Rev Harry Newton preaches on grace and baptism at Sumner Redcliffs Church
A sermon by Rev Harry Newton at Sumner Redcliffs Anglican Church, preached on Baptism Sunday, 28th June 2026.
Summary
Rev Harry Newton delivers a Baptism Sunday sermon at Sumner Redcliffs Church, centred on Acts 9:10–19 — the account of Saul's encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus and his subsequent baptism by Ananias. Newton uses Saul's story as the centrepiece of a broader exploration of grace, arguing that no one is so good they don't need Jesus and no one is so bad they can't receive his forgiveness. The sermon builds to the baptism of two church members, James and Gabe, who are then taken to the beach to be baptised in the sea.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
The Story of Stephen and Saul
Rev Harry Newton: Two thousand years ago, there was a man named Stephen. Stephen had become a Christian — he was a Jew — and he would get up and tell people about this man called Jesus, about who Jesus was, about how he had died and how he had come back to life. The local Jewish authorities didn't like it, and they'd have a bit of a barney with him. But it turned out Stephen was really good at debating and no one could outmatch him. It got to the point where the authorities felt embarrassed that this young upstart could out-debate them. So they actually paid a bunch of men money to come and falsely accuse him of, quote, blasphemous words against Moses and God.
Now, that might not mean much to you and me, but it meant a lot to an ancient Jew — and it still means a lot to a devout Jewish person today. To blaspheme God was punishable by death, and to blaspheme Moses was essentially punishable by the exact same thing. It was pretty bad. We're told that the false testimony of these men, quote, stirred up the people as well as the leaders, and they suddenly confronted Stephen, seized him, and brought him before the council.
If you know the story, I won't bore you with all the details, but there's a bit of a back and forth, there's a long speech he gives at the end of it, they stop up their ears, they rip their clothes — all very dramatic — and they take him out of the city and they stone him to death. We're told that as that's happening, another young man called Saul stands there and tends to the cloaks of the men who are busy murdering Stephen. These guys are probably late teens, maybe early twenties — quite young. And we're told that Saul, quote, approved of their killing him.
Saul the Persecutor
But the thing is, Saul didn't just approve. He was actually inspired by these men, and he decided to hunt down any Jewish people who were following the way of Jesus and to punish them for their faith. Saul himself tells us that he was, quote, extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers, and that he genuinely hated Christians. We're told that as he hunted down Christians, he started going from house to house, forcibly entering people's homes and dragging off men and women and committing them to prison — the only crime being suspected of being Jewish people who were following the way of Jesus.
He didn't stop there. He began to travel throughout the region, going from synagogue to synagogue to arrest, beat, and flog anyone suspected of following the way of Jesus. He sounds like a nice guy to have for dinner — not really. Later on, he tells us that when he had arrested people, he had dragged them before the local Jewish authorities and then encouraged those leaders to have them executed. He personally would vote in favour of having them executed, regardless of who they were. And as the Christians began to flee and spread out across the Roman Empire — which is, funny enough, actually how the Christian faith began to spread — he was so obsessed with persecuting these Christians that he, quote, even hunted them down in foreign cities.
The Road to Damascus
Which brings us full circle to the passage that was read for us before. What happened was Saul started to ramp up his persecution on these followers of the Way — as they were called. They weren't called Christians yet. They were called Christians later at a place called Antioch, and "Christians," or "Christ-like ones," was actually an offensive term that they then took on for themselves and made their own. Saul decided to go to the Jewish high priest and asked him for a letter of introduction to all the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found anyone there who belonged to the Way, he might make them prisoners and take them to Jerusalem.
He heads off to Damascus, and as he's coming in — you might have heard the story — a heavenly light flashes up in the sky. He falls to the ground and hears a voice saying, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? He responds, Who are you, Lord? And the voice replies, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Now get up and go into the city and you will be told what you must do. Saul stands up, opens his eyes, and can't see a thing. His companions take him and lead him into Damascus.
Ananias Receives His Vision
Meanwhile, in the town itself is a man called Ananias, who is a follower of Jesus. He's sitting there doing his own thing when suddenly he has a vision. Jesus appears to him and says, Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street.
That's a bit of a curious detail to include, and it's worth a brief aside. Luke, our author, never saw this happen — he relies on interviewing multiple sources of information. So it's his way of what we call bracketing. Like when you write an essay and you've got to do a footnote or a bracket. When I was at uni, I once quoted my mum — Newton, 2003 — and my lecturer crossed it out and said, "You can't quote yourself." I had to go to him and say it was actually my mum. But it's a fair point. Luke faces the same problem. He knows it can't just be his word, so he's writing down: if you want to know the story for yourself, go to the household of Judas who live on Straight Street in Damascus and ask them what happened.
And so Jesus says to Ananias, Go there and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.
Now, would you go? Probably not, if we're honest. It's awkward — turning up and saying, "Hey, we've never met before, but I had a vision telling me I have to come lay hands on you." Most people are going to think that's weird. But even if you were that way inclined, you turn up and walk in, and there's the man who has been going around household to household, dragging your friends and family from their homes and having them stoned to death. So Ananias is, quite understandably, a little bit hesitant to go anywhere near Saul.
But we're told Jesus says to Ananias, Go. This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles — that means non-Jews — and their kings and to the people of Israel. And I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.
Ananias Goes to Saul
And so Ananias goes to the house of Judas, who lives on Straight Street. When he arrives, he places his hands on Saul and says, Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here, has sent me so that you might see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.
How brave is that? And we're told scales fell from Saul's eyes and he could see again. Slowly, Saul stands up and looks at the man he had come to that town to murder, with all the hatred in his heart combined with what he has just experienced. And what does he do? He gets baptised.
What a cool story. You might have heard it before — Saul sometimes goes by a different name, Paul. Some people say he changed his name, but he didn't. He had two names: a Jewish name and a Roman name. As he goes on to talk to non-Jewish people about Jesus, it would be strange to keep using a Jewish name, so he calls himself Paul from then on. But also, symbolically, he's got a new name, a new persona, a new personality — a new leaf.
Grace and the Transformation of Saul
He goes on to become one of the most influential people in the history of Christianity outside of Jesus himself, and arguably one of the most influential people in the history of the planet through his writings. And one of the things that makes his story so incredible is that it exemplifies what we call grace.
In Jesus, God became the perfect, once-and-for-all sacrifice that cleanses us from all sin — all wrongdoing. Not some of it, not most of it, but all of it. All the darkness, all the muck, all the big stuff, all the small stuff, all the public failings and the private ones that no one else ever sees. Jesus took it all in himself and made it possible for you and me to draw close to God, because through him we are washed clean.
That is why the Jesus story is such good news. People tell you the Jesus story is bad news — it isn't. Some people say it's the worst thing to have happened, that it's an evil story. It's not. It's the complete opposite. It is such good news. Because by dying and rising again, Jesus paid the price for our weaknesses and made it possible for you and me to know God personally. And his sacrifice was done out of grace — that means out of unmerited favour, out of unmerited love. Unmerited meaning you don't deserve it, and neither do I.
When this good news clicks and we understand our acceptance by God, we realise our relationship with God is not transactional. It's not based on how spiritual we are, how conservative we are, how progressive we are, how fill-in-the-blank we are. It isn't based on any form of merit — it's a gift. We can't earn God's love. It's given to us by grace.
Lives Changed by Grace
Throughout the Bible, we hear about people whose lives were changed after they experienced this grace of God. Anyone remember Zacchaeus — the vertically challenged man who liked to climb trees? Jesus sees him and invites him down. They become friends. And then Jesus goes to the man's house and Zacchaeus says, "I'm going to give away everything I stole from other people. I'm going to make it right." He radically changes his life.
Anyone remember Mary Magdalene? Her life was an absolute mess. Jesus heals her, and she follows him right through to the cross. She's one of the women there who goes to look after his body on Easter Sunday. What about the woman with the perfume we heard about a couple of weeks ago? She comes in, pours ointment on Jesus' feet, and cries because she's so overwhelmed by the gift of God's love that she's experienced in Jesus — and she actually wipes his feet clean with her hair. That is strange, but even stranger when you understand the social context.
What about that song we just sang, Amazing Grace, written by John Newton? Do you know what he was? He was a slave trader. He was a horrific person who did terrible things. And yet he met Christ and realised that his life had been turned around.
Another perfect example is Saul from our story this morning. When he encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus, Saul realised that he was a ratbag. Have you ever looked at the news and wondered how people can do such terrible things to each other and still think they're okay? I was looking yesterday at some of the horrific things coming out of the Middle East and parts of Africa, and when they interview people on the news, those people think they're good. And you're thinking, how on earth can you think that? Saul was the same. He justified his terrible behaviour. He thought what he was doing was good. And then he met Jesus and realised he was a ratbag.
He realised the evil nature of what he had done, and there was nothing — nothing — he could do to earn God's forgiveness and acceptance. He realised that his zealousness, his religiosity, his spirituality, his academic credentials — he had studied under the most revered Jewish rabbi of all time, Gamaliel. Paul was the equivalent of being tutored by the head of Oxford University. He was right up there. He wasn't some fringe figure with a week-long degree off the internet. He was a proper, serious scholar. And his social standing — we're told he was a member of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council of the Israelites, which was quite young to be a member of. That's significant. He was an important person.
All his achievements, he realised, counted for nothing. And he wrote about this in a letter to the early church:
"You know my pedigree: a legitimate birth, circumcised on the eighth day, an Israelite from the elite tribe of Benjamin, a strict and devout adherent to God's law, a fiery defender of the purity of my religion, even to the point of persecuting the church, a meticulous observer of everything set down in God's law. But — but — whatever were the gains to me, I now consider lost because of the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ, my Lord."
His point being: he understood how absolutely lacking he was in the presence of a holy and perfect God. And he also understood that no one is so good they don't need Jesus, and no one is so bad they can't receive his forgiveness — even someone as terrible as him. Saul was a bad person, and yet he was acceptable to Jesus. When he realised that it was by grace alone that he was forgiven and made acceptable in God's sight, it changed his life.
What Baptism Means
Which is why the first thing he did after being prayed for by Ananias was to be baptised. Because when we get baptised, it's a whole range of things happening at once, but part of what's going on is we're responding to God's grace — God's unmerited love — when we've encountered Jesus. And being baptised is symbolically being washed clean.
Has anyone ever washed a really grubby baby? You dip them in the water — the water's nice and clean, the baby's disgusting — and you put them in and wash them and pull them out. My nephew Asher was just known to be a grub. I remember bathing him and pulling him out, and the water had gone dark brown. But Asher was clean and beautiful and smelled like babies always do. In the same way that water washes away the dirt from our bodies, God's forgiveness washes away our muck, our darkness — what we call our sin.
When we're baptised, it's like a new birth into a new family. You ever watch those Instagram reels where there's a kid who's a foster child, and the parents pull out an envelope and give it to them, and the kid opens it and there's this moment of realisation that it's an adoption form and they're now part of the family? If you haven't seen those, look them up — and if you don't cry, you're heartless, because they are powerful. It's a bit like that. We're being adopted into a new family, into God's family.
Baptism marks the beginning of a faith journey that will last a lifetime and into eternity. It is an outward and visible sign of an internal encounter with God's amazing grace. And when someone is baptised, they're making a declaration, loud and proud, that they have encountered the grace of Jesus and want to follow him.
Baptism of James and Gabe
And that's what we're going to do right now. We go to the beach — and as Millie put it, we dunk the divas. Sorry James, I didn't mean to call you a diva. We're going to take James and Gabe down to the water, go in, and baptise these two and symbolically welcome them into the family of Christ. You're already here, you're already a part of the church, but this is that step in the journey.
Before we head down, Gabe and James — do you want to come forward for a sec? We've got these for you as a gift. You'll need to give them to someone else to hold once you're in the water. These are little Bibles for you, and inside they're marked up with your baptism details.
It's going to be cold, so we're going to be quick. Anyone else who wants to come in the water is welcome to join us. I'm told the surf is okay, and there are a couple of surfboards next door — grab one off Jeff if you want.