He Shall Sprinkle the Nations

We'll be continuing in our study of the book of Acts, Acts chapter 8.

Acts 8 · chapter mention

If you want to follow along in your scriptures, pardon me, sermon title,

it says there in your bulletin, sermon title.

It's actually, it's my fault. I got it to the bulletin person too late.

It should be, he shall sprinkle the nations.

And I'll tie that together as we get to the end and look at the Ethiopian eunuch.

We'll be reading verses 4 through 40, so let's stand together in honor of God's Word.

Hear now, and do give attention because this is God's holy and inspired Word.

Now those who were scattered went about preaching the Word.

Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ.

And the crowds with one accord paid attention to what was being said by Philip

when they heard them and saw the signs that he did.

For unclean spirits crying out with a loud voice came out of many who had them

had them and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed.

So there was much joy in that city.

But there was a man named Simon who had previously practiced magic in the city

and amazed the people of Samaria saying that he himself was somebody great,

that all paid attention to him from the least to the greatest saying,

this man is the power of God that is called great.

And they paid attention to him because he for a long time had amazed them with his magic.

But when they believed Philip, as he preached good news about the kingdom of

God in the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.

Even Simon himself believed. And after being baptized, he continued with Philip.

And seeing the signs and great miracles performed, he was amazed.

Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word

of God, they sent to them Peter and John, who came down and prayed for them,

that they might receive the Holy Spirit.

For he had not yet fallen on any of them for they had only been baptized in

the name of the Lord Jesus.

Then they laid hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit.

Now, when Simon saw the spirit was given through the laying on the apostles'

hands, he offered them money saying, give me this power also that anyone on

whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.

But Peter said to him, may your silver perish with you because you thought you

could obtain the gift of God with money.

You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God.

Repent, therefore, of this wickedness of yours, and pray that the Lord,

if possible, may change the intent of your heart, and that you may be forgiven.

For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity.

And Simon answered, Pray for me to the Lord, that nothing of what you have said may come upon me.

Now when they had testified and spoken of the word of the Lord,

they returned to Jerusalem preaching the gospel to many villages of the Samaritans.

Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, rise and go toward the south to the

road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.

This is a desert place. And he rose and went, and there was an Ethiopian,

a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians,

who was in charge of all her treasure.

He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning seated in his chariot,

and he was reading the prophet Isaiah.

And the spirit said to Philip, go over and join this chariot.

So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and said,

asked, Do you understand what you're reading?

And he said, How can I, unless I have someone who guides me?

And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this.

Like a sheep, he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer

is silent, so he opens not his mouth.

In his humiliation, justice was denied.

Who can describe this generation? for his life is taken away from the earth.

And the eunuch said to Philip, about whom I asked as the prophets say this,

about himself or somebody else?

And Philip opened his mouth and began with his scriptures. He told him the good news about Jesus.

And they were going along the road and they came to water and the eunuch said,

see here is water, what prevents me from being baptized?

And he commanded the chariot to stop and they both went down into the water,

Philip and the eunuch, and he was baptized.

And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip

away, and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing.

But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he passed through,

he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Samaria.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God. You can be seated.

Let's pray together. Heavenly Father,

we ask for your spirit to guide us this morning as we do word-to-word,

text-through-text, that we might understand it, and we might even,

as Philip explained, that we might see Jesus Christ at the center.

And we pray in his name. Amen.

So the gospel in Acts now is going to Samaria and to the Samaritans,

as promised in Acts chapter 1-8.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

Remember, the book of Acts is held together by the beginning,

the introduction, and following through from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the world.

It's exactly what we're going to see in marvelous and wonderful ways here as

we see not only the curse of the fall reversed, but also the promises of God

made through the prophet Isaiah fulfilled in our very presence.

I hope you're aware of that. When you're reading through these scriptures,

by the Spirit's work in our lives, I want the scriptures to come alive to us as we see these stories.

Stories, and especially as we see the stories plugged into the Old Testament,

and particularly when we see that the book of Acts has much to do with the establishment

and foundation of the church of Jesus Christ.

The church is central to this gospel. I know that in Acts, the book of Acts is a bit fluid.

You see sometimes, you know, Philip is a deacon, and Philip is also preaching,

and Philip, it's a bit fluid. You'll see miracle signs, wonders,

and tongues that we don't experience today.

And the book of Acts, by the way, is the favorite place to go for our Pentecostal

brothers who love that fluidity. They love those things.

But as we move through the book of Acts, be aware that the church is forming.

Remember, the office of deacon was created, and then eventually by Acts chapter

Acts 15 · chapter mention

15, we have churches with pastors and elders that are created,

and we have an organization and order to the church.

The churches are built on the apostles and their teaching.

Acts chapter 8 verse 14 says, Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that

Acts 8:14

Samaria had received the word of God, They sent to them Peter and John.

This is the apostolic commission, as it were, to establish the church in Samaria.

Who came down and prayed with them that they might receive the Holy Spirit,

for it had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in

the name of the Lord Jesus. This word that they use here, that Luke uses,

received in verse 14, is a pretty important word. We've seen it before.

It doesn't just mean that, oh, look, Peter and John, let's welcome them.

It's a word that means that the Samaritans accepted and received with submission.

The Greek words seem to indicate to readily receive information and to regard it as true.

But in the context of the apostles, it has a kind of technical expression we've already seen.

Acts chapter 241, it says, so those who received, same word,

it's a different form of it, but same root word, those who received his word

were baptized and they were added to the souls.

This word is related to the idea of coming to believe something that is true,

and then to respond accordingly with some emphasis on the source.

That gets us back to last week when I said the gospel was preached,

keruso is the Greek word, with the kerygma, the body or substance of doctrine.

The church is founded on the doctrine of the apostles. Doctrine is important to a church.

Doctrine is what founds the church. And these people are receiving the apostles

and their doctrine and their authority and their teaching from God.

And Peter is acting as an apostolic representative. He's not the first pope,

but we do need to acknowledge he does have a great standing in this book as

the head or representative of the apostles, which shows us that the church is

now growing and being established in a formal orderly way.

Churches aren't just established because we wanted to get one going here and

a couple of guys in their basement or a house church leader decides,

I'm just going to start a church.

You'll notice that churches are started, ordered, formed, and founded on the

apostles and their teaching.

That's why in our creed, Sunday by Sunday, we say that the church which is holy,

Catholic, and apostolic.

Still, today, it needs to be apostolic. Now, what most people mean when they

put the word apostolic on their sign is not what we see in the book of Acts.

I'll go over that when I make some connection, sadly, to that movement and Simon

Magus or Simon Magus himself.

So this is the church being established on the apostles by the apostles and their authority.

And as the church is established here, just like it was earlier,

you have two examples of two people who receive this differently.

And these examples like Ananias and Sapphira versus Barnabas. Remember that.

Barnabas said, I sow all my land. I bring it. I give it to the Lord.

I give up everything I have to these apostles and to Christ, and he's blessed.

Then Ananias and Sapphira seek to hold some back, and they're literally killed.

Two people receiving the work, following the work of Jesus, but very differently.

Here in our story, we have two men that are talked about.

It's a rather larger section than I've been going through. Maybe some of you are glad about that.

I don't know, but we're moving through almost an entire chapter to look at these two men.

You have Simon Magus, and you have the Ethiopian eunuch.

And what seems to be at stake here is an inheritance that they will or will

not receive. An inheritance.

Luke uses the word portion when Peter is talking about this.

When Peter rebukes him, he says, you're going to have no portion,

no lot. And the word there could be even translated, no inheritance.

What is this inheritance? Well, the inheritance of which Peter is speaking is

the inheritance that was promised to our father Abraham.

And I emphasize that, and I don't want to spend, maybe we'll do a whole Sunday

school series one day on dispensational theology. I don't know.

But I can tell you, even today, I was getting up, getting ready.

I was really wanting to find out what's going on in Iran, how things are going.

And it doesn't take long, whether you're going on Facebook or whatever social

media, to find someone that says, aha, this is the fulfillment of the prophecies.

Iran is the last key piece. And when they fall, then God will give the whole

land to Israel. They'll rebuild the temple, hallelujah, rapture, et cetera.

I'm not going to mention whether this or that part of this war is just or legitimate

or not, but I can tell you one thing for fairly certain.

It has nothing to do with the promises to Abraham, okay? Because the promises

of Abraham are given to the church, okay?

Here in Galatians, it's interesting. Paul says in Galatians,

for in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith.

For as many as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

There is neither Jew nor Greek. What? Wait a minute.

Everything, you know, the record would have scratched and breaks would have,

everything comes to a halt here. Paul said something out loud that was never to be said by a Jew.

There's in Christ no distinction between Jew or Greek. That is a radical statement.

And he goes on further to say why that is. Well, there's neither Jew nor Greek,

slave nor free, male nor female, for we are all one in Christ.

Listen carefully. And if you are Christ, you are Abraham's offspring and heirs to the promise.

Don't know if you've been listening recently, but many high profile people have

been still claiming that Israel has a legitimate God-given right to that particular

strip of land because God gave it to them through Abraham.

They're ethnic descendants of Abraham, and therefore they have a right to the

land. But Paul's saying here that when Jesus Christ came, he opened up those

promises to the nations.

And if you are in Christ, you are Abraham's heir and heir to the promise.

What is the promise? The promise is that inheritance that Abraham was given

in types and shadowy forms in the form of the law and the prophets and the land

and the temple and so forth.

But it's changed. It's not a strip of land in the nation of Jerusalem today.

It's changed. we're going to see that change right here with the conversion

and reception of the Ethiopian eunuch, a radical thing that happens that could

not have happened before this, that shows us that the inheritance is not an ethnic thing.

It's not an ethnic claim back to the descendants of Abraham.

It's a spiritual promise to all those who are children of Abraham.

And remember, Abraham was going to be the father of what? Many nations.

Amen. That's us. All right. Well, let's look at those two people.

Again, I can't resist weaving that in there because we've got to start understanding

what Acts is doing to break down the barriers between Jew and Greek.

It was the most significant ethnic issue in the whole of the New Testament.

We oftentimes gloss over it because we have Israel on the shelf waiting for

some future fulfillment.

But in the New Testament, you see that Israel is the church.

The church fulfills the promise.

We're not saying the church replaces Israel temporarily until Israel can come

back, what we're saying is the promises, as Paul said, is to the church through

Israel, and the church has fulfilled the promises to Israel.

All right, let's look at these two men.

I can't, I've got to, we've got to lay those foundations slowly by slowly so

that by the time we get to the end of Acts, we're like, oh, well,

yes, of course, those promises were not ever really about a strip of land,

but about the Messiah who was to come.

Our first man in the story is Simon Magus. The man Simon is recognized for his

role in the early church as the father, they called him.

I think it was Justin Martyr, maybe, who called him the father of all heretics.

So he's, in other words, bad. You've got that. He's bad. You'll see Ethiopian

eunuch, good, Simon, bad.

Pretty obvious. And in fact, it's important to pay attention to biblical stories.

You'll notice in biblical stories that characters aren't described in very much

detail unless those details are important to us.

So when you're reading a biblical narrative, you know, you see,

I remember it always amused my boys when we were reading through the book of

Judges that Eglon the king was fat. They love that story.

Obese. And you think, why does God say he's fat?

So fat, in fact, that when Ehud stabbed him, which my boys also love because

they're boys, but stabbed him in the belly, the fat fell over the handle. It's like, oh, gross.

Why is he described as fat? He's bad. Okay. He's lazy.

He's a bad character. And so in the Bible, when you see character descriptions

of certain people who pay attention, we see a pretty elaborate description of Simon Magus.

He's a popular guy. He wants to be popular. He wants his identity to be famous

and well-known. He wants power. He wants influence. He wants money.

And Simon, with selfish motives, actually hoped through greater magical power

with these gifts, these apostolic gifts, to use these gifts to bring to himself

fame and influence and money and power.

And Peter, when Peter answers the question, it's not translated really as powerfully

in your English versions as what he says.

Peter says in Acts 8.20, he said, May your silver perish with you.

And that's not a nice thing to say, but it doesn't seem it doesn't seem to have

the kind of elevated curse level.

This is actually an anathema, a curse, a damnation, as it were, upon Simon.

Peter's denunciation, I translated, this is the Charles Jackson,

I would translate it, Peter said to him, may your silver together with you be destroyed.

And it's a powerful way of talking about destruction. It's like destroyed unto perdition.

One author said that he translated it rather loosely, may you and your money go to hell.

Like that. And it's powerful. It's a little bit, it's a little bit crass,

but it captures the imagery here where Peter's denunciation is a curse.

This word that's used means to destroy or to cause to destruction of persons

or objects or institutions to ruin and to destroy them permanently.

In other words, this is no small matter, right? Bad guy, easy to see.

Peter says, may you and your silver be destroyed. He uses a rare kind of curse

language, the optative case and Greek, those of you who are into Greek, maybe a couple,

it's a futuristic sort of mood that tells us that this is what he hopes will happen.

Might you and your silver be destroyed unto perdition?

You and your money are cursed, and your way of thinking is cursed,

and your way of approach to this is cursed, and you're thinking about the gospel

is cursed. It's reverse. It's anathema.

The gospel can't be manipulated for personal gain.

The gospel can't be used for money. The gospel can't be used for influence and

the gospel can't be bought by money or fame or influence.

It's not the popular way to look at things.

Today you hear, I don't know, maybe some of you wear them. If you do,

you'll have to forgive me. But you see all these t-shirts, you know,

that say, try Jesus, but it's in the form of a Coca-Cola advertisement.

Maybe you've worn the shirt. Don't wear it around me.

But it's like this approach that the gospel is something that ministers peddle

to people as a cure-all, things that you can use to fix it.

Like, you know, if your money's down, try Jesus. If your marriage is falling,

try Jesus. Having trouble with the kids, try Jesus.

It's like he's NyQuil, you know, the sneezy stuffy head so you can rest medicine,

just covers everything.

Just there's Jesus. He's a remedy for you. That's not the way Jesus is presented,

by the way. You notice the apostles are not going around begging people like that.

Try Jesus. You might like him. Hey, what about this? They're like, repent.

It's very different, isn't it? Repent. All such theologies that teach that you

can peddle Jesus in such a way to get yourself money or influence or get people

into heaven easily are cursed theologies.

Now, I hope I don't go too far. I'm warning you in advance, but I was reading.

Sometimes when you're studying, you read a little bit too much and you get all fired up.

And as I saw this, my mind went directly to the development and creation of

the Pentecostal movement in America.

And I'm not saying that anyone who's Pentecostal is Simon Magus.

I'm not saying that. Did you hear that?

But the founders of the movement were Simon Magus. The founders of the movement

and the Azusa Street Revivals of 1906 to 1915, these men were peddling Jesus

and his gifts in order to gain money and power and influence.

The Azusa Street Revival, by most historians, is marked as the kind of the beginning

of the opening up of the Pentecostal movement in America.

Heretofore, yes, there had been scattered, quote, apostolic preachers and apostolic evangelists.

But after the Azusa Street Revival, it sparked actually a global Pentecostal movement.

Some guys, which I thought was funny, thought they could just go to China and

be a missionary and the Lord would give them the Holy Spirit gift to knowing Chinese.

But it wasn't the tongues they were thinking about. The tongues they were thinking

about was that gibberish.

They ended up leaving China. They couldn't learn the language of China.

So the tongues that they were peddling were not the biblical tongues that we

learned about in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

The Azusa Street revival was characterized by speaking of tongues rolling around in the spirit.

My dad used to call Pentecostals holy rollers.

I never knew exactly where that came from, but right here in the Azusa Street, they were rolling.

They would fall down into a trance and kick, and they were called holy rollers and holy kickers.

They did all kinds of things, screaming, shouting, speaking in tongues,

clapping, claiming to hear visions.

Seymour himself would go around the service and put a box over his head,

walking around claiming that inside the box, God was giving him visions and

prophecies of the Lord of the future ministry and the future of America.

Other prophetesses, other women came and preached.

And multiple numbers of predictions of the destruction of Los Angeles did not come true.

San Francisco had been recently ravaged by a bad earthquake and fire,

and so they were like, this is the end of the world. Typical stuff that you hear.

Wild meetings were characterized by this. One Los Angeles Times reporter said,

this is a bizarre new religious sect. He was right.

People are breathing strange utterances and mouthing a creed which it would

seem no sane mortal could understand.

These devotees of this weird doctrinal practice, the most fanatical rites,

and preach the wildest theories and work themselves into a state of mad excitement.

Maybe some of you came out of that. I've been to that. I've been to services

like that where you're sort of like everyone's working themselves into a mad

frenzy so that they're jumping, screaming, squealing, shouting,

laughing, whatever it is.

But the bizarre underbelly of this movement, not just the bad theology of all

of that, but the bizarre theology is that most of these men wanted fame,

fortune, power, and money.

And ironically, they wanted to use those gifts of tongues, healings,

and wild, excited meetings to get that empire and to build it.

Seymour had been a student of

Charles Parham until he was accused of child molesting and admitted to it.

He was sort of considered one of the fathers of Pentecostals. They'd push him aside.

Another great leader of the movement was a man named Alexander Dowie.

And Dowie, who also started, John Alexander Dowie, was a faith healer that immigrated

here to America and built an empire on his faith healing.

He had this idea that if you wanted to be healed, if you're dying of cancer

or something, you come to him and he would heal you.

But there's just one catch. You have to sell everything you have and give it to him.

He was happy to take the deed to your lands and property and so forth Many thousands

of people traveled from literally all over the world Alexander Dowie was called

at one time the richest man in the West,

By selling the gifts of healing and the wonders and the signs Ironically,

he had a stroke towards the end of his life that he couldn't heal.

And he shuffled off to Mexico privately so that no one would see that the healer

couldn't heal himself. Frauds all of them.

Frauds all of them. And the fraud and the bad theology was connected to this

Simon Magus approach to ministry that there could be one guy who rises up as

a celebrity pastor, which is also popular in our culture today.

The celebrity pastor model has driven the megachurches that have grown all over,

and thanks be to God, the megachurch model is now on rapid decline.

COVID put the bullet through the heart of most of it, but actually the massive

avalanche of failed ministries, these ministers who rise over the years,

Bill Hybels, James McDonald, Bruxy Kevy, Carl Lentz, Brian Houston, Mike Bickle.

I read about Mike Bickle, the founder of the International, not House of Pancakes,

International House of Prayer, built up a fabulous million, multimillion dollar

ministry only to find out that there's

scandal after scandal after scandal connected to this terrible life.

The church isn't given for celebrity pastors or for Pentecostals who want to

sell their gifts that don't even answer or don't even remedy the problem.

There's no inheritance for seeing the gospel as a way to get rich or get famous or build an empire.

That's not the church of Jesus Christ.

And so the next person that enters onto our scene is, it may seem odd to you.

It's not odd when you plug it into the prophecy of Isaiah, which we have to

think about. When you plug his appearance on the stage here of this story, it begins to make sense.

Now, an angel of the Lord says in Acts 28, 26, said to Philip,

rise and go towards the south to the road that goes from Jerusalem to Gaza.

This is a desert place. This would have been an old route to Gaza because the

Romans had built a new Gaza road.

In other words, God was saying, go out of your way down in the boondocks.

You know how those old roads are replaced by straight, better road,

but the old timers take the old road because they know it, which leads to nowhere.

It's out in the middle of nowhere.

God tells Philip, go out there and go for a reason. So this is a divinely appointed meeting.

Philip obeyed, went there in

verse 27. It says he rose and went and there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch.

Again, pay attention to the descriptions of both these different people.

He's Ethiopian. He's a eunuch. He's a court official of Candace,

the queen of the Ethiopians in charge of all her treasure a powerful rich man

but an Ethiopian and worst of all to his story a eunuch,

To be a eunuch meant that you had been emasculated. It was common in the courts,

many kingdoms, but Ethiopia in particular, to castrate the eunuchs so that they

could serve the king and the court of the women.

And many times, like Candace, the women were the ones who were the administrative

heads of state in Ethiopian culture in the ancient time.

And so it was obvious why you would want a eunuch in charge of the women of your castle or kingdom.

But also then there would be men who were focused entirely on the mission of

the kingdom of Ethiopia.

Now Ethiopia, I have to say, and this is, I'm leaning towards what the Bible

says about it, but I have a lot of personal love for Ethiopia.

Of all the nations in Africa I visited, Ethiopia was by far my favorite.

It has the richest, most amazing history. The kingdom of Aksum in the ancient

world was one of the few kingdoms accorded by the Caesars with equal mutual respect as citizens.

Kingdoms of Aksum could get the same rights as a Roman citizen and vice versa.

It was a magnificent, powerful kingdom in its day.

It's one of the oldest Christian nations in the world. It is,

don't forget in our story, the place where Solomon had met that queen,

the queen of Sheba, when she came over from Ethiopia to meet with him.

And according to Ethiopian, every culture has its legend.

According to Ethiopian culture, Candace had a baby by Solomon.

So, of course, every Ethiopian king that descended from the queen of Sheba had

ties to the kingdom of Israel and to Solomon.

Haile Selassie, when he had a flag made, also had the lion on his flag.

He was the lion from the tribe of Judah, or the Ethiopian.

So there's an amazing connection.

And that connection to Solomon is most likely why that Ethiopian was on his

way to worship God in the first place.

And he was understood that there were promises made by God through Solomon and

through the prophets that all the peoples of the world could someday come to

God and he was longing for that day.

Ethiopia played a key role in forecasting this gospel.

When that queen came over there and recognized the true and living God and brought

that truth back to her people, Ethiopia was being forecast as one of the nations

that when Messiah comes, he would reach out and call back to himself.

And so God sent Philip out on that road into the wilderness to a man who was

there simply to worship God. You note the difference.

Simon wanted power, influence, fame.

Ethiopian eunuch just wanted to worship God. He longed for it.

There's a real sense of longing here, especially as you see him studying the prophets.

And Peter tells us that taken to the passage, now the passage of scripture he was reading was this.

From Isaiah, like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb before

its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth.

In his humiliation, justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation?

For his life is taken away from the earth. And the eunuch said to Philip,

about whom, I ask you, is this speaking?

He's speaking of himself or someone else. Then Philip opened up his mouth. I love that phrase.

He just opened up his mouth and he began to teach the eunuch of Jesus Christ

that this prophecy is about Jesus, who is the Messiah.

And the passage would break open all these things for this Ethiopian.

Everything that he had hoped for, everything that he might've thought about

himself and his own hopeless condition was just exploding before his very eyes

when he found out that Jesus was central to this passage because there's preceding

and following passages from Isaiah 52,

54, and 55 that talk about the explosion of the grace of God that goes to the nations.

In the Old Testament, when the eunuch was there, there were concentric nearness circles to God.

Only Jewish males could enter it. Only the great high priest could enter the Holy of Holies.

Only Jewish males could enter the Jewish section, then the court of women,

and then the court of Gentiles.

And we saw this already. And the same very thing happened in Peter's ministry.

When Peter's on his way to the temple, remember the story of the crippled man

sitting outside the gate of the temple, longing to enter the gate,

but he could not because he was crippled.

No crippled man, no lame man may enter into the presence of the Lord.

So Peter said, ironically to our passage, I don't have silver,

I don't have gold, but what I have, I give to you, right?

In the name of Jesus, rise. And where did he go? After dancing and singing appropriately,

he went into the temple with Peter. Isn't that amazing?

He was brought near to God by the healing grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It reminds us of what Peter had already preached at Pentecost,

that this promise is to you and to your children and to all who are far off.

The crippled, the lame, the needy, this Ethiopian eunuch.

The high priest, remember, even priests couldn't enter into the presence of the Lord as eunuchs.

No maladies on their hands, their fingers, et cetera, no deformations.

Perfection was required for the Holy of Holies to be entered,

even by the great high priests.

The priests who entered couldn't be divorced or widowed. Thank you.

Or have relations with a woman who had been defiled, he was not allowed to mourn

public. There were a lot of restrictions, even on those who entered the Holy of Holies.

In order to come nearer to God, to the closest place in God's real presence,

you had to exemplify perfection.

And these restrictions were everywhere. But yet in the book of Acts,

you'll notice the restrictions are being brought down to the power and grace

of the Lord Jesus Christ, the crippled man, and now the Ethiopian eunuch.

Not least of which is that these Jewish leaders had turned these restrictions

to enter into the temple into ethnic barriers as well.

Only a true Jew, an ethnic Jew, could enter into the presence of the Lord,

creating ethnic borders that kept them out of Samaria.

Remember, they're only in Samaria because God scattered them there.

Remember from our story of persecution, they wouldn't have just been saying,

hey, John, hey, Peter, why don't we start a ministry in Samaria?

Wouldn't have happened. They would never have gone there, but the Lord persecuted

them and literally sowed them

as seeds in that area. And the gospel was growing in Samaria, unheard of.

The Samaritans were also not allowed to enter into the nearness of God.

The gospel you see destroys any false notion of ethnic superiority.

In Christ, God will bring all nations and all peoples together as one nation in him.

And this Ethiopian eunuch, you can imagine like, I'm Ethiopian and I'm a eunuch

serving the interest of a powerful queen in another land.

And yet this man is telling me I have the hope of being brought near to god,

Jesus came to give his life as a ransom for us He was the sacrificial lamb that

he's reading about he paid what we could never pay so that there's no need to

pay Anything to enter into the presence of the lord come the prophet says all

you without money All right and buy what am I going to buy without money come

near to god through jesus christ.

As the sermon title, as the real sermon title says, he shall sprinkle the nations.

In Isaiah 52, it says, and as many were astonished at you, his appearance was

so marred beyond human semblance and his form beyond that of the children of mankind.

So he shall sprinkle the nations.

And in the prophecy of Isaiah 53 from 52 earlier, he said, the Lord God through

this sacrificial lamb would sprinkle the nations.

Think about it. This is something that the unit could never have had done.

There was no baptism for this man You might find that ironic because he immediately

says, let me be baptized Well, he says, let me be baptized Because he realized

there's finally a way for him to be baptized And it's through Jesus,

Deuteronomy 23.1 says Anyone who's emasculated by crushing or mutilation shall

never enter the assembly of the Lord.

This man was out forever. There was no hope for him.

This may seem rather intense. I mean, think of the restrictions in the Old Testament.

This poor guy didn't do anything.

It wasn't his fault. It didn't matter. He had no hope of entering into the presence of the Lord.

There was no way for a eunuch to be cleansed and brought near to God.

There was no baptism for him.

You see, what clicks in his mind, he says, now there's a baptism.

The baptism of Jesus in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can even be given to me.

I'm now included. The prophet Isaiah also speaks to this man later as he's reading,

sing, O barren, chapter 54, verse one, sing, O barren, you who have not born,

break forth into singing and cry aloud, you who have not labored with child,

for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married woman.

He's going to take people like this man and make them fruitful and productive

in ways that they never even imagined.

In fact, in ways that heretofore were not possible. It simply was impossible

for this man to ever enter into the presence of Lord. Now imagine his bliss.

Imagine his amazement. What?

That's why once he realized that, oh my gosh, there's water.

Baptize me. He's so super jazzed. He's excited because now he realizes it clicks.

He is one of the people that will be sprinkled by the work of this Messiah that he's reading about.

The eunuch was well aware of his hopeless estate. He couldn't enter.

He came there to worship God from a distance. What an amazing man, by the way.

And what an amazing contrast between Simon Madges and him.

Simon wants to buy it. Simon wants to use it. Simon wants to get rich.

Simon wants authority and power. This is a man who comes knowing he can only

worship from a distance.

This is a man who's traveled thousands of miles from Ethiopia to be only from

a distance to worship the Lord.

He associates the passage of Isaiah with sprinkling the nation with himself.

Baptize me. Amen. That'd be so exciting. So they went down.

By the way, the plural they went

down doesn't have anything to do with the mode. They weren't immersed.

In accord with Isaiah's prophecy, he was sprinkled. Now, they went down and

they came up. That's plural, by the way.

So maybe you think they both were dunked or not. No, they just went down to

water and the eunuch was baptized.

And coming up out of the water, the Lord sent his spirit, took Philip away.

And the eunuch made the immediate connection and realized he's now able to become near to God.

The inheritance that Peter said doesn't belong to anyone who thinks they can

buy it or earn it or work for it.

That inheritance is no longer also the production of male heirs.

The whole circumcision, the whole hope of Messiah to come is finished in Jesus

Christ. It's fulfilled in him.

He is the heir. He is the promise. And the Ethiopian realizes that he doesn't

have to produce an heir. He doesn't have to have a family and multiply generations

for the hope of this promise because he's founded in Jesus Christ.

Fatherless and the widow. Find a future in Jesus. There is no future for the widow.

There is no future for the fatherless. There is no future for the eunuchs.

There is no future to all the people that Jesus was going to in his ministry.

And now the church is going to them as well.

You're useless. You're hopeless. You're worthless. As I mentioned,

when we read those prayers of confession, I have had friends that say,

you guys, it's almost like you abuse yourselves with your prayers of confession.

Should go a little too far.

I'm worthless. I'm corrupt.

I'm bought. And it's like, well, yeah, it's true. And when you would come to

the Lord like that, quite simply, he lifts up the humble, but he resists the proud.

The Ethiopian eunuch knew now that he was a recipient of the inheritance and

it wasn't about the land and it wasn't about the temple and it wasn't about

this or that. It was about Christ Jesus himself.

God himself is the inheritance.

And anyone who believes in Jesus will receive the promises given to Abraham

and receive God as his inheritance.

The inheritance is God himself. That's why throughout this book,

we're seeing over and over, he who loses his life for my sake will gain it.

He who seeks to gain his life, Simon Magus, and anyone else like that,

he who seeks to gain his life will lose it.

If you want God for happiness, peace and blessings, you'll get nothing.

He's not NyQuil. This kind of approach only arrives when you come to the end of yourself.

And the Ethiopian eunuch was already at the end of it. He was well aware that

he was a eunuch and he was well aware that he had a distant relationship with

God. He still loved the Lord.

He still longed for nearness to God.

If you're able to understand the joy of this Ethiopian eunuch,

then you're making the proper connection between our joy as well.

We are that eunuch. So often like that in these stories. If you don't recognize

yourself as worthless and hopeless, again, not constantly going around beating

yourself, flagellating, oh, woe is me, but I have nothing to offer God, nothing.

As this eunuch rightly understood, there is no future generation for this eunuch. He is hopeless.

He'll never, as the scriptures say, enter into the assembly of the Lord until Jesus comes.

And then all of a sudden the doors are knocked down and opened up and he's able

to enter into the presence of law.

He's able to be brought near to God through Jesus Christ Listen to the words

of the prophet Isaiah when he spoke this Their very day and more to come in

Isaiah 56 And I'll close on this,

Do not let the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord speak Saying the

Lord has utterly separated me from his people And then he says right here in

the passage And the eunuch would have read this Nor let the eunuch say Can you imagine?

This Ethiopian eunuch's reading the scriptures Don't let the foreigner,

that's me Don't let the, what? The eunuch.

Don't let the eunuch say, here I am a dry tree. For thus says the Lord,

to the eunuchs, he says, this is in there.

The thing that we miss oftentimes when we read the New Testament is plugging

it in from the Old Testament.

This story is just told about a bad guy and a good guy and one gets saved and

you can get saved too. You're missing a lot.

This is a story about how the glorious prophecies of the Old Testament a thousand

years before are being fulfilled and people are named in the story,

brought to our attention so that we can see that the promise of salvation has

been given from the ages and in Christ alone, it's all fulfilled.

So this eunuch says to scripture, again, Isaiah 56, verse four,

thus says 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 my house.

And within my walls, he says, coming near to me, a name better than that of sons and daughters.

I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.

Also the sons of the foreigner who join themselves to

the lord to serve him and to love the name of the lord to

be his servants everyone who keeps from defiling my sabbath and hold fast my

covenant even to them i will bring they will bring them to my holy mountain

and make them joyful in the house of prayer their burnt offerings and their

sacrifices will be accepted by my altar for my house shall be a called a house

of prayer for all the nations.

For the Lord God who gathers the outcast of Israel says, yet I will gather to

him others, those who are gathered to him.

This eunuch and us, amen. Let's praise the Lord.

Lord, how we thank you so much, Lord, for these stories.

For we know that they're real stories about real people. And we know,

Lord, that this eunuch, oh Lord, must have swelled and burst out with joy.

He must have ridden his chariot as fast as he could back to Ethiopia to tell

the good news of Jesus Christ,

the fulfillment of all of these prophecies that will bring even the far swung

Ethiopians into the presence of the Lord our God through Jesus Christ.

Lord, how we thank you that this promise is also for us, for we also like this

eunuch have nothing to offer, nothing to bargain with you for,

nothing to gain or bargain with you for a gain. Lord, become empty-handed.

It's why the prophet said, come all you who are poor and buy,

even though you don't have any money.

And so the Lord, this morning, we come to you through the blood and the power

of Jesus Christ as we come to the Lord's Supper.

We ask that you would renew within us a great joy of our salvation,

that we, like this eunuch, have been brought near to God through your grace,

through your blood, through the prophecy of Isaiah 53, which said he was slain,

and unrecognizably for our blessings.

Lord, as we come to that, help us in Jesus' name. Amen.