Sermon: Baptism - And Both Went Down Into The Water

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Well, here we are again. I want to dispel any of the rumors that there has been a hostile takeover of the preaching duties at Apologia Church.

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I had the opportunity of preaching two weeks ago and that was sort of normal.

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And then, lo and behold, last week, and here we are again.

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I just want you to know that, that Jeff has every intention of being back again next week and that Matthew will be completed someday.

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It will, it will take place. If you're visiting with us, thank you for being with us.

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You have wandered into the middle of a series that I have been preaching.

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I have not preached it every time I've preached. In fact, we started this series. We, I started preaching on the ordinances or sacraments as you, what terminology you choose to utilize along those lines.

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We did five sermons on the Lord's Supper and then quite some time ago

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I began a series on baptism that was interrupted by a number of different events and sermons and things that have gotten in the way.

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We picked it back up again two weeks ago and then got to continue last week and so here we are again.

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So I apologize that you're walking into the middle of a series, but I will not apologize if you're visiting with us and you happen to have a different view on certain aspects of this topic.

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No, no apologies there. We have, we are fully well aware of the fact that we have differences with people that we love and cherish in the gospel on this subject, but I will say something right now right up front.

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I've said this, I said this earlier in this, in the series, but I'll repeat it now. In my experience, and my experience is getting a little long in the tooth these days, but in my experience,

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Baptists who are covenantal and Reformed in their theology have read on average 50 times as much from the other side as Pato Baptists have read on our side.

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It's just a fact. My dear brothers who I love and who I minister with, they just don't read our stuff at all.

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They just don't really think that, they think they know exactly why we believe what we believe and so they just don't.

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And so I hope you'll listen. I hope you'll hear a covenantal theologian speaking about the subject of Baptism.

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Now what we're doing, just to remind you, we began by laying out the issues and then we laid out where we needed to go.

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We needed to define the term and so we looked very carefully at what the original language sources, the early church fathers, the uses of the term in the ancient church, what

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Baptism meant, what its normative meaning was, and what extended meanings it could have.

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We've already looked at that. And we've looked at the fact that even all the way up through Calvin, Calvin said, yeah, in the ancient church,

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Baptism meant to immerse somebody. Pretty obvious, pretty straightforward, and that is the case.

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But then we recognized that before we get into all of the theological discussions of, yeah, but circumcision means this and then you've got this covenant and that, before you get to all of that, if we are going to be practitioners of Sola Scriptura, Scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith of the church, and Tota Scriptura, we need to believe all that God has revealed in Scripture, then there are certain other things we need to do.

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For example, we need to work through each of the examples of Baptism that are given for us in Scripture to see what we can learn from those examples.

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And that means looking primarily and mostly at the book of Acts and seeing what the

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Apostles did and what accompanied Baptism and how they were fulfilling the command of Christ to go and preach the gospel and, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the

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Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. And so, we looked at Acts chapter 2.

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We looked at the day of Pentecost. Last week we, we discussed rather in depth the issue of you and your children and all who are far off in Acts 239.

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And so now I want to begin by looking at a couple of different texts that don't necessarily mention

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Baptism. You say, why would you do that? Why would you do that? Well, we want to eventually get to the two stories of Simon and then

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Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. So we want to get into Acts chapter 8. But before we get there,

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I felt it would be somewhat improper if we didn't at least notice that the gospel is still going forth, even though Luke changes his focus to talk about the relationship between the church and the

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Sanhedrin, and then the state's gonna start getting involved and persecution's gonna start beginning, and that's where the focus is.

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But people are still coming to know Christ, so what was happening with them? So let's look at, for example,

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Acts chapter 4, verse 4. Acts chapter 4, verse 4, there has been, again, proclamation of the gospel, fulfilled prophecy in Christ, and we have this brief mention, but many of those who had heard the message believed and the number of the men came to be about 5 ,000.

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Now remember, we had had the, the number increasing on the day of Pentecost, so here is an expansion of that number, and how does that number expand?

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Well, because they hear the message and they believe the message.

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Now we know what happened on Pentecost, so can we assume that if these men hear the message and they believe that they were baptized, well,

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Luke doesn't go into that level of detail, but you would expect, given what's gonna come afterwards, that that is the consistent practice of the

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Apostles at this point. And so, who is it that would be being baptized?

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Those who had believed. That would be the consistent, if we're, if we're assuming the Apostles are not doing one thing one day and something different another day, then we, we can assume that in Acts chapter 4, this is the continuing application and practice.

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In the next chapter, Acts chapter 5, verse 14, we read these words, and all the more believers in the

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Lord, multitudes of men and women were constantly added to their number.

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So you have this added to their number thing, which if we were addressing other issues would probably be relevant to a sermon on the subject of church membership in the sense that we are going to eventually encounter the situation with the need to establish deacons and start dealing with the ministry within the church.

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This is obviously in a very, very, very, very primitive situation right now. You have the whole story in Acts chapter 5 of Ananias and Sapphira.

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All of that would be well worth looking at. But the point, the point is that all the more believers in the

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Lord, multitudes of men and women were constantly added to their number. Now, we haven't spent too much time focusing upon this, but I want to point out something that may to us be a given, but really meant something because it wasn't a given back then.

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The sign of the old covenant was what?

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Well, circumcision. Well, that's only given to men. That's not given to women.

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And yet, from the beginning, as soon as the gospel is proclaimed, notice what is said.

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Multitudes of men and women were constantly added to their number. The later emphasis that Paul gives us that in Christ there is no male or female does not mean that there are not male and female roles.

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But what it does mean is that when it comes to standing at the foot of the cross, we stand equally as men and women.

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And men and women believe on the same basis. And they are baptized on the same basis.

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And they are added to the number, multitudes of men and women. But what's the basis of that?

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More believers in the Lord, faith. Faith is absolutely required.

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Faith, in Latin, is credo, credo, as in credo baptism.

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There you go. Acts chapter 8, Acts chapter 8, verse 12.

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Acts chapter 8, verse 12. Acts chapter 8, verse 12.

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Now, we have just skipped over one of the longest sermons ever recorded in the Bible. It's a great sermon, but we skipped over it because we don't have time to look at it.

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Acts chapter 8, verse 12, but when they believed Philip preaching the good news about the

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Kingdom of God in the name of Jesus Christ, and remember, Jesus the

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Messiah. That term Christos is not his last name.

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That is a description of an office that he fulfills, Jesus the Messiah.

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They were being baptized, and then what's the last phrase? Men and women alike.

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Men and women alike. So what do you have? They believed.

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They believed the preached message about the good news and the Kingdom of God in the name of Jesus Christ, and they were being baptized men and women alike.

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And even Simon himself believed. Now, this is, this is about a, a, go back to verse 9.

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There was a certain man named Simon who formerly was practicing magic in the city and astonishing the people of Samaria claiming to be someone great, and they all for the smallest of grace were giving attention to him saying this man is what is called the great power of God.

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And they were giving him attention because he had for a long time astonished them with his magic arts. But, verse 13, and even

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Simon 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.

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Which would probably tell you that his alleged miracles were fake. If when he saw the real ones, he's constantly amazed at what he's seeing.

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Maybe he knew exactly how he had been doing it, but he couldn't figure this part out. Now, when the apostles, verse 14, in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the

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Word of God. So let's stop for just a second, realize Jerusalem, very much center of Judaism.

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But we all know the tremendous animosity that exists between the

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Jews and the Samaritans. Don't have time to go into all the history, it goes back to what happened when the Assyrians destroyed the northern kingdom in the 8th century and brought other people in.

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And so there was a, what the Jews considered to be a mixed race, a lesser people.

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And so that's why when Jesus goes to Samaria and he's speaking to the Samaritan woman, the, his

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Jewish disciples are creeped out. How could you do something like this?

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This is, this is impure. This is compromising. And so now the gospel goes to the

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Samaritans and at least the Samaritans had a connection to the

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Jewish race. So this was, this was a step outside of the comfort zone, but it wasn't all the way out to the position of Gentiles yet.

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And as we see in Acts, this was something God had to work upon his people to get them to understand the, the, the prophecies that the gospel is to be for all people.

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Now when the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the Word of God, they sent them

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Peter and John. Yeah, Peter and John, you all better go check this out. What, what's, what's going on here?

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So they sent Peter and John, who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the

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Holy Spirit. Now this is interesting, notice. For he had not yet fallen upon any of them.

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They had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they began laying their hands on them and they were receiving the

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Holy Spirit. Now very briefly, because we could do an entire sermon on this, why?

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Why this unusual situation? The Holy Spirit had fallen upon those who were baptized before. Why isn't this happening in Samaria?

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Let me just suggest what seems to me the most likely and simple answer for this.

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The key emphasis that you find even in, in a verse that almost everyone in this room has memorized,

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Romans 3 .23, right? All of sin. Sin. Why is that even in the

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Bible? So that there could not be a division between a

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Gentile Christian church and a Jewish Christian church. That was one of the greatest dangers in the early church.

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And so I think that the reason that Peter and John have to come down is not because they're somehow more spiritually great than Philip or something like that, but that there needs to be a clear demonstration from the apostles themselves that as the gospel begins to move out of that strictly

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Jewish context, that this is what God has commanded to take place.

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That there is one church and that even the disciples needed to see this. I mean, remember, we're only a few chapters away from God having to do the, you know, dropping the sheet down from heaven to whack

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Peter over the head. So he would go and, and present the gospel to Gentiles. And so there is a, a huge curve that the people had to be working through.

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And so I think the reason that Peter and John have to come down and lay hands upon these people who've believed and been baptized is, is to show one church, one faith, one way of salvation.

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You're not going to be the Samaritan Christian church, which is lower than the

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Jerusalem Jewish church. No. One church, one faith, one baptism, one

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Lord, one way of salvation. And so, verse 18, when

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Simon saw that the spirit was bestowed to the laying on of the apostles' hands, he offered them money saying, give this authority to me as well, so that everyone on whom

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I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit. But Peter said to him, may your silver perish with you, because you thought that you could obtain the gift of God with money.

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You have no part or portion in this matter, for your heart is not right before God, therefore repent of this wickedness of yours and pray the

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Lord that if possible the intention of your heart may be forgiven you, for I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bondage of iniquity.

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But Simon answered and said, pray to the Lord for me yourself so that nothing of what you have said may come upon me.

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And so, again, we could spend a great deal of time discussing the issue of Simon and what his situation was.

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That's not our point. The point here is that these people were baptized upon believing and then the apostles come,

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Peter and John come, and now they receive the Holy Spirit. But this seems to be because of the fact that you needed clear demonstration of the unity of the church that was going to consider, going to continue on.

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Now, we come to our focus for today. But an angel of the

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Lord, verse 26 of chapter 8, but an angel of the Lord said, spoke to Philip saying, arise and go south of the road that descends from Jerusalem to Gaza.

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This is a desert road. And he arose and went. And behold, there was an

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Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure.

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And he had come to Jerusalem to worship. Now let's stop there. Again, large numbers of words have been written over the years concerning this

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Ethiopian eunuch. Why was he a eunuch? What, what was the situation here?

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And now today, of course, in our confused world, you have a tremendous amount of focus upon the very few places in Scripture, they, they occur because these folks existed in the ancient world for various reasons, upon the idea of a eunuch.

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And as Jesus said, some people, some are made eunuchs by men, some choose this lifestyle.

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And so today, these people are actually even being attached to the idea of transgenderism and everything else.

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The reality was that eunuchs in the ancient world were considered important in taking care of the king's harem, making sure that the king's women would only be having children by the king was very important.

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And therefore, you did not assign virile men as their guardians because the king couldn't be everywhere at all times.

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And so you had eunuchs who could therefore not father children who were placed in that position of authority and it was primarily so that there could be an issue of trust in the purity of the line that would come from a particular king.

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You see how often, even in the history of Israel, that was an issue that comes up in the kings and the, and the succession lists and things like that.

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Now this eunuch was an individual who had great authority. He was a court official of Candace, queen of the

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Ethiopians. Maybe he was a eunuch because Candace was a queen and therefore there could be trust in regards to the line of succession in that case.

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But the point is that he was in charge of all her treasure. So why in the world is an

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Ethiopian eunuch, who of course would have been very much a black man,

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I mean, that's Ethiopia, that's, that's what you would be dealing with in that time period just as in today.

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What's he doing in Jerusalem to worship? Sometimes we skip right over that.

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In the book of Acts, over and over again, we encounter the God -fearers, the

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God -fearers. Cornelius is going to be a God -fearer in chapter 10.

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And the apostles are frequently going to find these God -fearers in the synagogues, and they become a rich source of people who come to believe the message of Jesus Christ.

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But they were primarily pagans who encounter the teachings of the

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Hebrew Scriptures. And they are attracted to the consistency, they are attracted to the beauty of the message of one

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God, the creator of all things. They recognize that in their

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Greek polytheism or any of the religions that would be present in North Africa at that time, and the polytheism that was all over Arabia and North Africa, they find that to be unsatisfying as it is.

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And so somehow this very powerful man has come to understand the message of the

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Hebrew Scriptures, and he had come to Jerusalem to worship. Not only that, but notice verse 28, and he was returning and sitting in his chariot.

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So he's been in Jerusalem, he's worshiped. Now how would he worship? Because he could not, he would not be allowed into the temple.

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If he is the God -fearers, now we don't know all the situations of this man, but you could become a proselyte convert to Judaism, but you had to be circumcised.

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Had he done that? We don't know. He had come to worship, maybe he had in some way, but maybe he couldn't.

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He really, as a eunuch, he could not enter into the congregation. The Old Testament law forbade that.

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So whatever situation he was in, the worshiping he would have been doing would have been from afar.

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He would not have been able to be a part of the congregation that goes in for Yom Kippurim or something like that.

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But he had gone to Jerusalem, he had gone to worship, and as he was returning and sitting in his chariot, what's he doing?

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He's reading the prophet Isaiah. Now folks, you've got to understand, for us that's easy to do.

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This man would have had to have expended a fair amount of effort to obtain for himself copies of the books of the

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Hebrew Scriptures, which would be written on scrolls. Could he, had he learned

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Hebrew? Aramaic? We're not told. Had he had translation made?

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We are not told. But one thing that immediately strikes us is he has a love for Scripture.

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There is a sign of a serious individual. There is a sign of a serious worshiper of God.

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And so he is sitting in his chariot and he's reading the prophet Isaiah.

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And the Spirit said to Philip, go up and join this chariot. I'm sure Philip had been wondering a good bit, why did the

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Spirit send me onto a desert road? All of us today in, now, fully understand why

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Philip may have been asking this question. How would you like for the Lord to say, go walk down the side of Alma School Road for 20 miles in the afternoon?

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Yes, Lord, but why, Lord? And that's probably where Philip is, because it says it was a desert road.

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And Philip's probably wondering, you know, I'm really, Lord, I've been having some, some success in my preaching.

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So, I'm not going to have much of an audience on a desert road, you know. But he's obedient.

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And he finds one guy. Spirit says to Philip, go up and join this chariot.

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And when Philip had run up, can you imagine Ethiopian eunuch? And here comes this guy, running out of the middle of nowhere, running up to his chariot.

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He heard him reading Isaiah the prophet. And so he knew his

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Scriptures well enough to know what he was reading. He must have been reading out loud. Do you understand what you are reading?

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And he said, well, how could I unless someone guides me? And he invited

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Philip to come up and sit with him. So this obviously was not just a little teeny chariot, okay?

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This is, this isn't the Ben -Hur racing chariot version, okay? This is the long distance

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RV chariot version, okay? Fifth wheel. Now the passage of Scripture which he was reading was this.

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This should sound familiar to us because I sort of freaked out our psalm reader by making him read something other than the psalms.

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He had to get a special permission to read something other than from the psalter.

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But it's all inspired. It's all good. Did a good job, Isaiah 53. He was led as a sheep to slaughter, as a lamb before its shearers is silent so he does not open his mouth.

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In humiliation his judgment was taken away. Who shall relate his generation for his life is removed from the earth.

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I won't go into any of the variations there and is the Greek Septuagint behind this or any of the rest of that stuff.

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That's not our focus right now. The point is he is reading one of the most clearly, compellingly messianic prophecies in all of the

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Old Testament. Remember he doesn't, he can't just go and get an Old Testament. They're written on scrolls. So he just happens to have

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Isaiah. He just happens to have it open to the part that talks about the

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Messiah and his sacrifice. And Philip just happens to have been sent and he happens to be on the same road.

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Okay, there's nothing, nothing here that's just simply happenstance. This is God sovereignly bringing the message of the gospel to an individual.

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Why did he just have an angel pop down and do this, right? God has chosen to use men and women as his means of communicating these truths.

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And so here's Philip, here's the Ethiopian eunuch, and Philip hears what he's reading.

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And the eunuch answered Philip and said, please tell me of whom does the prophet say this, of himself or of someone else?

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Truly, you cannot read Isaiah 53 without being absolutely captured by what it's saying, by its message.

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It is one of the most amazing texts of Scripture. And think about something.

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As this man is reading these words, these were words that had been given by inspiration of God and written down 700 years earlier, 700 years.

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And here is a man from far away, and he is strangely drawn to these words.

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Please tell me, of whom does the prophet say this? I want to know, was it himself?

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Was it someone else? You want to see the evidence, the work of the

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Spirit of God? Here's a man who's reading Scripture. He wants to know its meaning.

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He wants to know who is being referred to here. And truly, how many the seed of Abraham, according to the flesh, down through the years it has been this same text.

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There are so many who have testified that it was reading

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Isaiah 53, that section about the servant and what he does and what happens to him and, and that by his death he justifies the many.

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There's been many a person raised within the Jewish faith who reading this has said, wait a minute, that's what the

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Christians are saying. This is in our Scriptures? Yes, and they were written 700 years before Christ came.

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And so what does Philip do? Philip has heard that time when

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Jesus, after His resurrection, the first thing He does with His disciples is He opens their minds to understand the testimony of the

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Scriptures concerning Himself. And they are now passing that on in their preaching and in their teaching.

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And so Philip opened his mouth and beginning from this

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Scripture, so he didn't just stay there but began with that Scripture, he preached

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Jesus to him. Fellow Christian, I'm sure there are many of you in this room who, like me, had the tremendous privilege of being raised in a

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Christian family. I still have the first two

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Bibles that my parents gave me. The first one, the zip -up one, it's not in very good shape.

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It still has a lot of my vacation Bible school stickers in the front. It was a good

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King James, of course. And then the first leather

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Bible they gave me, that brown, leather King James, red letter edition, I still have it.

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My earliest memories are of church and Sunday school. That's a tremendous privilege.

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Maybe some of you, like me, have walked the Lord for the vast majority of your life.

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But here's the question for all of us. Could you do what

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Philip did? Could you start with Isaiah 53 and work through only what was available to you at that time?

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No New Testament. Could you preach Jesus from the

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Hebrew Scriptures? We should be able to do so. And if you've been in this church for any period of time at all, you know how often

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Brother Jeff takes us through those Messianic prophecies and takes us through the testimony of the

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Old Testament text to the person of Christ. But this is what the early church could do.

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They were absolutely convinced that those Scriptures were about Jesus.

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And I love that Philip opened his mouth and beginning from this Scripture, he preached

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Jesus to him. He didn't have to do much in the way of preparation.

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He already saw, God sent me down this road, here's this guy, I walk up, he's reading the

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Scriptures about Jesus. I really don't have to work too hard on this one.

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Just get out of the way and let the message of Christ be proclaimed. And that's what he does.

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I don't know about you, but I wish there was about 20 verses between verses 35 and 36, because I would love to hear

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Philip's preaching. But to be honest with you, that's probably what we've been reading in the previous chapters in the preaching of the early church anyways.

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I mean, you look at Stephen and how often he's quoting from the Scriptures before his martyrdom.

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And all the preaching of the apostles at this point is just rich in Old Testament Scripture.

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So we can assume that this is exactly what Philip has done. And what we need to understand is, was that he preached

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Jesus to him. Philip didn't do just a half -hearted job. Because verse 36 says, and as they went along the road, they came to some water.

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And the eunuch said, look, water, what prevents me from being baptized? Now, verse 37, you will note in your translations, has either a bracket or a double bracket.

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Maybe some translations put it down in a footnote. If you have the King James, the

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New King James, you probably don't have that, though the New King James will have a text note there. Verse 37 was known as early as the end of the second century, at least a portion of it is quoted by Irenaeus, at least probably.

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But the first written manuscript of the Book of Acts that contains verse 37 is from the sixth century, so from the 500s, long after the

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Book of Acts was originally written. It is a later insertion. And you can see why someone felt that it needed to be there.

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And Philip said, if you believe with all your heart, you may. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the

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Son of God. So you have a perfectly orthodox confession.

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You have a perfectly orthodox demand on Philip's part for such a confession.

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But why would it be added in at a later point? Well, probably because someone looking at verse 35 didn't figure that Philip had done enough preaching of Jesus or something, because the eunuch says, look, water, what prevents me from being baptized?

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Now just stop for a second and think for a second. Where did he get that idea?

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Where did he get the idea that he should be baptized? Why did they have to come along some place where there's water that you can go down into and come up out of, as is described in the text?

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Trust me, this guy had water with him. And so if you want to do this number, if you want to do this number, he had plenty of that.

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Didn't need to wait until they were coming along the road and find a body of water that they could actually go down into and come back out of, which is what happens.

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Clearly, when it says that he preached Jesus to him, he preached the whole counsel of God, he preached the whole message, and he preached to him that a person who believes in this one prophesied by Isaiah is to be baptized into his name, which is what we saw all the way back in Acts chapter two.

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And so they're coming along the road, look, water, what prevents me from being baptized?

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What prevents me from being associated, from openly declaring my belief that Jesus was the

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Messiah? Now, let me ask a, let me, I gotta, I gotta talk honestly with you here for a second.

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There are probably some folks in this room, you believe

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Jesus was the Messiah and you believe that He's the only way of salvation, but for some reason you have not yet publicly testified to your faith in Christ, illustrating your death, burial, and resurrection with Him in the waters of baptism.

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Jesus commands it, the Scriptures command it, here is a man who hears the Gospel, and what's the first thing he asks when he sees a big enough body of water to get dunked in?

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What prevents me from being baptized? Is there anything in my way from right now going down to that body of water and being baptized?

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When you confess faith in Christ, your desire should be obedient to everything He commands.

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And since He commands you to be baptized, this should be a no -brainer. This should be a no -brainer.

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Now, I know there are some situations where it can be very costly. I know there are some situations where because of your culture or your background, there are people today, and this was very much the case in the

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New Testament, where if you are a part of the Jewish community and you are baptized in the name of Christ, you were cut off, treated as if dead.

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And obviously there are places today where being baptized in the name of Jesus can result in your death.

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That should make it all the more special for those of us that have the freedom to do so, and to make that public testimony.

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I am so thankful I can look back upon my baptism. I still remember it.

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The people who saw it only saw about this much of my head. But I remember it.

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I remember the song they sang as I walked out of the baptistry. I remember the pastor.

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I remember the look of my parents. I'm thankful to be able to look back on that act of obedience to my

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Lord and Savior. And when the eunuch says to Philip, what prevents me from being baptized?

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There was nothing, because he had already believed. And so he ordered the chariot to stop.

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Now, obviously what this means is it's not just Philip and this guy. There is an, there is undoubtedly an armed guard along with this man, because he orders the chariot to stop.

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Now, I suppose you could say he just said to the horses, stop. But that's probably not the case.

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People like this didn't just travel around by themselves. So he orders the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water,

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Philip as well as the eunuch. So there was enough water for at least two. And he baptized him.

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So what do we, we don't really need to repeat it.

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But this is plainly, clearly, unarguably baptism of a believing person upon profession of faith in Jesus Christ in water by immersion.

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No question about it. No question about it. They both went down the water,

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Philip as well as the eunuch, and he baptized him. And when they came up out of the water, the spirit of the

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Lord snatched Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, but went on his way rejoicing.

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Now let me tell you something. That's a baptism that he never forgot. I would love to have listened to that eunuch years and years down the road telling the story of his baptism.

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I'll bet his grandkids love to hear that story. Grandpa, can you tell us about Philip again?

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And how he just sort of beamed out, because he did.

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And in fact, verse 40 says, but Philip, now, I think it's funny.

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I've got the numeric standard here. But the Greek, it says, 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.

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And it says he found himself. It's actually, he was found. But the point is,

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I wonder exactly how Philip told this story in years after this.

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I mean, how would you even explain this to people? So, the Lord sent me down this road, and I encountered this high court official from Candace and preached the gospel to him, and he was reading from Isaiah, and man, was he ready to hear the gospel, and, and he wants to be baptized, and so we go down in the water, and I baptize him, and we come up out of the water,

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I'm soaking wet. And then I'm in Azotus, and I'm still dripping.

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Can you imagine? I mean, we think about the poor Ethiopian eunuch going, what just happened?

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And we think about the fact that he, he probably is how the gospel first gets introduced to Ethiopia.

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I mean, God's been, God's orchestrating this. But I really wonder what it's like to be

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Philip. You've been obedient, you get to see someone accept

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Christ, you baptize him, and then it's like the enterprise beams you someplace else.

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Wow. Now that's not normally how it ends up happening, even by the end of the book of Acts. This is pretty unusual.

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But it happened. It happened, and God had his purposes for doing so.

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I mean, you might say, well, was Philip the only one, or, you know, did he have to do this miracle because there just weren't enough

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Christians? That's all speculation. I'm just simply thankful that God was so concerned about one of his elect people coming to know the truth, finding out about the gospel, that he supernaturally directs

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Philip to be there, to be that one, to bring the message, and then as soon as he's done, he's out of there.

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Wow. Wow. That is truly amazing. Now, with all that said, here we have the next major instance.

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We've had baptizing being mentioned, sort of mentions of men and women alike and, and all of that.

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But here we have, after the day of Pentecost, now going, we, we've seen it coming to Samaria.

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Now we see it being, going off into Ethiopia. But yes, this guy is a

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God -fearer, he's a eunuch, so he never could have really been a part of the full congregation, but he was worshiping in Jerusalem.

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Do you see how it's like, I know we don't get to do this in the desert very often, but when you live someplace else, there are things called lakes and ponds and stuff like that where water actually congregates on the surface of the earth, it doesn't just go like that as soon as it, as it comes out of the hose.

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And I've lived in places like that, and one, it's a really fun thing to stand at the edge of one of these bodies of water, and don't, kids, do not do this with the pool,

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I'm not, no, this is, no, this is, you do not throw rocks into the pool, bad idea, okay. But you throw something in there far enough out, and it goes kaplunk, and here come the ripples.

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And you get to watch them go all the way across, and they sort of bounce off the sides, and it's, it's a beautiful thing to do.

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Much more entertaining than being on Facebook. So I, I recommend it, it's very much more relaxing, lowers the blood pressure, it's a great thing.

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Do you see this happening in Acts? Okay, you've gone kaplunk in Jerusalem, and now those waves are going out and out and out.

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And so they've gone all of Jerusalem, and now, uh -oh, Samaria, uh -oh,

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Ethiopia, and by the time we get to Acts chapter 10, uh -oh, Gentiles.

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And this is really, really important to see. Because once you go back and you start looking at Matthew, and you start looking at Mark, you start looking at Luke, it's like, oh wow, this was, this was part and parcel of what

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Jesus was talking about all along. He was, He was saying this all along, but man, it, it really, it takes till Acts chapter 15 before the church as a, as a whole finally goes, okay, yeah, we, we see now that this message is for the whole world, and no, you do not have to become a

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Jew before you become a Christian. And some of the greatest strife the early church experienced was due to the fact that there were some people who resisted, and in fact went back the other direction and said no.

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And that's what Galatians is all about. Nope, you have to become a Jew before you become a Christian. That was the whole point.

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And the Scriptures say that that was very much an error. And so it's interesting to me, Philip finds himself at Azotus, and then what happens the very next portion of Luke's story?

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Now Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the

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Lord, went to the high priest. We go back to this man named Saul. Now he had been introduced briefly back in, in chapter 7 with the martyrdom of Stephen, just sort of, he just appears in the narrative, and now he's going to become the focus of the rest of the story.

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I'm rather partial to the theory that Luke and Acts were written as an amicus brief.

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Do you know what an amicus brief is? An amicus brief is a friend of the court. You can, you can submit as a friend of the court papers to judges to be taken into consideration in their, in their analysis of a case.

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And I think there's a good reason to believe that Luke and Acts were written by Luke for Paul's trial as a demonstration of what this

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Christianity was all about, what Jesus was all about, and who this Paul was, and why he was doing the things that he was doing.

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Because it's interesting where Acts ends. It doesn't give us the final disposition of what happens with Paul, which would make sense if it was submitted and given to the

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Roman authorities as evidence in his trial. It would make sense. But the point is, from now on,

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Paul is going to become central to the focus of what we're going to find in Acts, and as we look at more examples of baptism, then that's going to help us tie into the fact that the person who gives us the most direct theological teaching on the subject of baptism is going to be the

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Apostle Paul, and it's going to be particular texts in the Pauline epistles that we will be focused upon, especially when it comes to making final decisions in regards to the nature of this ordinance commanded by Christ and considered so important to us that here, in just a matter of moments, we will be engaging in both of the ordinances, the

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Lord's Supper and the ordinance of baptism. So before we do that, let's pray together.

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Our gracious Heavenly Father, once again we thank you for your word and the testimony that it is to your power, to your saving power.

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We thank you for the Ethiopian eunuch. We thank you for the faithfulness and obedience of Philip. We thank you for the scriptures that you had preserved.

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Lord, as we look back upon this incident, we are reminded once again of your great power, the very same power that found us out, that drew us out, that changed our hearts, the same power that was present in the

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Ethiopian eunuch's life, the same power that's present in our life today.

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We thank you that you have not grown old and weak, but that you are still a strong Savior.

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Now Father, as we partake of the supper, as we partake together, as we observe the confession of faith and baptism, may our hearts be lifted up, may we rejoice as you continue to build your church.

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I pray these things in Christ's name, amen. Amen. It is indeed our privilege to have many visiting with us today, so let me begin by...