Book of Acts

The Book of Acts—Chapter 8-11 
Week 16 -

BIOGRAPHY V. TESTIMONY

All right, if you’ve got a Bible, go to Acts 9:19.

In our day, there’s a real fascination, a love for, biography. So whether it’s a testimonial on a talk radio or television show, or it’s a runaway movie, or it’s a best-selling book, we love biographies. We love to hear about someone who overcame adversity, someone who stood in the face of opposition, someone who was able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps to do better, to try harder, to get some great victory, and to emerge triumphant over their circumstances.

Our culture is littered with these stories, and the difference between a biography and a testimony is this: God. 
A biography is “Look what I did.” 
A testimony is “Look what God did. 

As Christians, we know that no matter what we have “accomplished” it is ultimately God that has done the work. He is the One that should receive the glory!!! 
All of chapter nine of the book of Acts is the testimony of Saul of Tarsus, also known as Paul the Apostle. So what I want to do today as we study this together, I want you to think about your own life and ask yourself, “Am I living for a biography or a testimony? Am I living so that others would be impressed with who I am and what I’ve done, or living in such a way that others would be impressed by who Jesus is and what he’s done for me?”
Why is this important? There is power in your testimony. 
Revelation 12:11New Living Translation
11 And they have defeated him by the blood of the Lamb
    and by their testimony.
And they did not love their lives so much
    that they were afraid to die.
Your testimony is powerful because it testifies not just that God is alive, and loving, and good, and powerful, and true, but HE has manifest HIMSELF in your life. 
As you share that with others, you become a living epistle. You become a story of God’s grace that not only encourages believers, but it evangelizes un-believers.
So let’s ask ourselves some questions with this in mind.  
1. WHAT WERE YOU LIKE BEFORE YOU BECAME A CHRISTIAN?
Testimony: For me, looking back, God saved me when I was young. God blessed me to be born into a Christian, church attending family. Now things were not perfect by any means. My family went through divorce, and I took it personal. Even though I wasn’t the reason for the divorce I thought that I was. 
My mom and dad were divorced and then remarried and then finally divorced again for the final time in my twenties. Like any typical male, I grew up only when I had to. I loved the Lord but still had struggles with insecurity, trust, and shyness. 
As we’re looking at the story of Saul, Paul, the first half of Acts 19 tells us that he was very religious and relentless. He was sincere, but he was sincerely wrong. He was relentless, but in the wrong direction, for the wrong cause, on the wrong mission. He was religious, he was relentless, and he was ravaging. The Bible actually uses that word, that Saul was ravaging the church. What we learn about him is that he hated Christ and he hated Christians.
If you asked the Christians in that day, “Who is the greatest enemy to Christianity?” They would have said Saul of Tarsus. He was the equivalent in our day of a guy who’s sort of leading a terrorist group that is out to assault, and incarcerate, and execute Christians. He was that kind of man. As a result, he put to death the early church deacon, Stephen. He oversaw his murder. The Christians fled, the churches emptied, people scattered, and he got permission like a bounty hunter to pursue them upwards of 150 miles on foot with the right to legally arrest them and bring them back for trial, possibly incarceration, or even execution, bound in chains. That’s Saul of Tarsus. That is who he is and what he is like as a non-Christian.

How about you? What were you like as a non-Christian?
 
2. HOW DID YOU VIEW OF JESUS CHANGE?
My view of Jesus was that He loved me but for me I thought He was sitting on His throne waiting for me to mess up so He could take any blessings away. 

How about you? 
(Open it up for discussion)
Well, as I told you, Saul thought that Jesus was a blasphemer and a godless man who was saying he was the God. He thought that Jesus was perhaps the most ungodly person who had ever lived, and he hated Christ, and he hated Christians who worshiped Jesus as God. And then his view of Jesus changed.
We saw earlier in chapter nine, Jesus comes down from heaven, and Saul literally has an encounter with Jesus, and his view of Jesus changes. Then we read this, 
Acts 9:19 NKJV 
19 So when he had received food, he was strengthened. Then Saul spent some days with the disciples at Damascus. 20 Immediately he preached the Christ in the synagogues, that He is the Son of God. 21 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 priests?”
You can see the transformation in Saul. Imagine how the people must have felt when hearing what he was preaching. They had to be asking, “What happened to this guy?”
How did your nonbelieving friends act when you gave your life to Jesus? Even now, do they see a difference in how you live your life compared to theirs? 
22 But Saul increased all the more in strength, — so the Holy Spirit is working in and through him— and confounded the Jews who dwelt in Damascus, proving that this Jesus is the Christ.

There are two titles here that the Saul is teaching that are important. Don’t miss them: Son of God and Christ.

Biblical titles are different than the ones we use. 
So today, let’s say you’re in a Muslim country that’s ruled by a royal family, and someone says they’re a prince. All right, if you live in that culture and context, prince is loaded with meaning. In our country, prince, not so much. You’re like, “Isn’t he the little guy that lived in Minnesota, wore a raspberry beret, went out in the purple rain? Is it that?” You know, we don’t—prince doesn’t mean as much, right?

So, we need to look. Culturally, what did the titles mean? How would they have heard it? So that we can understand it and get the most meaning from it.

TITLES 
Jesus is the Son of God and he is the Christ. That’s what Paul is proclaiming. That is what he is declaring because his view of Jesus has been changing. When it says that Jesus is the Son of God, this is a direct claim to be God, to be divinity. 
In the Bible there are a lot of genealogies. There is an importance on this question. “Who’s your father?” I see this more with older people than younger. I believe in some ways, this is why the enemy tries so hard to break up the family unit. People lose their identity that is usually found in their families. 
So when they ask Jesus, “Who is your daddy?” 
He says, “My Father is God.”
No one had ever said that. He had an adoptive earthly father named Joseph, but he’s saying that ultimately his father is God the Father, and that he is not just a son of Joseph, he is the Son of God.

There is an old saying, “Like father, like son.” That’s why Jesus says, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father. I and the Father are one.” He’s saying that God is his Father and they’re equal. He’s putting himself on the same plane as God the Father. They have the same attributes, the same authority, they share in the same glory. If I commission one of my sons on my behalf, they show up with my authority. Jesus is saying, “I come with the Father’s authority. I come on his behalf.” Well, those who heard this heard this clearly as a claim to be God.

Jesus was opposed, Jesus was arrested, Jesus was crucified, Jesus was murdered because he said he was God.
Saul comes along, and he hates Christ because he said he was God, and he hates Christians because they worship him as God, and then he meets Jesus Christ, he becomes a Christian, and he proclaims that Jesus is the son of God.

Secondly, he says that Jesus is the Christ. This means the Anointed One, the Messiah. This means that God the Holy Spirit resides on and works through this person in a supernatural, miraculous, inexplicable way, and that there are people who are anointed— in the Old Testament, there are prophets, and priests, and kings, and the Holy Spirit indwells, and empowers, and transforms, and uses them for God’s supernatural work on the earth— but the prophecies were given and the anticipation was awaiting the coming of one who would be the Anointed One, unlike everyone else, in a category unto themselves, the person who would come with God’s power and God’s authority on God’s mission for God’s glory, the Anointed One. Nobody like them, nobody alongside of them, nobody in the same category as them. And Saul is saying that Jesus Christ is the Anointed One. He has authority as God and power as God that is unprecedented, unparalleled, and unequaled. 
Do you see this radical change?

How many of you may have thought of Christianity as a good example on how to live? You thought Jesus was a good man, now you know he’s the God. You thought Jesus was a good example, and now all of the sudden you realize he’s Lord, Savior, King, and Christ. That you’re understanding of Jesus has completely expanded, and changed, and transformed. 
Now, here’s the important thing. What Saul is saying is not important unless it’s true. And if it is true, it’s radical. What Saul is doing is he is echoing what Jesus had already been saying. 
So, Jesus is the Son of God and the Christ. 
Matthew 26:63-65 New Living Translation
63 But Jesus remained silent. — Friends, the context is this. It’s like a trial. Jesus his been deposed, right? He’s on trial. Somebody’s keeping a record, right? Those who are going to render the verdict are present. And the charge is this, “You say you’re God. Now, we want to give you an opportunity to recant, to say, ‘Oh, I was misinterpreted, misunderstood.’ We want you to clarify that. We want you to, if you did say it, apologize for that and agree never to say it again.
The issue is he says he’s God. We need to hear from him what he truly believes. —” Then the high priest said to him, “I demand in the name of the living God— Okay, this is kind of funny, right? This is like, “Put your hand on the Bible. Do you swear to tell the truth?” tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.”
64 Jesus replied, “You have said it. And in the future you will see the Son of Man seated in the place of power at God’s right hand and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
65 Then the high priest tore his clothing to show his horror and said, “Blasphemy! Why do we need other witnesses? You have all heard his blasphemy.
What’s blasphemy? When someone says they’re God and they’re not God. If I told you right now, “I’m God,” that would be blasphemy
People who say, “Jesus was a good man, he just made a mistake saying he was God,” Good men don’t make mistakes like that. Cult leaders do. Sociopaths do. People who are insane do. Good people don’t say, “I’m God, worship me, and when you die, trust in me.” 
Christianity comes down to what Jesus said about Himself.
If it’s true, he’s God. If it’s not true, he’s a blasphemer, a man claiming to be God who’s not God. And just so you know, there is no other major world religion in the history of the world that has its founder making this claim, “I’m God.” In fact, we tend to consider those most holy who are clear that they’re unholy, right? We want to follow someone who knows that they’re not perfect, and Jesus says he’s perfect. So that’s either true or false, and this is a magnificent, extraordinary, unprecedented, unparalleled claim. And they rightly understand, if he says he’s God and he’s not God, he’s guilty of what? Blasphemy. And the consequence is death.

This is why they crucified him. Not because he fed people, not because he petted lambs, not because he hung out with children, they killed him because he said he was God, and that’s either true or false.

“Blasphemy! Why do we need other witnesses? You have all heard his blasphemy.
They’re saying, “Case closed. We had people ready to testify. We don’t even need their testimony. We can make this trial very short. He just told us he’s God, case closed.”

Saul’s view of Jesus has radically changed because he would have said previously, “Blasphemer,” and now he says, “Jesus is Lord.”