Jan 10, 2010                    Gal 1:11-24               Our Past and Future  

   Anwar El Sadat was the third President of modern Egypt, serving from October 1970 until October 1981. In his eleven years as president he changed Egypt's economic and political direction.  His leadership in the War of 1973 made him a hero in Egypt, and for a time throughout the Arab World.  His visit to Israel and the eventual Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty won him the Nobel Peace Prize.  However, this was an act enormously unpopular among other Arabs, and resulted in Egypt being suspended from the Arab League. The peace treaty was the primary reason given by Khalid Islambouli, who assassinated Sadat on Oct 6, 1981.  This is Islamboulis photograph.

       As you look at this man, a committed terrorist and assassin, I want to suggest that you are looking at a man much like Saul of Tarsus in the New Testament.  We are continuing a sermon series on Paul’s letter to the Galatians and today I want to see a little of who Paul was in his past life as Saul of Tarsus.  And I want to see what happened to him on the road to Damascus where he saw the risen Jesus Christ.   In all this, I hope you and I can take a look at our past life, who we are today, and who we might become in our life.  Because if this man Saul could change so much, then there is reason for us to know that we too can change our lives. 

       Who was Saul of Tarsus?  Traditional Protestant thought since Martin Luther in the 16^th century has thought of Saul as a man trying to keep the Jewish law in order to get to heaven.  At some point, he realized his failure to keep the law and realized that the law could not save him and so he turned to faith in Christ.   This is the picture that many of us were taught in church.  But this view does not hold up historically or Biblically.  This view better describes Martin Luther himself rather than Saul.   Look at Galatians 1:13f…

       Paul describes his former way of life as violent persecution, destruction, and extremely zealous.  He says he had advanced in Judaism beyond most others.   What does this mean?   First, this word Judaism needs examination.  This word only appears in the New Testament here in these two verses.  No where else.  This word appears no where in the Old Testament.  You see, the word Judaism emerged only around 167 BC when Israel revolted against the Greek powers that ruled over them.  In this period between the Old and New Testaments, the Jewish people and especially the Pharisees focused most heavily on themselves as the chosen people of God.  In this period, the most strict among the Jewish people emphasized the parts of Jewish law which separated them from other people.  Things like circumcision, food laws, keeping the Sabbath, and mingling only with Jews.   These things were emphasized to separate themselves from the Greeks and Romans who ruled over them.   The word Judaism did not simply mean the religion of the Old Testament, but rather a very strict religious-political view of keeping oneself separate from all other people who were not the chosen people of God.   I want to emphasize that this is not the meaning of the word Judaism today, but it was the meaning between 167 BC when Jews went to war against the Greeks and AD 70 when the Jews went to war against the Romans.  

      The next word to understand is the word Zealot.  Paul says that he was an extreme zealot.  Everyone in this time would have understood this word in the same way that we understand the word “terrorist.”  During this period, from 167 BC to AD 70, Zealot Jews took the most violent stories of the Old Testament and made those to be the model for following God.   If you study the apocryphal writings between the Old and New Testament, if you study the Dead Sea Scrolls, you discover that zeal for the Lord is modeled after people like Phinehas in Numbers 16 who kills a fellow Israelite who had married a foreign woman, or modeled after people like Simeon and Levi in Genesis who kill an entire village after their sister was attacked by one man from that village.   Now if you look at these Old Testament stories, they never say that God had commanded these actions.  But Zealots for Judaism between 167 BC and AD 70 understood that Zeal for the Lord meant violently opposing foreign contamination.   Zeal for the Lord was the phrase used in the war agianst the Greeks and the name Zealot was the term used by those who attcked in Romans.   But this Pharisee Zeal was most often focused not against foreign Greeks and Romans but against fellow Jews who were more open or friendly to foreign ways.  In the same way that Anwar Sadat was killed by a fellow Muslim because Sadat sought peace with Israel, Zealots like Saul were most focused on violently persecuting fellow Jews who were associating with foreigners.  This Zeal set up boundary walls to protect the purity and separateness of Judaism.  God was only for the chosen people and no one else.   Thus Jesus was opposed due his breaking down the walls of food laws and healing on the Sabbath.  Thus the Jewish Christian Stephen is killed in Acts chapter 6-8 with Saul’s approval because Stephen was a Jewish Christian who spoke of opening God’s love to all people. 

       Who was Paul in his former way of life?  He was not a man worried about keeping the law so he could go to Heaven.  He was a Zealot, keeping a specific view of the law that separated him from Greek and Roman people, and he was a Zealot, terrorizing fellow Jews who did anything to break down the walls between Israel and foreign people.  But then something happened to him.   Saul was on his way to the city of Damascus to arrest more Christians, to have them brought back to Jerusalem in chains, when he had a sudden change of life.  Did this change of life come from some other people?  Was Saul influenced by his fellow Zealots to change?  No, they were encourgaing him in his present life and he was very successful in his current life.  Was Saul influenced by the Jewish Christians?  No, they were runing from him and would have nothing to do with this man.  Then what caused this change?  Galatians says that it came from God.  Paul is clear in all he says here.  This did not come from man.  His change came from God.   It was not of his own doing but was the Grace Gift of God given to him.  It was not a new idea that Saul figured out, but it was revealed to him from God. 

     What was revealed to Saul on the road to Damascus?  Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  For Pharisees like Saul, Jesus was a cursed figure.  Jesus was a teacher who had shared meals with sinful people.  Jesus did not keep the purity laws concerning food.  Jesus healed people on the Sabbath.  Jesus associated with Roman soldiers and tax collectors.  Jesus in every way broke down the walls that separated the chosen people from the heathen outsiders.  Finally, the Old Testament law says, “Cursed is anyone hanged on a tree.”  On the cross, Jesus was a person cursed by God.  He could not be a man of God, and his followers were not part of the chosen people of God.  But then all that changed.  “Saul, Saul.  Why are you persecuting me?”  And Saul, lying in the dirt, asked, “Who are you?”  And the answer was, “Jesus.”  Saul was so shaken to his very core that he was soon baptized in the name of this Jesus.  Then he says in verse 17-18 that he went away for three years into Arabia, into the wilderness, to pray and meditate and read the Word, to understand what this all meant.  All that Saul had ever been was shattered.  His hatred of foreign people.  His separation from others.  His violence.  How much was he changed?   Gal 1:16 and in Acts 9, Paul says that he was now called by God to preach the good news among the Gentiles.

      Can you grasp this change?  Saul who had hated and persecuted Greeks and Romans would now become the leading voice of the ancient world to tell all people that God loved them.  The change is beyond comprehension.  How could it be?  Paul says that it was all because of the Grace Gift of God.

        So who are we in our lives?  Where have you been and where are you today?  Sometimes, we are so locked into our past that we seem unable to ever go forward.  So many people are trapped by a past of mistakes they have made or by mistakes and abuses enacted against them by other people. Some of us are trapped by false models of the Bible just as Saul was.  So many of us are stuck behind walls of anger, hatred, abuse, sin, hurt, and pain.   It just seems we can never really escape our past.  It looms so large behind us like a giant shadow following us everywhere and everyday.  Listen.  We can be set free.  If a man like Saul of Tarsus with his horrid past could escape, then so can we.  No matter what is behind you, you can move into a new life.  You too can meet this risen Jesus Christ.  You too can grow in prayer, meditation, and study of the Word.  You can discover a new life of joy in place of fear.

       Today we have learned some about who was Paul?  This will be important as we look in the next weeks at what was Paul’s message?  To understand what he taught, we need an accurate view of who he was.  But for today, I hope you see clearly this man of anger and violence and false views of God who was changed into a man of joy and love for all people.  That is an incredible change.  And God can change your life also.  Wherever you are and whoever you are, God in His Gift Grace can change your life too.  Amen.