This message I have titled, A Spirit-Led
Evangelistic Life.
It is really a close look at Philip,
who became Philip the Evangelist as we know
him.
Last time when we were going through Chapter
8 here in the Book of Acts, we
went by and we studied about all that
was going on in Samaria and we saw
the sham conversion of Simon the sorcerer.
And along the way we saw that the
Apostles in verse 14, who were at Jerusalem,
heard that Samaria had received the Word of
God, and so they sent Peter and John
to them.
And if you look there, verse 15, who,
Peter and John, when they had come down,
prayed for them that they might receive the
Holy Spirit.
Now, these people have already believed on Christ
and been baptized in water, so to even
read that is odd.
Then, verse 16, for as yet he had
fallen upon none of them, as they had
only been baptized in the name of the
Lord Jesus, then they laid hands on them
and they received the Holy Spirit.
Now, as we came to the end of
the message last time, I raised those issues
and said, well, what about that?
So we need to address them now.
I have to resist the temptation to take
all of our time together to talk about
this, but in some other message we will
deal in full detail with the baptism of
the Holy Spirit versus do you get it
all when you come to salvation and so
on.
But why this?
Why did this happen here?
Well, let me begin by saying this.
And really, if you get nothing else out
of our study of the Book of Acts,
please get this and keep it.
The Book of Acts is a transitional book.
It's transitional.
You have the Old Testament, which takes up,
by the way, most of your Bible.
You have then the New Testament, which begins
with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
That is the Gospels, which are full treatment
on the life of Jesus Christ.
Then you have the death of Christ, his
resurrection and the Book of Acts as recorded
by Luke.
And from there you go on into Romans,
which is the loftiest treatment on the grace
of God and any extant literature.
And from there you have the epistles, which
are largely polemic in nature.
They are corrective.
There's a problem in the church.
So a letter is written to correct the
church problem and so on.
And the doctrine to build you up.
The doctrines in the epistles are mostly elaborations
of teachings that Jesus gave.
There are effectively commentaries on the Gospels and
the words of Jesus.
Now, Acts sits right there between the Gospels
and the epistles as a transitional book from
Old Testament to New Testament.
So that what you see going on in
the Book of Acts is unique to that
transitional time.
From the Old Testament to the New Testament
time, so that even if you look at
the apostles, the followers of Jesus Christ, they
are to begin with Old Testament saints.
Then Christ calls them, he disciples them, he
teaches them, he goes to the cross, he
raises again, he tells them to go to
Jerusalem to wait for the power to come
from on high of the Holy Spirit.
And that comes on the day of Pentecost
and the day of Pentecost, the church is
born.
So then the church at that point becomes
the light of the world.
Israel was called of God to be his
chosen people for what chosen to be a
unique people on the earth whom God would
work with in a wonderful, marvelous, divine and
unique way to what end to be the
light of the world.
Israel mishandled their stewardship of being the light
of the world.
Ultimately, Jesus came unto his own and his
own received him what not.
So they were unfaithful in being the light
of the world overall.
Overall, not all the time, but when it
was all said and done overall so that
you have then the church born on the
day of Pentecost, which the city of Jerusalem
was still teeming with millions of people, a
couple of million pilgrims who had come up,
Jewish pilgrims who had come up there to
celebrate Passover, stayed for Pentecost.
And so when the Holy Spirit was poured
out on the believers as they were gathered
together, 120 of them in an upper room,
the spirit of God was poured out on
them.
They began to speak with other languages as
the spirit gave them utterance and all those
gathered around from different places, heard them speak
in their own languages, the glorious things of
the kingdom of God.
Peter then jumped up and began to preach
the resurrected Christ.
Three thousand came to know Jesus Christ.
Three thousand, basically Jews.
So all these people then are in transition
from living under the mosaic law, which was
given as a schoolmaster or a tutor to
bring us to Jesus Christ.
That's what Paul said in Galatians.
So you're in transition.
Do you understand it?
So you're moving from Old Testament to New
Testament when the church is born and the
spirit fills them.
And Christ has died, risen from the dead,
gone back to heaven.
Now you're in the New Testament age, New
Testament time.
And that transition takes a little while to
happen.
It starts in Jerusalem, goes to Judea, spreads
to Samaria, by the way, with Philip and
then goes on to the uttermost parts of
the earth, by the way, through Philip, by
preaching to the Ethiopian eunuch who went back
to Africa and became a missionary.
And the gospel goes to the uttermost parts
of the earth.
Acts is a book in transition.
Therefore, there are things that happen in the
book of Acts that you don't see happening
anywhere else.
And unless you understand the transitional nature of
the book of Acts, you're going to grab
things that you see happening in the book
of Acts, take scriptures right out of context,
run with them and use them to validate
certain activities in your life.
Which is wrong.
OK, so you're with me so far.
So when we come to Acts chapter eight
and we see the apostles come from Jerusalem
to Samaria, it's part of that transitional time
now to give you a little backdrop on
this.
It's been about five years that had gone
by since the resurrection of Christ and the
giving of the Great Commission and the birthday
of the church on the day of Pentecost.
About five years.
Jesus said when he gave the Great Commission,
I want you to take the gospel first
to Jerusalem, then to Judea, then to Samaria,
then the uttermost parts of the earth.
After about five years, they're still lurking around
Jerusalem because of the persecution that broke out
with the death of Stephen and the ensuing
persecution from Saul.
The church was scattered.
As a result, Philip, who was a co
-laborer and a friend of Stephen's, he went
on up to Samaria.
Easy for him to go to Samaria because
he was a Hellenistic Jew.
He didn't have the prejudicial baggage that the
apostles had against the Samaritans.
The Samaritans were half breed, both in their
physical makeup.
They were a blend of Jewish people and
Assyrians and all kinds of other people from
around the area from the time of the
captivity, but also in their worship.
So they feared the Lord and they worshiped
other gods, it says in one place.
OK, if you understand that, that there was
tremendous animosity between the Samaritans and the Jews
of Jerusalem, then you understand that something had
to be done in this transition to make
sure that when Philip led all of these
people to the Lord in Samaria, they didn't
just form their own sect of Christianity or
let's just say make the first denomination and
say we are of Philip and everybody down
in Jerusalem says are up in Jerusalem because
it's all up to Jerusalem.
You remember that everybody in Jerusalem says we're
of the apostles up here.
Thus, you would have had a schism right
from the very beginning that would have only
perpetuated what had gone on for so many
hundreds of years already.
A horrible rift in the church.
So when you read in verse 16, for
as yet he had not fallen upon them,
the Holy Spirit, they'd only been baptized in
the name of the Lord Jesus.
But then when they laid hands on them,
the apostles, they received the Holy Spirit.
That happened for this very reason.
God did something unique so that the apostles
would come to Samaria, follow this, and John
and Peter would be eyewitnesses that God really
had saved all these Samaritans and that he
really was working there.
So they had to drop their prejudice.
They had to accept them as Christians in
Christ.
They had to start doing something new, which
was loving Samaritans.
And then they were to go back to
Jerusalem and tell them what they saw.
And everybody at Jerusalem had to do the
same thing.
So for the sake of the apostles, he
did not put the Holy Spirit upon them.
Then for the sake of the Samaritans, these
men were, in fact, apostles.
Peter and John, so they had the apostolic
authority and they were the head of the
church as Jesus had made them that before
he went back to heaven.
So they come bringing apostolic authority.
Don't forget, they are going to write Bible,
New Testament.
So the Samaritans have to get over their
prejudice.
They have to receive the apostles.
They have to respect the apostles.
They have to know they're from God.
What better way than to receive the infilling
of God himself through them so that when
John pens his gospel, they will read it
as from God when Peter writes his epistle
and so on.
You understand it's for the benefit of both
sides.
And it's for the benefit, then, of the
church being the light of the world, because
now all the people around that always saw
the Samaritans and the Jews at odds are
going to suddenly see them loving one another.
And Jesus said, by this, shall all men
know that you are my disciples, that I'm
risen from the dead, that I'm alive and
I live in you.
How?
By your love one toward another.
The Lord loves to follow through with the
things that he says, and that's the big
picture of what's going on here.
So from that time, after you see the
Old Testament saints filled with the spirit on
the day of Pentecost, Jews converted to Christ,
filled with the spirit, Gentiles, as you see
the Samaritans here, once you get through all
that Old Testament saints, Jews, Gentiles, Samaritans.
From there, it's a whole different thing.
So you don't read of these things in
the epistles moving on from here.
And as for.
The whole issue of the baptism of the
Holy Spirit, let me just make a quick
statement so I can answer a lot of
the questions that would be immediately asked afterwards
anyway.
Now that I'm into this, I'm committed, right?
What do I believe about the baptism of
the Holy Spirit?
Well, in Corinthians, when Paul was writing to
the Corinthians, he said, if you want to
use the terms properly, he said, for you
all are baptized by the spirit into the
body of Christ on the day of Pentecost,
when they were filled as Luke is writing,
he says they were filled.
And you might as well learn it now
that the word translated baptize or baptism in
the New Testament in English comes from the
Greek word baptizo, and it means to immerse.
So to what I believe about the baptism
of the Holy Spirit, you mean, what do
I believe about being immersed in the Holy
Spirit?
Do I believe that you become born again
and you.
Receive part of the spirit and then later
you get a second touch and you receive
another part of the Holy Spirit.
I have a really hard time dividing up
the omnipresent, omnipotent, all powerful, all knowing.
God, the Holy Spirit in all of his
infinitude.
I have a really hard time dividing him
up.
He's God.
Now, for those of you that came up
in Christianity, believing that you're born again, the
spirit comes to live inside of you and
then you get the power of the Holy
Spirit upon you later with a second touch,
the Holy Spirit.
OK.
All right.
For those of you that came up in
Christ, believing you come to Christ, God comes
life of God in the soul of a
man.
There's nothing beyond that so that you receive
everything when you're born again.
All right.
As for me in my house, we shall
serve the Lord.
So what I mean by that is this.
In my mind, regeneration to be born again
is the ultimate charismatic experience to go from
being dead spiritually to being detonated in your
soul by the life of God.
To have him come and live within you
is the ultimate charismatic experience when it really
occurs from there.
Know this.
Whatever camp you're from, God wants to fill
you with the power of his Holy Spirit
until your cup overflows.
In fact, it's more like a rushing mighty
river.
Jesus said he that believes on me out
of his belly will flow a trickle of
living water.
No, he said rivers of living water.
It's Niagara all over the place.
So that what whatever you want to believe
when you some for some people, it's semantics.
For other people, it's not.
So if you subscribe to the end with
an upon idea, the Holy Spirit was with
the apostles as they were with Jesus.
Then Jesus breathed on them and they received
the spirit.
He came into them.
He said, receive the spirit.
So now he's in them.
And then he came upon them at Pentecost.
If that's what you've been taught and that's
what you believe, then just make sure you
press on to being filled again and again
and again and again and again with rivers
of living water.
If you believe now, I don't mean to
classify you folks as that, but if you
believe that you receive all of the Holy
Spirit at salvation, then you make sure that
you don't miss out on what the other
folks have, because they have open hearts and
they want all they can get.
Does that make sense to you?
Let me just sum up by saying this.
You cannot go wrong either way.
And everybody's going to find out in heaven
who is right.
So you cannot go wrong either way.
If you, as Jesus said, come to the
father and he said, shall not the father
give the Holy Spirit to them who ask
him.
And if you ask him, fill me, Lord,
fill me, Lord, fill me.
He will fill you.
So that is, in a nutshell, what I
believe about those things.
I believe that God wants to fill you
again and again and again and again.
And to stop short of that is to
stop short of all that he has for
you.
And salvation begins by the Holy Spirit.
And anything that happens from there that is
God through you happens by the Holy Spirit.
Now, at some point in time, we'll do
one whole message on this and you can
ask me more questions.
But thanks for those questions.
They were good.
So you understand what's going on here in
this transitional time in the book of Acts.
Now, let's move on into Acts versus 25
and on down to the end.
What we have here is, in contrast, is
Simon.
Simon was not saved, but he had the
faith that did not say we looked at
that last time.
In contrast to him is this great man,
this Ethiopian eunuch who has a faith that
does save.
And the way it happens, it's all sovereign.
Salvation is all of God, all of grace,
and ultimately it is all sovereign.
So you have here what I would call
sovereign preparation before this Ethiopian eunuch is saved.
You have then a certainly a spiritual presentation
from Philip, and then you have the saving
response of the eunuch who believes.
So sovereign preparation always before salvation occurs.
Holy Spirit of work, spiritual presentation, the Bible,
Christ.
And then comes that response, which only you
can give a saving response, trusting Christ.
Let's look at the sovereign preparation here first.
In verse 25 and 26.
So when they had testified, that's Peter and
John, and preached the word of the Lord,
they returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel.
Look at this in many villages of the
Samaritans.
That's kind of a key issue, because the
next verse, God's going to ask Philip to
leave.
And that will help you understand how he
could leave in the middle of the greatest
events of his life.
So they preached the gospel on the way
back to Jerusalem.
They took their time and they preached all
around and they preached all around in many
villages of the Samaritans.
Verse 26.
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.
And then you read, this is desert, this
is desert.
So here is the sovereignty of God at
work.
This man, as we read in a minute
here, has traveled all the way from Ethiopia,
all the way up to Jerusalem.
He has been led by God to do
that, something even beyond himself.
At the same time, Philip was a servant
just loving the Lord, loving the brethren in
the church, and they needed help overseeing the
ministry to feed the widows and care for
them.
He was chosen out of among the flock
and he was faithful in what God gave
him to do and serving tables.
And then God began to continue to work
in his life.
Persecution broke out.
He's thrust into Samaria.
He opens his mouth.
He starts to preach.
Revival breaks out.
And all of this is the Lord getting
Philip ready.
For the Ethiopian eunuch, the Ethiopian eunuch account
is not less than the Samaritan revival, it's
leading to something bigger, something bigger.
So God is sovereignly at work in this
man's life, the eunuch and sovereignly at work
in Philip's life.
God is always sovereignly at work in the
lives of those that he saves long before
they become born again.
And he uses human instruments in the process,
which is so glorious.
That's why we're the light of the world.
That's why we have the gospel and we
share it.
Now, there is a prerequisite to being used
in the sovereign work of God to lead
someone else to the Lord.
And that involves the submissive will of the
individual God wants to use.
Here's the submissive will of Philip in Acts
8, 27, it says, so he arose and
he went.
That is so good to me, that is
so rich.
If I die suddenly and forget to tell
you what to put on my gravestone, I
wouldn't mind if you simply put so he
arose and went.
That is as good as it gets to
follow God, to follow God, he arose and
went, he arose and went.
You know why?
Because he was yielded to the Lord, but
also because he was ready.
Charles Spurgeon used to say, be fit for
your work in the kingdom and you will
never be out of it.
God will keep you busy here.
He is so submitted to the Lord that
when God asks him to get up and
go to Gaza and he does it to
the angel, he doesn't struggle with the fact
that the request is irrational.
Lord, you want me to go to the
desert, I'm here in Samaria, I have never
had a better time in my life as
a Christian, I'm preaching, people are being saved,
this is incredible.
You want me to go to the desert
and you're so serious about it, you send
an angel.
And by the way, if he didn't send
an angel, I'm not so sure he would
have been able to tear himself away from
what God was doing.
But having had a visitation from an angel,
well, that makes things a little easier.
So he's not arguing with the irrationality of
it, as it seems, but rather he obeys.
He arose and he went.
You know something, by his willing obedience, he
became the means by which God saved this
man forever, for eternity.
What a glorious thing.
Do not underestimate the work of the Holy
Spirit when he's strongly churning in your heart,
strongly working and putting impressions on your heart
that won't go away, but rather get stronger
and stronger and stronger.
God is wanting to do something, something wonderful,
something new.
We're going to see a lot of that
in the book of Acts.
So you have the sovereign work of the
spirit.
You have the submissive will of Philip.
Then you have the searching heart of this
eunuch in verse twenty seven.
Behold, the man of Ethiopia.
Now, read this carefully, a eunuch of great
authority under Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians,
who had charge of all her treasury, had
come to Jerusalem to worship.
This man is truly seeking after God.
He has taken a long journey to Jerusalem,
how he came to come in contact with
Judaism.
We don't know, but we do know that
he took a long journey to go to
Jerusalem to find his way to the Lord.
Now, when you read that he was the
treasurer or the keeper of the treasure of
Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians, know this
Candace was not her name.
Candace is a name you see, the Ethiopians
at that time believed that their kings were
offsprings and incarnations of the sun god.
Therefore, they were above everyday affairs of governments.
They didn't do anything.
So they just sat around as kings.
So the affairs of the government actually went
to the one that had the real power
in their society, which was the queen mother.
The queen mother then was known by the
hereditary title of Candace, like Pharaoh, like Herod.
Herod in the Bible isn't the guy's name.
It's the name of his position, like Caesar.
So Candace is the title.
It's an official title.
In modern terms, then he would have been
the secretary of the treasury or the minister
of finance in Ethiopia.
This guy is a very important man.
What Joseph was to Pharaoh, what Daniel was
to Nebuchadnezzar, the Ethiopian eunuch is to Candace,
the queen of the nation of Ethiopia, which
is just south of Egypt.
So here he is now.
Obviously, then he's got power, he's got prestige,
but he's got a vast emptiness in his
soul, enough to cause him to make this
pilgrimage all the way up to Jerusalem.
Now, one thing that might just give you
a little more insight into the man, we
read that he was a eunuch.
You find that word in the Bible a
lot, and unless somebody explains to you what
it means, you may never know what it
means.
And it's one of those things you read
over it, eunuch.
Yeah, that's a Bible word.
And you move on.
So here is a man, he is a
eunuch, he is an official in the court
of the queen of Ethiopia.
So he's both a eunuch and he's a
court official.
It is very likely that he was made
a eunuch surgically.
See, eunuchs in the Bible are usually those
that work with kings and officials like that,
and they all in those days had harems.
So the only way to have a man
you could trust with all your money and
trust around your harem was to surgically make
them a eunuch.
I don't want to get any more graphic
than that.
So here is this man.
Now, Potiphar in the Old Testament is called
the eunuch.
So not everybody and he's married.
Not everybody in the Bible with that title
is in the category of being surgically a
eunuch.
But in this man's case, he most likely
was very possible that Daniel was.
Most people never thought about that.
What it does is it it sheds a
whole different kind of light on your intimacy
with God, your love for God and having
market, having things happen to you that you'd
rather not have happen to you that are
big, they're significant.
And yet you can still love the Lord
and not go through your life mad at
God or hating God or whatever else.
You understand what I'm saying?
So here is this man, very important man,
has a vast emptiness in his soul and
he's hungering and thirsting for God.
There's something further to go with what I've
just told you, though, being in that category,
going up to Jerusalem.
He was in for a lot of heartache
and a lot of affective rejection, because in
Deuteronomy 23, 1, it said that says there
that someone in the situation of life is
this man would would not be able to
go into the temple and worship God with
everybody else.
He would be denied access to participate fully
in the Jewish worship services.
So he makes this long journey.
He gets there and they tell him, sorry,
you can't come in and join in the
full worship service.
You're going to have to stay outside.
Hey, you can go down the street to
the synagogue.
Further, you cannot become a full proselyte to
Judaism as far as you can go with
your condition is to become a God fearer,
which is what Cornelius was.
We'll run into him later, a God fearer.
And you can go to the synagogue and
hear the scriptures read, but you cannot go
into the temple and worship and become a
full proselyte Jew converted into Judaism.
You have to stay on the outer edge.
So that is to say that what happened
to him as he went to Jerusalem is
disappointment.
Further, Jerusalem was filled with Christ killers.
So this man goes all the way to
Jerusalem to find the Lord.
God has revealed himself in Jesus Christ.
He gets there, he finds Christ killers in
the temple, those still living out their Judaism,
having rejected Christ who fulfilled all of that
and put it all away.
Those in the temple then would be those
continuing to follow after the scribes and the
Pharisees and the Sadducees who didn't believe in
life after death or anything supernatural.
What he found was a lot of death
and a lot of disappointment.
And yet he manages to get a copy
of the book of Isaiah, which would have
been a big scroll.
And he would have had to obtain that
a great price.
So he would have had to have been
very, very hungry.
OK, then get the answer from all of
you.
But I believe the answer somehow is in
in the word of God.
So he understands to some extent that to
find God and know him personally, it's going
to involve the word of God.
And it does.
The Holy Spirit did that within him.
So here he is, this eunuch from Ethiopia,
what he has done and this is what
happens in salvation.
He has lived up to the light that
he had.
In creation, the Bible tells us God has
put light in the creation, it testifies of
the glory and the power of God in
creation.
In Romans chapter one, if you will look
at that light, perceive that light and respond
to that light, then God will look at
your heart and he will give you more
light.
He will bring you all the way up
to the light of God, the glory of
God in the face of Jesus Christ.
He would bring you all the way up
to the light of Jesus Christ, saving knowledge
of Christ.
This man lived in Africa.
He goes all the way to Jerusalem, doesn't
find what he's looking for.
He's in the middle of the desert on
the road.
God sends a man out of a revival
to go stand and wait on the on
the desert road.
He responded to the light that was given
to him, and God was able to bring
the light of God in Jesus Christ to
him and save his soul.
That says a lot, doesn't it?
About what about poor so and so out
there, da da da da da da, who's
never heard the gospel?
Well, our God is a great and awesome
God, able to save and that is his
great work.
So this searching heart now in verse twenty
eight, as he's going along, he's sitting in
his chariot, which could have been one of
those kinds of things where, you know, the
person sits in a box, it's a glorified
box with nice curtains and everything and pillows
and they peek out occasionally and, you know,
they're carrying on the shoulders of some servants.
I doubt if he was hauling down the
road, this dirt road in the desert, because
it was the old road.
They didn't use it anymore.
Gaza had been destroyed in ninety six B
.C. So this is the old road through
the desert.
I doubt if he's hauling and a chariot,
you know, reading Isaiah.
So he's probably being carried along on the
shoulders of some servants or either that or
it's more like a rolling cart, something like
that.
At any rate, he's got this long journey
going very slow and he's able to read.
Now, the Lord, as he's sitting in his
chariot, he's reading Isaiah the prophet and he's
hungering to know God.
So along comes Philip, the Lord leads Philip
to go there.
He tells him to go down to Gaza,
to the desert and stand there on the
road.
And so that's all the sovereign preparation of
God.
And he's even reading in Isaiah the account
that speaks of Jesus Christ.
So that's all sovereign preparation.
We come then to the spiritual presentation of
verse twenty nine.
To preach the gospel in a saving way,
there must be two non negotiable ingredients.
Do you know what they are?
They must be Bible centered and Christ centered,
Bible centered and Christ centered.
And that's what we see here.
He's reading the Bible, Isaiah at least, and
Philip opens it up to him and then
Philip preaches Christ to him.
So, first of all, it must center on
the Bible for someone to really come to
a saving relationship with Christ.
Look, verse twenty nine.
Now, God sends an angel to Philip, tells
him to leave Samaria and go down here.
He gets there.
He's standing out on this dirt road in
the desert.
OK, Lord.
Not a lot of action here.
All right.
Anytime you want to send somebody along, that'd
be great with me.
So he's standing there, we don't know how
long.
And in verse twenty nine, this man begins
to come along and he's reading and the
spirit said to Philip.
Go near and overtake this chariot.
I love the way this man obeys God.
What does verse thirty say?
He ran.
May God help us all to run, to
obey when he speaks to our hearts.
He ran to him and hearing him reading
the prophet Isaiah, he was reading aloud.
He ran to him, he said, do you
understand what you're reading?
I get the picture.
This isn't one man moving down this dirt
road.
He is the treasurer.
He's the assistant of the queen of Ethiopia.
He has a long entourage.
Right.
So he bypasses the whole entourage.
The spirit says go and he runs right
up to the chariot of the main person
who's in charge.
And obviously the spirit is got control of
that and he runs right up to him.
And rather than being stopped by all of
his servants, he says, hey, do you understand
what you're reading?
This is the strangest thing ever.
Here's a guy standing and here comes somebody,
you know, and then he's coming by and
he's waiting.
The Lord's going, hold, hold.
And he's.
And then the Lord says, go and do
you understand what you're reading?
Tell me God doesn't have a sense of
humor.
And he says he doesn't say guards.
He says, how can I unless somebody guides
me?
He says, well, hey, Philip, come on up
and sit with you.
Probably said, hi, I'm Philip.
Nice to meet you.
But he says, yes, Philip, to come up
and sit with him.
Verse thirty one in the place in the
scripture which he read was this.
He was led as a sheep to the
slaughter and as a lamb before the shearer
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 from the earth.
You understand why God held him until the
exact moment and told him to run, told
him to go and why he did run,
not because he would miss the chariot going
by, but because he would miss the passage.
He would miss the passage.
So right as he's reading the passage about
Christ, he runs up, he says, do you
understand that?
He says, no, not unless someone explains it
to me.
He begins to unfold it.
Verse thirty five says Philip opened his mouth.
And beginning at this scripture beginning.
Beginning at this scripture, preach Jesus Christ to
him.
So the scripture is what God uses to
convert us all.
It must center on the scripture when you're
witnessing to people and it must center on
Jesus Christ.
So the scripture and he preached Jesus.
May I say that Philip was able to
do that because he was ready to do
that, if anything else, we see he met
this man right where he was, right in
Isaiah, right there.
And may God grant the same to us
to be able, able to meet people right
where they are in life.
And to share Christ with them right where
they are, to take whatever their situation and
turn it right toward Christ, because he knew
the word of God so well, he was
able to start there and then take him
all the way through the scriptures to Jesus
Christ.
I'm certain even to baptism, which is why
he asked to be baptized because he was
ready as we study the word of God.
It isn't just so we can do the
right thing as Christians.
We study the word of God to be
ready to give an answer to every man,
as Peter said, of the hope that's in
us because we live in a world that
is no hope.
The only hope is Christ.
And so we study the word of God
because faith comes by hearing and hearing by
the word of God.
And that's what he did.
He opened it up to him.
Proper preparation by the Lord, sovereign preparation, spiritual
presentation.
Then you get this wonderful response.
The last thing here is a response of
faith and confession and issues and rejoicing.
Verse 36, 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's what leads me to believe that he'd
taken him through the whole gospel and all
the way up to baptism.
And so that's his profession of faith right
there.
And they came to this pool of water
stream in the desert, whatever it was, and
he wanted to publicly testify of his saving
faith.
And so his confession comes in verse 37,
38, Philip said, if you believe with all
your heart, you may.
He answered and said, I believe Jesus Christ
is the son of God.
He commanded the chariot to stand still and
both Philip and the eunuch went down into
the water and he baptized him.
After notice, after he was saved, after he
was saved, he got baptized and notice they
went down into the water.
That's baptism by full immersion.
We're going to have a study one of
these days fairly soon on water baptism.
We'll cover all those details, but you see
it here.
Luke tucks in down into the water and
they come back out and so they go
into the water and he gets baptized, immersed.
The Greek word is baptizo, it means to
immerse.
So his confession, followed by public confession, what
he was really doing is not just saying
to Philip, I want to know I'm a
true believer.
He wants to show, don't miss this, the
entire entourage.
Hundreds of people that will go back to
Ethiopia and share what they have seen and
they're going to it's a long journey.
They're all going to get the gospel.
He's the one in charge.
They're all going to get the gospel all
the way back.
And so he goes on his way rejoicing.
And that is what happens to you.
Verse 39, when they came up out of
the water, up out of the water, then
at the end he went on his way
rejoicing.
Joy is the mark of the true believer.
When you're truly born again, it's not just
religion.
And when you're immersed in the word of
God, as he was, there's joy, there's life.
It is the most winsome thing about the
born again Christian, I believe, is the joy
of the Lord, the most winsome thing.
So the eunuch went on his life's journey,
rejoicing and saved.
And the final thing here is, get this,
just back up.
God says to Philip, I want you to
leave Samaria, I want you to go down
to Gaza, to the desert.
All right, Lord.
Got any ideas about catching a ride when
I'm done?
As a matter of fact, God has some
a really good idea.
Philip got a ride from the Holy Spirit
to the next city.
Read verse 39.
When they came up out of the water,
the spirit of the Lord caught Philip away.
So the eunuch saw him no more.
Can you imagine?
He's just barely getting over the fact this
guy's waiting in the desert, comes up as
he's reading right there, opens it all up
to him.
And then he comes.
He's born again and he's he's just getting
settled in with that.
And they come up out of the water
and Philip goes, see ya.
No wonder he went on his way, rejoiced,
he's going, you know, I love this Jesus
thing, this relationship with the Lord is awesome.
Well worth the journey.
So and it is well worth the journey
when you come to know Christ.
So Philip got a ride from the Holy
Spirit to the next city.
We read in verse 40, but Philip was
found at a Zotus.
You know how far away that is?
Twenty miles, twenty miles and passing through.
He preached in all the cities till he
came to Caesarea.
Now, there is one question that will be
on the test.
Listen closely.
Was his shirt wet or dry when he
arrived at a Zotus?
I'm just kidding.
That is not important.
What is important is that he kept preaching
in all the cities till he came to
Caesarea.
And you know what I like and I
want to end with this.
We find out later in the book of
Acts that he moved his family to that
area.
The daughters of Philip prophesied.
Isn't it amazing that as he followed the
leading of the Holy Spirit up to Samaria,
then what seemed to be a rational down
to Gaza, to the desert, then the Holy
Spirit picks him up, translates him 20 miles
away, drops him off and he goes on
preaching because that was always in his heart.
He ends up in the area where he's
going to live with his family there near
Caesarea, which is a wonderful place right on
the Mediterranean.
You see, if you will follow the Holy
Spirit in your life, all these big questions
you have about where am I going to
live, what am I going to do?
He will take care of those things.
And in the end, you will find that
if you offer your life as a living
sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto him, which is
your reasonable service, then you will be able
as you are not conformed to the world,
but transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Romans 12, 1 and 2, you will be
able to put God to the test and
find out what is that good and perfect
and acceptable will of God for your life.
And I can just see Philip reclining on
the shore of the Mediterranean in his beach
house going, oh, Lord, your way is better
than my way.
I would have never thought of this, but
I sure do like it.
God's good, isn't he?
Let's pray.
Thank you, Lord, that you are so good
to us.
You're so very good.
Lord, now lead us by your Holy Spirit,
fill us with that wonderful, rich love of
God and that wonderful power.
And Lord, give us that desire to share
Jesus with others, not out of compulsion or
duty because we have to, but because we
want to, Lord, because we want others to
know your love.
And Lord, we will give you all the
glory as you lead us and guide us
and bless us.
And how we thank you, Lord, it is
your nature to bless.
So we look forward to being blessed and
we ask these things in Jesus name.
Amen.