Acts 8:4-8
Please remain standing and turn
in your copy of God’s word to Acts chapter eight. We’ll be reading verses four
through eight. While you’re looking, I just
remind you that it’s been three or four weeks, I think, since
we’ve been in Acts together, but things have shifted. Remember
that Jesus told his disciples, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem. Judea, Samaria, and then to the
ends of the earth. So the apostles, the church,
have been active in Jerusalem, of course, particularly around
the temple. Judea would be that area, that
region. And now they have entered into
Samaria because they have been scattered by persecution. And
so we are seeing as we progress our way through Acts, Jesus’
promise of the witness of his life and ministry to spread to
the ends of the earth. Before we read, let’s ask for
God’s help and blessing. Pray with me. Our Lord, we are
a stiff-necked people. We like what we like. We want what we want. We bump
into your will and we do indeed want to bend our knee in submission
to you, but sometimes we find it so hard because, well, our
hearts have gone astray. Our hearts are bent. They are
inwardly bent. We love ourselves. So Lord, help
us in this moment to love you, to hear you and to believe you
and to take great joy in what you have to say and that we might
put it into practice in our lives. This we ask in the name of Christ,
amen. Verse four of Acts chapter eight
says, now those who were scattered went about preaching the word.
Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaim to them
the Christ and the crowds with one accord paid attention to
what was being said by Philip when they heard him and saw signs
that he did. for unclean spirits came out
of many who were possessed, crying with a loud voice and many who
were paralyzed or lame were healed. So there was much joy in that
city. Amen. You may be seated. I don’t know how many sermons you
all have sat through, but I imagine by, um, to use the, uh, phrase,
uh, we sang in a hymn a little bit ago, some of you with snow
crowned, You’ve sat through a lot of sermons. Some of you children
by the pain and the grimace on your face say, oh, I’ve sat through
many sermons. And y’all think it’s hard, don’t
you? Have you ever heard about the preacher being bored? He
fills in the Bs and the Ds and the zeros and the eights just
like you do. Listening to a sermon ought to be something we do with
great joy. And I think that sounds a little
maybe oxymoronic given today’s culture. We live in a TV world.
You go into most churches and on every side there’s audio visual.
We purposefully haven’t gone that route because how does faith
come? Faith does not come by seeing.
It comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God. And so maybe
we’re a little old school. usually not a bad thing. I think
it’s good to sing out of a book. You see the words. I think it’s
good to read out of a Bible. You see the words. I just read
to you from my Bible, which I’ve carried for about 12 years. And,
you know, I kind of know what’s on what page and what’s where,
you know, you can scroll through a phone and all the rest. But
I think it’s good to hold in your hands the very word of God
and to know its pages and whatnot. But I think it’s also good to
sit with a Bible in your lap, an open Bible in your hands and
walk through the word as we walk through it together in church. And that’s true during sermons.
That’s true during Sunday school, Wednesday night, other Bible
studies. It’s good to have open books.
There’s an art to listening to a sermon. And in our culture,
you know, we’re, I don’t want to be insensitive, but we, we
have attention deficit disorder in our culture. It’s, it’s really
everywhere. And isn’t it strange to come to church in our culture
and to be whatever number of people sitting and listening
to one person. That’s not how it works out in the world. Everything
is interactive. Everything is audio and visual
and computer and technology and tablet and whatnot. But there’s
a real art to listening to a sermon. I’d encourage you, if you want
to think about it a little more, visit our resource room down
the hallway and look through, I think it’s on one of the bottom
shelves. Christopher Ash has a little book called How to Listen
to a Sermon. And just a quick couple things,
maybe it helps you to take notes. Maybe for you children, it helps
you to draw a picture of what you hear. Maybe for some of you
big kids, it does the same. I never fault a person for doing
what it takes in church to listen and to receive and to process
and to handle God’s word. There’s gonna be a really big
reason in this passage, though, for you to listen well to sermons.
And it’s gonna come up in two ways. You’ll see as we get to
it. But as we get into this passage
today, I want us to think about how evil when Jesus died on the
cross thought they had won. And I want you to think also
about how evil when they stoned Stephen and all the Christians
scattered out of Jerusalem thought they had won. Well, they’re wrong. They’re wrong because at the
cross, Jesus’ ministry was, oh, it was just beginning. He would
rise from the dead. He would be raised for our justification. He would rise from the dead and
ascend into heaven and give gifts to his church that his church
might thrive on earth to continue his witness to the ends of the
earth. Satan would be defeated. And
when Stephen is stoned and Saul is there standing at the feet,
uh, with all the cloaks of those who stoned him, uh, at his feet
giving approval. And we’re going to see in weeks
to come his ongoing, um, wicked persecution of the church.
Uh, evil has not won. No, God has scattered his people
to the ends of the earth to preach Jesus. We remember the great
quote that comes to us from the centuries, the blood of the martyrs
is the seed of his church. And I want us to notice as we
think on this passage today, I want us to think about gospel
joy. Gospel joy and where it encourages
us in our evangelism. Think about gospel joy first
brought to Samaria. In verse four it says, now those
who were scattered went about preaching the word. Then it specifically
in verse five speaks of Philip. He goes down to Samaria. Now Samaria, that’s probably
ringing a bell in many of your minds. A story Jesus told about
a man who was robbed. He was left for dead on the side
of the road and a priest came along. Is he gonna help? Nope. And then a Levite. comes
along from his service in Jerusalem. Is he gonna help? Nope. Well,
who helps? The good Samaritan. That’s a
phrase that has come down in our modern day language. It’s
maybe a colloquial term for a person who helps, a person who gives
need. When I was in Charlotte area
for seminary, I would write in on I-77 from where we lived and
there was the CVS the drugstore, CVS Good Samaritan Van. And they
stopped and helped people change their tires or whatever they
needed as they broke down on their morning commute. A good
Samaritan is one who helps in need. But think about the Samaritans. They were not good in the minds
of Israelites. In fact, they were worse than
the Gentiles. Remember when Israel was formed,
12 tribes, their 12 tribes entered the Promised Land. Come back
on Sunday night for a study of Joshua and you’ll hear more about
that little plug advertisement there. But these 12 tribes dispersed
into the land and they took their allotments, they took their possession,
they took their inheritances and When Israel grew and became
a great nation under David and Solomon, the sins of the leaders
and the sins of the people caused a kingdom split. The Northern
tribe, the Northern 11 tribes split off and then there was
the Southern tribe Judah with Jerusalem. But these 11 tribes
were first carried off into exile by the Assyrians. The Assyrians
always repopulated in an area where they stripped the inhabitants
of the land. They always sent people in. Well,
you don’t send the best and brightest in. And so the Samaritans were
a hated people. It was a mixed race of people. It became a neighborhood nobody
liked. Nobody went through their lands.
They avoided them. And so when it says in our passage
that gospel joy spreads by the people going to Samaria, it ought
to say in your minds and in your hearts, God loves to save those
the world hates. The gospel goes to all kinds
of people. The gospel goes to all sorts. And when Jesus says, you will
be my witnesses in Jerusalem, well, that’s great. In Judea,
that’s acceptable. But in Samaria and on to the
rest of the Roman world, we don’t think so. That’s how our minds
and hearts think. sometimes, but the gospel joy
is brought to Samaria and it ought to encourage us. It ought
to drive us to think about the gospel going to many nations,
many peoples, many tribes. Maybe it’s a ministry to the
jail. Maybe it’s a ministry to the other side of town. Maybe
it’s a ministry where you work. And I know some of you work in
difficult places. You see difficult things, you
bump into difficult people, and it just may be in God’s providence.
As it was with these early church folks, persecution sent them
scattering onto the mission field. And maybe God No, not maybe,
he has indeed placed you right where you are in your various
settings in life to bring the gospel joy to all kinds of people. And the second thing our passage
shows us is gospel joy leads us to proclaim Christ to the
unsaved. Gospel joy drives us to proclaim
Jesus to the unsaved. You never ever know You never
ever know what a conversation will do. You sit down in a waiting
room and somebody says, oh, I see you’re reading thus and such.
Or you bump into a neighbor on the street, you see someone in
the grocery store, you maybe have a client, I don’t know,
you’re a school teacher, whatever the situation may be, you have
a conversation with someone, you never ever know where that
might lead. You may be planting a seed that
someone else waters. You may be giving them an answer
to one of life’s deepest questions that is. kind of normal every
day to you because you love Jesus, you read your Bible, you go to
church, you’re filled in your mind and in your heart with the
truth. But this may be something new that someone has never heard
before. Gospel joy puts us in positions
to proclaim to the unsaved Jesus Christ. And so my encouragement
to you is be prepared, as Peter says, to give an account of the
hope. that is within you. And we’ll
stop there for a second. It’s part of why listening to
sermons is important. Because the more you hear, the
more you have your faith strengthened, the more you have your mind filled,
and the more you can articulate the things of the faith. You
think of Sunday as training for evangelism. You think of it as
the school of ministry so that as you leave this place, blessed
by God, encouraged and filled up with his grace, you also leave
with the words to say when someone asks you, why are you so happy?
Why are you so full of joy? Why are you not so concerned
about fill in the blank with today’s cares and concerns? Gospel joy proclaims Christ to
the unsaved. We call this evangelism. Why
do we call this evangelism? Well, the evangel is the good
news. And so you put an ism on it,
evangel good news. It’s the good news ism. It’s
the practice. It’s the activity of telling
the good news. Jesus saves to a dark and dying
world, to a crooked and depraved generation, to people in great
need. And so God gathers us on Sunday. And then what does he do at the
benediction? He scatters us with his blessing
into our various places and callings. And we are given opportunity
to give the hope of Jesus to the watching world. You think
of all of us in this room today, And then you think of a scattered
throughout the week. How many places do we go? How
many spheres of influence do we have? How many households?
How many neighborhoods? How many places of business,
doctor’s offices? How many stores may we go in?
You think about the home place, the marketplace, the social spheres
we enter into. As you are scattered into the
world, equipped by the word of the living God, you can take
gospel joy, proclaiming it to an unsaved people. And I want
to press in upon you, it is your duty. It is your duty to get
equipped for the work of the ministry. It is your duty to
be evangelist. And it is your duty to have evangelism
training so that you get the gospel right. We live in an era
where the gospel has been so watered down, it is no gospel
at all. And we have so many gospel cliches that you wonder why the
church in America hasn’t really grown, it’s declined. It’s because
we’re not sharing the gospel. We’re sharing a gospel, but it’s
not the gospel. And so it is our duty as a church. It is our duty as individuals
to proclaim the true gospel, the whole gospel, the accurate
gospel to our children, our family, our neighbors, and in the marketplace. It is our job as we are sent
to proclaim Christ. And so gospel joy is brought
to Samaria because they have been scattered by persecution.
Gospel joy goes into your spheres of influence because you are
set apart and sent by God and called to live and evangelize
in your spheres of influence. Well, there’s a third thing to
think about from this passage. Gospel joy ought to be received
with attention. Gospel joy ought to perk up the
ears of those who hear it. Gospel joy ought to stand out
as a bright light in a dark world. From time to time, our family
goes to a certain campus, which will be unnamed, where we like
their sports better than the other sports. Nine miles down
the road, you know what I’m getting at. And sometimes we’ll go over
there at night to an activity. And the whole place is lighted
up. It’s not just the basketball
arena. The football stadium’s lighted
up. The baseball stadium’s lighted up. Everything’s lighted up.
And it’s so bright, you would think it’s daytime on this college
campus. But as soon as you step off and
get near the woods, it’s rather dark. But as you approach, it
gets your attention. What is this strange light? Why
is it nighttime here, but daylight there? And that ought to be the
way it is when we speak of Jesus, when we speak of our Christianity,
our Christian faith, when we speak of our Christian living,
when we live our lives as lights in a dark world, it ought to
be such a stark contrast that people say, why are the lights
on at their house? But it’s dark in mine. Why is
it that their family is bright and happy and cheerful and confident
when my family is deathly afraid of the headlines? And so when
we carry gospel joy to an unsaved world, when we who gather on
Sunday are scattered into the darkness, when we preach, when
we evangelize, it ought to be received with such attention
because it is a bright subject. Now, the church, again, has tried
to win the world in worldly ways. And so we have darkened the gospel. We have darkened church. You
think about it this way. If somebody came into our church
for the first time, shouldn’t a pretty normal response to be
say, y’all are weird. We’ve been to other churches
and they got all this stuff going on. It’s strange here. In fact,
a couple of weeks ago, we had a couple visiting and they said,
I have never heard so much Bible. in church. And I thought, well,
good, you’ve come to the right place. We have so neutered and
stripped the church of her power because we want to reach the
world. The gospel really gets no attention.
It’s just fun and games, really. But it ought to, it ought to
be a bright spot. Now think for just a moment about
this. There was a dispute in one of the earlier chapters of
Acts. They needed deacons. They chose
seven men full of the spirit, seven men who had a good reputation,
seven men who were full of wisdom. And these men were to assist
in the distribution to the poor and to the widows. They were
the first deacons. And Stephen was one of them. He’s now dead.
But think about Stephen’s preaching or his evangelism to the the
Jewish authorities. Boy, wasn’t it powerful? I mean,
his chapter, that chapter in Acts on Stephen’s speech to the
Sanhedrin was, oh, it was chapters of, of, of recitation of the
old covenant and how Jesus fulfilled it and how they put him to death.
And then we come to Philip who we’re going to see his ministry
for quite a little while. He’s no ordinary deacon. This
man can preach. This man can evangelize, this
man can be scattered by persecution and he can go full of the Holy
Spirit and full of wisdom and he can stand out in the dark
world as he proclaims the Christ as our passage teaches us. Jesus’
disciples had primed the pump in the land of Samaria. Remember
Jesus, he had gone through in his three years of ministry and
preached and proclaimed and he had healed These people, as he
made his way to Jerusalem, were kind of left behind, and probably
on the nightly news, they had heard that this Jesus, who had
been through all their towns and cities and preached and healed,
was now dead, because he died on a cross in Jerusalem a couple
months back, or whatever time frame it has now been. So as
Philip and others go through Samaria, Jesus has primed the
pump. And can’t you see the woman who
met Jesus at the well? As she probably likely hears
about this, remember he said, you know, there will be a day
where we worship in spirit and in truth. There will be a day
where, where people don’t go to Jerusalem to worship. They
worship wherever they are because God’s Holy spirit dwells within
them. Well, Jesus and his disciples
had primed the prompt. These were a broken people. These
were a, a cursed people by sin and hardship. And the good news
comes to them and doesn’t it light up their region. Doesn’t
it bring hope to the lame and the paralyzed and the possessed?
Doesn’t it do quite amazing things? Back to the subject of preaching.
If you want a simple way to think about Sunday preaching, preaching
is going to do two things. It’s going to convince and convert
sinners, or it’s going to comfort and build up saints. If a person
comes into church and they’re not a Christian by God’s grace,
by the Holy Spirit’s power, through the reading and preaching of
the word, our hope is that people will be convinced of their sin
and misery and converted to Jesus Christ. And if you are a Christian,
we hope that you continue to be convinced of your sin and
misery, but comforted and built up in your faith in Jesus. And
can you imagine the words of Philip, the words of the disciples
bringing good news to a broken people? And they received with
attention this word. Verse six tells us so well, it
says, and the crowds with one accord, what preacher gets to
say that? I see what y’all do on Sunday.
And the crowds with one accord paid attention to what? was being
said by Philip. And when they heard him, when
they saw the signs that he did, they were listening, they were
receiving, they were responding. Our shorter catechism, some of
you who’ve been with us on Sunday nights, if we’ve read through
the shorter catechism, says that when we come to the reading and
the preaching of God’s word, we ought to attend to it with
diligence, with preparation, and with prayer. We ought to
receive it with joy, lay it up in our hearts and put it into
practice in our lives. You know, sometimes we come to
church, we’re sleepy, we’re tired, we’re busy, we’re harried, we’re
on the Monday. Do you realize that God is speaking? The Samaritans did. The Samaritans
realized somebody is here speaking to us about something that is
otherworldly and they received it with great attention. And we can surmise from this
passage, these came to faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus Acts 1.8,
you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and now Samaria is
coming to fruition. It is being fulfilled. And so
the persecution brings gospel joy to Samaria. The gospel joy
is proclaimed to the unsaved. They receive this gospel joy
with attention. But I want us to look lastly
at how it accomplishes its work. And I want you to have confidence
in the simple gospel. Don’t water it down in hopes
that pagans will like it more. That’s just, that’s nuts. God has a recipe and his recipe
has worked for ages. And what, what, what, but 21st
century Americans think we can better, better do than the only
wise God, uh, it accomplishes its work. Gospel joy does what
it accomplishes to, to do. Um, y’all know, I’ve been kind
of recovering from surgery the last couple of weeks and I’m
not supposed to do anything and I’m trying really hard to behave.
So, um, I’ve had the iPad in my hand quite a bit, and we get
the TV channels on it. And so I flipped through, maybe
a week ago, some of the TV preaching. Oh boy. Probably none of it you should
be listening to. I’m trying to be nice here. But you know, I
was sick. And some of these preachers will
say, if you have faith strong enough, you’ll be healed. Well,
I went and saw a surgeon because I think God makes people in his
own image and gives them dominion over the earth and they can help
and heal our bodies. And I think that’s how God has
got me on the path to recovery. Uh, I am not going to send in
a seed to a man who lives in a multimillion dollar mansion
and flies on his own private airplanes in hopes that that’s
how I’m going to get healed. Okay. That’s not going to happen.
Um, I have friends, family, loved ones over the years, maybe they’ve
gotten cancer, various things, and they’ve dragged their weary
bones to a crusade in hopes that Benny or somebody will touch
them and heal them, only to never get called. Only to leave disappointed
that that thing in which they put so much faith did not work
out. You understand what I’m trying
to say. It’s pretty rampant in today’s
culture. And I want to make an important distinction as we think
about the gospel joy accomplishing its work. We’re talking in here
in the book of Acts about apostolic times. The word was always accompanied
by signs and wonders. That’s the way it was for Jesus.
And that’s the way it was for the apostles, but it ended. We
believe these apostolic times have ended And now the ordinary
ministry of the church is through what you’re here to do today.
Worship and preaching, word and sacrament, the ordinary means
of grace. If you get sick, don’t come to
me and ask me to heal you. No, go see a surgeon, go see
a doctor made in God’s image. That’s how God and his providence
ordinarily works. Now, might God supernaturally
heal you? Yes. Will we pray for that? Of course,
but we’re not getting into all that wacky stuff. And I do not
live in a multimillion dollar mansion and fly on private planes.
You kind of get what I’m saying here. It’s a wacky world that
we live in, but signs and wonders accompanied the apostolic times.
Signs and wonders do not accompany me or any other preacher since
the apostles all went to heaven. The word, the gospel does its
work. And it comes simply through this. We preach faith in Jesus Christ.
We preach repentance from sins. We preach, engaging in the life
of the church, the words and the sacraments, the prayer, fellowship. We preach the simple New Testament
pathway of the church, which Christ ordained and the apostle
Paul so clearly put before us, the apostles preached and historic
Christianity has followed now for a couple thousand years.
Faith in Jesus Christ, you become a new creation in Jesus. All
the riches of heaven are yours. Come to church, grow in grace.
You get God’s blessings now spiritually and sometimes physically. But if you want ultimate healing,
brothers, sisters, go to heaven when your body will be made new. And when you will live in a new
heaven and a new earth and all that is wrong with the world,
all that is cursed of this world because of Adam’s sin will be
made right. Might you be cancer free in this
life? Of course. But might you go to grave with
a weak heart or a failing heart? Yes, you may. But in the new
heavens, you will receive full healing. See, I think these TV
preachers, they promise too much. They promise too much from their
hands and their ministry, that we understand. But they promise
too much from God. God doesn’t promise everything
to be hunky dory in this world. Now the wages of sin is what?
Death. But the gift of God is eternal
life where your body will be made whole. Indeed, all those
promises are yes and amen. But there’s so much wrong with
this world. It is broken, it is cursed. It is unredeemed,
it is given over to sins, it is given over to lust, it is
given over to all kinds of wicked things, and all creation, Romans
8 tells us, groans under the travails of the curses of this
world, and eagerly, as we do, waits for the adoption of the
sons and daughters of God. This gospel joy went to Samaria
because of persecution. It was proclaimed to the unsaved,
they received it with attention and it accomplished its work. Now back to why you should listen
to sermons. One reason you should listen to sermons is because
the Samaritans did. And you should listen with great
attention and not just listen with great attention, you should
do what it says. I think I was saying this a couple of weeks
ago to a group of y’all. You should leave every Sunday with
a to-do list. I know some of y’all in the front of your bulletin,
you’re writing up your grocery list. And you know, one, one,
one man told me years ago, he did a family settlement agreement,
uh, for some clients of his that were getting divorced. Um, Brandon,
don’t do that. Um, when you, um, you know, I
know, I know what y’all do. You should leave with a spiritual
to do list. Be a better evangelist. Listen to sermons. Why listen
to sermons? Well, the Samaritans did. Why
listen to sermons? It’ll make you a better evangelist.
Why listen to sermons? Why pay attention in church?
Why listen to preaching and Sunday school and Wednesday Bible study
and all the rest? It’s because the gospel joy you
hear equips you for the work of the ministry. And as you are
scattered into the world and sent out into the Judean countryside,
into the land of the Samaritans or the Burlingtonians or your
medical practice, your law practice, your school classroom, your neighborhood,
your children, whatever is your sphere of influence, you will
be asked to give an account of the hope that is within you.
And the more you listen, the more you will have to say, pay
attention because you’re being equipped for the work of gospel
joy ministry. Pray with me. Our Lord, we thank
you for Jesus Christ, our great salvation. We do not want to
take this light which has been given to us and put it under
a basket. We do not want it to be in the
corner of the house, but we want it to shine so brightly in this
dark and dying world that this crooked and depraved generation
hears of Jesus and repents of their sins and comes to faith
in him. And they become worshipers of the true and living God, denying
themselves, giving up their wicked lifestyles, putting away their
idols. And Lord, we might have a bright culture again. We might
have a bright community again. Lord, may this be true in our
covenant community, but may our witness be effective to the watching
world. Now hear us, help us and give
us your strength and encouragement. We pray in the name of Jesus.
Amen.