Well, I really appreciate those song selections. I believe my cold's coming back. I'm gonna have to take some cold hits when I get home. Zinc losses. For tonight's message, I'd like to ask you to turn to Acts chapter 9. Acts chapter 9, beginning in verse number 10. This is the story of Saul after he got born again, after he was saved on the road to Damascus. He got his eyes opened. And he went blind. And he got his eyes opened. Some people believe his eyes never were fully restored. that he had eyes for all the rest of his life. And that's what his thorn in the flesh was. There's a lot of scriptures that seem to indicate that. One place he said, y'all were so good to me, you would have plucked out your own eyes for me. Remember that place? Another place, Paul didn't write his letters. He had another man write the letters. I'm like a secretary of them. They call that a manuensis. But he always signed the letter to authenticate that the letter was from Paul. On one letter, he wrote hisself. And at the end of that letter, he said, see what a large letter I've written in my own hand. And so it seemed to indicate that he had to write big letters. in order to get his letter out. But that's another story altogether. Paul was struck blind after he saw Jesus, and they had to leave him about. And verse 9 says, And he was three days without sight, and neither did he eat nor drink. This was a big experience with Paul. This was very profound. We'll talk about that in a few minutes. Now, verse 10, this is the text. And there was a certain disciple at Damascus named Ananias. And to him said the Lord in a vision, Ananias. And he said, Behold, I am here, Lord. Now the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the streets which is called straight, and inquire in the house of Judas. For one called Saul torches, for behold, he prayeth. And hath seen in a vision a man named Ananias coming in, and putting his hand on him, that he might receive his thyme. And Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard by many of this land how much evil hath he done to thy saints in Jerusalem. And here he hath authority from the chief priest to bind all that call on thy name. But the Lord said unto him, Go thy way, for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel. For I will show him how great things he must suffer for my namesake. And then Ananias went his way, and entered into the house, and putting his hands on him, said, Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, hath appeared unto thee in the way that thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost. And immediately there fell from his eyes, as it had been scaled, and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized. And when he had received me, he was strengthened. Then we saw a certain day with the disciples which were at Damascus. Now, dear God, we just ask you to help us preach today and help us get this message across. This is your Bible, your word, and I'm just trying to preach it as I find it here. And I really believe that's what you intend. And I just pray, dear God, you give us some good Bible principles tonight. that would help us to live more like our Lord Jesus Christ in these last days before ye come. In Jesus' name I ask, Amen. The first greatest persecutor of the body of Christ was Saul of Tarsus. There have been a lot of tremendous persecutors of the body of Christ. Untold, millions have been persecuted, put in prison, died, and this is it. You see on the walls here some of the struggles that we had, even in America, trying to preach the gospel. No one was a greater persecutor of the body of Christ until the themes of the Church of Rome emerged in history. And when they came, that rack came out, torture, oh my word, it's just hard to tell the persecution these poor people had to endure. Now this Hebrew of the Hebrews was a scholar of the Old Testament law and of the Jewish faith who actually superseded his teacher. There's only a few people who get taught and they supersede their teacher. They come out and they know more after a while. than the guy that taught them, but that happens to a few brilliant men. Saul was one of them. His teacher was the great Gamaliel of history. He was a rising star among the religious ruling class of his day, and may have been a member of the Sanhedrin itself. Then this bookish scholar rose up from his dusty scrolls and tables, and with a furious energy persecuted the early church with as much zeal as he had devoted to his faith. Now you don't, let me tell you, you don't find anybody persecuted from the zeal that Paul had. And later on he tells in his testimony, he dragged them to jail, men and women. They wouldn't have a chance to stand up. He would betray them. He called hailing them. He went about the region as a police detective seeking members of the new religion and using physical violence like a modern day SWAT team. He brought them to prison and some to execution. He was on his way to Damascus with authority from the high priest. when the Lord Jesus Christ met him on the road just outside the city. And that's when he saw his error. Now it's hard for you and I to understand the shock that Saul must have felt. He was so energetic and then the Lord appears to him and says, Saul, Saul, why persecutes thou me? And Jesus said, I am Jesus, whom thou persecute. Good grief, I've been wrong about the Messiah all this time? I mean, this is a profound thing. Now, he didn't eat or drink anything for three days, partly because he was blind, but the main reason is, he is totally in shock. I have been so wrong about this. Think of the crimes I've committed on poor innocent Christians. Then the Lord appeared to a man named Ananias and instructed him to visit Saul in a certain house on a certain street, then lay hands on him to restore his sight. This he did. And Saul's eyes are open in such a way that the Bible tells us that the experience was like scales falling from his eyes. I would like to preach about how Saul of Tarsus got his eyes open. And we all need our eyes open from time to time, don't we? The modern day expression is something like this. That made a believer out of him. But that means you've got your eyes open. Now first of all, I'm going to look at the scales on Saul's eyes, and then I'm going to look at the human instruments God used to remove those scales. First of all, the scales on Saul's eyes. We have to remember that Saul, Paul, Christ, was a Christian by this time. They saved that. There are many Christians who have scales on their eyes and cannot see. This is not a picture of an unsaved man getting his eyes opened or an unsaved woman being saved. That's earlier on. When Bartimaeus, the blind man, he said, Jesus, Jesus, have mercy on me. And they say, call him here. And they said, don't bother him, don't bother him. And he gets more and more anxious. And says, Jesus, Jesus, have mercy on me. Now, he's a blind man. He's a bear. He's wrapped in his... What they did was they, uh, they're poor people. They had one garment, mainly. And they wrapped it around them. And sat down and slept. That's what covered them up at night. If they were friends or somebody put them out on the street to beg, and they would cover up. That's where the expression, gird up thy loins. So you had those long loins, you gird them up around your legs so you could run or walk. Well, he didn't have time to do that. You know what the Bible says? He threw his garment down to run to Jesus. And he said, what were you having to do that thou might open my eyes and give me my sight back? That is a picture of salvation. When he threw his garment down, he is renouncing his own righteousness. So that he can get to Jesus and get the righteousness of Christ. because a robe or clothes is a type of righteousness in the Bible. That's not here. Paul has already said, he's a Christian now, but he needs his eyes opened, as we all do. Now what are some of the scales that people have on their eyes? Have you seen them? I bet one of the scales is the scales of self-esteem. If anybody had an over, you know, opinion of themselves, Paul had it right. If he were to write his biography or describe his character at that time, he would have said, I am circumcised the eighth day of the stock of Israel of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews. That's touching the law of Pharisee concerning zeal, persecuting the church, touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. If anybody had a right to have scales of self-esteem, Paul had that right. And there's a lot of people, the reason they don't get their eyes on it, is because they have too much self-esteem. A lot of rich people, they started out on a card table in their garage that they rented. And they built up a business out of that. They worked night and day, wife and husband, they worked night and day. And now they're multi-millionaire. They were a self-made man. They got self-esteem. I worked my way up to the bottom, buddy. That will blind you. We're in the Living Sin Church, buddy. We think we're rich! We're increased with goods. We don't know we're poor and what? Blind, right? That's self-esteem. John the Baptist said, he must increase, I must decrease. John the Baptist said, I'm not worthy to carry his shoes. I'm not worthy to stoop down and unlatch his shoes. The centurion said, I'm not worthy that Jesus should come into my house. Now what a contract. You know what a centurion was? He was a pretty high officer, buddy. And the Bible gives a description. And he said, hey, I tell a man to go, he goes. I tell him to come, he comes. Whatever I say, bud, they do it. Just like that. But he knew, he said, hey, I'm not worthy of you to even come to Ohio. Self-esteem can put the scales over your eyes. You can't understand the Bible. You can't read the Bible and understand it, because the Holy Spirit works in this Bible and helps us understand it. When He, the Spirit of Truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth. So if you don't have him, how can you get God in offer? You can't. Because that's self-esteem. That's scales on your eyes. There's another kind of scales. And that is the scales of ignorance. You say, well, Paul wasn't ignorant. Oh, yes, he was. This is called learned ignorance. This is the worst kind of ignorance, is learned ignorance. Saul knew a great deal of all kinds of things from Greek and pagan culture to science to the Hebrew religion. He was a great man of learning, but he didn't know the Lord Jesus Christ. Now you learn things that are wrong, baby. When I went to high school, they taught us evolution. Went to college, they taught evolution. I thought, well, that's the thing, maybe that makes sense to me. Evolution. While I was over there at Tennessee Tech, there was an independent Baptist preacher, somewhere in Coquitlam, I don't know who he was, I used to know, I mean, I've long forgotten his name, and he had a public debate with the head of the science department at Tennessee Tech over evolution. I laughed. I didn't go to it. They made an announcement who won the debate. The preacher won the debate. How'd that happen? He's not as smart as that Ph.D. Because he had the facts. Ph.D. had scales over his eyes. You could have learned ignorance. How many today in America are so very educated in the culture, science, art, social media, internet, politics of the world system, and yet they do not know what they ought to know. What's important? You got scales over your eyes. You can't see. Styles and standards, music and worship, the Bible, Hollywood and the media. We're, you know, there's people that know what Hollywood stars date and then another Hollywood star. When they break up. How many old children mature do they make? I mean, you see that on magazines. Who cares about that stuff? They keep those magazines in business over gossip. I hear on so-and-so and so-and-so how to break up. Read the whole story here, more people are eating grass. When they hear preaching, like I preach and like our pastor preaches from the straight word of God. They're confused. I've never heard that before. I mean, I had a person tell me that down in Macon, Georgia. He said, I've never heard that before. Where'd you get that? After the sermon one time, I said, well, you know, you heard, you saw me read it right there in the Bible. Is that in the New Testament or the Old Testament? I said that's in the New Testament. I read it right from the Bible. Well, I never heard that before. They never came back. He says, we're confused. We don't understand. That's not what they taught us in school. We're in the 21st century now. So we got ignorance. But it is learned ignorance. Another kind of scale is the scale of prejudice. Prejudice almost always follows ignorance. The person who is most ignorant of the Bible and the truth is the one who despises it the most. They're prejudiced against it. I remember when Miss Cooper was trying to get me to go to church. And they'd show a movie, you know. There was a movie called, it's about the rapture. Y'all probably remember the name of it. Left Behind or something like that. Oh, she tried to get me to go. She just, I wouldn't go. She tried to get me to go. I said, Brenda, I don't like hollering preachers. Just let her talk in her normal voice. I don't want to hear a hollering preacher. Why? I'd pray Jesus against that. What's wrong with that? I didn't like it. I was prejudiced. The person who's prejudiced hates the Bible and despises it the most if they're ignorant of the Bible. Have you ever dealt with this kind? Who cannot see that they're prejudiced? They call you fanatic. Call you Bible thumper. These kind of people who are prejudiced are wiser in their own consent than seven men who can render a reason. These remain fooled because they refuse to see. They've still got scales on their eyes. Then you have the scales of unbelief. When the centurion saw Christ die and the earthquake and the darkness, he believed and he said, truly this was the Son of God. I mean, the whole earth went black. There was another man, he believed, but when Saul saw Stephen die, Saul, the same guy, saw Stephen die. He held a coat. They said, take care, hold my coat while I throw rocks at him. He held her coat. But he would not allow himself to believe. And Stephen said, Lord, I see Jesus standing on the right hand of the Father. I see him laying off this sin to their children. Everybody knew that's what Jesus said on the cross. Father, forgive them. They don't know what they do. Stephen's sermon was a great sermon. But Paul would not let himself believe. He had the scale above belief. Of course, that was before he was there. And then you have the scales of heaven. Not going to Sunday school. Not going to church. A person will never see until he breaks that former pattern. Old things must pass away. All things must become new. When the doors of this church is open, y'all be here. Sunday school, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. You get a great, a benefit from this. When you miss, let me tell you what's gonna happen. The Lord's gonna have something special for you when you stay at home. And watch something else. Because, you know, well, I feel good, you know, I'm not such a bad sinner, you know. I'm not apostate or anything. I just don't feel like going to church tonight. That's habit. The scales of habit. Well, there's things you don't ever understand. Because you're not open to it. You don't come to church and say, speak Lord, thy servant, hearer. And then the scales of worldliness. Boy, now that's a big problem today, isn't it? The scales of worldliness. The Bible talks about that in the parable of the sword, remember? That seed got entangled in the vines and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches and became unfruitful. That's the scales and world of this. It's related to habit. We all have a habit of shunning the church activities. You know, when you shun church activity, even if it's just a church social, a dinner, you miss out on fellowship with other Christians. And these Christians can help you grow, and you can have them grow. You miss out on Bible reading, because you're reading worldly literature, listening to worldly music and activities. You know, I know people are tired of preachers preaching against worldly music, but it's important! That whirly music will get in your ears, get down in your heart, and mess you up, buddy. And next thing you know, you won't be satisfied until the preacher gives a whirly group up here to play the same kind of music, but just put Christian words to it. Then all of a sudden, OK, that's all right now. Why? Because you've got the scales of whirliness on you. The bright lights of the world will blind the eyes of God's children. Those are some of the scales that can be on Christians. I believe Paul's scales were his self-esteem. But they came off, because you know why? He said, man, I've been wrong all this time. And he wasn't leading the pack. I can see him on the Damascus road right now, buddy. He's determined. Look, he's marching like this. He's on his way. He's going to get some people and put them in prison. He's mad. He's agitated. He's going there. And all of a sudden, the Lord appears. At noontime, the brightest time of the summer. And when Jesus came, it was brighter than the summer. And everybody fell down. And Paul got blinded. He said, Saul, Saul, thou persecutest thou me. The body of Christ had already started. So when you persecute a Christian who's in the body of Christ, you're persecuting Christ because he's part of his body. And he said, who art thou? He said, I'm Jesus. Isn't that persecuting? Uh-oh. There goes self-esteem. How many years did I stay to become a PhD? Doing extra work and everything. I really thought I was smart. I really thought I was doing God a service. Now those scales are coming off. Now let's look at the human instrument God used to remove those scales. He was not an angel, was he? He was not even an apostle. He wasn't a prophet. I know. In order to get through to Saul, God needs to use an upper-class Pharisee, right? Because Paul was a Pharisee of the Pharisees. I mean, this guy's way up at the top. He's in the upper crust of religious society. So God, if I was choosing, I would get a great big guy way up there in the upper crust. But he wasn't a Pharisee. He wasn't in the upper class. He didn't live in a big palace. He wasn't highly educated. How can you reach Paul unless you're highly educated? God didn't do that, did He? It wasn't a burning, But when God wanted to talk to Moses, what did he do? He spoke to him in a burning bush. Now that gets your attention. When God wanted to talk to Lot, what did he do? He sent two angels, right? When God wanted to talk to David, he sent the prophet Nathan. He's a prophet. When God wanted to talk to Pontius Pilate, what did he do? He sent a note from his wife. Now that got Pilate's attention. How are you going to get to a pagan? I mean, no prophet, no apostle is going to be able to talk to him. So God went and said, I'm going to make a dream in Pilate's wife. And she got so scared she barely went up. Tyler, on January the 8th, had no shoes. All these were used to remove scales from someone's eyes. Logic would have favored God using a fellow Pharisee or another educated person in Saul's social class. But Ananias was a plain, ordinary man, wasn't he? Jesus himself met Saul on the road to Damascus and saved him. But he did not send an angel or a college professor to Saul to help him see. Now I've got a question. Who are you? Well, would you not say I'm just a plain ordinary person? Yeah. That means you need to go out and preach the gospel, give out gospel prayer. Do what you can to help people. You are helping people when you do this. You're just an ordinary person. And that's what I am. And that's what you are. Another thing about him, he was a good man. The Lord knew him by name. Isn't that good? He called one guy, Betheliel, by name. He knew Moses by name. The Good Shepherd called his sheep by name. Ananias was a good man. Another thing about Ananias, he was a ready man. The Lord said, Ananias, and he responded, Behold, I am your Lord. He didn't say, Lord, I'm pretty busy right now. I don't know about that, but I'm here. Now, he didn't wonder about that, and rightly so. He said, this guy was a bad persecutor of the church. He said, nevertheless, you go. He was ready to go and do whatever the Lord commanded him to do. I don't know if he talked it over with his wife or not, But whoever, if he did, she could've said, or would've said, or his buddy might've said, you know what you're doing? Well, the Lord told me to do it, I'm gonna go ahead and do it. I knew about a man that got born again, he was a smoker, he was a drinker. Well, I'm going in dead. And he got born again. And he told his wife, this is a true story, he said, honey, I'm going to start tithing, dropping me tithe. She said, do you know what you're doing? He said, well, the Lord wants me tithing. I'm going to go ahead and tithe. And he told me, he told the story, that when he started tithing, he had more money than when he didn't tithe. Well, of course, part of that was because he quit drinking and smoking. The part of it is, there's a supernatural thing there. When you tithe and give the right amount to God and do what God tells you to do as a matter of money, somehow you start making, you start having more discretionary income. It's funny that way. He was a ready man. He was a good man. He was a discerning man. He was very discerning concerning the issues of the day. He knew about Saul. He knew about Christianity and the persecution. And so God's children should be discerning. You're not going to get discerning if you just come to church one time a week. There's a lot of issues. You need to know about separation. You need to know about the blood. You need to know about the King James Bible. You need to know about the apostasy that's going on. There's a lot of issues, and you need to discern them. You need to discern about this modern music. Boy, it's something. This modern music is something. It's hard to find music on the radio now. I have to order CDs. to put in my car if I don't want to listen to good music and proper music. He was a discerning man. People need to be discerning. He was an obedient man. He did just exactly what the Lord told him to do. We used to sing this song, obedience is the very best way to show that you believe. It's the very best way to show that you love the Lord. The Lord said, if you love me, keep my commandments. That's what he said. And that's a big deal about keeping commandments in the Bible. That's a very important concept. He was an obedient man. I'll tell you something else about this man. He was a personal worker. Nothing can take the place of personal work. I'll give you out on the street, door to door, wherever you are. Nothing can take the place of personal work. It's important. It's really important. He told Saul who he was and why he was there. He called him brother. He understood. Paul understood. He was baptized in water. Then he received the Holy Ghost. That was the Jewish formula, remember? That was in the early book of Acts. After you got baptized, then you received the Holy Ghost. Later on, you received the Holy Ghost as soon as you believed. He was a personal worker. He worked with them. One of the great things in life is being a personal worker. Get you one of those little New Testament, for personal workers, you got verses marked. Talk to people. Get them along, buy them a cup of coffee. Talk to them, open up the Bible to them. And say, well, why does this, you know, just show them in the Bible. Where do the heathen go? Talk with them. Be a personal worker. Get the scales off their eyes. Hey, they've got 20, 30 years. of ignorance and learned ignorance to go through. These people need help. They've been told everything. It's our job, we're personal workers, work with people, help them, open up the scriptures to them. But how can you do it if you don't know the scriptures? And you can't know the scriptures unless you read the scriptures. Come to church. Come into Sunday school. And when did I learn what the Bible has to say, the proper attitude towards it, end of context. Be a personal worker. That's what Ananias was. He was a personal worker. He was just an ordinary man. He wasn't highfalutin'. You can read this account. I double-dog dare you to find me big highfalutin' words in it. There's no big theological terms here. He just worked with salt and his scales fell off. And after that, we never saw another apostle like the Apostle Paul did. Now there's a lot of them that worked their way back in their mind to a personal worker, ordinary person. Dale Moody worked in a shoe store. We don't know his name! I don't. Leads to the Lord, guided him, and got him born again, and became a great man. He's one of the greatest. There's others like that. Just working with people, talking to them about the Word of God. Guiding them. And the next thing you know, they're on fire for the Lord. Some of them have gone on a mission, people. All over the place. Let us be like Ananias. You don't have to be highly educated, have a six-figure income, be a self-made man or woman, be a celebrity, be an epitome of Christ or whatever. Just ordinary people that love the Lord and willing to do what they can for the Lord. Now there's another true story I'd like to tell you about. And to be honest with you, I tried to look up the names. I couldn't find the names. There was a mountain climber in the Alps. And he was like a jet setter. He knew everything. He knew everything. And they were climbing in the Alps. And they run into a lot of trouble with the wind and the snow. And they decided to go on and might even camp before they go on to the summit. And he said, look, y'all go on. I'm going back down the village. And they said, you can't make it down the village. You don't know your way. He said, look, I know mountains. I've been climbing mountains for 25 years. There's nothing I don't know about mountains. And he said, I know how we got up, and I'll go back down. But the problem was so much snow fell, he couldn't recognize his way. And he took the wrong turn and he come to a ledge that just dropped off. He couldn't go back up, it was too slick. He couldn't go down, it was like 200 or 300 feet. There he was. And he began to holler, HELP! HELP! And a woman who was a sheep herder, or goat herder, was out there in goats and looked up and saw just an ordinary woman. Made goat cheese. Milked goats. Relied on her household. Probably had a fifth grade education or something. She was out there with a goat. She heard that man. Sophisticated guy. He hollered, HELP! She said, stay where you are. You all know that when you're up high and you're talking down here, the sound carries like an amphitheater. And he stayed where he was. A few minutes later, he heard on the rope. One of the shepherds threw down a rope to help him escape. This simple, ordinary woman, save this smart aleck from starving and freezing to death on a ledge somewhere in the Alps. That's what you can do for somebody. Be like Ananias and let's exalt the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us pray. Father, please bless this message. Use it for your own good. Give us good Bible