All Were Amazed

by Pastor Bill Farrow

²⁰ Immediately he preached the Christ in the synagogues, that He is the Son of God. ²¹ Then all who heard were amazed, and said, “Is this not he who destroyed those who called on this name in Jerusalem, and has come here for that purpose, so that he might bring them bound to the chief priests?” ²² But Saul increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who dwelt in Damascus, proving that this Jesus is the Christ.

Well there was little wonder why they were amazed! Saul certainly knew a great deal about the Old Testament. But other than the standard Pharisee line about who Jesus was ( and you don't have to read very far in the Gospels to know how completely inaccurate that perception of our Lord was) he knew nothing more that was accurate about Christ than the startling fact that He actually was from God. This he knew from the fact that he had just heard the voice of the risen Christ, speaking from the heavens, telling him so.

Yet in spite of knowing nothing of the Lord Jesus, and having no direct experience with Christ while he walked the earth, (at least none that we know of) Saul preaches a marvelous, truth–filled sermon concerning Christ, who He was, and what that means.

We are driven to ask, where did he get that knowledge from? Well, of course, some of that knowledge was rooted in his already existing knowledge of the Old Testament. As a Pharisee Saul had an extensive knowledge of the Old Testament and its content. But from all that Jesus said and taught while He walked the earth, we know that such Biblical knowledge (in fact, any mere "knowledge" at all, no matter how profound, deep, or thorough) was completely insufficient to lead someone into an understanding of the truth. Jesus said that He was the Way the Truth and the Life, and that no one could "know" the Father unless they first knew Him! Saul came to know that on the Damascus Road in a dramatic fashion.

But how did he come to know that which he preached concerning Christ to the audience that he preached to here in Acts chapter 9? There can, of course, be but one explanation. The Spirit of God supernaturally gave him the knowledge and the ability to take that Old Testament knowledge that he already possessed and apply it to our Lord and use it then to preach truths he did not know beforehand to those to whom he had in front of him. God opened up his understanding, he opened his eyes and his ears, and then he allowed him to preach those truths to his audience.

Though not as dramatically, this is how you and I get our information, our revelation from God as well. We don't receive our revelation as distinctly miraculously, but we receive it no less by means of the Spirit of God.

It is important that we, as we seek to understand and then to communicate the Truths of the Word of God to the world around us, that we understand that our minds and our intellect are not the source or even the chief mechanism of our perception of the liberating facts that we are communicating to the lost and dying world to whom God has sent us.

Saul was one of the greatest of the Pharisees. In terms of our own world, he was a "Type A", a "go-getter", aggressive, sure of himself, and not willing to settle for anything less than what he saw as right and correct. His way was the best way and that was all there was to it. There was no satisfying him with anything other than the outcome which he had in his mind when he set out upon his task.

But all of that changed when Saul heard that voice, the voice of the Christ whom he had been persecuting, speak to him from heaven. The people to whom he preached were amazed? No one was more amazed than Saul was!