- [Narrator] Apostle Paul, ambassador and servant of Christ.
So who was this man?
The scriptures tell us more about the Apostle Paul
than any other apostle in the Bible.
In fact, a third of the New Testament
is either by him or about him.
If you combine the book of Acts with all his letters
you will find that more than a third
of the New Testament focuses on this one man.
Apostle Paul has had more influence on 2000 years
of church history
than any other person except Jesus himself.
You could even go as far as saying,
he's had more significant impact on the history of Europe
than any other man.
Well, there is Paul before his conversion,
during his conversion and after his conversion.
Those are the three major phases of his life.
Before he was converted,
he was born in a place called Tarsus
in the Southeast of Turkey.
He was of Jewish descent.
He was Jewish and he was very proud to be Jewish.
He was from the tribe of Benjamin
and was named after the first King of Israel
who also came from the same tribe.
Saul was convinced that Christians were dangerous.
He felt this is a greatest threat to our Jewish faith
that there's been and I'm going to fight it hard.
In the end, the same passion was used to spread the gospel.
Paul set out as an anti-Christian missionary.
He was willing to be a missionary
against Christians and to leave his own land
and go and persecute Christians elsewhere.
So he was a missionary before his conversion
but on the wrong side.
He had the perfect credentials to spread the gospels
but how was God to use him
if he persecuted Christians?
His conversion.
Before his conversion,
Saul was a Pharisee of the Pharisees
who intensely persecuted the followers of Jesus.
According to the account in Acts,
his conversion took place on the road to Damascus
where he reported having experienced the vision
of the resurrected Jesus.
He fell to the earth and heard a voice saying unto him,
" Saul.
Saul, why persecute thou me."
Saul replied, "Who art thou, Lord"
and the Lord said, "I am Jesus, whom thou persecutests."
He was blind for three days
and had to be led by his hand to Damascus.
During these three days, Saul took no food or water
and spent his time praying to God.
When Ananias of Damascus arrived,
he laid his hands on him and said,
"Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus
"that appeared unto thee in the way that thou camest
"has sent me, that thou mightest received thy sight
and be filled with the Holy ghost."
His eyesight was restored.
He got up and was baptized.
So that was his Christian birth,
but it is fascinating
that he did not immediately begin his missionary work.
And very quickly he aroused hostility.
Paul was going to incite hatred wherever he preached
but primarily from Jews.
Paul's preparation for ministry
would be exciting to some of us.
It took him 13 years after God hauled him
for Paul to begin what God called him to do that day.
This would be a surprise to many of us today
because we are typically in a hurry to begin things.
So what happened during those 13 years?
Three of those years were spent in Arabia
where Paul had to think and rethink
through his entire theology.
During that time, Paul did not go to college.
He didn't need to consult anybody but the Lord.
Paul was a special one
just like the other disciples.
Paul was also called by Jesus.
Then there was a man called Barnabas.
Barnabas was a good man.
He was the one that introduced Saul
to the Christian Church in Jerusalem.
And that was how Paul spent his 13 years
after he was called.
He spent three years in Arabia thinking about it
and 10 years later in his hometown
after which he was confirmed.
He had a double call from the head and through the church.
So he went forth with a double call.
Paul's first go is to spread the word
through the whole of the Northeast Mediterranean world
as far as the capital of the empire.
And that's what he and Barnabas set out to do.
They went to Cyprus first
after which they went back to the mainland.
Paul's strategy was to create a community of Christians
in every major city
and then move on from there as quickly as possible.
In the book of Romans, Paul says that,
"It was my ambition not to work
where anyone else would have worked."
He tried to open up new ground in unbroken territory.
And so he pressed on even further until he crossed the seas.
The gospel then came to Europe for the first time
and Europe has not been the since.
Having planted churches
and having moved on of course,
he had to follow up his work
and he had a care of all the churches.
And he often did that.
He went back to these little group of churches
one year after he'd planted them
and was able then to appoint elders in each place.
And once an apostle had appointed local elders,
his job was done.
So the other way in which he followed up
was to write letters
and that's why we've got the letters in the New Testament.
That was his way of following up his evangelism.
His motivations.
The last question is actually what made Paul the man he was.
If we look at the life of the apostle Paul,
three things tend to reveal themselves.
The number one great motivation of his life was Christ.
There is no doubt that Paul lived
absolutely for Christ alone.
From the day he met Him in Damascus
he was completely absorbed in Jesus.
That is why he said,
"If I die, I'm better off."
Paul referred to himself as a servant of Christ.
He oftentimes would begin his letters saying,
"Paul the Apostle, a slave of Jesus."
And to be a slave in the ancient world was to be despised.
You were totally owned by someone else.
You had no spare time of your own,
no money of your own, nothing of your own.
You were in complete ownership to someone else.
And he called himself a slave to Christ.
And yet Paul also referred to himself
as an ambassador for Christ.
That was an interesting combination
of high and low social standing.
He was a slave yet an ambassador.
He was proud to be an ambassador.
And again, pleased to be a slave.
His second great motivation of his life was the gospel.
He would have done anything to spread the gospel of Christ.
And that is why he could find pleasure
in a very terrible place like prison.
Even when he was chained to a Roman soldier,
he also saw that as an opportunity to spread the gospel.
He was happy to say, "We now have Christians
in Caesar's household."
While he was in prison
some people grabbed his pulpit
and preached out of rivalry to him
and were glad he was locked up
so they could grab his platform.
And he says, in Philippians
"I hear they've done it out of rivalry and jealousy of me."
But to that, he said, "Hallelujah."
The gospel is being preached.
Can you imagine his focus was the gospel.
He is a man who lived for the gospel.
And he said that I owe it to everyone
just as he had discovered the cure for a pandemic.
He saw it as his responsibility to spread the word.
He saw himself as a debtor to both Jew and Greek.
That's why he was an ambassador
and he would go anywhere to tell anybody
what God had done in Christ.
The third great motivation of his life was grace.
Paul could never get over the fact
that Jesus claimed him when he was on his way
to put Christians in prison.
He could just never get over the fact
that he was totally undeserving
and that Jesus had given him what he deserved
he'd have been in hell.
He just couldn't get over it.
That's what grace means.
It means something that you simply do not deserve.
It is freely given to you.
It is summed up in the statement in Romans.
Paul says, "While we were yet enemies Christ died for us."
And of course, that was so true of him.
He was an enemy.
He was using his whole energy to fight against Christ.
And Christ said, "I'm going to use you.
"You're going to be one of my servants.
This grace is for you."
It's gratitude.
And you can see that the motive of gratitude
is behind so much of this man's labors.
He was so grateful
that he was treated much differently than what he deserved.
The grace of the Lord Jesus
became the motivation for his life.
Those were the three great things in Paul's life.
The gospel was the thing he wanted for others
more than anything else.
And the sheer grace of God motivated him.
We hope you were blessed and encouraged
as we try to spread the message of God.
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