ACTS: "Phillip the Evangelist" - Acts 8:26- 40 - Part 1

Brett Meador: When it comes to sharing the gospel with people, you get that little stir in your heart and the Lord wants you to do it. The question is, are you going to go? "Oh, I don't know if it's going to work out. I don't know if they'll like me or make fun of me. I'm not a theologian," or whatever you are telling yourself. Better to step out in faith.
Guest (Male): Pastor Brett Meador says you've been called. Will you answer?
Brett Meador: The old saying is true. You can't steer a parked car. One of the things you've got to do as a Christian is start moving, especially when the Lord starts stirring you. Ready and go.
Guest (Male): In an incredible God-ordained circumstance, Philip suddenly finds himself in the desert sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with a traveling Ethiopian in Acts chapter 8. In the same way, we're all also called to share the message of salvation through Jesus with the people God places in our path. Pastor Brett Meador reminds believers this too is our call in today's word.
Brett Meador: If you could have one thing to say in a message to the world, what would you say? If you have one chance, one opportunity. I've often been amazed at what people will tattoo on their bodies. You have one chance, your body. You're going to put something on it. What are you going to put? It tells you a lot about a person, really. What about what you put as a bumper sticker on your car? I think you can learn a lot about people on bumper stickers. Here's one that I liked: Three things I hate the most. Number one, bumper stickers, irony, and lists. Or this one: Forget world peace. Visualize using your turn signal. I like that one. We have enough youth. How about a fountain of smart? He who laughs last thinks slowest. I like this one: Sorry for driving the speed limit. Some of us have warrants. What do you do if you're a police officer and you see that? The thing is, really, your life is a message board whether you want to admit it or not. The way we live, what we do, what we say, what's important to us. Have you thought about what your messaging really should be or what should be something that you actually care about to say to the world? If you only get a few words or a few chances, what's the most important thing you can say? Well, I believe there's something that we need to remember. Jesus told us something we should all be about and it has to do with going into all the world and preaching the gospel. "Well, Brett, that's your job. You're the preacher. That's what we pay you to do. What are you going to tell us? We're supposed to preach?" Yep. Yeah, in fact, there's a lot of people that would never set foot in a church where you have access to them and I don't. You and I are both called to be salt and light. I love the mandate that Jesus gave us in Matthew 28:19. "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." Sharing the gospel, teaching, discipling about who Jesus is, and ultimately seeing people baptized. Remember the disciples? They had their normal job. They were fishermen, but Jesus sort of swapped it out. He said, "Follow me and I will make you fishers of men." Your new job description. Then really all the disciples after that, you and I are called to that same kind of ministry to try to reach people for Jesus and share the gospel. I wonder if we would take that seriously. If we all took it very seriously, what would happen? Would more and more people come to know Christ? I guarantee that if we all took our job seriously to go into all the world. The world needs to hear the good news of Jesus Christ. By the way, we're a post-Christian culture and maybe post-post-Christian as they love to call it where we're irreligious, the least churched cities in America on the West Coast. But at the same time, because it's been that way for so long and it's not really worked very well for us. Because of that, I think there's a ripeness. The field is white, as Jesus said, with harvest and hopefully the laborers are not few. But here in Acts chapter 8, we meet the next deacon in the New Testament. The first one we looked at was Stephen. This one here we're going to look at is Philip. Here in Acts chapter 8, he's called Philip the Evangelist later on in the book of Acts. Evangelism just means this: spreading the gospel, the Christian gospel by public preaching or personal witness. That's what evangelism is. Spreading the gospel by public preaching, that's what I do and maybe some of you do that too. But most of you will not do that. Most of you would hopefully do that more personal witness kind of evangelism where you're just talking one-on-one. This is what we see Philip the evangelist do here in our story in a beautiful way, spreading the good news of the gospel. The gospel is so perfect. How did Jesus declare salvation? He said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father, which is in heaven, but by me." See, Jesus is the answer. Jesus is what the world needs to hear and that should be our single message more than any other message in the world. People need to hear the gospel. Here in our story, we've got this guy Philip. Let's pick it up here in Acts chapter 8, verse 26. It says, "And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise and go toward the south to the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert." "And he arose and went: and behold, a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under Candace queen of the Ethiopians, who had the charge of all her treasure and had come to Jerusalem for to worship, was returning and sitting in his chariot, read Isaiah the prophet." Pause there just for a second. What's going on? Well, this guy's a great ruler, leader from Ethiopia. The queen there is Candace. Now Candace wasn't her name. It's a title that was of these African queens in Bible time. They called it Ethiopia. Today it's more like Sudan, the area where the Candace queens were from. It's like the word Pharaoh is more of a title. Same with Candace. It became a title for the queens. These queens were powerful and wealthy and this guy's like one of the high-up treasurer or the guy of the money. But this Ethiopian, why is he traveling to Jerusalem? Well, it tells us here he went up there, great authority, he had come to Jerusalem to worship. Judaism had reached down into Africa and it had been for quite some time. If you remember Solomon and all that where Queen of Sheba and all these different people and kings and queens came to visit Solomon. Judaism spread and that's part of that fruit of that. Philip is told to go into the desert and he meets this guy. Now what happens? Well, we pick it up here in verse 29. "Then the spirit said unto Philip, Go near and join thyself to this chariot. And Philip ran thither to him and heard him read the prophet Isaiah and said, Understandest thou what thou readest? And he said, How can I, except some man should guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him." "The place of the scripture which he had read was this: He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth. In his humiliation, his judgment was taken away, and who shall declare his generation for his life is taken from the earth? And the eunuch answered Philip and said, I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this? Of himself or of some other man?" "Then Philip opened his mouth and began at the same scripture and preached unto him Jesus. And as they went on their way, they came to a certain water: and the eunuch said, See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized? And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God." "Verse 38: And he commanded the chariot to stand still: and they went down both of them into the water, both Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. And when they were come up out of the water, the spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, that the eunuch saw him no more: and he went on his way rejoicing. But Philip was found at Azotus: and passing through, he preached in all the cities till he came to Caesarea." Wow, what a story. Philip meets the Ethiopian eunuch out the desert and we have so much here that's so wonderful. In chapter 8, persecution had already plagued the early church and scattering of Christians had actually helped the gospel message get out. Philip, earlier in this chapter, was at the center of a massive revival in Samaria. He was casting out demons and seeing people healed and then suddenly God calls Philip away. It's almost like there was such a fun happening deal with Philip in Samaria and all of a sudden God says, "I want you to leave this and go somewhere." Well, where are you supposed to go? Well, I love that Philip goes to the desert out by Gaza. Now this is where we start to realize Philip's a great example of what we should do when it comes to the Lord's calling on our life, when it comes to being an evangelist and preaching the gospel. There's so much that I think you and I can learn from Philip. As we learn from Stephen, so we will learn from Philip. I've got five things I want to show you in this story about Philip that are noteworthy for us today. The first one is notice that Philip, he went without knowing. If the Lord called you away from your situation where you are now, what if you're doing really well? What if spiritually, man, you're just discipling people and sharing the good news? Because Philip had a Holy Ghost happening work going on in Jerusalem there in the early part of the church and what if God calls you? Would you go? Even a bigger question, would you go not knowing what you were doing or where you were going? Oh, but the Lord called him to go to Gaza. Yeah, you've got to understand Gaza. It's the same place it is today you see on the news. The Gaza Strip, same area. If you've been down there, it's really kind of desert area. There's not much down there. Even today, it's a little more tropical today because they've planted a lot of trees and there's orchards and stuff and there's a little more greenery. But in first century, Philip's time, Gaza was just a dry barren desert and that's what it's called. So the angel of the Lord says, "Philip, I want you to leave this happening deal in Jerusalem that's going on here and I want you to head down to Gaza, no man's land and I want you to go to the desert." I love that he went not knowing what was going to happen. Notice a couple key verses here in verse 26. It says, "And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise and go." Then verse 27, it says, "And he arose and went." I've marked those two little phrases in my Bible: "arise and go" and "he arose and went." Because that's often where we drop the ball. The Lord calls you to share the good news with someone. You don't know what's going to happen. You don't even know where you're going sometimes, but the Lord just stirs your heart. You need to go and talk to that person or go and be a missionary or move and start a church. It could be at any scale that we're talking about here. But I love that when the Lord stirred Philip up, he went. He did what the Lord called him to do. Philip didn't ask, "Well, what do I do when I get there and when I'm at the desert, what should I be looking for? I don't understand the plan. Give me more of the plan." Some of you are that way. You need the full clear plan before you're willing to actually make the move and go. But that's not really often the way the Lord works. If the Lord gave you a word like this, would you do it? Or would you say, "Well, Lord, when I have the money, or when I finally get married, maybe I'll do that, or when I have kids, or after my kids are grown up, then I'll do that, or once my grandkids are grown up, then I'll do that." What happens? We put stuff off because we don't know how it's all going to turn out. The old saying is true: you can't steer a parked car. One of the things you've got to do as a Christian is start moving and especially when the Lord starts stirring you. Note his obedience here. What if Philip didn't get up right away and go? If you know the story, he would have missed the whole opportunity to talk to this Ethiopian eunuch. This man of great influence, a man of great authority. Philip would have missed that opportunity. Man, what would have happened to Ethiopia? Because this man of influence is actually going down and going to now spread the gospel to Northern Africa. This is really a wonderful thing that's actually happened here in this story. So we see examples of opposite people. Think of people in the Bible that were told by the Lord to go, but they didn't go. Anybody want to know who the dictionary picture is of that? Jonah the prophet. Remember Jonah? God said, "Go to Nineveh." By the way, the Lord gave all the details. "Go to Nineveh and you're going to go in there and tell them to repent and the whole city's going to repent. It's going to be great." The Lord gave him all the details. But God said go and Jonah said no. He went the opposite direction and took off the other way and really became kind of an interesting thing. Now, it's amazing how the Lord worked that out. But you can either do this the easy way or you can become whale barf. It's your choice. That's the choice. That's Jonah's example. Even things when they don't work out exactly, sometimes the Lord just has ways of working out according to his plan. When the Lord's calling you to do something, I think we need to do it. The Lord called Noah and he said, "I want you to build an ark." Noah's like, he could have sat around, "Well, what's an ark?" I don't even know what, like there was no such thing even as rain in the antediluvian world. What's Noah, like what's going to happen? You want me to do what and build what for what reason? There was a lot of questions, but you've got to love how Noah just went and did it. There's all kinds of examples in the Bible. Joshua told by the Lord, "I want you to march around Jericho and round the walls and then what Lord?" He's a military general Joshua was. He's probably wanting to know military strategy. But marching around walls and singing some songs doesn't really do the trick. But Joshua in faith did what the Lord told him to do and the walls came a-tumbling down. Hosea the prophet, he's standing out in the street. The Lord says, "Hey, Hosea, see that prostitute over on the street corner over there?" Hosea's like, "Yeah." "I want you to marry her." Wow, God said go, Hosea said okay. "I'm going to go and I'm going to marry the prostitute." If you realize, the Lord used Hosea and that relationship to be a massive example to all the nation of Israel. We could go on and on. The servants at the Cana wedding in Galilee. There in Cana of Galilee, the servants were told by Jesus, "Fill the pots up with water." They could have said, "We don't need water. We need wine. What are you thinking?" But I love how the servants did it. They went and filled the pots to the brim and then suddenly it turned into wine. That's the way the Lord often works. He doesn't always tell you how he's going to do it or what he's going to do. Philip was willing to get up and go and do what he was called to do even though he didn't know what was really happening. Sometimes the Lord wants you to go, you know, he calls us to go without knowing. It's the kind of thing here that we see, stepping out in faith. When it comes to sharing the gospel with people, you get that little stir in your heart and the Lord wants you to do it. The question is, are you going to go? "Well, I don't know if it's going to work out. I don't know if they'll like me or hate me or make fun of me. I don't know if I know enough information to share the gospel. I'm not a theologian," or whatever you are telling yourself. Better to rather than sitting around making excuses, it'd be better just to get up and go when the Lord calls you and stirs you. He went without knowing. That's number one. The second thing that I want to point out of Philip's behavior is he went with enthusiasm. Where do we see the enthusiasm? Well, it says here in verse 30, it says, "He ran thither to him and heard him read." Now, I don't know what this looks like. What does it look like? Philip standing in the desert, "Okay, Lord, I'm here." All of a sudden, clopping along, here comes this chariot and no doubt this guy's got some sort of an entourage. He's a high-up leader. He's probably got some guards with him and this chariot and horses. It's quite a deal. Suddenly he comes, is he riding by or was he just sitting there? I don't know, but it says he ran thither to him. He wasn't just moseying. He was getting the job done. We see that in God's people in a beautiful way. In the book of Genesis, I love there in Genesis 18 and 19. We kind of have a compare and contrast against Lot and Abraham. But Abraham sitting in the tent there in the heat of the day, the door of the tent, just kind of hanging out when suddenly he sees three men coming. He doesn't fully understand who these men are, but two are angels and one is an Old Testament appearance of Christ, what is called a Christophany in the Old Testament. The Lord himself. Abraham sees these guys coming and once he realizes what it is, that the Lord is there, he runs around. This 80-year-old man is running around and he kills the fatted calf and bakes cakes and makes a meal for them, is very hospitable to them and just this high-energy performance of being hospitable. I love that you see the old guy just cranking it out. It just reminds me of Colossians 3:23. "Whatsoever you do, do it heartily as unto the Lord and not unto men." We live in a culture that says, "Ah, chill out, man, kick back, relax. Don't get too radical. Don't get too intense about stuff." But when it comes to things of the Lord, we're called to do things heartily as unto the Lord, not unto men. The word might be enthusiasm. I love that word. The etymology of the word enthusiasm is kind of fun. It's "en-theos," which means in God. Some would translate it as enthusiasm means to be inspired by God. Like when you're enthusiastic, it's because you're inspired by God's call on your life. Don't lose enthusiasm for the things of the Lord. I need to say this to particularly us older people in the crowd. Don't you kind of miss sometimes the enthusiasm of children? I love how kids get into stuff. I was thinking the other day when me and my next-door neighbor got an idea to build a fort. It'd be summertime and we lived on the Applegate River in Southern Oregon. We literally had the river in our backyard. In 1974, there was this big flood and all these logs and driftwood came floating down. It was strewn throughout our whole region. But it made for awesome forts. You could build forts out of all this wood and logs and stuff. When my neighbor Kirk and I, we'd get a hankering to build a fort and we'd work all hours of the day and night hauling logs and stacking stuff up and making. By the time I was eight years old, we made a fort that had running water. I'm not kidding. It's a true story. I just think man, I had endless energy and was wanting. Then you get older and you're like, "Oh, I think my knees hurt. I'm kind of done with that sort of stuff." But you know, I think sometimes not just in your body, but in your mind and your soul, we can lose that enthusiasm. The faith of a child, that's what you have to have if you want to be saved, you have to have faith like a child. But I think in a lot of ways, you need to have that same zeal and enthusiasm of a child and be willing to step out and do stuff. "Yeah, but Brett, what if it doesn't work? Like, Philip's lucky because it worked out and the guy was curious and listened to what he had to say." Do you think everybody listened to Philip? Do you think Philip was always 100% successful? You remember what Jesus taught when he was talking about the sowing of the seed, the Word of God. Do you remember how many times did the word take root and bring fruit versus how many times it didn't? One in four, or 25% of the time, the seed takes root. I've found that's kind of actually an interesting truth. You can share the gospel and some people are going to, well, the seed will be picked up by the birds of the air or trampled by the wayside or choked out by thorns. Those other conditions. But one in four. You're not called to be successful, but you are called to be faithful. I think that's the thing. You say, "But what if I fail?" That's okay. It brings to mind Proverbs 14:4. I love this, especially growing up on a little farm: "Where no oxen are, the crib is clean: but much increase is by the strength of the ox." In other words, you can have a life that's pristine. "Hey, I don't have any messes." I'll tell you, if you show me a person who doesn't have any messes in their life, no cow pies, I'll also show you not a lot's been accomplished in that person's life. But the person that's actually done things of value and substance took a lot of work and stuff. But I'll also show you there's probably cow pies. But if you want increase, the word increase here could also be profit, you're making money or getting milk from your cow or ox or beef, ribeye steaks and stuff. If you want to have good stuff from that, don't be shocked if there's going to be a messy stable. I think there's a lot of Christians going around, "Look at my pristine stable, the crib is clean." But that's not impressive. But profit comes by the strength of the ox. Don't be afraid to have mistakes and to step out in faith and risk failure. I love that Philip not only goes without knowing, number one, but he went with enthusiasm and that's the next thing. I hope that the Lord can light a fire under all of us, especially in the days we're living. We're living in days where we should enthusiastically share the gospel with whoever we can, whenever we can, and trust the Lord that he's going to guide you.
Guest (Male): Pastor Brett Meador drawing a great example from Philip's encounter with the Ethiopian, not only of the believers called to share the gospel, but how the Lord is there to guide you too. And there's more to share from Acts chapter 8 next time on Today's Word. I invite you to stay right there as Pastor Brett will join me here in a moment. If you missed any portion of our time today, you'll find all of his messages online at todayswordradio.com. That's todayswordradio.com. Our vision on Today's Word is to proclaim the hope of salvation and help people know Jesus through careful study of the Bible. We invite you to find out more by going to todayswordradio.com. I also want to mention that Pastor Brett Meador is the senior pastor of Athey Creek Church just outside of Portland, Oregon. In addition to the main Athey Creek campus in West Linn, we also have locations in Hillsboro and McMinnville, Oregon. For more information, just go to todayswordradio.com and click on the link "Locations." That's todayswordradio.com and click the link "Locations." All right, Pastor Brett is with me now. Brett, I know your church Athey Creek in the Portland, Oregon area has seen tremendous growth over the years. Why is it so important to expand via this Today's Word radio program to a lot more places around the United States?
Brett Meador: Well, Kurt, as grateful as we are for what the Lord's done at Athey Creek here in the Portland area, you know, we've never really wanted to keep it just local if God was opening a bigger door. And we really sense that that's what the Lord has done recently. And one of the things that's marked our church from the beginning is just simple, consistent verse-by-verse teaching through the Bible. And we really know that people are hungry for that. And so as we just do what the Lord's called us to do, expanding through Today's Word radio wasn't really about growth for growth's sake. It was about stewardship, really, just using what the Lord's entrusted to us, teaching people the word, helping people to grow. And radio really allows us to go beyond geography and reach into a broader sense, everyone who wants to hear.
Guest (Male): Right. And helping more people grow through God's word. Thank you, Pastor Brett. Well, if you'd like more information about this Today's Word radio program or Pastor Brett Meador, just go to todayswordradio.com. Well, next time, Pastor Brett will continue looking at the Acts of the Apostles and we'll learn how God often orchestrates circumstances for us to present the gospel. Today's Word with Pastor Brett Meador is an outreach of Athey Creek Church in West Linn, Oregon.