ACTS 26:12

In this part of the book of Acts the Apostle Paul has been taken prisoner and has been brought before King Agrippa. Paul uses the occasion to speak about Jesus. We will see in this passage that Paul simply tells the king what Jesus had done for him. That is how you give your testimony if you have been saved: tell people what Jesus has done for you. Paul is speaking and he says in Acts 26:12-13, “Whereupon as I went to Damascus with authority and commission from the chief priests, At midday, O king, I saw in the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them which journeyed with me.”

Paul was doing what he had been doing for quite some time: persecuting Christians and causing them to be thrown into prison. In other words he was going about his routine. What changed? At just the right time in Paul’s life Jesus visited him. Salvation comes from God. It is initiated by God. No one gets saved unless Jesus first visits them. Be careful about being too aggressive in so-called “leading someone to Christ.” You cannot lead someone to Christ unless Jesus is there touching their heart. You would not want to give someone a false impression about their salvation just because you had a much more dominant personality. If Jesus wants to reveal Himself to someone, He will do it. One of the keys to soul-winning is the challenge of trying to determine if God is speaking to someone or not. In other words, is your testimony a time of sowing or of reaping? One sows and another reaps: both are important. Do not try to do reaping if it is a time for sowing. If Jesus is speaking to someone’s heart, they are going to know it just like Paul knew it.

Paul said in Acts 26:14-15, “And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest.” Before Paul was saved he was very sinful. In fact he was guilty of murder in the name of religion. Of course, Paul was saved as an adult which gave him more time to enter into worse sins as he got older. It is always better to be saved as young as possible because you will have more years to serve the Lord and less time to enter into worse sins. I have heard some people say that they were saved when they were very young, maybe at the age of five, and they therefore did not have a dramatic conversion experience the way that the Apostle Paul did. Even so, people who are saved at an early age have just as much to be thankful for to the Lord Jesus. You would have committed greater sins if Jesus had not visited you when he did. Go to a maximum security prison and observe the worst of criminals. Except for the grace of God that is in Christ Jesus, you could very well have done the same things.

Jesus said to Paul, “It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.” Without Jesus your life will be a selfish life, which is a sinful life. Without Jesus your life will also be empty and vain. It will be pointless and useless in regards to eternity. It goes without saying that you cannot resist the Almighty all-powerful God and accomplish anything. That is what Jesus was talking about when He said to Paul, “It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.” It does not make any sense to resist God. You are not getting anywhere. It makes much more sense to surrender to God. Do what Paul did. Look to Jesus and say, “Lord.”

In Acts 26:16-18 Jesus said, “But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee; Delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee, To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.”

The first thing that Jesus told Paul to do was to rise and stand upon his feet. That is because Jesus had something for Paul to do. Yes, Jesus does everything when anything good takes place in a ministry. You did not do it. He uses people, but Jesus does it, and He deserves all the credit and all the honor and all the glory. “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power.” Jesus uses us as His instruments. We are his hands and His feet. When Jesus was on the earth, His feet walked the dusty roads of Galilee in order to take the gospel here and there. If the gospel is going to continue to be spread, then it is going to require your feet also. Of course, speaking of the feet is symbolic of going places with the gospel. Why did Paul become the missionary and the evangelist and the soul-winner that we read about: probably one reason was because he always remembered what Jesus told him when he was first saved. “Rise, and stand upon thy feet.”

Jesus also told Paul that He was going to make Paul “a minister and a witness.” The word “minister” means servant. We do a disservice to the word “minister” when we apply it only to pastors. Every believer is called to be a servant. If you do not regard yourself as a servant, you certainly will not be serving Jesus Christ, and you will not be serving other people. You will just be serving yourself, which is sinfulness. A servant will not get offended because of insults, or because of difficult circumstances, or because of having less money than others; because he is a servant. One thing about a servant is that a servant has a lower station in life than the lords and the masters. Jesus made it clear to Paul that Jesus was calling Paul, not to be the great Apostle Paul as we now call him, but to be a servant. If Paul had not gone as a servant, he would never have accomplished what he accomplished. Paul was given a low estate so that God could lift him up in God’s time. Paul was given a low estate so that he would not be proud. Pride goeth before a fall.

Jesus told Paul that He was going to make Paul a minister and a witness. If you want to be like the Apostle Paul then these are the two things that you need to become: a servant and a witness. You will do exactly what Paul did. You will bring glory to the name of the Lord, and you will fulfill God’s will for your life. Jesus told Paul exactly how to be a witness. Jesus said that He would make Paul “a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee.” You can do that too. You can tell people what Jesus has done for you when he saved your soul, and you can tell them anything else that Jesus teaches you or shows to you. That is what life is all about. You learn something, and then you pass it on. You tell others what you have learned.

When a believer first hears about witnessing usually the first thing that passes through their mind is fear: fear of the unbelievers or fear of persecution. Jesus wanted to immediately put that fear to rest. He said to Paul in verse 17, “Delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee.” If God promises to do something, He is going to keep His promise. Those who learn to be faithful witnesses find that the unbelievers are afraid of them. That is not surprising because the demons are afraid of Christ.

Jesus told Paul that when Paul went with the gospel, there would be five wonderful results in the lives of those who would receive the gospel. Jesus said to Paul, “I send thee, To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.” Someone who receives the gospel has their eyes opened spiritually speaking. One of the reasons that Jesus gave sight to the blind when He was on earth was because of the symbolism. Why is it that unsaved people just do not understand the things of God? Because they are blind spiritually speaking. Only the Light of Christ can give them spiritual eyes. Notice that Jesus said that those who believed would be “turned” from darkness to light. To turn speaks of a change in direction. Anyone who hears the gospel and turns to Christ will see changes: a change in their eternal destiny, a change in what they actually believe, a change in their ability to understand the Bible, and a change in their way of life. “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away: behold all things are become new.”

Jesus told Paul that those who receive the gospel will be turned “from the power of Satan unto God.” What is going on in the world is a spiritual warfare for the souls of men and women. Satan is a powerful and extremely deceitful enemy. Satan has many weapons and many tricks to hold the minds and hearts of people captive. Some people he traps with excessive sinfulness, and they become held by the cords of their sins. They enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, and they do not wish to repent because their enslavement to sinful practices. Sometimes it seems as though Satan has new pleasures every day to offer the foolish. Those who go after those pleasures find that they end in hell.

For those who cannot be caught that way, Satan has false religion at his disposal. Millions upon millions are absolutely trapped by the religious ideas they have been taught from their youth. Every religion in the world including most of what is called organized Christianity is a tool used by Satan to keep the souls of men and women trapped in a vise-grip of their minds. There are so many things that Satan uses to keep people under his power. Satan uses materialism, the love of money, work, careers, entertainment, sports, sex, and a host of other things to hold men and women captive. What hope is there for the masses of humanity who have been enslaved in such a variety of ways? The only hope is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Jesus told Paul that those who receive the gospel “receive forgiveness of sins.” The forgiveness of sins is a wonderful thing, and it is a very important thing. When a sin takes place, a foolish and weak person makes a poor choice. But also Satan is there because he is the tempter. With the wiles that only the devil possesses, he tempts and he entices. Satan was there in the garden of Eden tempting Adam and Eve, and they fell, and great was the fall. Satan leads man into sin because he knows that sin separates from God. Satan was there in the wilderness trying to get Jesus to fall. But Jesus was too strong and too good for Satan. As a man Jesus was tempted and stayed faithful to God the Father. You did not. You owe everything to Jesus, do you not? To be forgiven means that you are separated from your sins, and your sins are separated from you. God takes them away. “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” Once you are forgiven, when God looks at you, He sees no sin. All that Satan did to ruin you: his lies, his deception, his temptations that worked are all made of no effect because Jesus is now your Savior.

If you have the forgiveness of sins, then you automatically have the next thing that Jesus mentioned: “inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.” It is a good thing to have an inheritance from an earthly father. If you have a father with some means in this world, and who loves you, and who meets his responsibilities; then he will give you an inheritance. That is the way it should be. Some of us do not have fathers, or we do not have fathers with material means, or we do not have fathers who love us; but once we accept the gospel of Christ, then our Father in heaven has an inheritance for us and it is a wonderful inheritance: an eternity in paradise.

In the writings of the Apostle Paul there is a constant reminder of the doctrine of the justification by faith. It is the central theme of the book of Romans. It is the reason for the great exposition against legalism in the book of Galatians. Any idea that goes against the doctrine of justification by faith in Christ is a terrible false teaching that must be opposed. Paul knew that because of what Jesus Himself said to Paul right there on the road to Damascus when Paul was first saved. Paul understood completely what Jesus meant when Jesus said to Him on the day of Paul’s conversion, “that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.”

For example in Romans 4:5-6 Paul wrote, “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works.” In Galatians 3:8-9 Paul wrote, “And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham.”

Have you put your faith in Jesus in order to have your eyes opened, in order to be turned from darkness to light, in order to be delivered from the power of Satan unto God, in order to receive the forgiveness of sins, and in order to have an inheritance among the sanctified in heaven? If not, today you can turn to Jesus and through prayer put your faith in Him for salvation.

___________________________________________________