3. What are these pricks we kick against? Consider Acts 9:5.
NOTE: ‘“And the Lord said, I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest; it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.” Acts 9:3. These were the words of the Lord to Saul of Tarsus as he was on his way to Damascus to destroy all the followers of Christ in that city. By considering them carefully, we get an insight into a bit of Saul’s previous history. In the first place, we see that Saul had not been at peace with his own mind, while persecuting the church of Christ, He had been pricked in his conscience. He had been under conviction that the doctrine he was seeking to root out was the truth, yet old prejudices, derived from the instruction of the priests and doctors of the law, which had been his life-study, would not yield, and so time after time he had sought to banish these convictions by renewed zeal in persecution. In these efforts he was sincere, for he could not think that the priests and rulers and learned doctors were all wrong, and the despised sect of Nazarenes in the right; therefore he strove against the prickings of conscience as against the whisperings of Satan. In the second place, we learn that just as Saul was unconsciously persecuting the Lord, even so the Lord, without his recognising the fact, was patiently giving him instruction all the time. The expression, “It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks,” is an allusion to the way in which oxen were driven, namely, with a sharp goad. A stubborn ox would sometimes kick against the goad, but this only made his case the worse. In the Hebrew language the word for “ox goad” is derived from a word meaning “to teach.” It was with thorns of the desert that Gideon “taught the men of Succoth.” Judges 8:16. It was with a sharp goad that the oxen were reminded of their duty, and taught the way they should go. Even so, by the sharp conviction of the Holy Spirit, the Lord was seeking to teach Saul the right way, while Saul was stubbornly resisting. The Lord was pricking Saul’s conscience to awaken him, because He had chosen him for a special work.’ E. J. Waggoner: Present Truth, November 4, 1897.
4. How did David describe the same feeling? Psalm 32:3-4.
NOTE: ‘Even before the divine sentence was pronounced against David, he had begun to reap the fruit of transgression. His conscience was not at rest. The agony of spirit which he then endured is brought to view in the thirty-second psalm. He says: {
“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity,
And in whose spirit there is no guile.
When I kept silence, my bones waxed old
Through my roaring all the day long.
For day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me:
My moisture was changed as with the drought of summer.”’ Patriarchs & Prophets, page 724.