Power to Save the Unclean

Good morning. This morning we get to enjoy a very straightforward story. It really demonstrates two things about the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is both simple and powerful. Our passage this morning really helps us see the simplicity of the gospel, and it helps us to see the power of the gospel. They're simple truths of God's plan that are articulated. God speaks, he saves, we believe. And so I just wanna jump right into the story, and as it's already been read, I want us to see that there's a growing story here. First, we have a setting. And that's verses 26 and 27. The setting of the story is that Philip has been told by an angel of the Lord, rise and go. What we see throughout Acts is that the Spirit is moving the believers in Jesus Christ all around the world now so that others will hear of the good news. So we have the setting. Philip is sent to proclaim. Now it's interesting as we look at this story because it's the angel of the Lord that speaks to Philip. Later it's going to be the Spirit of the Lord, and previously it was the Spirit of the Lord that moved those who proclaimed Christ. But here's the angel of the Lord, and we don't even make a big deal of the difference, but it does seem to be interesting that it's the angel as if he were an Old Testament prophet. The most important thing is that God says, go, and he goes. Now in case you haven't been with us, Philip is an important character so far in Acts. Go back to Acts 6, there was a problem in the church. Some of the widows were feeling like they were getting fair treatment. And so Philip was one of the men who were set aside to help serve those widows to make sure they were getting fair treatment. In last week's sermon, we saw that Philip goes to Samaria, and he proclaims the gospel to this new people group. And now he's on a new mission. Where does he go next? rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. It's a desert place. Now, it makes sense to go to Samaria, which was a big city. But now Philip's being told, go to a desert. There's nobody living there, but this is where God is sending Philip. And God is sending him there to this specific place, to speak to a specific person for a very specific purpose. God has been organizing and planning and preparing this moment to save a particular man. Before we move on from the setting, look at verse 27. Notice what Philip does. He rose and he went. He didn't reason with God. It's a more significant city just down the street. They haven't heard the gospel yet. No, no, he's a faithful servant. This is what we see in a man who's being used by God and is bearing fruit by God. He's simply faithful. He's willing to serve tables. He's willing to go and proclaim the gospel to Samaritans who would have been the despised cousins of the Jews. There was a tension between these people, group, and Philip didn't let that keep him from proclaiming the gospel to them. He's faithful to go way out of the region. He's faithful to go to the desert. Wherever God says go, he goes. Now the next step of the story is we actually have a problem presented. And I say that in the sense that we're introduced to a man who was prevented from worship. Look at chapter 8 verse 27 beginning, and there was an Ethiopian. In the early part of Acts, we kept seeing mass conversions. We kept hearing sermons and seeing large groups of people come to Christ. But then after Stephen, what we're gonna see is just individual stories. Luke is helping us see how the gospel is progressing with individuals. Last week, we saw a warning about Simon the magician who thought he could buy the power of God. This week, we're looking at a specific individual, someone who is kind of different in the story of Acts. Let's look at this description of him. He goes out of his way to make sure we know a lot about this man. One, he's an Ethiopian. Two, he's a eunuch. Three, he's a court official. Four, he's a treasurer. Five, he's a proselytizer. He's a God-fearer. He is not Jewish by birth, but he has said, I'm going to worship the God of the Jews. I want to be a worshiper of Yahweh, even though I don't belong to the tribe of Israel, or to the people of Israel. Well, let's go through that list because who he is is extremely important. It says he's an Ethiopian. Now, the region of Ethiopia at this time is probably not modern-day Ethiopia. It's probably more modern-day Sudan. He's a black man. He's an African. There is some speculation if Luke is trying to say this man is the first Gentile to kind of take the progress from Jerusalem to The Samaritans and then the Gentiles, but I think it actually fulfilling more so that the real the the clear thesis of Acts 1 8 Because Ethiopia represents the ends of the earth that this man is coming to Christ so that he is going to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. God is already showing, I am sovereignly going to bring about my plan of salvation. Because it is interesting, the next two individuals that get saved, Saul, who we better know as Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles. The next individual to be focused on, it takes two chapters, and it's a Gentile named Cornelius to show that gospel is going to spread to all different kinds of people. Next, let's look at the description. He's a eunuch. Now this brings back a wonderful college memory. I had the privilege of taking the book of Acts with Don Fowler, who's preached here a couple times. And in that class, during this time, one of the students awkwardly raised her hand and just said, what's a eunuch? And Dr. Fowler, he answered with great confidence and clarity. And then 15 minutes later, another student raised their hand. What's a eunuch? Well, that second student, you might think, well, they're just looking for a deeper meaning. Well, no, that was me, and I just didn't listen the first time. I was daydreaming. But Dr. Fowler, he made it very clear. And what a eunuch is, it's someone who was either born without male genitalia or someone who has had it volitionally removed. It is oftentimes a voluntary religious commitment. He's not a family man. He is committed to a celibate life of service. And it's important for our understanding of what's taking place is that this man is not as God designed him to be. In the Old Testament, according to Leviticus 21, this is a blemish. He's not whole. He's impure. And that would actually keep him from worshiping close to God. These next two descriptions go together. He's a court official. He's a treasurer. He's a court official of a queen of a great empire. He's a man of power. Then we see he's a treasurer. He's a man of wealth. He owns his own copy of Isaiah. Now, that may not seem like a lot to you because you can find a Bible pretty cheap today, but to own a copy of a book of the Bible at this time showed a demonstration of great wealth. And the last thing we see. He had just come to Jerusalem to worship. He's a God-fear. He is not a Jew. He is seeking to worship Yahweh, the God of the Jews. He's not a pagan. He has said, I am going to commit my life to Yahweh. He's an Ethiopian eunuch who has now made a long, difficult, dangerous, and expensive journey to worship a foreign god to his people, the one true god, Yahweh. And this is what's amazing is he's going to worship a god and he is prevented from personally worshiping him. When he makes this long, difficult, expensive journey, he's actually prevented from worship. Now I want to be clear about something from the very beginning. In Genesis 12, God tells Abraham, the fulfillment of the promises I'm making to you is going to bless all the nations. All the people are in God's peripheral. He has in view all the nations. But God's design was for his one Savior to come through one people, the Israelites. And the other people were supposed to come to Israel and observe. And worship had a structure to it. If this, when this Ethiopian eunuch went to Jerusalem, there was a structure, there was a temple, and this temple had barriers. And it was appropriate to have barriers, because the nature of worship in the Old Testament, it was distant. And that's right. Worship was meant to be distant, because there was a holy and awesome God, and sinful people could not approach him. They will be consumed because of the righteous and holy and awesome God. And so I just want to walk through some of these boundaries. I want to walk through some of these stages and nearness because it gets farther and farther away. And if we just think about our own building, just so we can kind of visualize it, we could picture the baptism. Well, that's the Holy of Holies. Only one person, once a year, gets to go in there. And the stage would be the area for the priest. Where you're sitting in the pews, that would be the place for all the male Israelites. The foyer would be the court for the women Israelites. Outside would be for the Gentiles. This man came to worship Yahweh, and he's all the way out there, and God's in here. And there's boundaries, and he's being prevented from worshiping and praising God in a personal, clear way. He's coming home, and he's reading the book of Isaiah. Well, what's interesting is God is speaking. God has spoken His word, and this man is seeking God, and there's something that's wonderful we need to remember here. God says, if you seek me, you will find me. God says, if you seek me, you will find me. This man is seeking God, and he's about to be found by God. So the problem is this man wants to worship, and he's prevented. The solution is, he must believe in the one who saves. Verse 29, the Spirit said to Philip, go over and join this chariot. Here we are, we're in the desert. There's a chariot. Philip is told, go. And he runs up to the man and he says, what are you reading? Do you understand it? Now, this is a bizarre scene orchestrated by God. This is a little weird if we think about it. There's a wealthy black man of high social status, he's reading the Hebrew scripture in his chariot, and a Jewish man of lower status approaches him and says, do you understand what you're saying? The possibility of personal offense is all over the place. But God, God's the one who's orchestrating this. God is bringing about an opportunity for the gospel. You see, someone of lower social status would never approach a man of higher social status, but Philip runs up and the man is teachable. Philip says, do you understand what you're reading? And he says, how can I unless someone guides me? The Ethiopian eunuch has already shown the great mark of a disciple. He's teachable. He wants to understand and he wants to be taught. So when Philip hears this, he has to be thrilled. He hears what he's reading. It's Isaiah 53. Now it's one thing that he's reading Isaiah. Some people call the book of Isaiah the fifth gospel. Because the plan of salvation, the one who's going to come and save, is so clear. And even, not just the book of Isaiah, it's Isaiah 53, as you just heard. That has to be one of the clearest declarations of who the Savior's going to be. It's one of the most explicit declarations in all of Isaiah. There will be a man, he will be slaughtered like a lamb. He will remain silent. He will not give an answer. Justice was denied him. There will be a man. He's a suffering servant. He will quietly be led to die. It will not be just. He'll be murdered. The specific portion of Isaiah makes it very clear there's a man who's going to suffer. But usually whenever we see a specific verse, the bigger portion is understood. And I want to introduce a You might think this is a big theological phrase, and it is, but it's important. Isaiah 53 teaches us the importance, and with great clarity, the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement. Penal substitutionary atonement. And this is important for us to understand what the gospel is. Penal simply means there's a punishment. When there's a penalty. So when we look at the penal, there's a judgment, there's a punishment. Substitute, well we all know what substitutionary is. You've had substitute teachers. It's someone who stands in somebody else's place. The atonement. The atonement is God punishing that substitute for all the sins we've committed, laying the penalty that we deserve on Him. That's what we heard from Isaiah 53. Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many. He shall divide the spoiled with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death. He was numbered with the transgressors, yet he bore the sins of many and makes intercessions for the transgression." You can go back up to verses 4 to 6, you see that great clarity. He was crushed for our iniquities. Now, the important question is, why is this necessary? See, God is holy and awesome, and we want to be with Him, and more importantly, He wants us to be with Him. But because He's holy and awesome, and we're sinners, we can't approach Him. So God had to send someone to take our sin off of us by being punished for our sin. And this is actually what's so wonderful about the way this conversation goes. It's nice when a student asks the right question. The eunuch says to Philip, Who is this? Who's he talking about? Who's going to do this? Who could possibly do this? Because one of the questions is, who is without sin that can be punished for somebody else's sin? The answer is Jesus Christ. God who took on flesh. The one man who lived a sinless life, the one man who was perfectly righteous, he sacrificed his own life. And before we go there, I want you to see, he opens the scriptures, verse 35. To answer, Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with the scriptures, he told him the good news about Jesus. This scene is very much like Luke 24. where Jesus goes with two disciples who don't recognize Him yet, and He opens up the Old Testament Scriptures, and He explains all, and how they are all pointing to Him. And then He disappears, just like Philip does. What the eunuch needs is, he needs a Christian interpretation of the Old Testament. This is the amazing truth of this book. It is one book. Over 2,000 years, 66 books have been written by 40 different authors. And what's amazing about it is the unity, how God, using different authors at different times in history, with different cultures and different languages, shows the great themes that are united. You can trace themes like the king, the priest, the prophet, the seed. This is one book and we can see God's powerful, sovereign hand orchestrating all of history, orchestrating the hands of the prophets to bring about this one fantastic story that helps us know who He is, who helps us know who we are, who helps us know that He's the God of love and we're the sinners that can receive His salvation. And the one thing that unites all this text together is Jesus Christ. The Old Testament pointing forward, the New Testament looking back and also reminds us He's gonna come again. Jesus Christ is what unites this one book together. God has made promises, He's fulfilled promises. Jesus Christ says all those promises are fulfilled in Him. There is one Word of God and Christ is at the center. That's why this morning, if you want to go back and look at your order of worship, Christ is at the center. We sing of Christ. We praise God for Christ. We prayed to the Father in the name of the Son. Because God has made Christ the center of our salvation and the center of His story for us, we now focus on Christ. And as you read Scripture, ask, Father, show me Jesus. If He is the fulfillment, if He is the promise, help us see Jesus and the great salvation He's accomplished if we look to Scripture. Now something I wish we had were the notes of Philip's Old Testament lectures. Wouldn't that be great? Or better yet, it'd be nice if we had Jesus' notes for his Old Testament lectures. Here's how all these things point to me. That would be fantastic, but we also have to step back and say, God's Word is sufficient. We have everything before us that we need to know. What we have to do is prayerfully ask, give me understanding. Jesus Christ hasn't stopped teaching. The Holy Spirit continues to illuminate us as we read His one Word. Now let's get back to what he learned about from all the Scriptures. He opened up the Scriptures and he told him the Good News, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Since this Good News, this Gospel is about Jesus Christ, we just need to think about who He is. Who is Jesus? Well, the first thing we need to see is He's God's Son. He's a Son who was sent by the Father. This is important because He has the power of God because He is God to save us as sinners. Secondly, He's God's Son who took on flesh. He became like us in every way, yet He is without sin. He came so that we can know God. He's the perfect revelation of God. Because He is God. He came so that we can know God. He removes what keeps us from knowing Him. That's our own sin. He's God's Son who took on flesh so that He could die for us. He serves as our substitute. On that cross, the penalty that we deserve, when we believe in Jesus Christ, the penalty of the wrath of God is no longer on us because it's been satisfied, it's been put on Him. He suffered the penalty in our place. So that now God looks to us and He says, I have already crushed my son for your iniquities. You're free. You're no longer guilty. You're declared righteous. And more so, He rose again. He's conquered our enemies, sin and death. He's conquered our enemies so that we can now have life, and I have to make it clear, Jesus Christ made peace with our greatest enemy, which is God. Our greatest enemy is not sin and death, it's not Satan. Our greatest enemy is God. We rejected God. We began to rebel against God. And God, being a holy and righteous God, sees us as enemies because we declared war against Him. But He said, no, I want to love these people. No, I'm going to send my Son so that He is treated like an enemy, so that these people who believe in Him will be my sons, will be loved, will be forgiven. It's the great exchange. We should be treated enemies. But because Christ was treated as an enemy and suffered the penalty for our sin, we're now treated as sons below. This is why we sing, and can it be. We get so much that we don't deserve. This is the gospel. If you're not a Christian this morning, this is what you must believe. You have sinned against God. He does look at you and He sees your sin. And He's looked at your sin and He sees that you can't resolve your own problem, and so He sent His Son, so that if you believe in Him, that sin is placed upon Him, and now you can be counted righteous. No more guilt. But you must believe. You must believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins and rose again. Christian, I want us to think about what Philip is doing here. And it's wonderfully simple. Philip is making a disciple. Philip's a disciple maker. He sits down with a man, he looks at scripture, and he says, here's Jesus. That's discipleship. This is a beautiful picture of how powerful the gospel is, how powerful God's word is, and yet how simple discipleship is. This is what we should be doing with one another regularly. Making a disciple of Jesus Christ is simply sitting down with the word of Christ and saying, let's look to see how we can learn more about Christ together. I wanna charge you, church, study God's word together. Help one another have confidence in Christ. We need to be disciples. I forget who it was, but there's a way of describing what a good disciple is. It's someone who's faithful, available, and teachable. They have to be faithful. They have to be regular. They have to be available. They have to want to study. They have to be teachable. They have to be ready to learn. See, we often think discipleship is finding the one guy who has all the answers and just learning from him. Or, I can't make a disciple until I have all the answers. Well, no. Discipleship is everybody coming together and saying, Christ is a great teacher. Christ's word is rich. Christ's word is ready for us to sit down together and we learn from one another. We submit to Christ by sitting down together at his word. There are Bible studies that take place throughout the week. If you're a woman, please talk to Carol about that. If you're interested in getting a Bible study, talk to Carol who oversees a lot of our women's Bible studies. Or you can talk to Sam who oversees the men's, male and female Bible studies. What I want you to see is that discipleship, it comes when there's a regular routine of studying God's Word together. That's what makes a mature disciple. It's a regular routine of studying God's Word together. It's faithfully going in the right direction for a long time. This is what we should be doing together. The fourth part of the story. There was the problem, he was prevented from worship. There's a solution, Jesus Christ. Now look at the commitment that follows, beginning in verse 36. And as they were going along the road, they came to some water, and the eunuch said, see, here's water. What prevents me from being baptized? Now we need to pause here because if you're using the ESV, you should notice there is no verse 37. And there is no verse 37 in the original documents, in the original Word. The earliest texts do not have this verse, and it's a pretty clear insertion, because we can see it's not there. Well, it's easy to understand why that would be inserted. That verse 37, which you can look down and see it as a footnote at the bottom of your Bible, most likely. And Philip said, if you believe with all your heart, you may. And he replied, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. This is a known baptismal formula for when someone's being baptized. And since this is a very popular baptism story and most likely preached often at a baptismal service, we can see how that would be inserted into the story. And I want to also encourage you that if a variant in the text makes you doubt the text, I think you're misunderstanding what's going on. We have so many original early autographs we can find variants. We have so many original autographs, we can have assurance about what was in the original inspired text. So it's actually encouraging that we have so many, we can actually identify when something's been added. Now let's go back to the written word and think about what happens here. Philip has taught him. We don't know what he taught him, but apparently it was very clear that baptism is a proper response. And I want to just focus on this question that the eunuch There's water. What prevents me from being baptized? If you think about this in the context of what's happening, this is gut-wrenching. What prevents me from being baptized? You see, this man who just went on a long journey, he was prevented from coming into the temple. He's prevented from coming in to worship the one God that he believes in and wants to know personally. He's prevented. And so when he asks, what prevents me from being baptized? What's the answer? Nothing. Nothing prevents you anymore because of Jesus Christ. This is a wonderful story of the power of the gospel because if you believe in Jesus Christ, nothing prevents you from worship. You believe in Him and all He's accomplished, and you now get to worship. He had previously been prevented because of His nationality, because of His blemish, and most of all, because of His sin. What's amazing about Jesus Christ is He comes. He takes away what prevents us, and then He says, come, enter boldly into the very presence of God in My name. That's what we've been studying from the book of Hebrews. Enter boldly in the name of Christ. This is what's so unique about the gospel of Jesus Christ is it's incredibly inclusive and exclusive. The gospel is inclusive. Men, women, Jew, Gentile, slave, free, those with blemishes, those of beauty. Those things do not keep you from coming to God. But it's also extremely exclusive. There is only one way to God for all those different people groups, and it's Jesus Christ. You have to be purchased by His blood. You have to believe that He died on the cross for you. You have to believe He's risen. You have to follow Him. As I reflect on this, I want to read another portion of Ephesians 2. Therefore, remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision which is made in the flesh by hands remember that you were at one time separated from Christ alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenant of promise having no hope and without God in the world but now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. Amen. You were once far off. You now are brought near, how? By the blood of Jesus Christ. He is the one who gives us that precious opportunity. He removes those preventions so that we can worship. He says, is there anything that prevents him from baptism? Not anymore. And he commanded the chariot to stop. They both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. Now this man seeks baptism, and it's appropriate. Baptism is the first personal act of worship and obedience for the believer. It's the personal identification that says, Jesus Christ has died for my sins and risen again. It's the personal testimony that Jesus Christ has washed my sin away and I now trust Him. It's a personal commitment that I'm going to be His disciple, which means I'm going to deny myself. I'm going to take up my cross. I'm going to follow Him. See, your baptism is important. It is a personal act of worship. And he now understands this means he's following Christ. So look to the last part of this passage, the commission, beginning in verse 39. And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuchs saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. Philip found himself at Azotus. As he passed through, he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea. The gospel seeps going. Philip gets moved somewhere else, and he's gonna keep preaching the gospel. We know from church history that the eunuch, he goes down to Ethiopia, he's rejoicing, and he also starts a church. He continues preaching the gospel. And what we see is God's will being done, because there's a good and holy God. As we close, conclude very briefly, I want to ask you today, what prevents you from the presence of God? that the same truth that this Ethiopian eunuch hears, the same truth we need to hear today, that there are things that prevent us. Oftentimes, it's our pride. We want to fix things before we come humbly and say, God, I need your help. Oftentimes, it's our lust. We love our sin. We love our desires, and we know they're contrary to God, and we don't want to give them up, so we are preventing ourselves. Sometimes it's fear. How much is God gonna change me? The answer's just enough. Sometimes it's fear, what will happen next? What prevents us from clinging to our sin and we're not clinging to Christ? So this morning as we conclude, We need to hear this wonderful story where God has pinpointed and focused on this one man and said, I'm going to send somebody to you. You're going to know who Jesus Christ is. You're not going to be prevented anymore. Brothers and sisters, if you're feeling prevented, now's the time to pray. What sins are preventing me from truly enjoying the presence of God and worship as I believe in Jesus Christ? If you're not a Christian, What is it that you are clinging to that keeps you from believing in Jesus Christ? Will you pray with me? Father, I pray that your Spirit would come, convict, convert, transform us, Almighty God. Help us to see the beauty of this gospel that opens up our way to love you, to know you, Because You've made Yourself known and You have shown us Your love. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.