Check Your Reflexes - [Acts 8:26-40]

It is a blessing to be back. I know lots of people are like, how can you say that? You know, you were just in Orlando, you were in Southern California. How can you say it's great to be back in New England?

And I was telling somebody this morning, when I got off the plane, it was kind of exciting to just kind of, excuse me for a moment, to just hit the fresh air of New England. So, in spite of the fact that it was a little chillier than what I've been used to, but just a great blessing to be here and to be with you this morning.

I'd like to invite you to open your Bibles to Chapter 8 of the Book of Acts. We're not going verse through verse through the Book of Acts, but that's where we are this morning. We're going to look at a large section of it.

Now, let me ask you this. How many of you here, and this is full participation, how many of you have had your reflexes checked during the course of your life? Most of you have. Those who haven't, please see your doctor.

But it is a clinical test that they actually perform. And, you know, it's interesting because when you start looking on the Internet, you can find all kinds of things. Did you know that there are six possible results when you have your knee reflexes checked?

Number one is zero, is what they call it. That's the medical term, zero. Absent. Nothing happens. The doctor hits it and nothing happens. That's not good. That's indicative of a pretty sorry state of physical decay.

There's also the one plus state, which is hypoactive or underactive, which means you move a little bit but not too much. And then there's the two, which is normal. Three, which is hyperactive, which is actually when you kick the doctor.

And then there's a state of four, which is hyperactive with unsustained clonus. Now, yeah, just to put this in special terms, it just means your knee gives a couple extra, your leg gives a couple extra kicks.

And then there's the state of five where your knee just doesn't stop kicking. And I just thought, you know, this is appropriate because we're going to be talking about checking our reflexes. How are your spiritual reflexes?

How do you respond to the commands of God? How do you respond to the word of God? Let's read chapter eight, starting with verse 26. But an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, Arise and go south to the road that descends from Jerusalem to Gaza.

This is a desert road. And he arose and went. And behold, there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. And he had come to Jerusalem to worship.

And he was returning and sitting in his chariot and was reading the prophet Isaiah. And the spirit said to Philip, Go up and join this chariot. And when Philip had run up, he heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and said, Do you understand what you are reading?

And he said, Well, how could I unless someone guides me? And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Now, the passage of scripture which he was reading was this. He was led as a sheep to slaughter and as a lamb before his shearer is silent.

So he does not open his mouth. In humiliation, his judgment was taken away. Who shall relate his generation? For his life is removed from the earth. And the eunuch answered Philip and said, Please tell me.

Of whom does the prophet say this of himself or of someone else? And Philip opened his mouth. And beginning from this scripture, he preached Jesus to him. And as they went along the road, they came to some water.

And the eunuch said, Look, water. What prevents me from being baptized? And 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.

And he ordered the chariot to stop. And they both went down into the water, Philip as well as the eunuch, and he baptized him. And when they came up out of the water, the spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away.

And the eunuch saw him no more, but went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus. And as he passed through, he kept preaching the gospel to all the cities until he came to Caesarea. Now, the Bible, the word of God, has often been compared to a diamond.

And if you hold it up, you see it in a certain light, and you see the brilliance of it, and you see a certain facet. But when you turn it and you look at it from a different perspective, you see yet another perspective, and you see yet more brilliance.

This morning, we can easily focus on the sovereignty of God and salvation because it's clearly in this passage. We could also easily focus on our responsibility to evangelize because we have a perfect example of evangelism here.

Philip is a great evangelist. But that's not how we're going to look at it. We're going to look at yet another facet of this diamond, of this jewel of Scripture. And I want to challenge each of you to examine your lives to determine whether your initial response, your spiritual reflexes, as it were, whether those are to obey God.

That is the true mark of a child of God, one who has been born again. We will see three commands given to Christians this morning and their respective responses, what they do when they receive this command to obey.

Our challenge, in fact, I would say our calling, is to respond in obedience to the word of God. So look to your own lives. How do you respond to God's word? Now, in the book of Acts, we have a history of the early church.

And I think it's important to note that what we have is a description of what happened. In other words, we have a historical account of the events that transpired. What we do not have is a prescription or a how-to manual.

We have 1 and 2 Timothy, the book of Titus, and other letters, one might argue, including 1 and 2 Corinthians, other passages to tell us how to run a church. Acts just describes how things were done. Now, let's just introduce some of the characters here, our main character, Philip.

Philip should, in this passage, should not be confused with Philip the Apostle. He was a faithful servant, but he was probably a deacon or an early prototype of a deacon. Let's look at Acts 6, just to go back a couple of chapters.

Acts 6, verses 2 to 5. And the twelve summoned the congregation of the disciples and said, It is not desirable for us to neglect the word of God in order to serve tables. The apostles had various things that were distracting them from their major task, which was to study the word of God, to pray, so that they could accurately preach and teach the word of God.

Verse 3, But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word. And the statement found approval with the whole congregation, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicholas, a proselyte from Antioch.

So that's our Philip right there, is this man who had been faithful. Well, he's one of seven men who, as I said, were either deacons or the prototypes, the models for the office that was later described as deacon.

We don't have there in Acts 6 the actual word deacon. But in any event, he was considered faithful by the apostles. How would you like to have that on your wall? A little certificate. I remember my dad has a certificate on his wall from the Board of Supervisors of Los Angeles County because he helped develop the SWAT program.

And I read all this stuff, you know, whereas, whereas, whereas. And then on the bottom, there's a signature of all the Board of Supervisors of Los Angeles County. I think that's great to have something like that on your wall.

How would you like to have a certificate that says, You have been found faithful and full of the Spirit, signed the 12 apostles. That is a commendation. In fact, I think the only greater thing one can imagine is to hear, Well done, thou good and faithful servant from the Lord himself.

But how exciting to be thought of in that way by the apostles. So that's Philip. Also, if we were to look on in Acts 21 .8, and you don't have to turn there. It's only one verse. But Luke writes this.

Luke wrote the book of Acts, and he says,. And on the next day, we departed and came to Caesarea, and entering the house of Philip the Evangelist, who was one of the seven, we stayed with him. This is a time maybe about 20 years into the future, and Philip has become known as Philip the Evangelist.

One of the original seven. Now, that's a nickname for you. Philip the Evangelist. We're about to get an example of how he earned that title. Let's look at the first command we have here in chapter 8, in verse 26.

But an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, Arise and go south to the road that descends from Jerusalem to Gaza. This is a desert road. Again, this is a description, and I don't want anybody to be confused about this.

Don't wait for an angel of the Lord to tell you what to do. It is describing a historical event, not something that we should be waiting for. And it seems that, especially when it comes to evangelization, some of us would like that sort of direction.

But this is an angel, a messenger from the Lord, who tells Philip to get up and take a specific road. That's all pretty simple, but maybe not so simple as we'll see. The first response, verse 27. And he arose and went.

Well, that's the right response. An angel of the Lord appears, tells him what to do, and he does it. He did exactly the right thing. But you can't help but wonder if he might have had some thoughts. Because Philip, if we looked at chapter 8 in total, was apparently in the midst of what might be called an evangelistic crusade.

He was preaching the word and having a great impact for the kingdom. Look at verses 12 to 14. But when they believed Philip preaching the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were being baptized, men and women alike.

And even Simon himself, Simon the magician, himself believed. And after being baptized, he continued on with Philip. And as he observed signs and great miracles taking place, he was constantly amazed.

Now, when the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent them Peter and John. He was having a great impact in the area of Samaria. He was preaching the word, he was preaching the gospel, and people were coming to faith in Christ.

So even though this is a little bit out of the ordinary for an angel to appear, but if you saw, if you were having this kind of an impact, and if you saw many people coming to faith in Christ, you might want to ask a question or two.

You know, could we maybe get a double check? Does the angel really know what he's doing? Could he have asked something like, are you really sure you want me to leave right now? Have you been paying attention to what's going on?

Haven't you seen all the people that are coming to faith? He didn't do that. He got up and he went. Now, there are two ways to get from Jerusalem to Gaza. One goes via the coast and via all the populated areas, the big cities, and that's not the way the angel told him to go.

He said, go by the desert road. Again, a question or two might seem in order. What could he possibly find out here on this desert road that was semi-deserted, not often used? I mean, why would you go through the desert where nobody lives when you could go through the coast and have plenty of comfort?

But there's a reason why he was sent that way. And behold, there was an Ethiopian eunuch. Interestingly, by chance, in the middle of nowhere, where nobody in their right mind would be, Philip encounters an Ethiopian eunuch.

So who was this guy? What's his story? What's his background? Ethiopia at the time of the New Testament was not the relatively small country that we think of today. It referred to a much larger area. Basically, it was south of Egypt and covered a large portion of Africa.

And it ran from Aswan, the tip of the Nile, down to Khartoum. And this is the same area that the Queen of Sheba came from in the time of Solomon. So this is a big kingdom, a big area, and a well-known area.

Now, a eunuch in biblical times was someone who, in order to have his trustworthiness elevated, had been subjected to having his ability to procreate removed. That's a polite way of saying it. But eunuchs were trusted, and they served in high positions, especially like being keepers of harems, as we would see in Esther 2 .14.

And they fairly frequently rose to significant positions. Why? Because they posed no significant threat. They weren't going to have any children. They weren't going to cause any kind of threat to the kingdom.

So we have this Ethiopian eunuch who is further described as a court official of Candace, a queen of the Ethiopians who was in charge of all her treasure. Now, it's interesting. Candace was not her name.

But this Ethiopian was her court official. He was, in essence, the treasurer. You could think of him as a minister of finance. He controlled the purse strings. You could think of him as... Excuse me. Excuse me.

The secretary of the treasury. You might want to think of him as, if it helps you, he was the Alan Greenspan of his era. He controlled the money flow. And Candace was not her actual name. It was the office that actually exercised the power in Ethiopia.

She was the queen mother. The ruler of Ethiopia would be a king. But he was thought to be divine, and, of course, anyone who is divine is far too important to have to rule a country, to be involved in the day-to-day affairs of men.

So the queen mother essentially ran the government. But he had come, verse 27 tells us, and he had come to Jerusalem to worship. This Ethiopian eunuch, this secretary of the treasury, had been to Jerusalem to worship.

Why? Well, he was a God-fearer, one who had heard the Old Testament scriptures, one who had come to a form of belief in the God of the nation of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Now, he had not become a proselyte.

He had not been converted to Judaism because he had a problem. He was a eunuch. And Deuteronomy 23, verse 1, would prohibit him from fully participating in the worship of Judaism. However, he was able to go into the synagogues.

He was able to interact with rabbis and teachers and to learn about the religion. But he couldn't even go into the temple. But he had gone on a religious pilgrimage. He had been in Ethiopia. He had gone to Jerusalem with the express purpose of going to learn more, perhaps even to see the temple.

And if you've ever seen models of the temple, if you understand how large the temple was in that day, you could understand that. It's a fairly spectacular building at this point. Verse 28, and he was returning.

He was on his way back from Jerusalem. And he was sitting in his chariot. He was on this quiet little road on the way down to Gaza in the middle of the desert, sitting in a chariot. Again, this points to his wealth.

The fact that he was in a chariot says this was a wealthy, important person. How do we know that? Because typically people in that day and age walked. That's how they got around. If you had some money, let's say upper middle class, lower upper class, whatever class it was, you might have an animal that you could ride.

But you had to be very wealthy to ride in a chariot. Why? Because it demanded several animals. You had to have the chariot itself, and somebody had to drive that thing. You had at least one attendant, maybe more.

In modern terms, we could think of this as a limousine. He was riding around in a limo. He was styling on his way down to Gaza in this desert road. And he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Now in the ancient world, when you read Isaiah, when you read any passage of scripture, you didn't do it silently like we do now.

You would read it aloud, which I think has a lot of advantages. It does slow you down a little bit, but it really causes you to focus on what you're reading. So Philip, as he approaches this chariot, or as he sees it, he is able to hear what the eunuch is reading.

But Philip obeyed the angel. He did what the angel said, even though it would seem contrary, certainly, to what I would want to do. If I knew I was having an impact in Samaria, I would not want to go to the middle of the desert, especially without knowing what I was going to be doing.

But he obeyed. He went. He runs into this Ethiopian eunuch, a man of wealth and standing. And he heard him reading the book of Isaiah. And I think right then, if Philip, and certainly we don't see anything in the text here that would make us think that Philip ever had any doubts.

Pretty hard to have too many doubts when an angel tells you what to do. But right there, that moment, I think he's fully convinced that he's in exactly the right place, exactly where God would have him.

And so we come to the second command. And the second command in verse 29, And the Spirit said to Philip, Go up and join this chariot. Now, literally, Philip was commanded to stick to the chariot, to fasten himself to the chariot.

I mean, in essence, it's more like not just follow that car, but jump on that car. Not an easy thing to do, even at a slow rate of travel. I mean, you think Philip's already been traveling through the desert.

We don't know how long. It's not in the text. But there has to be a certain amount of weariness that comes with that. And he's ordered to basically jump on the bus, go catch that thing. Note his response.

Verse 30. And when Philip had run up, he heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and said, Do you understand what you are reading? How does he respond? He doesn't say, I'll do my best. He runs. He takes off.

Now, while doing this and hearing the words of Isaiah, he starts thinking to himself, how do I take this obvious opportunity and turn it into what we might call an evangelism encounter? So he asks if the eunuch understands what he's reading.

Can I just say that we have opportunities all the time? We have evangelistic encounter possibilities all the time. We just don't know it. We don't watch for them. I can remember being in my locker room one day, back when I was a deputy sheriff, and a guy a couple of lockers down from me that I'd known for 10 years or so was carrying around a book, one of the Left Behind series.

I knew this guy wasn't a believer. No way. So what's he reading that book for? That's my first thought. It's not, how do I get the gospel to that guy? It's like, what is he doing, wasting his time reading that book?

He doesn't know anything. So when I start thinking, oh, wait a minute, that's not the best response. Now I start going, do you understand what you're reading? When you read that book, does it make sense to you?

It didn't. And after I got through, it still didn't. But I gave him the gospel. That's my obligation. I do whatever I can to give him the gospel. And then the results are up to God. But even today, we think maybe the Left Behind series isn't so popular, but there are 25 million people toting around that purpose-driven life.

And if they read it from beginning to end, they still won't get the gospel. I don't want to launch on a great big thing, but I've got notes. We were at Saddleback Church here a few weeks ago. We heard Rick Warren give a gospel call.

There was no gospel. There's no gospel in that book. People need to hear the gospel. They're looking, some of them are looking for answers. They think they found them in this book. They need to be led to the book.

They need to see the God of all creation. They need to hear the truth. And that's our responsibility. We have opportunities. We need to seize them. And Philip did that. Here's the response from the eunuch.

And he said in verse 31, Well, how could I? How could I understand unless someone guides me? And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Now, for any of you who have a heart for evangelism, this is like a dream come true.

This is as good as it gets. This is that, you know, lob. The eunuch is saying, I want to hit this ball. And he throws it up about 10 feet high and just wants you to swat it out of the park. In essence, he could be saying this, The Bible is difficult to understand.

I don't really get it. Would you explain it to me? What a great opportunity. It's like having somebody say, How can I get right with God? What must I do to be saved? Would you help me to understand that?

How often does somebody ask you that? Believe it or not, I think I've had one person ask me that in my life and I was just kind of like, You've got to be kidding. That's great. Verse 32. After he gets this invitation, Now the passage of Scripture which he was reading was this.

He was led as a sheep to slaughter and as a lamb before its shearer is silence. So he does not open his mouth. In humiliation, his judgment was taken away. Who shall relate his generation? For his life is removed from the earth.

The eunuch is in Isaiah 53. The passage of Scripture, often called the suffering servant, is a powerful testimony of the works of the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, this quotation is from the Septuagint and even as you read it, you're just reminded that Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, but you're just reminded of the life of Jesus and how he did not offer a defense in spite of all the scurrilous accusations that were hurled at him and how he went to this death willingly.

And Isaiah 53 is so powerful and I've mentioned this on a few occasions. Forgive me if you've heard it before, but it's often passed over in Jewish synagogues. Why? Because it's too complicated to explain.

How do you dance around that truth? I once had a Jewish inmate come up to me and we were in a lockdown in the jail and say to me, you know, I have an Old Testament that I'd like to give to another Jewish inmate.

And I said, can I see that? He said, certainly. And he handed me the book and it was an Armed Forces Old Testament and I think I just heard about how they don't have Isaiah 53 in a lot of their collections of the Old Testament.

So I said, you know, I bet this thing doesn't have Isaiah 53 in it. He says, oh, sure it does. And so I said, well, look it up. You know, blind man's bluff. And so he looks and it's skipped from Isaiah 52 to Isaiah 54.

And he says, why isn't that in there? Well, thank you for asking. Now let me explain why it's not there. And I saw him some months later and he said, Senior Cooley, he says, do you remember me? And I looked at him and I said, no.

I mean, I see hundreds of inmates every day. So he says, well, you know, you told me that and it really bothered me. And I started going to a Bible study after that. And he goes, you know, I'm just so thankful to know the Lord Jesus Christ.

So Isaiah 53 is a passage that really gets to the heart of the matter. Who is Jesus Christ? Who does the Old Testament say that he is? And that's where our eunuch is. Verse 34. And the eunuch answered Philip and said, please tell me of whom does this, the prophets say this, of himself or of someone else?

Speculation on my part. But, you know, there are those rabbis who like to say that Isaiah was talking about himself in Isaiah 53. So he may have even heard that taught. I mean, this isn't like we have to put ourselves in the mind of the Old Testament period because that's what we're talking about, even though this is the New Testament.

But we're living without access to all the gospels. We're living without access to Christian bookstores and that's a shocking thought. But he couldn't just go to the bookstore and get another book. So he probably, again, speculation on my part, but most likely he picked this scroll up of Isaiah and had read it fairly consistently, trying to understand it, wrestling with the truths contained there.

He wants to understand who Isaiah is talking about in Isaiah 53. Now this, again, it's a softball question. It's the one, it's the kind of question you just, if you want to preach the gospel, if you have a heart for the lost, this is what you just think, why doesn't that ever happen to me?

But if we're going to explain it, and you don't need to turn there, but if we're going to explain it, if we say, yeah, that's about Isaiah, well, we have some problems. Isaiah 53 verse 5 says, but he was pierced through for our transgressions.

He was crushed for our iniquities. The chasing for our well-being fell upon him, and by his scourging we are healed. Does that sound like any human being could do it? Even the Tanakh, a modern Jewish translation reads, but he was wounded because of our sins, crushed because of our iniquities.

Again, that idea of substitution. He bore the chastisement that made us whole. That's what Jesus Christ did. How can a mere man like Isaiah take on the punishment for the sins of others? How can he in the divine economy accomplish something for others when he had sins of his own to deal with?

We come to the third command. And Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from this scripture, he preached Jesus to him. Reminds me of what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2, verses 1 and 2, when he said that he came and he didn't have any fancy language, and he came to just talk about Jesus Christ.

That's the Cooley translation, but that's what he said. He said, I didn't come here to do anything else, but to preach Jesus Christ and him crucified to you. Now, how can I say that that's a command? How can I say that that's the third command?

Well, not to beat a dead horse, but Philip is what? He is an evangelist. And that Greek word that's used here, it says he preached Jesus is the anglicized version of evangelize. The Greek word would be the same root that we get evangelize from, and it means to proclaim the divine message of salvation.

Evangelism is not sharing your faith. You can't give your faith to somebody else. Evangelism is preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ without flinching and without apology. Evangelism demands a response.

We don't just throw it out there. It's not just information that people can gather if they want to. Evangelism commands repentance. If you give a gospel presentation and you haven't told that person that they need to repent, that they need to turn from their sin and turn toward Christ, you have not given them the gospel.

And again, when we went to Saddleback a few weeks ago, he led people in a gospel presentation, one that did not talk about God's holiness, one that did not talk about any of the attributes of God, His justice, did not talk about man's sinfulness, did not talk about repentance, did not talk about the resurrection, and then he welcomed people into the family of God.

That is not a gospel. That is what Galatians 1 -8 would call not even another gospel. That is anathema. That is cursing. That is damning heresy. You cannot get to heaven any other way but through the finished work of Jesus Christ.

Now, let's look. So there is a command there. Philip didn't just throw out information. He gave him the gospel, which demands a response. Let's look at the eunuch's response, verse 36. And as they went along, as they went along the road, they came to some water.

And the eunuch said, Look, water, what prevents me from being baptized? Now, clearly, the Ethiopian understood what had been given to him and he received it. He wanted it. He believed it. He understood the importance of being obedient.

He even had that sense right off the bat. And he wanted to identify himself with his risen Lord in baptism. Now, notice, and I mean, I don't mean to be too flippant about it, but he didn't say, Hey, I've got some water on my wineskin.

Why don't you sprinkle it on me? He said, Look, there's water. Baptize me, please. I want to be obedient to Christ. Now, verse 37, we have, most of you probably have brackets around that. You have some kind of indication, maybe in your notes.

If you have the NIV version, in this case, I'll say, Blessed art thou, because I don't think it actually has 37 in it, but that is not in the oldest manuscripts. It says,. And 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. Well, that's absolutely what you have to do. But if we take that out, we take that verse out, and I don't believe it belongs there, it doesn't change a thing.

You can be sure that Philip had given the eunuch a complete and thorough presentation of the gospel, including his need to repent, to confess Jesus as the Son of God, that he needed to believe in his heart that God raised him from the dead, and he had told him about the command to be baptized.

In verse 38, the eunuch orders the chariot to stop, and it says,. And they both went down into the water, Philip as well as the eunuch, and he baptized him. And so there we have it. Philip brought to this place where by human logic he would never go, encountering someone who maybe he would never encounter any other way, giving him the gospel, all these circumstances leading him to give him the gospel, that eunuch repenting, believing, and being baptized, right there on the spot.

Now the divine appointment ends. Look at verse 38. And he ordered the chariot to stop, and they both went into the water, Philip as well as the eunuch, and he baptized him. Surely they went down into the water, and that was not really necessary, if all there was was a spranking, but Philip dunked the eunuch, he submerged him under the water, and he baptized him.

And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away. Now why would this supernatural encounter end just kind of normally with them splitting up and going their normal ways?

The verb here, snatched, is to grab or seize suddenly, so as to remove in such a way that no resistance is offered. Philip was gone. He just, he's gone. And the eunuch saw him no more, but went on his way rejoicing.

Now in spite of his wealth and position, the eunuch was in many ways, in spite of his lofty status in Ethiopia, he was in many ways an outcast. If we think about the religions that surrounded Israel, a great many of them were focused on what?

Fertility. Here's a guy who had nothing to offer. Even in Judaism, he would have been prohibited by virtue of Deuteronomy 23. He would have been prohibited from fully engaging in the religion, of even going into the temple.

But now he could rejoice. Why? Because he had been fully accepted by God. All of his sins forgiven. He was fully received by God. Even the blessings, as I said, I think he read through Isaiah on more than one occasion.

In Isaiah 56 verses 3 to 5 says this, Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say, The Lord will surely separate me from his people. Neither let the eunuch say, Behold, 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, to them I will give in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name better than that of sons and daughters.

I will give them an everlasting name which will not be cut off. Exactly. Hallelujah. This eunuch had been promised by God something that no earthly person or religion could possibly offer him. He had been, as it were, made complete, promised a greater inheritance than any hope of children could ever offer him.

Verse 40, But Philip found himself as Otis, and as he passed through, he kept preaching the gospel to all the cities until he came to Caesarea. And if you remember, Caesarea is where we find him 20 years on, 20 years later.

This man was about the work of the gospel, preaching and teaching the word until he wound up, I will call it retirement, but until he wound up at his final home in Caesarea. So now, how can we measure our obedience?

Well, first, obviously, I think in evangelism. The early church, Philip was not an apostle. He was not a pastor. He was a deacon, a prototype of a deacon. He was a lay person. He had a passion for sharing the gospel, for preaching Christ.

And may I just say that this is already obvious to you, but Pastor Mike and I can't evangelize each other. Mike might try on occasions, but it doesn't really help. The church's mission, you all now, you all have contact with a lot more people than we do.

It's the church's mission to preach the gospel. Our mission, the church's mission, the church is here, the elders are here to equip you and exhort you to do the work of ministry. So how about you? You know, D .L. Moody once asked a man about the state of his soul.

You know what the man said? That's none of your business. D .L. Moody said, Oh yes, it is my business. And the man said to him, Then you must be D .L. Moody. I think that's a great reputation to have.

How about that? It's none of your business. People say that all the time. What's the state of your soul? None of your business. It is my business. Then you must be Steve Cooley. It must be fill in the blank.

Your name should go there. You must be so and so. You must be from that Bethlehem Bible Church. Every single Christian here this morning has as his or her business the salvation of souls, the proclamation of God's word.

How else can we apply this? The baptism. Your first response after believing should be a desire to identify yourself with the one who gave himself up for you. If you believe in Jesus Christ, if you believe that he's a son of God who came and lived a perfect life, died a perfect death, was resurrected on the third day and did all of that on your behalf, then why would you not want to be baptized?