Wed Apr 30

Listen up, little ones

Especially for the littles in your household.

Listen for the words persecuting and Lord.

Reading

Acts 9:1-19—Threats and Murder against the Church

Optional Reading

2 Chron 36:18-19

Keys for kids

Also for the littles. Young households might choose, after Keys for Kids, to go directly to praise and prayer.

Saul wanted to destroy Jesus’s church.
In doing that he was harming Jesus himself.
Jesus turned Saul from an enemy to a friend and disciple.

Questions

(Some read the ?s before the notes/ ask them after.)

What was Saul doing against the church?
What did Jesus say Saul was doing against him?
What happened to Saul?

Notes

Like the Chaldeans’ (Babylonians’) attack against Judah and Jerusalem in 2 Chronicles 36 (and many other attacks in the Old Testament) God’s house is under constant attack. Here in Acts, Saul is breathing out threats and murder against the church. He thinks he is justified as a faithful Pharisee, wrongly believing that Christianity is a false religion with a false Messiah. But, that’s just it—he is wrong. Nevertheless he is seeking to destroy Christians and is quite content to see them put to death.

Then Saul had somewhat of a “Damascus Road experience”😊. He was confronted by Christ though he only saw a bright light and heard an audible voice. Jesus tells Saul that he is persecuting Jesus himself when he is persecuting the Church.

Maybe Jesus laughed at Saul’s efforts to destroy the church (see Psalm 2:4). And, he put a stop to Saul’s persecution of the church by transforming Saul into one of his disciples—a Christian. And by that same act, Jesus continued his work of building his church. This work will not be stopped even by the gates of hell.

Hughes comments on Saul’s story this way: Saul, a fierce persecutor of the church of Christ, discovered first to his horror and then to his eternal delight that he, the hunter, was also the hunted. For all of us who are Christ’s, the story in Acts 9 is a picture of how we came to be his.

Swedish Method questions

See the Sunday reading for meaning of the symbols.

Praise

Psalm 2a, 10a

Prayer

Rejoice that Jesus converted you from an enemy to a friend.
Pray for change in you from last Lord’s Day’s sermons.
Pray for a member of our church, for your family, and for a non-Christian friend/family member.