📖 Acts Intensive — Unit 4: The Damascus Road (Acts 9:1–31)

I. The Man at the Cloak Pile

Last unit we left a young man named Saul of Tarsus standing in a field outside the walls of Jerusalem with the cloaks of Stephen's executioners piled at his feet. Acts 8:1 makes him an accomplice with one cold sentence: "Now Saul was consenting to his death." By the time we open Acts 9, that consent has metastasized into a campaign. "Then Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked letters from him to the synagogues of Damascus, so that if he found any who were of the Way, whether men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem" (Acts 9:1–2, NKJV).

Read the verb. Saul was breathing threats. The Greek picture is of a man for whom murder and intimidation were the very air he inhaled. He was not a casual opponent of the new movement; he was its self-appointed exterminator. And the man with that résumé was not a Roman thug. He was the rising star of first-century Judaism.

By his own later admission Saul of Tarsus was a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, brought up at the feet of the great Gamaliel — yes, the same Gamaliel whose caution we read in Acts 5. He had advanced in Judaism beyond many of his contemporaries. He was, as one preacher used to put it, the Mr. Who's Who of Pharisaic Judaism. He would later look back on this season of his life and say, "I was a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man" (1 Timothy 1:13, NKJV) — and, in the same breath, "I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief." Saul thought he was serving God. He was actually fighting against Him. He had walked right into the warning Gamaliel had pronounced in his own hearing two chapters earlier, and he had not heard a word of it.

II. A Hunting Trip Cut Short

Damascus was a hundred and thirty-five miles from Jerusalem. That is no day trip on foot or by donkey. Saul was not chasing a single suspect; he was leading what amounted to an international fugitive operation. He had letters from the high priest in his saddlebag granting him authority over Jewish synagogues in a foreign country to extradite the followers of Jesus back to Jerusalem in chains. Men and women, Luke notes carefully — Saul did not discriminate by sex. The Way was an infection, and Saul was the appointed surgeon.

And then came noon on the road outside Damascus. "As he journeyed, he came near Damascus, and suddenly a light shone around him from heaven. Then he fell to the ground, and heard a voice saying to him, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?'" (Acts 9:3–4, NKJV). The repetition of his name is the same gentle reduplication God used with Abraham at the binding of Isaac, with Moses at the burning bush, and with the boy Samuel in the temple. Saul, Saul. The voice did not say, "Why are you persecuting My church?" It said, "Why are you persecuting Me?" Christ was so identified with His battered followers that to lay a hand on them was to lay a hand on Him. Take that lesson home. The Lord still feels every blow.

Saul answered with the only honest word he had left. "Who are You, Lord?" The Lord identified Himself: "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting" (Acts 9:5, NKJV). Three days of blindness, fasting, and dark-room thinking followed in the house of a man named Judas on a street called Straight. Notice the contrast Luke is setting up. Saul rode into Damascus with letters of arrest. He left Damascus with a mission to Gentiles. He came carrying papers that would put men in chains. He spent the rest of his life writing letters that would set men free. As one preacher put it, the persecutor of Christians became the proclaimer of Christ. The high priest's commission was canceled by a higher High Priest's call.

III. Brother Saul

Here Luke introduces one of the bravest men in the New Testament whose name almost nobody knows. Ananias of Damascus — not the dead Ananias of Acts 5; a different one entirely — was a disciple living quietly in the city. The Lord came to him in a vision and gave him an assignment: go to Straight Street, ask for a man named Saul of Tarsus, lay your hands on him, and pray for his sight to be restored.

Ananias's reply is one of the funniest moments in the New Testament. He effectively said, "Lord, I think You may have the wrong file." "Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much harm he has done to Your saints in Jerusalem. And here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on Your name" (Acts 9:13–14, NKJV). One can almost hear Ananias's voice rising. This is the man, Lord, who came to put me in chains. And You want me to lay my hands on him and pray over him?

The Lord's answer is one of the most consequential sentences ever spoken to a Christian: "Go, for he is a chosen vessel of Mine to bear My name before Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel. For I will show him how many things he must suffer for My name's sake" (Acts 9:15–16, NKJV). Two things to underline. First, before Saul has preached one sermon, he is called a chosen vessel. The man's calling was set before his career began. Second, the call comes with a price tag, and the Lord prints the price tag right on the receipt: I will show him how many things he must suffer for My name's sake. Christ does not promise Saul success. He promises Saul suffering. Years later when Paul writes the catalog of his beatings, shipwrecks, and stonings in 2 Corinthians 11, he is not complaining. He is accepting delivery of what was ordered the day Ananias prayed over him.

Ananias obeyed. He walked into the room of the man he had every reason to fear and addressed him with the sweetest two-word sermon in the New Testament: "Brother Saul" (Acts 9:17, NKJV). Read those two words carefully. Saul has not yet been baptized. Saul has not yet preached a sermon. Saul has not yet so much as opened his eyes since the road. And the first human voice he hears in his new life calls him brother. Christian fellowship, when it is real, can turn an enemy into a brother in the time it takes to say two words. "Immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales, and he received his sight at once; and he arose and was baptized" (Acts 9:18, NKJV).

IV. The Bee in the Bonnet of Hellenized Damascus

What happened next ought to be a model for every brand-new convert in every century since. Luke says, "Immediately he preached the Christ in the synagogues, that He is the Son of God" (Acts 9:20, NKJV). Saul did not go away to seminary first. He did not wait for a denominational license. He did not retire to a contemplative cottage to digest the experience. He walked into the very synagogues whose membership rolls he had brought letters to subpoena, opened the same Hebrew Scriptures he had been weaponizing against the Way for years, and proved from the prophets that Jesus is the Christ.

The Damascus synagogue was thrown into pandemonium. "Then all who heard were amazed, and said, 'Is this not he who destroyed those who called on this name in Jerusalem, and has come here for that purpose, so that he might bring them bound to the chief priests?' But Saul increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who dwelt in Damascus, proving that this Jesus is the Christ" (Acts 9:21–22, NKJV). The man they had heard was coming to chain them was instead in their pulpit demolishing their objections.

The synagogue's reception swung from amazement to hostility — Luke says it happened after many days (Acts 9:23). The Jews of Damascus plotted to kill him. They watched the city gates day and night. The new convert who had ridden into town with a Roman-style writ in his pocket was now reduced to sneaking out the way smugglers did. "Then the disciples took him by night and let him down through the wall in a large basket" (Acts 9:25, NKJV). The man who had come to drag others away in chains was lowered out of a city by his new friends in a fish-basket. Christ has a sense of humor, and He uses it on His servants. The future apostle to the Gentiles, the man who would write Romans, was unceremoniously reverse-fished out of Damascus.

V. The Bridge No One Wanted to Cross

From Damascus Saul made his way back to Jerusalem. Galatians 1 fills in some details Luke leaves out — Saul actually spent some time in Arabia first, perhaps three years of quiet recalibration before he set foot back in Jerusalem. But Luke focuses on what happened when Saul finally walked back into the holy city. "And when Saul had come to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples; but they were all afraid of him, and did not believe that he was a disciple" (Acts 9:26, NKJV). Of course they were. The last time the Jerusalem church had heard about Saul of Tarsus he was holding the cloaks while Stephen was being stoned. The story that he had been converted on the Damascus road sounded like exactly the kind of trick a man like that would pull to infiltrate the church.

Enter the second bravest man in the chapter. Barnabas — Joseph the Levite from Cyprus, the Son of Encouragement, the man we met selling his field in Acts 4 — "took him and brought him to the apostles. And he declared to them how he had seen the Lord on the road, and that He had spoken to him, and how he had preached boldly at Damascus in the name of Jesus" (Acts 9:27, NKJV). Barnabas vouched for Saul when nobody else would. He picked up the new convert and carried him into the room and stood up beside him while he told his story.

I want to stop and underline this. The book of Acts has its share of preachers, prophets, and apostles. But the church I know would die without its Barnabases. They are the people who walk up to the new believer everyone is whispering about and stand next to him in a way that says, I'm with him. They are the people who pick up the young pastor who failed his first church and walk him to a second pulpit. They are the people who write the recommendation letter for the felon-turned-disciple. Without Barnabas there is no Paul. Without Paul there are no New Testament epistles. Without the New Testament epistles there is, frankly, no doctrinal Christianity. Be a Barnabas. The Holy Spirit will keep raising up Sauls; He needs Barnabases to receive them.

The apostles took Saul in on Barnabas's word. Saul preached boldly in Jerusalem too, and once again the Hellenistic Jews tried to kill him. The brethren got him to Caesarea and put him on a ship to Tarsus, his hometown. Then comes one of Luke's quietest, most beautiful summary verses. "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, NKJV). The greatest persecutor of the church had become a member of the church, and the church got its first taste of peace in years. The dragon had been muzzled. The seed Stephen had planted with his blood was up.

VI. What This Conversion Teaches Us

Three lessons. First, nobody is too far gone. If you have a son you have given up on, a brother who hates the church, a former friend who mocks the gospel — read Acts 9 again. The Lord found Saul of Tarsus on the road outside Damascus. He can find your prodigal too. The same Christ who stopped a one-man inquisition with a flash of noonday light still walks the roads of this world looking for hardened persecutors. He has not lost the ability to make Pauls out of Sauls.

Second, conversion costs the convert. The Lord did not promise Saul comfort. He promised Saul suffering. Most of the Western church has lost the honesty to tell people this on the front end. We sell the gospel like a self-improvement plan and then act surprised when our converts fall away the first time the cost shows up. Read the price tag out loud the way the Lord did. I will show him how many things he must suffer for My name's sake. The gospel is the costliest free gift in the universe.

Third, and this is where most of you live, the church needs its Barnabases more than its Sauls. There are more Barnabas-shaped roles in any congregation than there will ever be Paul-shaped pulpits. The future of the gospel runs through the people who put their reputation on the line for a new believer who does not yet have one. Saul could not build the church alone. He had to be received. Somebody, somewhere, took the risk. Be that somebody. The Spirit who broke the persecutor on the Damascus road still uses ordinary disciples named Ananias and Barnabas to finish what He started.

The man who left Jerusalem in chapter 9 breathing threats came back to Jerusalem in chapter 9 a brother. The dragon had become a lamb. The persecutor had become a preacher. The destroyer of the church had become its greatest builder. The hand of the Lord is not shortened. He is still in the conversion business. And He will be until the last Saul on the road is found.

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