The sermon 'Faithful to our Calling' by Peter Allison focuses on the calling of Paul as recounted in Acts 22. It highlights Paul's transformation from a persecutor of Christians to a devoted apostle chosen by God to witness to the Gentiles. Ananias, a devout man, calls Saul 'Brother,' emphasizing their shared spiritual rebirth in Christ. The sermon outlines three key privileges Paul received: knowing God's will, seeing the 'Just One,' and hearing Christ's voice, which underscore his unique role in spreading the Gospel. The sermon also emphasizes the importance of recognizing and fulfilling our calling, using the story of the three bricklayers to illustrate how one's work can glorify God. Potential hindrances to fulfilling our calling, such as delay and resistance, are addressed, urging believers to trust in God's sufficiency and grace in their divine missions.

Our Scripture reading is Acts 22, beginning with the 12th verse. We pick up in the middle of Paul's address to the Jewish crowd as has been rescued from them. He has just recounted his conversion on the way to Damascus. He's now in Damascus and we pick up in verse 12. Then a certain Ananias, a devout man according to the law, having a good testimony with all the Jews who dwelt there, came to me.

And he stood and said to me, Brother Saul, receive your sight. And at that same hour I looked up at him, then he said, The God of our fathers has chosen you that you should know His will and see the just one, and hear the voice of His mouth, for you will be His witness to all men of what you have seen and heard. And now, why are you waiting? Arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord. Now it happened when I returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple that I was in a trance.

And saw him saying to me, Make haste and get out of Jerusalem quickly, for they will not receive your testimony concerning Me.' And so I said, Lord, they know that in every synagogue I imprisoned and beat those who believe on You. And when the blood of your martyr Stephen was shed, I also was standing by, consenting to his death, and guarding the clothes of those who were killing him. Then he said to me, Depart, for I will send you far from here to the Gentiles. And they listened to him until this word, and then they raised their voices and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth, for he is not fit to live. And then as they cried out and tore off their clothes and threw dust in the air, the commander ordered them to be brought into the barracks and said that he should be examined under scourging, so that he might know why they shouted so against him.

And as they bound him with thongs, Paul said to the centurion who stood by, Is it lawful for you to scourge a man who is a Roman and uncontemned? And when the centurion heard that, he went and told the commander saying, take care what you do for this man is a Roman. Then the commander came and said to him, tell me, are you a Roman? He said yes. The commander answered, with a large sum I obtained this citizenship.

But Paul said, but I was born a citizen. Then immediately those who were about to examine him withdrew from him. And the commander also was afraid, after he found out that he was a Roman, and because he had bound him. And the next day, because he wanted to know for certain why he was accused by the Jews, he released him from his bonds and commanded the chief priests and all their counsel to appear and brought Paul down and set him before them. May these testimonies be our meditation, giving us more understanding than all our teachers.

Heavenly Father, may You seal to our hearts Your Word. May You give us understanding of it. May You open our ears to hear it, to meditate upon it, to remember it. Lord, may You deliver us from any sleeplessness, from wandering minds, from other thoughts. May You sanctify my lips to proclaim Your grace in Jesus Christ, Amen.

A little over a year ago, we looked at Paul's calling on the road to Damascus. Remember, that's first recorded back in Acts 9. And now it's some 20 years later after the events of Acts 9. Paul is back in Jerusalem. He's standing in chains.

He's a prisoner of Rome. And he's recounting his conversion and his calling. As an apostle, he's recounting this calling to his fellow Jews. People who moments ago were trying to kill him. They were beating him.

But it's people for whom Paul has a great burden that they would know God's will, That they would see the just one and hear the voice of His mouth. Paul wrote to the Romans just shortly after this that he had great sorrow and continual grief in his heart that these countrymen of his, the ones he's speaking to right now, didn't see, didn't hear, and didn't know God's will. And so today, we return to this subject of calling. Not to review what was said the last time, you'll have to go back to that message to get that. But to look at Paul's privileged position in his being called.

And to His faithfulness to that calling. His privileged position in being called and His faithfulness to the calling to which God had called him. First, it was Paul's great privilege. Ananias comes to Paul as he's sitting in Damascus in darkness, can't see, Waiting to be told what to do after being knocked to the ground, blinded by a light stronger than the sun. And Ananias comes to this house and he tells him, Brother Saul, brother Saul you have been chosen by the God of our fathers.

Saul here is called a brother by Ananias. Now, Ananias is not a male who comes from the same physical womb as Paul did. That's what a physical brother is. But he is someone who shares close affinity with Paul because both are born again in Christ. And so yes, we do share the same spiritual womb.

Both have been born from above. Both of these men have been born of the same Holy Spirit, and therefore they are brothers. Saul is now a brother. That's a privilege. Paul has also, Ananias says, been chosen by God that he would know God's will, see the just one, and hear the voice of his mouth.

Paul has been chosen, he's been hand-picked, He's been selected by God to be God's messenger, of God's grace. Now at that time, Paul was in the middle of the unjust torture and execution of Christ's followers, of Christ's people, and of Christ Himself, Jesus said. He said, why are you persecuting Me? Paul has been torturing and killing Jesus' people. He's been zealot about it.

It's not just an occasional pastime for him. This is his life's mission at this point. He's dedicated to it. He travels to other cities and brings them back in chains. And God chose this man to be His messenger to the Gentiles.

He's a messenger of the King to bring the King's good news of deliverance from bondage and death. Now that would be a little bit like President Trump choosing Ryan Routh, the man who tried to assassinate him in Florida on the golf course. It would be like the president choosing him for a position in his cabinet, to be his secretary of state and to bring his message to the nations. Seems pretty far-fetched. Of course, the difference is that no president or earthly king can change a person's heart and nature.

But King Jesus can, can't he? He does change the people that He chooses. He takes dead people and makes them alive. He takes simple people and makes them wise. He takes ignorant people and He fills them with knowledge.

He takes wicked people and He makes them righteous. He takes condemned people and He pardons them, declaring them not guilty. He takes unworthy people and He makes them worthy. He took us. It's an undeserved privilege.

It's not an earned privilege, it's an undeserved one. But you see, this is our privilege as saints as well. As Paul told the Ephesians in Ephesians 1, for he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we, that you and I, should be holy and without blame before Him. And He did this because He loved us. And Paul then goes on to exhort those Ephesians to walk worthy of that call.

Now, Paul uses the phrase here, God of our fathers, God of our fathers. He didn't say God of my father, or my fathers, or God of your fathers. He says God of our fathers because He's speaking to the Jews and He wants to emphasize that Christians worship the same God as the Jews claim to worship. The God of the Jewish fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You see, he wants to point out very clearly that Christianity, the Christians, haven't introduced a new God or a new religion.

Christianity didn't depart from the faith of the Old Testament saints. It's the Jews who have departed from the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the Old Testament saints. But Paul has been called by the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This is an Old Testament expression. It's used some nearly 40 times.

God of our fathers, God of your fathers, God of their fathers. And when God appeared to Moses at the burning bush, He identified Himself as the God of your father. And He instructed Moses to identify Himself to the children of Israel as being sent by the God of their fathers. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And that's the word that Paul uses here.

I'm sure it wasn't lost on them. That Paul is claiming to have been chosen by The God of their fathers. And the God of their fathers is the God of His Father as well. And so you see this same God that appeared to Moses and spoke to him from the burning bush has appeared to Paul in the days when he was Saul, and spoken to him from heaven surrounded by an unapproachable light. The sun is an unapproachable light.

But Paul said that this light was even greater, brighter than the sun. And it is in that light that God appeared to Paul and identified Himself as the Jesus that He was persecuting. Now, God chose Paul for three things. He chose him to know the will of God. He was chosen to know his revealed will concerning the gospel, his salvation of sinners by Jesus Christ, by imputing the guilt of their sin to Christ, and then pouring out on Christ all of the just wrath of God for their sin.

And by imputing to those same sinners the righteousness of Christ and giving them everlasting life. Paul was chosen to know this will of God. And so while Saul had known the revealed will of God in the law, and he was zealous for that, he was entirely ignorant of God's will for his salvation by grace. And so God chose him to know that will. What is God's will in redemption?

Jesus says it in John 6-37, all that the Father gives Me will come to Me. And the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out, for I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent me. And this is the will of my Father who sent me. This is the will. Right here, this is what God chose Paul to know.

And He's chosen us to know. That of all that He has given Christ, Christ would lose nothing. That of all that He has given me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. That's the will of God for our redemption. And this is the will of Him who sent me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day." This is what God chose Paul to know.

And this is what God has chosen all of His saints to know this will of God. That God has will that everyone who believes in Him would have everlasting life. It's passed from death into life and is not under condemnation. God chose Paul to know that will and to proclaim that message. Paul was also chosen for the privilege of seeing the just one, or the righteous one.

And this is another Old Testament name for Christ, the righteous one. Isaiah 53 says, By His knowledge, My righteous servant shall justify many. For He shall bear their iniquities." And this is how Peter refers to Christ in his sermon on the portico to the Jews. And this is also how Stephen referred to Christ in his defense to the Jews just before they killed him. This name, this title, the just one, the righteous one, identifies Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, of the Old Testament that the Jews were seeking.

Paul is very clearly saying here Jesus is the Messiah. This also sort of emphasizes the guilt of the Jews in killing one that was just and completely undeserving of death. So With the eyes of faith then, Paul sees Christ's beauty. He sees His fullness and His glory as our Savior. But he also saw Christ with the eyes of flesh.

When Christ appeared to him, as he told the Corinthians, as one born out of due time. Paul saw. Paul saw the just one. Many kings and prophets and Jews longed to see the Messiah. But Paul was privileged to see the just one.

Paul was also chosen for the privilege of hearing Christ's voice, both in the voice of His human nature when He spoke to Him, in Hebrew from heaven saying, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And in the voice of the Gospel. There are many voices in the world that beckon us in many different directions. There are many spirits, but they are not all of God. It is our privilege in Christ to hear His voice, to separate out all the other sirens that call to us, that beckon to us to come.

The taste of them to see, to experience. But it is our privilege to hear Christ, to hear His voice. John 10.3 says that Jesus said that His sheep hear His voice, and He calls His own sheep by name and He leads them out. And when He brings out His own sheep, He goes before them and His sheep follow them, for they know His voice. Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from Him, for they do not know the voice of strangers." Do you hear the voice of our shepherd Christ?

Or Do you hear the voice of our shepherd Christ? Or do you hear the voice of strangers that are calling you other directions, other places? You can't go both ways. You can't go both ways. I pray that it is your privilege to hear the voice of Christ, our Shepherd, and to follow Him and not these other voices of the false shepherds that will lead you astray.

Their way leads to death. They do not have life. It is not their will that you have everlasting life. It is their will that you have everlasting destruction, which the Bible calls death. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.

See, this was Paul's response when he heard the voice of Jesus. He said, Lord, what do You want Me to do? Is this your response to God's call on your life? I beg you as Christ's messenger this morning that today if you will hear His voice, don't harden your heart as the children of Israel did in the wilderness. Brothers and sisters, those who are in Christ, beware lest there be in any of us an evil heart of unbelief departing from the living God.

As brothers and sisters in Christ, we need to exhort one another daily while it is called today, lest any of us be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold fast that confidence, steadfast to the end. Today then, if you will hear His voice, don't harden your heart. Don't harden your heart. Now this privilege of knowing the will of God, of seeing the just one, of hearing His voice, was given to Paul for a purpose.

To whom much is given, much is expected. Much was given to Paul. And God gave it to him for a purpose. It was given to him to be a witness to all the world of what he had seen and heard and what he knew. Paul was called to testify to the Gospel of the grace of God that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, and that He rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures, that He was seen by many witnesses, and last of all, He was seen by Paul.

You see, you have a calling. You and I have a calling as saints. And it's not something that we have to add to all the other things that we do. And if we think of it that way, we're missing the point. After the great fire of 1666 that leveled London, a famous architect, Christopher Wren, was commissioned by the king to rebuild St.

Paul's Cathedral, which had been mostly destroyed. And in 1927, Bruce Barton published a book called What Can Man Believe? In which he recounted a story from there that has since become very, very famous. And I'm sure you've already heard it. But as the story goes, one day in 1671, Christopher Wren visited the site and he asked three very hardworking men handling bricks what they were doing.

And the first man replied, I'm a bricklayer. I'm cutting this stone to this size, it's going to go right here. The second man replied, well I'm a husband and I'm a father and I'm working to feed my family. The third man replied, I'm a cathedral builder, and I'm building a great cathedral in which to worship Almighty God. See that third man understood his calling, That in his work as a bricklayer, he probably had a family too that he was feeding and supplying.

But he recognized what his calling in life was to glorify God. And in his case, he was doing it through his skill as a bricklayer. This wasn't something that he did in addition to. It was what he was doing as whatever God called him to do. Now I very much doubt that it's a historical account, But it's a great illustration of our calling as saints.

It's historical that Christopher Wren restored the building. Whether he actually spoke to those people, I have no idea. I doubt it. But it illustrates the nature of our calling as saints. We're called to glorify God and to enjoy Him.

All of us have a calling. In your work, whatever the particular task or vocation you have, maybe you're a mother, and you spend your days washing dishes again and again, and clothes again and again, and wiping dirty noses and changing dirty diapers. Maybe you're a husband, or a bricklayer, or a mechanic, or a healer, or a builder, or a writer of books, or a writer of computer code, or you're a practical problem solver called an engineer, or you're a theoretical problem solver, or you're a teacher, Or you're a musician. Whatever it is, your calling as a saint is not something that is in addition to that work. Your calling as a saint and a witness transcends that work.

It is the purpose for that work. It is the goal of your life. Do you keep your calling as a saint in view? Do You keep your calling as a saint in view. You keep your calling as a saint.

One who is called to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. You keep that calling in your view day to day. Sometimes we have a lot of input into what we do and where we're called, and sometimes we don't. And so it's times that we don't that we may be most tempted to forget our calling as saints in Christ. There are many, many scriptures that speak of our calling as saints, and it's far out of our scope here in this text to look at all of them.

But Peter says in 2 Peter 1.10, Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things, you will never stumble. And Paul told the Ephesians, I therefore the prisoner of the Lord beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called." Walk worthy of that calling. "...with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in, one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism.

One God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in you all. That's our calling. That's our great privilege as saints. Now this text gives us two things that can derail or that can cause us to be derailed in our calling. And the first one is delay.

It's one way that we can subtly, maybe even innocently, maybe even justify to ourselves resisting God's call, and that's delaying to carry it out. Ananias says, why are you waiting? Why are you waiting? Don't delay. Arise and be baptized.

And baptism here is a symbol of breaking fellowship with the world and with sin and being identified with Christ and His people. To be baptized is to be marked as belonging to Christ. To be, we saw in our law this morning, the being cut, cutting in the flesh. That's to be marked for the evil one. To be baptized is to be marked for Christ.

It's a commitment to walk in Christ's grace and not in the arm of flesh. Don't delay. The second response here that Paul gives or that we see is to push back on why the particular call God has given us is maybe not the right one for us. And Paul pushes back just a little bit here on God's call to be a messenger to the Gentiles. God called him to leave Jerusalem immediately because the Jews weren't going to hear him, and God said, I'm calling you to go to the Gentiles.

I'm going to send you to the Gentiles. And Paul argues back in effect that he's better suited to be an apostle to the Jews. He can relate to one of them, right? He's persecuted the church. He has credibility with them.

He's one of them. He was among the most zealous of them. The who's who of the up and coming Pharisees. That was Paul. It would be like Al Capone being converted saying I can go back to the mob and witness to them.

Because I was one of them. He wasn't, of course, but that's what Paul is in effect saying here. He says, So Lord, they know that in every synagogue I imprisoned and beat those who believe on You. That gave him credibility with them. And when the blood of your martyr, Stephen, was shed, I also was standing by, consenting to his death and guarding the clothes of those who were killing him." So Paul's pushing back a little.

Why send me away to the Gentiles? It would make most sense, Lord, for me to be the witness to the Jews. But God says no. God wouldn't hear of it. No, depart, for I will send you far from here to the Gentiles.

The Jews won't listen to you. They won't hear you. That's because that was what God had ordained. And God was calling Saul somewhere else. Just like Moses.

God called them to be a spokesman to the children of Israel. Moses says, no, I'm not a good public speaker. I wouldn't make a good person to go be your spokesman to the children of Israel." And he kept coming up and God would give him an answer. He said, okay, I'll give you your brother. He's a good speaker.

And Moses kept coming up with excuses to the point that God became angry with him and said, Moses, go! We don't want to push back on God's call. What He calls us to do, He will equip us to do. And it's not in our flesh anyways that we do what He calls us to do. It's by the power of His grace.

And in fact, it's in our weakness and inability that His strength is made perfect. And so Paul says therefore most gladly, I will rather boast in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me, for it's when I am weak, then I am strong. And when God calls us, and we don't feel adequate for the call, we don't feel gifted, we don't feel that we're as able as someone else and that so-and-so would make a better one, or why did He have to lay this burden on us. We're overworked and too tired. Then we just need to remember that this is what God's called us to do.

And if He's called us to do it, He will equip us to do it. That He's sufficient. He's sufficient. His grace is sufficient. His strength is sufficient.

Now, Paul had direct revelation from God as to His calling. And we don't. But we do have the Scriptures. And we have providence. And God brings us to our calling through both of these things.

He gives us inward desires for things. He gives us His commands in the Scriptures of what we are to do. And He puts us in the middle of circumstances. And it's when He does that that I think we have the most tendency to resist His call and to say, Lord, find somebody else, please. Anything I'm willing to do, whatever you want, just not that.

But it's when He puts us in His divine providence, He puts us in His good governance, He puts us in the middle of a situation. We need to ask, Lord, what are You calling me to do here in this situation? And be willing to go. Here am I. Send me.

And we trust in His grace to equip us for it. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You that You have so richly privileged us in calling us as Your children, in giving us an inheritance with the saints, with Jesus Christ. Father, what a rich inheritance, what a rich calling, what great privilege that we have not deserved. May we never tire of thanking You for this great privilege.

May we never cease being willing to go where You send, to come when You call, to be obedient to your calling, to be worthy of your calling, and to walk worthy of that calling. Father, grant us to be content with where you have called us. And we ask that you would strengthen us, that you would, where we have become discontent or unsettled, May you grant us your supernatural grace to know your will, to see the just one, and to hear your voice through Jesus Christ. Amen.