Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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We are far more dangerous in our righteousness than in our sins. It is for this reason that we must read our Bibles diligently, pray every day, struggle to keep focused and to maintain an honest relationship with God -- because (if we don't) we will soon come to believe that our truth is God's truth, and our ways God's way. Which is why pride goeth before a fall, and why good people sometimes find themselves on the wrong side of God. History teaches that God is full of surprises, and has often turned the tables on his saints, especially those who were do-gooders as opposed to good-doers.

Rooting Out the Followers of a False Messiah

A man rides from Jerusalem to Damascus. He is an important man, travels with an entourage, has arrest warrants in his pocket. He is young (in his early twenties), but he is a comer, already recognized as one of the young Turks of the Temple, a fired-up Pharisee, zealous, well-educated, devout, spiritual, Bible-bred. Nobody out-religions Saul. The Temple elders have seen his potential, and have made him a special prosecutor. His assignment is to root out a small cancer nibbling away at the body of Judaism, a disgusting little sect of uneducated and undistinguished Jews who are pushing a false Messiah: one Jesus of Nazareth, a carpenter, who was executed thirty years ago for inciting the people to riot.

Saul was already working on these Jesus people in Jerusalem -- had been for some time. He had made their lives miserable when he could, had accused them falsely and dragged them before the magistrates, had them tortured and imprisoned whenever possible. He had even arranged to have their beloved Stephen stoned to death, in public, as an example. But trying to contain Christianity was like trying to put kittens back in a box. Even as they ran from Saul's wicked persecutions in Jerusalem, Christians set up homes in near-by cities and started preaching the gospel there! By now the cancer had spread toDamascus. And Paul sets out, cock-sure in his rightness, to exise the tumor.

It is easy to convict and convert an outwardly sinful man. He knows what his sin is doing to him.

O, yes; O, yes, darlin' Cory,
Come stand beside my bed.
Bad liquor hath ruined my body,
Pretty women gone to my head.

The Lord Comes: Even to a Sinner Robed in Righteousness

People like that, at least, know what their problems are. But a sinner robed in righteousness is a far greater challenge! The story of Saul's conversion on the road to Damascus is told three times in the Book of Acts. What happened there, to the church's chief persecutor, was (for the early Christians) both a warning against self-righteousness and a proof of how God can transform even the worst of us into saints. First a light from heaven, and then a voice, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" "Who are you, Lord?" The question contains the answer! Yet, not really -- for Paul (a good Jew) would have expected the answer to be as it was for Moses, "I am YAWEH (The Lord)." It must have sent him into total shock when he heard, "I am Jesus, whom you persecute." My God! This carpenter, this upstart, this troubler of Israel, this false Messiah -- this one against whom I have worked my fingers to the bone -- now speaks to me from heaven! And, in that horrible moment of self-realization (the very kind of moment we all desperately avoid -- when the truth about us is known, and all our righteousness is as filthy rags) -- in that moment Paul is struck blind, and is led by the hand like a child into Damascus, into the very bosom of that tiny Christian family he had come to destroy.

 

The Lord Can Turn Our World Right Side Up

Paul's great brain was now scrambled. Nothing would ever be the same again. Right was now wrong, and wrong right. Top was bottom, bottom top. True was false, false true. First was last, last first. He had to re-think his entire world. No wonder he couldn't see for a while. This wasn't a bad man being made good, it was a good man being made humble, being broken like a fine horse, so that God could ride him. And ride him God did! God commandeered Paul, took possession of him. The man no longer belonged to Satan, nor even to himself, but to God and to his Son, Jesus Christ. Paul would later write that in his baptism he was buried, and that in Christ's death the world was crucified to him and him to the world.

Avoid Pride; Cultivate Humility

E.B. White's, The Elements of Style, is still the best "how-to" book on writing. At the end he offers some rules, and anyone who has ever tried to put his thoughts on paper, can identify with them. My favorite is, "If you think you have said something, look again. Chances are you have not!" In the family of faith, we have a rule, "If you think you are good, look again. Chances are you are not." The very thought of your own goodness will lead you astray. Believe instead that you are, and always will be, a sinner saved by the grace of God, and then hope that God might get his hands on you in some way and permit you to do some good thing. That is all. If Paul wrote these words about himself, how could we write anything more boastful about ourselves: "The good that I would, I do not; and the evil that I would not, I do. Miserable creature that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." So Paul's conversion is a warning and a reminder to us all to avoid self-righteousness.

God Makes Us Entirely New People in Christ Jesus

The second point about Paul's conversion is the point about God's transforming power. No matter how you cut the cake, there was Saul one day and Paul the next. Same flesh and blood, but an entirely new person in Christ Jesus. The early Christians stood with their mouths open as they watched God take tax collectors, and prostitutes, and jailbirds, and enemies of the church (like Paul), and sinners of every stripe, and transform them into saints. This church of ours was not built on good people, it was built on bad people whom God had gotten his hands on.

Thinking about a title for this sermon, the phrase "turning the tables" came to mind. But, as I thought about that old expression, I realized that I had always had it wrong. I had always thought of it as referring to upturning the tables, spilling them over on someone -- as Christ upturned the tables of the money changers in the Temple. But I guess it's more of a gambling phrase: "to turn the table," literally, to turn it, to shift it around. To give a player a different hand to play -- different from the one he was dealt. To turn the table like that, in a poker game, for instance, would change the fortunes of everyone at the table. That is, perhaps, exactly what God did in Jesus Christ. It surely is what he did for Paul.

Always Strive to Find the New Will of God for Us

We must never be content in our righteousness, but must always strive to find the new will of God for us. The Christian life is not a table of static rules, laid down once and always adhered to. "Sometimes right is just as wrong as wrong is," says the song. It may be right to oppose liquor with one person, and wrong with another. It may be right to forbid working on the Sabbath, but wrong to tell a group of hungry men that rubbing a few grains of wheat between their fingers, to get the husks off, is threshing, and is therefore work, and therefore forbidden. I oppose abortion and homosexuality, and I know many of you do to, but we must be careful not to be entangled in our own self-righteousness about these issues. For there are other questions to be considered, questions of mercy, and forgiveness, but most of all the question of newness of life. God can change people. God does change people. That is our central hope. Let us not lose sight of the message: "For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might have life."

Take the Wind Out of Your Own Righteousness

People sometimes say to me, "Why do you marry that couple? They're just using the church for a place to tie the knot. You know you'll never see them again." "Why do you baptize that baby? You know the parents won't bring the child to church, any more than they have the others, even though they promised to do so each time in their vows?" But, see, I don't know that! In human terms, I know it. Once a stiff, always a stiff. Leopards don't change their spots. But, a major big piece of our faith, is the one that says God can make people new. He is full of surprises. He did it with Paul, and has done it with millions of others. If we combine that belief (that God can make people new) with the sure and certain knowledge of our own sin, it takes the wind out of our judgement.

Jesus Refashions People

Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage. Nobody is what he is, nobody is in a predicament he can't get out of, as long as Jesus is around. I'm telling you an amazing thing! It goes against all the wisdom of this world, in a fundamental way. For the world counts on us to stay the same: a poor student in third grade is counted on (ahead of time) to become a poor student in fourth grade. The world says people with poor credit histories can never be trusted with a loan. A liar can never be believed. An addict never gets well. A criminal record indicates a permanently blotched character. The world says people are what they are. Jesus says, "It ain't necessarily so." I can refashion people, in fact I can take them apart and make them all over again. I can do it so completely, and with such skill, that the old person will be completely gone -- as if the person were actually born again, into a new life. That's quite a claim.