Sunday, May 28, 2023 AM

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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Let's go to the Lord together in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for gathering us here today, knowing our needs before we have even asked.

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But we have asked today that you would show us Christ, that you would nourish us through your word, that you would bless our adherence to what you have to say.

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You have made us in your image, made us for your word.

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We ask that you would do your work, that you would glorify yourself in us, that you would be magnified, that your name would be made great by what you do in our lives.

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We ask that you, by your word, because of the death and resurrection of your

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Son, because of his reigning glory, because of your gift of the

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Holy Spirit, we ask that you would change our affections, our understandings, our perspectives, our behaviors, everything about us, that you would conform us to the image of your

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Son, Jesus. And we ask that you would show these mercies upon us and bestow to us these graces for the sake of your

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Son, Jesus, with whom you are well -pleased. Amen. I invite you to open your

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Bibles and turn with me to Acts chapter 8. Acts chapter 8, verses 26 through 40.

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We are continuing with Philip, Philip, one of the original seven deacons, whose friend

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Stephen was stoned to death for preaching

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Christ, giving a faithful witness of the glories of Christ throughout the

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Scriptures. And in the persecution that erupted led by Saul of Tarsus, as the people of God began to scatter, as the

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Christians began to scatter, as the new wine rushed freely through the cracks of the old wineskin throughout the surrounding countryside, they went preaching

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Christ. And Philip went to Samaria, and he preached Jesus to the city of Samaria, and we've considered that at length.

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And Philip now is leaving Jerusalem, having come back to it, and he goes another direction, led by the

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Lord to preach the gospel elsewhere. And as we consider what goes on in the book of Acts, we have a very important question to both ask and ponder and answer.

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Who's right? Who's right? The Sanhedrin maintain control of the temple.

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The Sadducees are still in place. The Pharisees continue their practices, continue their teachings.

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They are still held in honor by many in Jerusalem. A great many

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Christians are now fleeing Jerusalem, persecuted by Saul of Tarsus and the rest.

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Who's right? The Sanhedrin control the scrolls and the copies of the scriptures.

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They stayed. These others, they're on the run. So who won?

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Who lost? Who's right? Who's wrong? You see?

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It's worth pondering whether authority, whether salvation, the meaning of life itself is to be determined by force, by fear.

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And are those who are on the run is what they believe to be discounted because they take flight.

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In one sense, we may think that things are getting rather difficult for the early church. And yet another sense, they have a

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Good Shepherd who is leading them to proclaim His good news not only in Jerusalem, but also in Judea and Samaria, and also to the uttermost parts of the earth.

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And what Saul of Tarsus meant for evil, Christ means for good.

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So I invite you to stand with me as we read of our brother

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Philip and him preaching the gospel to a man of Ethiopia.

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This is the word of the Lord, Acts 8, beginning in verse 26. Now, an angel of the

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Lord spoke to Philip saying, arise and go toward the south along the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.

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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

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Ethiopians, who had charge of all her treasury, and had come to Jerusalem to worship, was returning.

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And sitting in his chariot, he was reading Isaiah the prophet. Then spirit said to Philip, go near and overtake this chariot.

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

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And he said, how can I unless someone guides me? And he asked

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Philip to come up and sit with him. The place in which the scripture which he read was this.

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He was led as a sheep to the slaughter and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opened not his mouth.

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In his humiliation, his justice was taken away, and who will declare his generation for his life is taken from the earth?

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So the eunuch answered Philip and said, I ask you, of whom does the prophet say this, of himself or of some other man?

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Then Philip opened his mouth and beginning at this scripture, preached

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Jesus to him. Now, as they went down the road, they came to some water.

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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.

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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

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Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and he baptized him. Now, when they came up out of the water, the

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Spirit of the Lord caught Philip away so that the eunuch saw him no more, and he went on his way rejoicing.

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But Philip was found at Azotus, and passing through, he preached in all the cities till he came to Caesarea.

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This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. In Exodus chapter 17, we catch up with Israel as they have been delivered by mighty wonders from their slavery, from their bondage in Egypt.

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God has visited Egypt with many plagues, many signs, and many wonders.

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And in fact, He has defeated Pharaoh and his whole army by leading

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His people safely through the parted Red Sea and then closing it back over Pharaoh and all of his chariots.

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God has won a great victory for His people. And now they are in the wilderness, and they become thirsty.

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Years later, Moses, preaching to the next generation of Israelites, still on the way to Canaan, tells them in Deuteronomy, God let you be thirsty.

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He intended it. He arranged it. He provided for it.

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In fact, He brought you to a place where there was water, but it was bitter, and you were bitter.

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And so He named the place Meribah and Massah instead of Rephidim, because of your bitterness, because of your arguing.

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There they were in the wilderness, there they were in the desert, and they had nothing to drink, and they were thirsty.

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So what does God do? He has provided a rock, and He speaks to Moses and says, strike the rock with your staff, you know, the staff you struck the river of Egypt with, the staff you held out over the

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Red Sea. This staff, strike the rock. And the rock split, and from it came water, so much water that it satisfied the thirstiness of millions.

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Water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert.

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Many generations later, as the idolatry and the wickedness of the people of God had become encrusted upon the soul of the nation, the prophet

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Isaiah spoke of coming judgment in which God would keep His promises and bring the curses of the covenant upon His people and destroy their city, and they would be taken away as exiles, slaves once again.

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Not a popular message at all, but it was not totally hopeless. Isaiah also proclaimed that God would do a new thing, a new thing.

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Isaiah 43 and verse 16, thus says the Lord who makes a way in the sea and a path to the mighty waters.

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Now, any good Israelite now is thinking back to the Red Sea, even to the Jordan River. God is the one who parts the rivers and makes a way through for His people, who brings forth the chariot and horse, the army and the power.

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They shall lie down together, they shall not rise, they are extinguished, they are quenched like a wick.

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Now, this is definitely Red Sea material. Chariots and riders, there they go. There was a whole song that they sang, the chariot and the rider.

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Any good Israelite knows what the prophet Isaiah is preaching on right now. The defeat of Pharaoh and the armies in the parting of the

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Red Sea. And then Isaiah says, forget about it.

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Verse 18, do not remember the former things, nor consider the things of old.

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Why? What I'm going to do in the hereafter will be way better than what you've already seen.

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Do not remember the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing. God says,

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I'm going to do a new thing. Now, it shall spring forth, shall you not know it?

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I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. God, you already took them on the road in the wilderness, you already gave them rivers in the desert.

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The beast of the field will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches, because I give waters in the wilderness and rivers in the desert to give drink to my people, my chosen.

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These people I have formed for myself, they shall declare my praise. Well, God, you say, don't remember the things of old, you're going to do a new thing, but this sounds like the old thing.

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This sounds like the old thing. What does God mean by that? It's not going to be like the old thing.

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It's going to be greater than the old thing. In fact, it's going to be the significance and the fulfillment of what the old thing meant.

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As Paul pointed out, the rock was Christ. The rock,

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Paul says, was Christ. We've already seen this with the

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Samaritans, what did Jesus say to the Samaritan woman? He offered her living water, streams of living water.

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He says in John 7 that those who would believe upon Him that from their own person that there would be streams of living water bursting from them, and He says this of the

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Holy Spirit. This is new covenant promise, new covenant imagery.

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I do a new thing. Don't remember the things of old. Behold, I do a new thing, and this new thing is going to be waters in the wilderness, rivers in the desert.

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It's good to remember that. When did God give waters in the wilderness and rivers in the desert to Israel?

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When it was hopeless. No way forward. We're done. We're boxed in.

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We're going to die of thirst in the wilderness. It's over. No way we can proceed. But God provided.

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God had arranged in His sovereign goodness to provide in such a way that would strengthen their faith and call them upon independence upon Himself, and the same thing happens in our story.

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Waters in the wilderness, rivers in the desert. When the church is on the run, when solitarsis is going into houses and hauling

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Christians off to jail, I do believe our brothers and sisters in Canada look at that text a little differently now.

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We will too. So when it looks like everything is going the wrong way, there's no way for us to continue to do the work that He called us to do.

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How is Israel going to make it to the promised land when they don't have any water to drink? And how are we going to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to every nation when it is quickly becoming the most hated and illegal thing to preach

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Christ? Well, God sovereignly provides.

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That's what this text is all about. God sovereignly gathers by gospel preaching a global people.

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God sovereignly gathers a global people by gospel preaching, and He provides for this.

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Now, as I look at the story here in Acts, as I read it,

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I see Romans 10, beginning in verse 13, and the important text there in reverse.

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Look over in Romans 10 very quickly. Romans 10, verse 13, here is the promise of Joel, for whoever calls on the name of the

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Lord shall be saved. Verse 14, how then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed?

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And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?

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And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things.

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You know, Acts 8 and Romans 10 both depend very, very heavily on Isaiah. Here's another quote from Isaiah.

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But look here, it's Philip. How beautiful are the feet of Philip, who preaches the gospel of peace, who brings glad tidings of good things.

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But you know, he was sent. He was sent. That's what we see, he was first sent out into the south to go and meet someone, and that person needed to hear.

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And Philip was that preacher so that the Ethiopian would hear, so the Ethiopian would believe on him and call upon him and be saved.

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So you look at Acts 8, you see in reverse the whole chain there in Romans 10. So we're going to use

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Romans 10 as our headings. Number one, how shall they preach unless they are sent?

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First question, how shall they preach unless they are sent? Philip was sent. Verse 26, now an angel of the

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Lord spoke to Philip saying, arise and go toward the south along the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.

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And Luke helpfully says, this is desert. This is desert.

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An angel of the Lord told Philip to do something, which means what? Which means Jesus told him to do it.

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And he sent his angel as a messenger to relay the message. The angels are entirely in the service of Jesus Christ, the

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Lord of all. They do what he tells them to do. They say what he wants them to say, and they're about his business in his way.

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Jesus, as the Son of Man, is Jacob's ladder.

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What did Jacob do when he was fleeing from his angry brother? Spend the night in this strange place and use a stone as a pillow.

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And that night he had a vision where he saw angels ascending and descending upon some very, very steep kind of construction, a staircase, a ladder, and that God declared his will from heaven to earth by means of this ladder.

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Well, Jesus, in his ministry, told Nathanael, you're going to see angels ascending and descending upon the

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Son of Man, upon the Son of Man. He's the mediator between heaven and earth.

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And the angels do whatever he tells them to do. What did Jacob name that place as he set that stone up?

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Beth -el, the house of God. And what does Jesus build? What has he been building here in Acts?

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The temple. He's been building the house of God. And so he sends an angel to Philip and says, you go down over here, you go south, take this road out into the desert.

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I've got something for you to do there. Philip says, okay, not a great road, not a great destination, but here

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I go. And he goes to this place, and all

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Philip knows at the first is go south. Well, he went north earlier, now he's going south.

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Why? Because they're to go every direction.

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The promises throughout the Old Testament were that God was going to bring it in a people of God from every possible direction.

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Isaiah 43, 5, fear not, I am with you, I will bring your descendants from the east to gather you from the west.

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I will say to the north, give them up, and to the south, do not keep them back. Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth.

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Everyone who is called by my name whom I have created for my glory, I have formed him, yes, I have made him.

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Look for that in the Bible as you read, look for the promises that God says, I'm gathering my people from the four corners of the earth, north and south and east and west, from everywhere.

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They all come up Mount Zion in Christ. So he heads south, and then

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Luke helpfully tells Theophilus, his patron, and everybody else he reads, by the way, this is desert.

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This is the wilderness. This is not a nice place. This is barren.

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This is empty. This is dry. I'm already thirsty. But watch, he preaches gospel to the

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Ethiopian. He believes, and all of a sudden, what does

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Philip and the Ethiopian find in the desert? Water.

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What? They find water in the wilderness.

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They find rivers in the desert. So much water that notice it says that after he baptized him, they came up out of the water.

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As any good Baptist would note, he done been immersed in the water and they come up out of the water.

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That's how much water they found in the wilderness. But why did he get baptized?

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Because before they found water in the wilderness, he found water in the wilderness. So he goes to this place that is desert.

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It is surprising that later on we find water there, but again, these are the promises of God.

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In Isaiah 44, 3 through 5, God says, For I will pour water on him who is thirsty and floods on the dry ground.

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I will pour my spirit on your descendants and my blessing upon your offspring. It will spring up among the grass like willows by the water courses.

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And again, this is after he's already said in chapter 43, I'm going to do a new thing. He's talking about the new covenant.

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Now notice how this works. Verse 5. One will say, I am the Lord's. Another will call himself by the name of Jacob.

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Another will write with his hand the Lord's and name himself with the name of Israel. Why? Why are they writing it on themselves?

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Why are they writing it on them? Because they're coming in. To be named by the

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Lord is to be named the people of God. How does anyone come into the people of God except by the way, the truth and the life of Jesus Christ?

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If you're in, you're in through him. You're not in through circumcision. You're not in because you were born of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

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You're in because you're born again of the Holy Spirit and you're in Christ. Water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert.

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Jesus elsewhere said it was light and darkness. So now let's look also at the person.

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So I mean, Philip's not going to simply a place. He's going to a place to meet there a person.

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And look at this person. He's a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under Candace, the queen of the

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Ethiopians who had charge of all her treasury, and had come to Jerusalem to worship, and he was returning.

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He was returning. An Ethiopian. The Greek word literally means a scorched face.

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It is the partner word to the Hebrew kushite, which means black heat.

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It's a man from Africa. He lived in a hot place and his face was black.

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That's what he was. That's who he was. That was a description that described, it was not a description that derides.

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Way too many people are focused on skin color today. They have a hermeneutic, a way of looking at everything based on what color somebody's skin is.

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How does God look at it? Shouldn't we say what He says? He says

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He makes us different for His glory. The Ethiopian can't change his skin color any more than the leopard can change its spots,

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Jeremiah said. Is there something wrong with the leopard? No, God made the leopard look like the leopard, and God is glorified by that.

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And God made people look different, and God is glorified by that. So that's step one. Here's step two.

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Paul, preaching at the Oropagus in Athens, Acts 17 and verse 26 says this, and he is made from one blood, every nation, remember what a nation is, not a political entity, but a mega family, a family of families.

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He is made from one blood, every nation of men, to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their pre -appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings.

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So God made us all different and put us where He wanted to put us. Praise God. All right, so step one,

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God made us different for His glory, and then He put us where He put us, all glory to Him. So I say that because we're just trying to pull out all of the modern weeds before we move on.

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Luke's not thinking about any of that. We have to pull the weeds out of our head.

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When he says Ethiopian, let me tell you what's the biblical joy of reading that here's an

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Ethiopian, right? Obviously, in the background, we're all made, we all descended from the first Adam in need of the second

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Adam, amen? We're all from the first Adam in need of the second Adam. But when we read that he's an

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Ethiopian, this is not to point out the fact of his skin color at all.

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This is pointing out that a royal servant of the queen of Ethiopia sent her servant to Jerusalem, and he worshiped there, and he's on his way back.

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Now, he encounters Philip who preaches Christ to him from the scroll of Isaiah that he has in his possession.

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And what will this Ethiopian eunuch, born again, believing in Jesus, have to say when he makes his joyous way back to Ethiopia and he bows before the queen of Sheba, what will he say?

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Someone greater than Solomon is here. That's the biblical joy of the text.

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Someone greater than Solomon is here. And even more importantly, five times in the text, he is called a eunuch, only one time he is called an

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Ethiopian. Let's just think about this. This Ethiopian eunuch went all the way to Jerusalem, and when he got there, it says that he went to worship.

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Now, I wonder how his worship experience went as a Gentile and a eunuch.

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How do you think that went when he showed up near the temple grounds? Not well, not well.

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Not well because there was a big sign said, hey, you

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Gentiles, stay out, but also because Deuteronomy and Leviticus said, eunuchs, stay out.

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He didn't get very close. He didn't get very far. He didn't have the same worship experience as everybody else may have who was around him, and he's on his way home now.

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He's on his way home now. So he didn't really get the full experience.

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Now, he is in charge of the royal treasury, and perhaps he was instructed to do this probably by Candace the

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Queen. He bought a scroll of Isaiah, pretty expensive, very costly.

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And on his way home, he's reading Isaiah out loud. He wants to be in.

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He has a God -given desire to know what's going on in this text.

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He was denied entry into the temple, and now he's on his way home.

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Psalm 107 says, I'll give thanks to the Lord for He is good, for His mercy endures forever.

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Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom He has redeemed from the hand of the enemy and gathered out of the lands from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south.

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They wandered in the wilderness in a desolate way. They found no city to dwell in. Ethiopian eunuchs going home, hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them.

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Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered them out of their distresses and led them forth by the right way.

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Here comes Philip. They might go to a city for a dwelling place. Same city which

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Abraham sought, a city with foundations. So he's reading

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Isaiah the prophet. Now, notice he's reading it aloud while driving. This is not a text that is prescription for you to read while driving.

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You don't get to text while driving because the Ethiopian eunuch did. He's not actually driving.

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Later on we see in verse 38, he commanded the chariot to pull to the side so he could get out and go get baptized. Somebody else is driving this thing.

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He is an upper echelon royal servant. So he's got nothing to do but sit there in the chariot, and he's reading

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Isaiah. Notice he's reading it aloud. Scripture was written to be read aloud.

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Also, he's reading it from the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which is called the Septuagint.

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And ancient manuscripts try to save space, so they had to try to put a lot of words into a very little space.

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And what they did was, at this time they were all written in capital letters and they were squashed together. So you couldn't barely tell where one word ended and another began.

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However, if you read it aloud, you see, then you would know where the words were if you just followed the intonation.

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So he's reading it aloud. And you've got to imagine he's hollering this because the chariot's got to be pretty loud. And God has told

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Philip, you go south into the desert. He gets there. There's a chariot.

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You go right up to that chariot. Philip gets there. And this Ethiopian eunuch is hollering Isaiah from the back of his truck.

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And God says, get up in there. That's amazing to me. That's amazing to me how

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God sovereignly prepared all of that. Even as far back as Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. The wealth of this country sending this eunuch to go worship, how he's reverent to the things of God, how

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Philip already has his experience under his belt from Samaria, how Stephen's death and the persecution that followed has scattered them all.

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And here's this eunuch. He's on the way back. He's not on the way there. He's on the way back.

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And Philip is brought to just the right place to intercept this chariot.

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And here this guy hollering out, Isaiah 53, so that he can preach

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Christ to him. And then, of course, there were the waters in the wilderness.

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There were the rivers in the desert. You know, what

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God calls us to do in many ways doesn't look like it should work, right?

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To believe the Bible, to believe the Bible, to love one another, to herald

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Christ as King, that Jesus of Nazareth is the

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Christ, the Son of the living God, that He was born of a virgin and lived a righteous life, pleasing

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His Father, and died upon the cross for us and for our salvation, was raised the third day for our justification.

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And He ascended to the right hand of the Father where He reigns supreme and will come again to raise the dead and to judge all men.

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To herald the news of who Christ is, declare that, and to call our hearers to repentance from their idolatry, repentance from their self -righteousness, repentance from their excuses, and to believe in the good news of Jesus Christ.

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How can that do anything in our pluralistic, paganized, hostile, technologically advanced, messed up world?

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Same way it's been happening every single generation before us, no matter what the problems were then, because God keeps on providing waters in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

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And what He calls us to do requires what kind of obedience, what kind of faith? Child -like.

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Child -like. Now, a child that has tasted the goodness of the Heavenly Father, when given instructions that perhaps don't make sense at the foreground, will obey knowing the

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Father will take care of it. He'll provide for it. He'll make sure it works out.

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All I've got to do is step forward in child -like obedience, child -like faith, to step forward with confidence, confide, with faith.

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And whether we're at home or at work or in peace or in war or at rest or on the run, in season or out of season, we are to preach

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Christ. This is the commission that we have been given, to preach

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Christ among the nations. And we're the nations, the nations are here and there, gathered here, gathered there, we preach

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Christ. We are servants of the King, we have His name on our foreheads, we are to herald

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His good news. You know, the

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Ethiopian eunuch is not unique. There were countless, there were countless who could not come to the temple.

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But in Christ -made temple, we come to His table. Praise God for the new covenant.

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We're in because of Him, in because of Christ. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for the time

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You've given us in Your Word. I pray that You would help us to rejoice in Your truth. Thank You for giving us

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Your Son and giving us Your Spirit and sending us, that we would say what

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You say about Your Son. Help us to rejoice in Your truth.

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And as we commune together today in the love of Christ around His table, I pray that You would nourish us, encourage us, and supply our every need.