Acts 8:26-40
You may be seated and turn in
your copy of God’s word to acts chapter eight. Our reading will
be versus 26 through 40 as you’re making your way there. In your
own copies of God’s word, I’ll remind you that Jesus, when he
was raised from the dead, gathered his disciples. He gathered the
apostles. And for some days in Jerusalem,
he prepared them for a ministry. The risen Christ was exalted,
being raised up into heaven where he sits at the right hand of
God, the father. But he left his apostles and his disciples,
now his church on earth. to bear witness to all that he
is, all that he’s done. And so his promise to them would
be that the gospel would go into Jerusalem, to Judea and to Samaria,
and then to the ends of the earth. So today we have a section where
Philip is taking the gospel more and more into Samaria. It will
land in the heart of an Ethiopian, and it will go from there to
the ends of the earth. Next week, we’ll see the conversion
of Saul, and he will take the gospel all around the Mediterranean,
and as far as we know, by the end of his life, all the way
to Spain. Before we read God’s word, let’s
pause and ask for his help and blessing. Pray with me. Lord, our hearts are a jitter
with caffeine and with the buzzes of our phones. We’re already
thinking about tomorrow and Tuesday and Friday. We’re busy people. We live in a noisy world and
sitting still for a brief time to hear from you is difficult,
but it’s worth every ounce of our being. So help us to be still
and know that you are God. Help us to taste and see that
you are good. Help us to realize this is bread from heaven. This
is water from the rock. And that if we eat this bread
and drink from this spring, we will never hunger and we will
never thirst. We pray that by your word, you
would convince and convert sinners unto salvation and that you would
comfort and build up saints in their most holy faith. We ask
this now in the name of Christ, amen. Hear God’s word now from
Acts chapter eight, beginning at verse 26. Now an angel of
the Lord said to Philip, rise and go toward the south to the
road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. This is a desert place. And he arose and went, and there
was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of
Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come
to Jerusalem to worship and was returning, seated in his chariot. And he was reading the prophet
Isaiah. And the spirit said to Philip, go over and join this
chariot. So Philip ran to him and heard
him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, do you understand
what you are reading? And he said, how can I, unless
someone guides me? And he invited Philip to come
up and sit with him. Now the passage of the scripture
that he was reading was this. Like a sheep he was led to the
slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he
opens not his mouth. In his humiliation, justice was
denied him. Who can describe his generation?
For his life is taken away from the earth. And the eunuch said
to Philip, about whom, I ask, does this prophet say this, about
himself or about someone else? Then Philip opened his mouth
and beginning with the scripture, he told him the good news about
Jesus. And as they were going along
the road, they came to some water and the eunuchs said, see, here
is water. What prevents me from being baptized? And he commanded the chariot
to stop. And they both went down into the water, Philip and the
eunuch, and he baptized him. And when they came up out of
the water, the spirit of the Lord carried Philip away and the eunuch
saw him no more and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found
himself at Azotus. And as he passed through, he
preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea. Amen. The word of the living
God for us. The question for you, does anyone
get saved through Religion? Well, the easy answer is no. But religion is what we’re so
good at in the American church. We’re good at having committees.
We’re good at taking minutes. We’re good at making decisions.
We’re good at having meetings. We’re good at protecting the
parlor from fingerprints and peanut butter and jelly. We’re
good at doing church, right? We’re good at doing religion,
but I wonder, what does the outside world see in the life of the
church? Well, there’s one characteristic,
I think, that this passage very clearly shows us, that we would
all do well to glory in, to revel in, and to make sure it is the
thing that is most important to us. And that is church. and the reading and explanation
of God’s word. Yes, there are all kinds of things
we do in the life of the church that are important. It’s good
to eat together. It’s good to take care of the
building and grounds. It’s good to make sure the finances
are in order. It’s good to sweep up and mop up. It’s good to do
all the things we do. But the one thing that we want
to be crystal clear and front and center and the main thing
in the life of our church, the life of any church, is to be
a people who read and explain the word of God so that men and
women and boys and girls may clearly see who is Jesus, what
has Jesus done, and how the salvation which he has worked may be brought
to bear in their lives. That is the absolute critical
thing that we must understand about the life and the ministry
of the church and of our witnesses as evangelists in this world. Remember that the gathered people
of God in Jerusalem were scattered because of persecution. Remember,
Stephen, one of the deacons, was preaching the word and the
authorities brought him in. They were ruining business for
the Pharisees and the scribes and the teachers and the Sadducees
and all. They were ruining their place and position of power and
authority and money making in the Jerusalem temple. And so
persecution came as they put Stephen to death. They stoned
him outside the camp, that persecution got great and wide and hot. And so all the worshipers in
Jerusalem who knew Christ ran for their lives. They were gathered
and now we’re scattered throughout the ends of the earth. but we
have another deacon on the loose. Stephen wasn’t the only deacon
who preached the word. Now, Philip we’ve seen for a
couple of Sundays is out and about preaching the gospel. And he’s an effective evangelist. He can very well, very clearly,
and in a Holy Spirit blessed way, tell the good news of Jesus
Christ to those who will hear, those who will listen. And so
the word of God is scattering from Jerusalem into Judea, the
surrounding countryside. It’s going north into Samaria.
Remember those are the kind of the half breed people, the people
who repopulated that area during Israel’s exile by the Assyrians. The Samaritans were not liked. I think the last two Sundays
we’ve explained that. Remember the story of the good
Samaritan. who helped the man who was in need. It wasn’t the
priest. It wasn’t the Levite. It was the good Samaritan. Jesus
has a way of showing us our hearts. And so these Samaritans were
hated by any God fearing person. And so now the gospel is scattering
and it’s going into the ends of the earth. It’s going north
into Samaria. And now we see Philip being sent
south of Jerusalem along the desert highway that goes from
Jerusalem to Gaza, one of the old Philistine cities. And we
see in this passage two important movements. We see first explosive
gospel growth. Remember in Jerusalem, when Jesus
let his disciples loose, he let his apostles loose. They went
every day into the temple to worship God. They went every
day into the temple and proclaim Christ as Messiah. Christ is
the way of salvation. It’s also evident to us in our
study of the book of Acts that the gospel went into Samaria,
where Simon, the magician, had been doing many mighty and wonderful
and powerful things in their eyes, and they turned from his
magic to the truth of the gospel. and the saving power of Jesus
Christ. And now we have explosive gospel
growth in Jerusalem and now in Samaria. And then we have, well,
a one-man mission. Philip is sent from what is a
bustling ministry in the north, in Samaria. He’s sent down to
a desert road to meet with one man. Now, that does not strike
well with our American sensibilities. We love to have tent revivals,
right? We love to have hundreds, no,
thousands come forward and profess the name of Christ. This morning
I was listening to a certain minister on television I enjoy,
and he was talking about his vision for 2025 to see 5 million
people reached by 2025. I thought, what great ambition. But what about when God sends
us to just one? Is that okay? The answer is,
of course, yes, it is. We love and we revel in big-time
gospel, big-time revival, big-time tent meetings, but what about
when God sends us all down I-95? That’s what this little road
is like. It was just a road, a bunch of billboards, a Burger
King at every other exit, maybe, something like that. But that’s
where God is sending Philip, and he must trust and obey. As
we sing, for there is no other way where he sins, we will go. And sometimes in our American
church language, we think as ministers, we think as churches,
we think as, as Christians, how can I be most effective? Well,
the answer to that is you could be most effective by being faithful
where God puts you. And it starts with your family.
It starts in your local church. It starts in all the natural
places you go. As you sit in the doctor’s office,
you go in the marketplace, you live in a neighborhood, maybe
you’re at dance class for your child or soccer practice, basketball,
whatever, whatever, and wherever. You look for those opportunities. You look for where God has planted
you providentially and strategically to live faithfully in your sphere
of influence. A friend of our family’s known
him, he’s with the Lord now, but knew him 40 years, a big
part of our lives, told me a handful of years ago, he said, my job
is my grandchildren. And so he bought a station wagon. And he picked them up from school
every day. He brought them to his house and he tutored them
in math. He helped them with their spelling. He worked with
them in their science and their reading. He then took them, maybe
after a good snack, off to soccer lessons or whatever the afternoon
had for them. And, you know, he had a sailboat. He had a place at the lake. But
he knew what God had put in front of him. And it was to be a witness
to his children and to his grandchildren. And that flies against TV commercials,
doesn’t it? Oh, you plan your retirement
so you can pick up seashells. You plan your retirement so you
can live your dream. But one of the things we don’t
want to forget is that God has a calling on each of our lives.
We have been bought at a price. We are not our own. And where
he sends, we must go. And whatever lands in your lap
for gospel opportunity, it may not be what you thought it would
be, but it’s exactly what God and his wisdom has given you. And so explosive gospel growth
may happen in Jerusalem. Thousands were added to the church.
Explosive gospel growth may come in Samaria through the work of
Philip. It may come in the life and the
ministry of a great evangelist or a larger church in a larger
city. But friends, brothers and sisters,
we cannot ever be tempted. We cannot ever believe the lie
that God is doing nothing in small places. For gospel growth
in the life of one is explosive, isn’t it? It is life changing. It may not be that thousands
came forward, but does not heaven rejoice when one comes to faith
in the living and true God? And so explosive gospel growth
can mean a couple different things, can’t it? Oh, it can mean great
numbers, but it can mean simply the work of God in one human
heart. from wickedness to righteousness. So there’s an explosive gospel
growth in our passage. There’s also an Ethiopian gospel
growth. Don’t think of Ethiopia by looking
at your Atlas. You know, you pull up your maps
on your phone or you get out your 2022 world maps. Don’t think of Ethiopia there.
It’s a much smaller nation today, but in this era, it was a large
region. It was a vast kingdom. And if
you do just put a little bit of thinking in your Bible knowledge,
you’ll remember that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
the God of David. Oh, the God of Solomon has visited
Ethiopia. Remember when Solomon and all
his splendor was living in David’s royal city, the temple had been
built. And remember Solomon’s one thing
he asked for wisdom. He was the wisest man that ever
lived on the face of the earth. And but who came to see him?
Well, princes and kings and queens. And remember, it was the queen
of Sheba, queen of Ethiopia, who came to see the wisdom of
almighty God. And so you have to see here that
God is continuing the work that he began some thousand years
ago in the life of the queen of Sheba. She has this official,
Candace is now the queen, the mother queen. It’s likely her
little boy, her young son is the true king, but the queen
mother would rule in his place because he was a special deity,
something like that. But one of her high officials,
the chairman of the Fed, or maybe more appropriately, the secretary
of the treasury of Ethiopia has gone to Jerusalem to worship.
It’s a long road, a long trip, but he’s made a pilgrimage to
one of the feasts, possibly the Passover where Jesus was put
to death. We don’t know. We don’t know
how much time has passed since all that, but in some way, shape
or form, he sought the Lord of heaven and earth. And he sought
him in Jerusalem. And somewhere during his time
in Jerusalem, because he was a man of means, he picked up
a scroll of Isaiah. Now, all of you today, I think,
have a Bible, maybe not with you, but you have one at home.
You may have several at home. You’ve got them on your phones,
your tablets. The word of God is plentiful for us. We all have
copies, several copies. It’s available to us. But for
this man to purchase and hold a scroll of the book of Isaiah
was some major undertaking, an expensive one. Remember, no printing
press, no laser jets, no cannon duplicators, no Barnes and Nobles. This was a hand copied copy of
the book of Isaiah. And so this man was seeking the
Lord. This man was looking for truth.
And he thought and he thought, well, that he would find it in
the book of Isaiah. You know, a lot of folks Maybe
less so in our day are tire kickers. They’re truth seekers. They want
to know what is the truest truth on the face of the earth. And
so they read this book. They search this religion and
they go all over the place until they find what they’re looking
for. But the thing we know as Christians. is you can search
and search and search. And unless God, by his grace,
through the power of his Holy Spirit, reveals himself through
his word and through his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, you will
continue searching aimlessly and restlessly until your dying
day. And so we have this picture of
explosive gospel growth in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, and it’s
now going to the ends of the earth and it’s coming into the
life of this Ethiopian man. And he’s sitting in his carriage,
reading God’s word, but not understanding. And thank the Lord that Philip
is faithful. You know, Philip could have said,
I’m staying in Samaria. I’m getting a little notoriety
here. They think I’m a good preacher. They see me lay hands and the
Holy Spirit comes. Crowds are coming. They’re rejecting
the magician who was great in that region. I’m going to have
my picture on bestsellers and this is going to be great. I’ll
retire with two houses. That’s kind of American evangelicalism
mindset, isn’t it? Not for Philip. He goes and he’s
there and the spirit says, go to that man over there in that
carriage. He needs your help. understanding
the book of Isaiah, in particular chapters 52 and 53. Of course,
they didn’t have chapters and verses then, but he’s looking
at the suffering servant. And so he goes and by the grace
of God, through the power of the spirit, through an obedient
servant, he explains, he explains Jesus leaving the riches of heaven.
He explains Jesus, who knew no sin, becoming sin for his people
in order that he might redeem them. He explains that Jesus
is the Lamb of God slain before the foundations of the earth.
He explains to him what it means to put our faith, our hope, our
trust in Jesus alone for our salvation, to receive his righteousness,
to receive his obedience, to receive his forgiveness and to
receive all the blessings of heaven as we live the Christian
life. We can fill in the blanks as we understand the gospel and
what the Bible teaches. So beginning with the whole scriptures,
he explained to them all that God is, all that man is, and
all that is provided in Christ. This man was thirsty, this man
was longing, this man was searching, this man was frustrating. You
can imagine he took many other pilgrimages to many other places.
and he sought many other ways of salvation, but now God in
his grace would make this man thirst no more. He would end
his longing. He would bring an end to his
search. He would no longer be frustrated,
but the word of God would be clear to him as Philip faithfully
explained. You know, this passage of scripture
ought to encourage us as a church. Keep reading the Bible. Keep
explaining the Bible. Keep singing the Bible. Keep
saying the Bible. Keep studying the Bible. Give
out Bibles. Have our Bibles ready, not only
in our hands, but in our minds and hearts. Peter tells the scattered
Christians there’s going to be more scattering. more persecution. He tells the scattered Christians
in his epistles, be ready to give an account, always be prepared
to give an account of the hope that is within you. Do you know
your Bible? Do you sit under the teaching
of the word? I was thinking today this morning
about how in our church, we try to read through the Bible, preach
through the Bible. You have your table talks, which
take you through a daily Bible reading plan. You can read the
whole Bible in a year. We give out the chronological reading
plans. And we don’t do that so you can check the box as we do
it so that you’ll read and know and understand the Bible because
you’ll be asked to explain it to your children, grandchildren,
friends, neighbors, whoever. Think about Wednesday nights,
how we’re going through Genesis and Lord willing, we’ll do Exodus
and Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy. We just started
on Sunday night a series in Joshua and perhaps we’ll tumble on to
Judges. I think we’ve studied Ruth. Maybe
we’ll get through Samuel and Kings and Chronicles and Ezra
and Nehemiah. We’ve done the Psalms. We’ve
done the Proverbs. We’ve done Ecclesiastes. I think
we skipped over Psalm of Solomon. We’ve studied some of the little
bitty prophets. We did Daniel last year. We’ve
done Esther. We’ve done a bunch of them. In
the mornings, we’ve looked through all kinds of New Testament passages.
Luke, now Acts. We’ve gone through Hebrews. And
if you come, you will hear, if you read your Bibles during the
week, daily, you’ll be able to do just like Philip. God will
say to you, speak to this person, tell this person the gospel.
It’ll be in your mind. It’ll be in your heart. It’ll
be on the tip of your tongue because you are ready. One of the things that’s so wonderful
about this passage is it tells us Philip’s response. Apparently
their conversation had gone on to such a degree that he realized
he needed to be baptized. Here’s water. Let’s take care
of business now. No more delay. Uh, I’ve decided
to follow Jesus. No, no turning back. He repented,
he was baptized and it says he went on his way rejoicing. Uh,
that’s a similar phrase that Luke uses elsewhere in acts,
but also in Luke, the gospel, according to Luke. about the
man who received his sight, he went on his way rejoicing. The
man whose legs were no longer lame, he leapt and danced and
praised God and went on his way rejoicing. And isn’t that how
it is when we come to faith in Jesus? We were lost and are found. We were blind and now we see
we were dead. Now we’ve been made alive and
saved people sing, saved people rejoice, saved people go and
tell the good news to many others. And can’t you imagine, can’t
you imagine the gospel going to Ethiopia? We have no account
in the scripture and I don’t know about church history, but
can’t you imagine the gospel spreading as Jesus promised to
the ends of the earth? Why else, after all, would God
send Philip to that lonely desert road to meet with this Ethiopian
official, to give him the gospel that he might take it home. And
so Philip is beamed up, as we say. The Holy Spirit takes him
away. He takes him up into the north
of Israel where he preaches through the villages. I was also thinking
this morning, I have an early morning sense of humor as I’m
drinking my coffee and looking over my notes. You know, these
TV preachers, they all have their private jets. Philip flew private. The Holy Spirit took him up to
the north. And our passage says he found
himself at Azotus. He’s out on the coast. It’s on
the Mediterranean. And as he passed through, he
preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea
up in the far north, up on the coast. Let me ask the question
I mentioned earlier. Does religion save anyone? It doesn’t. But how about reading
and explaining and making Christ plain to all who ask and will
hear? Friends, that’s our ticket. And
it may be to one, it may be to many, it may be to a few, but
what does God always remind us? Never despise the day of small
things. If it’s your family, if it’s
one grandchild, If it’s one neighbor, if it’s just a few on a Sunday
morning, God is at work and be excited and rejoice that he has
included you in it. Pray with me. Our Lord, we thank
you that you are at work in this world and it’s not always in
the way we wish or with the notoriety we’d like to receive. Lord, we’re
people of Christ. It is all for his glory. We’re
people of the book, so help us to know and be able to explain
our Bibles to all who ask. Lord, let us not look necessarily
to the world, but start with our family, our loved ones, our
neighbors, the people close by us. Let us never fail to tell
them who God is and what he’s done. And Lord, let us, yes,
be faithful to the ends of the earth through your church to
tell the glories of salvation in Jesus Christ. Hear us and
help us for we need it. And we ask for it in Jesus name.
Amen.