To the Ends of the Earth: A Basket Case!

Acts 9:12b-31

By Dr. Derek W. H. Thomas

Now turn with me if you would once again to The Acts of the Apostles, and we're in chapter nine. We pick it up at verse 19b. the second half of verse [19]. In some of your Bibles that verse is cut in two, beginning a new paragraph in the middle of a verse.

Last week we were thinking together on the incredible and marvelous story of the conversion of Saul of Tarsus — the most unlikely conversion that you would ever have imagined at the time — and God in His sovereignty has struck him down. He has seen this great light, he has fallen to the ground, he has been blinded by the experience. He is on his way to Damascus with letters from the high priest in Jerusalem. He's made this, what would be a six-day journey (140 miles, 150 miles or so) up to Damascus, all the way up to Galilee, and then slightly to the east, and keep on going and you come to Damascus. And he's been led now by the hand...this fire-breathing dragon, Saul of Tarsus, has been reduced to a blind man having to be led by the hand into the city of Damascus.

We saw the beautiful ministry of Ananias. God asked him to go to Straight Street and there meet with Saul of Tarsus. Ananias, you remember, was understandably apprehensive about going to see Saul of Tarsus...and those astonishing first words to Saul of Tarsus, calling him "brother." And we saw how Saul begins his ministry as he is introduced now to this fledgling community of believers in the city of Damascus.

Well, we're going to pick it up now at verse 19, and before we do so let's pray together.

Once again, O Lord, this is Your word that we're about to read. We thank You for the Bible, and we thank You for these 66 books. Every word, every jot and tittle "given by inspiration of God and profitable for doctrine and reproof and correction, and instruction in the way of righteousness, that the man of God might be thoroughly furnished unto every good work." Teach us; instruct us. Grant, Lord, by Your Spirit, that we might learn the things we need to learn and implement them in our lives. For Jesus' sake we ask it. Amen. Now this is God's word:

Now for several days he was with the disciples who were at Damascus, and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, "He is the son of God." All those hearing him continued to be amazed, and were saying, "Is this not he who in Jerusalem destroyed those who called on this name, and who had come here for the purpose of bringing them bound before the chief priests?" But Saul kept increasing in strength and confounded the Jews who lived at Damascus by proving that this Jesus is the Christ.

When many days had elapsed, the Jews plotted together to do away with him, but their plot became known to Saul. They were also watching the gates day and night so that they might put him to death; but his disciples took him by night, and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a large basket.

When he came to Jerusalem, he was trying to associate with the disciples; but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple. But Barnabas took hold of him and brought him to the apostles and described to them how he had seen the Lord on the road, and the He had talked to him, and how at Damascus he had spoken out boldly in the name of Jesus. And he was with them moving about freely in Jerusalem, speaking out boldly in the name of the Lord. And he was talking and arguing with the Hellenistic Jews; but they were attempting to put him to death. But when the brethren learned of it, they brought him down to Caesarea and sent him away to Tarsus.

So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria enjoyed peace, being built up; and going on in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it continued to increase.

Amen. May the Lord add his blessing.

When I was converted in 1971, in December — this would have been probably late January, perhaps even beginning February 1972 — I was an applied mathematics student, and one of my professors was a man by the name of Professor Walters. Professor Walters had a reputation — an unusual reputation at the university — of being a Christian, and of being an evangelical Christian; and of now and then giving words of Christian exhortation and witness, even in the midst of the class. The first day back at class after I was converted, in the middle of a lecture on fluid dynamics or some such thing, he turned to me. (And he was a very old-fashioned sort of a professor...wore a robe, a black robe, while he was lecturing.) And he suddenly turned to me and pointed in my direction, and he said, "Thomas! You've been converted. Tell us about it." And I'm trembling and stumbling for words, and wishing I could disappear, before the rest of this fairly hostile but somewhat inquisitive class, that I had been converted. And he said to me afterwards when everybody had gone, he pulled me aside and he said, "I believe in nailing your colors to the mast from the very beginning."

Well, that's Saul of Tarsus. He has nailed his colors to the mast by preaching Jesus as the Son of God in the synagogues in Damascus. This passage that's before us tonight — a beautiful passage with a gorgeous ending — is a tale not of two cities, but is a tale of four cities (well, four regions, anyway...four districts). One is not here. We'll have to include that in a minute.

The first is of course Damascus. Damascus is up north from Jerusalem. Go all the way up to Galilee, then turn right...northeast...and keep on going for some distance, and you'll come to the great and historic city of Damascus — still historic and newsworthy, of course, to this day. And Paul has been preaching Jesus as the Son of God. It's only here and one other instance in Acts 13 that we read in the words of Luke of Jesus as the Son of God.

The Son of God is a distinctively Old Testament messianic title for Jesus, for the Messiah. It comes from II Samuel 7, and it's derived from the second Psalm, and it's derived again from the eighty-ninth Psalm; and you can see what Saul of Tarsus already is beginning to do: drawing from the Old Testament, drawing from the Bible that he had been studying in Jerusalem as a Pharisee, and now seeing the fulfillment of those messianic prophecies of the Old Testament in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

The atmosphere in the synagogues in Damascus must have been electric. You know, news of Saul's coming had already reached them, and this is the Saul who was coming to bring those believing Jews who had scattered from Jerusalem and had gone hither and yon, but some of them had obviously gone as far as Damascus, 150 miles away; and his intent was to bring them back to Jerusalem; and to bring them back to trial, and probably to bring them back at least to incarceration and possibly death. And this Saul of Tarsus, at least according to Ananias, has been converted! And do you think that the believing Jews in Damascus believed that?

I think the atmosphere would have been electric. I think there would have been a fair degree of tension. I think that the synagogues...on the one hand there would be unbelieving Jews who would now regard Saul of Tarsus as a traitor, and there would be believing Jews (still in the synagogue, of course) who would regard Saul of Tarsus as an agent provocateur, as a Trojan horse, as somebody who was pretending conversion only to find out information about who the believing Jews were — where they lived, and who their families were, and what their whereabouts were, in order that he might perhaps capture them. You can imagine how tense the atmosphere was.

We read in verse 22 of his boldness: that "Saul kept increasing in strength and confounding the Jews who lived at Damascus by proving that this Jesus is the Christ." And you get a glimpse already, a little cameo glimpse of the Paul that you and I know: the Paul of the missionary journeys, the Paul of Athens, and the Paul of Ephesus, and the Paul in Rome, and the Paul who writes letters, and the Paul who is out and out for God, no matter what; Paul the apologist, Paul the preacher, Paul the great defender of the faith. And already in this short space of time you see a little glimpse of what God is about to do through this man. Damascus.

But the second city or location is Arabia. Now there's no mention of Arabia here, but if you turn to Galatians 1...and let me tell you about Galatians 1, because in Galatians 1 (where Paul, you remember, is among other things defending his apostleship) he tells us a little bit about his conversion story and about his visit to Damascus, and about the fact that he went from Damascus to Arabia, and then back to Damascus again, and then on to Jerusalem, and that this covered a span (according to Galatians 1) of three years.

Now, Luke's time references here are fairly elastic. They're not precise. And somewhere in this chronology we have to fit Saul of Tarsus' visit now to Arabia and to the territory of Nabataea and the domain of the Nabataean king, King Aretas IV. Nabataea is that region Trans-Jordan...east of the Jordan somewhere, where it's not precisely clear whereabouts he was.

Now, when exactly did Saul go to Arabia? And there are several possibilities. One possibility is that he went immediately after his baptism. It's possible that he would have been baptized and then immediately went into Arabia, and then come back to Damascus, and Luke is now picking up the story from there. It's possible — John Stott thinks it's possible — that he went to Arabia after he was lowered down from the walls of Damascus. I think that's less likely. It looks as though King Aretas' involvement in why he has to leave Damascus in the first place is tied up with the fact that he was lowered by night in a basket. It's possible that after he began to preach Jesus in the synagogues he went then to Arabia for a while, and then came back to Damascus again. And when he comes back to Damascus again, trouble breaks out. I don't know. I'm merely giving you the possibilities.

Why did he go to Arabia? Well, he tells us in II Corinthians 11 that in Arabia he upset the king, Aretas IV, and Aretas IV has an ethnarch representative, a diplomatic representative, in Damascus. What had Paul done to upset the King of Nabataea? What had he done in Arabia to upset the king? If he'd gone to Arabia to meditate, to pray, to study the Old Testament Scriptures, to learn more about the gospel in some secluded place, why would the king of Nabataea be all upset? The only reason why the king of Nabataea is all upset is because evidently the Apostle Paul did in Arabia what he did in Damascus, because Paul couldn't keep his mouth closed about the gospel. He was always talking about the gospel, and it's more than likely that the reason why the Nabataean king and the ethnarch of the Nabataean king is involved now in the persecution that comes upon Saul in Damascus is because Saul had once again been preaching and teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. And in all likelihood there had been converts.

Why did he leave Damascus? And why did he leave in a basket? And why did he leave at night in this incognito fashion?

I was reading today in one of the early church fathers, Tertullian, and Tertullian by the year 200 or so is giving very different advice to Christians. He's telling Christians to face the persecution, and if necessary to be ready to die for the gospel. So why is Saul of Tarsus leaving Damascus when his life is threatened? And the answer, Tertullian says, is perfectly simple: because God has told Saul that there's a work for him to do. He must be the apostle to the Gentiles, and that work has not yet begun. Our lives, my friends, are immortal until our work is done. And here is Saul, realizing now that the call of Almighty God is upon him to take the gospel to the Gentiles — a work that he hasn't even begun yet to unfold. And so from Damascus and Arabia and back to Damascus, he goes to Jerusalem.

I want you to try tonight to use that sanctified imagination that resides in your brain and mine, and I want you to try and imagine being in Jerusalem. Now, three years have gone by, and three years in the Jewish inclusive sense. In the same way that we speak of Jesus' being raised after three days, when actually He died on Friday night and He was raised on Sunday morning. It's Friday, Saturday, Sunday, in that inclusive sense, but not specifically and exactly three years. It was possibly just over two years.

So he's been gone for two years. Gone first of all in the great city of Damascus, and then gone somewhere in Arabia, and he's come back...plenty of time, you understand, for the imaginations both of the Jews and of Christians in Jerusalem now to work overtime. They were deeply suspicious of Saul of Tarsus in Jerusalem, as they were in Damascus. Was he an agent provocateur? Was this all one grand scheme and plot? The Jews, the Pharisees especially, are angry with him, seeing him as a traitor; and the Christian church are deeply suspicious. And what does God do?

Do you remember in Damascus he had an Ananias, who went to Straight Street and called him "brother"? And here in Jerusalem he has a Barnabas...Barnabas, whose real name of course was Joseph — his nickname. It's the sobriquet that the apostles give him — "Son of Encouragement." You know, it's the same word as the word used for the Holy Spirit. Jesus in the upper room: "I'll go away, but I'll come to you again. I will send to you the Comforter." A paraclete - that's the word...an advocate. What kind of person is the Holy Sprit whom Jesus calls a paraclete? What kind of advocate is the Holy Spirit whom Jesus sends as His personal representative agent? You might say His best Friend. You might say the One who knows Him the best in all the world and out of this world. And it's that term that the apostles now apply to this extraordinary man, Barnabas.

We met him earlier in The Acts of the Apostles in chapter 4, when he sold a piece of land and laid the money at the feet of the apostles. When up in Antioch the Gentiles are being converted and the apostles in Jerusalem are a little suspicious of what's going on in Antioch, who do they send up there to deal with this and to investigate this, and to inquire into this? They send dear Barnabas. There were things going on in Antioch that no doubt would have got some of the apostles in Jerusalem all bent out of shape. Gentiles didn't do certain things that some of the Jews in Jerusalem expected them to do. They were still unclear about the way ahead with regard to Sabbath laws, ceremonial laws, food laws, and so on...circumcision was still up in the air. What are they to do with this? And God sends this gentle man, this extraordinary man Barnabas, the Son of Encouragement, who knows how to encourage, who knows how to motivate, who knows how to lift up the downcast, who knows how to say a word in season, in a difficult and tense situation. Who is it that God will call with Paul to be a missionary on that first missionary journey in Antioch in Acts 13:1? Paul and Barnabas. Oh, there'll be some tensions between Barnabas and Paul before the story's through, and we'll come to that later. But what a marvelous provision. What a beautiful gift, as Ananias was in the city of Damascus, that God had a Barnabas in Jerusalem to introduce Saul of Tarsus to the disciples and to the apostles in Jerusalem.

He's in Jerusalem for fifteen days. He doesn't meet all the apostles. Again, Luke doesn't tell us that here, but in Galatians 1 we read that he met only two of the apostles - the two apostles, interestingly enough, that he mentions when he writes I Corinthians 15 and that beautiful chapter on the resurrection. He says in I Corinthians 15 that the two people that Jesus appeared to were Cephas and James, the Lord's brother. And in Galatians he tells us that the two apostles that he met with and conferred with were Cephas (Peter, the Aramaic name) and James, the Lord's brother.

I wonder what they talked about. Wouldn't you like to be a fly on the wall when Saul of Tarsus is knocking on the door of Peter and James? Who knew Jesus better than anyone? James, who grew up with Him. Can you imagine James sitting down perhaps over Turkish coffee or whatever it was that they...[not the Starbucks coffee that Ligon has here, now!]...but can you imagine James sitting down with Saul of Tarsus in Jerusalem? And Saul says to him, Saul says to James, 'Tell me, what was Jesus like as a little boy? What was He like as a teenager? What was He like in your father Joseph's carpentry shop? Tell me about your mother.' Wouldn't you just love to overhear those conversations? And as James begins to relate stories about his brother, Jesus...his brother in the flesh, Jesus, born of the same mother...and at the same time every now and then you'd hear James saying 'the Lord Jesus' — kurios Jesu — that this brother of mine is God, the Lord, the Messiah whom Paul has been preaching in Damascus as the Son of God. What greater confirmation for Saul of Tarsus that Jesus of Nazareth was actually and truly the Son of God, than to hear it from the lips of James?

And then, the fourth place. After fifteen days in Jerusalem - Tarsus, and the districts of Syria and Seleucia. This is Saul's home town, now. He goes home now. And again, Luke doesn't tell us all the details here and you have to piece them all together, but he was going home, and he would be there for ten years.

It's during this time, according to something we read in Acts 22, just before he leaves Jerusalem and he goes to Tarsus, that in visiting the temple he has another vision — appearance — of the risen Jesus, who confirms to him once again that he is to be the apostle to the Gentiles. It's during his time in Tarsus that we obviously have to piece in somewhere in that time frame the five occasions on which Saul of Tarsus received the thirty-nine lashes, the forty lashes minus one at the hands of the Roman authorities, when his back was lacerated. And why would they do that? Because evidently there, too, Saul of Tarsus was preaching and teaching about Jesus and proclaiming the gospel of faith alone in Christ alone.

And then Luke tells us in verse 31 — and isn't this an exquisite verse?

"So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace, and was built up; and walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit it multiplied."

Isn't that a beautiful verse? After all the trouble, after all the threats and death threats that we've read about in the previous chapters, all of a sudden there's a period of supernatural peace; a period where God, as it were, restrains His enemies for a season and pours out His Spirit upon His people; and His church grows and multiplies. And don't you want to know — because I want to know — don't you want to know what the secret of multiplication of the church is? Do you want to know what the secret of church growth is? You know - the forty days of prayer and fasting, or the DVD's, or the books, or the schemes, or this thing or that thing? What's the secret for church growth and multiplication?

And Luke tells you what the secret is:

Now my dear friends, do you find that disappointing? Because if you find that disappointing, I want you to read that again, because Luke is telling you something here. What is the secret for church growth for Luke? It's a holy people living out and out for God, and giving themselves to a life that is lived to the glory of God. That's the secret. They were living out their lives, regardless of the consequences, in fear of God. They were putting God first. God first in their homes, God first with their children, God first with their teenage children, God first in their employment, God first with their hopes and dreams and ambitions.

Was that hard? Of course it was hard. "And they were strengthened by the Holy Spirit...comforted by the Holy Spirit." Do you know that's the same word as Barnabas, the Son of Encouragement? It's paracletos again. And just as there had been a physical comforter in Jerusalem, so now for a season there was a supernatural Comforter (after which, by the way, Barnabas was modeled: the Holy Spirit).

Oh, don't you long for days like that? Don't you long for days when the enemy is put back just a little, and you see not something that you do, not something that you can put on a billboard outside the church and say "Revival next week," but an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and the church grows and multiplies, and is strengthened as people walk in the fear of the Lord and are strengthened by the Holy Spirit. And that's a beautiful thing, and oh! may God grant us in our lifetime to see something of that: to see something of an outpouring of the Spirit that has nothing to do with us, and has all to do with God. May God so grant it.

Let's pray together.

Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for this encouragement, that there are times when You tell Satan to be quiet for a season and You pour out Your Spirit, and You cause Your church to grow. We've seen glimpses of this in parts of the world — in China and in the Soviet Union, and in parts of Africa — and we bless You and thank You for it. We thank You for this sovereign supernatural work. Now bless us, we pray. Help us to learn from this. Help us to fear You, to walk in the fear of God; and comfort us by Your Spirit. For Jesus' sake we ask it. Amen.

Let's stand and we'll sing The Doxology once again, and I'll close with the Benediction.

Grace, mercy, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, be with you all. Amen.