An overview for teachers and Bible study leaders, of Lifeway’s Explore the Bible lesson of Acts 9:3-16 for Sunday, August 4th, 2024, with text highlights, suggested outline, illustrations, discussion questions, and life applications for your group. A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:

INTRO:  In 1997, Rosaria Champagne Butterfield was a liberal, lesbian college professor who was researching the Bible to write an article against the religious right. After she published the article, she got a lot of mail, pro and con, but one stuck out to her, from a local pastor, Ken Smith, who asked her some sincere questions about her presuppositions about the Bible. He invited her to have dinner with him and his wife, and they began a long process of loving her, ministering to her, answering questions — and to make a long story short, two years later she gave her life to Jesus as her Lord & Savior, and she is now the wife of a Presbyterian Pastor in North Carolina! She wrote an amazing book about the process of her conversion — I consider it one of the best books I’ve read, because it is so insightful regarding the thought processes of a person God’s working in, and how He spoke to her and changed her. The title of her book? The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert”!  Rosaria Butterfield, liberal lesbian college professor, was definitely an “unlikely convert”! 

??? Can you share the story of another “unlikely convert” that you know, or heard/read about, who came to the Lord? 

(There are so many famous ones, including Chuck Colson, C.S. Lewis, Anthony Flew (atheist debater who famously became a believer in God and possibly a Christian and wrote the book, There Is A God — and others of your own experience.)

Then say something like: today we are going to look at the story of one of the most unlikely men who was ever saved: Saul of Tarsus, who had actually been persecuting Christians, but whom God dramatically saved and changed.

CONTEXT

We’ve seen that the Book of Acts is in many ways the story of how the Early Church continued to spread the gospel, overcoming many barriers and difficulties, both outward persecution and inward challenges of dissension and hypocrisy.

We saw how the church began the deacon ministry to address the needs of the widows, and how new deacons Stephen and Philip shared the word. After Stephen was martyred for sharing his faith, Acts 8:1 says “On that day a great persecution began against the church … and they were all scattered …” (God used even this persecution to scatter the disciples so their witness would go all over the world, as :4 indicates) Verse 3 says “But Saul began ravaging the church, entering house after house, and dragging off men and women, he would put them in prison.” 

(Again here we see this characteristic of Luke’s writing in Acts, of how he briefly introduces a character almost in passing, who will later emerge in a much larger role. We saw that with Barnabas in Acts 5, and now we see it with Saul/Paul.) 

This brings us now to Chapter 9, and the story of God’s miraculous saving of the Apostle Paul, and His call on his life — which leads us to consider ours as well!

OUTLINE

It’s been taught that a good outline for a testimony is to share:

— what your life was like before Christ

— how you came to know Christ

— and then what your life has been like since Christ

This is a great outline for a testimony, and I plan to use a similar outline for this lesson, with a little “addition” for the Lord’s instructions to Ananias:

I. Saul before Christ (9:1-2)

II. Saul meets Christ (9:3-9)

III. Ananias’ calling to serve (9:10-14)

IV.  Saul’s calling after Christ (9:15-16)

??? Point V or application: Preparing YOUR Testimony!

TEXT

I. Saul before Christ (9:1-2)

At the end of Acts 7 we see how when Stephen was stoned, the persecutors laid their robes at the feet of Saul. Then when the persecution breaks out after that in Chapter 8, :3 says it was “Saul (who) began ravaging the church, entering house after house, and dragging off men and women, he would put them in prison.” 

Now in Chapter 9 we see this is still going on:

(:1) “Now Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest, (:2) and asked for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, both men and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.”

??? What all do you see in this passage about Saul before he came to the Lord??? (or just lecture these points)

— “STILL” — he hadn’t “cooled down” any; he was STILL very actively persecuting the Christians which he had started when Stephen was killed.

— it says he was “breathing threats and murder” — so it wasn’t like he was just posting insulting things on Twitter, right? He was really persecuting the Christians. He was threatening to murder them — and he HAD evidently led in murdering Stephen, so it was no idle threat!

— Then notice :2 says he asked for letters from the high priest for the synagogues at Damascus — you might show a MAP of where Damascus is:

And make the point: LOOK HOW FAR Saul was going to persecute the new Christians! 

Damascus is 135 miles in the  air, but closer to 200 miles with the route you have to take, from Jerusalem. THAT IS A LONG WAY in Biblical times!

If you went 20-30 miles a day, that’s a week’s travel to get to where you could find and persecute more of these people! This just demonstrates how very zealous he was in his persecution of the followers of Christ. It wasn’t enough just to hound them in Jerusalem, he had to make a week’s travel to get even more of them! 

— and then I think it is of note that the text specifically says he would take “both men and women” — he had no extra compassion on women; he took them as well. He was a real hardliner! 

— And then it says he wanted bring them “bound to Jerusalem.” So he would tie them up, or put them in chains, and he wanted to bring them to Jerusalem, where they could be tried and punished like Jesus and Stephen were, or “just” put in prison, like 8:3 says!

Paul shares some more about his “pre-Christ” days in his testimony in Acts 26 (as I will mention later, his testimony is shared THREE TIMES in Acts (also in Acts 22 & 26) indicating how important the Lord felt that was!) He says in Acts 26:10-11:

“this is just what I did in Jerusalem; not only did I lock up many of the saints in prisons, having received authority from the chief priests, but also when they were being put to death I cast my vote against them. 11 And as I punished them often in all the synagogues, I tried to force them to blaspheme; and being furiously enraged at them, I kept pursuing them even to foreign cities.”

So this gives us quite a sketch of just how zealous Saul was in his persecution of the Lord’s people. This was no “half-hearted” guy; he led the fight against Christianity, and was giving everything he had to stop this new faith. (which makes it even more dramatic, how God changed him!) 

So that was Paul “B.C.” — “before Christ”! 

If you didn’t do it in the introduction, you might discuss others you know, whose lives were greatly changed from “before Christ.”

But then especially help them apply this personally, asking:

??? What was YOUR life like before you came to Christ? What are some things that changed???

(You/your group can share …)

***Many class members may have come to Christ at a young age; they may not have much to share at this point. You might consider using the following so that they will not feel badly about that: Someone has said that coming to Christ as an adult, after a whole life of rebelling against Him, is like crossing a great river at its widest point (I think of the Mississippi, which I driven across many times; it is so wide!).  But, while we must all cross that same “river of salvation,” when we come to Christ as a child, it’s like crossing that same river way upstream, when it is just a little “brook” that you can just hop across. It’s not as big, not as dramatic — but you DID STILL CROSS THE SAME RIVER!  

I think this illustration can help a lot of Christians who may “feel bad” that they don’t have a “dramatic” testimony like Paul and so many others. They shouldn’t. There’s much to be thankful for if you had a godly upbringing. And perhaps sharing this illustration may help some of your class members with this.***

You might also include this question at this point:

??? What does this tell us about some people we know/whom we are praying for, who seem to be radically against Christ???

(It gives us hope that they too can be changed by the Lord! “Nothing is too difficult for Him!” If He can save Saul, the primary persecutor of Christianity, and Rosaria Butterfield, a liberal lesbian college professor, then He can save that person YOU are praying for too! DON’T STOP praying and sharing!)

II. Saul meets Christ (9:3-9)

Again, to get my group involved with the text, I am going to ask them to listen while I read this, and then share what stands out to them in Paul’s encounter with Christ in these verses:

“As he was traveling, it happened that he was approaching Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him; 4 and he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” 5 And he said, “Who are You, Lord?” And He said, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting, 6 but get up and enter the city, and it will be told you what you must do.” 7 The men who traveled with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. 8 Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; and leading him by the hand, they brought him into Damascus. 9 And he was three days without sight, and neither ate nor drank.”

(You may also choose to just lecture on these points, but among the points I would share would be the following:

— This happened while “he was approaching Damascus.” So he was well along on the journey when this happened.

— And this happened “SUDDENLY.” I’ve read where some contemporary “scholars” have tried to explain this away as some kind of “astronomical sign” in the heaven, or something like that, but that does not fit the story of what happened in the text at all! 

It says it was “suddenly” and that it was “a light from heaven” that “flashed around him.” It it was like anything “natural” it was like a lightning flash — but as we will see it lasted much longer.

— And what did Saul do? It says “He fell to the ground.”

— And he heard a voice, and it was Jesus, saying: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?”

— In 5 he asks who this is, and He tells him that it is Jesus. 

— And in :6 He commands him to go into the city (Damascus, which they were close to)

— and significantly, He says: “It will be told you what you must do.” Right off the bat here, Jesus shows that He is going to be his LORD, giving him orders, which he would follow for the rest of his life. 

WE (and those we would share with) need to realize that Jesus does not just come into our lives to save us, but also to be our LORD, master, boss. He’s not just our Savior, but also our Lord. In Scripture it is always in this order: “LORD & Savior” — LORD first!  Christ told Saul what he was going to do, and He will tell us what we are going to do as well! He comes into our lives as Lord, just like He did in Saul’s.  

Then :7-9 give us some interesting tidbits:

— :7 says the other men in his party heard the voice, but didn’t see Jesus. Only Paul saw Jesus — one condition of an apostle; being a witness to Jesus’ resurrection. But the others did hear, so they could corroborate that he was not making this episode up. There were witnesses to the truth of what happened.

— :8 indicates that after this, Saul couldn’t see, and :9 says he didn’t eat or drink anything for 3 days afterwards.

??? WHY do you think he didn’t eat or drink for 3 days???

(— it was such a traumatic event! Like a lightning flash, etc.

— but then even compounding it more, was the feeling of a complete life reversal: everything he’d been living for, with such zeal, had been wasted, and now he was going to serve what he had previously hated so much! 

You can see why he might respond in such a way!)

So Saul’s conversion was very dramatic: a flash of light, meeting Jesus in person, etc.  In the introduction, we talked about some “unlikely” people we knew who were saved. To help illustrate/apply this second point, you might share some of the most “dramatic” conversion stories you/your group have heard/experienced:

(In history, Martin Luther a “somewhat” similar experience to Saul’s although it took much longer — but it did involve a flash of lightning! In July 1505 in what is now Germany, Luther was on horseback, returning to college when lightning almost struck and killed him. But it did knock him from his horse, and he cried out: “I will become a monk!” And so he did — but that whole process of trying to become right with God through the works of the church left him continually unsatisfied, and he knew he was not saved through those works. One day he had gone to Rome, where he was climbing the “Scala Sancta,” the holy stairs there which were supposedly where Pilate stood to judge Christ, and which would gain you a lot of “credit” with God. But suddenly the verse “the righteous shall live by his FAITH” struck him, and he got up from the stairs, now justified by faith in Christ.

You could share Luther’s testimony, or some other dramatic conversion story, and your group can also share any they know.

But then at this point I would ask my class to make some personal application here and share:  ??? “How did I personally come to meet Christ?”???

(You be prepared to share, and then ask other group members to briefly share their stories. It’s important for people to share their testimony, or “story” of how they came to Christ; it may help them to share it in the world. (And I’ll suggest an exercise at the end of the lesson can help them too.) AND God might use this to convict someone in your class that they don’t HAVE a testimony, and it might end up leading them to Him!)  But share those testimonies about how you all met Christ, just like Paul did on the Damascus Road. Our stories will not be as dramatic as His — but it does not mean that they are any less real!  

But the best test of the reality of our testimony is the last point: our lives AFTER we met Christ. How did we change; what has God done with us? This will bring us to Paul’s life after Christ, or His calling, in :15-16. 

(But before we get to that, there is a “side story” in :10-14 regarding Ananias …

III. Ananias’ calling to serve (9:10-14)

(:10) “Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias; and the Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” And he said, “Here I am, Lord.” 11 And the Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and inquire at the house of Judas for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying, 12 and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him, so that he might regain his sight.”

So God tells Ananias in a vision to go to the Street called Straight, and ask about Saul, and lay hands on him and pray so that he might get his sight back. 

??? But what was his response???

(:13) “But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much harm he did to Your saints at Jerusalem; 14 and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on Your name.”

??? Can you understand WHY Ananias might be hesitant?

(Sure! This man had been arresting and killing Christians, you want me to go over to where he is staying and pray for him??!!

Why don’t you just ask me to stick my head in a lion’s mouth or something, right? From a human standpoint, it WAS a difficult thing God was asking him. But we have to trust that God knows what He is doing, and go and do what He asks us. He’s going to use us when He sends us like that.

??? Does God call us, as His people, to do some difficult things??? 

Absolutely He does! And we often wrestle with Him about them:

— like Moses (who said he couldn’t talk) and Gideon (who kept testing the Lord), etc., we often give God reasons why we can’t do what He’s called us to do. And too many times, I’m afraid as church members we just decide whether we are going to do something or not, by how hard it is. If it’s too hard, then we just don’t think we should do it. But we need to pray and ask: Is this something the Lord is calling me to do? He does call us to do hard things, with His help.

??? Can you share a time when God called YOU to do something you didn’t want to do/were afraid/felt unable to do???
(A few years ago I went to witness to an unchurched family where the wife had just come down with cancer. It was a really difficult situation. I did. not know those people very well. I asked one of our new deacons to go with me, and he told me later, “I could tell you had your ‘game face on’!” But the Lord used us, and we were able to lead both the husband and wife to pray to receive Christ. It was tough; I had to “put my game face on,” like Mike said — but God used us!

You/your group can share your stories of times when God called you to do something difficult (you may or may not want to share about it, but maybe that’s even your testimony about serving as a Sunday School teacher — some of you all have shared those stories with me — but God is using you!

So just emphasize to your group: just like God called Ananias to go and do something difficult, sometimes He calls US to do difficult things too — things for which we feel inadequate. Maybe God is calling some of your group members to do some difficult things: maybe to go on a mission trip, or serve Him in ministry in some challenging way. But this passage reminds us that if we will go ahead and obey Him, He will use us, just like He did Ananias here!

IV. Saul’s calling after he met Christ (9:15-16+)

(:15) “But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of Mine, to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel; (16) for I will show him how much he must suffer for My name’s sake.”

So God tells Ananias here to GO! (He’s the Lord; we’re to do the hard things He commands us!) but He also shows him some of the plans He has for Saul.

??? What all do you see in these verses about God’s plans for Saul???

— “He is a chosen instrument.” The word “instrument” here is “skeuos,” a household vessel or utensil, used for carrying liquid. This gives us a great picture of what God wants to do with us.

We are “vessels.” Think of a PITCHER. What’s important, the pitcher, or what’s in it? Of course, it’s what’s IN it that matters! The pitcher may be better or worse quality, but what’s poured out through the pitcher is the important thing.

So Paul writes in II Corinthians 4:7 “We have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves.” Paul says there, WE are not the treasure; we are just like vessels that God’s treasure is poured out to others, through us. 

Every one of us as Christians needs to see ourselves as a “chosen vessel” like Paul was; through who God is going to pour out His treasure to other people.

And He may use us each in slightly different ways to do that. Some have one specific calling from God; some have another.

God shows us here in :15 what His specific plan for Saul was:

“To bear My name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel.” So Saul’s call was to share the Gospel with the Gentiles (In Romans 1:5, 11:13, and Galatians 2:8, he refer to how God called him specifically to minister to the Gentiles.) 

So that was HIS calling. But this isn’t just a history lesson; let’s make sure that each of our members understands that God has called US to be a vessel for Him in some specific way too. Ask them to consider: “What’s MY calling?” How does God want YOU to be used as a “vessel” to share Christ and His word with others?  (And REMEMBER: as we saw, He may ask you to do something difficult when He gives you your assignment!)

(Pt. V. or lesson application: Preparing Your Testimony

The Lord obviously felt that Paul’s testimony was so important, that He inspired Luke to share it, pretty much in full, THREE TIMES in the Book of Acts (Here, 22:3-21, and 26:2-23)!

As I mentioned before, a good outline of a personal testimony is to share your life before Christ, how you came to Christ, and what your life has been like since you came to Christ. We’ve seen that outline lived out in Saul’s life in this passage.

I think one of the best applications we can help our class members make this week, is to encourage them to write out THEIR own personal testimony, using this same outline. I’d have maybe a half sheet printed out LIKE THIS:

“My Story” Testimony Worksheet

I. My Life Before Christ

II. How I Came to Christ

III. My Life Since I Came to Christ

Encourage each member to write out their testimony on it — in class if you have time — or if not, when they get home some time that afternoon. And challenge them to practice sharing it briefly (1-2 minutes) in a natural way, and then pray, and watch for opportunities to share it. This may be one of the best applications you can make with your group this week. And remember, God may also use it to convict someone who doesn’t have a testimony, that they need Him!

The Apostle Paul’s testimony is one of the most important stories in the whole Bible — it’s shared in full, three times in the Book of Acts! 

But encourage your group that THEIR testimonies are important too, and that God can use their stories to touch others, just like He used Paul’s!

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