The Spirit & The Father (Elder Joe Story, 06/18/22)

Father's Day. In a world where so many fathers don't seem to be around, we can be grateful

for those who are. And I'm very appreciative of fathers who take their position as fathers

seriously. We need more of them. Turn with me to Acts chapter 8. Today we're going to

Acts 8 · chapter mention

look at a very special father. A man who, well I don't know if you thought much about

him. Get a little bit of a background. Stephen, one of the seven, are often called deacons.

The Bible just refers to them as the seven. And Stephen, one of those seven, had just

been stoned to death. And a persecution broke out against the church. And people were being

hauled off to prison for being Christians. By the way, did you know people are being

hauled off to prison today for being Christians in some places? Did you know that there are

people today, just as in the days when Stephen was stoned, there are people who are being

killed for their faith? Did you know that there are some places on earth that it's

very dangerous to be a Christian? It really is. Anyway, Saul, who was one of the leaders

in the martyrdom of Stephen, at that time a great persecution arose against the church.

Acts chapter 8 verse 1. And they were all scattered throughout in the regions of Judea

Acts 8:1

and Samaria except the apostles. And devout men carried Stephen to his burial and made

great lamentation over him. This was a time of great difficulty for the church. And as

I said, it's happening today. Some places it's worse than others and some places that

it was worse, it's better and some, you know, it's up and down. Only the apostles, and I

don't know how the apostles escaped staying in Jerusalem, but they did. And they were

all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria except the apostles. It's interesting

because it says that Saul, he made havoc of the church entering every house, dragging

off men and women committing them to prison. Now, what is interesting to me is that people,

Christian people were scattered everywhere and verse 4 says, therefore those who were

scattered went everywhere doing what? Preaching the word. Now that's an amazing picture. These

are people who are running for their lives but they can't keep their mouths shut when

it comes to Jesus. They can't stop talking about him and what he's done for them. And

it was time, if you will look in Daniel chapter 9, which we're not going to go to, but you

Daniel 9 · chapter mention

will find that the time when Jesus was to begin his ministry had been foretold to the

year. Did you know that? Did you know? And I think most of you do, that the time of his

crucifixion was told to the year. Did you know that? It's exciting. And the time when

God's probation on his Israelite people was also foretold. And sure enough, we see the

gospel is no longer just going to the Jews in Jerusalem. It's going everywhere. And

by the way, I think it's going just about everywhere today. They tell me over at Jesus

for Asia that there are 6,000 people groups in the world today that as far as we know

have not been reached with the gospel. Pardon? All we need is 6,000 missionaries, one to

go to each place. Wouldn't that take care of it in a hurry? Well, God has ways of reaching

people that we have never heard of or thought of. And I have found over the years that we

should not sell him short. God's arm is not any shorter than it ever was. I'll never forget

sitting at a table potluck dinner after the morning service in Indonesia. It was the day

when we had our big baptism, it was a mission trip. We were doing evangelism there. I had

a church I was doing evangelism in. My wife had a church she was doing evangelism in.

And there were several other sites where evangelism was going on. And that afternoon we had a

big baptism from all the sites in the hotel swimming pool where we were staying. That

was exciting. But during lunch we sat across the table from a young man who was telling

us how he had grown up being taught how to kidnap and assault young Christian women.

He told us the things that he had been taught and then he told us how one night he had a

dream. Jesus appeared to him in a dream and told him that he needed to go to the seventh

day Adventist and he needed to find out what things were really all about. And I don't

remember the specifics of the dream but that young man today is a seventh day Adventist

evangelist. That young man today has been winning souls for Jesus including some of

his family members. I would like to give more details but you know we can look here in scripture

and see that God is well able to take care of the details. He scattered Christians out

of Jerusalem everywhere with the persecution. And one fellow by the name of Philip, not

Philip the disciple, you remember the apostles all stayed in Jerusalem. This is thought to

be Philip one of the seven just as Stephen was one of the seven. Philip went down to

the city of Samaria. In fact as we get into the story a little bit we find that he apparently

went to not just the city of Samaria, which city we're not sure, but he went down to Samaria

and he reached the whole province of Samaria. Things happened because the Holy Spirit was

with Philip. Notice the multitudes with one accord heeded the things spoken by Philip

hearing and seeing the miracles which he did for unclean spirits crying with a loud voice

came out of many who were possessed and many who were paralyzed and lame were healed and

there was great joy in that city. I don't know about you but when I read that I am

interested in the fact that when God's message comes to people and they find Jesus he can

fill their lives with joy. Now that's interesting. I know I had a church member one time who

was being badly persecuted in her home. She said oh I wish I could find the joy. Hey it's

there. It's there and what's interesting I go through the gospel and I find Jesus preaching

to the Samaritans. Oh that brings me to a very important point. Philip wasn't the first

one to go to Samaria was he with the gospel. Where had these people heard the gospel before?

They heard it from Jesus himself at least some of them had. John chapter 4 Jesus is

John 4 · chapter mention

sitting by a well. He's tired he's thirsty the disciples have gone into the nearby town

to buy food. Woman comes to get water you know the story and he asks her for a drink.

Now you could buy stuff from Samaritans if you were a Jew but you didn't ask for favors

and you didn't grant any right. We call that racism today and the Jews were very racist

and so were the Samaritans and you know the story. How is it that you're a Jew asking

me a Samaritan and a woman at that for water. You know the story. If you knew who it was

who was talking with you you would ask him and he would give you living water. And Jesus

goes on to present himself as the water of life to this woman. And before the story is

over she runs to the town and talks to the men because she apparently was a woman that

knew the men better than the women. And she tells them come to come out and see the man

that told me everything I have ever done. Is not this the Messiah and they went. And

afterwards they said now we believe not because of what you said because we have heard him

ourselves and there was great joy. I get excited about what God does for us with his Holy Spirit.

We hear today a lot of people talking about the Holy Spirit in the religious world. There's

different claims made for him. Mostly we hear about power. We hear about the gifts of the

Spirit and I believe in the gifts of the Spirit. We hear about all kinds of things. But I'd

like to suggest that when the Holy Spirit fills our lives he brings joy. Deep down joy.

That even when the world about us is coming apart. When people are unhappy and crying

and everything else. In Jesus there is joy through his Holy Spirit. And in Samaria that's

what happened. It seemed like everybody was being converted. People were happy. They were

proclaiming. People would hear and they would share it with their friends. Even Simon Magus

the sorcerer who had been kind of a religious leader amongst the Samaritans noted for his

magic. He accepted the gospel. Now he had some problems. I don't want to go into all

of that. But it tells us that word got back to the apostles in Jerusalem and guess who

came down to get in on the program. And at that point the people were being converted.

They were filled with joy. They were seeing the miracles that Philip was doing. And down

come Peter and John to Samaria. By the way, remember how John loved Samaritans? Lord shall

we call fire down from heaven on these people like Elijah did. Remember that little story?

It tells us about it. Now Peter and John come down to preach a more full gospel to lay their

hands on people and give them the gift of the Holy Spirit. I don't know about you but

I think this is an exciting story. Right? Yeah. And if you've ever seen the Holy Spirit

at work healing, it doesn't seem like we see a lot of it but we do see it. And it's

exciting when it happens. And when these people saw the Holy Spirit at work they were filled

with joy all the more because demons were being cast out. They would make a loud cry

and leave their victims and the victims would be converted. The lame were walking. The blind

were seeing. A little bit hard on the ophthalmology business but it worked. People were seeing.

Little bit hard on orthopedics there. But who made us? It is he who has made us and

not we ourselves. Little hard for us to remember that sometimes but the one that made us can

heal and he can give strength. And one of these days we're told he's going to take

old dusty bones and give them life again. Did you know that? I'm sure you did. You've

heard it before. So it's not a big thing for him to heal. Maybe it's a big thing for

us to accept it sometimes. I don't know. But one of the gifts, there's a number of

gifts of the Spirit that are mentioned. That's just one of them. Anyway, Philip has done

a wonderful thing down there. And then we go on later on in the chapter. The Lord tells

him the angel of the Lord, by the way, who's the angel of the Lord? Jesus. Remember Jacob

fought with an angel by the brook Jabok and he finally discovered it was the angel of

the Lord when the angel just touched his hip and threw it out of joint. Boy, that's quite

a touch. Try that one. That's the opposite of healing. The angel of the Lord appeared

to Gideon. The angel of the Lord appeared to Manoah and his wife. The angel of the Lord

when Jacob had finished wrestling with him, he said, I have wrestled with God and lived.

The angel of the Lord spoke to Philip saying, arise and go toward the south along the road

which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. This is desert. 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 and had come to Jerusalem to worship, 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. I like the way the spirit was able to direct

him. You know the spirit is still able to direct. He directs, doesn't always speak

to us directly, does he? But he does give us direction through circumstances and some,

once in a while he speaks. Philip ran to him and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah and

said, do you understand what you're 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, and you know this, he was led as a sheep to the slaughter and as a lamb

before its shears is dumb. So I'm sorry. This is a, in this version it says silent. So he

opened not his mouth to his humiliation, in his humiliation his justice was taken away

and who will declare his generation for his life is taken from the earth. Some of us have

learned those passages about the suffering Messiah written in Isaiah 53, back over 700

years before Jesus was ever born. Isn't that amazing? How God could look down in the future

and say, this is what's going to happen to the Messiah. And here's this man, this Ethiopian,

now he's obviously a Jew, he's been to Jerusalem, been there to worship and so he's, he's a

Jewish Ethiopian, there's still plenty of Jewish Ethiopians today. Did you know that?

And many of them will, and actually there's Ethiopian Christians who say that Christianity

first, they trace Christianity and Ethiopia back to this man. Very interesting. And so

with the Holy Spirit guiding him, our friend Philip explains how the Messiah came, how

he was rejected, how he bore our sins and was nailed to a cross and how he arose the

third day. And this Ethiopian, and they got to the point, you know, a chariot, how fast

does a horse push and carry a chariot along? They don't use chariots anymore. I've been

in places where they have wagons. In our hotel in Egypt they had a chariot, we were there

during December and they had a chariot down in the lobby with some plastic horses pulling

it and they had a Santa Claus in the chariot. It's kind of interesting. But here's this

man and Philip riding along. They've covered who the Messiah was, how he died for our sins,

they've talked about baptism and they come across a pool of water and the man says, here's

water, what's to keep me from being baptized? You know, you're here, you can baptize me,

can't you? Yeah. And so they go into the pool and they come out and then the Holy Spirit

does something that I don't read about anywhere in scripture other than here. It says he caught

Philip away. I don't know what that was like. All I know is that he showed up 20 miles away

and he didn't walk that 20 miles, the Holy Spirit transported him there. And Philip,

well he's known as the evangelist, after all, look what he did in Samaria. Look what he

did with the Ethiopian eunuch. To read the story of Philip is for me to get very excited

about what the Holy Spirit can do. It's not the last mention of Philip in Acts, by the

way. If you go to chapter 21, if you're looking in your Bible, let's look at Acts chapter

Acts 21 · chapter mention

21. Paul is coming back from a missionary trip, his third one. He's headed for Jerusalem

where he expects to run into, you guessed it, persecution. But he stops and spends a little

time in the home of Philip. Verse 8, on the next day we who were Paul's companions departed

and came to Caesarea and entered the house of Philip, the evangelist. We've met that

guy haven't we? Who was one of the seven and stayed with him. Now get this. This is one

of the most, well I find it a very interesting verse. I wish I had a whole lot more details.

Now this man had four virgin daughters who prophesied. Did the apostle Peter have a wife?

Bible says he does. Paul says, yeah, Paul says he has as much a right to haul around

a wife with him as Cephas and the other apostles. So yeah, we know Peter was married. What about

his children? Did he have any kids? I don't know. I see puzzled looks because you don't

know. The Bible doesn't tell us. Was Paul married? The apostle Paul. Well when he wrote

first Corinthians chapter 7 he obviously was not. Had he been married before? Well we know

1 Corinthians 7 · chapter mention

he was a member of the Sanhedrin and one of the rules for belonging to the Sanhedrin was

you had to be married. So he probably was at one point. What happened to his wife? We

have no idea. The Bible does not even mention her. Did he have children? I have my doubts.

We don't know. How about the other disciples? Do we know anything about any of the twelve

apostles' children? If they had any. We don't know. Do we know anything about the children

of the seven? Did Stephen had children? We don't know. How about Nicholas or any of the

others? We don't know. Children are rarely mentioned unless they're in a royal line or

something which reminds me. You can go through the kings of the Old Testament. Have you ever

looked at some of the stories of those kings? Some of them were good men. They might have

had some problems but they were good men. Right? King David? King Saul was not that

great a guy but he had an awfully fine son, didn't he? Jonathan? Yeah. Stop and think

about it. Then there were some others. How about Hezekiah? Was he a good man? How about

his son who followed him on the throne, Manasseh? He was about as bad as they get. How about

Jehoshaphat? Was he a good man? Wonderful man. What about his son who reigned after

him? Very wicked. You go down the list. A good man might have a good son. A good son

would have a son who would turn out to be a good son who would have a son who was terribly

wicked. Have you ever wondered about that? What went wrong? And by the way, I would like

to point out that with the best of parents, some children grow up and they make their

own decisions, right? There comes a point where you just can't really hold parents

responsible. But I have thought about it. Who raised these little princelings in the

Old Testament? Dad was busy with the affairs of state, right? Conducting wars, taking care

of all kinds of things that had to be taken care of by a king. Well, mom might have a

little more input. And were moms chosen because they would be good mothers? Maybe sometimes,

they were just pretty women. And my guess is a lot of them, in fact the Bible mentions

it with Ahab's children that they had governors and people who raised their children for them.

And all of that made a difference. And it still does make a difference. Growing up,

I noticed that it was proverbial that preacher's children had problems. As a preacher, that's

scary. But it's true. Dad's gone a lot. Dad's busy with the affairs of the church or maybe

two or three churches or four or five. I've had a district once where from the front door

of the parsonage where I lived to my father's church was 112 miles exactly. And there are

districts in the denomination that are bigger. Wyoming, there's a pastor there. In fact,

I assisted in that district for a while. He has five churches all the way from New Castle,

Wyoming to Sheridan. That's more than 200 miles. That's at least 150. He's got the

whole northeast corner of Wyoming in his district. Where do you find time for family when you're

constantly on the go? Well, I'll tell you, there was one man who managed with the help

of the Holy Spirit to work it out and his name was Philip. He had four daughters. Now,

did he have any other children? I don't know. But he had four daughters who had the gift

of prophecy and God doesn't just give that gift to everybody. I think it's an amazing

story how much is in those few verses he had. Look at it. Now, the man had four virgin daughters

who prophesied. That is so exciting. I wonder what their home life was like. Well, I've

heard it said the first thing you can do for your children is to marry a woman who would

be a good mother. And maybe it's the other way around too. Women, the best thing you

can do for your children is to find a good father. Unfortunately, we live in a society

where those items don't seem to enter into the choices very often. You know what I'm

saying? Oh, he loves me. Or she loves me. She's so pretty. You know, we could go on.

You know the kinds of things that people look at in our society. Emphasis on outward appearance.

The son. All kinds of things. What kind of a parent will that loved one be? Philip and

his wife, and we know nothing about her, but the two of them must have been dynamic in

the home because they had four daughters who had it together. Now, the daughters weren't

married. They didn't have children. I don't know if they ended up getting married. I don't

know if they were grandchildren that ever got involved. There's so much we don't know,

but we do know that all four daughters of Philip prophesied. And that tells me that

when Philip was home, there was a very special presence in that home. The Holy Spirit. And

four daughters had received the gift of prophecy. The Holy Spirit's presence in that home made

it a very special place. And daughters who almost never are mentioned in the New Testament

are four of them mentioned here. And by the way, did have you ever read the Book of Malachi?

Anybody here ever read the Book of Malachi? Not a very long book, but it's a very interesting

book. It says, by the way, it's my wife's favorite. It has one of her favorite promises

in there. Did you know that? It says in there that we will grow up as calves in the stall.

Isn't that a precious promise? There's others there. It says, Behold, I will send you Elijah

the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he will

turn the hearts of the fathers to the children. And the hearts of the children to their fathers,

lest I come and strike the earth with the curse. I don't want anyone to go out feeling

guilty if your home is not what you would like it to be. I want to make that very clear.

But I do want to make another thing clear, and that is we need to be praying for the

Holy Spirit. Not just that we might have the gifts of the Spirit, but that we might have

lives that are representative of our Heavenly Father. And we cannot make our children's

decisions for them. Right? They cannot make our decisions for us. Well, if we get old

enough and bad enough shape, they might be making decisions for us. But we can be praying

that God will fill our hearts. Men, I especially address this to you. I grew up in a society

that said religion was especially for women. Malachi talks about fathers. Philip was a

father who had four daughters who were filled with the Spirit. And as imperfect as we are,

and none of us are perfect, we need to be praying for the Holy Spirit to fill our lives.

Men, yes women too, but men, this is a message for you. This is Father's Day. You cannot

make mother be whatever you think she should be. You can pray for her. You cannot make

your children be, especially when they get older, you can't make them be what you think

they ought to be. But you can pray for them. And most of all, you can open your heart for

the presence of the Holy Spirit so that you can be the Father that God intends you to

be. And to the young men, to the children, such things are still in the future for you,

but if time lasts long enough, you too will probably be a parent. And you too can pray

that God will fill your life, that you can be to your children and to those about you

the person that God would have you to be. I understand we're all born with a bill of

goods, every one of us, but we can turn that over to God. We can. And our God can make

us new creatures in Christ Jesus. What about it?