The Scoundrel & The Servant

Would you take your Bibles and turn with me to Acts chapter 8, Acts chapter 8. Acts chapter 8 beginning at verse 1. And Saul was there at the stoning of Stephen, giving his approval to Stephen's death. And on that day a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him.

But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off men and women and put them in prison. Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went. Philip went down to a city in Samaria and proclaimed the Christ there. When the crowds heard Philip and saw the miraculous signs he did, they all paid close attention to what he said.

With shrieks, evil spirits came out of many, and many paralytics and cripples were healed. And so there was great joy in that city. We are so close, brothers and sisters, to the Lord's coming. We are so close.

pro-life activists, okay, by all true pro-life advocates for what it is, an act of terrorism, end quote. A police officer was killed and a nurse remained seriously injured by the senseless violence. And let me add my voice to the condemning of that kind of activity. Even though I'm against abortion, I believe it's wrong. God does not advocate violence where this kind of thing is concerned.

And we need to just remember the families of the officer that was killed and the family

a 3.0 grade point average, and must be active participants in community service. Where is our nation going? On the plus side, though, there's an article here that says that Disney ABC is pulling the sitcom Ellen from its regular lineup for six weeks. The network is reportedly undecided about whether the show will return. Amen. Praise God. Quote, it would be unrealistic to not at least wonder whether or not the content is the reason

for the drop off in viewers, end quote, said ABC Entertainment President Jamie Tarsus. Network sources confirm they are also pulling the extremely low rated Nothing Sacred during February. Amen. Yeah, go ahead. Praise the Lord. We are close. Things continue to happen to indicate that. Just in between services, shared with a couple that were in Topeka this weekend at the Republican

Platform Convention, helping develop the Republican platform for the state.

We don't have the alliance that we did before. We don't have the international support that we did before. But we will be going to war within the next three weeks. There's an attitude among the people as you watch the news networks and as you even talk to people locally that say that's the thing we ought to do and we ought to get in there. And there's an attitude like we've done it before and we're successful and we can do

it again and not have any loss of life. Conditions are different. Attitude of the nation is different. There is more godlessness in higher places than there was back then. Iraq already reportedly has loaded biological weapons into trajectory material, into the rockets themselves. And their most detestable enemy is not the United States as much as we get called the

great Satan, but it's Israel. And you can believe and know because they have already stated it. If even one biological or chemical rocket comes into the nation of Israel, Israel has already stated categorically they will respond with full nuclear strikes. If they do that, if that happens and they do that, Russia will come down to Iraq's defense and Ezekiel 38 and 39 will be fulfilled.

And our congressmen and senators have already told us that within the next three weeks we're going to be at war.

the president lied about having an affair with Monica Lewinsky. Again, as much as this sounds like it's political, I'm not going that direction, so stick with me. 46% of those questioned think it's definitely or probably true that the president lied about having an affair with Monica Lewinsky. Yet, the same poll found that 67% approve of the way Clinton is handling his job.

And I get this on Fridays and Friday evening after receiving this, ABC had a poll on where 74% of the American people approve of the way that Clinton is handling his job. So it went up from 67% the day before to 74% or that day from the morning poll to the evening poll. Confusing results were also found in a Los Angeles Times poll, which reported that 62% of respondents felt that an affair alone would not be reason enough for Clinton to resign, but 51% agreed that impeachment would be in order if he'd lied, quote, we have become

The revolution, quote, so lobotomized our morality on the sexual front that people are blinded to infidelity, end quote, Land told Focus on the Family. He also noted that people refused to judge sexual impropriety because, quote, so many of them have been guilty of similar actions, end quote. While Blankenhorn admits that even the president deserves a certain measure of privacy, he also believes that a right to privacy does not absolve him of personal responsibility,

If you've watched any of the news reports this week as they interview people about it, over and over and over is an in-your-face response that his sex life is not my problem. His sex life, it shouldn't have any bearing on it. Let's just let him do his job as if his actions and character and integrity in no way influence his job performance. Now three-fourths, just about, of the American public feel like he's doing a good job.

You may be one of them. Let me just ask you a question, then how do you measure integrity? What do you measure it against? You see, we are measuring with our heart rather than with what God intended us to measure. And the Bible itself says that the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. And yet I'm afraid that because most people have a job, most people have food coming in,

most people have medical taken care of. The stock market is, even though it's going rollercoaster, hasn't really devastated anyone yet. And so based on those things, economic conditions, people are willing to turn the other way because my boat is afloat. Don't rock it. There's a good job being done because the economy is doing well and my boat is afloat. So then let me ask you, by what do you measure integrity?

You see, if you're saying, well, we measure it according to the bad people, you know, and you're true, you know, these things may have happened, but, you know, that's not a bad person. I mean, you know, I'm not a bad person and I've done some things that aren't right. And so, you know, I'm okay, you're okay. And the Bible again warns, if you measure yourself against yourselves, you are foolish and deceived.

See, the only measure for integrity that is given, whether you are a Christian or not, the only stick that God will use is His Word. And whether you acknowledge that God exists or not does not change the measure. God measures everything according to His Word. Whether you're a believer or a non-believer, it doesn't make any difference. You will ultimately stand before Him and answer for your life according to the measuring stick

of the Word of God. And so, He gives us opportunities while we're here to come to an understanding where that's concerned. And so, let me ask you again, by what do you measure integrity? I tend to believe that if the economy were in the pits right now, there would be no question. Get the guy out of there. But because people are measuring with their hearts, because they're weighing it out with

their own personal circumstances rather than according to the Word of God, we have a nation that's in the condition that it's in and going downhill fast, about ready to go to war that could be the beginnings of World War III. Now I say all of that because as we come into Acts chapter 8, we are shown four different individuals. I don't know if you've read through the chapter yet. I hope you do.

But if you read through the chapter, you'll notice that there are four individuals listed. There is Saul, and Philip, and Simon the sorcerer, and the Ethiopian eunuch. Now again, if you've been here any length of time at all, you will hear me say over and over and over, whenever you read the text, ask questions of the text. Ask God what He's doing. What do you want me to understand from this?

Lord, you've written this this way. What do you want me to understand by what you've written? It's not just a bunch of words. It's not just a bunch of stories. There are reasons why God has written what He has written the way that He has written them. So Lord, you've given us four different lives, four different individuals in this chapter. What do you want us to glean from that?

What do you want us to understand? What do you want us to see? I do not believe that this is simply a chronology of the church, although it is that. By that I mean from the time the church is born at Pentecost until the end of the book of Acts, you see different occurrences, different things that happen regarding the church. It obviously ends when we get, if we have a chance, if we're here that long, when we

get to the end of Acts, you'll notice that it doesn't have an ending. It just goes on because the church continues. The church is still going on from the time that it was founded until the time that Jesus takes it out, which we may be at that end of it right now. But it's not just a chronology of the church. There are things that God is teaching us about the church and the lifestyle of the church,

what we as the church, Christians, part of the body of Christ, need to be doing. We're looking at this overall study under the heading, under the overall heading, called to be witnesses. That's what we are called to be. And so everything that's presented in this book of Acts will answer that. What does it mean to be a witness? How are we called to be witnesses?

To what do we witness? We've already talked in chapter 7, at the end of chapter 7, about that we need to be godly witnesses of how to die. And I mean literally, physically die. Nobody talks about that. Only at a funeral do you hear much about death. And yet at the end of chapter 7, we are given an understanding of how Christians should face death and literally die.

And that needs to be modeled. We need to, if we are ones who are called on, that God calls on us, and we're going to experience and taste death, then we need to know how to face that. And the Bible teaches us those things. And so as we come to Acts chapter 8, we have four individuals. What do you want us to learn, Lord, from these four lives? I believe, as you look at these over the next several weeks, we will examine these

four individuals and find that they reveal to us four heart conditions. Four conditions of the heart that end up reflecting the attitudes of the heart. For your mouth speaks your heart, and you will act on what you believe. You may say you love the Lord, but let me watch your actions because your actions speak your heart. Your actions will show me, in fact, what you believe.

And so your heart attitude reflects itself in your outward attitude, in your lifestyle. And as we look at these four individuals, we will see that fact. Their heart attitude is reflected in their works, in their lifestyles. And so to help us kind of remember who they are, I've kind of assigned them a name that goes along with their name, just kind of a hook on which to hang for your own memory purposes.

First of all, we're going to meet today, we're going to meet Saul the scoundrel. And then we're going to meet Philip the servant. And then we'll meet Simon the sorcerer, that's what he's called in the text, and we'll just keep that because it tells us volumes about his life. And then we'll meet the Ethiopian eunuch who has no name, but we'll call him the seeker.

So we have the scoundrel and the servant and the sorcerer and the seeker, four S's on which to hang the studies over the next few weeks. Now, not only are we given these four individuals, but if you notice, from almost the beginning,

like, but also to contrast the other three. This kind of a pattern is found throughout scripture. You remember in the parables, there is a parable about the seed and the sower. Jesus talked about a sower going out to sow some seed, and that seed was sown on four different kinds of soil. Jesus mentioned later that the soil represented the heart, just as I want us to see the same

picture here in Acts chapter 8. Some seed, first of all, was sown onto the path, Jesus said. And the birds of the air came and ate it up. Now the disciples are listening to this, and later they ask him, what do you mean? We didn't understand. It's cool because Jesus would have imprinted upon their minds the picture before the explanation. We've been on the hill that they label over there, the hill of Beatitudes or the Mount

of Beatitudes. Their mountains are like our flint hills. So the mountain range of Carmel and all this is mountainous and similar to the Rockies. But when you talk about the Mount of Beatitudes or the Mount of Transfiguration, they're kind of like the flint hill region. But along the Mount of Beatitudes, which is right on the edge of Galilee, the Sea of Galilee,

which is a big lake, you can sit. We sat there, and Pastor Chuck was down at the bottom speaking up to us.

And Jesus mentioned that that indicated that the path of the heart that that seed fell on was a path that was well-worn and traveled, that heard this over and over, and was so beaten down, so trodden down, that the seed could not catch itself in the ground and set down any kind of a root. There are those of you here today who have heard the gospel before, and as I even begin to teach, and I know some of you work in third shift, and I'm not condemning you, but there are some who, this is just, you know, it's like, you feel like it's old hat, and you're just kind of nodding, you know? And the seed that's coming out is just going to be like that on the ground of the path.

It's just kind of going to be there, and I'll wake you up in about a half an hour, and you can go home, and, you know, nothing's going to transpire as a result of that sowing, because it's just going to hit the ground. The birds, Jesus said, represent the evil one, and he comes and snatches up that seed before it ever has a chance to take root. There is what's called in interpretation, or in the hermeneutics of biblical interpretation, biblical constancy. Whenever something is defined for you in Scripture as representing something, it continues that constant representation throughout Scripture.

So when Jesus defines the birds as representing the evil one, wherever you go through Scripture and find that, the area of the birds, biblical constancy will tell you that the birds represents the evil.

Something that grows great big is abnormal. It's not normal for the growth. The second thing is biblical constancy. Jesus had already used the birds in the parable of the sower and said that they represented the evil ones. So the birds nesting in the tree indicates that the evil one nests in the middle of the church. And boy, if you've been with the church very long, you know that's a fact from the squabbles

and the infightings and pastors running off with secretaries and everything else that goes on. A lot of trouble in the church. But the birds come along and they eat that. They take it before it has any root. The second ground he mentions is the one where some of the seed is sown along the rocky path. Now, I've mentioned before in Israel, that's not hard to do because everything there is

rocks. And so to sow some seed along the rocky path, even off the main beaten down path would still be rocks off to the side of it. And the seed fell among the rocks. And because there's rock and then there's rock right underneath the soil, the seed had no opportunity to germinate. It had no opportunity to really put down a whole lot of root. And though a stock of plant grew up, it had no way to go down and reach the water that

refreshed it. And so the sun beat down on the plant, Jesus said, and it died out before it ever produced any fruit. Before it ever headed out and produced any grain, it died from the heat. Jesus went on to describe that as being the heart that has heard these things before.

You will not seek to spend time in his word. You will not seek to spend time in prayer. You will not seek out someone else to whom you can be accountable and pray together. And after a period of time, a few days or so back out there in the world, the pressures from your peers will get so intense that you, in order to continue to maintain that relationship with them, that will die out and you'll just go back to being the way that you were before.

Now the next soil that's mentioned is the thorns. And if they're the second thing that Israel has most productively besides rocks are thorn bushes and thistles. And you see those along that area where the wheat is, the areas of the thorns, you sit on them just about, or you're sitting on the hill to listen to the message. And according to Jesus, some of the seeds, some of the word fell among the thorns and it started to grow up.

But it says that the thorns choked out the plant so that it was unable to bear any fruit. And you look at the thorn bushes and that's what they are is bushes. I mean, they're, they're spiny little thorny things. We have something like it, you know, those little weeds that, that are kind of flat and they go, they spread out like a flower flat on the ground and you go to pick them up and they're just born bristly and you grab them and you get thorns stuck in your fingers and stuff.

their bitternesses, their greed, their animosity, their complaining, their backbiting is so ingrained in their lifestyle that although they want to walk the way the Lord wants them to walk, this other is so established already that as much as they try to walk in the Lord, the habit patterns of the old life just grab on and choke that out before it has any chance to grow. And some of you sitting here today are that way. You're going to hear this and want to walk in the ways of the Lord, but as far as confessing your own areas of sin, you're not going to want to do that. You're not going to want to give up certain areas of your lifestyle.

You're not going to want to give up certain habit patterns. They will compete and you'll think, well, I can do this. I can walk with the Lord and still do this on the side and be okay and you won't. You will be choked out. The life of the word of God will be choked out in your life soon where that's concerned.

You, first of all, got to move the rock and I'm talking rock enough to make buildings, let alone fences. You got to get it off the ground. Then you got to dig down a little bit and remove the rock that's right underneath the ground so that you can get some depth with your plants. Then you have to remove the thistles and the thorn bushes and pull them out and go pile them up and burn them.

And now your land is cleared. Now you can plow it, then you can sow it. And that's the one that he said produces fruit. Now that's a heart that's sitting here today and you say, I want what the Lord has. I know the time is close. It's short. I want to follow the Lord. I want to be about his business. Well, there's some things that have to happen. First of all, you need to realize that there's going to be pressure put on you where your

faith is concerned. You need accountability. You need the blessing of a small group of other brothers and sisters that are there that will walk you through this time. You need that constancy of their availability. You need to realize that you have habit patterns of part of your sin nature, part of the flesh that you have, wants to do those other things and will continue to want to do those other

things even as you surrender your heart to the Lord. But God is saying that I can overcome that. You need to confess it as something that's sin and that you want to forsook, not that

He dragged off men and women and put them in prison. Let's look at the scoundrel. I call him Saul the scoundrel. And you may think, oh, that's awful harsh. I mean, here, he's just a guy who's ignorant of what God's doing. He's just, I mean, he's like me, you know, he just didn't realize what was going on. And God had to just knock him to the ground on the road to Damascus to really speak to

him. But he's just, he's just ignorant. He's not a scoundrel. What is a scoundrel? Well, Webster defines scoundrel as, quote, a mean, worthless fellow, a rascal, a low, petty villain, a man without honor or virtue, a man without integrity. Well, surely we can't say that of Saul, can we? I mean, isn't Saul here an honorable man? I mean, rather than from being from a low, despotic background, wasn't he from a well-bred

family? Yes, he was. Weren't his parents wealthy? Yes, they were. Wasn't he schooled in some of the greatest schools? Yes, he was. Wasn't he schooled in Hebrew and in his theology under Gamaliel, the head of the priests in Israel? Yes, he was. Was he really a man without honor and virtue? He even says of himself, Philippians chapter 3, verses 4 through 6, that he was circumcised

on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, in regard to the law of Pharisee, as for zeal, persecuting the church, as for legalistic righteousness, faultless. Wasn't he worthy? Wasn't he a man of integrity? Wasn't he well-bred? Wasn't he a man of great reputation? By the way, in Philippians, that was Paul, Saul converted, writing that in the very next

verse he says, and all of these things I count as dung. I like listening to Gail Irwin when he teaches that. He says, the word dung, he said, doesn't that just kind of hang on your lips, dung, you know? Saul counted everything that made any difference, made any point of virtue, of position, of honor in his life, to that point, he said, he counted them as dung in comparison to his life with Christ.

Well, okay, maybe scoundrel is a little too harsh of a word to describe him. How about this one? How about let's just describe him as a sinner, because all of us are sinners, right? That sounds a little more compassionate, I mean, we're all sinners, there's something excusing about saying that today, we're all sinners, so that's okay, you know, pat each other on the back, we're sinners, that's okay.

But Paul wrote to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1.15 and says, here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, in NIV it says, of whom I am the worst, in King James it says, of whom I am chief, and so Saul even says of himself, Paul even says of himself, I'm a sinner, I'm the worst, I'm the baddest, I'm the most corrupt. Sinner or scoundrel, it really doesn't make any difference, apart from Christ, Saul is both, he's worthless, he's a petty thief, he's a villain, he's a liar, he's corrupt, that's a scoundrel, that's a sinner. Apart from Christ, you and I are scoundrels and sinners.

Apart from Christ, we're just going through the existence of this world, waiting for hell, which is not going to be like that joke about the Savior, by any means. Verse 1 says, and Saul was there giving approval to Stephen's death. Back in chapter 7, verse 58, we saw that the stoners, those who were stoning Stephen, laid their clothes at Saul's feet in order to get a better throw, in order to get more power into the propelling of their stones at Stephen.

One of those who opposed Stephen, who argued with him, who discussed theology with Stephen and opposed, the word there means they derided, they opposed him vehemently concerning the gospel. Saul was one of those from Tarsus, and probably a member of that synagogue of the freedmen. He was knowledgeable in the Word of God. He obviously knew the Word of God. He obviously could quote the Word of God.

He trusted in his own righteousness, his own rightness, and his esteem was based upon that. Christians then were a threat to Saul, not because Saul was seeking to defend the Lord. Listen, God does not need defending. God is perfectly capable of defending himself. You and I are not sent out to defend God. This is not the Crusades. We're not sent out to be defenders of God.

We're sent out to tell other people about Him. That's what a disciple is.

You can't please people. When the people esteem Jesus and they say, oh, he's great. Let's make him king. What does it say in John chapter 4 that Jesus, how did he respond? He didn't take it to heart because he knew it was in the hearts of people. He didn't succumb to the peer pressure. He didn't succumb to their acclaim and their esteem of him because he knew it was in the

hearts of men. Man, you'll go wacko trying to please people. You need to do what God's word says is right. That's the rod. That's the stick of measure.

Then and only then will you find the joy and the approval and the esteem that you're looking for. Quickly. Verse two. The persecution begins to intensify. On that day, the great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. Now, I hope you write in your Bibles. If you're using one from here and you don't have one, please take it.

Please write in it. Please mark it up as you read it and study and mark things down that stand out to you and things you want to remember right in the margins and everything else. There's nothing unholy about that. But two words I want you to at least be aware of and circle are the word all and accept. All except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea.

All. The believers there in Jerusalem had been trained. The period of years has probably gone by now, by the time we're at Acts chapter eight, maybe two or three years, maybe even a little longer. But at least two years, most scholars feel like has gone by from Pentecost to now, from chapter two to chapter eight. And the believers have been discipled. They've been prepared to minister, but they're probably reluctant to go.

They remember what the disciples had probably been teaching, the apostles had been teaching about how Jesus, at the end of what we call Matthew 28, but at the end of his time on earth, told them that he was sending them out. And as they went, they were to make disciples, teaching them about the things that Jesus had said and baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. They remember Acts chapter two, or Acts chapter one, really verse eight, where Jesus said to wait in Jerusalem until the power, until the promise of God comes upon you, for you shall receive power and you shall be witnesses. You'll receive power to be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.

They've heard that. They remember that. They've been taught that. They've been prepared. But there's just a reluctance yet to step out and go and go do it. And you and I know how that is.

in chapter 7, the first part of chapter 7, 8,000 priests ministering in the temple, and probably several thousand of them had become believers, and they're there with the other 15 or 20,000. There's a bunch of believers, and they've gotten a routine established, even with all of them. They're meeting in homes. They're meeting for prayer three times a day at the temple.

Things are going great. It's kind of cushy. Where's the getting out and going into the uttermost parts of the earth? Well, yeah, I know, we need to do that. So God stirs them up. He sticks His finger in and just kind of stirs them up, and persecution begins, and they leave, and they go out. And verse 4 tells us, as they went, they preached the Word. That's what He wanted them to do in the first place, several years earlier.

And see, you and I are the same way. We're kind of comfortable with the way things are, and we don't want to rock the boat. That's where it comes back to. We don't want to rock the boat. Well, sink the boat. This place is not our home. We're leaving this place. Don't be afraid of a little change. Don't be afraid because you are the Lord's. You belong to the Lord.

God uses adversity to stir us up, and so persecution happens, and God mixes up the circumstances, and He uses that to cause us to trust Him and to begin to minister. The things He's called us to be and to do in the first place. So all of the believers, the persecution was intense. They saw Stephen stoned. They saw Saul going nuts in a rage, and they decided to leave, and it says, and all of

them left. And that means all of them left. Remember again, this is Luke writing. Luke is a physician. Luke is a researcher. Luke does not use words that mean something other than, well, some of them stayed. No, it would have been some of them left, and some of them stayed, but he put all left except the apostles. So we know that the main part of the believers left because of the persecution, but the apostles

stayed. Now ask the question, why? I can understand the others leaving because of the persecution, but why did the apostles stay? Well, let me give you two possible reasons. Number one is they've been here before. They were with Jesus when He was arrested, and they all scattered. They split, and Jesus was crucified, and nobody was there, and they find the tomb empty three

days later. Jesus appears to them in the room with the doors locked, freaks them out. Thomas isn't there. He won't believe them. He appears the next week with Thomas present, freaks them out again, tells them to go ahead and go on out. They've been locked up here now for three days, and then a week, they're afraid, scared to death to step out. Jesus says, go on before me to Galilee, and I'll meet you there, and they get there, and

they're waiting, and He hasn't shown up, and they go back to fishing, and they see this guy on the shore, and you know the story. They find out it's Jesus. They come, and He instructs them some more, restores Peter, and tells them how they're going to die, which is encouraging, right? Well, it is. If you know how you're going to die, you can go ahead and go for it, and that was the intent,

and He showed them that He was in control. He was in control. They need not fear, and they'd understood that. Between then and now, they'd come to understand that, and they stayed, even in facing persecution because they knew how they were going to die. He'd already told them, but secondly, and we may overlook it, is verse two. It says, godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him.

I believe they stayed also because of those godly men. Now, if you're reading King James, I think it says, devout men. The devout men stayed. Let me say to you that these are not believers. Wait a minute. How can you be so sure? Because what did it say in verse two here? Verse one, it says, and how many of them left? All of them except the apostles. There weren't any other believers there.

Again, Luke doesn't mince words. If Luke were to say that these were believers, he would have said, and some of the believers buried Stephen, and some of the disciples buried Stephen. But he says, and he's very specific in his wording, and some godly men or some devout men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. Now, again, it's significant. Why? Because these are probably Jews who have not yet believed.

Very probably priests who have been watching from the periphery and seeing all this stuff going on and seeing several thousand of their own becoming believers, sacrificing the benefits of the priesthood, being driven out by the persecution of Saul, and yet hanging on to their faith. And these guys are watching, much like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea did when Jesus was there. And they haven't quite yet committed their hearts to the Lord, but as Stephen is killed, they step out. And this is an act of faith, twofold.

First of all, it was a law, a Jewish law, that you don't leave a body unburied. It was against the law for a dead body can desecrate.

They were taking a stand, and they were openly saying, this was wrong, and they mourned deeply. They wailed. They cried for him from the deep part of their heart. These godly men are going to need discipling, and the apostles stayed and were there to disciple these guys and others that were going to come to faith as a result of that. But Saul began to destroy the church, verse 3.

Saul began to destroy the church. If you're reading King James, it says, Saul made havoc with the church. The Greek word that's used there was used in classical literature to describe a wild animal that would savagely tear up a body, the body of another animal or the body of a human for food, just savagely rip it apart. Or it would also describe a wild boar that was wounded, and as it was wounded, just was enraged and would run through the fields and run through the vineyards, and the vineyards there, if you've seen an olive vineyard, how the shoots grow out, and they're pretty stout and stiff, and they'll weave themselves together, and these wild, wounded boar would just run

through that, it would make no difference, and they'd just tear them to pieces, just tear it apart, because they were just insane from being wounded. That's the word that's used, is destroy in the NIV, or made havoc with the church in the King James, that's Saul just went nuts. He sees these guys openly defying the law and burying this body and mourning for him, probably fellow priests again, and Saul just goes nuts, it just sets him off. And in a rage, he's ready to destroy the church.

He was wounded himself, he was reacting, he was not thinking about his actions, he was just moving solely on emotions, not weighing his actions out before God. And it says that he went house to house, dragging off men and women to prison. He had no concern for others, no concern for families, he would break in and drag husbands and wives off, or rip husbands away from their wives, and leave screaming kids there, and drag them off to prison.

what your past is like. Saul says, I'm the worst. I'll give him that. I've been pretty bad, you know, but I'll let him be the worst. That's okay. I'm pretty bad. Enraged heart. Done things stupidly. Wanted the approval of other people rather than the approval of God. Moved in a rage at times. And maybe some of you are here, and you've done things, and you've hurt other people.

Maybe those closest to you, and you've hurt them deeply, wounded them severely. Maybe it's to other brothers and sisters in the church. Maybe it's to family members. And you kind of feel like, they probably will never forgive me. How could they forgive me? That's not your responsibility right now. You're just to love them, and realize the love that God has for you, and realize the

love that he fills you with to love them, even if they don't love you. See, if he can do that with Saul the scoundrel, he can do that with you and me. And this morning is the first of the month, and it's the time we come to the tables, the Lord's table. And we take the articles that represent the body of Jesus that was broken for us, and his blood that was shed.

And we remember. We remember that event of the cross, and how brutal it was. And yet we're to remember what it accomplished, because this, he said, I do for you.