Affirming the Will of God  Acts 9:10-25

Sermon by Pastor Dennis Gleason -- April 15, 2007 

Can you imagine what things would be like if God was politically correct?

Imagine Moses sitting in an Egyptian ghetto. Things in Egypt are terrible. Pharaoh won’t even speak to him. The other Israelites are mad at him for making the overseers even more irritable than usual. Now they have to keep up their quota of bricks but have to gather their own straw. No more 12 hour days for them. And Moses is about ready to give up.

Suddenly a booming voice spoke from above. “You, Moses, heed me! I have good news and bad news.”

Moses of course is staggered by the booming voice again. The voice continued: “You Moses will lead the People of Israel out of bondage. If Pharaoh refuses to release your bonds, I will smite Egypt with a rain of frogs,”

“You Moses will lead my people to the promised land. If Pharaoh blocks your way, I will smite Egypt with a plague of locusts.”

“You, Moses, will lead the people of Israel to freedom and safety. If Pharaoh’s army pursues you, I will part the waters of the Red Sea to open your path to the promised land.

Moses is amazed and stunned. He stammered, “That’s fantastic. I can hardly believe it! But what is the bad news?”

“You, Moses, must write the environmental impact statement.”

Source: www.theholidayspot.com

The story is cute and usually we think of God’s will as good news and bad news: “What if God spoke to you?” He did speak to Moses. How might he do it? What would he say? How would you react? Would you really believe it was God speaking to you? How would you know it was God?

If God were to grant you the answer to one question – any question you might think of to ask – what would that question be? My guess is that you would want to know something of God’s will for your life. For a committed Christian this is the only thing that really counts. Peace and satisfaction in your life depends on knowing that God is guiding your life.

Let’s look at our text for this morning.

God comes to an ordinary believer in Damascus, the capital city of what we now call Syria.

¹⁰Now there was a believer in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord spoke to him in a

vision, calling, “Ananias!”

“Yes, Lord!” he replied.

¹¹The Lord said, “Go over to Straight Street, to the house of Judas. When you arrive, ask for Saul of Tarsus. He is praying to me right now. ¹²I have shown him a vision of a man named Ananias coming in and laying his hands on him so that he can see again.”

¹³“But Lord,” exclaimed Ananias, “I’ve heard about the terrible things this man has done to the believers in Jerusalem! ¹⁴And we hear that he is authorized by the leading priests to arrest every believer in Damascus.”

¹⁵But the Lord said, “Go and do what I say. For Saul is my chosen instrument to take my message to the Gentiles and to kings, as well as to the people of Israel. ¹⁶And I will show him how much he must suffer for me.”

¹⁷So 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 may get your sight back and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” ¹⁸Instantly something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he regained his sight. Then he got up and was baptized. ¹⁹Afterward he ate some food and was strengthened.

Saul stayed with the believers in Damascus for a few days. ²⁰And immediately he began preaching about Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is indeed the Son of God!”

²¹All who heard him were amazed. “Isn’t this the same man who persecuted Jesus’ followers with such devastation in Jerusalem?” they asked. “And we understand that he came here to arrest them and take them in chains to the leading priests.”

²²Saul’s preaching became more and more powerful, and the Jews in Damascus couldn’t refute his proofs that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. ²³After a while the Jewish leaders decided to kill him. ²⁴But Saul was told about their plot, and that they were watching for him day and night at the city gate so they could murder him. ²⁵So during the night, some of the other believers let him down in a large basket through an opening in the city wall.

We are told that God came to Ananias in a vision. The text tells us that God spoke to Ananias and gave him an assignment. The call of God is reminiscent of God’s call to Samuel when he was a young boy. God speaks to him. And somehow he knows that it is God.

The assignment was to go…leave the comfort and the safety of his home ….and go into Straight Street and inquire in the house of Judas for a man named Saul. He is from Tarsus.

Why is Ananias to go there? Because Saul is praying.

Saul is praying. Why is this significant enough for Luke to record it here? Well, the Jews prayed a lot. They had a regular ritual they went through with their prayer shawls, their prayer books and such. But this is a different kind of prayer. It is quite likely that Saul has never prayed like this in his life. This is prayer of desperation. This is prayer in the trenches; it is the kind of prayer you pray when you are desperate in your need. This is prayer when you just have to have an answer from God. You don’t know what to do or which way to go.

What do you suppose Saul wants? I think he wants to know the plan God has for him from right then and now and forever. He had obviously missed the plan up to this point in his life.

How do we know Saul is desperate? His whole world has been turned up-side-down. He has met the resurrected Christ and all the assumptions he built his life upon have suddenly crashed. He is in desperate need of God’s help. He is blind. He is in a strange city with people he doesn’t know. He has no idea of what happens next in his life. And he is praying.

Ananias is Saul’s answer to prayer.

I know that I have used this illustration before, but it just came to mind again. There was a pastor who had just been dismissed from his church. He had taken his family on a trip across the country to in an attempt to get beyond the problems he has just gone through. He has no idea of what God’s will for him is. He has been devastated by what he has just gone through. He no longer senses or feels the Lord’s presence. In fact he is quite certain that not even God knows where he is.

So there they are in a small town in Idaho, out in the middle of nowhere. They stop at a country restaurant for lunch. He dropped his family off by the front door and went to park the car. As he is walking to the restaurant, a pay phone he passes begins to ring. He looks around to see who might be waiting for a call. There is no one else anywhere near the phone. So he picks up the phone and he hears what sounds like a little old lady on the other end of the line. She asks if he was Reverend So and so (I don’t remember his name). He is taken aback by her question. Finally, he stammers an answer. “Yes, this is he.”

The woman then said, “I was praying this morning and God gave me this phone number and asked me to call you. He told me to tell you that He does know where you are.”

True story.

One of the issues that confronts us in the story of Ananias is that there are times when we don’t really want to hear from God. Why? Because if we did we would really have to go. Because it will interfere with our lives.

Look at Ananias here. God says go to this man named Saul. Why is he to go? Again, it is because Saul is praying. And Ananias is going to be God’s answer to Saul’s prayer. What does Ananias do? He proceeds to give God a little information about this man Saul.

“Lord,” Ananias answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.”

Our English text has a period at the end of that last sentence. But in the original Greek there is no period. What does that mean? It means that God has cut him off mid-sentence. But the Lord said to Ananias, “Go!” “This man is a chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles…”

Enough of this already. Ananias, just go.

There are two aspects to God’s will.

First of all, there is the will of God that has already been revealed to us in His Word. So if you want to know His will…read and study His Word. You will clearly see what God has revealed to us about His will. The vast majority of God’s will for your life is already revealed to you in the Bible. There are positive commands that compel us to do this or do that. Then there are the negative ones in which God says no and puts on the brakes to keep us from sin and self-destruction.

The second aspect of God’s will is related to those areas of life that are not specifically spelled out for us in God’s Word. For example, when you dressed for church today did you seek God’s will about what to wear? How many of you spent time praying about what God’s will for you was for church today? Do I see any hands? I don’t think so. Why? I think it is pretty clear that God does not really care what you wear to church today so long as your body is covered with some kind of clothing. Adam and Ever were naked in the Garden and it did not bother God at all. The clothes are for our comfort not his. The point is don’t bother praying about whether you should wear the blue dress or something else. God would say, I don’t particularly care which. Go, get dressed!

Psalm 32:8 however, gives us one of God’s promises: “I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel (or guide) you with my eye upon you.” There are things God cares about and then there are those things that he simply leaves up to us and whatever we decide is simply OK with Him.

Often when we are thinking about God’s will for our life, we are really thinking about a blueprint. “have you discovered God’s blueprint for your life?” is really what we want to know. But if that is what we want we will be disappointed.

God will usually show you the next step you need to take, but seldom will he show you the whole package up front.

You have to trust him with the rest.

Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your insight. In all your ways acknowledge Him and he will make straight your paths.”

The will of God for us is more like a scroll that that unrolls a little more each day. And the call on our lives is that we follow the Lord Jesus Christ.

Saul is in the middle of that very thing.

He is praying. And while he is praying he has a vision that tells him about Ananias. Saul now knows that a man named Ananias will be coming to touch his life. And Ananias is obedient to the will of God in his life and that of Saul and he goes as God has commanded.

Do you want to know God’s will for your life? You can hear from God if you are a child of God who has placed his faith and trust in Jesus as Lord and Savior.

You can hear from God if your disposition is to obey God when he speaks in those areas of your life where you already know what God wants. Mark Twain is said to have once said, “It’s not the parts of the Bible I don’t understand that bother me. It’s the parts I do understand.”

You can hear from God if you are willing to accept the will of God in those unspecified areas of our lives before knowing what it is. In other words, we must accept the will of God in advance.

Our problem is that we think we know better than God. Isn’t that what Ananias was saying to God when God said go to Saul. I think I know better than you about this man Saul. Don’t we act as if we know what will make us happy? Isn’t the real problem that we don’t trust God. If we really let God run our lives, in some way he will shortchange us. We even think that if we actually do the will of God, or what God wants, that we will have to choose between doing what we want to do and being happy and doing what God wants us to do and being miserable.

Let me illustrate what I am trying to say with this:

Dave Boswell tells the story of Earl Weaver, former manage of the Baltimore Oriels. Weaver had a rule that no one was allowed to steal a base unless he was given the sign to do so. This upset some of his star players. Reggie Jackson, because he felt he knew the pitchers and catchers in the league well enough, he could judge best when he could or could not steal off them.

So in one game, he decided to steal without a sign. He got a good lead and then a good jump off the pitcher and easily beat the throw to second base. As he shook off the dirt from his uniform, he felt pretty good about it.

Later Weaver took Jackson aside and explained why he hadn’t given the steal sign. First, the next batter was Lee May, his best power hitter after Reggie. When Jackson stole second base, first base was open. So the other team walked Lee intentionally, taking the bat out of his hands. Secondly, the following batter had not been very strong against that pitcher. So Weaver had to send up a pitch hitter to try to drive in the men on base. That left Weaver without any bench strength later in the game.

The problem was this: Jackson saw only his relationship to the pitcher and catcher. Weave was watching the whole game. We see certain things, but God sees the bigger picture.

Having said all of this, let me give you a guarantee about hearing from God and knowing His will for your life.

You can hear from God and know his will if you simply ask him.

If you ask him…He will give you what you need. God is not some scrooge sitting up in heaven trying to make your life miserable.

Paul Little once wrote this: I was frustrated out ofmy mind, trying to figure out the will of God. I was doing everything but getting into the presence of God and asking him to show me.

That is what Saul is doing. He is praying, He is in the presence of God, asking God to show him.

And before Saul was finished praying, Ananias was in the presence of God getting his marching orders.

Get into the presence of God and ask Him. He will speak to you. He will show you what he wants you to do. He will speak to you in a voice you can understand and give you directions you can obediently take that will be a blessing to you.

Try it and see if it is not true.

 --Dennis Gleason