He Heard a Voice (Acts 9:4; 22:7; 26:14)
He Heard a Voice (Acts 9:4; 22:7; 26:14)
The voice said, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads” (26:14). The men with Paul heard a sound from heaven but could not distinguish the words, and Paul had no idea who was speaking! However, before the speaker identified Himself, He revealed what Saul of Tarsus really was: an angry animal that wanted his own way and was rebelling against the Lord who was prodding him with conviction (Acts 8:1–3; 9:1). Paul considered himself a devout and zealous rabbi, a defender of God’s holy law, so being called an angry animal was a shocking experience for him. Actually, this indictment was one more step in God’s gracious process of humbling Paul.
In the ancient Near East, an ox goad was a pole about eight feet long, with a small spade at one end (for scraping off mud) and a sharp point at the other. The farmer would prod the oxen and keep at it until the animals obeyed. This raises a fascinating question: Prior to his conversion, what was Rabbi Saul experiencing in his mind and heart that finally brought him to faith in Christ? How did God prepare this fanatical persecutor to trust Jesus when he was sure Jesus was only a dead deceiver (Matt. 28:1–15)?
I think one of the strongest “goads” the Lord used was the triumphant witness of Stephen, the first Christian martyr (Acts 6–7). It’s probable that Paul heard Stephen preach in the Synagogue of the Freedmen in Jerusalem, since Jews from Cilicia were there (6:9), and Paul was from Tarsus, the capital city of Cilicia. If Paul was in that synagogue congregation, then he was not able to “stand up against the wisdom the Spirit gave him [Stephen] as he spoke” (6:10); and this must have infuriated the young rabbi. Paul heard Stephen’s powerful sermon, and he saw Stephen’s radiant face. When Stephen was stoned to death, Paul not only approved of the murder but also took care of the garments of the men who killed him (7:58; 8:1).
When he spoke to the angry Jewish mob in the temple, Paul openly admitted that he could not forget the death of Stephen (Acts 22). He told them what he had said to the Lord when He appeared to him in the temple: “Lord … these people [the Jews] know that I went from one synagogue to another to imprison and beat those who believe in you. And when the blood of your martyr Stephen was shed, I stood there giving my approval and guarding the clothes of those who were killing him” (vv. 19–20). Stephen’s sermon, his vision of Jesus, his prayer of forgiveness for his murderers, and the glory of God on his face all were goads that certainly cut into Paul’s heart. No doubt many of the believers Paul arrested and jailed also gave a witness that was so consistent that he could not ignore it.
Another painful goad was the frustration he must have experienced as he tried in his own strength to keep God’s law as he was “advancing in Judaism” (Gal. 1:14). Personally, I don’t interpret Romans 7 as a description of Paul’s preconversion experience. But if Romans 7 describes the struggle he felt after his conversion, what must he have experienced before he was converted! The more he tried in his own efforts to be a successful Pharisee, the more he uncovered deeper sins in his heart and the more frustrated he became. After all, Paul didn’t have copies of Romans 6–7 or Galatians 3–5; he would write them following his “schooling” in Arabia for three years. But as a young rabbinical student studying the Old Testament law, he must have repeatedly discovered how weak he really was. He appeared to be a model religious leader, but in his own heart, he knew he was stumbling and failing. His face had never been as radiant in life as Stephen’s was in death.
In his superb book A Man in Christ, Dr. James S. Stewart writes, “And here at once we meet the striking fact that for years before the call came the dominating note of Paul’s inner life had been one of utter failure and frustration and defeat.… He found that the more keenly he pursued his ideal, the farther it receded. The righteousness on which his heart was set stood afar off, mocking his endeavor.” 4 James Stalker wrote in The Life of St. Paul, “On the contrary, the more he strove to keep the law the more active became the motions of sin within him; his conscience was becoming more oppressed with the sense of guilt, and the peace of a soul at rest in God was a prize which eluded his grasp.” 5
Like many religious people today, Paul was serious and sincere, but he was unable to grasp the meaning of what it meant to receive God’s righteousness by faith in Jesus Christ, the gift of God’s grace. Why would anybody want to follow an unemployed Jewish carpenter from Nazareth who was crucified by the Romans? To his educated intellect, it all seemed foolish.