 |
Printer Friendly VersionA second chance is no small thing.
In a recent book on the life of Billy Graham, William Martin
says that the primary reason for Dr. Graham’s lifelong phenomenal success
is that he consistently preached “the transforming power of a second
chance.” Billy Graham’s message of the second chance is also the
message of the conversion of Saul.
We first meet Saul in Acts 7, where Luke calls him “a young
man” who was checking coats for those who were stoning Stephen to death.
Very quickly this Saul moves from being a willing bystander to an active persecutor
of Christians. So much so that Acts 8:3 tells us: “Saul began to ravage
the church (a wild animal), and entering house after house, he dragged off
men and women and put them to prison.” Acts 8:3 (NRSV)
Saul is a busy, resourceful, dangerous enemy-number-one of the
church. By the time we meet him again here in chapter 9, Saul has been appointed
head of the Stop-the-Church Movement. He has official letters granting him
power from the authorities in his program of persecution. Now he’s on
his way to Damascus to stamp out this Christian thing once and for all.
What caused him to change? Some have suggested that Saul had
an inner turmoil, and doubts about his mission, which finally led to his conversion.
They imagine him searching for something more fulfilling in his life, something
that might better explain how this story ends in a life change.
But forget it. There’s none of that in this story. Saul
isn’t searching for anything here except Christians. He isn’t filled
with inner doubts or uncertainty. In fact, he has no doubts at all about the
will of God and what he ought to be doing with his life. He is, in his own
mind, a full-time theological authority, conducting investigations, holding
court, and helping to make Israel safe again for God.
But on the road to Damascus, in a lightening bolt flash, Saul
is knocked off his horse, and lying in the dirt he hears his name called out.
He doesn’t know the one who calls him. And so he cries out: “Who
are you, Lord?” And the voice answers: “I am Jesus, whom you are
persecuting!” 9:5 (NIV).
You can just hear Saul: “But Lord, I’m not persecuting
you, I’m persecuting Christians.”
“No, Saul, when you persecute my church, you are persecuting
me. When you ravage the body of Christ you are ravaging me!”
Can you see the picture? The voice intrudes, and interrupts,
and rearranges Saul’s self-confident journey. In an instant, the once
vibrant, intelligent, confident, resourceful man is rendered helpless. Saul
opens his eyes, but he can’t see. He has to be led around by the hand
by strangers like Ananias and cannot eat or drink for three days.
It’s quite a contrast with the Saul we first met, the one
who was so active, going to and fro with letters of introduction from the
bigwigs at the temple, pursuing believers all the way to Damascus. But now,
he is helpless, frail, needy, small – LIKE A LITTLE CHILD. He has reverted,
fallen backwards toward … a second life. In fact, his turnaround was
so dramatic he couldn’t even keep his old name. He was given a new name
for a new life: Saul became Paul.
You may remember that just a few months earlier, on another
road, the one leading toward Jerusalem and a cross, Jesus began to teach his
disciples his kingdom. Everyone was listening, trying to pay attention, and
taking notes.
There were some children there. One had pulled another’s
hair. Two were rolling in the dirt. Another was marking up a hymnal with a
crayon. The disciples said: “Send these children away! We can’t
focus on serious religious business with kids around! Don’t we have a
nursery or ‘Children’s Church’ or something for these children?”
Do you remember what Jesus did? He called for the children and
said: “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them. For it is to
such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. You can never enter God’s
kingdom unless you come as a little child.”
Saul, who once knew so much about religion, about God, about
big, important ideas and big, significant people, is rendered into a little
child who must be led by the hand, healed at the mercy of strangers, and instructed
by and dependent upon the very ones he once looked down upon.
You have to admit, that coming to Christ is an experience like
no other in this life. We come to Christ on a strange path of growing light
in which we progress by regression and go forward by falling backward, and
there is confusion, speechlessness, hunger, and childlike dependence that
can make us uncomfortable at times. It is humbling!
*I have a friend who came to Christ as an adult. He is a well
respected professional in his field. He told me shortly after his conversion:
“I am well-educated and powerful in every other area of my life. I feel
in control and confident. But when it comes to God I feel as if I’ve
thrown away my degree and am back in kindergarten.” Conversion is not
comfortable!
But the kind of change in our lives that Christ comes to bring
does not come in any other way. It doesn’t come by more education, by
more money, by more power – it comes only by NEW BIRTH! And there is
nothing easy about BIRTH!
*If you’ve ever had the privilege of witnessing a baby
being born you know that new birth only comes through shoving and pushing
and tears and cries and blood and water! But the miracle is a brand new life!
And suddenly, Public Enemy Number One became Number One Leader
of the Church. The persecutor becomes a preacher. Somewhere between a moment
of blinding revelation and three days of stumbling and searching through the
confusion, Saul’s eyes were opened and he was given a second chance at
life!
It is no small thing to have been loved by the God of the second
chance. When Saul met Christ on that road, he was neither looking for him
nor expecting him. Christ came to him! He became like a little child, but
in the process his eyes were opened and he would never be the same again,
because in hitting bottom HE MET GOD! The purpose and direction of his life
radically changed! And he became a missionary for the very faith he had given
his life to stamp out! He had had an encounter with the God of a second chance
and it transformed his heart.
*Lee Strobel recently told this story about Billy Moore (Preaching
Today, Volume 211). Billy Moore grew up in a tough city in Ohio to an impoverished
family. He got involved with crime when he was very young. He and his friends
would smoke dope and get drunk and break into taverns and steal cash registers
– break into cigarette machines and steal the coins – and all other
kinds of petty theft. He later joined the army and got married. But shortly
after that his wife left him and took their son with her. He was broke, and
he was desperate.
One night he and a friend were drinking and talking about how
broke they were. His friend said: “I know about a guy who lives not too
far from here, and the word is, he doesn’t trust banks. He keeps all
his money in his bedroom.”
Billy said, “You know where he lives?”
His friend said: “Yea”
“Is he some big, tough guy?”
And the friend said, “No, he’s an old guy. Wouldn’t
hurt a fly.”
So a plot hatched in Billy’s mind. He went back to the
barracks, got his gun, and loaded it. He drove to that man’s home, broke
in, and starting ransacking the house.
The elderly man was in his bedroom when Billy broke through
the front door. He had a shotgun he used for hunting. And so as Billy Moore
broke through the bedroom door with a gun in his hand, this elderly gentleman
pointed the shotgun, pulled the trigger, and a blast went off.
The buckshot went over Billy’s shoulder, missed him completely.
Billy took his gun, pointed it at the old man, pulled the trigger twice. The
elderly gentleman fell dead. Billy rifled through his pockets, stepped over
the body, ransacked the bedroom, and walked away with $5,600 in cash. He fled
to his trailer in rural Georgia.
It didn’t take long for the police to track him down. He
wasn’t exactly a clever criminal. They arrested him and took him to jail.
Billy thought his life was over. He was being charged with capital murder,
which was a death penalty case. He believed he would never see the light of
day again. He thought his life was over.
Billy Moore’s mother was a Christian, and she knew a Christian
couple who lived near the jail in Georgia. She called and said, “I’ve
got a son, who is charged with capital murder. Would you please go visit him?”
They went to visit Billy, and told him about Jesus. They said: “Billy,
Jesus is willing to give you a second chance and a fresh start at life.”
Billy looked back at them dumbfounded: “You’ve got
to be kidding me. Don’t you realize my situation here? I have murdered
an old man. I am charged with a death penalty case. My life is over! It’s
too late for a fresh start! It’s too late for a second chance! There
are no new beginnings for me!”
But that Christian man looked back at Billy Moore and said:
“No, you don’t understand. Jesus Christ loves you so much he wants
to give you a second chance and help you find a way to make your life count.”
Billy not only heard these words from this man and woman, but he saw Jesus
in them. He later said: “Nobody ever told me that Jesus loved me. Nobody
ever told me that Jesus had died for me. It was a love I could feel. It was
a love I wanted. It was a love I needed.”
And so Billy Moore, as hopeless and broken an individual as
you’re ever going to see, got down on his knees in his jail cell and
said, “God, are you telling me that you want the likes of me? That you
can forgive the likes of me? If that’s true, Jesus, then have at it!
I’m sorry for all I’ve done, and I want to live for you. If you
would adopt me and take me to heaven, that would be the best. But I don’t
have much time left, and if you could do something to make my life count,
it would be like icing on the cake.”
God heard that prayer. There was a bathtub there in the jail.
They received permission from the guards to fill it up with water. Billy Moore
knelt in that bathtub and was baptized.
Billy later went to court and pleaded guilty. He said to the
jury: “How can I tell you I didn’t do it when I did?” They
found him guilty and sentenced him to death. For sixteen years of living Billy
waited to die. But during those sixteen years Billy opened his life up more
and more to God, and God continued to change him from the inside out.
Billy Moore became a model prisoner, so much so that the guards
had a nickname for him. They called him “the peacemaker.” Death
row was an ugly, forsaken, violent, hateful place until Billy got there. But
Billy led Bible studies with the other inmates, and one by one they found
hope and redemption and new life in Jesus Christ. And this place that had
been so awful and violent became a place for second chances where people cared
for each other. The whole environment of death row changed for the good.
Billy took thirty-two courses from a Bible college by correspondence.
He became such an expert in counseling other people in spiritual matters,
that when local churches had real troublesome cases they would send these
people to death row to be counseled by Billy Moore!
He began writing and corresponding with hundreds of people throughout
the country. He did it for sixteen years, living in his cell, waiting for
the day he would die. And God continued working in his life.
In August of 1990 the court system finally caught up with Billy
Moore. The hours were ticking down to August 22, which is when Billy would
go to the electric chair. He was put in the deathwatch cell, where prisoners
were held during the last hours of their lives.
On August 21, 1990, seven hours before Billy Moore was to be
electrocuted something absolutely amazing took place. In fact, it is still
unprecedented in American legal history! The Georgia Pardon and Parole Board
held an emergency hearing about this model prisoner that they’d heard
about who had changed so many lives.
Guess who came to the hearing? All of the relatives of the victim
who Billy Moore had murdered! They came before that Parole Board and begged
them to spare his life. Why? Because when Billy had become a Christian sixteen
years before, he had begged their forgiveness and established a relationship
with them.
The largest newspaper in the state of Georgia, the Atlanta Journal & Constitution,
wrote about Billy Moore and called him the “Saintly figure of death row.”
Mother Teresa called the pardon and parole board all the way from India and
offered only one sentence of counsel. She said: “Just do what Jesus would
do.”
The five members of that Pardon and Parole Board looked at this
repentant man, and did something so amazing that the next day it made the
front page of the New York Times. They threw out the death penalty against
him and did something that had never been done before in American history:
they set the gears in motion to actually release him from prison. It was the
first time in history a confessed killer on death row was to be set free.
And do you know what happened in that room when the pardon and parole board
announced its decision? Spontaneously, everybody stood up and began singing:
“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me!”
All they could think to do was sing the anthem of forgiven people.
Do you know where Billy Moore is right now? Billy Moore is today
where he is every Sunday. He’s in church worshiping the God of the second
chance, because Billy Moore is a pastor. His church is located between two
housing projects in Rome, Georgia. And today he is one of the most gentle,
compassionate men you would ever want to meet. He spends his afternoons searching
the streets of Rome, Georgia for the outcasts and unlovable.
Lee Strobel recently had a chance to interview Billy Moore. He asked: “Billy,
it’s just the two of us here. You can tell me the truth now. What is
really at the root of the miraculous change in your life? It was the prison
rehabilitation system, wasn’t it?”
Billy laughed: “No, it wasn’t that.”
Lee asked: “What was it then? Was it the self-help program?
Was it positive thinking?”
He answered: “No, it wasn’t that either.”
Lee asked: “Was it transcendental meditation? Was it just
psychological counseling?”
Billy answered again: “Come on. You know better than that.
You know what it was.”
Lee Strobel later said he knew the answer, but he wanted to
hear Billy say it: “No, Billy, you tell me. What changed you?”
Billy said: “I will tell you plain and simple. It was Jesus
Christ. He changed me in ways I could never change myself. He gave me a reason
to live. He helped me do the right thing for a change. He gave me a heart
for other people. And, Lee, he saved my soul.”
Billy Moore deserved to die. He had committed a heinous crime.
But he was set free! Doesn’t that sound a lot like the God of the second
chance?
There is no person outside the sphere of God’s redemption, whether that is Saul, Billy Moore, or even you. You can know the God of the second chance.