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Sunnyside Baptist Church Michael Dirrim
Heavenly Father, we thank you for gathering us here today to remind us by your Spirit of the glories of your Son to strengthen our faith that we may hold fast the confession of our faith, that we may together encourage each other and rejoice in your truth.
I pray that you would help us today to see the joy of your Word, that we would see Christ and that we would be changed. We pray for these mercies, looking to your Son with whom you are well pleased. It's in his name that we pray.
Amen. I invite you to open your Bibles and turn with me to Acts chapter 8, and we're going to be looking at verses 26 through 40. As we continue the story of Philip, Philip the deacon of the church who had gone to Samaria and preached the Word, and then Philip who went down into the desert toward Gaza, and he preaches the gospel to an Ethiopian eunuch there in the wilderness.
Acts chapter 8, verses 26 through 40. Our title comes from Isaiah chapter 43, verses 16 through 21, in which God promises to do a new thing. He says, don't remember the old things, but I'm going to do a new thing, and this new thing is waters in the wilderness, rivers in the desert.
Now right before he said forget about the old thing and we're going to do a new thing, he reminded them of the story of how he had delivered them from the Egyptians, having had them crossed through the Red Sea and then covered over all of Pharaoh's chariots and army.
That was the old thing, and of course you remember the story that there they were in the wilderness now delivered from Pharaoh, but they became thirsty and they had no water to drink. And what did God do through his servant Moses, but have him strike a rock and the rock poured forth water, and look, there was water in the wilderness, look, there were rivers in the desert.
So how is it that God says through the prophet Isaiah to his people, don't recall the old thing, I'm going to do a new thing called waters in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. Lord, that is the old thing.
What was he saying? Not like that. Like that, but not like that. And so he's telling them to get ready for something new, something that they could recognize based on how he had dealt with them in his covenant faithfulness to them in history, but that was the shadow, he's going to give them the real deal.
That was the picture, here comes the fulfillment. Waters in the wilderness, rivers in the desert. What is Jesus up to here in the book of Acts? These are the acts of the risen Lord Jesus Christ. He is busy at work through his Holy Spirit, through his apostles.
What is he doing? What does the Son of David do? The Son of David builds the temple. He's building the new covenant temple, one made of living stones, one that is far more glorious than the temple that came before, and Jesus promised that what he builds, the gates of Hades would not prevail against.
He is building his church, he is building the new covenant temple, he is establishing his kingdom, he is at work, and we are seeing the results of that here in the book of Acts time and again. He is building the house of God with living stones, and the quarry includes Samaritans, and it includes Ethiopians, it includes eunuchs.
Look at the glorious house of God that the Son of David is building. Well, let's read the word of the Lord together. I invite you to stand with me if you are able, and we're going to read Acts chapter 8, beginning in verse 26.
This is the word of the Lord. Now an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, Arise and go toward the south along the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. This is desert. So he arose and went, and behold, a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians, who had charge of all her treasury, and had come to Jerusalem to worship, was returning.
And sitting in his chariot, he was reading Isaiah the prophet. Then the Spirit said to Philip, Go near and overtake this chariot. So Philip ran to him and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah and said, Do you understand what you are reading?
And he said, How can I, unless someone guides me? And he asked Philip to come up and sit with him. The place in the scripture which he read was this. He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opened not his mouth.
In his humiliation, his justice was taken away. Who will declare his generation, for his life is taken from the earth? So the eunuch answered Philip and said, I ask you, of whom does the prophet say this?
Of himself or of some other man? Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning at the scripture, preached Jesus to him. Now as they went down the road, they came to some water, and the eunuch said, See here is water.
What hinders me from being baptized? Then Philip said, If you believe with all your heart, you may. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. So he commanded the chariot to stand still, and both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water, and he baptized him.
Now when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught Philip away, so that the eunuch saw him no more, and he went on his way rejoicing. But Philip was found at Azotus, and passing through, he preached in all the cities till he came to Caesarea.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. When the son of David built the temple in 1 Kings chapter 7, Solomon made a sea of bronze, a massive edifice, a massive construction, a bronze sea, and this water was placed in the courtyard of the temple, which would be on the east side of the temple, because the entrance of the temple faced east, and there before the throne of God, the Ark of the Covenant, upon which was the mercy seat, the throne of God on earth, there sat a bronze sea.
Water. A lot of water. Now what was this sea for? When we read about the brazen labor, a much smaller version, back in Exodus, we discover it was for the purification of the Levites who served in the tabernacle, and they had to wash their hands and wash their feet lest they die as they offered up sacrifices and went through the various motions of worshiping God.
But Solomon makes it much bigger. It's not just a labor. It's not just a bowl. We don't have a really nice sink. No, we have a sea. A brazen sea. And something that was interesting about this sea, it was to be on the move.
This water that was before the throne of God was supposed to be on the move. It sat on the back of 12 oxen. Three faced west, three faced north, three faced east, and three faced south. But you know, all that water before the throne of God didn't move because the oxen were bronze.
Yeah, Aslan hadn't come and breathed on them yet, so they weren't on the move. Additionally, on either side of the brass sea, on the bronze sea, on either side were ten carts. Probably each one as large as the original brazen labor, but here they are, ten of them, and they all were full of water, and they were all on four wheels each.
But they were situated on either side of the bronze sea, and you know what? They didn't move either. They had wheels, but they didn't move. They just sat there. The oxen were interesting. They didn't have their heads toward the sea.
Their heads were facing the other direction. So here's this picture that God gives his people. Here's all this water that the Levites are to wash themselves with, water that says, thus far and no further.
You have to be cleansed. You have to be washed clean. If you come any closer, if you don't wash in this water, you're dead because of the holiness of God. But this water was supposed to be on the move, but of course it didn't move.
It just sat there on these oxen. They didn't go anywhere because, of course, they were bronze. Carts, they had four wheels each, water before the throne of God that was supposed to be on the move, and yet it never did.
Well, least wise, not in the old covenant. Not in the old. The promise was there. The promise was there. The fulfillment was not yet. I think it's important that we keep that in mind as we think about the promises that God gives about water on the move, water that goes to a dry and thirsty land, water that is before the throne of God and is supposed to be on the move in all directions.
God sovereignly gathers a global people by gospel preaching. God sovereignly gathers a global people by gospel preaching. And as we look at the story in the book of Acts, and we think about Philip evangelizing the Ethiopian eunuch, it's helpful to compare that with Romans 10 and to think about that chain of events there in Romans 10.
How shall they call upon him in whom they have not believed? How should they believe on him in whom they have not heard? How shall they hear without a preacher? And how should they preach unless they are sent?
Reading it backwards, we see the story of the Ethiopian eunuch and Philip. How should they preach unless they are sent? Well, Philip was sent. God sent his angel to tell Philip, I want you to go down to this place, and Luke helpfully tells Theophilus and all of his other readers, hey, by the way, this is desert.
Why is that important? Because a little bit later on, the Ethiopian eunuch is going to get baptized, immersed in water in the desert? And what book was he reading? Isaiah? Oh, Isaiah. Water is in the desert.
Okay, this is good stuff. So Philip is sent. God had prepared the place, he had prepared the person, he had prepared the prophet. Here comes Philip, and he is there to be the preacher for this Ethiopian eunuch.
I love Romans 10. Romans 10 reminds us of a lot of important priorities. Verse 13 is a quote from Joel to the same passage that Peter preached at Pentecost, whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Whoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, they shall be saved. Now, many moons ago, when I was pastoring in Tennessee, we had a missionary come by and he got up to preach, and he told us a story of which he found that he approved of and thought it was a good idea, and he shared this story.
And it was a story of a missionary who was fresh on the field in the jungles of the Amazon, and he didn't know the natives, and he didn't know their language, but what he decided to do to get started was he began to walk along that jungle path, and he assumed that possibly the natives were hiding in the bushes, and so he began to yell out, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, in hopes that even if they didn't really, you know, know what that meant, that the natives would begin to repeat that, and since they would be calling upon the name of the Lord, they would be saved.
So you can follow that little superstition under your absurdity folder. That is not what that passage means. What is required is that there be some preaching, that there be some description, that there be some explanation.
There is a need for a declaration of some kind. In Acts chapter 8 verse 25, we read about Philip and the Apostles in verse 25, so when they had testified and preached the Word of the Lord, they returned to Jerusalem.
They testified, they were witnesses of the reality of what happened, that Jesus of Nazareth indeed is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, he was born of a virgin, he lived a perfect life, he died upon the cross for us and for our salvation, was raised the third day, and he's sent to the right hand of the Father, all according to the Scriptures.
This is the witness, the martyro, you hear the word martyr in there, they were the witnesses, they were testifying to the reality of what happened. Jesus said to his followers, you are my witnesses. But also Philip, in verse 5 of Acts chapter 8, when he went down to Samaria, we read that Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached Christ to them.
In this way, in this word is keruso, he was a herald, he was going about as the herald of the King. Jesus of Nazareth is King of kings and Lord of lords, he has been enthroned, he's in charge, he is the only Savior for the world, he has all glory, all power.
Everybody should know this, he's a herald declaring the royal realities of Christ. And so now he is also sent to the Ethiopian eunuch. And do you see his question? Do you see his question in verse 30?
He hears him reading Isaiah the prophet, but he says, he asks him a question, do you understand? Do you understand? Now, Isaiah is very appealing. Isaiah had a great appeal to that generation. Jesus read from the book of Isaiah when he went to the synagogue.
It makes sense that the Ethiopian would have bought a copy of Isaiah. We see, by the way, that he reads it later on, that he is reading from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible called the Septuagint, because obviously the Ethiopian eunuch couldn't read Hebrew or Aramaic, but he could read Greek, the trade language, the common language that everybody used.
And so he got this copy of Isaiah and he's reading it. Very appealing. The Dead Sea Scrolls, over 25 of the Dead Sea Scrolls were Isaiah. This is a very popular book. It was very appealing to the people, but do you understand?
The Bible is very appealing to many people. There is beauty, there is mystery, there is history, but do you understand it? Do you know what it means? That's the question Philip asks, that's a good question to ask.
Do you understand what you are reading? I think the book of Isaiah also holds additional appeal for this Ethiopian eunuch. Look over in Isaiah 56. This is just three chapters past where he read from in Isaiah 53.
Isaiah 56, and think about what Isaiah is saying here. Think about the word of the Lord, the prophet Isaiah, and why the book of Isaiah, and this area of the book of Isaiah, might be very appealing to this Ethiopian eunuch.
Think about it. You'll probably be able to tell. Isaiah 56, let's begin in verse 3. Do not let the son of the foreigner, who has joined himself to the Lord, speak saying, the Lord has utterly separated me from his people, nor let the eunuch say, here I am a dry tree.
For thus says the Lord, to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths and choose what pleases me and hold fast my covenant, even to them I will give in my house and within my walls a place and a name better than that of sons and daughters.
I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. 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 the Sabbath and holds fast my covenant, even them I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar, for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations. The Lord God who gathers the outcasts of Israel says, yet I will gather to him others besides those who are gathered to him.
Now that's a very appealing to the Ethiopian eunuch, don't you think? Yeah, I think so. This Ethiopian eunuch is a God-fearer, he went up to Jerusalem to worship, we read in the story, he went to Jerusalem to worship, and he was on his way back.
What did he do? How did he worship when he got there? Obviously he offered up sacrifices, but now he's on his way home. Does he get to stay? No, he does not get to stay in Jerusalem, he does not get to stay in the holy city.
Did he get to witness the sacrifices that he undoubtedly bought from the, you know, he had to change out his money to the holy money, and then he had to buy the approved sacrifices from the animal dealers there in the courtyard of the temple.
Did he actually get to see the lamb that he bought offered up on the altar? Did he get to watch it? No, because there was a wall. There was a sign, in fact, on that wall that said, thus far and no further, Gentiles.
Additionally, there is more than one passage, Leviticus and Exodus and Deuteronomy and so on, the eunuchs were not allowed to go inside to worship. He didn't get to go in. So now, you can imagine, I don't know if he's reading Isaiah for the third time, the 30th time, or for the first time here in this chariot, but if he hasn't read Isaiah 56, he's about to, and I wonder what his reflection is going to be when he does, or if he already has.
He's going home. He's not within the walls. He's not in God's house. He isn't given a place. So how does this work? How does this work in the text? More on that later. Philip says, do you understand what you are reading?
He's reading out of Isaiah 53, and he says, how can I unless someone shows me the way, unless someone guides me? Literally, he says, unless someone shows me the way. What was the name of the early Christians?
They didn't go by Christians. They went by what? The way, because Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. No man can come to the Father except through him, and so he's saying, someone's got to show me the way, and Philip says, okay, I can do that.
There are not many ways to understand the Scriptures any more than there are many ways to come to God. There is the way, and that is Christ. We need to be witnesses. We need to be heralds, which means we need to take up the Word of God and say, do you understand this?
Do you understand this? The Bible can be appealing to people for a lot of different reasons, but hey, do you understand this? And how are we going to be a guide? We have to show them the way, not our way, not a way, the way.
I've got to show them Jesus from the Bible, or what am I doing? What's the point? We have to use the light of the gospel. Let us be very clear. When we read 1 Corinthians 15 and other places, the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, constitutes his person and his work.
The term gospel gets used a lot. People call this or that a gospel issue. People will say this is important or that is important because of the gospel, and they don't take any time to define what that is, but the Bible tells us what the gospel is.
It is the person and work of Jesus Christ, who he is and what he has done, what he is doing, what he will do. Everything about him, he's the way. So, how should they hear without a preacher? Well, they need somebody to preach Jesus.
The next question, of course, is how should they believe in him of whom they have not heard? Are you going to believe in him of whom they have not heard? This is in verses 32 through 35, and so we see that the place in the scripture where the Ethiopian eunuch is reading was this, okay, so this is Isaiah 53 verses 7 through 8.
Let's turn over there and take a look. Isaiah chapter 53 verses 7 and 8. Do you know what the Ethiopian eunuch was reading just a little bit before this? Isaiah 52 13. He didn't have chapters, he didn't have verses, he just had a whole lot of capital Greek letters all smushed together, so you couldn't tell where one word began or one word ended.
No punctuation, just all smashed there together, written upon this animal skin roll. But when you read it out loud, you hear the vowels and you hear the consonants and you know what it means. So, he's sitting there in the back of his chariot, yelling Isaiah so he can hear himself as he drives along, as somebody drives the chariot along, and this is what he reads.
Isaiah 52 verse 13. Behold, my servant shall deal prudently. Now, that's a surprise already because earlier on in these servant songs, God says things like, is there anyone so stupid as my servant? How deaf, how blind, how dumb, how rebellious, stiff-necked.
But you know, there's another servant. If your translators have done their job right, you'll be reading lowercase s about that servant which was unfaithful. But there's another kind of servant. There's another servant who fills the same role, the same space, that he has a capital S.
Behold, my servant shall deal prudently. He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high, just as many were astonished at you, so his visage was marred more than any man and his form more than the sons of men.
So he shall sprinkle many nations. Kings shall shut their mouths at him. But what had not been told them they shall see, and what they had not heard they shall consider. Who is believed, I report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant and as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness when we see him. There is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and we hid, as it were, our faces from him.
He was despised and we did not esteem him. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions.
He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. All we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silence, so he opened not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who will declare his generation?
For he was cut off from the land of the living. For the transgressions of my people he was stricken, and they made his grave with the wicked, but with the rich had his death, because he had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in his mouth.
Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He has put him to grief, and when you make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed. He shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
He shall see the labor of his soul and be satisfied. By his knowledge my righteous servant shall justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors, and bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.".
Hallelujah. This Ethiopian eunuch, I don't know if he's read chapter 56 yet or not. I don't know. Maybe he has. Maybe he's backtracking. But Isaiah 56 states, in no uncertain terms, that the only way the foreigner or the eunuch is going to be welcomed and accepted in God's city and at God's temple, and to be at peace with God, and know the smile from the face of God, is if all the requirements of covenant faithfulness are met.
And this Ethiopian eunuch is going home. He's on his way back. Didn't get into the temple. He didn't see his offering being given up to the Lord. Was not allowed in. He came up to the temple, and there was a great sea.
Thus far and no further. You are not holy enough to enter. And yet there is this servant who satisfies all the requirements of covenant faithfulness, in all the different ways that this Ethiopian eunuch has failed.
Oh my. Look at the one who bears the transgressions and justifies the many. And unlike the cynical, wasted man of Ecclesiastes who dies and doesn't see the labor of his hand, all this man does because he is risen from the dead.
It's amazing. And the Ethiopian eunuch says, who is he talking about? Is he talking about himself? Is he talking about another man? And beginning at this passage, Philip preached Christ. Preached. Not the martyreo, the witness of history.
Not Cheruso, the herald of Christ's authority, but the euangelizo, the good news. He gospelized him. He says, let me tell you about Jesus and why this is good news for you. Why this matters to you. This is not mere information.
This is not a good idea. This is pressing to you. The hope of this Ethiopian eunuch depends upon a covenant-keeping servant. That by the merits of this servant, who bears all the transgressions and covenant failings, will this eunuch be allowed in.
This Ethiopian eunuch will be welcomed as part of the temple in the holy city. He's all the way in, according to Isaiah 56, based upon the merits of the servant in Isaiah 53. You see, this is good news.
This is a great example. Many different stories that Luke could tell. Many different stories that he could include for his patron Theophilus and for his readers in posterity. But he includes this one because if an Ethiopian eunuch can get saved, so can you.
Better yet, if Saul of Tarsus, next chapter, can get saved, so can you. How should they believe in him whom they have not heard? Well, Philip preaches Jesus to this Ethiopian eunuch so he may believe.
How shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? Question verses 36 through 38 of Acts. Now some of you don't have verse 37. Do you notice that? You're reading along and all of a sudden, where did verse 37 go?
Well, God bless Erasmus, he grabbed the texts that he could in the day that he could, put together the first Greek New Testament for the Western world, improved by scholars who came after him, and they compiled a group of Greek manuscripts for the New Testament called the Texas Receptus.
State-of-the-art for their day. State-of-the-art. Even though they had to translate parts of Revelation from the Latin back into the Greek, and they had to patch some holes. Later on, they found a massive amount of Greek manuscripts, now called the majority text, which is all cards on the table, my favorite.
Majority text. The one that got used the most, copied the most, trusted the most by the church, and the most of history. And then, even more recently, they found even older texts that were laid aside and not used and not copied, called the critical text.
Well, in the majority text and in the critical text, they couldn't find verse 37. They just couldn't. They found it really, really late. They couldn't find it really, really early. So they said, well, it must have been added in the margins, and somebody put it in, and then it was called verse 37.
I'm just telling you the history. Now, I think, without a doubt, this happened even if it wasn't written by Luke's pen. Why? Because already in the book of Acts, if you're going to ask the question, what prevents me from being baptized?
If you're going to ask Philip about that when he was in Samaria, he would have said the same thing. If you ask Peter, what prevents me from being baptized? He would have said the same thing. If you were to ask Jesus, what prevents me from being baptized?
He would have said the same thing. If you believe with all your heart, you may. And the response is, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Everybody in the book of Acts, if we don't even look at verse 37, and we just read everywhere else in the book of Acts, people who got baptized believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God.
That's what was required. So, I'll leave that there, and you can go look up more interesting things about that later. But that's why, in some of your translations, verse 37 isn't there. But I'm really interested in verse 36.
Philip asks him, do you understand what you are reading? He says, is this of the prophet or some other man? Philip preaches Jesus to him. Obviously, the man believes. Obviously, Philip has spent a while preaching Jesus to the Ethiopian eunuch, because the Ethiopian eunuch knows by this point, hey, I need to be baptized.
In other words, even though I'm a God-fearing Ethiopian eunuch who travels hundreds of miles to go to Jerusalem to offer up sacrifices that I can't even see, because I'm so committed to the revelation of God and the Old Covenant, even though all of that is true, I'm ready to convert.
That's what baptism is. When this Ethiopian eunuch converted from his Gentile pagan ways to Judaism, you know what happened? He got baptized, and he quoted the Shema. That's what happened. Now he's saying it's time for me to get baptized again, because I'm going to follow Jesus.
I believe in Jesus Christ as the son of the living God. And so I'm going to get baptized again. What prevents me from getting baptized? That's what he's questioning. In other words, look, they came to water.
This water is in the wilderness. This river is in the desert. What a beautiful picture for a people who grew up in the in the ancient Near East, a land filled with wadis, ravines that are empty and dry and barren and dead until the rains come from the hand of a good God who sends his rain upon the just and the unjust, and the waters begin to flow and these ravines turn into rivers and all of a sudden there are.