Witness Pt. 15

A study into the book of Acts with Pastor Jesse Carr

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

My name is Jesse. I'm blessed to be the lead pastor here at Mud Creek. And so after I've talked to the kids, now I'm going to talk to the rest of us. So take your Bible if you would today, please, if you have a copy of God's Word, and find your place in the New Testament book of Acts. And we're going to be in Acts chapter number eight. Acts chapter number eight. We're studying the book of Acts together on Sunday mornings, and this is our 16th sermon through the book of Acts by my account. And we've got maybe 30 more to go. I hope to be able to finish up sometime around Thanksgiving, but we'll see what the Lord does. Acts chapter number eight. Acts chapter number eight. And we're going to begin reading in verse number 26. And this passage of Scripture records one of the most famous gospel conversations in the history of the Christian movement. And what I mean by gospel conversation is I mean a person who is a follower of Jesus is talking to somebody who is not a follower of Jesus about why that person should become a follower of Jesus. And at church, as believers, we love to talk about gospel conversations, don't we? We love to talk about sharing the gospel. We love to talk about evangelism. We love to talk about what we used to call soul winning. We love to talk about these kind of encounters here that we find here in Acts chapter number eight. But as much as we love to talk about having gospel conversations, we don't always do a good job of having gospel conversations, do we? We admire it when other people do it, but we lock up when we have to do it. Let me give you, for instance, let me confess my own faults to you for a moment. I think I've told you before that I really hate to fly. Y'all know that about me, right? And I don't thank you, Kyle. And I don't hate to fly. I want to be clear, I don't hate to fly because I'm afraid to die. I'm not worried that this metal tube full of jet fuel is going to fall six miles out of the sky and kill me with 300 strangers. That doesn't bother me at all. It's just that flying is uncomfortable. Flying is is aggravating. And the worst place in the world are airports. If our Roman Catholic friends are right about purgatory, it exists at the Atlanta airport. I know this for a fact. Alright? And every time you're in an airport, something goes wrong. It's better that it goes wrong in the airport than on the airplane, but it's something always goes wrong. For instance, Pastor David and I flew back from Mexico City just a few weeks ago from our quick mission trip there, and I was randomly selected by Mexican TSA or whatever they are for a more intensive security screening. Great. They took my pomade. I need that for my hair. I've got to have that to look handsome, and they took it from me. Because it was too many ounces to be on the airplane. But the worst thing about flying is that for however many hours you're on the plane, you get assigned a seat buddy, you know? Some stranger, and you've got to like basically sit on their lap because there's not enough room. When Pastor Kyle and I came back from London, God, in his providential sense of humor, determined that I would have a seat buddy that was as different from me as anybody on planet Earth. And there's a lot to this, and I'm not going to share. But he was very, very British. And he was very, to say this pastorally, he was very effeminate. Long manicured fingernails. He was wearing a kimono, I guess, some sort of shawl or wrap. And he was also wearing entirely too much jewelry for a man who's not a pirate. Alright? And I noticed these things when we sit on the plane. And I did what most any of us probably would have done. Put my headphones in, rolled my eyes, and ignored him for the rest of the flight. Except for when he had to make me get up so we could go to the bathroom. I ignored him. Now here I am. Pastor Kyle and I have been in London for a week to share the gospel with British people. And I'm sitting on one's lap. Elbow to elbow with him. And instead of taking an opportunity to even pray for him, I ignored him. Didn't share the gospel with him. As far as I know, I'll probably never see this gentleman again. And that's where we live, right? Often we go through life and instead of seeing the opportunities God gives us to share the gospel, we're so busy, we don't see the doors that are open in front of us. Sometimes when those doors are open, we slam them shut through our own prejudice or through our own ignorance or through our own disobedience. But on the other hand, there are some of you that are here this morning that perhaps you need a gospel conversation. You need to clearly hear what it means to know Jesus, who he is, and how he saves. And you've got questions that have never been answered. And I'm not going to pretend to answer all those today, but I do think there's something for all of us to learn from overhearing the gospel conversation that occurs here in Acts chapter number eight. And I think above all else, this passage of Scripture is designed to teach us that because everybody is somebody to Jesus, anybody can tell somebody about Jesus. Because everybody is somebody to Jesus, anybody can tell somebody about Jesus. Let's read Acts chapter 8 together. Acts 8, verse number 26. The Bible says, Now an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, Arise, go toward the south along the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. This is desert. So he arose and went. And behold, a man of Ethiopia, 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. He was returning. And sitting in his chariot, he was reading Isaiah the prophet. Then 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? And he said, How can I, unless someone guides me? And he asked Philip to come up and sit with him. The place in the scripture which he read was this. 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 would declare his generation? For his life is taken from the earth. So the eunuch answered Philip and said, I ask you, of whom does this prophet say this? Of himself or of some other man? Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning at this scripture, preached Jesus to him. 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? Then Philip said, If you believe with all your heart, you may. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. So he commanded the chariot to stand still. And both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and he baptized him. Now when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught Philip away, so that the eunuch saw him no more, and he went on his way rejoicing. But Philip was found at Azotos, and passing through he preached in all the cities till he came to Caesarea. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of the Lord abideth forever.

unknown 7:43

Amen.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

In Acts chapter number eight, the church is fulfilling the great commission that Jesus has given before he ascends in Acts chapter 1 and verse number 8. In those last words, Jesus gives his first priority for the church, say, When my spirit comes, you will receive power and you will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the uttermost parts of the earth. Jesus says that the Spirit of God will come and that the gospel will begin at Jerusalem and it will spread further and further. That was his intention, his design all along. But up until this point in Acts, the gospel message had basically been located and locked into the city of Jerusalem until the martyrdom of the first Christian martyr by the name of Stephen. And in the fallout and the panic that comes with Stephen's death, the church scatters. But while they may be scattering in fear, they're also scattering with the message of Jesus. And they take the message of Jesus to the city of Samaria that Jesus had said they would preach in back in Acts chapter number one. They're taking the gospel further, they're establishing new boundaries, going to a place where people look different and think different. And they're bringing new people into the kingdom of God. And at the center of all of that is a man by the name of Philip. Philip is the main character in the story that we've just read. And Philip is sort of the main actor in Acts chapter number eight. And Philip is a fascinating combination of very, very rare personality traits. On the one hand, we know that Philip was one of the original deacons in the early church, one of the first seven deacons. He's a humble servant who eagerly looks for opportunities to take care of widows, to take care of those that cannot repay him in any way. And yet, while he is a humble servant, willing to stay offstage and out of the limelight, he's also the kind of person who will step up and boldly preach the gospel to what the Bible calls a multitude. And yet, even though he's eager to preach the gospel to a multitude, when the apostles show up in Acts chapter number 8 to check in on the work in Samaria, he has no problem turning over the authority to those that have the proper leadership responsibility. He's humble, he's bold, he's a leader, he's a servant, he's willing to be out front, he's willing to step back. But most of all, Philip has been known in history by this nickname: Philip the Evangelist. Philip the Evangelist. Philip, the guy who shares the gospel, Philip the good news guy, Philip the gospel guy. I read about Philip, I want to be honest with you today and tell you, I want to be a gospel guy. I want you to be a gospel guy or girl. I want you to be a gospel man and a gospel woman, gospel boys and gospel girls, gospel workers and gospel students. How is it like Philip that we can come to have these sorts of gospel conversations the way that he does here in Acts chapter 8? Well, I want to show you today by bringing out three ingredients that I think are part of every genuine gospel conversation. And as we learn from these, I think we can learn the simple truth that this passage teaches us that because everybody is somebody to Jesus, anybody can tell somebody about Jesus. Here's the first ingredient. Peter has, or Philip has rather, open ears. He has open ears. Get this in your mind. Philip is preaching in the city of Samaria. The Bible says that multitudes of people are responding. The Bible says that they're casting out demons. The Bible says that they are healing the sick. The deacon Philip is preaching in such a way that an entire city, Acts 8.8, is experiencing joy. The city of Samaria is a better and a happier place to live because Philip is preaching Jesus there. This is a once in a lifetime, even once in history, miraculous work of God, and Philip is right at the center of it. And then all of a sudden, the Spirit of the Lord comes to Philip and says, Philip, you need to leave. And not only do I want you to leave, but Philip, I want you to go into the middle of nowhere. The Bible goes out of its way to tell us this is a desert. We call them deserts because they're deserted. Philip, I want you to leave this dynamic, exciting, eternal ministry where thousands of people are looking at you and looking to you, and I want you to walk away. Now, is that not backward to you? Wouldn't you think that the Spirit of God would have come to Philip and said, Philip, man, things are going so good. What you've got to do is you've got to build a building. And you've got to establish the Deacon Philip Family Worship Center. Alright? And what you've got to do, Philip, is you've got to hire you a media guy, and you've got to get some really dynamic Facebook reels, not too long, or people won't watch them because their brains have been rotted by TikTok. But you've got to go viral. You've got to capitalize on this. And man, you've got to get a blog, and you've got to get a website, and you've got to start selling your sermons, and you've got to start marketing yourself at somebody important. God doesn't do that. God seems to reward faithful obedience with a demotion. It's backward, isn't it? As a pastor, I would never give Philip, the preacher, the advice of leaving this impactful ministry to go out into the middle of nowhere. But the Lord does. And whether Philip thought about all this, whether he had concerns about it, whether he said, this is just crazy, we don't know. Because the Bible simply says, verse 27, that he arose and went. He obeyed. And I want to emphasize this to you today that before Philip ever opened his mouth to share the gospel with the Ethiopian eunuch, he had first opened his ears to the leading of the Holy Spirit. Here's what I mean by that. Gospel conversations begin not when we're talking to people that need Jesus about Jesus. Gospel conversations begin when we are listening to the Spirit of God who has commanded us to go into all the world and share the gospel with every creature. See, here's what happens to believers. We think about sharing the gospel. And some of you already know. You say, all right, Pastor Jesse, here's the sermon today. You're going to tell us the world's going to hell. It is. That Christians need to go share the gospel. Yeah, you do. And you know, I can't. Because look, here's the thing. I've never been to seminary, and you know, I don't understand all of the arguments for, you know, young earth creation, old earth creation. I really haven't studied carbon dating. And if I share the gospel, somebody knows a lot about science. They're going to tell me the age of the earth is five trillion years old, and they're just going to embarrass me, and I'm not going to be able to share the gospel. You know, really, I don't know anything about Joseph Smith, so if I have to go out and talk to a Mormon, I just can't do this. I know that's what you're thinking. And on top of it, you know, Pastor Jesse, I have to take a Xanax before we shake hands at church. I'm an introvert, I'm shy, I'm awkward, I'm weird. I can't even go out and talk to these people, much less go out and talk to some stranger about Jesus. I just can't. I just can't. This ain't for me. I know that's what you're thinking. Friends, I want you to hear me today. Sharing the gospel is not primarily a matter of personality. It is certainly not primarily a matter of education. It is not even primarily a matter of spiritual giftedness. It is firstly a matter of obedience. See, here's what I know about most of you. Most of you love Jesus very much. And you want to make a difference in somebody's life and make a difference in this world, and God bless you for it. And if an angel of the Lord spoke to you this afternoon and said, you need to go to Traveler's Rest. And at the speaks in Traveler's Rest, there's going to be a guy there driving a white pickup truck. And he's going to be wearing a Make America Great Again hat that hadn't had the oil chain since 2016 in it. And this guy needs Jesus, and you go tell him about Jesus. Most of you would be obedient enough to go if God told you, right? Four of us would be obedient enough to go if God told us. Here's what I want you to understand today. God has already told you. You don't need an angelic visitation. You don't need some miraculous intervention by the Spirit of God to know God has commanded you to go and share the gospel. But Jesus said it in Acts chapter 1 and verse number 8 to his followers, you will be my witnesses, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth, which is traveler's rest. That's what he meant. He told his disciples just before that in Matthew chapter 28 and verse number 19, he said, Go into all the world, because I have all authority, because I am Lord of Lords, because I am King of kings. You go in my name, and you make disciples of all men. You teach them to obey what I've commanded you, and you baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And Jesus says, as you go in that parking lot of the Sphinx at traveler's rest, I'll be right there with you. So Jesus says, because of his authority and because of his presence, we can go anywhere to anybody with the gospel. And see, Philip is just being obedient. I think that the reason he obeyed quickly is because he had submitted entirely. He had said, Lord, my life is yours. I will go wherever you send me. And when the Lord sent him a hundred miles away from where he was preaching to the middle of nowhere, he said, Lord, if that's where you want me, I'll go. God wants some of you here this morning to be faithful witnesses of him in the desert, dark, hard places of your family, in the deserted places where you work, where there's no gospel witness. Deserted place of a high school cafeteria. I know you're out of school for the year, but when you go back, he wants you to be that witness for him there. And it is a matter of obedience. Saying, Lord, here I am, I'll go. So he has open ears. That's the first ingredient of a gospel conversation. The second ingredient is this Philip has an open heart. He ends up, and this is probably a several days' trip, he ends up out in the desert, and in verse 27, he sees a man in his carriage or his chariot, and the spirit whispers to him in verse number 29, go near and overtake this chariot. So Philip ran to him. One of the lesser components of being a faithful evangelist is cardiovascular activity. And so Philip evidently is in good shape. Or maybe not, I don't know. Maybe he gets to the man in the chariot in verse number 30. Do you uh you understand what you're reading? I don't know. He overtook the chariot because he ran. There's an eagerness to his obedience, which I love in this passage. But the man that he has a conversation with is an enigmatic character in Scripture. The Bible tells us actually quite a bit of information about him in a very compact space. We know that he's Ethiopian. And that's probably not necessarily the modern country of Ethiopia, but a larger ancient empire, the ancient Nubian Empire that would have encompassed modern day Ethiopia, northern Africa, maybe parts of the Arabian Peninsula. We know that he's a eunuch. And what that means simply is that he'd been castrated most likely as a very, very young child, so that he would grow up and not be physically strong due to the absence of a lot of testosterone. That he would grow up and obviously not be able to have children, so that he could work safely around women in power and produce no illegitimate offspring that would be a rival to the reigning dynasties. It's an interesting man. We're told that he was the head of the treasury, very important government position, for the Candace of Ethiopia. Now, Candace to us is uh an 80s white girl name, but in the Bible it's actually a title, sort of like Caesar. And the Candace of Ethiopia was the ruling queen mother. Now, the ancient Ethiopians seemed to believe that their kings were so divine and so important that they couldn't be actually bothered with doing any real work. And so the women did all the work. Sound familiar, ladies? And the ruling queen mother of the ancient Ethiopian Empire was called the Candace. These are fierce warrior kings, these are strong African women, incredible people. And the eunuch worked closely with the Candace as the manager of her treasury. And the Bible says, most remarkably about this man, is that somehow, we don't know how, somehow he evidently had become convinced that the God of Israel, the God of the Jews, was the true God. Because the Bible says that he had come to the city of Jerusalem for the purpose of worship in verse number 27. That is, he's not just coming to see the temple of Jerusalem as a wonder of the world. He's not just sightseeing, he wants to worship, he wants to encounter God. And he makes this long, expensive journey to go meet God in Jerusalem. But there's a problem. And the problem is that as a eunuch, he would not have been welcomed into the assembly of the people of God. So the Old Testament law says in Deuteronomy chapter 23 and verse number one, that those who are emasculated by crushing or mutilation shall not enter the assembly of the Lord. Now we look at that and we think, well, why is that? And I don't, frankly, I don't have a good answer as to why the Lord put this in Scripture. I really don't. If you do, I would please, please tell me, I would love to hear it. My best guess is that we need to be reminded over and over again that the Old Testament law pushes all of us away. The Old Testament law regularly confronts us with the holiness of God. And it confronts us with our own sinful hearts and reminds us that none of us on our own can enter into the presence of God without somebody who is perfect and righteous to take us there. And so this eunuch travels all this way to Jerusalem. Different skin color than the majority population, different language. Because he was a eunuch, he would have been very effeminate. His body would have looked different, his voice would have been much higher, unable to grow facial hair, all of these kind of things, and he Finds rejection and he's pushed away. And I think in many ways the eunuch is a picture of so many of us in our lives who have been scarred to be pressed into whatever our idea of worldly success is. You understand that this eunuch was physically scarred. His body was mutilated so that he could achieve the highest levels of power in the Ethiopian government. And he had. This guy's over all the money. That's a good gig if you can get it. And yet at what cost? Now it's unlikely that he had any choice in this. This is probably a choice made for him by other powerful people when he was a child. But I want you to understand today that according to the Word of God, we live in a broken world. And this world that is broken breaks all of us in different ways. And that all of us have been broken trying to find success, trying to find our place. And many of us carry the scars, do we not? Not on our bodies as such, even though some may. Some of you might have came to church with bullet holes. I don't know. But we carry the scars in our souls. Think about how many of you are here today that can look back in your life and 30 years ago you sacrificed a relationship with your wife and sacrificed a relationship for your family just to pad a 401k or a stock portfolio. You know what that is? That's scarring and brokenness. We know what it's like to experience the scarring and brokenness that comes from people that pursue addiction for reasons they can't even untangle. I heard in Sunday school today some families in our church that are on the front lines of foster care, and they were talking about the repeated generational brokenness that is in our community and in our world. Why? Because we live in a broken world that is breaking us over and over again. Even for those of us, maybe like me, that grew up in church, but we're still broken, believing that we have a God that can never be pleased, and a God that can never be satisfied. Friends, we know what it's like to be broken, don't we? And yet somehow, Philip recognizes this. Now, I don't know how much he knew. He obviously knew he was Ethiopian. It's a dead giveaway. He obviously knew he was wealthy. He's not riding a mule, he's riding a chariot. He's obviously educated because he's reading. He's obviously somebody important. But if you read the conversation carefully, and I want you to do this, the conversation is half over before Philip ever says anything about Jesus. What is he doing instead? He's asking him questions. The first question he asks him, you can see it right in verse 30. Do you understand what you're reading? I see you're reading something there. At this point, Philip probably didn't know it was the scroll of Isaiah. Does this make any sense to you, man? Just can I help you understand it? And then the eunuch opens up. He said, Look, how can how can I? I can't understand this without somebody to help me here. And then he asks another question, verse number 34. Do you notice who's leading the conversation? It's a eunuch. And Philip is listening. The eunuch answered Philip and said, I ask you, who's he talking about himself? And then Philip opens up. The conversation is two-thirds over before Philip says anything of any spiritual benefit. And I want to emphasize that because I think some of us really don't do a great job of speaking up for Jesus because we don't do a good job of listening well for Jesus. Like we think gospel faithfulness is, you know, launching into a precanned gospel presentation. We think gospel faithfulness is, you know, throwing Bible verses at people that we don't like on Facebook. And yet do we listen to the brokenness in people's hearts? Do we know how to ask good questions? Do we hear them for who they are? Do we see them as people or do we see them as problems? Do we see them as people to be loved or problems to be solved? The book of Proverbs gives us a lot of wisdom in this. In Proverbs chapter 8, verse number 2, the word of God says, A fool has no delight in understanding, but in expressing his own heart. Solomon goes on in Proverbs chapter 8. Chapter 18, he says, that if we answer a matter before we really hear it, it's folly and shame to him. Just to jump into people's lives and to start launching out into proclamations and scripture verses without hearing them, also it's not going to be very effective. Why? Because before people are going to be receptive to you, telling them that Jesus loves them, they want to know that you love them. They want to know that you care about them. This eunuch had been rejected in Jerusalem, and yet now as he meets Philip, he says, Here's somebody that will listen to me. That has space for my questions. And so let me encourage you. Start asking good questions. You know, I could have done that on that airplane from London, right? I could have just said to that guy beside me, I could have said, Hey man, that's a great accent. Why are you coming to America? I could have said, you know, I'm a pastor and I've been in England sharing the gospel for the past week. Tell me about your religious beliefs. Or I could have asked him this one of the most powerful questions you can ever ask people is this. How can I pray for you? How can I pray for you? And you know what you'll find is you'll ask non-believers that question? You will find as often as not they will say to you, I don't know because I've never had anybody ask me that question. We live in a world where people are so far from God that they don't even know of anybody in their life that's regularly praying for them. But you can be. And as far as I'm concerned, the secret to really opening up gospel conversations is this. All you really have to do is get people to talk about themselves. Because it's everybody's favorite subject. And so if you can just say, hey, tell me your entire life story in five minutes, you know what they're gonna start doing? They're gonna start talking about themselves. And when they start talking about themselves, you're gonna hear two things. You're gonna hear, well, you may hear more than two, but you're gonna hear at least two things. You're gonna hear about their hopes and their dreams, and y'all only Jesus can truly fulfill those, and you're gonna hear about their brokenness and pain, that in some way is a consequence of sin that only Jesus can fix. So learn to talk to people with an open heart. Third, obviously, if you're gonna have a gospel conversation, you've got to actually say something. You've got to have an open mouth. And so it just so happened that the Ethiopian eunuch is reading what is probably the most direct, the most clear prophecy about the work of the Messiah and the person of Jesus in all the Old Testament. Now, I don't know this for a fact, but here's what I think happened. I think the eunuch goes to Jerusalem to worship. I think he's stonewalled because of the laws prohibiting Gentiles and eunuchs from worshiping. And I think he wants to buy a scroll of the Bible as a souvenir. And so the book of Isaiah would typically be the largest of the Old Testament scrolls. And so I think he goes to a scroll shop or whatever to commemorate his trip. I'm a bookstore, I don't know what it would have been. Souvenirs, you know. And he buys the biggest one and a half. And as he travels in his chariot, he's just reading. And he comes to this place in Isaiah chapter 53. And then while he's reading it, this guy pops up and says, Man, do you understand what you're reading? And then instead of shooting him, he says, No, how can I? Help me. And what is he reading? He's reading from Isaiah 53. And here's what he reads the verses right before the ones quoted in Acts chapter 8. Talking about a Messiah who was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with the grief. The author says, and we hid, as it were, our faces from him, because he was despised and we did not esteem him. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. And he goes on to read that this Messiah, carrying grief and carrying suffering, that he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. Yes, all we like sheep have gone astray. We've turned everyone to his own way. But the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. And he's reading through this and he's processing, knowing that he's just been rejected, knowing that he carries the shame of not being what the people in Jerusalem thought he ought to have been, knowing that he has literally been scarred by the path that he's been on in his life. And yet here he reads about a promised Savior who would be scarred for scarred people. Now he reads about a Savior who does not push us away in our grief, but who steps into our grief, steps into our suffering, steps into our shame, and he says, Who is this person? Who is this? I need to know him. And Philip says, I know exactly who he is. And so Philip starts to connect the dots for him. And he starts right there in Isaiah chapter 53 and says, I know the Savior who was the man of sorrows. I know the Savior who was acquainted with grief. I know the one who heals us by our stripes. His name is Jesus, and that scroll you're reading tells you everything that you need to know about him. Friends, I want to say to you two things. Number one, if you've come into Mud Creek Baptist Church this morning and you feel in some way like the Ethiopian eunuch carrying scars and shame and grief and pain, the good news that Isaiah preached, the good news that Philip shared is that our Savior carries the scars that you should carry and that you have carried, and he's done it so that you can be made whole. He was not afraid of your grief and he was not put off by your shame, but he came to enter into it, to die in your place and to give you eternal life. But I also want to say to those of us that have heard that so many times were bored by hearing it. There's a world out here that's never heard it. And we need to be the ones that faithfully go and share it. But how do we do it? I mean, it's great to theorize, right? Like, go talk to somebody about Jesus. But how do you do it? Well, you really can't do any better than Philip did. Now, in all candor, all right? I'm a Christian too. I'm a normal Christian. And this ain't fair. I've never had a moment in my life where I walked up on somebody in the back of their truck reading from Isaiah 53, saying, What is this about? Can you help me? Well, sure. This is not fair, okay? But in principle, Philip does what we all need to be able to do, and that is, we need to be able to take people to Scripture and talk about Jesus. That's it. Because it's the Word of God and the Word of the Gospel that has the power to change life, not merely our presentation of it. And so, there's a couple things on my heart as a pastor I hope we're able to do in Mud Creek in the very, very near future. One of them is I'm looking at a date to give us maybe three or four hours, to give us what I'm gonna call an evangelism boot camp. And that is, if in three or four hours, we could just somehow beat you over to hell with a Bible so that you're able to leave like two or three verses. And you could just go talk to people about Jesus. We want to be able to do that. And so keep a lookout for that. We're also going to be, very, very soon, we're also going to be memorizing scripture together as a church. Isn't that exciting? Yes, it is. And part of those scriptures we're going to memorize are the scriptures that you will need to be able to effectively share the gospel. Like Romans 3.9, Romans 3.23, Romans 6.23, John 3.16. Even if you don't know anything from the Bible other than John 3.16, you can share the gospel from that passage. Another tip I would give you is that when you come to church and you hear the preaching of the Word of God, listen evangelistically. And what I mean is be listening for something that God may have for you to share with somebody else. Like you've heard from Isaiah chapter 53 today. You go to work tomorrow. What'd you do this weekend? Well, I went to church and I heard this story about two guys talking about Isaiah chapter 53. What's Isaiah 53? Like, I don't know if I can make it easier for you, honestly. So, friends, we have the great responsibility and privilege of having gospel conversations. Now, can I show you something that I hope just absolutely blows your mind? The Ethiopian eunuch is reading from Isaiah chapter 53. This is great messianic prophecy, 700 years before Jesus, about a suffering servant who will save his people by being scarred in their place. But it's not far from Isaiah chapter 56. And in Isaiah chapter 56, we read this. This would have been in the scroll. I don't know if he'd read it yet or not. If he kept reading, he got here. Thus says the Lord keep justice and do righteousness. For my salvation is about to come. My righteousness to be revealed. Blessed is the man who does this, and the son of man who lays hold on it, who keeps from defiling the Sabbath, and keeps his hand from doing any evil. Do not let the son of the foreigner, who has joined himself to the Lord, speak, saying, The Lord has utterly separated me from his people. Nor let the eunuch say, Here I am, a dry tree. For thus saith the Lord, to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbath and choose what pleases me and hold fast my covenant, even to them I will give in my house and within my walls a place and a name better than that of sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. The Lord promised through Isaiah to foreigners and to eunuchs who were not able to have children, that even though you may not have a family tree, the Lord said, I'll graft you into a family tree that'll last forever. I'll give you a name that will endure, I will offer you eternal life. And I wonder if this eunuch is reading Isaiah 53 and reading Isaiah 56 and wondering, how can this be? How can I, a eunuch, be welcomed in? How can I, a foreigner, be welcomed in? Who is it that is going to take me into the presence of God? And then it's Philip, the faithful evangelist, who shares that message with him. What I'm saying is, friends, that those of us that know Jesus, we live between Isaiah 53 and Isaiah 56. We live between the coming of Jesus, the suffering servant, and the fullness of eternal salvation as he welcomes people from all nations to himself. And who has the responsibility to tell people that? You do. That's what Philip's doing here. He's walking between Isaiah 53 and Isaiah 56 to share somebody who needs it. Man, listen, Jesus has a place for you. And so they come to some water. I don't know if the conversation went to baptism. It's possible that the eunuch had seen some Christian baptisms. Remember, he's in Jerusalem while the church is growing. We don't know. He asks, man, can I just go ahead and be baptized? And Philip responds with, Well, if you believe with all your heart, you may. Then he answers, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Now I know that some of your modern translations do not have Acts chapter 8 and verse number 37. And you're wondering, why is that verse not in my Bible? Why do I go from 36 to 38? I can count. I know there should be a 37 between 36 and 38. There are actually historical and textual reasons that that verse may not be in your translations. And if you want to know what those are, you should be coming on Wednesday nights because that's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about on Wednesday nights. So there you go. Regardless. The eunuch's ready to be baptized? Philip's ready to baptize him. I love that the Bible says Philip went down in the water with him. You know what that means? That means they're baptizing this guy. It's not just a dunking him, alright? And then the weirdest thing happens, basically, Philip just gets raptured away. Literally, he's caught up, he's seized, he's grabbed, and he's put somewhere else. And what does he do? He just keeps preaching wherever he's at. And then the eunuch goes on his way back to Ethiopia rejoicing. God who had brought joy to the city of Samaritans now brings joy to an Ethiopian eunuch through the faithfulness of one man to have a gospel conversation. You do not know today, child of God, how you might be the agent of joy for somebody's life who needs Jesus. You don't know. But you can be obedient, you can listen well, and you can speak up and share the gospel with people. And so, for those of you that are here today that do know Jesus as your Savior, you know you need to be obedient to talk about Him, right? I don't think this sermon blindsided any of us this morning. I get that. It's not exactly profound, it's not exactly a new revelation or insight. We need to be faithful in sharing the gospel. Many of us maybe lack the boldness necessary. Most of us like the obedience necessary. Maybe you just need to come this morning and say, Lord, you know what? I probably don't have the answers to every question. I may never have the answers to every question. I may not know how to settle every debate or win every argument, but Lord, I want to be obedient. And Lord, make me obedient. Make me obedient. And Lord, I'll do my best to go. I promise you, He'll answer that prayer. In fact, I would dare you today to start praying this every day of your life. Ask God for three things. One, Lord, give me today an opportunity to share the gospel. Give me an open door. Number two, Lord, give me the wisdom to see that open door for what it is. And three, give me the boldness to walk through it. I dare you to come to this altar and pray that. But honestly, today, for those of us that do know the Lord, the invitation's really not so much you need to come here and pray about it, is it? Obedience today looks less like coming to an altar and more like going to chase down a chariot. That's the job, is to go and run them down for the glory of God. But I also know that there are some of you that are probably here today that you're like this eunuch. You've got questions, and you don't have a lot of answers. Trying to figure this God thing out, this church thing out, this Jesus thing out, this Christianity thing out. Maybe you would even call yourself a Christian. Maybe at one point in your life you would have, but now you're not so sure, and you're just uncertain and unsteady, unsettled in some of these big questions. Well, here's what I would say to you. Do today. The best thing you can do, if that's you today, is do what the eunuch did. Let's read the Bible. Read the Bible. And as you have questions, ask a Christian friend about those questions. And trust that they can provide answers. Or if you've been reading the Bible and you have a lot of questions and you would like some help, you can come see me. And here's what we'll do: we'll go get coffee, we'll take our Bibles, and we'll talk. Because I am an over-caffeinated Bible nerd. That's my brand. And I would love to talk about the Bible with you. So set up a time and we'll do that. I mean that sincerely. And I say that on behalf of our entire pastoral staff. They would love to hear from your questions. They would love to listen to your questions, not to give you canned answers, but to hear your heart and how Jesus can help you. Or maybe you're further down that road this morning. Maybe you know that Jesus is the one who suffered for you. And you know that three days after he died for you, he rose again. And you know that he's calling you to eternal life. Well, I would invite you today to step forward and speak to one of our pastors, and we would love to tell you what it looks like to take that step of baptism. And we would love to do that in a few weeks when we have baptism on July 12th. But as we stand together today, as we prepare for our hymn of invitation, I want to challenge you to be obedient. Philip was. When it seemed crazy. Right now, obedience may seem or feel crazy to you, but I do know this. You will never regret obedience. And the people in your life who need you to be obedient will never regret your obeying Jesus.