Acts 8:1-40 (October 22, 2023)

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Amen, you can turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 8, Acts chapter 8 and get there in just a minute.

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We just sang a moment ago, mighty Lord extend your kingdom. I love that song and so thanks to whoever recommended it to Gary and thanks for Gary for leading us in that.

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It's a great missionary hymn, we sing it at home sometimes and I love the lyrics there.

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Let the lands that sit in darkness hear the glorious gospel sound.

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Or that last verse, come in all your spirits power, come your reign on earth restore, in your strength ride forth and conquer, still advancing more and more, till all people, till all people your holy name adore.

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It's a great missionary hymn and it's a great prayer. Mighty Lord extend your kingdom is the prayer of the church.

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We pray as the Lord taught us in the Lord's prayer, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

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We pray for the kingdom to come. And as we turn to Acts chapter 8, what we're going to see in this chapter of the

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Bible is the extension of the kingdom. We're going to see the kingdom extending from Jerusalem, which is where we've been in Acts thus far, to Judea and Samaria, which is where we are in Acts 8, and then as we go along over the next couple of weeks to the ends of the earth, to the

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Gentiles. So let's read, let me read just the first four verses.

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We'll read a little bit, talk about it, read a little bit, talk about it as we go through this chapter today. Let me read the first four verses, it says, now

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Saul was consenting to his death. This is referring to the death of Stephen that we saw last week. Paul was there, and it says that they laid the clothes of Stephen at the feet of a young man named

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Saul, and Saul was consenting to his death. And we see Saul is introduced here, we're going to see more about Saul later.

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Luke does this throughout the book, where he'll introduce a character and then give more of his story in just a little bit.

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So that's what we have here with Saul, Saul was consenting to Stephen's death. And at that time, a great persecution arose against the church, which was at Jerusalem.

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And they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.

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And devout men carried Stephen to his burial and made great lamentation over him. As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering every house and dragging off men and women, committing them to prison.

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So what we see here, we see a few things. We see Saul, we mentioned that, he's introduced for later.

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We'll come back to Saul in a couple of weeks, or next week. Then we see the situation that is at hand for the church that is in Jerusalem.

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And we see at the hands of Saul and others, we see they're facing a great persecution.

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Verse 1, at that time a great persecution arose against the church. Then we see it more specifically in verse 3.

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As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering every house and dragging off men and women, committing them off to prison.

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So we see the situation that they are facing is one of havoc, is one of being taken to prison, is one of persecution.

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And then we see verse 4, I failed to read it a minute ago, but let me read it here. It says, therefore those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the word.

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We see the church scattered. You remember back in Acts chapter 1, Jesus says, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

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And now we start seeing that unfold throughout the book of Acts as the believers are scattered.

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They're scattered by persecution, it's not under ideal circumstances, but nonetheless they are scattered. This might remind you of the early chapters, the first chapter of Genesis, where God said

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He told Adam to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. You see, the purpose of God has always been that the earth would be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the

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Lord as the waters cover the sea. That those who worship and obey Christ would fill the earth.

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And we see those who have believed in Christ, they are now being scattered. And what do they go about doing? They go about preaching the word.

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They were scattered, those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the word. They are being sent out from Jerusalem under unideal circumstances for them, but God uses it so that they would go everywhere preaching the good news about Jesus so that others would hear.

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They are going to be witnesses in Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

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It's interesting though, it says except the apostles. Except the apostles. The apostles were to stay in Jerusalem and they did.

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We do see where they go out and come back. But this shows us that the church does the ministry, not just the apostles.

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The church does the ministry, not just the leaders. And they go out and the church and the kingdom expand and extend because of this.

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And so what we see here, one thing we can learn is that what was meant for evil, God used for good.

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So Saul and the others that were persecuting the church, they meant it for evil. They meant it to snuff out the church.

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They meant it to end it. But what was meant for evil, God used for good.

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This is God's signature move. He does this over and over throughout the Bible. Think of just a few places.

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He does this in the life of Joseph where Joseph's brothers sell him into slavery and what does

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God do? He takes it and he uses it for good to preserve the line of the Messiah. And he ends up saving the brother's life through it and that's what

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Joseph tells him at the end. He says, Genesis 50, 20, what you meant for evil, God meant for good. We see it in the life of Jesus.

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What was meant for evil by the Jewish leaders, what was meant for evil by the

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Roman Empire leaders to crucify Jesus, it was meant to end it.

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And what did God do? He took what was meant for evil and he used it for good because by the death of Christ, our sins were paid for. He was the perfect sacrifice.

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By the death of Christ that he was resurrected, raised from the dead so we too could be raised from the dead to new and everlasting life.

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What was meant for evil, God used for good. And then we see it here with the early church. What was meant for evil to persecute them, wreaking havoc on them, dragging them from their house into prison, what did

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God do with it? He took it and he didn't end it, he spread it. What was meant for evil,

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God used for good. Here we see that persecution was used to extend the kingdom.

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Persecution was the means that God used. Now here's a few things that we can say about persecution against the church.

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One is that persecution is normal. It just is a fact. You look over church history, you look over missionary history, you read missionary biographies, you see wherever the church has gone, particularly in the early development of that, you have persecution.

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It's just a normal fact of life. I took a class, I audited a class in seminary from a guy who had spent thousands of hours interviewing believers in areas of persecution, probably the world's foremost expert on the persecuted church.

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And in that class, I remember him saying that persecution is normal. Now that doesn't mean it's desirable, it doesn't mean,

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Christians, we ought to go out seeking persecution and try to provoke persecution. Some evangelicals have something of a, kind of a fetish about persecution, the thinking that only the persecuted church is the faithful church, and therefore to be faithful we must be persecuted.

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I don't mean that at all. We do mean that it's to be expected. What Paul said to Timothy, anybody who desires to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

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And so we see that persecution is expected, and we also see that it is often the means that God uses to multiply the church.

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Now it's not always the case, but it is often the case that God, that persecution is the means by which

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God uses to multiply the church, to strengthen the church, to expand the church, to extend the church.

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He uses this. You may have heard the phrase that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church. That's not an absolute rule.

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There have been times where the persecution of the church has put it out in the area, at least for a time.

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But it is, you've heard it because it's often true that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church.

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And why? Why does that happen that way? I think it has to do with Colossians 1, where it talks about the sufferings of believers fills up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ.

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That's what Paul says to the Colossians. And we wonder, what do you mean, what's lacking in the afflictions of Christ?

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Because there's nothing lacking in the atoning value of what Jesus did on the cross. What is lacking is people don't see it anymore because it happened one time in history.

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And we don't see Jesus on the cross anymore. And so when he says it fills up what is lacking, that is referring to people not seeing the suffering of Jesus.

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But when God's people who are united in Him by faith suffer faithfully and suffer well, they point to Jesus.

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And they point to His suffering on the cross and being pointed to Jesus, having a visible expression of the gospel.

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People believe and the kingdom expands and the church is multiplied.

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And so persecution is often the means because God takes what was meant for evil and He uses it for good.

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And so application that I would make for today is this, that whatever befalls us, whatever happens to us, trust that God will use it.

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It doesn't mean any losses that we, you know, that we take, that they're not real or they're not painful or that we don't lament them.

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We do. They are real. They are painful. But it means that God redeems and He transforms those losses into glory.

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He transforms them into glory. And so yes, when these believers were taken from their homes and when they were scattered, they lost lands.

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But we think of Matthew 19, 29, everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands for my name's sake shall receive a hundredfold and inherit eternal life.

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God takes what was meant for evil and He uses it for good. He transforms what was meant for evil and He transforms it into glory.

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Let's keep reading verses 5 through 13 where we read the account of Philip in Samaria.

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God's word says, then Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached Christ to them and the multitudes with one accord.

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He did the things spoken by Philip, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did. For unclean spirits crying with a loud voice came out of many who were possessed and many who were paralyzed and lame were healed and there was much joy in that city.

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But there was a certain man called Simon who previously practiced sorcery in the city and astonished the people of Samaria, claiming that he was someone great and to whom they all gave heed from the least to the greatest, saying,

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This man is the great power of God. And they heeded him because he astonished them with his sorceries for a long time.

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But when they believed Philip as he preached the things concerning the kingdom of God in the name of Jesus Christ, both men and women were baptized.

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Then Simon himself also believed and when he was baptized, he continued with Philip and was amazed, seeing the miracles and signs which were done.

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So what we have is Philip goes to Samaria and he finds people prepared, ready to listen.

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Multitudes, it says, multitudes pay attention to what he said. They give heed to what Philip said and they're hearing and they're seeing because he's also doing miracles.

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Verse 7 accounts some of the great miracles he does. The cast out unclean spirits and the paralyzed and the lame are being healed and they're seeing that and they're hearing what he says and hearing and seeing the miracles which he did.

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And there was great joy in the city and they believed. You see, miracles validate the message.

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That's the point of miracles in the book of Acts is the miracles they validate the message and that's what we see with Philip here.

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And what it does is it leads to great joy, verse 8 says, and of course it leads to great joy because there's restoration, there's redemption, there's healing.

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The unclean spirits are being cast out. Things that were out of order are being put back into order.

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Things that were wrong are being set to right. The world is being, to borrow a phrase from the

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Chronicles of Narnia, undragoned. There's a great scene in the

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Narnia books where there's this greedy little boy named Eustace Clarence Scrub and he's greedy and because of that he turns into a dragon and then he realizes that he's trying to peel the dragon skin off but every time he peels a layer of the dragon skin off it's just more dragon skin, dragon skin all the way down.

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He can't do anything about it. He can't make himself into a boy again and then Aslan comes with his sharp claws and rips that dragon skin off and it kind of hurts but it ends up leading to joy because he's made back into a boy again.

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And what we learn from that little story in Narnia is that he couldn't do anything about it himself.

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He needed someone else to come and that's what we see here in Acts 8.

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They couldn't do, the lame couldn't make themselves walk again, the paralyzed couldn't make themselves whole again, the ones with unclean spirits couldn't make themselves well again but Jesus did and so there was great joy in the city, it led to great joy.

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But verse 9 introduces a little bit of tension into the story but there was a man named Simon and Simon was a sorcerer.

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Simon practiced dark magic. I won't say too much here except to acknowledge that sorcery is a real thing.

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We don't live in just a materialist world. We live in a world that has evil forces in it.

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We live in a world that has demons. There is an unseen realm and he tapped into that and he was able to do all sorts of things.

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So he astonished the people. People were amazed. They thought he had the great power of God it says. He astonished them with his sorceries for a long time and what we see is there's a man named

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Simon and there's a man named Philip and we have rivals now. There's a miracle worker showdown in verses 5 -13 and it's a proxy for rival gods.

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The true God and the usurpers. This might remind you of Moses before Pharaoh and Pharaoh's magicians.

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Remember that story from Exodus and the rod of Aaron turns into a serpent that swallows the rod of Pharaoh's magicians.

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There's this rival showdown. Threw out the plagues and Moses demonstrates power.

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What we see here is Philip demonstrates power. Both Simon and Philip they both work wonders. Both Simon and Philip they draw crowds.

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They draw attention. People pay heed to them. They do great works and they draw amazement and astonishment. But then we see in verse 12, but when they believed

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Philip as he preached the things concerning the kingdom of God in the name of Jesus Christ, both men and women were baptized. Christ won that showdown.

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At the preaching of the kingdom of God in the name of Christ, the people believed and were baptized. That is they pledged their loyalty and allegiance to Jesus, put themselves in service of King Jesus and no longer were they amazed at the sorceries of Simon because they had come to know the true power.

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They had come to know good power. They had come to know God through his son Jesus Christ.

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And so what we see here is that the kingdom and the sovereignty of God was greater and more powerful than rival worldly powers.

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So much so that it says then Simon himself also believed and when he was baptized he continued with Philip and was amazed seeing the miracles and signs which were done.

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He became amazed himself. Like pharaohs, magicians, rods, he was swallowed up.

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Now was it true belief for Simon? We'll return to that question in just a bit. But for now we see that Christ, Christ had won the showdown between Philip and Simon.

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Let's now read verses 14 through 17. It says, now when the apostles who were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent

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Peter and John to them, who when they had come down prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit. For as yet he had fallen upon none of them.

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They had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid hands on them and they received the

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Holy Spirit. So this is the Samaritans. First question I want to ask about them is who are the

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Samaritans? How do they function in the story? Well we see that the Samaritans are, they're ethnic and religious half -breeds to kind of put it in a crass way.

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That is, historically when Israel was exiled, some foreigners came in and intermarried with those who remained from Israel.

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They accepted only part of the Old Testament Scriptures. They did not accept all of the Old Testament Scriptures. They built a rival temple on Mount Gerizim and so they were not truly

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Jewish and they were not fully Gentile. They're kind of somewhere in the middle. Now Philip and others had gone and they had preached there and the people had believed and they were baptized but the

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Spirit had not yet come upon them and so the apostles come and they lay hands on them and they received the

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Holy Spirit. This raises a question for us. We're accustomed to thinking when somebody believes they're indwelt with the

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Holy Spirit, what is going on here? Are we to expect a second experience of the Spirit after baptism?

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And the answer is no. This isn't normative for how we would think about it now.

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This has to do with redemptive history and how the plan of God is unfolding with the advance of the

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Gospel, with the extension of the Kingdom, with how God is remaking the world.

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And so if you go back to Genesis, you have the fall of man in Genesis 3, right?

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Where Adam eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil where he's not supposed to. The fall in the garden. That is the fall.

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Everything changed from that. But if you keep reading in Genesis, you kind of see this three -fold fall of man in the early chapters.

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You have the fall of man, which is the fall that changed everything there in the garden.

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But you also have the fall of Cain in the land. And then you have, you keep on reading in Genesis 6, you see this, the whole world is wicked, right?

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Where they're only doing evil continually is what it says. And so you have this fall out in the world, the whole world, this kind of three -fold fall.

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And what you see in the book of Acts is God is remaking the world after the resurrection of Jesus.

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You have Pentecost, which is the Pentecost, right? It's when the Holy Spirit comes.

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We read about it in Acts 2. But as you keep reading in Acts, you see this three -fold Pentecost. There's Pentecost in Jerusalem in Acts 2.

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And then there's Pentecost in the land here, Judea and Samaria, in Acts 8 when the Holy Spirit comes upon the

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Samaritans. And then we'll see it in a few weeks in Acts 10 of incesoria on the Gentiles with Cornelius after he believes, and the

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Holy Spirit comes upon the Gentiles. And so there's just three -fold Pentecost, so to speak.

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And so what we see here is it has to do with redemptive history and the plan of God unfolding to remake the world. So that's what the coming of the

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Holy Spirit being poured out is about here. It's about what happens when the gospel of Christ goes out into all the world.

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And we see that what is, you know, what sin savaged, Jesus saves. What sin ruined,

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Jesus restores. And this is the work of the Spirit being poured out upon the nations.

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Let's move down to verse 18. Verse 18 says, And when Simon saw that through the laying on of the apostles' hands the

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Holy Spirit was given, he offered them money, saying, Give me this power also, that anyone on whom

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I lay hands may receive the Holy Spirit. But Peter said to him, Your money perished with you, because you thought that the gift of God could be purchased with money.

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You have neither part nor portion in this matter, for your heart is not right in the sight of God.

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Repent therefore of this, your wickedness, and pray, God, if perhaps the thought of your heart may be forgiven you.

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For I see that you are poisoned by bitterness and bound by iniquity. Then Simon answered and said,

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Pray to the Lord for me, that none of the things which you have spoken may come upon me. So when they had testified and preached the word of the

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Lord, they returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel in many villages of the Samaritans."

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What we see here is that Philip, as he preaches, and does the works,

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Simon professes faith and is baptized, but the question is, did Simon truly believe?

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Did Simon truly believe? There are different interpretations here.

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One thought is that yes, and Luke just leaves his repentance open, it's an open question.

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Maybe that's the case. Another interpretation says no, that he had made a false profession, and so what you have is earlier they accepted his profession of faith and baptized him upon that, and when he showed the fruit of his life to be a false profession, what we have is something kind of like church discipline here with Peter, where he sternly rebukes

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Simon. And so there's some who would say it was a false profession, you can tell by the fruit of his life that it was a false profession, that there was sin and there was no repentance.

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Even when called to repent, and Peter tells him to pray, he doesn't pray, he says, you pray for me.

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And so I think that second option is most likely the right interpretation, that his was a false profession.

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And one of the reasons there is, he doesn't pray and repent. He says, you pray for me that these things won't happen.

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This might remind you of Pharaoh, where Pharaoh would tell Moses to pray to the

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Lord that these plagues might stop. But Pharaoh hardens his heart, and Pharaoh doesn't repent,

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Pharaoh doesn't pray, Pharaoh doesn't worship the true God, and I don't think

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Simon does either. What was his sin here? His sin was thinking that he could purchase the power of the

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Holy Spirit, that he could use the Holy Spirit for his own ends. And his sin was also that of syncretism.

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It was that he could take his old life and supposed to do life and blend these things together, he could take his old sinful life and put it with the

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Christian life and put those things together, that he could fit Christ into the prior structures of his life, as a magician, as a sorcerer.

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People try to do this. In mission work, you hear about insider movements among Muslim people, where they'll try to fit

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Christianity into the shape of their old Muslim life, even going to the mosque, even keeping so many of the structures of Islam, but trying to put

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Christ in it, but it doesn't work. Hindus might do that, trying to put Christ as just another one of the gods, and their pantheon of gods.

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Here in our country, people do it more with the prosperity gospel as an example of trying to fit

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Christianity into something else that came before it. Or egalitarianism, feminism, trying to take

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Christianity and make it fit into something that it doesn't fit into. But here's the thing, new wine needs new wineskins.

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You can't put Jesus into the box of your old life before you were converted to Christ, because that doesn't fit.

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Jesus destroys that box and builds a new one. And in Christ, we were made into a new man, a new creation, with a new view of the world, shaped by the

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Word of God. And so what we see is that Jesus doesn't conform to us, we conform to Jesus.

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Jesus doesn't change to fit us, we change to fit Jesus. Simon had it completely backwards.

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He thought that he could reshape Christianity, he thought he could reshape

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Christ, reshape the Spirit, and fit his prior structures, and then he could make some money off of it.

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And Peter sternly rebuked him and said, you know, your money perished with you because you thought that the gift of God could be purchased with money.

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You have neither part nor portion in this matter, for your heart is not right with God. Your heart is not right with God.

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If your heart is not right with God, you need to repent, and he didn't repent. Is your heart right with God today?

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You need to repent. You need to conform to the Word of God. The Word of God will not conform to you.

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Having left the Samaritans, Philip now encounters an Ethiopian. Let's read in verse 26.

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Now an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, Arise and go toward the south along the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.

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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, had come to Jerusalem to worship. He was returning, and sitting in his chariot, he was reading

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Isaiah the prophet. Then the Spirit said to Philip, Go near and overtake this chariot. So Philip ran to him and heard him reading the prophet

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Isaiah and said, Do you understand what you are reading? And he said, How can I, unless somebody guides me? And he asked

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Philip to come up and sit with him. The place in the scripture which he read was this. He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is silent.

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So he opened not his mouth, and his humiliation, his justice, was taken away.

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And who will declare his generation, for his life is taken from the earth? So the eunuch answered Philip and said,

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

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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.

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

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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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And so what we see here is that Philip, he's gone north to Samaria, now he's going south towards Gaza.

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The gospel is going out, the kingdom is advancing, the kingdom is advancing directionally, north and south, to people,

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Samaritans, and now to Ethiopians. And the old barriers of the temple are being broke down, because the eunuch couldn't come and enter into the temple according to old covenant law.

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But what we have here is the eunuch being baptized. We see God's providence here.

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There are two roads that they could have taken. This is the road less taken, yet both the Ethiopian eunuch and Philip both took that at the

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Spirit's direction. And so Philip was perfectly positioned, Philip was perfectly positioned to encounter a

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God -fearing Gentile who just happened to be on the road, who just happened to be reading the Old Testament Scriptures, who just happened to be reading in the

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Old Testament Scriptures Isaiah 53, which just happened to be a prophecy about the crucifixion of Jesus.

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And by just happened, I mean in the meticulous, sovereign providence of the Lord, all of these things happened.

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And prompted by the Spirit, Philip goes up to him and asks him, do you understand what you're reading? The guy says, how can

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I without a guide? So he invited him up into the chariot and verse 35 says, and beginning with this

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Scripture, he preached Jesus to him. Beginning with this Scripture, he preached Jesus to him.

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You ever seen the movie, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? There's this one quote in there where he's wanting

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Dapper Dan and the store clerk doesn't carry Dapper Dan. And he says, well, it's two weeks.

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And something else that he was wanting, the store clerk said, well, I can get it in two weeks. And George Clooney's character says, well, isn't this place just a geographical oddity?

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It's two weeks from everywhere. What we see with the Bible, it's a literary oddity. You can get to Jesus from anywhere.

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Anywhere in the Bible you can get to Christ because the whole book is about Christ. And so when he was in Isaiah 53, he was able to get to Christ because it was about Christ.

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We see it's very similar when Jesus on the road to Emmaus, he comes across after his resurrection, he comes across those disciples and he says, and beginning with Moses and the prophets, he proclaimed to him all the things concerning himself because you see everything in Moses and the prophets, it's about Jesus.

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You can get to Jesus from anywhere in the Bible. And so he preached Jesus to him and he believes. And upon his profession of this confession,

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I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God. He was baptized. They went into the water and Phillips called up.

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He goes home preaching to the Aztecs and the Ethiopian unit keeps going back home to Ethiopia rejoicing all the way.

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We see joy again. We saw it in verse eight with the Samaritans. Now we see it with the Ethiopian.

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I want to end by applying, I want to apply this passage to us through the lens of the great commission.

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Great commission says make disciples of all nations, baptize them and teach them everything that Jesus commanded. And so the great commission is to disciple nations, which is corporate in nature, has to do with all of life.

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But to do that, we must make disciples of individuals. And so the great commission is more than evangelism and individual conversion, but it's never less than evangelism and individual conversion.

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We never lose sight of the gospel and gospel proclamation and discipling the nations. And so in acts eight, what we see here is the making of disciples through preaching the making of disciples through proclamation.

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And it's not just the apostles, it's the church. It's there. Those are being scattered. They go about proclaiming Christ. We see it in verse four.

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We see it in verse 25. We see it in verse 40. I won't read those now, but everywhere they go, they go preaching. We need to be as a church proclaiming

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Christ. This is an area where we need as a church to grow in.

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We need to grow in our evangelism. As we read what Evan read from Luke 10 earlier, the harvest is plentiful.

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Eight out of 10 don't know Christ. The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. We need to be proclaiming

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Christ. Saturday is a great opportunity. There's going to be a ton of people out on Main Street, and they're going to come to us, and we're going to have something to give to them, and we're going to be able to greet them.

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You have an opportunity to proclaim Christ. I want us to see just a brief evangelism lesson from Phillip's interaction with the

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Ethiopian eunuch. This is for personal evangelism. There's times where for public proclamation where you're not necessarily, you're proclaiming kind of to the masses.

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There's a place for that. But in personal evangelism, one -on -one with somebody that you know or somebody that you just meet, here's a few lessons we can learn from Phillip.

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One is to obey the Spirit's prompting. Verse 29, the Spirit said, go, and Phillip went.

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We need to obey the Spirit's prompting in our lives to speak on behalf of Christ. Second thing is you can ask a question.

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We see this with Phillip in verse 30. He asked him, do you understand what you're reading?

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Good questions get you into good conversations. And so you obey the Spirit's prompting. You can go up, and you can ask them a question.

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Then the third thing is accept the invitation. Verse 32, he accepted the invitation into the chariot.

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Again, there's times for public proclamation where you're not necessarily seeking permission to proclaim Christ. But in personal evangelism, you're looking for openness, and when you have that openness and that invitation, accept that, and then do the next thing, which is tell them about Christ.

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Tell them about Jesus. That's what Phillip did in verse 35. Beginning with these scriptures, he preached

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Christ to them. That's what people need. Lots of people need Jesus. Your friendliness will not get them to heaven.

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Your opinions about various world events will not get them to heaven. Your helpfulness, your religious dialogue, none of it will get them to heaven.

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What will get someone to heaven is Christ. And so we proclaim Christ to them. Give them the gospel.

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Give them Jesus. And then the fifth thing is call them to believe. Call them to believe.

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Verse 37, Phillip says, if you believe, you can be baptized. Believe is what we're looking for is faith.

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Call your friends, call your neighbors, call your family to believe in Christ. So make disciples.

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The second part of the Great Commission there is to baptize them, and this passage gives us a few things that help us in our doctrine of baptism.

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None of these things are definitive by themselves, and so we go elsewhere in scripture to develop our full doctrine of baptism, but these things help, and so I want to point just a few things out.

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First is verse 12. It says that both men and women were baptized. So this points to our belief that baptism is not just a

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New Testament version of Old Testament circumcision. Baptism is something different. Baptism is not just for males, and baptism is not given properly to infants, but it is given to both men and women.

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And so men and women marking their loyalty to Jesus and their entry into service to Him in the priesthood of all believers.

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And so we get some of our doctrine of baptism by seeing that it is for both men and women. In the mature covenant, men and women are baptized.

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We also see that baptism is upon profession of belief. Verse 12, it says when they believed, then they were baptized.

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And if you go through Acts, baptism is always associated in coming after belief, after faith.

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Verse 37, Eunuch had said, what hinders me from being baptized, in verse 37, he says, if you believe with all your heart, you may.

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And then he confesses, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And so what we see here is believer's baptism, or what might be called professor's baptism, those who profess faith.

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And then we see that that baptism is, there's at least a hint here, that it's by immersion. And so verse 38 says, they went down into the water, and when they came up, it says.

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And so what we see is the fact that there was water, enough water there to go down into is what brought it to the eunuch's attention that he could be baptized.

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And so we see at least a hint here, and we see it more clearly in other places, that baptism is for believers and is by immersion.

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So in other words, we're Baptists. Says it on the name of the church out there, First Baptist. Now a lot of Baptists have gone shaky on baptism in recent years.

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I understand the temptations that are there. But for me personally, the more

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I study baptism, the more Baptist I get, because it's right there in the Bible. Again, Acts 8 doesn't give us everything we need to know about baptism, but it does corroborate our doctrine of baptism for believers by immersion.

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And then lastly, the Great Commission says, teach them everything I have commanded. That's the job of the church.

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Everywhere Philip went, everywhere Peter went, everywhere Paul went, they left behind churches.

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And those churches would then teach their people and teach the nations to obey everything

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Jesus had commanded. And this, through the ministry of churches, this is how our mighty

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Lord extends His kingdom. Through us. So let's get to work.

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Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, I pray that you would strengthen us by your spirit to serve you, to serve your kingdom by proclaiming the gospel.

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I pray that you give us opportunities to do that, and I pray that we'd be faithful to do it. And I pray on Saturday that you would give us, specifically we ask on Saturday that you give us opportunities to proclaim the kingdom of Christ.

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We pray that you would take that effort at evangelism, and our efforts at evangelism in our homes, in our schools, in our neighborhoods, with our friends, that you'd bless it, you'd use it to bring people to repentance and faith in Jesus.