All right, we've got a couple of announcements just to remind everybody of. This time in two weeks, we will all be resting. The conference will be over with. We're not hearing it. They're not hearing it. We don't have a, the speakers aren't working. Is it working now? No. We don't have any speakers. I got everything, all the switches flipped up here. There we go. There we go. We have sound. All right. A couple of announcements. Early voting began this last, I guess it was Tuesday, and will run through next Friday. And so get a good conservative voter guide. and especially one that goes through the judicial races and gets some evaluation on some of those races. And I had someone send me some stuff the other day that was negative on one of them. So do your homework, one of the Republican judges as well as at least a guy running in my Texas House district. some problems there but you know it's a choice between it's the pot calling the kettle black and I'm not sure which is which unfortunately you have that but at least on the one hand there was no nothing untoward in her professional life just I'm just personal unlike the other guy so Voting, early voting, Chafer Conference starts Monday a week. We still need some volunteers to help out with some things. We need cookies, things of all that. It just goes crazy from now until then. And then we need to have two ladies who will volunteer to help in the nursery once a month. And then we can go, each person just works in there once a month. So it's not a lifetime commitment, though sometimes it feels that way. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication. With thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God, and the peace of God which surpasses all comprehension shall defend your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee. For the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God shall stand forever. So before we get started this evening in our study in Philippians, we'll have a few moments of silent prayer to make sure we're in right relationship with the Lord. And then I will open in prayer. Let's pray. Father, we're just so very grateful that we have you to come to. You are our very present help in time of trouble. We all face adversity and pressure day in and day out from one thing or another. Some things are small and they seem to bother us the most. And some things are much more serious. Father, we have, I know we have a number of pastors and retired pastors on our prayer list. that need prayer and their families need prayer for taking care of them. We have John Page out in Oregon. We have Dan Ingram in Virginia. And there are, and David Dunn here, we have these prayer requests that you would strengthen them and give them wisdom, give their caregivers wisdom. And Father, just pray for Dan that he might be able to have a time of clarity. With so much treatment going on, they're not really sure what's causing some of this confusion. So we just pray for them. And Father, we're thankful we can stand in their stead as intercessors. We're thankful for the missionaries we support and the way in which you're using the promise book in many places. And it's always your word that has the impact. Now, as we study your word tonight, help us to think our way through the background to what we're studying in Philippians chapter three, that we might come to a greater understanding of what is going on here. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen. It's interesting how the things that we're studying about Jewish evangelism on Tuesday night sort of dovetail in with what we're studying in Philippians chapter three, because the issue that Paul will get into when we get down into verse eight and following is the issue of justification. This is one of the great passages on understand how we become righteous before God. And so I'm hoping that this track that I've written will be available by the Chafer Conference, and we're working on that. And so things are coming together. Okay, well tonight we're going to get back into our study in Philippians. And so we're looking at the life of Paul, a review of the life of Paul. Philippians 3, 4-6 is our passage, but we're spending most of our time just being reminded of God's grace in Paul's life so we can understand the background to what he is saying here in verses 3 down through verse 7. And verse Going back to understanding our context, the issue, there are two issues facing the Philippians. The first issue is a problem of unity and a lack of humility. And that was the issue that started in chapter 2, verse 1, and covered the second chapter. The second is the issue of standing fast for the truth. These are indicated in the opening verses of the introduction to the main body of the epistle. where they are told by Paul to stand fast in one spirit with one mind striving together. And then in verse 28, not being terrified by your adversaries. Yesterday morning, I was reading in one of my morning devotional books, which is a book called Her Story. And that was written by Diana Lynn Severance, who is, in fact, she'll be here at the conference. But she is the director of the Dunham Bible Museum over at what is now Houston Christian University, used to be Houston Baptist University. And she has written two of these calendar devotionals. By calendar devotional, that means they're set up to read each day. So she's got her doctorate in history from, Rice, she also has a degree, I think from a seminary or two, and she's done a wonderful job. I'm not a fan of most devotionals, but these really focus on historical people and historical events, and she writes very well, and they're just fascinating to read. And so it happened that yesterday, or is today the 22nd? Yeah, it was this morning. that I think I read ahead yesterday. It's a story of Rene of France. Now, a little background on this, that Rene was brought up by her aunt, who was Marguerite of Navarre. who was then married to Henry of Navarre, who was the King of Navarre in the early 1500s in France. This is at the time of the Protestant Reformation. She was born in 1510 and was the second daughter of King Louis XII of France and Anne of Brittany. When her mother died at four, she was then brought up by her aunt, who was a strong believer. And even though she studied the writings of the Reformers and she came personally to an understanding of the key doctrines of the Reformation, she never broke with the Roman Catholic Church. And she was also able to have a strong influence on her husband, King Henry of Navarre, and that they made a home where Protestants could be rescued in Navarre. And so as she grew up, she was married to Ercole of Estes, who was the Duke of Ferrara. And he was not sympathetic to Reformation teaching at all. But Renee had been brought up and taught the English scriptures based on the translation of John Wycliffe, and she was very strong in that. Now, the Duke of Farrar is a fascinating individual if you study the Renaissance period. And around his court, they brought a lot of the significant people involved in the arts in Italy. And so it was a place of refinement, intellectual pursuits, and at her court, She tried to use her influence to protect Protestants who were fleeing from persecution. And one of the Protestants she protected was John Calvin. He had to go into exile. He lived under an assumed name, Charles Desperville, and he stayed there for a month. But then the Duke discovered who he was and had him arrested for heresy. And then she was able to work out his escape so that he could get to a place of safety. As a result of that, she was isolated and basically put under house arrest. Calvin maintained a correspondence with her for the rest of his life. And then Theodore Beza, who was Calvin's successor, continued to correspond with her through the rest of her life. So as a result of what she had done, the Duke of Farrar took the children away from her, put her in solitary confinement. And under pressure, she dissimulated and went back to the Catholic church. And so that reestablished her position. But after the Duke died, her son became the Duke, and he also was against Reformation truth. So she decided to return to France, and even though the people in Farrar loved her, she had to leave. So she goes back to France, and she is very heavily involved in protecting the Huguenots. Those were the Protestants of France. And she stayed away from the court in Paris. And as a result, she was able to do things. They had a large home. She had at one time over 300 Protestants living under her roof and feeding them and protecting them. And she even built a chapel and hired two Protestant ministers to oversee the teaching of the Word. When Charles IX came and became king, he forced her to give up her fugitives and leave the castle, so she hired wagons and provisions to move the Protestants out of the country. And so she is a picture of standing firm in the faith. I just love reading all these stories. There's so many hundreds of thousands of Christians in church history who have such incredible testimonies. So we are studying this section on standing fast, standing firm in one spirit. Now, this is a problem in chapter three because you have two different groups. The first group is the one we're looking at, and that's the Judaizers, those who have come in to add circumcision and some of the other Jewish traditions as being necessary in order to be saved or necessary for spiritual growth. In verse 4 Paul writes, though I also might have confidence in the flesh if anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh I'm more so. It's interesting how the verbs are used here because he uses a form of both verbs, but the second verb, the second confidence, he says, if anyone else thinks he may have already achieved confidence, it's a perfect tense verb, so they think they've already arrived, they think they've got this confidence, they've done well, they've checked off all the boxes in terms of obedience to the Mosaic Law, and so he just stating that as a hypothetical and he says, If you've arrived at the conclusion that you've made it, then I would have made it also. I'm more so. And so he's going to explain why. Verse five, he says, he was circumcised the eighth day. That's according to the Mosaic law. Remember, circumcision was involved in both the Abrahamic covenant and the Mosaic covenant. Under the Abrahamic covenant, it was the sign of the Abrahamic covenant, and its purpose was to demonstrate lineage to Abraham, identification as a Jew, as a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It had a different significance under the Mosaic Law, and there it was a sign that the parents were dedicating the child, as it were, to obedience to the Mosaic Covenant. But neither way was it related to being saved, being justified, or being sanctified. So Paul starts by saying he was circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, and concerning the law, a Pharisee. Now we talked a little bit about the origin of the Pharisees last time, and we went back to the Maccabean Revolt, which was 167 to 160 BC. And I went through the chronology there. I'm not going to go back through that. But the key part of this chart is it's by the time you get to John Hyrcanus, who's a descendant of Mattathias the priest who began the Maccabean revolt, you have mention of the Pharisees for the first time. And they're a full-blown, very influential political party by that time. So sometime in this period after the Jews returned under Ezra, you had this development within what were called the Hasidim. It's the same word we use today to refer to the Hasidic ultra-Orthodox Jews. And so they would have come out of that background probably. And that's about all we can guess because by the time we first see them mentioned, they're already a full-blown organization. But the issue really is highlighted in this next verse, in verse 6. Paul says, concerning zeal, he was persecuting the church, and concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. Now remember in Matthew 6, Jesus told his disciples that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the Pharisees, you're not going to get into the kingdom. And he's not talking about having eternal life. He's talking there to those who are already saved, his disciples. He's talking about their spiritual life, that spiritual growth is not based on following the traditions of the fathers. So we started off looking at what the Bible says about Saul of Tarsus, otherwise known as Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles. And that's always important to remember when we talk about Paul. He's the Apostle to the Gentiles, but he always started, as we studied in our evangelism sessions on Tuesday with evangelism, he always started, no matter what, he always went to the synagogue first. And he saw that as a priority. And just today, I was reading an article about Jewish missions decrying the fact that today, within Christendom, the focus on Jewish missions is less than it's been anywhere in the last almost 200 years, and that it's just fallen off. And part of that is because most Christian denominations are liberal, so they really don't think you have to hear the gospel to be saved. Or they are into various forms of replacement theology, so they don't see the Jews as being significant anymore. And so there's been a decline in missionary activity. There's also some historical and cultural factors, because 100 years ago, the vast majority of Jews lived in what was called the Pale of Settlement, or in Western Europe. And now the center has shifted. And the center of Jews outside of Israel is in the United States. But there's more going back. And since this Hamas war started on October 7th, I have read that the number of Jews who have moved back to Israel has really increased. And I saw a number the other day that I need to go back and document. I've said for a number of years that in terms of the worldwide population of Jews, that about 48% of them live in Israel. Now the number would suggest, and what I heard last week and I have to document, would suggest that they've broken the 50% barrier. So I've got to go back and do some research and see how accurate that was. But that's significant because Even at 48%, more Jews, a higher percentage of Jewish people are living in Israel today than have lived in Israel since 722 BC, since the northern kingdom was taken out under the fifth cycle of discipline under Sennacherib. So this is really a significant thing if this has brought even more Jews back into the land. With that, we have to think about that importance. Now, Paul is going to talk about himself as an example here, but I want us to think about where did he come from? How was he saved? Go through his testimony. So we go back to Acts 8.1. And this is at the end of... and actually the first time we see him is at the end of Acts 7, He is present at the stoning of Stephen, and he is looking on the death of Stephen very positively, and he is standing there taking people's robes and watching over them. We read, Verse 58, Acts 7, 58, and they cast him out of the city, that's Stephen, and stoned him, another illegal execution. And the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul. Now, we then skip to verse 1, that's only a couple of verses, and we read in Acts 8, 1, now Saul was consenting to his death. At that time, a great persecution arose against the church. Now, up to this point, the church was filled, even though Jesus said that they were to stay in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit came, and then they were to go to Judea and Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth. But they didn't scatter. Now, this persecution comes, and they're forced to scatter and to leave Jerusalem. many of the Christians had to leave, but the Apostles stayed in Jerusalem. So we read, the persecution arose against the church which was at Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the Apostles. And devout men carried Stephen to his burial. Skip to verse 3. As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering every house and dragging off men and women, committing them to prison." Now, if we were to skip a little further down, we come to verse 12, and it talks, it skips the focus to Philip, but it mentions men and women again, and that is that as a result of his preaching the gospel, many men and women we're coming to salvation. In 1 Corinthians 15, 58, Paul again gives us a little peek at his biography. He says, then, last of all Christ, that's the he, he was seen by me also as by one born out of due time. He's seen when Christ appears to him on the road to Damascus. Verse nine, for I am the least of the apostles who am not worthy to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God. That's why he did not believe he was worthy. The church of God takes him back to what happened on the road to Damascus in Acts chapter nine when Christ appeared to him and said, why are you persecuting me? He was persecuting the body of Christ, the church. So that's a fascinating identification of Christ with his body, the church, made up of all believers in history. He gives us another look in Galatians 1, 13 through 16. There he says, for you have heard of my former conduct in Judaism. He didn't try to cover it up. He talked about it. It was very clear. It was part of his testimony. He said, how I persecuted the church of God beyond measure. He just went beyond the law. He tried to destroy it. And I advanced in Judaism because of his zealousness beyond many of my contemporaries in my own nation being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers." Now, what does that mean? This is really a technical term, the traditions of my fathers. And so, I want to read the rest and then we'll come back to traditions of my fathers. But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb and called me through grace to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach him or proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood." So that's his testimony, that he didn't go down to Jerusalem to get an okay from Peter and the other apostles. He stayed in the area of Damascus for three years. Part of that time he went out into the into the desert just to study and rethink his whole theological system. I mean, he went through an entire worldview shift, and he had to go back and rethink everything that he understood in the Old Testament in the Hebrew Scriptures. So in verse 6 of Philippians 3, concerning zeal, persecuting the church, concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. Where did that righteousness come from? That takes us back to the traditions of the fathers. 1 Timothy 1.13, he said, although I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man, but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. In verse 5, he describes himself further concerning the eighth day as the stock of Israel, the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews. What is going on here? Well, this was a phrase that really distinguished him from the Hellenistic Jews, from the Jews who were out in the diaspora, the ones who were scattered. Diaspora is the root from our word dispersion, the Jews that had not returned from the fifth cycle of discipline. And as far as I can understand, probably no more than 20 or 30 percent, and I'm being generous, of worldwide Jews at the time of the New Testament had returned. two-thirds were still in the diaspora. So it wasn't anything like the return we're seeing today. And so when he talks about a Hebrew of the Hebrews, he is specifically focusing on the fact that in his family lineage, there's no mixture with any Gentiles along the way. He has a pure genealogy going back all the way to Benjamin, in the tribe of Benjamin. In 113, he persecuted the Church of God. Acts 22.3, in his testimony, he said, I am indeed a Jew born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city, that's Jerusalem, at the feet of Gamaliel. Gamaliel was considered the greatest Pharisee, the greatest teacher of the law in that generation. And that's whom Paul studied under in Jerusalem from the time he was 14. He taught according to the, that is Gamaliel taught according to the strictness of our father's law. That's a term that's very similar to the fathers, the tradition of the fathers. So we'll look at that in a minute. And was zealous toward God as you all are today. I persecuted the way that was the early name of Christianity, the way it wasn't until later that they were first called Christians in Antioch, Antioch of Syria. I persecuted this way to the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women. And elsewhere, he murders them, he has them executed. As also the high priest bears me witness and all the council of the elders, from whom I received letters to the brethren and went to Damascus to bring in chains even those who were there to Jerusalem to be punished." So he's going outside of the boundaries of Israel to bring Jewish believers in Yeshua as Messiah back to Jerusalem in order to be persecuted. So let's just review some things in Paul's early life. He's born somewhere between A.D. 5 and 15. We can't pinpoint it. I've read through different chronologies. Most of them will try to put it closer to 5, but it's somewhere in there. We can't nail it down. When he was 14 years old, he was sent to Jerusalem to study under Gamaliel. Apparently his sister was already there and he lived with her family. And Gamaliel was one of the foremost Pharisees. He may have written part of the portions that later are brought into the Talmud even. But I mean, it's possible that even Paul was involved in that, but his name would have been removed. And so he is, I'll give you a quote about him in a minute that is a little bit speculative, but it's possible. So he is between, if he was born in five, and he comes to Jerusalem when he's 14, five plus 14 is what? 19. So that would be AD 19. He could have come that early, or he could have come if he was born at 15, and 15 and 14 is 29. Jesus began his ministry in about 30. So he's in Jerusalem when Jesus is teaching and ministering. And I've always thought that he heard, he could not have not heard with the popularity that Jesus had, especially in the opening years of his ministry. So he comes to Jerusalem to study under Gamaliel between 19 to 29. The day of Pentecost, the beginning of the church, is on Friday, April the 3rd of 33. He would have definitely been there. two years later for the stoning of Stephen. So he's been in Jerusalem that whole time. That has, you know, just think about that. We're not told anything, but he could not have been ignorant. Jerusalem wasn't that big at the time. He's converted to Christianity in the summer of 35, and then there's approximately eight years where he's silent. He went back to Tarsus and he's not brought back by Barnabas until 43. The first epistle in the New Testament, I believe, is James, and that's written about 40, and somewhere around there was when Matthew was written. So this gives you a framework of what's going on chronologically. Now, this summarizes what is thought. It has indeed been the thought that an unnamed pupil of Gamaliel, who manifested, quote, impudence in matters of learning and tried to refute his master, was no other than Paul. If this is so, and it's quite uncertain, then the tradition reflects disapproval of Paul's later departure from the rabbinical path. It preserves no reminiscence of Paul's actual behavior while he sat at Gamaliel's feet, But in one respect, Paul did deviate from his master's example. Gamaliel was the one, if you remember, in about Acts 4 or 5, says the Pharisees come to him and say, what are we going to do about this? He says, well, if it's an act of God, we can't do anything about it, so just be patient. But that wasn't Paul's view. He was very antagonistic to Christianity. and all the Christians. That's written by Klausner in his book, Jesus to Paul, which came out in 1944 based on certain things in the tractate, Baba Shabbat in the Talmud. So Paul's born in Tarsus. Tarsus, the map on the right shows its location. It's in Cilicia. It's not far by water from Antioch, and not far by land either in southeastern, what is now southeastern Turkey. And so down here is Jerusalem. Over here is a picture of the mountains there outside of Tarsus. It was a critical strategic location because it was located along two of the major routes that began in northern Mesopotamia and went to Carchemish through the Amnaeus Pass. And then the other route went through Nineveh and Antioch and then through the Syrian Gate. So it's on a major trade route. So people from all over came through there. It was an educational center. It had a major university that was famous for its scholarship and teaching all of the Greek classes And Strabo says that it surpassed anything that was in Athens or Alexandria, which were the two foremost areas of learning. So he grew up in a family that was a Pharisee family, and that they would have been extremely observant of all of the law. And he would have been exposed to learning From a young age, he would have started reading the Torah when he was five, and when he was ten, he would have been studying and learning all of the rabbinical pronouncements. I compared that with Arnold Fruchtenbaum's autobiography, that when he was about five years old, I believe, when they got out of Poland after the war, and then they were in displaced persons camps, a displaced persons camp in Germany for about another five or six years. And there his father, who had been given all of this traditional rabbinical education by his father, had nothing else to do but to pass it on to Arnold. So that when Arnold was first interviewed by, I can't remember last name, by Ruth Wardlaw, Then she said afterwards she had to go study for six months because Arnold knew more than any of the rabbis that she had talked to. So the Jews had an incredible way of educating their children. And it was primarily through homeschool and then through the synagogue. Here's another picture of an ancient road that you can walk down in Tarsus today. Now Paul was challenged about his gospel, and he defended it in Galatians 1. He said, For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ. That's what occurred on the road to Damascus. He says, For you have heard of my former conduct in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God beyond measure, and tried to destroy it. And I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries in my own nation, being more extremely or exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers." I told you we'd get back to this. So, inside the circle you have the Torah, the 613 commandments that are in the Mosaic Law. And it was for their violation of the Mosaic law as primarily into idolatry as well as the human sacrifice of their children, in the worship of Baalism and the Asherah, that Israel was taken out of the land according to the five cycles of discipline that are outlined in Leviticus 26. So when the Jews came back from Babylon, after about 100 years or so, because you have Nehemiah, and then later you have Ezra, and so some of the followers of Ezra, a generation or two later, began to think, well, if God disciplined us by taking us out of the land because we broke the original 613 laws, then we need to devise a system of various rules so that by obeying those rules, we don't even come close to breaking the original 613 commandments. Now, over the course of time, I think there were three fences that were built around the law. The first fence is the sages, and this was before the beginning of Christ's ministry. And what they taught was that this fence, these traditions, was an oral law. So that when Moses went up on Mount Sinai, he was given the written law from God. But they also believe that God gave oral law that was passed down orally from one generation to another. And that made up the tradition of the fathers. And so you see how this is described in Matthew 5.21 and following. There are many phrases like this, but Jesus says in 5.21, you have heard it said to those of old. And then he says, you have heard it said. And then he gives the interpretation, not from the written law, but from the oral law. And in Matthew 5.33, again, Jesus says, again, you have heard it said. Each time he uses that phrase, he's referring to what is taught in the oral law, not the written law. Jesus never broke anything in the Mosaic written law. He violated their oral law, left and right. And then in Matthew 15.2, the Pharisees challenged him And they say, why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? They're not talking about what Moses revealed. They're talking about this oral law, the first fence built around the law. And then in verse 3, they say, Christ answers them and said to them, why do you also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition? So when these words are used, you've heard it said, or the tradition of the fathers, it's referring to the oral law that was already enslaving them as a way of having additional righteousness under salvation. So in Galatians 1.15, Paul says, But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb and called me through grace, to reveal his son in me that I might preach him among the Gentiles." So he recognizes, again, this is a recognition, he was called to be the apostle to the Gentiles. He said, I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem. Remember, you always go up to Jerusalem because it's elevated. You go down to everywhere else if you're going from Jerusalem to anywhere else. said, I did not go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went to Arabia and returned again to Damascus. Then after three years, so the after three years, the three years isn't how long he was out in the desert. The three years is how long he was in Damascus. Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter and remained with him 15 days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord's brother." So here we have a map to give you perspective. On the left, this is a broader map. Jerusalem is down here, just about even. It's only about 20 miles from Jerusalem down to the northern tip of the Dead Sea. So when you factor that in, you see that Israel isn't very big. And up here is Damascus. Now, when we take tour groups there, we will sometimes go right to the border. We can see it. We're on a ridge not far away, less than a mile from the border. And you can, on a clear day, you should be able to see Damascus. It's less than 40 miles from there. And of course, you're elevated there because you've got Mount Carmel that's right there. That's the highest point in Israel. So this is the blow-up of the map. And so he's here, and then this tan area outside, that's the desert. So he's out here, and that's where he'd go to be alone and to read and study. So in Acts 9-1, we have the story of his coming to faith in Yeshua as the Messiah. Then Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked for letters from him to the synagogues of Damascus, so that if he found any who were of the way, whether men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. So this is his conversion. On the road to Damascus, the Lord Jesus Christ, the resurrected, glorified Jesus, appears to him on that road. The account is in Acts 9, 1 to 5, and then he tells the story later in Acts in chapter 22, 4 through 8, and another time in 26, 9 to 18. So we're told in Acts 9, as he journeyed, he came near Damascus. So he's close. He's probably within just a few miles of Damascus. And suddenly a light shone round him from heaven, and he fell to the ground, and he heard a voice saying to him..." So he clearly hears the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ saying, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Verse 5, his response is, who are you, Lord? He's already recognizing who Jesus is. It's the self-authenticating voice of God. When God speaks to you, you know it's God. Who are you, Lord? And the Lord said to him, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. It's hard for you to kick against the goats. He's constantly being... Every time he's arresting these families and everything, there's pangs of conscience. conscience there. So he said, trembling and astonished, Lord, what do you want me to do? And the Lord said to him, Arise, go into the city, into Damascus, and you will be told what you must do. In verse eight, Saul arose from the ground, and when his eyes were opened, he saw no one. But they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. And he was three days without sight, and he neither ate nor drank. Now the inside of Damascus, according to one archaeologist, wrote that it contrasts at first unfavorably with the outside. The streets, with few exceptions, are narrow, crooked, remember that, crooked and filthy, and form a labyrinth which makes a guide indispensable. The houses are high and generally unsightly externally. There's but one hotel suitable for strangers. And it was formally kept by a Greek named Dimitri. So Wilson is writing this well-known archaeologist in Charles Wilson in 1881. These photographs date from 1910 to 1920. What's going on at that time period? World War I. It's under the Ottoman Empire. Who's one of the most famous individuals at that time? Going into Damascus. What was his name? Lawrence of Arabia. You've got to fit these things together, understand your correlations here. So that's when these pictures are taken. So in verse 10 we read, Now there was a certain disciple in Damascus named Ananias, and to him the Lord had said in a vision, Ananias, and he said, Here I am, Lord. So the Lord said to him, Arise and go to a street called Straight. Now how was those streets described? narrow and crooked." It's called the street called straight. "...and inquired the house of Judas for one called Saul of Tarsus, for behold he is praying." Verse 12, "...and in a vision he has seen a man named Ananias coming in and putting his hand on him so that he might receive his sight. Then Ananias answered, Lord I've heard many many things about this man, how much harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. And here he has authority from the chief priest to bind all who call on your name. So word of his mission had preceded him. And Wilson writes that the street called straight is straighter than a corkstrew, but not as straight as a rainbow. Verse 15, But the Lord said to him, go, for he is a chosen vessel of mine to bear my name before Gentiles. He's the apostle to the Gentiles. To bear my name before Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel. For I will show him how many things he must suffer for my name's sake. Now, I wonder how many people, when they first get saved, how to have a happy, meaningful life. That was a track they wrote at Dallas Seminary. Many of us were critical of that. because it's true if you look at it from a mature Christian perspective. But if you're just saved and all of a sudden God shows you all of the things you will suffer and be persecuted for, it doesn't seem at that point that it's going to be real happy. And the Lord says, I will show him how many things he must suffer for my sake." So this is considered the house of Ananias in the picture according to tradition. In verse 17, Ananias went his way and entered the house and laying his hands on him he said, Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road as you came has sent me that you may receive your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit. Immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales, and he received his sight at once, and he arose and was baptized." Notice he didn't wait very long before he was baptized. So when he had received food, he was strengthened. Then Saul spent some days with the disciples at Damascus. So he's there for a while. So he's seen the resurrected, glorified Jesus on the road to Damascus. And he spent time in Damascus. He spent up to three years, but part of that was spent out to the west in the Arabian desert. In verse 20 says, Luke writes, immediately he preached, and that means to proclaim the Christ. Now I've got, I'm using this somewhere else and I changed it to the Messiah. We need to understand I think it means more to us, we're used to the term Christ, but if you think every time you read Christ, what that is saying is the Messiah, I think it has a different significance to us, at least it does for me. Immediately he preached the Messiah in the synagogues. They have a frame of reference for it, that he is the Son of God. 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 priest? But Saul increased all the more in strength and confounded the Jews who dwelt in Damascus, proving that this Jesus is the Messiah." Verse 23 goes on to say, now after many days were past, the Jews plotted to kill him. But their plot became known to Saul, and they watched the gates day and night to kill him. Then the disciples took him by night and led him down through the wall in a basket. And there's a picture of the ancient wall of Damascus that Paul was lowered over. So when we look at that verse 19 where it says, so when he had received food, he was strengthened. That word has the idea of just recovering your physical strength and getting, recovering your vigor as a result of food. So I expanded the translation a little bit. And after receiving food, he recovered his physical strength. Then afterward, he spent some days with the disciples. then immediately began to preach Jesus as the Messiah. And in Galatians 1.16, he says that God saved him to reveal his son in me that I might preach him among the Gentiles. I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood. So preaching there is the word for proclamation, and he's proclaiming that. And the people are amazed. This is the word existemi, which means to be amazed or astonished or confused. How did this happen? This guy who made Christians the number one enemy is now a Christian. In verse 22, Saul increased the more in strength. Now, I have changed the translation to an expanded translation here. because we lose a little bit of the significance if we just have a straight translation based on the word that's used. Saul increased all the more in strength, that's physical strength, and confounded the Jews who dwelt in Damascus. So they're bewildered and confused. And then the next word that is used really means to put things together in a logical, orderly argument. but that doesn't always translate well. So I translated it logically putting together the messianic prophecies to demonstrate through sound biblical arguments and evidence that this Jesus is the Messiah. So he's going back to those prophecies that Jesus talked about to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. He knew them well because really it wasn't until about the 10th or 11th century AD, a thousand years after Jesus, that you have some rabbis developing a very creative way of interpretation who somehow are able to change the meaning of the text so that they can make a lot of these messianic prophecies not be so messianic. Now after this we read that after many days were passed the Jews plotted to kill him. But their plot became known to Saul, and they watched the gates day and night to kill him, and they led him over the wall in a basket. So he has gone from being saved to three years in Damascus, and then he leaves, and he goes to Jerusalem briefly, and then he goes to Tarsus for approximately 10 to 14 years. So there's some debate exactly how long that was based on other aspects of chronology. Now in Romans 1, he talks about this at the very opening. He says, Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called, that is God's call, giving him the gift and office of apostle, separated to the gospel of God, which he promised through his prophet. So he's going back at the very opening of Romans He brings in the Hebrew scriptures and the prophecies of the Messiah. That's the foundation for the gospel. That's made clear in verse 3, concerning his son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh and declared to be the son of God. So this is his deity. So you have according to the flesh, emphasizes his humanity, declared to be the son of God with power is his deity. to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead. In 2 Corinthians 1.19 he said, For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who is preached among you by us, by me, Silvanus, in Timothy was not yes and no, but in him was yes. Later in 2 Corinthians he says, In Damascus the governor, under Aretas, the king, was guarding the city of the Damascenes, with a garrison desiring to arrest me. So he not only had the Jews after him, he's got the Gentiles after him. But I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall and escaped from his hands. So the rest of his life is these missionary journeys. You have the first missionary journey to Crete and Southern Turkey, which is when he writes Galatians after that. Then the second missionary journey, he revisited Southern Turkey Then went to Troas in Greece. That's from April 51 to September of 52. So this is a year and a half. And he wrote 1st and 2nd Thessalonians. So after the first journey, he wrote one epistle. After the second journey, he writes two epistles. Remember that. It's real easy. Guess how many he writes after the third missionary journey. That's right, three. After the third missionary journey, He retraces his visit to the churches in Greece. And this lasts for almost four years, from the spring of 53 to May of 57. And then he wrote three epistles, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and then Romans. So that brings us to an end of our review of the Apostle Paul. But everywhere he went, he was plagued with these Jews called Judaizers who were following him, and they were teaching. That's what the whole epistle to the Galatians is all about, is this problem with circumcision. Because under Pharisaical traditions, circumcision had become salvific. so that they believed that that was necessary for salvation. So we'll come back to this next time, go through a couple more things about the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Essenes, and then we will get to the point of this, which is that of all these things, he checked all the boxes and he says, at the end he says, yet indeed I also count all things Everything he lists, all the good deeds that he did, I count them rubbish, which is a nice, mild way of translating it. I count them as rubbish, horse dung, manure, or a little more graphic, that I may gain Christ. So all of our good deeds, all the good that we do doesn't count for anything because it can't overcome the sin nature. See, this is another inherent problem in Judaism is that, not biblical Judaism, but post-Temple Judaism, Pharisaical Judaism, it doesn't account for sin. They don't have a doctrine of original sin. They think that you're basically born neutral, but people choose to do bad things. But they're basically good. That's why when you get into the later development of rabbinical Judaism, one of their prime directives is from the Hebrew tikkun olam, which means to repair the world. You can only repair the world if the world is repairable. But according to biblical teaching, the world isn't repairable except by God. It's only because of Jesus Christ's payment for the sin penalty that the world can eventually, the earth can eventually be redeemed and the kingdom will come when Jesus Christ returns. But this idea of tikkun olam lends itself because it believes that the Jewish people can eventually repair the world. It has an affinity for socialism and Marxism and communism and radical leftism. So that's why you see how, why a lot of Jews, and Norman Podoritz wrote a book about 10 or 12 years ago about why Jews are liberal. And it comes from the fact that you had this huge wave of migration of Eastern European Jews at the turn of the century, late 1800s, early 1900s, and they had already drunk deeply of the fountains of socialism and Marxism. And so many of the founders of the original labor unions in the late 1800s and 1900s were Jewish, Eastern European Jews who brought these socialist and these Marxist ideas with them. And then that's been handed down within the Jewish community ever since. And there are more and more Jews, I think, today waking up not as quickly as we would like, but they're seeing this rise of anti-Semitism. They can't explain it. And I had one Jewish friend who asked me, he says, I just think there's something cosmic going on here. It wasn't a context where I could answer the question I said, but I want to get together where we can talk about that, and that hasn't happened yet. But I thought that was a pretty good insight that, yes, there is something cosmic going on, and we call it the angelic revolt. And all of it relates back to understanding those things. All right, we'll come back and continue in Philippians 3 next week. Father, thank you for this time to study your Word, to be reminded that we have nothing to bring to the table. We have no righteousness on our own. It is impossible. None of our works of righteousness can bring us a favor in your sight. It is only when we possess the righteousness of Christ, even Abraham in the Old Testament believed your promise of salvation, and it was credited to him as righteousness. So, Father, we pray that we might have open doors to tell people the good news, the people we run into, we talk to, we work with, people in our family, to have these open doors to give them the truth of the gospel and to focus on the light of your word. And we pray this in Christ's name, amen.