How Can I? - Petey Bingham

Hey, I'm Tim Timmerlake, and I want to thank you so much for listening to the Celebration Church podcast.

I hope this message encouraged you, strengthened your faith, and gave you something you can carry into your week.

If you'd like to stay connected, I encourage you to join us live every Sunday at 9 a.m.

or 11 a.m.

on YouTube.

We would love to have you there.

And if you're ever in the Jacksonville, Florida area, come see us in person.

We have a seat safe for you.

Thanks again for being with us.

We're so grateful for you.

And see you next time.

Good morning, Celebration Church.

And welcome in.

Here we are.

We've done it.

Hey, uh, welcome to everybody here in the room, and welcome to everybody that's tuning in on Celebration Everywhere.

Come on, why don't you give everybody online a big round of applause?

Thanks for being there today.

You guys are our family, and we are just grateful to have you here.

We really are.

Y'all are the best.

Hey, uh, who's here for the first time today?

Anybody here for the first time?

Oh, hey, hi.

It's good to see you guys.

Hi.

Um, well, uh, my name is Petey, and I have the distinct privilege to be one of the pastors here at Celebration Church.

Um, and uh I am just so grateful to be with you here today.

Usually um you have uh one of our lead pastors, Pastor Tim or Pastor Jen.

Um so everybody here is for the first time, it's usually not me, it is usually them.

And um before you take a seat, I do want to say this.

Um man, I just couldn't be more grateful for those two.

Um the fact that the Lord has brought them here to be with us uh at this particular place, at this particular junction, juncture of history, in this particular environment is nothing less than a blessing.

And so, Pastor Jen, I know you're here.

Pastor Tim is traveling the world, but we love you so much.

We really do.

Come on, y'all, give it up for the Timberlakes.

I really mean it.

It's um the pleasure of my life to be here with y'all, to be here in this family.

Y'all, um, y'all know the Lord's doing something incredible here at Celebration, and uh man, to be a part of it is something.

Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I'm like, how like what did what did I do to deserve to be a part of something so amazing like this, you know?

And um, and it really does.

It's just such a blessing.

And so thank you.

Um, thank you for being my family.

I love you all.

Um and my all my family's over here too.

Farah and my two kids, Quinn and Nixon, they came here to hang out today, too.

Skipping sea kids.

Usually don't let your kids skip sea kids, but I did today.

Anyway, well done.

Um, okay, so uh here's how we'll do today before we take our seats I'm gonna read you.

We're gonna pick up uh exactly where Pastor Tim left off last week.

Uh we'll do a bit of a cold read, so this will feel a little jarring, but I promise that we will make sense of this by the time that the day's over.

Sound good?

Cool.

So if you have your Bible, Acts chapter 8 is where we're in today.

Acts 8 · chapter mention

Acts chapter 8.

Acts 8 · chapter mention

I'm gonna be reading from ESV.

Uh so everybody online, make sure you pull out your Bibles.

Everybody in here, take out that Bible or your phone or whatever it may be.

Um, but if you don't feel like doing that, we'll also have a Bible in the sky for you, too.

So we got that for you.

All right, here we go.

So we're gonna be in Acts eight, starting in verse 30, and this is what it says.

So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, Do you understand what you are reading?

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

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

Now, the passage of 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 his mouth.

In his humiliation, justice was denied him.

Who can describe his generation?

For his life is taken away from the earth.

Verse 34.

And the eunuch said to Philip, About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this?

About himself or about someone else?

Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this scripture, he told him the good news about Jesus.

Lord, we love you.

Jesus, today we're just grateful for your presence.

God, we're thankful today that you are Savior, that you are deliverer, that you are um our hope, you're our grace.

Lord, that you are um so immeasurably good beyond our ability to comprehend.

Lord, that you are um transcendent over the entire universe.

You are the creator of all things, and yet you're in this room dwelling with us right now.

And Holy Spirit, I ask you to just pray today, Lord, that you just um you open our hearts to what this scripture says to us.

God, just speak this message to us both individually, um, as members and parts of the body of Christ, but also corporately as the church, as the body of Christ, as a means to say, Holy Spirit, have your way.

Move us forward, direct us, guide us into all truth.

And Lord, just continue to uh do only that which you can do.

Lord, we give this time to you.

We're grateful to gather, and Jesus, we're just thankful for the sacrifice you've made for us.

It's in the name of Jesus that we pray.

Amen and amen.

All right, y'all can take your seats.

Okay.

Now listen, we got a lot to talk about today and not a ton of time to do it.

So we're just gonna, we're just gonna trampoline this thing.

I hope you guys are okay with that.

You have you have entered the classroom and there is no escape.

You understand that we got chains on the doors.

If you gotta use the bathroom, I hope you bought a diaper because we are rolling today, okay?

That was I I I can't believe I just said that out loud.

Anyway, um, anyway, um, so uh I'm actually really excited.

This is one of this is truly one of my favorite parts of parts of the book of Acts, and I think by the end you'll see why.

Um, and I really I really think that this is a pivotal moment, um, honestly, in church history, um, in regards to what it looks like to be a part of the body.

And so um, before we kind of outline our scripture today, I think it's important for us to maybe get caught up as to where we land in today's passage.

So just come with me.

This is what this is what we do.

It's a Bible study.

Deal with it.

All right, here we go.

So, we're in the book of Acts.

We've been in the book of Acts for approximately 12 and a half years at this point.

Um, hey, on the reels, this is for real.

I actually sat down for 20 minutes this this morning to do some math on this.

If we keep going at this pace, we might finish Acts in 2029.

Huh?

Come on, guys.

I'll be in my 40s, okay?

I'll be in my 40s by then.

Oh no.

All right, anyway.

Oh no.

Um, so all that to say, we've you know we've come a long way, um, but we are eight chapters in, and there's a lot more to go.

All right, so in chapter one of the book of Acts, right?

Here's what we know the book of Acts is written by Luke.

Luke is actually a follower of Paul, right?

Paul who wrote about 75% of your New Testament.

And so uh Luke's goal was to write an account in Acts of the launch of the early church and some of the happenings that gave way to where we are today in that early setting of the church.

So Luke writes the book of Luke, which is the you know, life and work of Jesus, and then transitions into Acts and gives us a beautiful account of some of the happenings that happened in that early church setting 2,000 years ago.

And um, what Luke does oh so beautifully in Acts chapter 1 is he actually gives us kind of like a table of contents, a blueprint for how all of Acts is about to unfold, okay?

Acts 1 · chapter mention

And in the words of Jesus, kind of reimagines the Great Commission as a means to tell us how that's gonna happen.

And he says that this gospel is gonna spread from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria, and then to the ends of the earth.

And the book of Acts, as Luke writes it, that's kind of the flow he uses as we start in Jerusalem.

We move out to Judea and Samaria, and then eventually make our way to the ends of the earth.

Now, Acts 1 through 7-ish, we find ourselves in Jerusalem.

The climactic moment of that uh of that ministry happens when Stephen is martyred and stoned for preaching about Jesus.

And in those days, right before that had happened, uh, the early church put into leadership seven, what we would call deacons, right?

Just leadership of the church.

Uh, one of those seven men who is friends with Stephen that was killed, his name is Philip.

And so after the martyrdom of Philip, uh sorry, the martyrdom of Stephen, Philip then leaves and he goes into Samaria.

So notice we've transitioned from Jerusalem now to Judea and Samaria.

Okay?

Now, Samaria is super controversial because there's a massive relational rift between Jews in Jerusalem and then people in Samaria.

A lot of history there.

We covered this a few weeks ago, but just know for the purposes of this message is they weren't very friendly to each other, right?

And so it was pretty shocking to see that the gospel was not just something for the people who were in Jerusalem, but also for those outside of Jerusalem as well, especially in Samaria.

So Philip goes to Samaria and preaches the good news of Jesus.

And where we pick up in Acts chapter 8 that we've been in for the last few weeks is um one of the people that he goes and presents the gospel to is this dude named Simon.

Acts 8 · chapter mention

And Simon is in Samaria, and he is dabbling in what we call divination, sorcery, magic, witchcraft, whatever you want to call it, it ain't good, right?

So Philip presents the gospel to him, and sure enough, old Simon says, All right, I'm in, I'll do this.

And so he gives his life to Jesus.

Well, lo and behold, it turns out that Simon's ultimate goal is not necessarily to spread the gospel, but instead, his goal is to use the power of the Holy Spirit as a means for his own advancement.

Right?

And so this whole story with Simon the magician gets pretty uh pretty messed up from the beginning.

We'll hit this more in a second, all right?

But now we transition to uh where Pastor Tim was last week and also beautifully um articulated how Philip is called by the Holy Spirit out to a desert place.

And in this desert place, he comes into contact with the person we are going to talk about today, and that is the Ethiopian eunuch, who he finds on the road between Jerusalem and Old Gaza, which I'll give you context for that in a second.

And that kind of catches us to where we are now.

Now, last week, one of the verses, and we backtrack just a little bit here, um, one of the verses that um Pastor Tim covered last week about the Ethiopian reads like this.

This is verse uh 27.

In verse 27, it says, He rose and went, and there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure.

Alright.

So before we carry on with where we're going today, it's important for us to understand who this guy is.

So who is this Ethiopian eunuch?

Alright, so first and foremost, what we know about him is that he is, in fact, Ethiopian.

Okay.

Now, in our minds, in 2026, okay, um, when you think Ethiopia, you think a relatively small country in like southeastern Africa, right?

Well, in those days, Ethiopia was much bigger.

In those days, Ethiopia um basically covered everything south of Egypt.

Okay, so you have Egypt in southern Egypt down through like modern-day Sudan and down was Ethiopia.

And uh this is how the first century viewed Ethiopia.

Is if you go through Egypt and then you end up with these Ethiopians beyond there, now you enter into a place of wilderness where there are wild beasts.

Literally how they described Ethiopia, right?

So in their minds, like, ain't nothing good south of Egypt.

Everybody with me?

There's Ethiopia that way, don't go that way.

Okay?

Now, here's what's interesting.

Again, following the blueprint of Ephesians, oh sorry, Ephesians, what am I even talking about?

Acts chapter 1, verse 4.

Acts 1:4

When you follow that, remember Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria and the ends of the earth.

Okay, well, here's what we know: the ends of the earth, what does that even mean?

What are the ends of the earth, right?

But here's what you gotta remember is that in those days, they didn't even know that North America existed.

You ever thought about that?

Like they didn't even know that this land was a thing.

So in their minds, the end of the earth to the what to the west is Spain.

You ever thought about that before?

That's pretty crazy.

There's a city in Spain all the way to the uh to the west.

It's called Tarshish, not Tarsis, but Tarshish.

Tarshish is literally what they imagine to be the ends of the earth.

So to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth meant the Far East went all the way to Spain, and then in the mind of a first century believer, the ends of the earth south was Ethiopia.

So now we see the blueprint of Acts 1, Acts 1, verse 4 playing out, where now Philip is beginning to work his way into the ends of the earth, and you'll really see that come into contact when you get to Paul's ministry.

Acts 1:4

Everybody with me?

Okay, so now in Ethiopia, this is all gonna be important, I promise.

If you're bored, sorry.

Anyway, um in Ethiopia, here's how they function.

So in Ethiopia, uh they did have a king, right?

But the way they treated their king was much differently than you probably um are used to.

In their minds, their king was divine.

Their king was of godly descent.

But their king was basically because he was so you know set apart, he didn't really do much.

Okay?

His job was just to reign.

What that means is he had all supremacy.

He was, in their minds, divine.

So he reigned, but he did not rule.

The rulership in Ethiopia was actually given to the queen.

Okay?

So the queen's job was to be in charge of managing the people, managing the law, and you guessed it, managing the money.

Right?

And so uh the queen actually came from a bloodline, and every time that a queen was replaced, they named her Candace.

I was impressed by that, not you.

Alright, anyway, so when we hear that this Ethiopian eunuch is not only from Ethiopia, but he serves the queen who is Candace in her treasury.

That means that this man is literally one of the most powerful, influential, and high-ranking people in all of Ethiopia.

This is a big deal.

This is a dude.

And then you layer on top of that the fact that he is a eunuch.

Does everybody know what a eunuch is?

Yo, I was really hoping somebody wasn't gonna say no.

Um, don't Google it, because IT will kill me.

Um that's gonna be a weird Wi-Fi search, that's for sure.

Anyway, uh a eunuch is somebody that they don't want to reproduce, so they handle it physically.

Does that you tracking?

They get rid of their ability to reproduce.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Does that make sense?

You didn't have the same reaction, so I'm just making sure you're good.

Yep.

All right.

You wanna I'm just getting all right.

Yikes.

Anyway, so why they do that?

Why are they doing all that?

Good question.

Well, here's why.

It's because obviously kings and queens don't want to be replaced, and qu and kings and kings uh kings, kingship and queenship came by way of familial ties.

In other words, it was through inheritance.

So the problem was is if you gave somebody high rank, high power, high influence, and then they start reproducing themselves, you run the risk of that family overtaking yours.

So the way that a corrupt kingdom went about making sure they would never be overthrown is that the most powerful people were devoid of their opportunity to reproduce.

So, as weird as it sounds, it was actually like an honor to be made a eunuch.

He just laughed.

He said, No, no, you were born in the right place.

Well done.

Anyway, so what we know then about this guy is that he is the Ethiopian, so that's his ethnicity.

He's a eunuch, so he's a marginalized person in society.

It works well in royalty, but trust me, it doesn't work well in your popularity.

You know what I'm saying?

Yikes.

Try being in middle school.

Anyway, okay, so we have that.

Uh, and then of course, he is of high power, high influence in all of uh Ethiopia.

So remember, the ends of the earth moving south.

So this is a high-ranking dude.

What we also learn about him is that he is um uh coming from Jerusalem, okay?

And what that means is that he is what we call in the Bible a proselyte.

All that means is just a fancy word of saying that he is converted to Judaism.

He has converted to worshiping Yahweh.

So he's the Ethiopian, um, he's the Ethiopian hand to the queen, controlling all of the money, who has converted to Judaism and has made his way on the old road to go to Jerusalem to worship Yahweh and is now headed back home.

Everybody track with me on that?

I promise it's gonna be helpful in a second.

Okay, and that brings us now to where we are in verse 30.

Philip, right, is sent by the Holy Spirit down this desert road.

He goes down and he's called.

He doesn't know what he's getting himself into, but then he realizes that he's called to this chariot that he sees moving in the road ahead of him.

Okay, and that's what we pick up in verse 30, and this is what it says.

So Philip ran.

Important lesson there?

Whenever the Holy Spirit calls you to do something, it's probably a good idea not to walk towards it.

Because when he's calling you, there should be some urgency to it.

You know what I mean?

So Philip himself already given us some points.

Anyway, so Philip ran to him, him being the Ethiopian eunuch, and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet.

You want to know a fun fact?

Thanks.

Okay, here's a fun fact.

How about, um, okay.

In the ancient world, in the first century in this case, right, there was no printing press, which means that the only way that you could get something written is it had to be handwritten.

Right nowadays you can get books that are copied.

But today, or back in these days, they had to be handwritten.

And not only that, but they were also really expensive to make because not only did you have to pay the person who is scribing it, but you also had to pay for the paper it was on and the ink.

So what they did is when they wrote on like a scroll, they would write on these scrolls and they would write really, really, really, really small so that they didn't have to use as much paper.

Everybody tracking with me?

So in order to do that, they would write small and they would keep the words really close together.

Okay?

So um how, you know, obviously when there's not much copy out there, the literacy rates are also super low, so not many people knew how to read.

But some of your highest ranking people in society were taught how to read.

But here's how they were taught, okay?

Um, you remember when you were in first grade and you were learning how to read and you learned like phonics, and everybody in the room had to read out loud to kind of like develop the muscle?

Remember that true.

Anyway, I mean say I still do it.

Anyway, so you had a little bit.

But then eventually you get to the place where you can start reading in your head, right?

Fun fact reading in your head didn't really become a thing until the printing press.

Did you know that?

How people were taught to read because it was harder to read and um it was it was kind of like dignified, is even if you were reading silently, you were still mouthing the words.

That's how you were taught to read.

So every time that somebody was reading something, it was always read aloud.

Reading in your head was not a thing.

Which is interesting, you know, by the means, one of the one of the means by which the Lord is uh spreading, you know, news of his kingdom, um, news of what is to come and news of his character was by way of something that wasn't just on paper to be preserved for all of humankind, but also something to always be read aloud into creation.

You know what I'm saying?

What a beautiful gift that it actually is.

So Philip being able to hear him read actually makes perfect sense because that's how somebody trained to read would have read.

So if Philip is standing next to the chariot, even if he can't see him, no matter how, no matter what he's doing, he could hear him reading.

Everybody tracking with me?

Okay, so he was reading Isaiah the prophet, and so Philip then looks up to the chariot, hears him reading this this uh passage from Isaiah, and says, Hey, do you do you get it?

Do you understand what you're reading?

Which has to be a pretty jarring experience for the eunuch.

You know what I'm saying?

Because he's just rolling around minding his business on his chariot with all of his servants around him, and all of a sudden this dusty dude comes up and is like, Do you get it?

You know?

Verse 31.

And this is how uh the Ethiopian eunuch responds to Philip.

Listen to this.

He says, How can I unless someone guides me?

You know, at Celebration Church, we do good hermeneutics.

And what you have to remember is that stories lie next to each other for a reason.

Okay?

What did I just tell you was the story that comes before this?

Simon the magician.

And if you remember, Simon the Magician hears the good news of Jesus, right?

Enters into this loyalty, does this deal, but you know what?

He never asks the question, how do I understand this more?

Instead, what Simon does is he says, How can I use this to make money?

How can I use this to be popular?

How can I use this for people to know my name?

How can I use this so that I can impress people in the village square?

How can I impress people so that I don't actually change the aspects of my life, but in fact just become more powerful?

How do I use Jesus for me?

That's what Simon asks.

And yet, one of the most influential, highly powerful, and incredible people on planet Earth at the moment is reading Isaiah and looks to this random dude on a dusty road between Jerusalem and old Gaza and says, How do I know unless someone guides me?

Let me ask you this question.

And be honest.

How many of you in this room think reading the Bible is easy?

Sweet.

Well done.

I want you to know I've put my poor family in six figures of student debt.

And that thing's still hard to read.

You know what I'm saying?

You ever read scripture and you like look up and you're like, I have no idea what that means.

A lot of words.

I don't know what just happened there, you know?

It's a thing, you know?

But we'll get there in a second.

So anyway, uh, what his goal is, remember, think of it like this: Simon the magician, the contrast between the two.

Simon the magician, his question is, how do I use this to get more power?

Whereas uh the Ethiopian eunuch, he uses this as a means to say, how do I understand more?

And the humility of that question is what we as readers are supposed to grasp.

This is what it looks like to not just start a relationship with Jesus, but to sustain a relationship with Jesus.

How can I unless someone guides me?

So here's what he does: he invites Philip to come up and sit with him.

One of the most highly influential, powerful dudes on all of the earth, lets the dusty dude from Jerusalem climb into the golden chariot and teach him about Isaiah.

Humble, man.

Humble.

He doesn't talk to people like that, but he knows he needs it.

Verse 32.

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

And I'll just say up front, Isaiah 53.

This is from Isaiah 53, verses 7 and 8.

Isaiah 53:7

Um, here's what it says 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.

Now, first thing I want to say is this as a teacher of the Bible, I feel obligated that you need to know this.

If you go and look in Isaiah 53 right now in your Bible, in your ESV Bible or whatever you have, and you go back to Isaiah 53, verses 7 and 8, you're gonna see that it actually reads differently in your Bible.

Isaiah 53:7

And your intuition is to go, wait, why then is it really Isaiah 53?

But hear me, okay?

This is apologetics.

This is the Ethiopian eunuch, a Gentile who has converted to Judaism.

He would not have been reading a Hebrew Bible, he would have been reading what we call the Septuagint, which is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible.

And that's why this reads differently.

It would be more problematic if they quoted this in Hebrew, because that's not what he would have been reading.

What he would have been reading was the Septuagint, which matches with this perfectly.

But your Bible didn't use the Septuagint to translate the Old Testament for good reason.

You don't want to translate something twice, you'll lose meaning, right?

So it's actually this is uh good historical, reliable evidence to show us that the biblical story is true because even a nuance like that exists in it.

Isn't that crazy?

So, all that to say, um, he's reading Isaiah 53, and he looks up and he does that same thing that we all do.

We're like, well, those are words that string together into a sentence that I don't know what they mean.

You know what I mean?

And Philip is humble enough to look over to Philip and be like, uh.

You know?

Hear me.

Side note.

Don't be the person in Bible study who you read a scripture, you have no idea what it means, and then you pretend like you do.

Okay?

It is way more humble to say, I have no idea.

And then together work on finding the meaning and the interpretation of that scripture.

You hear me?

Okay?

Don't be mad at me, but it's true.

Alright.

So he reads this, for his life is taken away from the earth.

Verse 34, and this is what he says.

And the eunuch says to Philip, so he finishes reading Isaiah 53, well, these two verses, and he looks over to Philip and he goes, Alright, so um, I'm gonna ask you this question.

Does this prophet say this about himself or someone else?

I mean, what a good question! You want to dive into the Bible more?

Ask good questions about it.

You know what I mean?

So he asks this brilliant question.

Who is he talking about?

So, Philip opens his mouth with authority.

He learned these things too.

And beginning with this scripture, he told him the good news about Jesus.

So, what we see here, right, is we see the picture of somebody in this biblical story who has more power and influence than most people we've even come into contact with yet, right?

And this dude is humble enough to recognize he doesn't know something, but knows there's something deeper there.

And so he goes to something who is somebody who is less than him, so to speak, to help find those answers in community.

Remember, Simon the magician, his goal was to make a profit.

But it turns out that the Ethiopian eunuch's goal is to actually engage in a relationship ultimately with Jesus.

Okay?

So so here's a fun fact.

In church history, obviously, both Simon and the Ethiopian eunuch, we don't get the fulfillment of their story in the book of Acts.

Hate to break it to you, but we actually don't see what happens to either of them next.

But in church tradition, here's how church tradition says happens, right?

Simon goes on to start what church history calls Simone, which is literally just Simon with a Y on the end, okay?

And essentially it becomes what we call Gnosticism.

Gnosticism is the false teaching that the early church was fighting against the entire time.

So when you go read epistles like from Peter and from John and from Paul, and they're fighting false teachings, a lot of those false teachings are developments of that guy and people that are his counterparts, right?

So he goes on to be a cancer in the church.

Okay?

The Ethiopian eunuch, however, the way that church tradition tells his story is like this.

Eventually, what happens is Ethiopia itself falls to a kingdom to the south, and it actually begins to diminish in its power and then slowly works its way down to where now all that's left of Ethiopia is what is today Ethiopia.

How church tradition says is that this guy goes on to launch the Ethiopian Christian church, which still stands today in strength.

Now, here's an important distinction about this.

Think about the genius of Luke's writing.

Simon has a name, but the Ethiopian eunuch does not.

Why?

Because Simon made it about himself.

Whereas the Ethiopian eunuch knew that it was not about him, it was about pointing people to Jesus.

Does that make sense?

What a beautiful distinction it actually comes out to be.

Because, and again, all of that is birthed from the fact that he was humble enough to ask these simple questions.

Now, here's the deal.

Sometimes what can happen, sometimes what can happen in our world is that uh asking questions is frowned upon.

Just just just to be honest, right?

Sometimes what can happen is you start asking questions and people are like, why are you doubting God?

And you're like, I'm not, I just want to know what he's like, you know?

Right?

Now hear me, there's two ways to ask questions.

Okay, there's a way of asking questions that's prideful, and what I mean by that is you ask a question, but you're not asking a question.

You're trying to make a statement with your question.

Does that make sense?

You know what I'm saying?

I'm not gonna give you any examples of that, but you know what I'm talking about.

The other, right, but the other way to ask a question is from the right heart, it's from the posture of genuine curiosity.

Right?

Pharaoh over there, okay?

I've said this before and I'll say this again, alright?

If I know about Pharaoh, but I don't know Pharaoh, I am a stalker.

I would stalk you though, girl.

You know what I'm saying?

Anyway.

Yikes, don't tell the police that.

That was weird.

Anyway, first diapers and now stalkers?

Pastor Jen's gonna fire me.

Anyway, um, but because not only do I know about Pharaoh, but I also know Pharaoh.

She's my wife.

So what I mean by that is, do you think that me and Pharaoh got married without asking any questions to each other?

And did my questions come from a place of doubt or from a place of genuine curiosity to know this girl better?

Right?

Why is your relationship with Jesus any different?

Right?

You're supposed to lean into those things.

You're supposed to say, why does suffering exist?

Why is evil a thing?

Why does it hurt?

You're supposed to ask those questions the same way you're supposed to say, Why are you so good?

How are you so good?

Who like how are you so great?

All of those questions help you see his character.

So hear me.

Asking the right questions is essential.

Okay, let me tell you a story.

Um, okay, so I come from a family that did not go to church.

Um, we would told you we were Christian, but we did not go to church.

And um, you know, my parents divorced when I was a kid, and uh, and the more that I grew up, you know, I'll spare you the details of kind of testimony stuff, but ultimately like life didn't deal the greatest hand of all time.

And so I found myself like 17, 18 years old, and I was like, man, there's there's gotta be more to life than just suffering and pain.

At the very least, there's gotta be perspective in it or something, right?

So it sent me down this journey to, you know, ask questions and and and you know, search these things, and eventually I found my way to Jesus.

More specifically, Jesus found his way to me.

And um and uh I went to college and um you know, I got involved in some ministries and stuff and do that stuff.

And so anyway, so I come home and I just have this massive heart for my dad.

Um I love my dad so much, he's just the greatest, uh I just he's he's the greatest.

And um, and uh, you know, he's your classic, like, you know, he would tell you that he believes in Jesus, but he doesn't go to church because the church just wants your money kind of guy.

You don't know.

Yeah.

And so um, so he was one of those.

And so um so one day I come home and I'm just I'm I'm just determined, like, I want to I want to essentially introduce my dad to the Jesus that he doesn't think he is.

Does that make sense?

And um so I come home and I say, Dad, would you be willing to do a Bible study with me?

And at this point, like I'm still gonna go to medical school.

Um, I'm not, I have no plans on you know, you know, going any sort of route other than medicine.

And so I'm like, okay, you know, let me buy you a Bible and let's just study this together.

And my dad said, Okay.

And I said, Oh, okay.

So I buy him a Bible, and um, I remember it's like it was yesterday, man.

We were sitting crisscross applesauce on his bed in his room and just staring at each other, you know, and and so I was so you know, we did what anybody would do, and we just started in Genesis 1.

Okay?

And so we started Genesis 1, we opened it up, and we read, in the beginning, God created.

And then my dad goes, Stop.

And I said, Oh, okay.

And he goes, I got a series of questions for you.

And I said, Sweet, let's go, let's do it.

Here's what he says.

He goes, We're supposed to model God's character, right?

And I said, Yeah.

Yeah, yeah?

And he said, okay.

And we're supposed to be humble, right?

And I said, Yeah.

And he goes, and you would say that God is humble too, you know?

And I said, Yeah.

And he goes, well, if God is humble, then why does he demand that we worship him?

That doesn't feel very humble.

And I said, I don't know.

If you were to ask me, hey Petey, when did your journey in theology, when did your journey to become a Bible scholar start?

In hindsight, I look back, and that was the moment it was born.

Because my dad sought understanding and I didn't know what to do.

And I found out myself that I needed to seek understanding.

That was the moment that I was like, oh wow, there's a lot more to this.

So I went and studied, and uh I went down the path and I, you know, trying to find the answer to this question, and eventually, you know, I mean, here, you know, here we are.

I'm, you know, learning as much as I can and you know, getting in school and doing all this stuff.

I ended up not going to medical school, I ended up, you know, becoming where we are today, and you know, I didn't do that stuff, and so so down the line, um, you know, I'm trying to find the answer to this one question that plagues me.

How do I answer this question you know about the humility of God?

And uh to make a long story short, um, it wasn't long after that conversation on my dad's bed that he dies.

And we never got to have the conversation again.

And um and it was brutally one of the first things I thought about when I got the phone call that he had died, um, was man, we never finished that conversation.

And um and I went and studied, and I went and tried to find answers, and I went to try and grasp understanding, and I went to try and find out what it was, and he was he was dead.

And I couldn't answer, I couldn't sit with him and talk about it again.

And man, it was brutal.

It really impacted me hard.

It was all I could think about was that question just plaguing me, and I couldn't go back to him and talk about it.

So a few weeks after he dies, I get an email.

Remember those?

Um, I got a I got an email, and um my dad worked at Mayo Clinic, and uh right before he had died, about a week before he died, he went on a trip up to Rochester, Minnesota, where the headquarters are, and uh he was meeting with you know some people up there, and I get this email from somebody that he works with.

I don't know who it is, but I got this email, you know, and they said, Hey, um I was praying this morning and I felt like the Holy Spirit wanted me to send you this email.

And I said, Oh, oh well I didn't say anything, I was reading it.

I was like, What?

Okay.

And so um here's here's how the email went.

Basically, they went to dinner by themselves, this man and my and my dad, a week before he dies.

And uh and the guy said, you know, basically, I just felt led to invite him to go to dinner and talk about Jesus.

And he said that at that dinner, my dad asked him a question.

And that man was able to answer it.

I know, I know, and so it ended with we had a really good talk about Jesus, and he gave his life to Jesus.

In hindsight, I'm like, why didn't he tell me that?

But whatever.

It's I'll ask him when we get there.

But um, but either way, I mean I I got this email.

And um I started to fare, a fair saw this email, like it was, you know, it just absolutely blew my mind.

Oh, and um, and I was just so happy to receive it.

And um, and it made me realize something really important.

Um, when it happened, when he asked me that question, um, if I'm honest with you, inside, I thought he was being malicious.

Um, I thought that he was just trying to trap me.

Um, I thought that maybe it was an unanswerable question.

I thought that he was trying to essentially just derail the conversation or whatever.

Um, but what I learned was that what he was actually doing was seeking understanding.

And eventually he found himself sitting at a dinner table with somebody who could help him.

Somebody that could say, I have this question, but how can I answer it unless somebody guides me?

And my dad did it.

You know?

And it made me go, man, like that that is so much what this walk is like.

Right?

It's so much about what this is, is making sure that we put ourselves in situations where we can help be guided into some of what those questions are and what they point us to.

Because hear me when I tell you this: you should ask your questions from the right heart.

And they should lead you to Jesus.

And when you ask them with the right heart, they will lead you to Jesus.

They will take you straight to the throne, they will lead you straight to his face to see what is true.

Y'all, listen, there's a lot of things out in the world that want to be your answer.

A lot of things out there.

Simon the magician was looking for answers in all the wrong places.

He was looking for answers in popularity, he was looking for answers in sorcery, he was looking for answers in witchcraft, he was looking for answers in money.

Even after he gave his life to Jesus.

But man, when you're like this Ethiopian eunuch and you say, Who am I, man?

Just guide me.

Ask your questions because they'll take you to Jesus.

Don't let them plague you.

Because, man, they will spark something in you that will change you forever because of what Jesus is doing.

Ask your questions.

Practically speaking, here's here's the deal.

Like I say, how do you do that?

Well, how do how do I ask my question?

What's the right way to do it?

It's super simple, right?

Okay, and we can learn it all from this story with Ethiopian eunuch.

First of all, what was he in?

The word of God.

So, where do you find answers?

The word of God.

Read God's word.

Revolutionary.

Right?

What else did we learn?

The other thing you can do is this is uh you can make sure that you seek after God's wisdom.

More specifically, you pray for God's wisdom.

Remember, Philip is with the eunuch because the Holy Spirit led him there.

And then the Holy Spirit was all in that conversation.

How crazy is it that Jesus pursued an Ethiopian eunuch on an old road, old deserted road, wasn't even a Roman road, met with this Ethiopian eunuch, seeing what the future was gonna play out for this man.

So you read God's word, you pray for God's wisdom, and the last thing that we see happen, of course, is that he uh learns with God's people.

In other words, we're in this together.

Okay?

And so what you can't do is be afraid to ask the right questions, but you also can't be somebody who doesn't let people ask the right questions either.

Right?

So that that's what being God's people looks like is making sure we're growing in this together.

And man, every day ain't perfect.

We're in the wilderness out here, y'all.

But Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

Y'all know God's not insecure, right?

Right?

God isn't out there, um, like God isn't givlies off of the fact that you worship him.

He doesn't need it.

Does that make sense?

You know?

But here's the deal.

Think about this.

Think about this.

The Lord is the creator of all things, he is the standard of what is good, he is the standard of what is righteous, he is um all-knowing, all-powerful, omniscient.

He is all things, he is the thing that gives you meaning and purpose.

Okay?

And so when you take your eyes off of him, you are now finding meaning and purpose in something that is not your original design.

So by putting highest of value of worth into something, in other words, worship, and you put that on God, now he becomes the truth.

And when he becomes the truth, that becomes your reality, and that becomes your reality.

Now you're walking in what it really means to be human.

But if you take your eyes off of Jesus and you look at other things, now you're living in a false reality like Simon the magician.

But then God's not done there.

God literally puts skin on, loves the world so much that he enters into it as a man, but doesn't come on a horse and chariot and overthrow Caesar and kill all of his enemies.

No, you know what he does?

He washes people's feet and sits with sinners.

You know what I mean?

The king of all creation who rules and reigns over all that we know.

That guy, you know what he does?

He came to serve, not to be served.

So to answer my dad's question, God demands worship because A, he's worthy of it, but B, because that is what reality actually is.

He's not prideful when he put skin on, he was the humblest among us.

In fact, in fact, let me tell you what he was like.

Okay?

Isaiah 53, according to the Septuagint, as Philip reads it, like a sheep, he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shear is silent, so he opens not his mouth.

In his humiliation, justice was denied him.

Who can describe his generation?

For his life was taken away from the earth.

In other words, that is not the words of somebody who is prideful.

That is the word of somebody who was perfectly humble, perfectly meek, and perfectly the creator of who you actually are.

So, that being said, I know it feels like a tangent to answer my dad's question, but it's not.

Why?

Because it answers the question of how this story finds its conclusion when he says, beginning with scripture, he told him the good news about Jesus.

He answers that very question.

This is the Jesus he presents him with.

And when those questions are asked with the right heart, they bring you right back to the gospel, right back to the reality and truth that Jesus is our King who rules and reigns over all creation.

And when you set your eyes on him, even out here in the wilderness, you experience what his intentions were always meant to be.

And that is a little bit of heaven on earth as we await the new heaven, the new earth to collide with where we're at.

So a second, I'm gonna have Pastor Ryan come up here and we're gonna move over to celebration everywhere.

But here's my inspiration for you today.

Ask your questions.

I know you have them, ask them from the right place, but let them lead you to Jesus.

Read God's word, pray for God's wisdom, and learn with God's people.

Not only is that a good way to answer those questions, but man, what a beautiful way it is to hear and confirm the voice of God and watch your entire life change.

Lord, we love you.

And Jesus, we're just grateful for your presence.

Lord, we're grateful that you are here among us in this room.

Lord, we're grateful that you are not a God who is distant, you're not a God who just put creation into motion and left.

No, you enter into it, Lord.

You are um our Father.

God, you are actively involved in all the comings and goings of life.

Lord, that you are focused on each individual in this room and you're col you're focused on us as the collective body of Christ.

And so, Jesus, today I just pray for everybody in this room.

You know the needs of their heart.

God, I just pray that as they grow deeper with you, they don't just know about you, but they know you truly, and lean into that relationship and say, Lord, have your way in their lives.

Holy Spirit, just um uh open their hearts, open their eyes, open their ears to that which you are doing in them.

And Lord, we just give you all the praise here today.

So in Jesus' name that we pray.

Amen and amen.