Our text for this morning comes from the book of Acts 9 starting at verse 26 turn there with me if you would and let’s stand together as we read God’s word together.

Acts 9:26-31(ESV) 26 And when he had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples. And they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple. 27 But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles and declared to them how on the road he had seen the Lord, who spoke to him, and how at Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus. 28 So he went in and out among them at Jerusalem, preaching boldly in the name of the Lord. 29 And he spoke and disputed against the Hellenists. But they were seeking to kill him. 30 And when the brothers learned this, they brought him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus.31 So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.One of the things that can get lost in our study of the Bible is chronology; we lose a sense of time in certain Bible events. On the surface of this passage and practically speaking we are going from one passage to the next in chapter 9 and one story to the next, previously in this passage Paul was in Damascus preaching the gospel following is conversion on the Damascus road, for those who are unfamiliar with that story Paul, who was a persecutor of those who followed Jesus Christ, had Christ revealed to him on the road going to a region called Damascus. It was in this revelation directly from God that Paul, in repentance came to realize his error in persecuting those who followed Jesus Christ and surrendered himself to Christ’s lordship. It was in that experience that his fervor and passion for God pivoted from wanting to destroy those who he presumed were coming against God, namely Christians, to proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ in the place where he intended to destroy Christians.

Now if you were to read that story of Paul’s salvation at the beginning of Acts 9, move through chapter 9 and his time preaching the gospel in Damascus to where we find ourselves in todays passage, in verse 26 it all moves rather quickly for us, but in reality as Paul affirms in Galatians 1:18, three years had gone by between verses 25 when Paul left Damascus and 26 as Paul arrives in Jerusalem.

It sheds a whole new light on what we are reading here in this passage. Paul had been a Christ follower for three years, he had been preaching the gospel in other regions and yet in that three years the disciples in Jerusalem, the place where his murderous journey started, weren’t buying it, they didn’t know this new and improved gospel-centered Paul. 

Although Paul was now an ardent defender and proclaimer of the gospel, his past actions had consequences in Jerusalem and now he had a reputation for something that was no longer true; fair or unfair, this was all the disciples in Jerusalem had as a witness for Paul up to this point. But despite that narrative Paul had an inescapable desire to align himself with the believers in Jerusalem and to not be an outsider looking in at the church. Paul faced an inescapable reality that every Christian faces:

Move 1: Every Christian Has aDesperate Need for Active Encouragement from Other Christians 

Imagine that you are Paul in this moment. You know and feel the weight of your errors, you just left a place where people wanted to kill you for preaching the gospel, you are now in a place where people don’t believe you are who you say you are in the gospel, what do you do?

Do you just go it alone? Do you just become a rogue in the Christian community? I don’t need these disciples anyway, God called me and that’s all that matters!Friends if COVID 19 has taught you anything, I hope what it has taught you is that you cannot go through the Christian life alone. Detreich Bonhoffer said it best in his book Life Tog