Keyser, Keith: Meetings At Gilbertsville-2008-04 ~ Acts 8

Good evening. Good evening. Turn in the Word of God, please, to the book of Acts. Acts chapter eight. Acts eight. You'll recall the last time we spoke on this last week, we were dealing with Stephen's message in chapter seven and his subsequent martyrdom, and chapter eight picks up the story of what is going on with the New Testament church. Acts chapter eight, and we'll begin reading at verse one. Now Saul was consenting to his death. At that time, a great persecution arose against the church which was at Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. And devout men carried Stephen to his burial and made great lamentation over him. As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering every house and dragging off men and women, committing them to prison. Therefore, those who were scattered went everywhere, preaching the words. And a few comments on these opening verses before we read, uh, farther along. After this event of the killing of Stephen, his stoning at the end of chapter seven, chapter eight begins with Saul's assessment. Saul of Tarsus, who was a rising star in rabbinic Judaism, was standing there beholding all of these things. And his verdict, what he said, was, yes, this is exactly what should happen to this man. Some translations say Saul was in hearty agreement with putting him to death. So he looked at this situation, and he said, that's exactly what should happen to people like Stephen, to these ones who call themselves, or who soon were to be called Christians, but were calling themselves the way or disciples of the Lord Jesus. This is what should happen to them. They should be put in prison, and if they refuse to recant and give up their faith in Christ, they should be put to death. And so we read in verse one, at that time, a great persecution arose against the church which was at Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. And it must have seemed like dark days indeed for the church. When you think about the fact that here was a powerful speaker raised up by the Lord, a man full of the Holy Spirit and of faith, Stephen, and he was doing tremendous miracles and preaching messages that couldn't be contradicted. He was confounding the unbelievers in debate. They couldn't make him slip up, and he was powerfully defending the deity and the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. But now, suddenly, he's been murdered. His life and testimony have been snuffed out. And somebody might say, well, you know, that's what comes of this preaching. I mean, we're just all destined to die an untimely death. I mean, here was this mighty speaker, and he was killed. What's going to happen to the preaching now? And, you know, through church history, God has raised up very gifted men at times to do special works, and their preaching has been accompanied by uncommon blessing. The names of John Wesley and George Whitefield, and of C. H. Spurgeon and D. L. Moody, and in our own times, Billy Graham, is synonymous in our minds with tremendous blessing from the Lord. But what happens when these men pass off the scene? Does that mean God isn't working any longer? Well, not so. Even when a man like Stephen passed off the scene in so violent a manner, a man who seemed to have so much work yet to do, a man cut down in the prime of his life. Still, God says the very thing that seems to be the worst tragedy to befall the church is actually going to be its greatest blessing, because the man who becomes the chief persecutor of the early church in the beginning of chapter eight is eventually going to become its greatest preacher. And I would argue, aside from the Lord Jesus himself, there's never been a greater preacher of Christianity than the Apostle Paul, a tremendously gifted man. And yet, who would have known that in chapter eight? Who could have told that by looking at him? Because he was one who was breathing out threatenings and slaughter, as the book of Acts would later say, in the next chapter, in fact. When he would give his own testimony later in the book, he'd say, I hauled off men and women to prison, and when they were put to death, I gave my vote that it should be so. Later in First Timothy chapter one, he would describe himself as an injurious man, as a violent man, as one who was the chief of sinners because he persecuted the church of God. And here indeed the text tells us that this persecution scattered people, and as far as his own role in verse three, as for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering every house and dragging off men and women, committing them to prison. Now the Greek word underlying our English word that he made havoc there in verse three is a word that in classical Greek was typically used of how you would treat a wild animal, of grabbing it and dragging it off. And here, that's all the better the l- this, this man Saul treated the church, treating them like animals, dragging them off and imprisoning them. It must have seemed like Christianity was going to fall, like it was going to be wiped out, like the gospel was going to be nipped in the bud. And yet, even here, there were the seeds of a greater triumph, because you'll notice that verse one speaks about the persecution scattering the believers. Notice it says in verse one, and they were scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria. Now, the word that is used there is to scatter like seed. It's sort of a word that the farmers would use. You know, some of you who know about farming may remember the times when people used to go out and plow up the ground, and they would have a sack of seed and walk along and throw the seed out. That English word broadcast actually comes from that concept of sowing seed, and that's what this word scattered means. It's to scatter like seed. Yes, the believers were going to be scattered. You weren't going to have thousands congregating in one place in Jerusalem as they had been. But as they were scattered, they were scattered throughout different regions, and like seed being scattered in a field, they were going to germinate and bring forth fruit to God in different places. Now, it's jumping ahead a little, but let's go over to chapter eleven a moment, just to show you that very quickly. Chapter eleven and verse nineteen. Acts eleven nineteen. Now those who were scattered, that's the same word, after the persecution that arose over Stephen, traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch. These are all points northward in modern day, uh, Lebanon and Syria, and Cyprus, of course, is still Cyprus to this day. But you'll notice they were scattered as far as these regions to the north, and they were preaching the word to no one but the Jews only. But then, verse twenty, some of them who were men from Cyprus and Cyrene, who, when they had come to Antioch, spoke to the Hellenists, that is the Jews who spoke Greek. They were preaching the Lord Jesus to them, and the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord. And this becomes the nucleus, the group that's going to eventually form the basis of the assembly in Antioch. And it's from the assembly in Antioch that the first missionary team is going to be sent out into the region. And guess who one of those missionaries was? The same Saul who in chapter eight is persecuting the church, in chapter thirteen of Acts, is a missionary sent out from Antioch to preach the gospel of Christ to the regions beyond. So sometimes, when we come back to Acts eight and we think about situations that seem absolutely horrible, and we think about things that seem like they must be the worst possible thing that could happen. We must remember that God is behind the scenes, as Ephesians puts it in chapter one, working all things after the counsel of his own will. That here the Lord is permitting the persecution and even using it to scatter the believers so that they can bring forth fruit elsewhere and take the gospel to Cyprus and Phoenicia and Antioch, and from Antioch into other countries all around. You know, today we hear about persecution in various parts of the world, and both in the Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa and also in the country of Sri Lanka off the east coast of India, I have heard in recent years of the church being severely persecuted there, and in both cases, when the church was persecuted and many of the believers found themselves scattered, and some of them ended up in refugee camps. Do you know, in the refugee camps, they actually started assemblies. They started leading people to the Lord. A few of the Christians found themselves together, and in a refugee camp, they started witnessing and talking about the Lord Jesus. And the next thing you know, some people got saved, and a little assembly was formed. So God is still doing it almost two thousand years later. Persecution cannot stop his word. In fact, one of the early Christian teachers after the era of the New Testament had closed, the late second century Christian preacher and writer Tertullian, said rather famously that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. And he's absolutely right, that wherever the church has been persecuted in history or up to the present time, that is not a recipe for disaster to the church. It doesn't spell the end for the church. Rather, in times of persecution, there have also been times of great spiritual blessing and of many being won to the Lord. In part, that is because when there's persecution, there aren't a lot of people standing up making false professions. When you could get your head chopped off for saying you're a Christian, you're not likely to lie about becoming one, are you? I'm not saying it doesn't happen. We're going to see in the same chapter a, a, a profession that, if not false, is pretty dubious, pretty strange, and we're not sure if the man was saved or not, maybe. I rather think he wasn't. So I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying when persecution comes, there's a lot less attractiveness to people in the world to pretend they're Christians. So there tends to be a winnowing out and a purifying of the testimony. But also what you see in these early verses is a great deal of courage on the part of the apostles, because you'll notice as these believers were scattered, the apostles stayed in Jerusalem. Now, they didn't stay there indefinitely. We'll read about them moving about and going to different places in the course of the book of Acts and later in the epistles as well. But at this juncture, at least, they seem to have the attitude, we're not going to desert our post. We're staying in Jerusalem. And think about it, they were saying, we're going to stay in the very city where we saw our Lord crucified just a short time before. We are going to stay in this place, although we know it's extremely dangerous, and we are going to be loyal to the Lord. Well, whether some stayed or some went, some stayed and some were scattered, either way, this didn't spell the end of God's work, it was only the beginning. Case in point, verse four. Therefore those, I'm back in chapter eight, verse four. therefore those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the word. Now this is the secret. The persecution did not shut the mouths of the believers. When things got tough, they kept preaching Christ. They kept talking about the Lord. They took, as the Hebrew believers did, they took joyfully the spoiling of their goods, and they rejoiced, as the apostles had earlier in the book of Acts, that they were counted worthy to suffer for the name of Christ. So they went everywhere preaching the Lord Jesus, and now specifically the text focuses in on one particular man, Philip, who is called Philip the Evangelist later in this book. In verse five, Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached Christ to them. Now, that statement is fairly straightforward in our language. We can probably understand it without any difficulty, and we might be tempted to move on to the next verse, but I want to tell you that verse is a bombshell, because that verse is saying that Philip went to an area that was tremendously opposed to Jews. The Samaritans did not like Jews, and Jews did not like the Samaritans. Just read John chapter four where the Lord comes and talks to that woman by the well in Samaria, and she there is a bit put off by this at first. She can't believe that a man, let alone a Jewish man, is talking to her, a Samaritan. And she brought up all kinds of objections, racial objections, and historical objections, and religious objections. But, you know, the Lord swept all the obje- objections aside, and he gave her the water of life which satisfies. So this place of Samaria might have seemed like an unlikely place to take the gospel. Ever since Old Testament days, people from Jerusalem had not been on good terms with people from Samaria, because after the reign of King Solomon, there was a split in the nation, you'll recall, and his son Rehoboam kept the southern two tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and some refugees from other tribes as well, but the ten northern tribes went with Jeroboam the son of Nebat. So the nation was split from, uh, around about a thousand BC, roughly speaking, on up to the time when in seven twenty BC, the Assyrians took the ten northern tribes away into captivity, and later in six zero six and finally in five eighty six, the southern tribes were taken away by the Babylonians. Uh, in the meantime, when the Assyrians took the ten northern tribes out of that region, they brought in people from other parts of their empire, and these people from other parts of the empire intermarried with the Jews that were left in the land, and the problem was that they started to mix their religion with the religion of the worship of God. So they built for themselves an alternative temple in Samaria, in that region on Mount Gerizim, a temple that was against the temple in Jerusalem, and they said, no, this is where we are to worship. And there was a great deal of racism and a great deal of hatred between the two groups. And yet here the gospel goes. Exactly where there's hatred, exactly where there's mistrust, exactly where there's been bad blood, the Lord sends Philip right down there to preach Christ to them. And you know, our gospel is not limited to any racial group. It's not limited to any geographical area. There's not any city or country or state or people group in the world that God doesn't want to receive the gospel. So we should never think twice about sharing Christ, no matter who it is that comes across our path, no matter how different from us they may be. And this man Philip went down there and preached Christ, and notice the reaction, verse six: and the multitudes with one accord heeded the things spoken by Philip, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did. For unclean spirits crying with a loud voice, came out of many who were possessed, and many who were paralyzed and lame were healed, and there was great joy in that city. So there was a tremendous evidence of the Spirit of God working among them by these miracles being done, these signs and wonders, and people being healed. I can't help but think that probably still it was fresh in people's minds that this man, Jesus of Nazareth, had come to that area and had saved one of the most dissolute women in the whole territory. A woman who had been looking for love in all the wrong places, as John four has it, with her having had five husbands, and the one that she was then living with wasn't her husband at all. A woman with a very checkered past, to say the least. And yet the Lord had come and had given her peace and the water of life freely, and based on her testimony, others had come and heard the Lord, and then they said, now we believe, not because we heard from you, dear lady, but because we've heard it from the Lord's voice himself. I wonder if that nucleus of Samaritan believers in John four were standing somewhere around there, amening Philip at every turn. The Bible doesn't tell us, but certainly the name of Christ was not unknown in those parts, and when the Lord's man, Philip, came and preached Christ to them, multitudes turned in seeing that. But verse nine focuses on one of the converts in particular. There was a certain man called Simon who previously practiced sorcery in the city and astonished the people of Samaria, claiming that he was someone great. Now, you know the type. You know, Miss Cleo is just one in a long line of people like this, people that claim to have supernatural powers and abilities and psychic power and clairvoyance and telekinesis and out of body experiences and astral projection and reading the tea leaves and the palms and who knows what else. There are all kinds of people in our world today that claim to have powers like this man had. And make no mistake about it, while there's a lot of deception and a lot of trickery and a lot of fakes and con men and con women that go into that line, there are real spiritual powers at work in the world. The Bible is quite clear on that. The Bible tells us there are unclean spirits, demons, who are out there trying to deceive people. The Bible tells us there is a personal devil, Satan, who is able to transform himself into an angel of light, the one who blinds the minds of men and women. And there are spiritual manifestations that he can give. For example, Second Thessalonians chapter two tells us that when the man of sin comes, his power is going to be satanic, and he is going to do signs and wonders and miracles. The book of the Revelation confirms this, that at a certain point, the beast sends the false prophet to the nations, and he does signs and wonders, and they follow the beast into the battle of Armageddon. Yes, there is real satanic power. That is why First John four said, don't believe every spirit, but test the spirits whether they are of God. Just because someone gets up and says that they're speaking in the power of the spirit, and even if someone gets up and does some sort of miracle, apparently, or some kind of supernatural activity, don't necessarily believe them, because you have to compare them with the Word of God. Even as far back as Deuteronomy, uh, this was being said. God said back in Deuteronomy, if a prophet arises amongst you and tells you not to follow the Lord anymore and tells you to follow other gods, don't believe him because the Lord's testing you to see if you'll go after the error. That's why the Lord has permitted this guy to come into the area. But if anybody tells you to follow another god, whether it was your son or daughter or your brother or sister, you were to put them to death in Israel. That's how seriously God took it in the book of Deuteronomy. Well, there are real spiritual powers. I remember when Brother Ramalingam was here a few months ago, he was talking about his working in some of the eastern parts of the world, and some of the people that he's had to deal with there are steeped in witchcraft. And when he first came into this territory to preach the gospel, these witches lined up and tried to do all of their black magic and all of their sorcery to kill him. And when he got up in the morning, you know, he had, he had heard some strange noises during the night and some certain things happening, so he just prayed and he read the word, and by the morning time he got up and he came out, and all the witches were standing out there, and they were absolutely shocked that he wasn't dead. Because they had worked all of their powers, and they had even dropped eggs into his house with little needles in them, that when they break and you step on them, they work their way into your body, and they poison your system and kill you, and yet he was entirely protected by the Lord. And they began to see that whatever they tried to do against him, the Lord would thwart it. So what happened? Many of these ones practicing witchcraft got saved and have come to the Lord. Now this man, Simon Magus, was like that. Simon the sorcerer, he was one who said he was someone great, and he was performing all kinds of things, keeping the people enthralled with his sorcery. It says he astonished the people. They thought he was someone great. Verse ten, to whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, this man is the great power of God. And they thought he had a special channel to heaven, you know? He has the red phone on his desk where he can call God anytime and get God to do what he wants him to do. But when this happened, it says, but when they believed Philip, verse twelve, as he preached the things concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, both men and women were baptized. Notice verse thirteen, Then Simon himself also believed, and when he was baptized, he continued with Philip and was amazed seeing the miracles and signs which were done. Now, please notice this. This is a man who was involved in sorcery formerly. This is a man who knows about spells and about magic tricks and about incantations and all that kind of thing. And yet, when he sees the signs and the wonders that the apostles are doing, he's amazed because his power is not as great as the power that's working in them. In First John four, we are told, greater is he who is in you than he that is in the world. And that's exactly what is to be seen in this case. The power of the Holy Spirit was greater than this man. Now, that's not unusual. You remember back in the book of Exodus, when Moses came to Pharaoh and started doing signs and said, the Lord says, let my people go. Pharaoh said, who is the Lord that I should listen to him? So they started doing signs. First of all, Moses cast down this staff, and it became a snake. Uh, you know, I have to laugh when God was first calling Moses in the desert of Midian, he threw down that, that staff, and it became a snake, and he ran away. I would have done the same thing as old Moses. But he apparently got brave enough that he went in and did this before Pharaoh, and Pharaoh said, that's no problem, uh, please send in the wise men, would you? And so all in came Pharaoh's wise men, and what did they do? They took sticks and they turned them into snakes too. Don't know how they did it. And by the way, Moses's staff ate up their staffs, so he had a bigger, badder snake, if you will. But you remember that as Moses went through and turned the Nile into blood, for example, they did the same thing. They replicated these miracles by their science and by their magic and by whatever else they used, they did miracles too. They duplicated some of it, but there came a certain point when Moses was doing these signs that they said, Your Majesty, we can't do it anymore. This is the finger of God. The wise men recognized of Egypt at that point, this is a power greater than any power we're acquainted with. This is a power, in fact, greater than the so-called gods of Egypt, because every one of the signs, all ten plagues, were judgments against specific gods of Egypt. So it was a very powerful statement, and the same thing was happening when Simon beheld what they were doing. But you notice that in verse fourteen we have it breaking off from Simon's story for a moment, and it says, when the apostles who were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them, who, when they had come down, prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit. Now, a lot of people today would tell you that that is the normal way it happens. They will seize upon this event in scripture, and they will say, see, you believe on the Lord Jesus first and are converted, and then you get the Holy Spirit second. In other words, you have to pray to receive the Holy Spirit. But you will find that this is a unique experience in scripture. It didn't happen at Pentecost, for example. In Acts two, the Holy Spirit came upon the apostles in God's own time and way. It happened spontaneously. Yes, the Lord had promised the gift of the Holy Spirit to them. Yes, the Lord had said he was sending the Spirit, but he told them just to wait at Jerusalem for the gift to be given. He didn't tell them to pray for it. Even when the gospel comes to the Gentiles in Acts chapter ten, already, as Paul, as Peter rather, is standing there preaching to them in Acts chapter ten, they have the Holy Spirit falling upon them. They believe right there and then, and Peter has to stop his message and tear out a page of his notes and say, well, I guess we're not getting to points five and six. Let's baptize them instead, because it's very evident they're saved. No, this delay in giving of the Spirit, and the only parallel you might find would be in Acts chapter nineteen with some disciples who had been believers in the gospel that John the Baptist preached. It was an incomplete faith, and when Paul explained to them in Acts nineteen the way of God more perfectly and preached to them Christ, then they were saved and received the Spirit. But here in Acts chapter eight, this is done in this manner for a specific reason. You'll notice that it wasn't that Philip the Evangelist prayed for them, and then they received the Spirit. No, it was the apostles who were from Jerusalem that came down and laid their hands on these men, and then they received the Spirit. Now, why is that important? Well, remember what I said about at the beginning. There was no love lost between the Jews and the Samaritans. In fact, there was a very real, deep-seated theological difference between the Jews and the Samaritans. And the Samaritans basically said, we can follow Jehovah, we can follow the Lord, we can follow the Word, which they only believed in the Pentateuch, really, the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy as we know them. We follow those five books, and we follow Jehovah, and we don't need Israel, and we don't need Jerusalem. Well, here God is saying, you Samaritans, if you're going to turn to Christ, and if you're going to believe in the Messiah, you have to recognize that this is Jesus Christ who has come of the seed of David, that this is the gift of Israel to the world. This is Messiah coming from Israel, and you're not going to be saved apart from Israel. In other words, you Samaritans are going to have to repent about all the hard things you've thought about Israel, because as bad as some of the, the Jews might have been to you, this nation has a central plan and purpose in the purposes of God. And if you're going to be saved and receive the Spirit, it's going to be believing in the God of Israel and in the Messiah whom he has sent, the Lord Jesus Christ. So there's a very important reason in context why the Lord makes them wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit in Samaria. He is showing them that there's not going to be multiple churches here. There's not going to be a Jewish church and a Samaritan church and a Gentile church. The Samaritans are coming to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Israel, the God who sent the Messiah of the seed of David, and there's going to be one church. As Ephesians four puts it, there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism. So they came and they received the Holy Spirit in verse seventeen. and notice now it comes back to Simon in verse eighteen. And when Simon saw that through the laying on of the apostles' hands, notice that, through the laying on of the apostles' hands, the Holy Spirit was given, he offered them money, saying, give me this power also, that anyone in whom I lay hands on may receive the Holy Spirit. Now, right away, that shows us there's a bit of a problem with Simon's faith, because anybody that looks at the gift of the Holy Spirit and looks at the working of God in someone's life and says, basically, this is just another power, just another spirit that I can get to manipulate. I'm willing to pay you to have the ability that I can lay hands on whomever I want and give the gift to the Holy Spirit. Coming out of the business he was in, that was quite a reasonable request to make, because there was a lot of money to be made in being a sorcerer, casting spells on people. Even today, in some parts of Africa, there are witch doctors, even in the twenty first century, and these witch doctors are not unsophisticated people. One of my friends from another country went to preach in a certain African nation, and the witch doctor turned up in town to check him out, and he was driving his Mercedes-Benz, if you please. Some of these witch doctors make over six figures a year. There's a lot of money to be had in cursing and blessing people and casting spells and telling the future and all of that. So if Simon could just buy the rights to this greater power, think of the power he could get for himself, the notoriety, the fame. He could be a king in Samaria. But look at the apostle's reaction in verse twenty. Peter said to him, your money perish with you. Now, that phraseology rather makes me think that the man may not have been a true believer, because the scripture does talk about believers who don't believe. The Lord Jesus, for example, at the end of John two, talked about many who believed on him because they saw the signs that he did at the feast. But Jesus, it says, did not commit himself to any of these men because he knew what was in man and needed not that any should testify to him of man. But now there was a man, Nicodemus, who came to the Lord by night, says chapter three, verse one, and so forth. So there is such a thing that there are people who make a profession of faith, who believe in the Lord intellectually. They believe with head knowledge, if you will. Yes, Jesus is who he claimed to be, the Son of God. Yes, Jesus died on the cross. Yes, he rose from the dead. But they are not believers in the saving sense of that word, because a believer who is saved comes to the Lord and repents of his sins and says, Lord, I don't want my old life. I don't want to go back to where you saved me from. I want the new life you give me. That's all I want. And here Simon was trying to bring the old life along into the new life. The old life of sorcery, just adding the Holy Spirit to it. But Peter said, your money perish with you because you thought that the gift of God could be purchased with money. And many people have that same error today, that they think they can buy their way into God's heaven or buy salvation as if it's a commodity to be bought and sold. It's not something you can buy. It's a gift of God by grace given through Christ. He says, you have neither part nor portion in this matter, for your heart is not right in the sight of God. Repent therefore of this your wickedness and pray God if perhaps the thought of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are poisoned by bitterness and bound by iniquity. And Simon answered and said, pray to the Lord for me that none of the things which you've spoken may come upon me. So here's a man who's afraid of the wrath of God. He's afraid of punishment. He doesn't seem to be repentant about the sin he's doing. I don't know if he ever did go on to get saved. Peter gave him every opportunity here, but he doesn't seem to be saved in this chapter. In any case, I'll let the theologians argue that one out, but in verse twenty five we have the summary statement. So when they had testified and preached the word of the Lord, they returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel in many villages of the Samaritans. Now, what are you going to do? Stephen has been silenced, and yet the work of God has not ended, because God now raises up Philip and uses Philip in a tremendous way to bring about a revival in Samaria, and by extension, into many villages of the Samaritans. What would you do if you were in Philip's sandals? I tell you what I'd do. I'd say, all right, call the architects. Let's build us a nice big building where we can have plenty of meetings, and people are getting saved left and right, and this is what we want, and we need to capitalize, and after all, what we want is more numbers, more, more, more. That's what we want. Well, God is certainly not against numbers. On the day of Pentecost, he saved three thousand people in one day. By Acts chapter five, he had added another two thousand. The number of disciples came to be about five thousand men, that chapter tells us. God's not against numbers, but he doesn't want numbers at any cost. He wants true conversions, and he's interested with all the multitudes that were hearing the word of God and many of the crowds that were turning to Christ, God is still interested in the individual. That is, he cares about one single soul. That's beautiful about God. Because here's Philip in the midst of a revival, and God says, okay, Philip, it's time for you to move on. Oh good, you have another city for me to evangelize, Lord? No, not a city. Okay, another town? No, not a town. Another little village? No, not a village. Perhaps a little hamlet? No? How about a block? No? I want you to take the gospel to one man out in the desert. This is completely out of the public eye. No notoriety. You're not going to write a report for any of the magazines on this one, Philip. I'll send you down to the desert. There's a man down there. Verse twenty six. Now an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, Arise and go toward the south along the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. This is desert. He doesn't tell him why he's going. He just obeys the Lord. That's the right attitude. The Lord says go, tells him where to go, he goes. Doesn't ask any questions. Verse twenty seven. So he arose and went, and behold, a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under Candisi, the queen of the Ethiopians, who had charge of all her treasury and had come to Jerusalem to worship, was returning and sitting in his chariot. Mm. So here is a VIP. This man is part of the governmental service of a very powerful kingdom of those days. Ethiopia, as the Bible calls it, Nubia, as the ancient historians would know it, Sudan and southern Egypt is the territory that it would currently occupy on our maps. And it was an important kingdom in those days. This man had not a second rate job in the kingdom. He was basically the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as the British would call it, or we'd say the Secretary of the Treasury. This guy had charge over the Queen's Treasury, and I found in my experience that people that get jobs like that aren't stupid people, because if you're going to have to balance a government's checkbook, let alone your own, you're going to have to be able to deal with some very large sums and understand economics and mathematics and so forth. He was a very intelligent man, no doubt. He was also a powerful man, I'm sure, because that position of holding the purse strings to the kingdom and being that close to so much money, that brings power with it. And doubtless, he he might have been a rich man himself, because after all, to keep your secretary of the treasury from pilfering the treasury, you know, helping himself to a little of the kingdom's funds, you're going to want a man who has a sizable income. Now, I'm guessing, I'm filling in the blanks there. The Bible doesn't say that exactly, and I won't be dogmatic, but suffice it to say he was a pretty powerful man in his own. And he had come up to Jerusalem. Why? He had come up to a feast that was there. He was one who was interested in Judaism, as so many Gentiles in the first century were, because there were a lot of people that looked at paganism, looked at polytheism, the worship of many gods, and they said, there's got to be more to life than this. And the Jews' emphasis on one true God, who preached ethics and exalted morality and righteousness like no other religion of the time, that was attractive to a lot of people. So he came up to Jerusalem to the feast and was investigating Judaism, it seems, because on his way back home, he was sitting in the chariot reading a book of the Bible. Now, books in those days weren't like these books, you know, bound, uh, between covers. They were in scroll form. And the particular kind of scroll he was reading here was that of the prophet Isaiah, a Greek translation of it. We know that by the quotation he gives in verses thirty two and thirty three, what they call the Septuagint translation. And verse twenty nine, the Spirit said to Philip, go near and overtake this chariot. So Philip ran to him and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah and said, do you understand what you are reading? Now, in witnessing to people about the Lord Jesus Christ, it's often a good idea to ask questions, not just to start off with a shot across their bow and say, you know, uh, are you saved or something? Not that that's always wrong to say that, but sometimes it's good to start by asking a question. The Lord in John four asked the woman, give me something to drink. Here he says, do you understand what you're reading? And notice the man's response, verse thirty one, how can I unless someone guides me? And he asked Philip to come up and sit with him. You know, everybody in Jerusalem, when they came to the scriptures, thought they needed a rabbi to help them understand it, and here this man, for all his power and intelligence, is just a Gentile. What's he know about Isaiah? So he tells Philip to come into the wagon there and read in the scripture, and here's where he was reading. It would be in Isaiah fifty three in our Bibles. He was led as a sheep to the slaughter and as a lamb before its shear is silent, so he opened not his mouth. In his humiliation, his justice was taken away, and who will declare his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth. So the eunuch answered Philip and said, I ask you, of whom does the prophet say this? Of himself or of some other man? Now notice, uh, the eunuch is already calling Isaiah prophet. So that shows an interest in and a respect for the word of God. He thinks that this is something of divine origin, but he doesn't understand it. So he reads these verses, which are from one of the choicest passages in the whole book of Isaiah, especially from the standpoint of thinking about Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. One of the old commentators said about Isaiah fifty three, methinks he writeth a gospel and not a prophecy, and that's true. Here, this man asked Philip a question, who is this man speaking about, himself or somebody else? And I want to tell you, that's the kind of question that makes gospel preachers salivate. I mean, Philip must have been ready just to do a cartwheel right on out of that chariot, because here the man is giving him an absolutely crystal clear opportunity to explain the gospel, and Philip doesn't miss his opportunity. Verse thirty five, then Philip opened his mouth. That's a good start. Some of us never do that. I find that exceedingly hard personally in dealing with people that don't know Christ. It doesn't come naturally to me. I find it very hard. My stomach is tied up in knots. I never know the right thing to say. I'm not a very good soul winner, I'll confess that quite openly, but Philip opened his mouth. And whether you think you're good at it or think you're not good at it, as Christians, we don't have the option of keeping our mouth closed for the Lord. We've got to open our mouth. He opened his mouth, verse thirty five, and beginning at the scripture, preached Jesus to him. He was very focused. He went right to the Lord Jesus because the man was ripe for the picking. Now, there are other people, like those in Acts seventeen that don't know the first thing about the scriptures, and Paul has to start out with creation for them. There are people like the Jews in the synagogue in Acts thirteen, and Paul has to start out with the Old Testament scriptures with them. But here, this man already believed in creation, already believed in the scriptures. All he needed to be pointed to was the Savior. And that's exactly what Philip did. He preached Jesus unto him. Verse thirty six, Now, as they went down the road, they came to some water, and the eunuch said, See, here is water. What hinders me from being baptized? That was tremendous evidence that this man had believed. Because already, as Philip preached to him and said, you know, here's what you do. You believe in the Lord Jesus, you confess your sins, tell the Lord Jesus you need a savior, receive him. He'll come and be your Lord and savior, and then you can tell the whole world that by being baptized. And as they came along, he saw some water. You say, how did he see water in the desert? Well, they have oases, okay? There is water, and at times there are springs that run certain times a year, so it's not unprecedented. And he saw some water there, and he said, what hinders me to be baptized? Well, Philip said, verse thirty seven, if you believe with all your heart, you may. And he answered, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Isn't that lovely? Romans ten says, with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. And here's this man confessing with his mouth, I believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He got saved right there and then, and they stopped the chariot, and Philip and him went down into the water, and he baptized him. And when they came up out of the water, again, these verses seem strongly to imply the practice of baptism by immersion. But when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught Philip away, so the eunuch saw him no more, and he went his on his way rejoicing. So God brought Philip down to that remote area just to witness to one man, just to win one soul. And when he was caught away, the man wasn't despondent because his faith and hope weren't in Philip. They were in the Lord, and the Lord wouldn't leave him. He went on his way rejoicing, but Philip, verse forty, was found at Azotus, and passing through, he preached in all the cities till he came to Caesarea. What a busy man for the Lord. Wherever he went, didn't matter the locality, didn't matter the ethnicity of the people, didn't matter any kind of condition. Wherever Philip went, he was found to be preaching the Lord Jesus Christ, telling others about him. And you know, we can do the same. You may not have the gift of evangelism, you may not have the gift of a teacher, you may not be what we call a platform man, you may not be one who's very good at public speaking, but we can all tell others about the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, God's not looking for great and eloquent people. He's looking for people that are faithful in telling others about the Lord Jesus, and may God help us to do so for his glory. Father, we thank thee tonight for the Lord Jesus. We thank thee that he's the answer. We thank thee that he suffered so much for us. He was humiliated, and he was taken away from judgment, and he suffered so much. And yet we're thankful that we can preach this suffering Savior to the world, who's now the glorified Christ, and the one who's coming again as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Father, we thank thee for him. We pray we'd love him more and serve him better, that we would be genuine, and that our testimony would shine in such a way that others would ask questions of us, and we'd be ready always to give a reason for the hope that's within us, and that we preach Christ, just as these brothers did in this chapter. We ask this in the Lord Jesus' name, amen.