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This is Paul's account of the decisive moment on which all his own future, and a great deal of the future of Christianity and of the world, hung. The Voice had spoken from heaven, and now everything depended on the answer made. Will he submit or resist? The text makes us spectators of the very process of his yielding, "I became not disobedient"; as if the "disobedience" was the prior condition. Surely there have been few decisions big with larger destinies.

I. THIS HEAVENLY VISION SHINES FOR US TOO. Paul looked back to this as being equally available as ground for his convictions as were the appearances of the Lord to the eleven after His resurrection. And what we see and know of Christ is as valid a ground for our convictions as this. For the revelation that is made to the understanding and the heart is the same whether it be made, as it was to Paul, through a heavenly vision, or, as it was to the other apostles, through their senses, or, as it is to us, by the Scripture. Paul's sight of Christ was for a moment; we can see Him as long as we will by turning to the Book; it was accompanied with but a partial apprehension of the great and far-reaching truths he was to learn; we have the abiding results of the life-long process.

II. THE VISION OF CHRIST, HOWSOEVER PERCEIVED COMES DEMANDING OBEDIENCE.

1. The purpose for which Christ made Himself known to Paul was to give him a charge which should influence his whole life. And the Lord prepared the way for the charge. He revealed Himself in His radiant glory, in His sympathetic unity with them that loved Him, in His knowledge of the doings of the persecutor; and He disclosed to Saul how the thing that he thought to be righteousness was sin. And so whatsoever glimpse of the Divine nature, or of Christ's love, nearness, and power, we have ever caught, was meant to animate us for diligent service. So the question for us all is, What are we doing with what we know of Jesus Christ? It is not enough that a man should say, "Whereupon I saw or understood the vision." Sight, apprehension, theology, orthodoxy, they are all very well, but the right result is, "Whereupon I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision."

2. But notice the peculiarity of the obedience which the vision requires.

(1) There is not a word about the thing which Paul always puts in the foreground as the hinge upon which conversion turns — viz., faith; but the thing is here. He got up to his feet "not disobedient," though he had not done a thing. That is to say, the man's will had melted. The obedience was the submission of self to God, and not the consequent external activity in the way of God's commandments.

(2) Paul's obedience is also an obedience based —

(a) Upon the vision of Jesus Christ enthroned, living, bound by ties that thrill at the slightest touch to every heart that loves Him and making common cause with them.

(b) Upon the shuddering recognition of Paul's own unsuspected evil.

(c) Upon the recognition of pity in Christ, who, after His sharp denunciation of the sin, looks down with a smile of forgiveness, and says, "But rise and stand upon thy feet, for I will send thee to make known My name."

III. THIS OBEDIENCE IS IN OUR OWN POWER TO GIVE OR TO WITHHOLD. Paul shows us the state from which he came and that into which he passed — "I became — not disobedient." It was a complete, swift and permanent revolution, as if some thick-ribbed ice should all at once melt into sweet water. But whether swift or slow it was his doing, and after the Voice had spoken, it was possible that Paul should have risen not a servant, but a persecutor still. Men can and do consciously set themselves against the will of God, and refuse the gifts which they know all the while are for their good. It is no use to say that sin is ignorance. Many a time when we have been sure of what God wanted us to do, we have gone and done the exact opposite. There are men and women who are convinced that they ought to be Christians, and yet there is no yielding.

IV. THIS OBEDIENCE MAY, IN A MOMENT, REVOLUTIONISE A LIFE. Paul fell from his horse a bitter enemy of Jesus. A few moments pass. There was one moment in which the crucial decision was made; and he staggered to his feet, loving all that he had hated, and abandoning all in which he had trusted. His own doctrine that "if any man be in Christ he is a new creature," etc., is but a generalisation of what befell himself on the Damascus road. There are plenty of analogies of such sudden and entire revolution. All reformation of a moral kind is best done quickly. It is a very hopeless task, as everybody knows, to tell a drunkard to break off his habits gradually. There must be one moment in which he definitely turns himself round and sets his face in the other direction. Christ cured two men gradually, and all the others instantaneously. No doubt, for young people who have grown up in Christian households, the usual way is that slowly and imperceptibly they shall pass into consciousness of communion with Jesus Christ. But for people who have grown up irreligious, the most probable way is a sudden stride out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear Son. So I come to you all with this message. No matter what your past, it is possible by one swift act of surrender to break the chains and go free.

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

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KJV: Whereupon, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision:

WEB: "Therefore, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision,