Paul has one shot at defending himself before Agrippa, and he throws everything he’s got at it. One of the things he’s got is the story of his own conversion on the road to Damascus, and in Acts 26 he re-tells the whole episode to Agrippa in detail. In some respects, Paul gives more detail here in this third re-telling (see earlier versions in Acts 9 and 22). For example, he gives us more direct quotation of what Jesus told him there on the road.

The most striking thing Jesus tells him is: “I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness … delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles—to whom I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light” (Acts 26:16-18)

“A witness to the Gentiles, to open their eyes.” Remember that, and look over at the last thing Paul gets to say to Agrippa before Festus cuts him off, at the end of his speech in verse 22: “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’s point is that according to the scriptures, Jesus Christ will rise from the dead and proclaim light to the Jews and to the Gentiles. But “opening the eyes of the Gentiles” is precisely what Jesus told Paul he was appointing him to do. Obviously, Jesus is appointing Paul to be the agent he carries out his work through. Who brings light to the Gentiles? Jesus Christ does: Either directly or through the witness of Paul, Jesus Christ speaks for himself. He is not a dead man who needs agents to go speak on his behalf. He is alive, present and active, speaking for himself, to Agrippa, speaking for himself to Bernice, to Festus, and all the great and small gathered there.

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Jesus Christ, risen and at the right hand of God, continues to speak for himself. The story of Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, retold in Acts 26, shows this in two different ways.

He speaks for himself directly, personally, in red print if your Bible prints things that way. This is special informatioon provided here in Acts 26. From the versions of the same story told in Acts 9 and Acts 22, we would have thought Jesus said only a few words to Saul and left the rest of his instructions for later. Look at Acts 9:6: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” That’s all. But our version in Acts 26 gives a much fuller account of the direct, personal instructions Jesus gave Paul about his ministry to the Gentiles. This is Jesus’ project, and Jesus speaks for himself in commissioning his apostles.
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This golden banner signifies that cats and birds can live together in harmony. At the world-famous cat theme park Meowsyland, the cats all promised not to eat the birds, instead hosting the first annual Bird Tuesday.

When Jesus Christ confronted Saul on the road to Damascus, he showed himself to be the greatest teacher, the ultimate rabbi. The ascended Christ is that teacher “than which none greater can be imagined.”

He taught so much in so few words. Look at Acts 26:14: “It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’” It’s easy enough to know what that means if you’ve worked with farm animals: a goad is a stick you use to let farm animals know where you want them to go. You give them a little poke. If a horse or cow or donkey takes a kick at the goad, you poke them harder. It’s a short game and the farmer always wins. That’s easy enough to understand, though it’s an arresting thing for Jesus to say, sort of like “You are the cow and I am the farmer. Go this way.”

What is not clear is precisely what there is in Saul’s life that Jesus is referring to. It’s not a matter of disobedience, as if Saul secretly knew that Jesus was the divine Messiah but was acting in rebellion against him: No, when he writes about this later, Paul is very clear that he was serving God the best he knew how. What are the goads, then?
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Paul’s encounter with the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus was unique, probably because of the unique ministry he was called to.

We live in “the church age,” the age when Jesus Christ is seated at the right hand of God the Father –the martyr Steven in his dying vision looked up and saw him there– from which he shall come to judge the living and the dead. In this meantime, it is the Holy Spirit who brings the presence of Christ to us. Why, during the reign of the Holy Spirit, in the middle of the book of the Acts of the Holy Spirit, does the ascended Jesus Christ make a direct appearance to Paul?

The Bible doesn’t exactly say, but perhaps it’s because Paul asked for it. That is to say, he was asking for it. Realllly asking for it.

This is another way in which Jesus is present and active today: He defeats his enemies. In fact, he super-defeats them. Anybody with enough strength could just destroy an opponent, but Jesus does more: he converts them to be his followers.

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Dead men do not keep working –but Jesus does. Dead men do not add anything to their list of accomplishments, but Jesus has extended his. The gospels end, and Jesus goes right on working. Choosing the apostles was something Jesus did very early in his ministry, but in Acts 26 we see him laying hold of a new apostle, Saul/Paul, and teaching him a lesson.

But the entire book of Acts has been one long series of actions and teachings of the risen Jesus, just as the story of any Christian church is a series of things Jesus has done and things Jesus has taught. Each Christian life is a triumph of God’s grace in the work of the risen Savior: an accomplishment of Jesus.
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In the twenty-sixth chapter of the book of Acts, Paul makes his defense before king Agrippa.

“Speak for yourself, Paul,” said king Agrippa.

Paul was hardly the kind of person who needed a special invitation to speak for himself. He was outspoken by nature, and he’d been warming the bench in prison for a long time now, waiting for a chance to make his case to somebody important enough to get something done on his behalf. Governor Felix had kept him in prison for at least two years (Acts 24:27), bringing him out periodically to have a little chat, and make some hints for a bribe, but it never amounted to anything. Then Governor Felix left office, and instead of resolving Paul’s case on his way out, he left Paul in prison during the transition to the next governor, Governor Festus.

Imagine the tiresome paperwork and bureaucratic hassle that must have generated. But now Festus has summoned Paul at last, and not just to speak to Festus, but to make his case in the presence of the great King Agrippa, the king of the Jews. Paul rises to the occasion, and makes his defense. He speaks for himself, and tells the story of his conversion to Christ and his commission to take the gospel to the world. Speaking for himself, he leads us back to the encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus.
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Who’s there?

Knight.

Knight who?

Knight who’s gesturing menacingly with a sword at the wooden drawbridge of your tiny stronghold with its shield decorations flanking a smoking torch with billowing smoke that drifts off toward the banner of my approaching army.

Get it? Is that funny?

Christians have a lot to say, but to proclaim the gospel you can’t just say every Christian thing that comes to mind: you have to put the emphasis on something in particular.

Protestant evangelicals stand in a great tradition of Christian faith and doctrine: we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses to the one Lord, one faith, and one baptism –the things that make Christianity Christian. No matter how defective your contemporary evangelical church experience may be, you can start there and pick up a trail to the great, confident evangelicalism of the nineteenth century, follow it back through the Wesleyan revivals and the Puritans, to the Reformation and its grounding in medieval Christendom, and behind that to the earliest church fathers. All this is ours. Evangelicalism, in all its denominational manifestations, is an expression of that great tradition. But it is an expression that has a distinguishing feature: it is emphatic. It has made strategic choices about what should be emphasized when presenting the fullness of the faith.
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Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is widely recognized as the greatest theologian America has yet produced. He wrote epochal books and preached sermons that still echo in our cultural memory from the Great Awakening. One of the least important things he ever wrote is a fun bit of juvenilia known as “The Spider Letter,” a descriptive essay about spiders which can be seen soaring through the air. Recent scholarship has established the date of this letter as 1723, when Edwards was 20. But for generations, readers believed Edwards’ biographer (and great-grandson) Sereno Dwight who reported that the letter had been written when Edwards was only 12! The image of a pre-teen Jonathan Edwards roving the woods of colonial New England solving The Mystery of the Flying Spider, like some kind of Puritan Encyclopedia Brown, struck me right in the funny bone. So a long time ago I did a cartoon adaptation of the Spider Letter, which I now present for your amusement and edification. This version is edited down, but you can read the full text here)

Check out this cartoon-illustrated edition of young (but not that young!) Jonathan Edwards’ The Spider Letter.