One of God’s Great Surprises
Galatians 1:1 and Philippians 3:3-6

As far as the worldwide (and eternal!) influences go, the conversion of Saul of Tarsus is probably the most significant conversion in the history of the Christian Church. As far as the world goes, however, it never should have happened! Let’s consider Saul of Tarsus, who became the apostle Paul:

1. Where he came from
2. How he thought
3. What he did
4. And then . . . !

One thing is for sure, and that is that this little book of the Bible contained for me and perhaps for some of you one or two points that are absolutely life changing. You might say there are surprises in the book that God has used to make me think differently and hopefully, to live differently.

If I had to pick a verse that describes what Galatians is all about, it would be Galatians 6:15

Galatians 6
¹⁵ For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.

Externals don’t matter, Paul says. When it comes to knowing God what matters is a new creation. There will be many times over the Sundays ahead where we will return to that point.

The book of Galatians didn’t fall out of the sky and land in the apostle Paul’s lap, causing him to say, “This must be from God so let’s put it in the Bible.” Every Bible book was called forth by some circumstance. Something was going on; there’s a background to it. It comes packaged.

Galatians is certainly no exception. That’s why I’m not going to begin at the beginning. I’m going to begin before the beginning. That’s why we’re going to be looking in several places in the book of Acts and in the first verse of Galatians. We’ll stick our toe in the water there and bring some thoughts from Philippians 3 as well.

Galatians 1
¹ Paul, an apostle (not sent from men nor through the agency of man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead),

Let me begin with a story.

In May of 1989 on a horse farm in Pennsylvania, known mostly for breeding and raising Trotters. A thoroughbred colt was born that gave his owners little promise for his future in racing. The colt’s constant bawling for his mother led to his name. He was called “Lil E Tee,” a takeoff from the movie.

He suffered from an immune deficiency disorder and a bad case of colic that required surgery. With what has been described as a dime store pedigree, Lil E Tee was owned by seven different stables in five states by the time he was two, at one time being sold for as little as $3,000 in an industry where winners and those with promise come to be worth millions.

That’s why in the spring of 1992, nobody among the 130,000 spectators at Churchill Downs took seriously the unknown challenger with the dime store pedigree. All eyes instead were on a prizewinner named Arazi, a thoroughbred standout who had drawn a celebrity crowd of film stars and sheiks, all expecting to see their favorite break Secretariat’s record in the Kentucky Derby.

Nobody took Lil E. Tee seriously; that is until the home stretch when the 17 to one long shot pulled ahead of the pack to win the Derby and become the biggest surprise the racing world perhaps would ever see. What a happy surprise if your money was on Lil E Tee.

I would expect though that without question a greater upset even than that derby race by far and away making it pale by comparison was the conversion and the apostleship of Saul of Tarsus.

Think about this. In a list of who is most likely to embrace Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, as Messiah, Lord and Savior – nobody, would ever have picked Saul. Hear what he says about himself:

Philippians 4

⁴ Although I myself might have confidence even in the flesh. If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more:
⁵ circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless.

Saul of Tarsus is a most unlikely prospect. The premier, New Testament, historical scholar of the 20^th century, F.F. Bruce, says this about Paul in this regard: “No single event, apart from the Christ event itself, has proven so determinate for the course of Christian history, should we say world history, as the conversion and commissioning of Paul.

God took this man, Paul, and a gospel from a southwest Asian Aramaic speaking, exclusively Jewish beginning, to shake the western world, all of Europe, Spain, the British Isles, in the space of a generation.

It would be an understatement to say, “What a surprise!” I have three reasons why we ought to be surprised that Saul ever got saved. I would hope that even in our most fleshly moments we would not say, “Oh that person, or I myself, am beyond the reach of the grace of God.” This is astounding.

Where He Came From

First of all, where did Paul come from? We’re going to be doing a little bit of history. I’ll be calling him Saul because that was his name before he was converted. I’ll be going back and forth without making a lot of distinction, so please know when I say Saul I mean Paul because they are the same person.

He came from the best of both worlds, the best of all worlds. He describes himself in Scripture. He didn’t just show up one day and decide to write the Bible. He mentions in the 21^st chapter of Acts that he was from Tarsus, which he called “no mean city,” in other words, a city that should be taken seriously.

Tarsus was quite a place. It was a city in Cilicia, southeastern Turkey today, northwestern Syria, right in that region. It was a city with a rich, colorful heritage going back 2,000 years before Jesus and a key city in the Hittite empire. For hundreds of years Tarsus stood alone as a city state, governed by capable local rulers.  Then the Assyrians whipped them in the 8^th century B.C..  Cilicia and Tarsus became a protector, at first of the Assyrian empire and then the Babylonian empire and then the Persians, then the Greeks, and finally the Romans took it over.

By the time of the first century the time of Jesus and the time of Paul, the Romans made it a province and declared Tarsus to be the principal city of the province. It was located on a fertile plain near a major river, mere miles from the Mediterranean Sea. From the standpoint of military strategy, from the standpoint of economics, Tarsus had it all and it was no surprise then when Tarsus came to surpass Alexandria and Athens as the cultural center of the ancient world. It was in Tarsus where Marc Anthony met Cleopatra for the first time.

Tarsus was a wealthy community, famous for the growing of flax and the weaving of linen, shipping, exporting, and so forth. Because of its character, the Roman emperors declared it to be exempt from taxation. The place was rich in culture.

Paul was a citizen of this place. It may not mean so much any more, although I’m sure in the minds of some it does, but back in those days, where you were from meant a lot. In the first century A.D., you didn’t want to be from Crete. All Cretins, the poem went, are liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. But to be from Tarsus, that meant something. That meant education, wealth, political favor and Saul had it all.

Secondly, recall in the 16^th chapter of Acts the apostle was jailed and they were going to beat him and flog him for an alleged crime. Just as they were stretching him out and preparing to apply the lashes, he said, “Is it lawful for you to do this to me because I am a Roman citizen.” To us, that may not mean a lot, but in those days, it meant a great deal. The captain of the guard said, “You’re a Roman citizen? I purchased my citizenship with a large amount of money.”

It was briefly available, historically, that you could buy the privilege of Roman citizenship and this particular Roman had done that. Paul said, “I was born a citizen.” That means his father or his grandfather were very influential, very wealthy people in the city of Tarsus and Paul had actually inherited his Roman citizenship. That meant all manner of privileges throughout the Roman Empire, wherever he might go.

He or any Roman citizen was always entitled to a fair public trial, exemption from certain forms of punishment, clearly to include flogging, and could not be summarily executed. He had to be tried and treated fairly before any sort of capital punishment could be levied.

Paul was a citizen. It was an empire that was at least half slaves. To be a citizen was a big deal. Paul had that. He’s from Tarsus, he’s a Roman citizen. From the secular standpoint, what more could there be?

How about from a religious standpoint? That takes us to the book of Philippians and those verses we read. He said, “I am a Hebrew of Hebrews,” and that is a deliberate reference. There were two kinds of Jews in the ancient world. There were the Hebrews and the Helenists. It all depended on where you were from and what  your mother tongue. was. Most of the Jews were Helenists. They were Greek-speakers. They were of the Jewish race but they were born and bred elsewhere in some outlying area as far away as Rome or even further west and they spoke Greek as their native tongue.

A Hebrew Jew spoke Aramaic, a form of Hebrew. The Hebrew Jews were considered, at least by their own number, to be a cut above, closer to the original, closer to the language that God spoke to Moses. So for a Jew to say, “I am a Hebrew,” that’s a good thing. That’s a plus.

He said, “I’m a Hebrew,” not a Helenist. Aramaic, not Greek, was Paul’s primary language. He went on to say, “I’m from the tribe of Benjamin.” A couple things are significant about that. This is the first century A.D. After all the tribes had been packed up and deported either by the Assyrians or by the Babylonians, they were scattered all around the civilized world. There were many of them in North Africa and Alexandria. They were everywhere.

For the most part tribal connections became blurred and then non-existent. Not everybody kept track of which tribe they were from.  Paul’s family did and he could claim, even though he’s from Tarsus that he came from a devout Jewish home that still spoke Aramaic in a Greek culture and still traced its lineage to the tribe of Benjamin. Benjamin, by the way, was a scrappy little tribe, made famous primarily by the first king of Israel, whose name was Saul. It wouldn’t be at all surprising to get to heaven one day and find out that both parents had named him after that first king who was from the tribe of Benjamin, King Saul, who was replaced by David.

He had a rich spiritual heritage from his family roots.  At a young age, probably in his early teen years, he was sent from Tarsus down the coast of the Mediterranean to study under the Rabbi Gamalio in Jerusalem. That’s where he received his training. He says, “as for the Law, a Pharisee.”

We’ll see later on in the book of Galatians, as a Pharisee in his training, he had excelled beyond his peers. He was a Pharisee of Pharisees. The word Pharisee means “separated ones.” They were a group of devout God-fearing Bible students who developed in Babylon and later in Persia between the time of the Old and New Testaments. There was no temple any longer. The priestly and sacrificial systems were no more. They were outside of the land, so what did you do if you wanted to be religious?  They organized around the Scriptures rather than around the temple. In their organization there were some who were more conservative, others were considered more liberal.

Different camps and schools of thought developed. Among them were the Pharisees and it was in this mix that the synagogue was born, a place not primarily of worship as the temple had been, but a place primarily for Bible study.

The Pharisees were passionately devoted to the law of God. Their particular niche, in the religious culture of the day, was to study the law and then apply it in modern circumstances. The law was written 1200 years before this, so how was it applied? They would preach on it, teach on it, apply it and gradually develop a body of rules that went alongside Scripture known as the “traditions of the fathers” or the “traditions of the elders” and to those traditions as well as to the Scriptures the Pharisees clung tightly. They were zealous for the Word of God.

Paul had it all. He had money, prestige, education, he was cosmopolitan, he was a respected teacher, a climber in his field, he sat at the feet of Gamalio. Of all the rabbis, Gamalio was universally acclaimed number one.

Don’t you think someone who has all that is going to be a little bit slow to turn his back on it? To embrace not just something different, but something opposite. But that’s what happened. That’s where he came from.

How He Thought

Obviously where we come from influences how we think. He had to know he was right.   This man was one who was very, very sure of himself. He had a strong commitment to know and to live the Scriptures.

The apostle Paul, as a boy, reached a point in his life where he took a stand and made a public decision and commitment to become what is called “a son of the Commandment.” We refer to that today as a Bar Mitzvah. He stood publicly, willingly, enthusiastically, I’ll bet, saying, “From here on out, I’m keeping God’s law,” and then devoted the rest of his life to learning it and applying it.

Someone who makes a commitment like that is bound to come up against failure. That’s what Romans 7 is all about but we’re ahead of the story. He made the commitment, he headed out for further training and he learned the Bible.

Here’s something that we have to dial into Saul’s training. First of all, because he is a Jew, he favors the Jewish side of things. He can read Genesis and realize that there is a sense in which the Jews are God’s chosen people. Different Jews have taken that to greater or lesser extremes but clearly the apostle saw the Jewish nation as God’s instrument at least to reach the rest of the world.

As other Pharisees of his day, he further thought in terms of a broad view of history divided into three time periods. This is how they saw things. They figured that from creation to the giving of the Law was about 2,000 years. That was their segment of time they called “Chaos,” not a lot was happening as far as God was concerned until Moses and the giving of the Law.

They figured the Law section of history would last 2,000 years as well and would be brought to a finish by a key individual predicted to come. They called him the anointed deliverer, the messiah, the Christ. This messiah, this deliverer, which the Pharisees and Paul understood would be coming, was free to change the law. That was his prerogative. He comes from God; he’s the Son of Man. That would follow by 2,000 years worth of this messiah reigning. That is a total of 6,000, and after that’s completed they saw in their minds an eternity of what they called Sabbath rest.

The third 2,000 year segment is characterized by a messiah, an anointed deliverer to be followed by an eternity of Sabbath rest – this is what he saw. Paul was right and he knew it. He understood something about what the Bible said about Messiah. He realized that Scripture taught Messiah would come, shall we say, along the lines of Isaiah 11.

Isaiah 11
¹ Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse, and a branch from his roots will bear fruit.
² The Spirit of the LORD will rest on Him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.
³ And He will delight in the fear of the LORD, and He will not judge by what His eyes see, nor make a decision by what His ears hear;
⁴ But with righteousness He will judge the poor, and decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth, and He will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips He will slay the wicked
⁵ Also righteousness will be the belt about His loins, and faithfulness the belt about His waist.

He had the typical understanding of a Messiah who would come in strength, in righteousness, and in power and would fix things. And the Spirit of the Lord, as the Scripture says, would rest upon Him.

Paul didn’t have any problem with the Messiah. His problem was with a Messiah who died on a cross because he knew what Deuteronomy 21:23 said: Anyone who dies on a cross is cursed. So he hears about Jesus and he gets the message that this new sect called The Way, later to be called Christians, are saying that their Messiah died on a cross. Paul says “absolutely, no way.”

Not only, in his mind, were these people wrong but these people were blasphemous to say that God’s anointed deliverer would be cursed.  Here was Paul’s stumbling block, and that’s language he will use. Christ, he said, to the Jews was a stumbling block. And clearly in his case, that’s how it was.

So how did he think? He thought he was right and he was utterly convinced the Christians were as wrong as they could be, to the point of blasphemy.

What He Did

Well, what happened? Several things. As we might have assumed, someone with Paul’s training, background and aptitude might be expected to pursue a career, an occupation that is both challenging and rewarding. And he did. He picked up a most exciting career, sort of a sanctified bounty hunter on Christians. That’s how he began his career as a young man, working for the Sanhedrin, rounding up Christians.

Why? Acts chapter 2 is Peter’s Day of Pentecost sermon. It says in verse 41 that 3,000 people were converted that day as a result of that sermon. So all these converts with the apostles claim Jesus is resurrected and gone. The apostles are teaching; the people are sharing and good things are happening. It says in verse 46 that day by day they continue with one mind in the temple so they’re not breaking Jewish rules. They are continuing to honor the temple as a special place.

They are breaking bread from house to house. They are taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart. Verse 47 says, “Praising God and having favor with all the people.”

They are clearly on a roll. Good things are happening. This is the infant church. It’s all in Jerusalem. They are all Jews. “And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.” 

If you’re in the Sanhedrin – you don’t like that. That’s not good. And if you’re a young Pharisee convinced these people are blasphemers, you don’t like that either.

Acts 6
¹ Now at this time while the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint arose on the part of the Helenistic Jews (who spoke Greek) against the native Hebrews (who spoke Aramaic), because their widows were being overlooked in the daily serving of food.

They had a problem and solved it with appointing these Greek-speaking deacons, among them, Stephen.

⁷ The word of God kept on spreading; and the number of the disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were being obedient to the faith.

We’re losing some of our own now – if you’re Paul. And there are getting to be more and more of them, whatever are we to do?

⁸ And Stephen, full of grace and power, was performing great wonders and signs among the people.
⁹ But some men from what was called the Synagogue of the Freedmen, including both Cyrenians and Alexandrians, and some from Cilicia and Asia, rose up and argued with Stephen.

The Synagogue of the Freedmen was a synagogue made up of former slaves. They would be predominantly Helenistic and yet it’s well within the scope of reason to expect that Saul knew them all. If he’s being drawn in, the Cyrenians, the Alexandrians, and some from Cilicia and Asia, which is Turkey, Saul surely had his finger in this pot.

He’s hearing things, and he heard Stephen. In the Synagogue of the Freedmen, these are Jews and they don’t like Stephen; they don’t like what he’s saying. Paul doesn’t like what he’s saying; he doesn’t like him either and so they’re going to put him on trial.

The whole of Acts chapter 7 is Stephen’s defense. We won’t cover Acts 7 today, but to put it very quickly, Stephen was accused of speaking against the temple. If you ever want a thumbnail survey of the entire Old Testament, it’s Act 7. Stephen was an intensive learner to the teaching of the apostles. This is laced with Old Testament quotes. It’s a survey of the Old Testament. Stephen basically says, “Look, where was the temple when Abraham, our forefather, came to faith?” Of course there wasn’t one, there wouldn’t be for many, many years.

If you are a member of  the Sanhedrin you really don’t like his argument. So they had to think of a way to do him in. It’s theoretically possible that if Stephen had been a little more restrained he might not have been rocked to sleep as he was. Every sermon needs a point of application and Stephen’s went something like this:

⁵¹ You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit; you are doing just as your fathers did.
⁵² Which one of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? They killed those who had previously announced the coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become;
⁵³ You who received the law as ordained by angels, and yet did not keep it.

Right now he is not their most favorite person.

⁵⁴ Now when they heard this, they were cut to the quick,

That means to the very core of their beings. He has put his finger on a sensitive spot.

And they began gnashing their teeth at him.

⁵⁵ But being full of the Holy Spirit; he gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God
⁵⁶ and he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”

The Son of Man – Messiah – that’s what they are hearing. “I see Messiah standing at the right hand of God.”

⁵⁷ But they cried out with a loud voice, and covered their ears and rushed at him with one impulse.

They took him out and stoned him to death.

Now Judea, with Jerusalem as the capital city, was a Roman state. And they were the ones, in the case of Jesus, who wanted His death but were unable to pull it off. His crime was against the emperors; that’s the tact they took with Jesus. But in issues strictly of religion, the Sanhedrim was able to take matters into their own hands and here they did.

And who should be standing by – standing there holding coats, while these fellows were getting prepared to throw rocks – but Saul.

⁵⁸ When they had driven him out of the city, they began stoning him; and the witnesses laid aside their robes at the feet of a young man named Saul.

Acts 8
¹ Saul was in hearty agreement with putting him to death.

Hearty agreement! There was no doubt in Saul’s mind. The church in Jerusalem began to be scattered. A great persecution arose.

³ But Saul began ravaging the church, entering house after house, and dragging off men and women, he would put them in prison.

“As for me,” he says, “a persecutor of the church.” That’s what I did! That’s who I was!” Saul’s quest was to oppose the blasphemers and he did it with zeal. He was focused and he was driven and he was wrong.

Jesus changed him, single-handedly. That’s where we’ll go next week -- the conversion of Saul. Please know this – when you are a Hebrew of Hebrews, circumcised the eighth day, of the tribe of Benjamin, as to the Law a Pharisee and as to a zeal for the law a persecutor of the church – when you are all those things, you may see yourself totally locked on and totally not needing the grace of God in any way. When that man changes, that’s a miracle. That’s a work of God.

And change He will. He’ll not only change, but he’ll go on to write a book like Galatians in which he comes to a point where he says, “All that I had –  doesn’t mean a thing. What matters, he will say, is a new creation. Nothing else.”