Acts 9:5

Acts 9:5

This declaration points:

I. To past impressions. Many persons regard this startling event as the first and only period that the Saviour sought the services of an ardent man; that without any previous internal preparation he was changed in the whole current and purposes of his life. But this cannot be altogether true. That this was the decisive moment in his history there cannot be a question. The grand transformation then took place, but the Divine Spirit had been at work within him before. There had been influences and arguments at work on St. Paul's mind, and these had been the goads against which he had rebelled. And what were these past expressions, and whence did they arise? I think they must have arisen from his education and experience. It was impossible that he, with his candid nature, should have witnessed the pure, loving, self-sacrificing lives of these men and women whom he had haled to prison, and not make some inquiry as to the faith which had accomplished so much in them. And then the very teacher at whose feet he sat as a revering scholar had spoken about this new religion in a manner that seemed to imply that he had in his own mind a half-conviction of its truth. These things formed the goads which stung Saul, against which he struggled.

II. These words not only point to past impressions, but they describe present struggles. Many a man has been conscious of this battle going on within him for years; this struggle of what he knows to be right for the sin he loves so well.

III. These words proclaim certain misery and future defeat. There could be nothing but unhappiness and failure as the result of the course which Saul took, the opposition he offered to the progress of Christ's kingdom. It was useless for him to kick against the goads; they only stung him the more severely; resistance was of no avail; he could not fight successfully against a superior power. This is a lesson which seems true enough, but it is difficult to learn. There is only one out of two courses to bow and acknowledge the grace and power of Christ, or resolutely set yourselves against Christ, and at last be broken as a rod of iron. For the enemies of Christ shall be made his footstool.

W. Braden, Penny Pulpit,No. 516.

References: Acts 9:5. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xii., No. 709. Acts 9:5; Acts 9:6. Ibid.,vol. xxvi., No. 1520.