Lesson 3 - Life and Lessons of the Apostle Paul (Saul) - Suffering - When Jesus met Saul on the road to Damascus, and blinded him with brilliant light, and told him, that he, (Saul), was persecuting Him ( Jesus), what did He mean? Remember back in Mathew 25:31-46, when Jesus was teaching about the judgement day, and He said, and I was hungry and you did not give me anything to eat, and I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, naked and ye gave me no clothes, in prison and you did not come and visit me (or see to my needs) etc., and they said to Him, when did we see you need these things....and He goes on to say, when you did not do it for my brethren, you did not do it for Me! Well, it was the same with what Saul was doing. He was persecuting Christians for their beliefs and each time one was hauled away, dragged to court, beaten, stoned to death, Christ was taking it quite personally, as if it was being done directly to Him, so He asked Saul, Why are you persecuting me? So now at this point in our lesson, Saul has realized how wrong he had been, and was baptized to wash away the terrible sins, by the blood of Christ. So what did He do next? Acts 9:18-20 says that after his baptism, he immediately began preaching that Jesus was the son of God. For him, this was a very dangerous stand to take, because now the Jews saw him as a traitor. But He boldly took a stand for Christ and His church, and preached the truth anyway. This led to much suffering on his part, because the persecutions, that he had dished out earlier to Christians, was now coming back on him, now that he, too, was a Christian. But he no longer walked alone. Jesus was with him, giving him the strength to keep on keeping on. But suffer he did. 2 Corinthians 11:23-28 says he labored hard, was thrown into prison many times, beaten many times, often he was at the point of death, beaten with rods, stoned and left for dead, shipwrecked at sea several times, and one time spent a night and day floating in the ocean. In his travels, in going from place to place to teach about Christ, he found himself in danger from swollen rivers, from robbers lurking on the roads, from his own people, the Jews, who wanted him dead, and in cities he was in danger, in desolate places, and at sea. He was in danger of people who claimed to be Christians, but were not. He went many nights without sleep, without food, without water, cold, and without warm clothing, at times without any clothes. And we think we have problems! But in going through all this, what made him not give up, not be discouraged, not quit? We will talk more about this in lesson 4 and how we can bring it forward to our day, where we will know how to find this strength to keep on keeping on. ADF
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 22:00:29 +0000
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