka he started living his life differently. I think most people don't really get past step one when we talk about legitimate repentance. They say they repented, they confess a little bit, but does their life really change, especially some of these folks that we've heard about probably in the news, et cetera. But here in Acts 9, Paul immediately starts proclaiming Jesus as Lord, almost immediately. So at Acts 9, verse 19, Saul stayed with the believers in Damascus for a few days and immediately began preaching about Jesus in the synagogue, saying he indeed is the Son of God. What's important about that is Saul is back with his friends. He's back with the people who respected him as a Pharisee of Pharisees, and his message didn't change. It was completely new. Jesus is Lord. That's important. Sometimes people repent and then they get back with the same, same folks, and then it's like, ah, you know, my message is changing a little bit, but not Saul in this moment. And then next, I think Saul did something very mature in that he took time away. And we don't see that in Acts 9, but in Galatians 2.15, it says he says this as he's kind of re redescribing his story. This is Paul speaking. Even before I was born, God chose me and called me by his marvelous grace. Then it pleased him to reveal his son to me so that I would proclaim the good news about Jesus to the Gentiles. Here it is. When this happened, I did not rush out to consult with any human being, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to consult with those who were apostles before I was. Instead, I went away into Arabia. And then later I returned to the city of Damascus. Then three years later, I went to Jerusalem to get to know Peter and stayed with him for 15 days. The only other apostle I met at that time was James, the Lord's brother. What I'm saying right here in this moment, and what I think is so important about this, is that Saul didn't just drop what he was doing and start a new church. He doesn't do that. He doesn't pretend like his old life never existed, or he went away. He took time to process, to repent, to redefine himself in Christ. And I think that's really healthy as we as we evaluate this. And then lastly, Saul respected boundaries. So continuing in Galatians 2, and this is verse 9, this is Paul talking again. He says, James, Peter, and John, who were known as pillars of the church, recognized the gift God had given me, and they accepted Barnabas and me as their coworkers. They encouraged us to keep preaching to the Gentiles while they continued their work with the Jews. Their only suggestion was that to keep on helping the poor, which I have always been eager to do. What I want us to hear in this moment is that Paul goes to the Gentiles to spread the message of Jesus, and he respects the fact that Peter, James, and John are helping the Jewish community. This is important because Paul is not in charge of the same community he was persecuting. He was not back with that vulnerable population or in charge of them. He sent to everyone else. And that is a good model for reconciliation in the church because reconciliation should always, always, always include healthy boundaries. And that's the organization's job, and then that's the person's job to respect. So if that's how we recognize Saul's true repentance, what are we asked to do in this moment as other Christians hearing this story? For that, we look at Ananias. And we are reminded of God's ask for us to carry the message of Jesus to all people and to see everyone the way that God sees us. And that comes to even trying to help those who we consider written off, who we might have written off. And that's the part that requires so much faith and discernment. It's an uncomfortable disruption to love someone who we consider an enemy, where we must truthfully pause and listen to the Spirit's voice to know how to love like Jesus, to know that no one is beyond redemption. Just like we weren't beyond redemption, that Christ met us where we were at, we can sometimes meet others where they are at to demonstrate Christ's love to one another, to be a spiritual steward in their journey. And we're called to do that even when we're desperately uncomfortable, even when we're afraid. And how do we do that? And this is the last point. We hope in the power of divine grace. We hope in the power of divine grace. Let's finish out our story in Acts 9. Verse 26. When Saul arrived in Jerusalem, he tried to meet with the believers, but they were all afraid of him. They did not believe he had truly become a believer. Then Barnabas brought him to the apostles and told him how Saul had seen the Lord on the way to Damascus and how the Lord had spoken to Saul. He also told them that Saul had preached boldly in the name of Jesus in Damascus. So Saul stayed with the apostles and went all around Jerusalem with them, preaching boldly in the name of the Lord. He debated with some Greek-speaking Jews, but they tried to murder him. And when the believers heard about this, they took him down to Caesarea and sent him away to Tarsus, his hometown. Then the church had peace throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria, and it became stronger as the believers lived in the fear of the Lord, and with the encouragement of the Holy Spirit, it also grew in numbers. The believers were afraid of Saul, and they should be. Of course they were. But in our story, there's a special power that is displayed through the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit's work. And that is the power of the risen Christ transforms even the arch persecutor of his church into the most ardent defender and prominent witness. That is the power of the Holy Spirit on display. In that same power, we hold out hope for the call and conversion of others. How does Jesus put it in the Sermon on the Mount? How does Jesus talk about this? Matthew 5, verse 43. You'll see it on the screen. You have heard the law that says, love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I say, love your enemies. Do what? Pray for those who persecute you. That is a hard thing to ask. But continuing, in that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. It's important for us to remember in the power of divine grace is like the sun. Sometimes that hardens the clay, but in other times that melts the ice. The power of the gospel, the person of Jesus, the moving of the Spirit can break down the toughest hearts. Always. And we might pray for that in our own lives, in the lives of those we care about, and even in the lives who we think are lost, completely written off. And yes, sometimes that means even embodying prayer for our enemies. One of my professors had well-known prayer in one of his books, Dr. Stanley Hauerwas, a prayer for enemies. And it said this. It's great. Forgiving Lord, I do not want my enemies forgiven. Yet you have bent us toward reconciliation that we may be able to pass one another Christ's peace. It is a terrible thing to ask us. I am sure I cannot do it. But you are a wily God able to accomplish miracles. May we be struck alive with the miracle of your grace, even to being reconciled with ourselves. Because sometimes our biggest enemy is us too. In conclusion, as Jesus calls us, much like Saul was called on the road to Damascus, he calls our entire being. Maybe you are here today and you find yourself struggling with identity, draining yourself as you seek out a life that just cannot give back. Maybe today is the day to hear the voice of the spirit, disrupting your life, allowing you to be ushered into this greater sense of joy. Or maybe you find yourself hopeless right now, hopeless in the state of the world about a relationship gone awry. Today we can cling to the question: how do I see another the way God sees me? Because in the truth of Saul's story and in Ananias' faith, we come to realize the power of a gospel that says no one is beyond redemption, not even the person we least expect. This week, maybe pray for someone you've written off or stop believing could change, and ask God how he might use you in their story. Remember, God turns his enemies into messengers because God's love always prevails.