Paul thought he was persecuting the early church for the right reason but he was ignorant of one very important fact so he thought he was doing the right thing till he was on the road to Damascus and found out for a fact that he was doing the wrong thing God has been so good to me throughout my life God's hand has been upon me and just blessed me and I hope you feel that same way too you know it doesn't matter how the world is or what's going on uh whether or not America has the most gold medals God's still on the throne and great right I have some wonderful things to share with you and what's need to so many of the things that we're going to learn about Paul can be applied to our lives so let's start with prayer father you are so good all the time Lord it doesn't matter what's taking place God you remain steadfast your goodness is always there it doesn't matter where we live it doesn't matter where we grow up your love is consistent and we thank you for that now God just open up our eyes to your word father open up our hearts to receive it and to be able to apply it God so that we can walk not only in your will but walk in your blessings we thank you for this in Christ's name amen well for the next few weeks and probably I'm being too optimistic for the next few months we're going to be teaching on the Apostle Paul and as most of you know Paul was a Monumental figure in the early church he wrote 13 of the 27 New Testament books in the Bible 14 if you count the book of Hebrews and of course I believe that Paul wrote the book of Hebrews look at Hebrews chapter 13 verse number 23 and I'll show you why believe that Paul wrote this in closing I want you to know that our brother Timothy has been released from jail if he comes here soon I will bring him with me to see you now only Paul had this type of relationship with Timothy in fact he was like a spiritual son and there'll be some Scholars that will say well he would have said son if this was Paul but I don't believe that because other places he refers to Timothy as our beloved brother but as you read through the book of Hebrews and you see the Deep doctrinal teachings within it only someone like Paul could have written it I believe and when you couple it with this verse and his intimate relationship with Timothy well I believe that Paul wrote the book of Hebrews only he would have expected Timothy to come see him after being released from jail he just expected him to do that now apart from Jesus no other person has been as influential in forming the doctrines of Christianity in fact Paul has been referred to as the second founder of Christianity Jesus of course being the founder of the Christian faith but most of the doctrines that Define our faith come from Paul's writings he was a master at weaving Old Testament Theology and Messianic prophecies into fundamental Christian doctrines that fully explain who Jesus is and what he's done for us as a result of his writings we understand how Jesus fulfilled God's Master's plan for the human race now because Paul was such a important figure in the early church Luke devoted the majority of one of his books to the life and missionary journeys of Paul and the book I'm referring to of course is the book of Acts acts is a history of the early church if you want to get technical it's a history of the Acts of the Apostles that's why it's named Acts if you were wondering and since Paul was a major player in the early church and most of its history is about Paul and his life uh then we're going to be able to see that acts is going to focus on Paul so as we study Paul we're going to spend the majority of our time in the book of Acts but to really know the man and who he was we're going to have to look at what he wrote in his Epistles now if you're not really a church person you've only been coming for a short while Epistles is just a religious way of saying letters you know you don't talk about the love Epistles you sent to your wife do you but actually Epistles simply means letters these Epistles were letters that Paul wrote to the church and in them he forms many of the doctrines of the church now in our study what we're going to do is we're going to try and harmonize Paul's writings with Luke's record of his life and missionary Journeys our goal is to examine Paul's life in chronological order so I'm going to be Co cating various scriptural references relating to each period of Paul's life in other words I'm going to take all of the pertinent scriptures from the book of Acts and Paul's Epistles and I'm going to place them in their proper sequence so you can see what transpired in Paul's life in chronological order I'll also note what Paul was doing and where he was when he wrote each epistle I'll take the time to briefly outline and point out the theme of each epistle in its historical setting Now by doing all of this I'm going to be able to give you Paul's itinerary in the events that led up to his final years and eventually his martyrdom now my objective in doing all of this is to help you gain a better understanding of the Apostle Paul his life and also and most importantly his teachings so you can can see what it means to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ and in the process it should inspire you to become more like Paul notice what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians chap 11 verse number one and you should imitate me just as I imitate Christ now I'm sure that there are people who thought that Paul was being arrogant when he wrote this you know every once in a while I'll have someone write me an email or they write me a letter and they'll say you come across as arrogant because you define terms like people don't know what they mean well just to be honest with you I feel like my job is to make things simple I take complicated things and I break them down and make them as simple as possible and I try to present them on an eighth grade level so the reason I Define terms is because I usually ask myself the question would an eighth grader understand this term and an eighth grader might not and I'll Define the term so that we're all on the same page well you know Paul wrote some things that every once in a while comes across as arrogant he writes here in the book of Corinthians you should imitate me just as I imitate Christ in essence Paul was saying follow my example as I follow Christ example he was saying you want to know what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ then watch me because I'm living what it means to be a disciple and Paul understood that sometimes when we say you should be like Christ we go no one can do that so Paul says I get it I understand if you feel like you can't be like Christ then be like me because I'm trying to be like Christ and don't set your bar that high if you don't want to but at least set your bar high enough to say well I can be like Paul and that's what he's saying here so let's start this series by looking at Paul's childhood and his education we're going to begin with his birth and his ancestry Paul was born in the city of Tarsus of cissa look at acts chap 21 verse number 29 no Paul replied I am a Jew and a citizen of Tarsus and cissa which is an important city please let me talk to these people now cissa was a Roman profence in South Asia Asia Minor which is what today is modern day Turkey Tarsus was the capital city of cissa and it was considered to be a very important city the King James version says it was a city of no means the word means as translated from the Greek word as Amos and it means insignificant so when Paul said Tarsus was a city of no means he meant it was not insignificant in other words it was a city of no insignificance therefore it was a very important city and that's why the NLT translates it as an important city but why was Tarsus an important city you know most of us are not familiar with the geography of the Middle East and when we read these names and these places in the Bible we have no idea where they are and why they're important so let me explain a little bit about Tarsus why it was considered to be an important city it was important for several reasons first of all it was strategically located you see there was only one route through the tourus mountains that linked cissa to Syria and Tarsus was located at the Eastern entrance into the route through the tourist mountains so it was a strategic military position in fact when the Romans were at war with the parthians they needed control of the city to keep the parthians from advancing through the tours mountains plus they needed control of the city to protect their supply line to their army that's why Alexander the Great had to conquer the city and he had to maintain it the Romans did the very same thing in 63 BC because it was the Eastern entrance to the root through the tourus mountains and there was no other way to get through them it's kind of like when everyone was going west when America was being settled there were certain Roots through the Rockies and if you didn't know those roots you would get bogged down and you would die in the winter time so you hired guides to take you through certain roots that they knew that the snow wouldn't come in and you get cut and therefore die during the winter time well in the Taurus Mountains it's the same way in modern day Turkey there's only one route through it and if you could control the entrance to the Eastern entrance to the route and the Western then you could control everything yeah that's why it was so strategic how's that secondly it was important because of its size at the time of Paul it grew to a population of about a half a million people 500,000 again because of its strategic location the silk root that came from China and the spice root that came up from India they would actually come most people don't realize this if you were coming from India you would come up Saudi Arabia there was a route that went through Mecca and Medina and then you ran up through Jordan on the King's Highway you went through the Golden Heights and then basically you would go through Syria and eventually where you wanted to get was Europe but the way you got there if you didn't want to sell in the Mediterranean is you went through the tours mountains and by the time you got to Tarsus your supplies were low and you knew you would need enough supplies to be able to get through the mountains and anything that needed to be repaired would be repaired there so guess what you had a huge City in the entrance to that route and you had a huge City at the exit of that route because once you went through the mountains you used all your supplies again same thing with the silk root okay I'm going off on tangents but I enjoyed doing that all right how many of you know that when Mark polo made his famous Journey into China that he actually sailed on the Mediterranean and landed in Israel yeah and he went up through the hoola Valley and of course he follows the way all the way to China when he comes back from China he decides not to sell especially the timing because it could be very dangerous in the Mediterranean during the winter time he actually had to go through land so guess which city he went through Tarsus because you had to get through the tourus mountains so you just need to understand that it was a huge City at the time of Paul 500,000 people strabo who was a Greek philosopher and historian wrote that Tarsus had surpass both Athens and Alexandria as a seed of learning strabo lived from 63 BC to 24 ad so we're talking about that first century there first century BC 1 century ad he also said that Tarsus was known for its schools of philosophy and for its poets that's why Paul was so familiar with philosophers and their philosophical views but it's also why Tarsus was such an important city Paul of course was born into a Jewish family and that's why he referred to himself as a Hebrew an Israelite of the Seed of Abraham look at Second Corinthians 11: number 22 he writes this are they Hebrews so am I are they Israelites so am I is there a difference between a Hebrew and an Israelite we'll find out in this series are they descendants of Abraham now I'm using the NLT if you use the King James ver are they the Seed of Abraham but here are they the descendants of Abraham so am I his family was from The Tribe of Benjamin that's very important look at Romans 11: number one I asked then has God rejected his own people the nation of Israel of course not if you have bought into replacement theology you're wrong just read Romans chap 11 and you'll see the error you're in there is no such thing is replacement theology the church did not replace Israel in fact the whole purpose of the Millennium is to fulfill the promises that God made to Israel every one of those Pro promises will come true during the Millennium anyways let's keep going I asked then as God rejected his own people the nation of Israel of course not I myself in am an Israelite a descendant of Abraham and a member of the tribe of benjam now if you remember Jerusalem was not within the boundaries of the tribe of Judah which is surprising because Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and in the capital who Reigns the Kings and who do the kings where do the kings come from the tribe of Judah so you would think that the capital would be within the boundaries of the tribe of Judah but Jerusalem is not within the boundaries of the tribe of Judah it's within the boundaries of the tribe of Benjamin it's very close to the boundary line with Judah but it's not within Judah in fact Bethlehem which is in judah's territory is only 5 miles away from Jerusalem now let me explain why David chose Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel because he's from the tribe of who Judah the Kings come from which tribe not a trick question Judah David was from the tribe of the Bible says that my Warriors come from Ephraim and my Kings come from Judah yeah so anyways David's going to be king but when he first is is uh he rises as the king only two tribes accept him and eventually the other 10 do too but there's still a lot of dissension and distrust within that and the reason why is because Saul was the king that was asked for but was not God's actually Choice he was the choice because they asked for King and because Judah had committed inest slept with his daughter-in-law didn't understand or didn't know she was cuz she in a sense had disguised herself in fact as a result of that he fathers twins with Tamar and of course you have the curse of the bastard and so for 10 Generations the scriptures say that they cannot be in a position of leadership and so David is supposed to be the first king but the people ask for a king and Samuel finally says because God says they're not rejecting you they're rejecting me go ahead and give them a king so they give them the king and Saul actually means asked for he was the king they asked for so you had a lot of benjaminites because he was from The Tribe of Benjamin that wanted to see Saul's Dynasty continue but even his son Jonathan knew David is supposed to be the king so when David becomes king he realizes that it's going to cause a lot of animosity if I choose the capital to be in the tribe of Judah within the boundaries Ephraim would also be upset anyone know why Ephraim would be upset this isn't in my notes this is all free the reason Ephraim was upset is because Ephraim received the birth right if you remember Jacob's oldest son had Dishonored himself and disqualified himself from earning the birthright even though he the oldest so at that point you don't give it to the second oldest the father then chooses who's the wisest and the reason he made Joseph a Cod of Many Colors is because he was chosen to earn the birthright in other words he was going to uh be get the rights of the B of the firstborn of course we know what the story we know what took place Joseph goes down into Egypt he solded into slavery but he rises up his brothers have to go down there because of a famine and Joseph is reconnected and here's Joseph who's been chosen to receive the birthright and he brings his two sons in if you remember with the firstborn the birthright you got two portions of the inheritance Levi doesn't get any property because their inheritance is the Lord himself so you have 12 tribes and you take away one and you have 11 but there's 12 tribes why are there 12 tribes because Joseph didn't receive territory his two sons did because he got a double portion so Jacob comes in and he's going to lay hands on them he's going to bless them but he crosses his hands and Joseph looks at this he said no no no no dad you don't understand manasse is the oldest ephraim's not and he tries to replace Jacob's hands and position them the way that his right hand strength and power would be on the ois and Jacob says I know what I'm doing son crosses him and he gives the blessing the blessing goes to the firstborn and He blesses Ephraim that's why Ephraim is always upset when they're not taken into consideration when something is done in fact many times after the separation the two Southern tribes are referred to as Judah the 10 Northern tribes are referred to as who Ephraim why their tribe is the firstborn the rights of the first born therefore they take the lead everyone with me so God says my Warriors will come from Ephraim my Kings will come from Judah well Ephraim is very close to Benjamin and he's afraid that if he puts his Capital going back to David in within the boundaries of Judah then ephraim's going to be upset Benjamin's going to be upset so he chooses Jerusalem of course that's God's choice but he does that as a gesture of unity now why is this important why did I spend this time because the capital God's chosen place where the temple is built is in Jerusalem and it's within the boundaries of Benjamin which is very interesting because Paul's family was from Jerusalem in fact he had family living there while his parents lived in torsus everyone with me so Jerusalem was like a second home to Paul his family was very wealthy so he was used to traveling to Jerusalem three times a year for the Feast of Passover the Feast of Pentecost and the Feast of Tabernacles and they would stay at their family home and Paul grew up with a great understanding of Jerusalem it was a second home to him Paul also referred to himself self as a Hebrew of the Hebrews which some scholars believe means that he was a full blood Jew in other words both his parents were Jews and their ancestry on both sides went all the way back to Benjamin the son of Jacob look at Philippians chap 3: 3-5 here Paul is writing about himself we just kind of gloss over this because it's not important to us but if we were Jewish this would be very important he says for we are the circumcision which worship God in the spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh though I might also have confidence in the flesh if any other man thinketh that he ha whereof he might Trust In the Flesh I more in other words if you're trusting that you're the Seed of Abraham I should have more trust in that than you why and then he lists what it uh he lists his his uh circumstances circumcised the eth day of the sock of Israel The Tribe of Benjamin a Hebrew of the Hebrews as touching the law a Pharisee now in the original Greek it says hebreos X hebon which literally reads a Hebrew from Hebrews in other words a Hebrew son from Hebrew parents so as I said most scholars believe that the phrase Hebrew the Hebrews is a hebraism a Jewish idiom that means full blood Jew other scholars believe that the hebraism means that he was able to read the scriptures in Hebrew which would also indicate three things number one he would have been brought up to speak read and write Hebrew not everyone in Israel could do that during that day they spoke Aramaic they read Aramaic and most of them were trilingual they could speak Greek they could speak Aramaic and if you were educated Hebrew number two it means means that his parents would have brought him up to follow the Torah along with all the customs and the culture of the Jewish people and last but not least number three he would have been taught to avoid at all cost assimilating into the Gentile culture and adopting their Customs thus being a Hebrew of the Hebrews now to me this is very interesting especially considering the fact if we look forward that Paul's going to become the Apostle to the Gentiles you know I can remember being already Christian being in uh Bible College and they were teaching about Paul being the Apostle to the Gentiles and my first thought is man he was a Jew through and through he knew it all in fact you're going to find out that did you know that Paul had almost all of the Old Testament completely memorized turn to the book of OB Obadiah quote that Paul he could have done it Hosea Joe Amos Obadiah Jonah mam Hab Zephaniah AI Zechariah Malachi he could have quoted any of those because he had them all memorized yeah and I thought to myself why wasn't he the Apostle to the Jews but God chose him because he was so educated that not only could he minister to both but he also knew all the philosophies the philosophers and he was the most educated of all the Disciples of Jesus Christ oh he wasn't a disciple of he was too after his conversion he says that Jesus taught him in the wilderness okay I get caught up doing that anyways so Scholars think that this hebraism a Hebrew of the Hebrews can mean these two things it can either mean that he was a Jewish son of Jewish parents or it could mean that he was brought up in the Jewish ways he could read and write and and speak Hebrew that he could do all of these things well I tend to think that it meant both I think it meant that he was a full-blood Jew he was a Hebrew son of Hebrew parents with a pure ancestry line and he was able to read the scriptures in Hebrew because he was brought up totally immersed within Judaism however and this is a shocking thing Paul was a Roman citizen by birth look at acts chap 22: 25-29 he's on one of his missionary Journeys and of course he gets arrested like he usually is stirring up things and they're getting ready to beat him notice what it says when they tied B Paul down to lash him Paul said to the officer standing there is it legal for you to whip a Roman citizen who hasn't even been tried when the officer heard this he went to the commander and he asked what are you doing this man is a Roman citizen so the commander went over and he asked Paul tell me are you a Roman citizen yes I certainly am Paul replied I am too the commander muttered and it cost me plenty Paul answered but I am a citizen by birth the soldiers who were about to interrogate Paul quickly withdrew when they heard he was a Roman citizen and the command was frightened because he had ordered him bound and whipped now there are those who think that Paul was a Roman citizen because he was born in Tarsus of cissa and it was a Roman city it was a Roman province but people being born in a Roman city did not make you a Roman citizen it was not like it is today in the United States of America where if you're born in the United States then you're a citizen in fact that's why all of these people if they have money they want to send their wives if they're pregnant to America because if they're born here guess what they're a citizen and they can have dual citizenship people that didn't work that way in the ancient days in fact it doesn't work that way in the majority of countries so evidently one of Paul's ancestors either purchased citizenship at a very great price for the family or his family was rewarded citizenship for some great deed they performed on behalf of Rome now we don't know the year of Paul's birth but we do know that he was born sometime around the birth of Jesus so Paul was approximately the same age as Jesus now let's talk about Paul's education because this is very important but first I need to explain a little bit about Jewish Education because the Jews were the very first to begin public education they began publication uh public education sometime in the fifth or 6th Century BC they were the very first to offer free education to everyone within their Community you see in the ancient world only the rich the aristocrats educated their children because you paid for it you paid for it but after the Babylonian captivity Israel realized that they had sinned against God because they hadn't kept God's Commandments and so they decided we need to have education because how can you obey the Torah if you can't read the Torah so let's talk about Jewish Education in the first century it was totally different back then in jesus' day children were taught the Torah in the synagogue beginning around the age of 5 to six six they had classes 5 days a week just like we do today and the ultimate goal was to be able to read write and memorize all of the Torah by the age of 10 now the Torah consisted of the first five books of the Bible what we refer to as the pen petuk Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy can you imagine being expected to memorize all of Genesis Exodus Leviticus number Deuteronomy by the time you were 11 years old you had you wanted to by 10 but by the end of your 10th birthday you were expected to have memorized the first five books of the Old Testament these classes were called bet cifer which means House of the book those who excelled were allowed to continue on in school those who didn't Excel or were just average they went home to the family to learn the family trade but as I said those that excelled moved on in school to something called beted beted means House of learning here they studied all of the Hebrew scriptures which we know today as the Old Testament now the main focus was on memorization so they had memorization drills with the goal being to memorize as much of the Old Testament as they possibly could in between memorization drills the teacher had question and answer sessions with each individual student this was to ensure that they understood what they were memorizing they were also taught the art of answering a question with a question have you ever noticed reading through the Bible it doesn't matter whether it's Jesus or one of his disciples or Paul someone asked a question and they usually answer with the question ever noticed that they were actually not that in school it's the art of answering a question with another question I tend to do this my staff has learned don't ask me a simple question unless you got about an hour because they'll ask me a question and I'll ask them a question they come up to me and they say hey Pastor you know so- and so is getting into universalism do you believe that Jesus died for everyone you see if you believe that Jesus died for everyone and then they last do you believe that his death burial and Resurrection was efficacious and you say yes they'll say okay if Jesus died for everyone and his death burial and Resurrection Resurrection is efficacious in other words it will produce the results intended then that means that everyone's saved you're a Universalist whether you accept Jesus Christ or Not Jesus still died for you your sins are paid for so when someone comes up and says do you believe that Jesus died for every everyone then I'm usually going to ask a question instead of answering them I'll ask them a question what does omnipresent mean and now we have about an hour for me to ex to expound that Jesus died for everyone potentially but until you accept him as your lord and savior he didn't die for you experientially what it's why it takes an hour we won't go any deeper so they were taught the art of answering a question with the question and there were three reasons they were taught to do this first of all it ensured that the that the question the person was asking was really the right question you see sometimes what a person wants to know and what they're asking are two different things they think they're asking the right question but they're not so many times someone asks me a question and I'll say are you asking this yeah well that's not what you asked so you have to ask a question and answering their question secondly sometimes a person will ask a question thinking they know the answer but they really don't so you ask a deeper question to show them that there's more to the subject than what they're asking and that there's a deeper answer than just the simple answer they want is healing in the atonement they want a yes or no answer but there's a deeper answer than just the simple answer they want so I asked them a question if healing is in the atonement would it mean that it's possible to never die what do you mean I don't have enough time to even talk about that let's keep going and last but not least it shows that you have a great regard for the scriptures and therefore you want to give a true and complete answer and not just a quick answer if you think about it that's what Jesus did when the Rich Young Ruler came to him the Rich Young Ruler asked good teacher what must I do to obtain eternal life and Jesus answered his question with the question he said why do you call me good only God is good H Deep but if you think about it can keeping the law make a person good good enough to go to heaven wait a minute no one is good except for God so I guess it's not as simple as keeping the law so you got about an hour let's talk about it so they also taught as I said the art of answering a question with another question now bet tomed lasted about five years from about 11 years old to the end of your 15th year and the truth is very few students ever made it that far most realized they didn't have what it took to go to the next level so they eventually dropped out they went home to learn the family business but those few who finished and excelled had the opportunity to seek further education known as bet midrash bet midrash means House of study and basically it referred to studying and being under the Tage of a rabbi for several years of course the ultimate goal was to become a rabbi yourself one who was considered to be an expert on the scriptures and who spent his life studying interpreting and teaching the Tanakh anyone ever heard of the Tanakh the Tanakh is what we consider to be an acronym it refers to the Torah first five books of the Bible the Nim which is the prophets the Major Prophets Isaiah Jeremiah Daniel Ezekiel and also the Minor Prophets Hosea Jo that's the Nim and then you have the Kim which are the writings first and second Kings 1 and 2 Samuel 1 and 2 Chronicles Ruth all of those other books those are the writings now if you put it all together the Torah the Nim the Kim to form an acronym you take the first letters off of them you get the word you have to add in a vow to KN to Torah Nim n and again to knock the kavim so Jews refer to the Old Testament as the tanak now it was considered to be a great honor to be accepted by a rabbi to become one of his disciples because very few were selected very few ever made it that far in fact at that point every candidate had a stellar resume because they didn't get this far unless were the best of the best and if you applied to go further the interest exam was grueling the rabbi that you were trying to get to take you would intensively test examine Grill and interr interrogate each applicant in his understanding of the Tanakh and he wasn't just looking for a detailed knowledge of the Tanakh and the oral tradition but the ability to ask good questions in order to better understand the meaning within it remember for first Century Jews the issue wasn't what does God's word say because they all knew what it said they had memorized it at least the first five books the pen but especially the Book of Leviticus because the Book of Leviticus tells you how do you live in the midst of a holy God and you had to know when you went to Jerusalem what sacrifice and and how to make that sacrifice to God yes so the question or the issue wasn't what does God's word say because they all knew what it said the issue was what does it mean it was all about interpretation because if they were selected they would be training to be rabbis whose job it was to interpret the scriptures to explain what it means and how to apply it to your daily life so the entrance exam was grueling it could take all day many times it went for several days sometimes as long as a weak now listen to me because this is very important if a rabbi determine that a potential disciple had the medal intelligence commitment and persistence to become a faithful interpretor of God's word just like him then he would utter those cherished words of acceptance that every every potential disciple longed to hear follow me follow me follow me was a Jewish idiom used by the rabbis to mean come and join my group of disciples and submit to my authoritative teaching hearing those words meant that you had made the final cut that you were one of the rabbis disciples training to become just like him can you imagine imagine the disciples when Jesus walks up to them and says follow me see we read the New Testament we have no idea I mean these guys are out there doing their Nets or they'd been sent home they didn't make the cut they thought they were learnning the family business Jesus walks up to him and says follow me and they drop everything and follow him we're thinking did they even know what Jesus was yes Rabbi Jesus was accepting them as one of his disciples so those who finished and excelled and bet tomed the house of learning applied to bet midrash the house of study and if you had the money you wanted to learn from the best and the most prestigious rabbis which in Paul's day were two rabbis in Jerusalem Gil and shemai they each had their own school and you might think of their schools as the ivy leak and more specifically you might think of them as Harvard and yell and only the best and the brightest applied and only a very few of the elite were selected and guess who was selected and accepted from Tarsus Paul Paul was accepted into gal school and became one of his disciples later on we're going to find out that Paul rejected some of gal's teachings and he gravitated towards shmi's teachings and then after his conversion he drifts back towards the teach teaching of G gel actually he adopts Jesus teaching is discipled by Jesus but it's closer to gel but that's next week for now you need to know that gal was one of the greatest rabbis of that period in fact gel had been a student of Hill and his school was still referred to as the school of Hillel so how do we know he was a student of gal well turn to acts chap 22 verse number three and let's find out you just read over this many times you have no idea what it really means and that's kind of sad because you need to know who Paul was the second founder of Christianity that gives most of us or gives us most of the doctrines of the New Testament then Paul said I'm a Jew born in Tarsus the city in cissa and I was brought up and educated here in Jerusalem under gal as his student I just wasn't someone that came and listened to his lectures I was one of his followers I was one of his students I was carefully trained in our Jewish laws and customs and then he says something that's not important to us now but it will be next week I became very zealous to honor God and everything I did just like all of you today so Paul tells us that he was a student of gal now next week we're going to find out why Paul persecuted the early church before his conversion listen to me this is important people do things for a reason let me say that again people do things for a reason and if you can understand their reason for doing something then you can understand why they acted the way they did sometimes they do it for the right reasons and sometimes they do it for the wrong reasons Paul thought he was persecuting the early church for the right reason but he was ignorant of one very important fact so he thought he was doing the right thing till he was on the road to Damascus and found out for a fact that he was doing the wrong thing but he had his reasons for doing what he did some of you have your reasons for for why you've never received Jesus Christ as your lord and savior you need the Damascus Road experience you need to know who Jesus really is because there are no right reasons for rejecting Jesus only foolish reasons all the right reasons will cause you to accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior and I'm going to give you that opportunity this morning let's stand whatever your reason for rejecting Jesus let me just say they're wrong they'll send you to Hell they'll separate you from God for all eternity you need Jesus and once you know who Jesus truly is you'll see there's only one thing you can do and that's to receive him and I'm going to give you the opportunity to do that this morning I'm going to say a very simple prayer and if you'd like to receive Jesus all you have have to do is say this prayer the prayer is not magic just because you say this prayer doesn't mean that you'll be saved and get to go to heaven but if you believe what you're saying you will be saved saved from going to hell Sav from having to pay the penalty for your sin able to go to heaven to be with God for all eternity so if you want to receive Jesus want everyone here to Bow their heads close their eyes all you have to do is repeat this prayer and believe what you're saying you don't have to say this prayer out loud when you repeat it you can even say it silently to yourself here it goes God I know I'm a sinner and I know that my sin has separated me from you but God I believe you love me and because you love me you sent Jesus the prophesied Messiah to come and die for my sin and I believe that when he died his soul went H to pay the punishment for my sin but I also believe that when all my sin was paid for God you raised Jesus from the dead and I believe that that shows that all my sins have been paid for past present and even my future sins Jesus I believe that and I want you to be Lord of my life thank you for saving me now with every head bowed every eye closed you need to confess that Jesus is Lord if you said that prayer and you meant it I want you to raise your hand real high won't embarrass you and send anyone to you see that hand real high back there thank you so much anyone else see that hand anyone else best decision you'll ever make I'm not going to embarrass you and ask you come forward I just want you to raise your hand if you said see the hand back there again anyone else that's three anyone else all right let's give them a hand Lisa