"Still Running" | Acts 8:4–40 | Sunday Evening Worship Service

There is often a stereotype of the church curmudgeon.

You can almost picture their hat, their wrinkled nose, their finger wagging in disapproval.

Kids ought not run in the hallway, don't you know?

After all, this is church.

But Paul tells the Corinthians that those who labor in the gospel ought not be curmudgeons, but ought to be marked by joy.

This is 2 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 24, where Paul describes his relationship with the Corinthians as laborers among you for your joy.

2 Corinthians 1:24

That becomes the really the hallmark, the disposition and the attitude of those in Christian ministry.

They ought to be joyful.

Now, Paul explains why it is so important that Christian leaders be joyful because it is their joy that is multiplied, it is their joy that is magnified.

There should be a real joy that comes from walking with a knowledge of Jesus Christ as the Savior.

You recognize that you used to be lost in your sins and transgressions, used to be on your way to hell, and then the Lord saves you by getting a hold of your heart.

He saves you through giving you his word.

He saves you through writing his name on your hearts, by giving you his spirit, sealing you as a promise of redemption for the day of salvation.

That's how the Lord saves a person.

He draws them from the darkness into the light, from blindness and gives them sight, from spiritual death and decay to spiritual life.

And so you realize I used to be dead and now I'm alive, and that should cause you to, I don't know, smile.

And maybe smile is too flippant of a word, uh, because this is a serious world.

This is such a serious world.

There's a lot to be serious about.

So maybe not smile, but at least, you know, enjoy life a little bit.

You're under the providential care of God, and he rescued you from hell and brought you into a relationship with his son and gives you meaning and hope and a purpose and confidence about the future.

So, I mean, I guess smiling is okay then.

That's the idea.

And as you share the gospel with somebody else, that joy becomes not just magnified, but multiplied.

You're one person after all, and you're left in darkness, and then the Lord changes your life.

That's you went from 0%, I know you can't put a quantity on glorifying God, but let's say 0% of God's glory reflected in your life.

And then you come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ where you are excited and you are have the glory of the Lord and the joy of the Lord in your heart.

So now let's let's go ahead and ramp that up to 100%.

We're gonna use extremes here.

So now you're 100% glorifying the Lord.

But you're just one person.

When you share the gospel with somebody else, and that other person comes to faith, now you're seeing an exponential growth, which, you know, with the one-on-one kind of thing, exponential is the same thing as, you know, doubling, sure.

But as it continues to expand, so Paul shares the gospel with Timothy's grandmother, and she comes to faith.

And then she shares the gospel with Timothy, and Timothy comes to faith, and Timothy shares the gospel with the Church of Ephesus, and 20 people come forward, or whatever it is.

You can see how the joy of the Lord is exponentially multiplied through evangelism.

That's the promise of the scripture.

And Paul says it's for your sake, so as grace extends to more and more people, it may increase thanksgiving to the glory of God.

Divine mathematics.

It's the process of multiplying joy.

It's not just multiplying demographics, it's not just increasing the count, the attendance, or the offering or anything like that.

The real place a church grows, and you can measure it in theological depth or maturity.

That's the way we often sanctify it, as we say, we're measuring spiritual growth.

No, our church is growing so much, but it's not by numbers.

It's not only by dollars, although we like them.

Our church is growing through spiritual maturity.

Well, that's great.

Paul talks that way.

Ephesians describes a church that grows in maturity.

So of course that's good.

But more frequently than maturity, the scripture describes the growth of the church in terms of a growth in joy, delighting in the glories and the joys of God, having an actual joy in you.

You know, the enemy of joy is apathy.

The Puritans used to have a word for it, sedia, which is this, it's not a word that's in English anymore, but it's a word that means lethargy, but it's really for pastors.

It's a sin that pastors are prone to.

It's a lethargy or an apathy that pastors can fall into because after all, God's gonna do what God's gonna do, so why should I bother?

You know, Sunday comes, I joked a few weeks ago that Sunday comes every week, whether or not I'm ready for it.

And I did, I did honestly mean that as a joke, but you can see how in a pastor's heart that that can quickly lead to apathy.

The weeks roll by, and Sunday gives way to the next Sunday, and sermon gives way to the next sermon.

And the Lord, this is a sin that's particular for those who have a high view of God, who strongly believe in God's providence and sovereignty, to fall into this sin because you say, listen, that God's gonna build a church no matter what I do, so I may as well not do anything.

And the way the Puritans taught that you fight that sin is with joy.

You actually delight in what the Lord is doing.

And so it's night as we're talking about setting aside a man for the role of pastor of evangelism.

I thought it would be appropriate for us to look at the first pastor of evangelism in the early church, Acts chapter 8, verse 4.

Acts 8:4

And those people were scattered all around, preaching the word of God, and Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ.

I love that word.

Philip went to the city of Samaria, and it's in the Greek, it's the article's not there, so it's a city in Samaria and proclaimed to them Christ, the Savior.

It's called down, but it would be north on a map.

Philip is leaving Jerusalem, he's going up on a map, but you know, Jerusalem is kind of elevated in the mountains, it's it's down.

This is going towards the way where Jesus met the woman at the well.

This is fulfilling the promise that God had told the Jesus told the church the gospel is going to go from Jerusalem to Judea, to Samaria, to the othermost parts of the world.

Remember, the Jews and Samaritans didn't like each other.

The Samaritans were the remnant of the ten tribes of the north who were taken in exile to um the Assyrians.

They never returned.

They just kind of scattered and hid in the mountains, and that's why there's no big cities up there anymore.

It's just, you know, it's it's desolate up there.

The Samaritans and they're half-breeds.

The Jews, the Jews called them half-breeds to be derogatory towards them.

There might be some Jewish blood in them, but whatever, it doesn't matter.

That's their attitude towards the Samaritans.

And Jesus says the gospel will go there.

And remember, in Acts chapter 2, they were not eager to go there.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

The angels shooed them and said, Why don't you go Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria?

And they were like, or we could stay here.

Like, that's cool.

We can stay here.

But they sold everything and they had everything in common and were just hanging out in the fountain, watching Peter do miracles.

They were loving life.

And then persecution comes, and then they get out of town.

And Philip is at least going in the right direction.

It wasn't Jerusalem, Judea, Ethiopia.

It was Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria.

So he's at least tacking in the right location.

But this is not the first time we saw Philip either.

If you remember, he is one of the people in Acts chapter 6.

Acts 6 · chapter mention

Acts chapter 6, verse 5, there was the crisis with the widows in the church because remember, all the Jews were staying in Jerusalem.

Acts 6:5

And so there are a lot of widows.

These were people that had journeyed across the world.

It was the diaspora.

They had come for Passover, they had come from Pentecost.

They got saved when they were there.

They're away from their homes, away from their families, away from their jobs.

They don't have jobs.

There's no LinkedIn in Tel Aviv right now.

There's no Tel Aviv right now.

They don't have the opportunity to get work.

And so you have pilgrims from all over the world, and they are poor and Christian now.

And so, like the handful of believers that actually live in Jerusalem are starting to organize how we feed them.

And once you know it, when they start feeding the widows, they feed the Jewish widows, not the Hellenistic widows, not the Greek widows.

Now they're all probably have Jewish backgrounds, and it describes them as Hellenistic widows, meaning they were probably Jewish believers, but from, you know, Macedonia or from Greece or Rome or even perhaps from Ethiopia, from outside of Israel was the point.

And, you know, why don't they just, if they're that hungry, why don't they go back to their families?

And the answer is because there's no churches anywhere in the world.

The only church is right there in Jerusalem.

So they can't, there's no TMS.edu backslash churchfinder.

You know, they're stuck.

And so they stay there, and the church tries to feed them, but is less eager to feed the ones from Macedonia.

The elders find out about this, and this is challenging for me to read as an elder because imagine what would happen in your church.

If you heard, you know, imagine all the elders are upstairs in the elders' meeting.

We meet in the second floor and somebody comes to us and says, We're doing food distribution in front of our Bible studies, and they're only feeding the women from this one ethnic group and not the women from this other ethnic group.

And it's happening right now.

And all of our elders in a room together, and we heard this.

I mean, we would like to trip over tables running down to the room to figure this out.

It's not going to happen on our watch, by golly.

That is not what they did in Acts.

They didn't scramble over tables to go fix the problem.

They told the congregation, why don't you find men in your flock that you trust and that have the Holy Spirit?

Those are the criteria.

You like them, they have a good reputation, they have the Holy Spirit, and they're wise.

They can figure out how to cross the street without, you know, getting run over, kind of thing.

Make them in charge of feeding the widows.

That was their approach.

And it says it seemed like a good idea to everybody.

I love that verse because you see the early ecclesiology of the church.

It is congregational but elder-led.

The congregation says, Yeah, these people have a good reputation.

So the elders said, Yes, then we appoint them.

The elders are leading, but the congregation is affirming, or you can swap those verbs, I guess, if you want.

The idea is that there's a relationship between the congregation and the elders that is synergistic.

They're together on this, they operate in unity.

And that's what happens.

And Philip is one of those guys.

And now you fast forward some period of time and persecution hits, and they have to get out of town.

In verse 4, it says they were scattered.

I mean, scattered is a nice way to say it.

Like they were getting killed.

They were getting arrested and beaten and flogged, and their property was being confiscated, and they got to the point where they had to leave.

And they left, and Philip went to Samaria, proclaimed to them the Christ.

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

So he is leading now by preaching and his evangelistic preaching.

He's telling the crowds of Samaritans who the Christ is.

They heard him and they saw the signs that he did.

You got demons getting cast out and crying with a loud voice, and many people who had been formerly possessed by demons who were paralyzed or lame were healed.

And then verse 8, there was a lot of joy in that city.

There's that word again.

There was a lot of joy in the city.

That's remarkable.

That spiritual growth comes and brings with it joy.

These people were persecuted, and yet they rejoiced.

They were borderline homeless and yet they rejoiced.

And it barely makes any sense.

Persecution drove them there, hungers and hunger and widows and flight and refugees.

But no worries.

It's almost as if the this flock of refugees says, we don't need to worry about anything because we have Philip here.

And he makes us rejoice.

Well, what comes next in the story here is Simon the magician, and we're not going to go through his story.

He's a scoundrel.

And all you really need to know about him is in verse 9.

He comes along to the people of Samaria, seeing all the demons cast out.

Look at verse 9.

He tells them all that he himself is somebody great.

You know, you all live in the Washington, D.C.

area.

I'm sure you've met this kind of person.

I didn't mean that, you know.

Okay, I meant it exactly like it sounded.

You know, you've met the kind of person that just wants to tell you, like, listen, it's important for you to know that I'm actually the assistant to the agent who is the undersecretary in charge of the third subdivision, the third subdivision of this one particular congressional office that got shut down last week, but it but it was important.

I'm exaggerating a little bit, but you know, you know the flavor when somebody puts themselves forward.

That was Simon.

And I don't want to dwell on Simon too much, except to say that that was not Philip.

Philip is in contrast with Simon.

Philip didn't roll in and say, Hey, I need you guys all to know that when the church in Jerusalem chose their first deacons, I was pretty high on that list.

So you Samaritans are pretty lucky to have me, you know.

I mean, Peter is on my reference sheet.

You know, you need to know how important I is.

Just go just contact my previous church, and John, the apostle that Jesus loved, will vouch for how significant of a leader I am.

That just turns everybody away, and it's certainly not what Philip did.

And so we'll skip Simon and jump down to verse 26 where we see Philip again in contrast with Simon.

And Philip is about to go off and become the model for evangelism.

I'll give you an outline just to follow along with Philip's story, the evangelist workout in four stations.

The evangelist workout in four stations.

I'm going to give you a workout routine for your evangelism, okay?

Um, Sean came in tonight all sweating, so this works perfect.

It works perfect for him.

It's his workout routine right here in four stations.

First, you want to work out as an evangelist?

The first step is the evangelist goes.

He goes.

This is true at a physical level, right?

The first step of working out, I'm reminded of this often when my alarm goes out, uh goes off in the morning.

The first step of working out is going to work out.

It's an often overlooked step.

I'm just saying, it's harder than it sounds, okay?

Well, the angel of the Lord said to Philip, rise and go.

Go towards the south, to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.

And then the the author, I mean, Luke is you know writing to some Gentiles here, lets you know this is a desert place.

People, Luke is writing to uh Theopolis, uh, you know, a Greek name here.

Maybe they're not familiar with the geography of Jerusalem.

So maybe you're not either.

So the angel is telling the disciples to go up to Baltimore, let's say it that way, and that's where Philip heads, just like he should.

The persecution comes, he goes towards Baltimore, and the angel grabs him.

Uh after massive revival in Baltimore, the angel grabs him and says, Actually, I'm gonna send you down to Richmond.

You know, it's the other place.

It's desolate down there.

I-95 the whole way, geez.

And that's where Philip goes.

It's the opposite direction.

It's actually triangulated, so it's being sent to Danville.

You could say it that way.

He's, I mean, it's off far away.

The only one who would be on the road to Gaza is somebody who's going back to Ethiopia.

That's the only reason you would be on that road.

There's probably even better ways to go that way, too.

You could go through Jericho or whatever, but he this he's sent to the road to Gaza.

This is where the Gaza Strip is to this day.

It's where that, you know, it's a beach area, but it is also a desert area.

Not a lot of houses there.

It is desolate, not a lot grows there.

You look at the map of the 12 tribes, and Judah has all of that, and you think, why does Judah have all that land?

Because nothing lives there.

And that's where he's sent.

Yeah, it's a desert place.

But Philip went, verse 27 says, He rose and went.

Now, it is reasonable to see some kind of supernatural transportation here.

Um, maybe he walked the whole way, maybe that's implied, but the just large gap in distance covered in the short verses here, it could lead you to believe that the spirit directed him there or transported them.

I don't know.

I don't know more than what's said here, but it was a long way.

And we know that Philip did go.

Well, he goes on his way there and he encounters the Ethiopian.

But before we get to that, I just want you to imagine what Philip the evangelist.

He's the only person in the New Testament identified as an evangelist.

The only one.

Evangelism is recorded in the New Testament as a gift.

Philip is literally the only one named in the New Testament who had the gift of evangelism.

And he's leading a revival of Samaritans with demons getting cast out this way and that way, and everybody rejoicing.

This is as good as the evangelist life gets, is what Philip is living.

He's leading his best evangelistic life right now.

And the angel tells him to leave.

That's gotta be hard to leave.

He left revival for the road to Gaza.

He left massive crowds for a place where there's most definitely not going to be any crowds.

That probably was hard to obey, I would guess.

I often tell people when they are getting ordained that part of the ordination process is giving up the idea that you get to choose where you're gonna live.

It's kind of like joining the military in that sense.

You know, you can't join the military.

Imagine, well, I'm sure the recruiters lie to you, right?

You join the military and you're like, I'm not gonna do basic at 29 Palms, okay?

And the recruiter's like, yeah, sure, we would never send someone to 29 palms for basic.

That would never happen.

And then you join and you're put on the bus to 29 Palms, and you you might tell the person, I want you to know my recruiter promised me I wouldn't go here.

You would probably get a good laugh out of that.

Yeah.

So it is with ministry.

You are directed by the Lord wherever he's gonna lead you.

Wherever we're chess pieces.

He moves us around, and it can rub against a person's pride.

I gave up a long time ago trying to associate church size with gifting.

There's a whole like industry in evangelicalism that tries to, you know, connect the size of the church with the giftedness of the pastor, and it's all fiction.

It's numbers and smoke, and there's I mean, I'm convinced at this point of my Christian life that there is zero connection between the two things, and that's just the reality.

Nevertheless, it rubs against a pastor's pride to be sent off to a smaller place, and this is Philip.

Massive revivals as an evangelist at his doorstep, and he's transferred, promoted with sarcastic quote marks, to the Gaza Strip, literally.

With a road with nobody.

Nobody.

And he went.

I mean, this would be the modern equivalent of somebody with a well-paying secular job leaving it to go to seminary and become a pastor.

Who would do such a thing?

It's crazy talk.

On paper, it's a step down, but in the kingdom, it's a step towards the chariot.

Amen?

First, he goes.

Second, he runs.

He runs.

Verse 27, he goes and finds Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure.

He had come to Jerusalem to worship.

This is an awkward situation.

This is not a random pilgrim on the road, on the Gaza Strip road here.

Remember, it's deserted.

There's not going to be anybody else around.

It's not some guy, like it's not like the road to Emmaus, where there's two guys walking, you can go up and talk to them, and that wouldn't be weird.

That's not what this is.

This is a very wealthy person, treasurer of the queen's treasury in Egypt.

This this guy has money and power and influence.

And he's not walking on the road like a pilgrim would be.

He's not leading a camel around.

Riding a camel, the guy's in a chariot.

This is not the kind of thing that you would walk up to.

You walk in N DC and you see the row of black suburbans.

I mean, it's one thing to ask somebody for directions like that.

That tourist looks lost.

I might talk to them, or that person looks like they live here.

I might ask them how to get there.

But you don't walk up to the window of the three black suburbans with the hidden blue lights and knock on the window and say, hey, I'm looking for a place to eat.

Like you recognize that's inappropriate.

But that's the situation Philip finds himself in.

You know, evangelism can be difficult to do, partly because of the fear of man, of course, that's obvious.

But also partly because we have a crazy and insane message about the God of the universe coming to earth as a human being who led a sinless life.

And even though he is God and has legions of angels at his disposal, he was murdered by the conniving Sanhedrin in partnership with some Roman ruler who wasn't even a king, like practically less than a governor, and they put the Lord of the universe to death.

That's a kind of embarrassing message to say.

Anyway, the guy's in his chariot, he's rooting the prophet Isaiah.

The Spirit says to Philip, go over and join his chariot.

So Philip verse 30 ran to him.

I mean, that's pretty cool.

He ran to him.

He didn't casually walk over.

He didn't ask even, you know, can I do a survey for you real quick?

That's a classic evangelism move.

I love that.

That's my favorite cold evangelism move.

Can I do a survey?

I just have a few questions for you, kind of thing.

No.

Philip books it over to him with an eagerness.

Because Philip's taking in the scene.

Here's a guy with his Bible out, reading it apparently out loud.

This is like tailor-made.

Remember, Philip left a massive revival for deserted road.

And then he finds on the road a guy reading his Bible, wrestling through it.

This is 2 Corinthians 5, verse 13.

2 Corinthians 5:13

If we look beside ourselves, it is only for the sake of God.

Philip certainly looks beside himself here, inserting himself in this kind of situation, that kind of chariot, this kind of conversation in that geographical place.

This is not something normal people would do.

It is odd and unusual, and it's what Philip was eager to put.

If Philip leans into the odd and unusual, he's all happy for that situation.

For you to be an evangelism pastor, you have to embrace, there's not going to be a casual, non-awkward evangelism conversation.

Like your job in evangelism is to invent conversations that are going to be awkward.

You're telling somebody to turn from their sin and repent from how they've lived their whole life.

There's not a tactful way to do that.

Philip didn't just do it, he leaned into it and ran over.

September 20, so sorry, September 19th, 2018, a fire broke out at the Arthur Caper Senior Apartments, 5th Street, Southeast, right next to the 8th and I Marine Barracks.

Perhaps you remember the story, if for no other reason the videos that circulated of the story, it's a it's a it's about a half of a mile from the marine barracks.

So not across the street.

But the smoke rose, fire trucks went by, marines were in their classroom and could see the smoke from the windows of their classroom file accounts, and so they left and because they were eager for an excuse to get out of class.

They are Marines, but they're also students at the time, and what student wouldn't take advantage of that?

As they started going to the building, it became apparent the fire department was overwhelmed.

It was a massive assisted living complex.

So it wasn't just an apartment complex, it was assisted living.

And the fire alarms weren't working and the building was burning down.

And by the end of the afternoon, something like a hundred Marines had run there.

And this is why you might remember, I bet many of you have seen the video of this, because all this, you know, the street cams are just showing all these like 18, 20-year-old Marines in their fatigues that they were wearing to class, so the green shirt and the pants, running in their boots down the street, right down the middle, like a fun video to watch.

They make it to the apartment complex and they're running into a burning building, and they got every single person out.

Many of the people who were rescued said they didn't even know the building was on fire.

It was the Marines pounding on their door that let them know the building was burning down.

What an image for Philip here.

You know, we live in a world where people don't know it's burning down.

Most people walk around, might avoid the fire.

Not Philip.

He ran to it.

Third.

He opens.

Philip gets there.

Hears the book of Isaiah being read and asks, Do you understand what you're reading?

What a good question.

The guy said, How can I understand unless somebody guides me?

What a great answer.

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

The passage that he was reading is this like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, like a lamb before its shear is silenced.

This is Isaiah 53, verse 7 and 8.

Isaiah 53:7

He didn't open his mouth, and his humiliation justice was denied him.

Who can describe his generation?

For his life has been taken away from the earth.

What a powerful passage.

Speaking of the death of Christ, like a sheep he was led to slaughter.

Judaism still debates over the identity of Isaiah's suffering servant.

Some say it's the nation Israel, some say it's the Messiah.

It truly is the Messiah.

Some say it's an image for the prophet Isaiah himself.

Jews still debate it to this day.

When you actually read the four suffering servant songs in Isaiah, you can't come away thinking that it's the nation Israel.

That doesn't work.

It's personalized in such a particular way.

He's buried in a grave and resurrects.

Ah, but the Israel was spent time in exile.

That's not buried in a borrowed grave.

Exile, the Old Testament has lots to say about exile, and it's not that word.

A man didn't open his mouth.

Who could describe the people that come after him?

This morning we talked about leverage marriage.

You died without kids.

You lose the promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

It's over.

It's as if God's word to Abraham meant nothing if he die without kids.

Jesus died without kids.

Where's Abraham, Isaac, Jacob?

Where's their promise now?

It's dead.

If Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are dead, it's dead.

Jesus dies.

No marriage.

No kids.

Where's the promise now?

His life, this is the verse 33, his life is taken away from the earth.

Who could even talk about his generation, meaning his offspring?

There's nobody after him.

That's what he's reading.

You could see how a eunuch who's not going to have kids in exile in Egypt, who believes in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, would have a particular interest in this passage.

We so often just look at the lamb led away for the slaughter.

Obviously, Jesus, you know, the Sunday school answer, who is the lamb?

Jesus is the lamb.

The eunuch is probably dwelling more on the second half of the verse here.

What is going to happen to the promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob if there are no kids?

If there is no land?

What does it mean?

We can make it more academic of this almost a scholar in an ivory tower with his library at his fingertips, asking Philip, oh, who is the identity of this man?

This is a desperate eunuch who wants to know if God's promise to him stands.

He's coming back from the temple, of course, where, I mean, you know this, he wouldn't have been allowed into the temple.

A eunuch is prohibited from going to the temple.

The eunuch would have known that before he went there.

He probably went some form of desperation.

Maybe he was sent by the queen.

Who knows why he went.

But he left sad and disappointed.

There's no answers.

Who's he gonna turn to for an answer?

Do you think a Levite's gonna help him?

You think the same people that just betrayed and murdered Jesus are gonna come alongside an Ethiopian eunuch and help him wrestle through the finer points of Isaiah 53?

He has no hope.

He's not gonna get an answer back in Egypt, that's for sure.

He's lost.

Totally lost.

I want you to flip over to Romans chapter 10.

Romans 10 · chapter mention

Just go a few pages over.

I know this is such a common story in the Bible, the Ethiopian eunuch, that I feel like I'm not telling you things you don't know, but I want to draw your attention to a connection that is often missed.

Romans chapter 10.

Romans 10 · chapter mention

Paul asks, well, it says in verse 13, everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.

Notice verse 9: if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Scripture says everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame, of course.

There's no distinction between Jew and Greek.

Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

That's the promise.

But there's an obvious problem with this promise.

Verse 14.

How can they call on someone whom they don't believe?

I mean, that makes sense.

And here's the Ethiopian eunuch problem right here.

How can they believe in someone who they've never heard?

And how can they hear without someone preaching?

You're on the road to Ethiopia, turned away from the temple.

There's no hope for you at all.

And this is an educated man.

We sometimes minimize the Ethiopian eunuch here, is like he doesn't know what he's talking about, he doesn't know anything.

Not true.

He's got the scroll of Isaiah, which would be worth, I mean, tens of thousands of dollars, at the very least.

This is not, this is not a pocket NIV he's carrying around.

You've got a Hebrew prophecy in a Greek Bible read by an African reader, worth tens of thousands of dollars, and no answers.

And Romans 10 explains why there's no answers, because how can they believe in someone that they haven't even heard of?

And they can't hear unless somebody tells them.

That's the obvious thing in verse 14.

You have to tell somebody.

You wonder why don't they why don't more people believe the gospel?

Because who's gonna tell them?

Somebody asked me a few days ago on Friday, why don't angels repent?

Angels are so smart, why don't they believe?

And my answer to the person was because repentance isn't gifted, you know, isn't predicated on your intelligence.

Smart, it's not that if you were smart enough, you'd repent.

One would think so.

That's just not the way the world works.

So, yes, angels are smarter than we are.

No, that does not make them more likely to repent.

And I've been thinking about ever since because this is a really good question.

And part of the answer is because there's no angel preachers.

It's Romans 10.

How's an angel supposed to call on someone that unless their preacher tells them what to do?

How can someone be preached to unless someone sends the preacher?

That's verse 15.

And then wouldn't you know this?

How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news.

That's the same song the eunuch is reading in the chariot.

It's the same text.

Paul goes on, they haven't all obeyed the gospel.

Just because they have Isaiah 52, Isaiah 53, that song in their lap doesn't mean they believe it.

Because Isaiah again says, Lord, who has believed the report from us?

That's Isaiah 53, verse 1.

Isaiah 53:1

That's the very same chapter the eunuch is reading on the on the chariot.

Why don't people believe?

And the answer is they don't have anyone to explain it to them.

So verse 17, faith comes by hearing, and hearing through, it's an odd Greek expression.

The word of Christ is how the Isv renders it.

That's fine.

It's words about Christ, it's a speech about Christ, is another way to say it.

Faith comes by hearing, but you cannot hear.

He's just saying the same thing you said earlier.

You cannot hear unless you have somebody explaining the words about Jesus to you.

That's the point.

It keeps verse 18.

But haven't they heard?

Couldn't you say the Ethiopian Eedic has heard?

He has Isaiah in his lap.

Well, yeah, Paul says, sure, verse 18, yeah, their voice has gone out to the whole earth.

Why not?

Their words have gone into the world.

That's like Psalm 19 kind of language.

But they don't understand it.

And Moses said they're not going to understand it.

That's verse 19.

And so finally, back to Isaiah verse 20.

I'm going to be found by people who didn't even seek for me.

You can go back to Acts chapter 8.

Acts 8 · chapter mention

What a wonderful picture.

The Ethiopian has scripture in his hands, but scripture unexplained leaves him lost on a desert road with no answers, only questions.

Fortunately, God brought Philip.

By the way, the verse that Philip asks, I'm sorry, the verse the eunuch acts asks in Acts chapter 8.

Acts 8 · chapter mention

Let me find it again.

How can I?

The verse that Philip asks in verse 30, do you not understand what you're reading?

That's the same exact Greek word from Romans 10.

How can they understand?

The guy's asking it.

He's acting out Romans 10.

How could I understand unless I get a preacher sent to me?

And Philip says, Wouldn't she know it, man?

Wouldn't she know it?

You can't believe unless there's a preacher and the Holy Spirit just made me come here.

Would you invite me in?

Because I'm getting tired running alongside.

He comes on board.

The eunuch asks Philip, Who's this talking about?

Philip opened his mouth, verse 35.

And beginning with the scripture, that's why I said he opens.

He opens his mouth.

He doesn't play with the recipe here.

He doesn't find some point of contact with the eunuch or anything like that.

He just opens his mouth and what comes out is the Bible.

He told him the good news about Jesus.

He opens the Bible.

This is why Philip was so joyful, because he opens his mouth, out comes the Bible.

You probably haven't met a you probably haven't met somebody who lacks joy but is always talking about scripture.

Usually they're connected.

Energy will get you to the chariot, but only the word of God will get a man to Christ.

Philip was energetic pursuing the chariot, but the word of God is what opened the eunuch's heart to Christ.

You can only get so far in personality.

Sometimes people think evangelism is all about personality.

Yes, an outgoing personality helps.

An outgoing personality doesn't save anybody.

No one's going to say, I repent from everything I've ever believed, because man, that guy makes me laugh.

No, the word of God does that work.

And so an evangelist goes, he runs, eager to lean in to the conversation, and he opens the word of God.

Finally, fourth stop, he disappears.

Of course, you know this.

The Ethiopian is baptized.

Hey, there's water.

What keeps me from being baptized?

So much.

People try to extrapolate so much of this spontaneous.

Oh, churches should do spontaneous baptisms because this was a spontaneous baptism.

This is not a spontaneous baptism.

It was not like the guy decided to be baptized and so just found the nearest water here.

He's being interviewed in a very robust pastoral interview, I might add, Sean.

A very robust pastoral interview with Philip walking through the suffering servant songs.

The guy has, the scroll of Isaiah has been to the temple five minutes ago.

This is a dude who is locked in and engaged, and then still submits himself to Philip and says, asks him, what would prevent me from being baptized?

You might say, oh, he can only be baptized in a church.

Yeah, that's preferable.

Baptism is given to the church to do for sure.

But you know where there's not a church right now?

Is Gaza.

You know where else there's not a church right now?

Anywhere in the world other than Jerusalem.

So give him some slack.

At the very most, I'll grant you this allows for baptism in churches or in Gaza.

And then Philip disappears.

Philip went away.

Verse 39 says, The eunuch saw him no more.

And he went on his way.

Notice the word?

Rejoicing.

Remember how we met Philip?

The first word that was used for him?

Rejoicing.

That joy is what is magnified by God.

It's shared and magnified.

The evangelist magnifies joy.

It was Philip's and now it is spread out.

Philip found himself at Azudos, which is further up the shore.

This is going back up towards Samaria, but it's on the coast now.

And he passed through there and just starts preaching in all the towns until he comes to Caesarea.

So Philip gets turned around.

That's why there's some supernatural transportation here that he's turned around and led in a different direction.

He's not going back up to Baltimore now.

Now he's going up to like New York City.

He ends up in Caesarea, which is the Roman capital of the whole area.

That's where the first Gentile church is going to be.

That's where Peter is going to come with the Gentiles and preach there.

It's where Paul's going to be held in prison.

It is the Roman city in Israel.

It's the metropolis.

It's the port.

All of Paul's missionary journeys leave from there.

That's where Philip ends up.

We're not going to see Peter there for another two chapters.

Philip gets there first.

Classic Philip.

Peter walks in and sees everybody getting saved.

He's like, how did that happen?

Yeah, well, your boy Philip's been here for a while.

That's one explanation.

Philip goes there bringing joy everywhere until he gets up to Caesarea.

Philip hands off from the Ethiopian eunuch.

This is the transition.

Evangelism leads to the water.

Baptism is the crossing into discipleship.

That's the great commission.

Go into all the nations, making disciples, teaching them to obey all have commanded you, baptizing them.

So there's a distinction there.

There's instruction that leads to baptism, that leads to discipleship.

If you're a disciple, that means you've been baptized.

You've gone through the waters of baptism.

And now you're following Christ.

The role of the evangelism person is to lead you to the water.

The role of the church is to disciple you and cause you to grow in maturity.

On both sides of the water, it should be marked by joy.

Joy in the Lord.

Simon provides a good contrast again.

Simon drew people to himself and told people, remember what Simon said?

How great he was.

Philip leads people to Christ and then is forgotten.

Forgotten.

You don't even know if the eunuch knew his name.

They never saw each other again.

We do know that.

It says in verse 39, they never saw each other again.

And they rejoiced.

Maybe the person who led you to Christ you don't see anymore.

You should still have joy when you think about them.

The joy of pastoral ministry and this specifically evangelism is not the need for it.

The joy that comes is not from knowing, oh, you know, I have a role to play at church.

The joy that comes is from seeing other people rejoice in Christ and handing him over to be baptized.

We do see Philip again.

20 years later.

You know where he is?

20 years later?

Caesarea still.

What a great city for him.

That's where the whole world comes to, and he's preaching the gospel there.

And it's in Caesarea, Acts 21, verse 8, that he's referred to as the evangelist.

Acts 21:8

He's still running.

20 years later, he's still running as an evangelist.

That's my prayer for you, Sean.

20 years later, if the Lord tarries, you're still gonna be running up to cars at McDonald's.

That you go where the Spirit sends, even when it looks like a demotion.

That you run towards the chariots, that you open the book, you lead them to the water, and then you disappear.

What do people remember from you?

Joy.

That's what you leave behind.

And grace extends to more and more people.

God's glory will multiply, and so will your joy.

2 Timothy 4, verse 5, brother, keep working.

2 Timothy 4:5

Do the work of an evangelist.

Keep running.

Lord, we are grateful for your word.

It motivates us to action.

It guards us from apathy, asetia, guards us from lethargy.

It energizes us to leave joy wherever we go.

Make us joyful people.

Not flippant people.

We don't want to be cavalier.

We don't want to be shallow.

We do want to be joyful.

Our joy has to have deeper roots than the trials of this world.

Philip worked with widows.

Homelessness and hunger.

Demon-possessed people.

That was his life.

And everyone described him with the same word, joy.

Our trials are so small compared to that.

Help us be marked by joy.

We're grateful for the legacy of Philip.

We pray that it would be our legacy as well.

Make us joyful.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or you want more information about what it means to follow Christ, please go to our church website, iBC.church.

If you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to see you at one of our own worship services at Emmanuel Bible.

Now may the Lord bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.