Ethiopia Stretches Out Unto God

Philip Preaches Jesus from Isaiah to the Ethiopian Eunuch

Turn with me to Acts chapter 8, and we will be spending the majority of our time here this morning. Let's begin in verse 26, and we will read through almost to the end of the chapter. We're going to read verses 26 through 39.

Acts chapter 8 verse 26 says,. And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise and go toward the south under the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert. And he arose and went.

And behold, a man of Ethiopia, and eunuch of great authority under Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who had the charge of all of her treasure, and had come to Jerusalem for to worship, was returning, and sitting in his chariot, reading Isaiah to the prophet.

Then the spirit said unto Philip, Go near, and join thyself to his chariot. And Philip ran thither to him, and heard him read the prophet Isaiah, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest? And he said, How can I?

Except some man should guide me. And he desired Philip, that he would come up and sit with him. The place of the scripture which he read was this,. He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb dumb before his shear, so opened he not his mouth.

And his humiliation, his judgment, was taken away. And who shall declare his generation? For his life is taken from the earth. And the eunuch answered Philip, and said, I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this?

Of himself, or of some other man? Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus. And as they went on their way, they came into a certain water, and the eunuch said, See, here is water.

What doth hinder me to be baptized? And Philip said, If thou believest with all thy heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And he commanded the chariot to stand still, and they went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him.

And when they were come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, that the eunuch saw him no more, and he went on his way rejoicing. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for being with us this morning, and though we are an incredibly small group this particular Lord's Day, we thank you all the more that we have this opportunity to gather as a local body of believers with your Spirit in our midst, with your Word in our laps, so that we can be instructed by it, so we can be edified by it and refreshed by it as well.

We ask for all of our friends and loved ones that are absent from us today and that they all come home safely to us, but for today we just ask that every word spoken is consistent with your Word, and that it's a blessing to everyone here.

Objective Truth Is Grounded in God's Reality

We thank you so much, we love you, and we ask these things in the name of your Son. Amen. What is truth is a very important question to ask. Every human must grapple with this particular question because living in a world that is obviously governed by universal laws and within a cosmos filled with astounding harmony, we will all intuitively at some point in our growing up as a human, intuitively know that there must be some objective basis for this thing that we call truth.

Even in Sunday school this morning, a couple of the things that Dave drew out of the Psalms, Psalm 44, showed us this very reality that there are principles that can be applied across the board, in this case amongst many nations, regardless of their heritage or their customs or anything like that, and the principles still work.

So we have these universal principles, these universal laws, this harmony in the universe that tells every human that has ever been born, deep within them, that there must be an objective basis for truth.

The question then becomes, since we have this intuition, where will people go to find their answer? The answer to the question, what is truth? Now amazingly, many will eventually concede to a subjective view of truth and of morality and the reason why is because, and Paul fleshes this out for us in Romans, the early chapters of it, but they do this because at some point they will cross a dividing line between having a genuine desire for truth, understanding it, knowing where it comes from, that's one side of the line, and they will cross to another side that merely wants to rationalize the lusts of their flesh.

And one of the greatest ways that you can do that is by holding to some sort of subjective theory of truth where it is ever-changing with the times, where you've heard of situational ethics, you've heard of morality being determined by majority opinion and ideas like this.

And philosophers have grappled with truth, of course, from ancient times. There is this interesting theory that is referred to as the correspondence theory of truth where philosophers have essentially come to the conclusion that truth is that which corresponds with or comports with reality.

And then they can flip it and say, reality is that which comports with truth. Now that sounds great, and by the way, that is typically the answer you would get if you're talking with a materialist or someone that does not affirm the biblical basis for morality.

If you ask them how do you define truth without a Christian worldview, that's usually the answer that you would get is truth is that which comports with reality. But that's not even really the thing that philosophers grapple with.

The thing that they grapple with is truth is that which comports to reality according to whose perception of reality. Who is the person, who is the one that decides what reality is and whether or not it is consistent with truth.

And at that point we run into a problem because you can put 12 people in a room, 100 people in a room, the more you put in there the more problems you'll have. They can all be looking at the same thing and come away with different interpretations of the reality they're dealing with.

So the biblical answer, one of the biblical answers and definitions of truth is truth is that which corresponds with reality based upon the perception of God. So reality, truth are corresponding with one another from God's perspective and His vantage point and only His.

If you move that reality into any individual person, any group of people, any nation, any legislator, then all of the sudden it's going to get really messy really fast. You have subjective value, excuse me, subjective truth theories and all sorts of different things, situational ethics that people have to come up with in order to make any sense out of anything.

The reason why humans have a tendency to move in that direction is because they merely want to rationalize the lusts of their flesh. They want the things that they lust after to be okay. They want to be able to say there is a moral basis behind why I feel the way that I feel or why I am attracted to the things I am attracted to.

So at some point, some human beings have crossed that line where they are no longer even searching for objective truth anymore, but they can cede to some theory of subjective truth to rationalize those lusts.

They do this because objective truth necessitates governance outside of themselves. And what happens is when they find any barrier at all that could possibly stand between them and their autonomy, which if you look at the etymology of that word, it's a couple of Greek words that basically means the law of man.

That's what autonomy is, is man's law. So any barrier that stands between me and what I want to do has to go. It must be discarded. So what I say goes. I define morality for me. And I will do all that is right in my own eyes.

This is an ancient problem and something that humans have dealt with, of course, since or from the beginning. But we're not going to be addressing all of the subjective theories of truth today and all of the various arguments for it and against it.

We could spend a great deal of time doing that. Today, I want to focus for a moment on those that are still on the side of the line that seeks the source of objective truth. On that side of the line, you have people that will eventually come to know the truth and who he is, but you have other people that may not ever come to that but are still seeking it because, again, this is a human endeavor.

This is a human intuition. This is an intuition we have being made in the image of God. We're familiar with one of the most significant historical moments that ever occurred when the representative of the Roman Empire, Pontius Pilate, stared into the eyes of Jesus, into the eyes of truth, and asked the question, What is truth?

So this is a great question, and every person that's ever lived has asked this question with an eye toward discovering the source of truth. What is it, and where does it come from? Some give up and fall into that subjective truth area that we just addressed a second ago.

They just say whatever I say goes. Live and let live. Whatever is good for you is good for me, and just leave me alone. I'll do my own thing. Some give up and fall into the void of subjective truth and morality.

Some will keep seeking it, but what happens is they will never find satisfaction in their quest. They seek it from the moment they first start thinking about it, and maybe to the grave. They take this pursuit with them, but having never been satisfied with any of the answers they could come up with.

And, of course, some do find it. And the people who find it would be the people of God. But there's an interesting set of phases that the people of God go through even before they're saved, before conversion.

They would be in the category of knowing in their bones that objective truth exists, but they just don't quite know where or by whom it comes from and what defines it. They're not yet converted. They haven't yet recognized Jesus for who He is and yielded to Him as Lord and Savior.

The Ethiopian's Search for Truth Leads Him to Scripture

And so they're searching like a lost sheep on the mountain far from the shepherd, and that is the situation we find our friend here, the Ethiopian, in this story. He is searching for truth. He's asking the question, what is truth?

He's like a lost sheep, gone astray, searching for the voice of the shepherd, but hasn't been able to find it. He wasn't yet a believer, but he was yearning for truth. He was obviously searching for truth in the context of religion, because in verse 27 we learn that he went to Jerusalem to worship.

So think about the religious factor of this pursuit for humans in general. Some of them come to Christianity hoping that maybe this is where I'll find the answer, but what happens is they're looking for the wrong reasons, and so maybe even in Christianity they don't find it because they don't have ears to hear and eyes to see.

Of course, sometimes they will go to any other false religion to seek for it. I can't help but think about Keith Green and even his wife, Melody, but Keith certainly in his biography, a huge portion of this is dedicated to the portion of his life, which was only a few years.

He died at the age of 28. He was only saved for seven years before he passed away in an airplane crash, but in the years preceding his conversion, predominantly in his teen years, early 20s, he tried out every kind of religion you could try in that pursuit of truth, to try to answer the question, what is truth?

New Age stuff was especially big at that time, so eventually he dabbled with that. He dabbled with Christian science, which interestingly was what his family was a part of, and so he grew up in a Christian science home.

His parents were Jewish. He was ethnically Jewish, but they were Christian scientists, and so, of course, he at some point searched into his roots and heritage as an ethnic Jew and looked at Christian science, and he looked at some of the Eastern religions and mysticism and New Age religions until he eventually, of course, came to Christianity, asking the question from the point of view of how does Jesus answer this question, and the rest is history.

He was saved. But the point is, is people prior to conversion will often go to religion to try to answer the question, what is truth? And the Ethiopian eunuch here was doing that. He traveled approximately 1 ,000 miles in the ancient world from northern Africa in the area he was from to Jerusalem to worship, but he wasn't saved.

He was simply trying to find out where does truth and objective reality, objective law, objective truth, morality, where does it all come from? And so he's on this religious journey and looking for answers.

And again, this is where we find him in this story. Now, though he was not yet saved, I need to point out that he also was not a child of the devil. He may have been a slave to the devil at this particular time.

He may have been a slave to the devil, but not his child. To put it another way, he was a sheep, but he was a lost sheep. He had not yet been found. And his pursuit of truth was really a search for the voice of the shepherd.

Being a lost sheep, once more, that is an intuitive thing that they have and that they are going to be seeking in the context of the darkness of whatever wilderness they find themselves in. They're searching for the voice of the shepherd, the source of all truth and meaning.

And in this brief narrative we have here, we see two amazing things that come to life with these two men in history, the Ethiopian eunuch and Philip. We see two interesting things come to life here. Number one, we see a sequence that demonstrates the order of salvation in real time.

We'll look at that more closely in just a minute. But the second thing we see is we see the simplicity of saving faith and the response that it yields. And we'll close by addressing that. But let's start by looking at how the Ethiopian's salvation experience demonstrates some very deep doctrinal truths.

In other words, doctrinal truths that we learn from throughout scriptures, certainly throughout the New Testament, but we see them in action in a living testimony of this particular man in this narrative.

The Father Draws the Ethiopian and Sends Philip to Preach

Take a look at verse 27 with me one more time. In verses 27 and 28 we see that the Ethiopian man was on the search for something that was missing in his life. Verse 27 again says,. And he arose and went, and behold a man, that was Philip, and behold a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who had the charge of all of her treasure, and had come to Jerusalem for to worship, was returning and sitting in his chariot and read Isaiah to the prophet.

Brief historical note. I want to put in here just so that y 'all can visualize the scene a little bit. You may read this narrative and you only have two characters. You have the Ethiopian eunuch and you have Philip.

So sometimes we picture this man sitting in a solitude, maybe on the bank of a river. We know that water comes into the picture here in just a minute, reading to himself the book of Isaiah, and then Philip kind of comes on the scene.

But I want you to take note in verse 27. This is a eunuch of great authority directly under the queen of the Ethiopians who had charge of all of her treasure. So this was a man that would not have been traveling alone.

He almost certainly had a massive caravan that was traveling with him under his authority. So he was the guy in charge. He took his own slaves with him, those that were under his direct authority. So he would have been serving the queen, but he would have had some servants for himself.

He would have had to have all the provisions for what was, again, somewhere between 1 ,000 and 1 ,200 miles between the area of Africa that he was traveling from to Jerusalem. And there you go. You would have needed quite a bit in order to make that journey.

So he was most certainly not sitting alone in this scene. He would have had a caravan of other people around him and all of his possessions. So I want you to picture that as we go through this. And he's sitting in his chariot.

Again, he's reading Isaiah the prophet. He was incredibly successful, as we see here, for the time that he was living in. He served directly under the queen of Ethiopia. Presumably, he was acting as her right-hand man.

Basically, at a bare minimum, he was her treasurer, which would have in and of itself been a huge position to fill. At a maximum, though, he could have even been as high as her right-hand man, who had authority not only over the treasury but over a number of other responsibilities as well.

Again, it says he had great authority. He had charge over all of her treasures. So this was a man of high rank in the kingdom of Ethiopia at this time, which was a lot larger, by the way, than the nation of Ethiopia for us now.

It would have included what we now know of as Libya and a number of other places. So this is a very successful man, a very important man. He knew that there were binding universal laws and objective truths that gave meaning to his life and to his work.

He knew that. That's why he was on the pursuit of answering this question, what is truth, going so far as traveling a thousand miles to Jerusalem to see maybe this God of the Jews, this God of Israel, is the answer to my question and my quest here.

But despite his material successes, he was still missing something in his life, and he knew that. What was the source of these laws and truths? What is truth? In verse 28, we learn that he had turned to the Hebrew Scriptures for answers.

No portion of the New Testament had been written down yet at this point in history. Now, this is an important note. You most certainly would have had the oral tradition of the apostles circulating already at this time.

They were obviously alive and very active. They were in Jerusalem and then Judea and then Samaria, so they were still somewhat constrained to a tight geographical space. They were all there concentrating their efforts on spreading the gospel and evangelizing, and they would have been teaching the doctrines that would have become inscripturated as the New Testament shortly, but they were not written down yet.

And so the word of God, the Christian Bible at this particular time, was in fact the Old Testament, usually in fact almost exclusively in Greek as far as the laymen go. If you went into the synagogues, you would have the Hebrew scrolls, but everywhere else they would have been carrying around, if they had one, a copy of books of the Old Testament in Greek.

And this Ethiopian at some point acquired the book of Isaiah. And so he turns to the Hebrew scriptures for answers. We don't know if he knew that he might find the source of all truth on these pages, but something, or perhaps someone, drew him to those pages.

I want you to think about this for a second. I mentioned that in this story we see a number of great doctrinal truths that we understand on paper, but we actually see in practical, real-time action in this story.

In John 6 .44, we know it so well, it says, Jesus says, No man can come to me except the Father which hath sent me draw him, and I will raise him up in the last day. When you see the Ethiopian eunuch here turning to Isaiah, the prophet, in his chariot on the side of a desert road reading it, that is the drawing of the Father.

We're seeing the drawing of the Father on the life of this man who had not yet been converted, but he was already being drawn. You see that? We understand in Jesus' teaching of John chapter 6 that that drawing must precede some other things that occur.

Again, theoretically we can understand that. Doctrinally we can understand that. But here we see it happening. He was being drawn by the Father. And he was drawn by the Father specifically to the book of Isaiah.

This is what we see happening to the Ethiopian here. He had not yet made the verbal proclamation that Christ is King. He had perhaps not even been regenerated yet. I'll get back to that thought in just a minute.

I don't think he was even regenerate at this particular point by verse 28. But he was being drawn to the Lord by the Father, and that divine drawing had put him on the side of the road in a desert place reading the prophecy of Isaiah.

But Paul makes it clear that God's method of bringing a person to him is through a preacher. And I'm going to go ahead and turn here. I hadn't decided if I was going to or not. And if you want to turn here with me, you can.

But in Romans chapter 10, we learn a really amazing principle with regard to the way God works. His ordained means to his ordained end. In the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 10, starting in verse 14, he says this.

Now, here's what's amazing about it. And this will kind of jump the gun a little bit. But while we're here, I just want you to see it. In verse 14, you have Paul basically giving kind of a reverse cascade of events here.

He starts with one and says, how can this happen without this? Something that preceded it. And how can that happen without this? Something that preceded that. If you do it from the bottom up, you could read it this way, if I can even do it here.

How shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? This is exactly what we see happening to the Ethiopian here.

He needs to be able to hear so that he can then believe, so that he can then call upon his name. And then verse 15, it says, how shall they preach except they be sent? That's what Philip was for. Philip was sent by an angel and then spoken to audibly by the Holy Spirit to go and in fact run to this Ethiopian man so that he could expound upon the Scriptures, so that it could be heard, then believed, then he could make that call, that proclamation.

But again, I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit. Paul makes it clear that the method of bringing a person to God is through a preacher. Dozens of people can all sit and read the same biblical passage but come away with different ideas of what it could mean.

So what does God do? What is his normal, his usual means for rectifying that particular scenario? What he does is he will send a called man, a skilled teacher, to give the sense, as Ezra did, so that the hearing can turn into believing.

One of my favorite verses, I'll read it really quickly, I don't have to turn to it, but in Nehemiah 8 .8, it says,. So they read in the book of the law of God distinctly and gave the sense and caused them to understand the reading.

This is perhaps the first mention of expository preaching. It's an ancient practice, it goes all the way back to the days of Ezra. That's what they were doing. They were reading the words, everyone was reading them together, but it required these men to give the sense so that those hearing the word could understand it and could then take it and run with it.

So Philip was this sent man for the sake of the Ethiopian. He was the sent preacher that Paul was talking about in Romans 10. He was the man that was giving the sense and that would cause them to understand that Ezra was to the ancient Hebrews.

So look at how this plays out in verse 29, we're back in Acts. Acts chapter 8 again. The story continues in verse 29,. Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near and join thyself to this chariot. And Philip ran thither to him, and heard him read the prophet of Isaiah, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest?

I want to make one more just quick historical point, again putting you in the scene, is that in ancient times you never had people sitting down and reading a book to themselves. You didn't have a person sitting down and in their mind reading quietly just to themselves.

If a person was reading, it was out loud with other people around. And so you picture once more, not necessarily this man by himself on the bank of a river meditating on God's word alone, kind of how we picture our own quiet time today, but rather it was a man with people around him.

This presumed caravan that would have most likely been with him, his servants, a number of people for this very long journey. And he was sitting in his chariot reading out loud the prophecy of Isaiah to these people.

Well, it tells us here that when Philip ran to him, he heard him reading the prophecy of Isaiah. So Philip comes within earshot of this man reading Isaiah, hears what he is reading, and he goes on and he says, Do you understand what you're reading?

Because he could hear what he was reading. And verse 31 is amazing. The Ethiopian said, How can I except some man should guide me? This is what we were talking about just a minute ago in Nehemiah. The man that gives the sense that causes them to understand.

This is what Paul was talking about in Romans 10. How can they hear unless a preacher is sent? The Ethiopian asks, How can I understand except someone should guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him.

Now I want you to note that Philip ran to this man. The moment the Holy Spirit told him what to do, he did not hesitate. He didn't stand around waiting maybe for a more perfect moment. He didn't sit around thinking about what was about to happen.

And of course, that is a principle we can take and apply to our own lives as well. When we are given an open door with clarity that meets all of those criteria that Otis and Rocky taught us that dad has passed down through them.

It's consistent with his word. We have the means to do it. We actually want to do it. All of these things that come together and present to us an open door from the Lord. There doesn't need to be any hesitation as Philip did here.

He ran to the Ethiopian. So take note of that. But also note the Ethiopian's lack of fear in asking for the explanation. He didn't have any trepidation with regard to saying, I need a little help with this.

And in fact, something here is happening. And I know it. And I'm on this quest to understand where truth comes from. And for whatever reason, he certainly may not have known in that moment, I was led to read this.

We can look at this and understand it was the drawing of the father pointing him to this passage in his word. And so he says, please come up here. I desire you to come up here and expound upon this for me.

The Ethiopian Is Regenerated as Philip Explains Isaiah 53

And so what did Philip do? He took up the passage and he preached unto him Jesus. Look at verse 32 with me again. The place of the scripture which he read was this. He was led as a sheep to the slaughter and like a lamb done before his shearer.

So open he not his mouth and his humiliation, his judgment was taken away. And who shall declare his generation for his life is taken from the earth. So this is Isaiah 53. This is the suffering servant.

This is one of the greatest passages in the entire Old Testament, certainly perhaps the greatest chapter of Isaiah, which is saying a lot, because there is a lot of material there. And that is where this man was led to turn and to read.

And the eunuch answered Philip after Philip had a good orientation of where exactly the Ethiopian was in the scripture. He answered Philip and said, I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this? Of himself or of some other man?

And then Philip opened his mouth and began at the same scripture and preached unto him Jesus from the Old Testament, from Isaiah 53. And so it's at this point in the story, verse 35, where you have Philip being that sent preacher, being the man giving the sense of what they were reading, as he is expounding upon this at this moment that I believe the Ethiopian was regenerated.

Now, it's not explicitly in the scripture saying here is when he was given a new heart, when the Spirit regenerated him. But if you're looking at the story and the way it unfolds, he's searching for truth and he goes to the scriptures but doesn't even know what he's reading.

Philip is sent and is expounding upon the passage he was reading. And the reason why I believe that it was in that moment that he was given a new heart, that regeneration occurred, is because of what happens here in just a second.

He was searching for truth. He was being drawn by the Father, led to open up the scriptures at Isaiah 53. He received an ear to hear and a preacher was given to him to interpret the passage. And now, desire for Christ was in his heart.

Dad has preached on this many times before, but the desire is the moment in which we are saved, not necessarily the moment we verbally proclaim Jesus as Lord and Savior. The desire is the moment in which that new heart has been given, in which that regeneration has occurred.

How do we know that the desire was there? Look at verse 36. And as they went on their way, they came into a certain water, and the eunuch said, See, here is water, what doth hinder me to be baptized? So something happened in between the moment where he said, I need you to explain this, Philip explaining it, and verse 36 where a desire has been put in his heart to obey the Lord and not just obey him but to do something that would signify this transformation that has already occurred.

So the drawing of the Father took place. The preacher was sent. Regeneration has occurred in his heart. He still, at this point in the story, had not yet made the verbal proclamation. Now, I will say that is a necessary effect of salvation.

It will come. But he hadn't made it yet, even though he was already saved. He already desired to be baptized at this point. The desire for Jesus, the desire to obey him as Lord, and nobody else, preceded his verbal affirmation of Christ as Lord.

But note what comes quickly after this point, after his request to be baptized, verse 37. And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. We're going to come back to this verse in just a minute.

Thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. There's the verbal proclamation. He had already been regenerated. Before that, he had already been drawn by the Father.

In between, a preacher was sent to expound upon the Word. It's the whole sequence of salvation, all in one brief narrative, ending with the verbal proclamation that, Yes, Jesus Christ is the Son of God, I believe.

There's the proclamation, that final step of the man's salvation experience. So, once more, in this brief narrative, we have seen him searching for truth. What is truth? Objective truth, the great human endeavor, seeking to fill the void with something that will ground that intuition that we all have, knowing the existence of objective truth.

Every human knows it exists. Every human has that intuition for a while. Some eventually cross a line where they don't care anymore. Their conscience is seared. They're given over to a reprobate mind.

None of it matters anymore. But every human is born with an intuition that objective truth exists. But what grounds that intuition? What anchors that intuition to something that will give us fulfillment and make us feel that fulfilling satisfaction that we so want to have?

He started with that search, and the search led him to the sacred Scriptures. To put it another way, the Father was drawing him to His Word, and specifically to the place that prophesied of His Son atoning for the sins of this man so that He wouldn't have to atone for the sins Himself, which would have required paternal separation from God.

The drawing of the Father coincided with a preacher being sent. Philip, led by the Spirit, runs to Him to guide Him through the Scripture, expounding upon it, allowing the voice of the shepherd to penetrate His ears that can now hear clearly for the first time.

That is when the Ethiopian was regenerated, when those Scriptures were being expounded upon. He was given a heart of flesh in place of his heart of stone. He became a new creature. He was regened as a member of God's family.

And now, because of that, he was desirous to obey his new Lord because of his desire for his new Lord. All of this is what was motivating the verses that follow Philip's explanation of the Scriptures.

Now Philip, not being omniscient, but being a very good minister, ensures that the man's desire and request to be baptized was appropriate. So God already knew the man's heart. He knew he was saved. The desire was genuine.

But us ministers, in order to fulfill our role guarding the sanctity of all that is the gospel ministry, we ask, if you want to be baptized, that's great. Do you believe with all your heart, with all your soul, with all of your strength, that He is the Son of God?

If thou believest with all thine heart, you may. And so, being a good minister, Philip asks that question, or I should say makes that statement, that the man's desire and request to be baptized was appropriate.