But when the twelve were at meat together the Lord turned to Peter and asked: “Lovest thou Me more than these?” How those words must have cut down into Peter’s heart! Jesus wanted to see whether his conceit had been taken out. That was hard, you know. He could not get any thing out of Peter. Peter did not say a word. Again the Lord asked: “Peter, lovest thou Me more than these?” He was a broken and empty vessel, and must be filled. Then Jesus gave Peter his commission: “Go, feed my sheep; preach the Gospel to all the world.” This is a sweet thought, that after Peter had denied the Lord, He took him back and used him! SAUL. I have been speaking on the Prodigal Son, but now I want to take up another man--a much harder case than the prodigal, because he did not believe he needed a Savior. You need not have talked a great while to that prodigal before you could have convinced him that he needed a Savior. It is easy to reach a prodigal’s heart when he reaches the end of his rope. The man of whom I shall now speak stood high in the estimation of the people. He stood, as it were, at the top of the ladder, while the prodigal was at the bottom. This man was full of self-righteousness, and if you had tried to pick out a man in Jerusalem as a hopeless case, so far as accepting Jesus of Nazareth as a Savior, you would have picked out Saul. He was the most utterly hopeless case you could have found. I would sooner have thought of the conversion of Pilate than of this man. When they were putting to death the martyrs to the cross he had cheered on the murderers; but, in spite of all this, we find the Son of God coming and knocking at his heart, and it was not long before he received Him as his Savior. You can see Saul as he goes to the chief priests of Jerusalem, getting the necessary documents that he might go to Damascus--that he might go to the synagogue there and get all who were calling upon the Lord Jesus Christ cast into prison. He was going to stamp out the teachers of the New Gospel. One thing that made him so mad, probably, was that when the disciples were turned out of Jerusalem, instead of stopping they went all around and preached. Philip went down to Samaria, and probably there was a great revival there, and the news had come from Damascus that the preachers had actually reached that place. This man Saul was full of zeal and full of religion. He was a religious man, and no doubt he could say a prayer as long as any one in Jerusalem. He had kept the laws faithfully, and been an honest and upright man. The people then would never have dreamed of him being in need of a Savior. Many persons today would say of Saul: “He is good enough. To be sure, he does not believe in Jesus Christ; but he is a good man.”