I want to read of a man that was divinely ordained to be a pattern for every child of God; I am to seek to be like Paul. I cannot hide behind the excuse that I can't be like Christ, because He is both God and man, therefore I can't hope in this life to be as perfect as He is. But God in His wisdom has given us a pattern; Paul is divinely ordained to be the pattern for God's people, and the man whom God chose, and the man who took the things of Christ and lived them out. I want His God to be my God, his Lord to be my Lord, his faith to be my faith; God help me, a little of his zeal to be my zeal.
If somebody would actually come into contact with and feel the power and impact of the living God and be changed, and then go out to be a faithful witness of the things that he has seen and heard. Galatians 1:20 says: "Now the things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not."
This is not truth he thought up, it is the truth that ran through his soul as he experienced the power and impact of God in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Long, long ago the truth was found; found in experience, not in fear, and a company of men it bound (who were the Apostles), the leader of the Apostles was this man. And that truth that bound them into a fellowship of committed men and women; who believed in a living God, and spoke with the authority of the Word of God and experience. There is no authority that packs the way as a man saying, "I know," "I was there, this took place, this is so." You can no more tell what you don't know than you can come back from where you haven't been. Let us read the testimony of this man. Galatians 1:6-19 says: "I marvel that ye are so soon removed from Him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel; Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the Gospel of Christ."
And then in the language of authority this man who met the living God in Christ Jesus on the road to Damascus and never was able to be the same again; he could stand up without apology and without rudeness, and be able to say: "But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed."
Isn't that some statement? You have received the Gospel, I preached it to you, I knew what I was talking about, it was my Gospel. I have experienced the Christ, Who is the message of that Gospel. "For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. But I certify you, brethren, that the Gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ."
Have you ever looked at that verse? That is the only way to know the Gospel; by the revelation of Jesus Christ. "For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it."
Not Judaism that was so; but the Jews' religion; the perversion, the mixing of tradition with truth, that's the Jews' religion that hung Christ Jesus on a cross.
"And profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers. But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by His grace, To reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood; Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days."
He sat at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ for three years and was taught by Him. He didn't have to go to a Seminary to be taught how to preach. He sat at the feet of the revealing Christ, the only One Who can reveal the Gospel to us.
"But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother."
And I want you to know I am telling the truth. Verse 20: "Now the things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not."
Four things took place when Saul of Tarsus met the living God in Christ Jesus and God met Saul. I am sure aware of the fact that after his meeting with the living God, that for three years he re-thought, and re-experienced, and re-learned, and re-listened; but he didn't confer with flesh and blood; he got his Gospel the only place anybody can get it; whether in the pulpit stand or in the pew: directly from God. The Gospel cannot be learned, it cannot be taught, it can be proclaimed without explanation to the faith of men. But we are shut up to: "But when it pleased God," but I'd rather be shut up to His work than to be left to do as I please, or the teaching of men, however good. To me the most pessimistic verse in the Bible is John 5:40: "And ye will not come to Me, that ye might have life."
And the most optimistic verse in the Bible is John 6:44, which says: "No man can come to Me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw him...."
Bless God that isn't pessimism, that isn't fatalism, that isn't shutting the door; that is showing where it is. There is only one door, but thank God, there is one door. Jesus said in John 10:9: "I am the door; by Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved…"
A preacher said to me in Winston Salem: "I wish I could have you in my church for a meeting, but my people have heard you say: 'We are all eternity-bound men and women and unless God Almighty is pleased to work a miracle in you, and reveal Christ in you; you are doomed for hell.' "He said, "Brother Barnard, they just can't take that"; but that is the God's truth and there is hope there; because God is a God Who is pleased to reveal Himself. It is in the character of God to do for men and women what He did for Paul, who is our pattern. "When it pleased God." I'd rather be subject to His pleasure, than the weakness of my own resolves and determinations in the best of men.
I believe the Apostle Paul spent three years sitting at the feet of the revealing Christ; and God knows that we would do well to listen; and not simply to learn the truth he wrote down but to experience the Christ of Whom the truth is written. We would do well to listen to a man who can come in a day when nobody wants to assume any voice of authority and say, "I am telling you the truth, I experienced it, I got this from the Lord, this is it."
There are four things that happened to Saul of Tarsus when he met God in Christ, and they must happen to you and they must happen to me if our profession be not false. If we too can stand up and speak with authority and say: "I speak the truth, telling you what I know, I'm telling you what I've experienced." Some things that always take place when a person meets God in Christ, for Jesus was God manifest in the flesh. When a man gets to Christ, manifested in the flesh he has got to God. Nothing short of that do we dare to call salvation. And any decision or profession or anything else that stops short of a meeting between a seeking God and a seeking sinner is not salvation. Paul didn't come to accept the doctrine of the bodily resurrection of Christ on the road to Damascus; Paul met the living Christ. He found out by experience that Christ is alive and he didn't believe that Jesus was alive. If Paul had seen a vision of a glorified Messiah, it would have confirmed his convictions that he was right; and Jesus was not the Son of God. But on that road he didn't see a vision of a heavenly Messiah, he saw the crucified Son of God, and that settled it right then and there. This One Whom they hung on a cross, was buried in another man's tomb; and these disciples going around here claiming that He didn't stay in that tomb; He arose, God raised Him. This was settled for Paul right then and there. These disciples had been telling the truth, that same person with the print of nails in His hands and the thorns on His brow and the riven side; Saul of Tarsus saw Him, and he was able now to identify Him as the God sent One. The One Whom his whole nation had rejected and said He is not the sent One. And all hell could never shake this man from that moment on. He said, "Christ is alive, I saw Him, He revealed Himself to me." The Christ of doctrine, the Christ of the Bible, the Christ of the bloody, bloody cross, He is alive, I met Him, He spoke to me, He changed me, He is alive. In the name of all that is high and holy this is it. If that same One Who was born in a manger, Who was crucified and hung on a cross; if He is alive then that settled it. There is not a safe refuge on this earth for any being with his unbelief; all men now are shut up to faith, there is nothing else for the order today; if Christ is alive. Paul found out that what Stephen said was so, he found out what these disciples said was so: Christ is alive. Here is a man that said, "I know He's God sent one, I know He is the world's Redeemer, I know He is very God, I know because He is alive and I met Him and He changed me."
First Paul found out that the resurrection of Christ was Almighty God's act; what Jesus had claimed for Himself, and what His followers claimed for Him was truth. The resurrected Christ is God's signal once for all, eternal declaration and final decree, by the resurrection from the dead. God said, "This is My Son, and I can speak to you in and through Him and this is My message to a lost and dying world: this is My Son and I raised Him from the dead." Jesus' conquest of death could be nothing less than God in action. It was God making bare His right arm. Brother, if you want to see God in power, see Him as He raised His Son from the dead, that's God's power in action, that's what God can do. And when He raised His Son from the dead, He raised all of His people for time and eternity. Oh! how great Thou Art. Scripture after Scripture in the book of Acts says: "You killed Him, and God raised Him." Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father. Him hath God exalted. God raised Him and in raising Him, He raised to newness of life "all" who shall ever be bound to Him by faith. All of the Scriptures that I could summon that God acts, God's power, God's action, God's mighty acts; all of them point back to the startling truth which broke upon Paul in the very hour of his conversion that what we call Christianity is not based on tradition, it's not based on foolish inventions, but it is based on the mighty power and action of a Blessed Holy God.
When we read 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, we see: "For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; And that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures." That means He rose once and He is alive right now.
What a message! And Paul said: "I've seen Him, I've heard from Him, I've experienced Him, I know He is alive." God is always the giver and man can do nothing but receive, but thank God he can do that.
The second thing that was settled was his attitude toward the cross of Christ was utterly changed. Most of the real conversions now are taking place long after people have claimed to be saved, when men and women actually meet God and become a member of the body of Christ. One who is committed to a person; the Lord Jesus Christ – and walk in loving obedience to Him. We are living in a day when we pleasantly accept things that can't be accepted, unless God reveals them. You are a fool if you believe that Jesus is the eternal Son of God on the testimony of anybody except God Himself. I hope someday I can learn how to preach the mystery of the Gospel of Christ. And here it is: and it comes not by learning, not by accepting what our churches teach; it comes by meeting this living Christ, Who was crucified, and then the Holy Spirit will do for you exactly what He did for the Apostle Paul: you will see the wonderful truth, He was made a curse for us. That is the most profound thing in the Word of God and nobody can accept that apart from the revealing work of God the Holy Ghost.
You can accept the hand-me-down, second-hand, something that passes for an experience; but what I am talking about is something that only God can bring to pass. Here at one sight of the living Christ as the One who had been crucified; not two different people but the same One; the mystery where justice and mercy meet; that no man can understand; but thank God they can experience. It was revealed to this Saul of Tarsus that God did what you just couldn't see in Deuteronomy 21:22 and 23 that man hanging on a tree outside of Jerusalem is accursed from God. But He was made a curse for me. If you believe that, it will change you. That will make you keep on with your face set like a flint toward the will of God, rejoicing in tribulations.
No wonder Paul said, "Pray for me that I may have utterance," authority to proclaim the mystery of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Multitudes are in hell who believed what they call a simple Gospel that a little child can understand; it is so profound nobody can understand it. Only God could do it, only God the Holy Ghost can reveal the Gospel to you. When Christ was revealed to Paul, his whole thinking was changed from a conviction that Jesus couldn't be God's Son. He said, "He is." What happened? The revelation of the Holy Spirit that God worked a miracle: He made His Son to be a curse for us. "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God" (1 John 5:la). Something has happened to him; he has received a revelation from God.
You see, nobody today has got time to get saved and preachers don't shut people up today: that this business is a meeting blood experience between a meeting blood sinner and a living God. He doesn't preach that a man has been set apart to live in the bounds and habitations that God marked out for him so that he may seek God and come into a living relationship to this revealing living God. Paul met Him and the proof that He couldn't be God's Son was shattered; and the proof that He was the Son of God was revealed to him. Yes, He had been made a curse, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me." I made you a curse, separated, rejected for me. From then on he was in a new sphere of being. Two hundred and forty-six times in his writings he calls that new sphere of being: "In Christ." It is foolish to talk about being saved, unless there is a moving from the sphere of self and sin and darkness into the sphere of Christ. Paul said, "I live in Christ." Paul's whole life and nature was completely changed. He is now a new man in Christ. That is what happened to him when he met the living Christ, and that is what will happen to you if you are ever saved. You must be "in Christ" or spend eternity in hell.
"Our Father, we pray in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, please speak to those who read this message; that they may seek the Lord while He may be found. May Christ be glorified. Amen!"