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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, this is a portion of a greeting from Paul's letter to the Romans, and it's especially apt today because I'm going to do something completely different. Ordinarily on this third Sunday after Epiphany would be we'd be looking at Matthew 4. We could focus on the tribalism that Jesus comes to supplant, intending to replace it with the unity that only faith in him can bring. And we can see him calling the first of his apostles. However, in our three-year lectionary, there is an alternate set of readings dedicated to celebrating the conversion of a certain Saul of Tarsus, a conversion that changed him from being the terror of the nascent sect known as the Way into the fearless Apostle Paul, author of multiple epistles, planter of multiple churches, and defender of the faith. We are reminded in the beginning of Acts chapter 9 about the target of Jesus' outreach here, where it reads, But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Acting on behalf of a pharisitical system that had led the people away from God's word of grace into a self-justifying system of external piety, Saul was actively seeking to snuff out this cult that was challenging the beliefs and practices that he had been taught. It is fitting in this season of Epiphany that Saul's encounter with the risen Christ begins with a blazing light of revelation. We read, Now as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him. And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And he said, Who are you, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. But rise and enter the city, and you will be told what to do. So, unable to see, and totally at the mercy of others, he was led by the hand into Damascus, where he sat in total darkness for three days, neither eating nor drinking. The Lord used a vision to send a disciple of Jesus, a local man named Ananias, to lay hands on Saul, who had been praying for restoration, in order to restore his sight. Despite his fears about Saul, Ananias consents because the Lord tells him this Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name. Laying his hands upon Saul, Ananias tells Saul, Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you have which you came, has sent me so that you may be regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit. And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and he regained his sight. Then he rose and was baptized, and taking food he was strengthened. For some days he was with the disciples at Damascus, and immediately he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogue, saying, He is the Son of God. And all who heard him were amazed, and said, Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem of those who called upon this name? And has he not come here for this purpose? To bring them bound before the chief priests? But Saul increased all the more in strength and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ. And that's our epistle reading, the alternate epistle reading. Now, the traditional epistle reading for Paul's conversion is Luke's just the facts, ma'am report we just read here in Acts 9. But there's another version, Paul's testimony before King Agrippa, where Paul reveals something interesting about his inner action with the risen Christ on the Damascus Road. He says this to the last king of Judea. And when we all had fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads. See, reading the word goads pricked my attention, which is quite apt, for a goad is a pointed stick that is used to encourage a recalcitrant animal to head in the proper direction. This form of encouragement is administered from behind the animal at a safe distance. You don't use a short stick, because oftentimes an animal will resist these prodded suggestions, even to the point of kicking back with its hind legs against the sharpened stick, thus hurting itself worse than the gentle pokes it would ordinarily be receiving. So what was it that was goading Saul? Now there's a clue that we find in Luke's first mention of Saul back in Acts 7, which is just after Stephen had given his masterful defense of the gospel before the Sanhedrin, that religious court of the Jews. Here we read, Now when they heard these things, they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him, but he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And falling to his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, Lord, do not hold this sin against them. And when he had said this, he fell asleep. That's Acts 7, 54 to 60. Saul was a young protege of Gamaliel and had been well schooled in the Torah. He had just witnessed a masterful recasting of the history of the Israelites from their beginnings with Abraham through the promises given by Moses of the prophet who would come, the continuing focus as it narrows to King David, and then through all the promises, and finally ending with Stephen's powerful indictment. You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the righteous one, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by the angels, and did not keep it. Now I bet that that particular goad struck deep. Although it did not have an immediate effect, and we saw that Saul continued to try to round up the Christians, but I figure that Saul had been exposed to the whole tapestry of God's plan of redemption. The pattern set way back in Genesis 3 when God made that cryptic promise to Satan about a time when, quote, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel. See, this is the promise of a coming virgin-born man who would destroy the power of the evil one, even as being struck down himself. The Lord immediately followed up that lesson by instituting the first blood sacrifice, covering his fallen creations with animal skins, highlighting Adam and Eve's inability to cover themselves from the consequences of their sin, while demonstrating his love for them even in their fallen state. But even so there were challenges for Saul. How could he follow this Jesus? Certainly, Saul held to the Old Testament judgment that, quote, if a man has committed a crime punishable by death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day. For a hanged man is cursed by God. Kind of hard to follow someone cursed of God. But you know, that's the whole point of why Jesus came. Because he should have known the prophecies, he should have looked at Isaiah, the prophecies about the suffering servant. He could also see the idea of there was a resurrection, as Job put out. And then you can look more recently to Daniel's time-specific 70 weeks, which set forth in part a time to put an end to sin, to make atonement for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness. See, this is when the Messiah would be cut off, that is, executed. And he surely should have known the words of the Lord found in Zechariah. And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem of spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that when they look at me on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him as one weeps over a firstborn. All of these goads pushing Saul in a certain direction. And more. There's so much more in the Bible, the Old Testament, that he had access to. It shaped his path until a glorious blinding light allowed him to finally see. Because Saul had been exposed to all of God's word in the Torah. He became an outstanding teacher, able to expound upon the incre in intricacies, easy for you to say, intricacies of the word, while breaking it down to its essence, which he puts so succinctly in 1 Corinthians, where he wrote, For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. In his first letter to his colleague Timothy, Paul identified his lifelong status like this. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. That Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. See, this is sort of testimony that Paul insisted upon. The man who had acted as a feared defender of the parasitic faith of the Pharisees became a fearless defender of the faith, once for all delivered to the saints. This is why he could write, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. It's Romans 1, 16 and 17. And this is the passage from Paul that opened Martin Luther's eyes to the fullness of grace found in all Scripture. He wrote this. And nothing stood in the way but that one expression, the righteousness of God. Because I took it to mean the righteousness whereby God is righteous and acts righteously in punishing the unrighteous. Night and day I pondered until I grasped the truth that the righteousness of God is that righteousness whereby through grace and sheer mercy he justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through the open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before the righteousness of God had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me the gateway into heaven. Now, Paul indeed found the suffering that Jesus had promised. He saw the light. And after missionary journeys, punctuated by threats, arrests, jailings, beatings, snake bites, illness, and shipwreck, Paul was able to stand before Agrippa and proclaim, To this day I have had the help that comes from God. And so I stand here, testifying both to small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would come to pass. That the Christ must suffer, and that by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles. Paul ended up in the hands of the Romans, where chained to members of the Praetorian Guard, his captivity led to the conversion of multitudes, as his teachings eventually infected even the household of the Caesars. We have those teachings. And we have his Lord in word and sacrament and power. Thanks be to God. Amen.