Saul of Tarsus was a man that was applauded wherever he went.  We have his resume in his epistle to the Philippians there in chapter 3 verses 5 and 6.  He says there that he was circumcised on the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews.  What he means is that he was a superstar. 

 

You see in first century Jerusalem, folks didn’t have 70” LED 3D Smart TVs!  They didn’t have the Jerusalem Broncos or the Judean Nuggets (that doesn’t even sound right)!  Their superstars were defined by precisely what Saul had…honorable parents who had followed the law of Moses to the “t”, even circumcising their son at 8 days old.  He had clear, documented and pure lineage all the way back to the tribe of Benjamin which was more difficult than you would think…you know, no Ancestry.com!

 

Remember, Israel had been sacked by the Babylonians in 586BC and carried away…Nehemiah and his crew led them back around 520 but then again Alexander the Great busts in around 200BC giving them grief which led to Antiochas in about 167BC desecrating the temple and dispersing the Jews again…Herod ended up rebuilding the temple completely (under the watch of the gentiles) and so you see from the days of Benjamin to the days of Saul, bloodlines had been muddied, several times!  And so, if you were pure and could prove it…you were a Hebrew of amongst Hebrews.  A superstar.  That was Saul.

 

But there’s even more to this resume.  We find that Saul was the elite of the elite.  One worthy of applause and reverence wherever he went.  In Philippians chapter 3 at the end of verse 5 and moving into verse 6 we read “concerning the law, a Pharisee.”  A ruling political and spiritual leader.  “Concerning zeal,” so he was passionate, captivating and powerful, and with that zeal he was bent on persecuting the church, which also won the applause of the Jews.  “Concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.”

 

He had it all, man.  (Do you know how many songs out there are called or contain, “we had it all?”  Me neither!  But a bunch!  Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, The Rolling Stones, Donnie Fritts…what was that one?  “We had it all, we had it all…just like Bogie and Bacall.”  Who is Bogie and Bacall?  That sounds like a cartoon…and they have it all?  Well Saul had it all too!)   He especially had the applause of men, the approval of the people…but what’s amazing is that in the end…he sums it all up…you know sum is a word of math…he counts up all that he has, all that he has amassed and his result of counting is found in verse 7.  “I have counted loss.”

 

You see he was missing something…all that he did, I believe he did in utter sincerety, in confidence that his was obeying God…accomplishing God’s work…but man he was missing something…just as I was missing something for years!  That although obedience was there and thriving, in truth…there was no worship.  There was no essence of submission in the heart of Saul you see.  All that he ever did, out of obedience, out of religiousity, all of it was always, in his heart of hearts…for Saul!  And that is the essence of conduct that is not worthy of Christ!

 

Even as I was putting this together, just hanging out with God, He shows me this in real-time.  I’m just chillin’ in my basement at my desk, where I like to study and pray and down the stairs comes my little princess.  My 6 year old daughter, my only girl, and she just comes right in and what do I do?  I save my work…and stop.  Juices just flowing, Holy Spirit just hoverin’ and my motor is running, right!  Then, all systems stop…

 

And as I’m sitting there with her on my lap and we’re talking about the cupcake that she is eating…I’m, in a way, completely tweaking out!  Because I want to get back on the keys man…I want to get back to the study…but Madison…she is so much more than a Bible study.  She is my little one.  The precious little soul, fragile in heart, pure in spirit that has been entrusted by God for a time…to me.  And so I breathe…and I invest and I love on her and I make it so clear how important she is to me…and all in a sudden moment, God’s smile upon my soul.  Why?

 

Because that is precisely it…worship.  Yes I’m worried about serving you all well.  Yes I am concerned about being utterly, deliberately and completely faithful to my dear friend and brother Sam in being well prepared.  But all of that is and should be far secondary to submitting to God’s desire for my moments…and simply worshipping Him not in obedience, but in submission.  Fully preoccupied and focused on pleasing Jesus and Jesus alone.  This is what Saul was missing.  This is why in the midst of all his laudable accolade it amounted entirely to a collection of…loss.

 

Please understand, as I speak to you in terms of obedience and submission, please understand that I’m not saying one is good and the other is bad.  Not at all.  What I’m simply saying is that obedience alone, calculated corporate conduct by itself, is simply religion and by itself, has no worth to God.  Paul calls it loss.  To have conduct worthy of the gospel of Christ, the conduct must be predicated upon the gospel of Jesus Christ you see and in that…the conduct, the obedience, the lifestyle will not be primary, but rather secondary as it flows quite naturally from a heart submitted to the Lord of Lords.

 

Turn over to Romans 10:9.  Jesus says here, “if you confess with your mouth (what drives the mouth?  Yup!  The heart!).  If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe IN YOUR HEART (see it?) that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved (sozo in the Greek…rescued).  Saul wasn’t rescued man…

 

You see obedience by itself…worthless.  Obedience rooted in worship (which is just another word for submission), worthy.  Turn over to 1 Peter 3:15.  Peter says, “sanctify (its that word hagiazo in the Greek which literaly means “hallow Him, place Him on the throne, drive everything else out”) sanctify the Lord God IN YOUR HEARTS!  Do you see it?  Not the mind…this really has nothing to do with the mind…this is something much much deeper.  Something that will ultimately drive the mind…Saul missed this.  This “only” thing that was required to avoid all the years of “loss” (in his own words, as he looked back and counted them himself). 

 

His obedience didn’t amount to a ham sandwich in heaven…why?  Because he missed what Peter shows us here.  He missed submission. 

 

Before Adam and Eve walked into sin and ate the fruit from the forbidden tree, they had no understanding of good and evil.  That is called innocence.  There was no right and wrong.  Only right.  All was God.  All was done and lived in absolute dependence upon God.  Whatever He said, that was it.  They never had to reason to figure anything out…they never had decisions to make…honey where do you want to eat tonight….no!  God just fed them.  God just led them.  God just dwelt with them.  Nothing in their heads was centered on themselves.  Absolute innocence.

 

Now, why would God set that tree in their midst and say, “Don’t eat this one…?”  I know I scratched on this for a moment last night…but I have been taught well and you have been taught well and we both know that man had to have choice.  The capacity to choose without the opportunity of choice…well that’s not free will at all right?  And so that tree meant that real relationship would be possible.  And I am down with that.  I believe that. 

 

But have you ever thought, just for a moment maybe, that its possible that God wanted to demonstrate to the worlds out there, to the angels, to Lucifer and all the demons, that submission, surrender…is the way by which He accomplishes His eternal purposes?  Has it ever crossed your mind that fellowship with, closeness to and worship of God was designed for us from the very beginning…and it looks like submission?  It never crossed Saul’s mind. 

 

In all of his obedience, in all of his conduct…more worthy than any other man…in the eyes of men…was shorter than filthy rags in the reality of the gospel of Christ.  You see, the truth is…we are wired for obedience…and that wiring is called sin.  God has created us to live in total dependence upon Him…He demonstrated that to us through the cross…as Jesus, God in the flesh, hung there alone.  He has created us to have our lives hidden in Him…and yet when man fell, man lost dependence on God.  Now we all start out self and flesh centered.  Satan fights to keep the flesh elevated and to cause us to depend on ourselves, not on God.  And so often that manifests itself in a soldier’s salute to the Commander of eternity…when God has shown us His plan is to have all of us…not just our wills.

 

You see what Saul missed, what Paul would later plead to you and to I not to miss, the “only” that he would lay out for us…is that when we surrender, we will obey…when we release our all to God, in light of His goodness, in light of His love, in light of His majesty, then quite naturally our conduct will be worshipfully worthy of the Gospel of Christ. 

 

Now all this talk about submission has several of you uneasy, I know.  Submission and surrender are two words that the human mind and the human heart cannot easily digest.  Why?  Because we are thinking in terms of human submission.  We must understand that God’s expectation of submission, even as displayed in the Garden man, is eternally different than man’s.  What?  What does that mean?  The secret of the precept, the key to the deeper truth is found in the Greek. 

 

Turn over to Romans Chapter 10, verses 1 through 3.  Notice Paul points out his own miss for years of his life.  That they are zealous for God but completely miss worship.  And what he says here, we have probably read before…that the miss is that they have not submitted to the righteousness of God…and as we read that we may have pictured a soldier’s solute, an obedient servant, a compliant child…but things aren’t always what they appear to be the first time you see them.

 

Has that ever happened to you?  You see something, conclude a thought, a determination of what’s going on…only to find out later that it wasn’t that at all?  We all have right?  A few weeks ago I came up the stairs to see what my little girl was up to.  She likes to go into her room and close the door and play.  She is a horse nut.  Tons of toys and they are all…horses!  Even her wall is covered in horse stickers, horse pictures…and little did I know she has named all of the horses, even the ones on her wall. 

 

So I come up the stairs and open her door and there she is in the middle of her room sitting and looking up at the wall and she’s kind of swaying a bit back and forth and I hear what she’s saying…”spirit, spirit!”  And my hair begins to tingle…you know that hair on the back of your neck…and I quickly just close the door back and call for April!

 

But I come to find out that one of her horses on the wall she has named “Spirit” and she had made up a song for it!  Precious but here I am bought ready to get out my big wooden cross and big Bible and google “exorcism of a child!”  HA!  Things aren’t always what they seem at first pass you see…and here in Romans 10, that word for submit in the Greek is a particular, specific, revelational word!

 

The Greek word used here is hupotasso.  It is a combination of hupo, meaning “under,” and tasso, meaning “to arrange in an orderly fashion.”  Putting these two pieces together, we get, “to arrange under in an orderly fashion.”  And most importantly, the word here is reflexive which means it’s the person under authority who initiates the act of submission upon themselves for their own benefit.  There is no external force that makes it happen!

 

No order given by the CO, no directive of a master to a slave, no rule of a parent to child…all of those things would find a destination in obedience…God desires relationship.  God’s will and plan are to be discovered and enjoyed somewhere quite beyond obedience…you see its spiritual man…it’s a spiritual concept, submission is.  This is something completely different.  This is Garden of Eden stuff man.  This is heart stuff man.  This is revelational.  Revelational?

 

I’m sure you’ve been outside when it’s pouring rain.  If you don’t have an umbrella handy, you will hurry toward the closest ledge or building entrance.  You look for any kind of covering you can get under to protect yourself from getting all wet.  In many ways, this is a picture of what the word hupotasso really means. 

 

It seems rather strange to brave the downpours on our own and end up repeatedly getting soaked to the skin, right.  Saul had it all in the eyes of men.  Applause, approval, authority…position…he even had it all in the contemplation of an impersonal God…a Pharisee of Pharisees, concerning the law blameless…but he was standing out in the rain, absolutely alone because he had missed the one thing God has asked of us all…the one thing that always, and eternally will preclude conduct worthy of the Gospel of Christ…to simply love Him.

 

Just because I pick up milk and bread when April texts me to do so doesn’t mean I love her.  Just because I complete my responsibilities at work doesn’t mean I love my boss.  Just because my little one does what I tell him to do doesn’t mean he loves me.  Love implies coming under the covering.  Being close and staying close and investing it all…all of us, all of our hopes, all of our concerns, all of our perogitaves…all of ourselves man…that is what Saul missed and Paul found.  And then when faced with whatever…he was ready.  More to come on that…