The Gospel is for Everybody - Acts 8:4-40

Hi family. Hey, before we get rolling, last week we were talking about, we were going to be looking at some stuff for how we can support the Ukraine in this time. By the way, for all of you who are leadership nerds, we are watching one of the coolest dichotomies of leadership show up in the difference the Russian president and the Ukrainian president. It's really fascinating study in leadership. But we are going to partner with an organization that we already partner with called Operation Mobilisation. They work with churches in Romania and Poland, and are dealing with already some of the refugees coming out of Ukraine, but also they have fingers into the church in the Ukraine.

So we have on our social media, on our website, on pretty much anywhere that we're online, you can find some button there to help figure out how to support Operation Mobilisation and directly support them as they're helping with our Christian brothers and sisters in the Ukraine. Now, obviously you're free to give wherever you would like to give. If you're say Southeast is your home, only this one. That being said, what we wanted to do was make sure that as we vetted opportunities, because there's a lot of opportunists out there that would just take this as a way to pad their own pockets. That money doesn't actually go to help anyone.

So what we wanted to do was make sure that the dollars we give would actually be helpful. So Operation Mobilisation is that organization for us. They're actually boots on the ground helpful for the people who need it the most. So you can find that information online and they will actually have a list of where that money's going to, what is it going to go support and how are they going to do that?

So anyway, that's all available off our website. You can do that, please jump in and help there. That'd be a way to make a real difference there.

[inaudible 00:02:36] number 10 and we are just getting warmed up. It's just getting interesting. Last week we talked about Steven and how God might call us into difficult places. We're going to continue to build on this idea of being called into difficult places, but for very different reasons. One of the things that Luke does specifically, he does this with his gospel as well is there's almost like expanding circles of, "Oh and it means this too. Oh, and it means this too." You're like, "Oh, I didn't realize that." What's interesting about the progression of the story here is that it is easier for them to accept that you could face persecution than it is to accept that you might have to go and talk to people that are different than you.

So we're going to talk about that today. We're going to have to talk about that today. So we're going to look at the back part of chapter 8 versus 4-40, and that's a chunk of scripture. So we'll work our way through it and then we'll pull it apart. We have a couple of lessons that we'll draw from it. So you guys ready to go to work? Here we go. Now, those who are scattered went about preaching the word. Now there's a whole sermon right here that we're not going to preach, but remember that Steven is killed and because of that, the people who are persecuting Jesus followers become emboldened and they wind up going and starting to cause all kinds of problems for the Jesus followers in Jerusalem.

So they scatter, but everywhere that they go, they're talking about Jesus. They face persecution, but everywhere that they go, they're talking about Jesus. This is the birth of the great mission of movement of the book of Acts. Not rooted in mission or purpose or love for Jesus. It's rooted in persecution. So it says that those who were scattered went about preaching the word. Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them, the Christ. Now, by the way, you should look at that. If you know anything about first century culture in the Jewish world at this time, he went to the city of Samaria. You go, "Oh no, he didn't. No, he did not." So we have talk about that.

The crowds with one accord paid attention to what was being said by Philip, when they heard him and saw the signs that he did. For unclean spirits, crying out with a loud voice, came out of many who had them, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed. So there was much joy in the city, but there was a man named Simon who had previously practiced magic in the city and amazed the people of Samaria saying that he himself was somebody great.

Now remember how somebody's introduced is really important. So what we need to know about Simon is that his driver is that he wants to make himself great. That's how we're being introduced to him. He did magic, but he did magic so that people would think he was awesome. They all paid attention to him from the least to the greatest saying, "This man is the power of God that is called great." They paid attention to him because for a long time, he had amazed them with his magic. But when they believed Philip, as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized both men and women. By the way, I just want to point out at this point that he's preaching the gospel, the good news and as a result of it, people are baptized.

This is a reality in the New Testament and I know that a lot of us have grown up in different church traditions where we've had differing weight put on water baptism. But the fact is in the New Testament, what we see is that you can't separate belief in baptism. People believed and then they were baptized. They believed, and then they were baptized. Now we can debate for the ages exactly what all happens when we're baptized. But what we can't debate is the connection between belief in Christ and baptism. You can't separate those two things.

So if you haven't been baptized and you call yourself a follower of Jesus, you should be baptized because belief and baptism are inseparable. Even Simon himself believed and after being baptized, he continued with Philip and seeing signs and great miracles performed, he was amazed. Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent Peter and John quality control. "These Samaritans are yayhoos. We got to make sure that they're not messing stuff up." They sent to them, Peter and John who came down and prayed for them, that they might receive the holy spirit free. Not yet fallen on any of them, but they'd only been baptized in the name of the Lord, Jesus and then they laid their hands on them and they received the holy spirit.

Now, when Simon saw that the spirit was given through the laying of the apostles hands, and that's an important detail, he offered them money saying, "Give me this power so that anyone on whom I lay my hands might receive the holy spirit." Here's the deal. Simon likes the power's power. He doesn't want to just have the ability to use the spirit, to exercise cool things. He wants to have the ability to decide who gets the spirit and who does it. That's next level. But Peter said to him, may your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money. So Simon says yes to Jesus and gets baptized. Then it turns out that not all of his old bad habits went away.

I'm so glad we're not like that. He's still struggling with his old self. He's still struggling with his old self and he winds up wanting to pay money for power. You have neither part nor lot in this matter for your heart is not right before God repent therefore of this wickedness of yours and pray to the Lord that if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and the bond of inequity. Somehow Simon is still caught up in the things that were affecting him before he said yes to Jesus.

Again, totally different than you and me, but he's struggling to let go of the person that he was. What he's trying to do by the way, what he's trying to do is to live is spirit filled life through the power of the flesh. We go, "That doesn't work. We've been talking about that. That doesn't work." Good news, I'm glad you're catching on where it doesn't work. Simon answered, "Pray for me to the Lord that nothing of what you have said may come upon me." Now, when they testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they returned to Jerusalem preaching the gospel to many villages of the Samaritans. Now an angel of the Lord said to Phil, "By the way, here's a side note. So Peter's okay with preaching the gospel to the Samaritans right now. But pretty soon he's going to go up to Antioch or refuse to eat with the Gentiles." Turns out he's struggling with his old self too.

Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, "Rise go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. By the way, come with me to Israel and we will be on this route." No big deal. This is a desert place and he arose and went and there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians who was in charge of all of her treasure. He came to Jerusalem to worship and was returning seated in his chariot. He was reading the prophet Isaiah and the spirit to Philip, "Go over and join this chariot." If I was Philip, I'd be like, "Spirit, no, I don't know him. That would be weird. That would be really awkward." First of all, he's in a chariot so you got to run pretty fast and be like, "Hi, I don't know you. What are you doing?"

It's weird. I'm so glad God doesn't ask me to do weird things like imitate Philip running next to a chariot. So Philip to him and heard him reading Isaiah, the prophet and asked, "Do you understand what you're reading?" He said, "How can I, unless someone guides me." He invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Now the passage of scripture that he was reading was this, like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before it shears silence. So he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him, who can describe his generation for his life is taken away from the earth.

Now, by the way, when you hear of that read, or when you read it, be aware of how you feel absorbing those words. That's difficult words. I don't feel awesome having to read those words like that. That's a hard justice was denied in and he kept silent. That doesn't feel very like America. It's like, "Oh, there's injustice. Here we go. Let's scream it from the mountaintop." The eunuch said to Philip, "About whom I ask you does the prophet say this about himself or someone else?" Now, have you ever wondered, "Why did he ask that question?"

We should probably explore that inquiry minds want to know. Then Philip opened his mouth and the beginning with the scripture, he told him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, "See here is water, what prevents me from being baptized now?" Again, Phillip's just preaching the gospel. He's not talking to him about getting baptized and yet belief in baptism are inseparable. That's just part of the gospel. He commanded the chariot to stop and they both went down into the water Philip and the eunuch and he baptized him.

When they came up out of the water, the spirit of the Lord carried Philip away and the eunuch saw him no more. I don't know what that looked like if he was like carried away like a dove or if there was something else where he was just magically whisked away to Delaware. That's a deep cut. So if you got that one, I'm impressed. It'd be excellent. Then went on his way rejoicing, but Philip found himself at Aztec as he passed through, he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.

So I want to pull apart some details here to help us have a context of why this is such a big deal and then draw a couple of lessons out and then we'll tie it down. Number one, who are the Samaritans? Why are they such a big deal? Now, if you know the story of the gospel, as you know that the Samaritans are despised. They are second class in every respect to the Jew. They're not even worth considering real humans. They're so looked down on. The question is, why? what's the problem with Samaritans? Why do the Jews hate them so much?

Well, here's the thing, in 722 BC Assyria comes through and conquers Israel. The way that Assyria maintained control was that they would break nations of people up. So they would conquer a nation and then they would take people from that nation and displace them to all the other nations that they had conquered. So you have people from Israel who are being taken out and moved all over the Assyrian empire. By the way, by the first century Asia Minor, which is modern day Turkey, where we go had a really solid Jewish population there because of the Assyrian rule.

But the other thing that they did was they brought in people from other nations and moved them into Israel. So a bunch of Israelites left and a bunch of people from other nations come in and they take up residents in this land of Israel. Well, what happens is over time, the Israelites start to intermarry with all these other people, which is a problem because God said don't intermarry with the other nations. Now that isn't a prejudice issue. What that is that every nation especially in this period in history, everything is about their God. Even wars is not about the great king or the great military power, it's about my God versus your God. The one that wins their God is stronger.

So much so that when you conquer a nation, you take their most holy Relic and you take it to the temple of your God and bury it under the cornerstone of the temple of your God. As a symbol, that my God has conquered your God. This is the whole thing. So to intermarry them is going to lure your heart away from your relationship with the Lord. You go, "Well, that would never do that. That would never happen. What happened to Solomon, Solomon built statues for child sacrifice in Jerusalem. He was the son of a man after God's own heart. None of us are immune.

So what happens is, over time the Israelites begin to intermarry with all these other nations and they start losing themselves. Now in 536 BC, Babylon comes in and really puts a whooping on Israel. Whereas Syria came in and they managed you, they would break you up, but then they'd let you do your thing, but they would tax you. Babylon had a very different ruling style. They were like, "I'm going to spank you and take away your birthday." They were harsh. They were mean. They were violent. So what they did, what Babylon did was they just took everybody that was there and yarded them off as slaves to Babylon.

What you have to understand and I've said this before, but I'll keep saying, because it's so central, is that in the first century, when Jesus shows up, the Jews believed that the reason why they went to Babylon was because they sinned. You have to know that. The reason why we went into slavery is because we sinned, which is why they come back from Babylon determined to live righteous, because they don't want to go back into slavery. Well, when they come back from Babylon, the people that were there, that were the products of all these inter marriages between people that the Assyrians had brought in and the Jews, they became a reminder of their captivity because of the result of their sin.

So they became people that were shunned. They were pushed aside. They were looked down on. Why? Because you represent why we went to captivity to begin with. So over time that escalates in this group of people, these symbols of sin becomes known as the Samaritan. They are absolutely despised because they're a reminder of why we went into slavery to begin with. So that's who the Samaritans are. They're not even looked at as human. Not even the most progressive rabbi saw them as human. So that's why like the parable, the good Samaritan is such a revolutionary story and there's another sermon for another day, but it's really profound what Jesus does there.

The other piece that I want to talk about here before we jump into our lessons is this, the holy spirit is transferred through the apostles laying hands on them. This is an important detail that not everybody just... and when we're talking about holy spirit, what we're talking about specifically here is more bent towards the miraculous nature of the holy spirit. If you're going to keep reading on, you're going to see that in the book of Acts. But what we're talking about is the miraculous nature of the holy spirit. So people want to debate about that stuff.

All I would say is, it was given through the laying on of the apostles hands and Simon notices it and asks for that power. It settled in enough that it wasn't just an anomaly. He's like, "Oh, that's how this works. This stuff that Philip's able to do, all these miracles and stuff, that's given as a result of the apostles laying their hands on him. So I want that power." Which raises a million and one questions for me today. In the work of the holy spirit today, are we still observing that or do we still need the apostles? Not just any old apostle, but the apostles. Just the thought.

Couple of lessons that I want to pull out here. Number one, Philip proclaimed to them Christ, Simon proclaimed himself. This is important because there's a whole lot of people in the Christian world that are leveraging God to push their own agenda, or they're leveraging God to build their own empire, their own kingdom. So what happens is they're like, "Look, I know you love God, but God needs my anointing. So you need to pay me. So send me some money so that I can exercise my anointing so that the kingdom can move forward. Because what would God do without me?"

I just feel like it's disgusting. I was talking with some friends actually just last night who came from that world of church. They were telling me some stories about stuff that they experienced. I was like, "Man, I don't even have a frame of reference for that." My dad was in ministry. My parents were as unpretentious as the day is long. They didn't do everything perfectly, but there was no pretense with them. They were the real deal and they loved the unlovable. We always had crazy people in our house. Bonafide crazy people.

I don't have time for this story, but it's the second service. So I was in fifth grade. We had a lady come into our house. She was waiting for my dad and my dad wasn't home from work yet. She sat down in the living room and wanted to only talk to me and I don't know why that is. Probably because I was the youngest in the house at the time. She said to me that her name, which was Lynette means God and that she's God. You go through Deuteronomy and she was bipolar and she was on manic episode. So she was delusional. I know you guys are like, "That's so weird." Now that's Wednesday in my parents' house.

I was like, "I'm freaked out. I'm going up in my room and doing homework." So I go up in my room and I start doing my math and she opens the door and comes and sits on the bed and starts talking to me in my room. Mom and dad are like, "Where are they?" Who knows? Here I am. I'm like, "Okay, if this goes south, I am 10. I could probably take you." Like just another day. That's the world I grew up in was where you find the unlovables and you love them because that's what Jesus would do.

There are people though that don't see the world that way they want to leverage God to get themselves ahead. Simon is one of them. I think there's too many Christians in the church world right now who are still trying to be that person. So there's all these groups of people in Israel at the time of Jesus. Like there's the Pharisees that are like, "Just keep the rules." There's the Sadducees that are like, "Just bleed the temple system and get rich." There's the [inaudible 00:24:00] that are like, "You Sadducees you're apostate. We're going to isolate ourselves and go out and live in the desert." Then there's the Herodians, which were basically like, "We're going to leverage the world systems to get ahead for ourself. We're going to get as much as we can. We're going to build our own wealth and we're going to do this."

The Herodian mindset is the mindset that our ancestors in faith died fighting against. The problem is the Herodian mindset is the mindset that we call the blessing of God and it's not. So we want to leverage God to make our lives comfortable. Read Acts, if you think for one second that God's goal is to make your life comfortable, then you've missed mission entirely. But again, you don't want comfort. You want purpose. You don't want happiness, you want purpose. Purpose gives all of the things that we need to have meaning and get out of bed in the morning. Happiness is this, the truth is if you find pure happiness, you'll sabotage it. The studies bear that out over and over again. You'll wreck happiness if happiness is the goal. But if purpose is the goal, then it's a different ballgame entirely. Our purpose is to make much of Jesus.

So if you look at Philip, what it says is those who were scattered went about preaching the word. Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them Christ and the crowds with one accord paid attention to what was being said by Philip. When they heard him, they saw the signs that he did. But here's what it says about Simon. Here's how Simon's introduced. Just a couple verses later, there was a man named Simon who had previously practiced magic in the city and amazed the people of Samaria. By the way, the word that's translated magic here, King Jimmy translates at sorcery and it's a little bit of a hard word to understand. But it has to do with more things like curses, like casting spells, like incantations.

Things that are really hard to track, unless you can see it through the rear view mirror. Like, "See, I told you something bad was going to happen." It's like, I cast this something bad's going to happen to you curse and he stubbed his toe. "See, I told you curse, boom. I'm powerful. He stubbed his toe." Those are the kind of things. That's what we're talking about when we're talking about this magic. It's not like, remember Rocky and Bullwinkle when you were a kid like, "Hey Rocky, watch me pull the ribbon out of my hat." It's not like that. It's not like slight of hand.

I'm pretty good at imitating Saturday morning cartoons because I spent a whole lot of my childhood trying to be anybody, but me and now I'm in therapy, so counseling. But he previously practiced magic in the city and amazed the people of Samaria saying that he himself was somebody great. They all paid attention to him from the least of the greatest saying this man is the power of God that is called great. This is the contrast that we see. Philip does something that isn't about himself. Simon does something that is all about himself and he gets chastised for it. He gets called to the woodshed for it.

So they're like, "Look, you are going to have problems." He's like, "No, don't want problems. Pray for me that, that won't happen." I'm sure Peter being Peter was like, "I'm pray that you get it double by my abilities. Who do you think you are? By the way, do you want those abilities? Because it seems like those come with a cost." Phillip has this incredible ability through the power of the spirit for miracles and all of these things. He also gets martyred. He gets chained through his Achilles tendon to a gate. While his seven daughters are raped and crucified in front of him. The Roman soldier is mocking him the whole time telling him to denounce Jesus and his daughter's crying out to him, "Don't do it dad." Then ultimately he's killed.

You want that kind of power because it seems to come with a cost. I don't think it's a price most of us are willing to pay. We love the blessing idea, but we don't like responsibility. We don't like stewardship. We love the benefits, the privileges, but we don't want to take on any kind of responsibility or necessity for faithfulness in the process. You can't have one without the other.

Second lesson that I want to talk about is this, why does the eunuch ask this question that he asks? So let's talk about the eunuch for just a second. First of all, what do we know about him? He's from Ethiopia. We know that. So he is not Jewish, right? He's from Ethiopia. Number two, he's important to the queen of Ethiopia. He's in charge of all of her treasure. You don't put somebody in that position that you've don't trust because that's a significant space where you can cause problems.

Number three, what we know is that he's in Jerusalem for worship and he's returning home. So the reason why he's even in the area is that he's taken a chariot from Ethiopia to Jerusalem to worship at the temple and he's on his way back home. This makes him a God fearer, which is a really big deal because he's from Ethiopia, but he's essentially a proselyte to the Jewish faith. Which means he's got all kinds of expectations of this Jewish God. We know that he has a scroll, which you go, "Yeah, he's got a scroll." Well, he's attached to some kind of money because you don't carry a scroll in this world. Nobody has scrolls in their home. Today's money, that one Isaiah scroll be worth $150,000. They're very valuable. Paper was incredibly rare and it didn't last very long cause it was made up of Papyrus. So it didn't last very long. So they had to keep copying and recopying. It was very expensive.

Here's the irony, in a world where no, nobody has the scrolls in their home, this is a world where even the least academic of them have the entire Hebrew scriptures memorized by the age of 15. Memorized, which is roughly our Old Testament. In a world where they don't have Bibles in, "How do they do that?" They went to the synagogue, the synagogue had the scrolls and they studied them there and they memorized the text. They lived their life in this way around the text. I bet each one of us has at least five Bibles in our house and we don't know if we can grab five minutes with it. We wonder why God won't work. "God, where are you? I don't see you." He's given you God goggles. It's called the word, put them on. How would you see him at work if you don't know what you're looking for?

I was talking with my son the other day and he's struggling with his faith, whatever. That's fine. He said, "Dad, I'll bet that if I started praying every day and listening to worship music and reading my Bible, I bet I'd start seeing things and hearing things and having signs." I was like, "Yep, and that the point. I'm glad we agree on that." But we want to have all the, "Then I see God everywhere, but I haven't spent any time with him." Nope, doesn't work that way. God doesn't owe you that. Well, I'm getting on a soapbox at this point. By the age of 15, the least academic have the text memorized and they don't even have scrolls in their own home, but they read the Bible in community. They don't read the Bible.

We're all about personal this, personal that, personal time with God, personal relationship with Jesus. They didn't see their relationship with Jesus that way, they saw it as communal. We have communal reading of the word. We have communal time with the Lord. We have a communal relationship with the Lord and apparently it was more effective. So in Acts 8, it says, "The spirit said to Philip, go over and join this chariot." So Philip random heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, "Do you understand what you're reading?" He said, "How can I unless someone guides me." He invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

Now the passage of scripture that he was reading was this and pay attention, like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before it shear is silent he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation, justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation for his life is taken away from earth. The Eunuch said to Philip, "About whom I ask you, does the prophet say this about himself or someone else?" Why does the Eunuch ask this question? Well, here's why.

In the first century, there are no chapters and verses yet. They don't exist. So for them, the Bible isn't stratified the way it is for us with chapters and verses and all that stuff. So they wouldn't have been like, "Well, in Isaiah 53 it says." There was no 53. There was the book of Isaiah says, and you either knew that and agreed with them or you don't know the text well enough. So each week Jewish people read a portion of the scriptures. So I want to read a section out of Isaiah 53 and then I want to read for you another section out of Isaiah 56, which is read the same week. I think it'll start to make sense for you why he's asking this question.

Starting in verse seven in Isaiah 53, here's what it says. He was oppressed and he was afflicted yet he opened not his mouth, like a lamb that is led to the slaughter and like a sheep that is before it shear is silent he opened his mouth. By oppression in judgment he was taken away and asked for his generation who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people. They made his grave with the wicked and the rich man in his death. Although he had done no violence and there was no [inaudible 00:35:01] in his mouth yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him. He has put him to grief. When his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring. He shall prolong his days. The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant make many to be accounted righteous and he shall bear their inequities.

So there's some good things in this passage. This passage is really hard. Whoever this Isaiah is writing about is not going through easy life. This is difficult. Now there's some good things that come of it, but he's got to endure a lot. Now in Isaiah 56:3-8, here's what it says. I want you to keep in mind this eunuch who's from Ethiopia, who's not a Jew has just returned from the temple. Now when he goes to the temple, he's a Gentile. So there's a wall where he can't go. He can't actually go into the father's house. He can only go so far. Then even if he's a full blown proselyte, he can't go further because he's not Jewish. There's a point where there's access only granted certain layers in and God's presence is in the house.

Now they agree God's presence is everywhere, but God's presence is in the house. So the closer I get to in the house, the closer I am to his presence. This man cannot get full access to the presence of God, because he's not Jewish. That's where he just came from. Now let's read Isaiah 56. It says, "Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say the Lord will surely separate me from his people." By the way, this Ethiopian, is he a foreigner? Yeah. So don't say the Lord will separate me from his people. Even though the Jews did. Let's read on. Let not the eunuch say, "Behold, I'm a dry tree for thus says the Lord to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbath." Who's this guy?

He's a eunuch who keeps the... to eunuchs who keep my Sabbath, who choose the things that please me and hold fast to my covenant. I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters. Put yourself in the position of the eunuch. This is amazing. I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off and the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord and to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it and holds fast my covenant, these I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer. What is Isaiah 56 promising this eunuch? Access to the house that the Jews are saying you can't get to.

Their burn offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. The Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel declares, "I will gather yet others to him besides those already gathered." Now, why is he asking this question? Here's why, because these promises that are made in Isaiah 56 are incredible, but the foreigner eunuch is Isaiah 53 talking about him? Yes, we have this amazing promise, but do I have to endure this to get there? What Philip does that is brilliant is he goes, "Let's begin there and talk about Jesus and about how he took your place and about how you don't have to endure those hardships because Jesus did it for you." Come on and all of a sudden the eunuch's like, "Oh, I'm in. If I don't have to endure, I'm in. He took that for me, I'm in."

Of course, he's in because who doesn't want to be a part of that kind of a compelling story. What we do is make Christianity about a system of dos and don'ts. No, this is a compelling story about a God and creator in the universe who holds matter together and numbers the hairs on your head because he loves you, because he wants good things for you. This is a story about a God who's big enough to manage a couple of square miles of space, and yet intimate enough to be the lifter of my head, To hold my chin up and look at me in the eye. That's my God.

The eunuch is compelled by it. He's compelled by it. By the way, so am I. I want to be a part of that story, But here's the thing, what Philip shows us in Acts 8, is that in order to have those kind of amazing God moments, you got to go to messy places. You got to go to those people, Samaritans. How evil? Wretched. Who are those people? I'll tell you how to know. If you close your eyes, you don't have to do it, and imagine yourself at the great banquet in heaven, and you're sitting at the table all by yourself, this big banquet table. Then the lights go out and it is so dark you cannot see. Then the lights turn back on and sitting at the table is a whole bunch of people that you go, "There is no way that, that person is here." That is your, those people. That's your Samaria. That's your foreigner eunuch.

What Philip models for us is the gospel of Jesus is for them too. The gospel of Jesus is for everybody. I love that Philip doesn't make the eunuch feel bad because he is like, "Is this guy talking about himself or somebody else?" I've had so many Bible teachers that when you ask them a question, they're like, "I don't believe you're asking this question. Do you even read?" It's just a condescending, like, "Well, I've got some experience [inaudible 00:43:11]." Well, aren't you amazing and I'm dumb for asking questions? But here's the thing, you read the Bible, the ones who God uses, aren't the ones who have the best answers.

They're the ones that ask the best questions and the goal of the whole Jewish world, one of their fundamental hermeneutics isn't resolution. It's not answers. Their goal in asking questions isn't to get to the right answer. Their goal is to get to a better question. We go like, "How, why, why would you not want to know the answer?" Here's why, you tell me one part of your theology that you have a 100% solved. Tell me one part of God that you have completely figured out. If you have any like single, like God is love, I know that God is love. Really tell me how deep that goes. Tell me the depth and the magnitude and the breadth and the beauty and the wonder of God's grace and love.

Oh, you can't get your mind around that. Because God's bigger than our answers. Because of that, he's bigger than our questions and he's okay. He's okay when we ask questions and if God's okay with us asking questions, then church, we have to be okay too when people ask questions. But what we do is we're like, "Stop questioning. That's a lack of faith." Oh, no, no, no. It's not a lack of faith. It's a wrestling match and God loves a good wrestling match. He'll wrestle with you all night. By the way, he wrestles with Jacob all night, knowing that at any point you could just touch his hip and dislocate it because he does. But he waits till the morning. So why does he wrestle with him all night? That would be like, "Hey, it's time for bed. So boop, there's your hip and I'm going to bed now."

Because Jacob needed it and God was okay with it. If God's okay with our wrestling matches, why can't we be? I love that Philip doesn't make the eunuch feel bad. It's okay. It's okay to have questions. The opposite of faith isn't questions. The opposite of faith is fear. Questions and faith go hand in hand. I have all kinds of implications for us, but here's a few.

Number one. The gospel is for everybody. No matter who you are, no matter where you come from, no matter what you're up against, no matter what your station in life is, no matter what family of origin you were born into, no matter what ethnicity, no matter what gender, no matter what, gospel is for every body. So we got to stop acting like it's only me and people like me. Because heaven forbid if there is another human like me.

Number two, when people see us, they should notice God's faithfulness, not our greatness. That's the problem with Simon is that he kept trying to point to himself. Philip is pushing the presence of Christ and the reality of his work. When people see us, they should see God's faithfulness, not our greatness. That's why Paul says in Galatians 2, I've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

Number three, just as Philip doesn't make the eunuch feel bad for asking questions, we must also create space where people feel comfortable asking hard questions. Here's the deal. If you're in this room this morning, if you're watching online this morning and you're like, "I have a lot of questions." You're in the right spot, we're glad that you're here. Let's wrestle. I'm not in very good shape. So I only wrestle for like 30 seconds, but I will wrestle. We don't have to make people feel uncomfortable for asking questions.

Number four, when we follow God, he will take us to some peculiar places. He will, could be Samaria, could be somewhere else. When we're faithful in those places, we'll see God do amazing things. If you want to see God do amazing things in your life, it probably won't happen in the comfortable places of your life. It'll happen in the peculiar places. So you got be willing to go there. I think for us so many times we get caught in this continuum of making life comfortable and leveraging God to have a comfortable life and then having a life of purpose and having a life that means something and is edgy and risky, and "Oh my gosh, who, this could completely fall apart." "Yeah, but we know we're living.

We live in this space and so often we keep trying to pull ourselves to comfort and safety. I promise you this, if you live that way, you're going to get to the end of your life and go, "Whoops." But there are no do overs. We can't waste our life in the kingdom trying to play it safe. God isn't safe, but he's good. It's like Aslan in the The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. It's my favorite line in the whole Chronicles of Narnia series, is when the kids ask the Beaver's, "Is Aslan safe?" They go, "No, but he's good." Because of that in those risky spaces, we can trust that God has our best interest at heart.

As we enter into our communion time this morning, I would just offer you a wrestling match with the Lord that God, where am I trying to be comfortable more than faithful? What do you want me to do with that? Let's spend a minute with the Lord as we prepare hearts for communion. The night Jesus was betrayed, he took bread and he broke it and he said, "This is my body, which is given for you. So whenever you eat this bread, do it in remembrance of me." Let's remember him.

Then after the dinner he took a cup and he said, "This cup, this is a blood of the covenant, which is shed for you. So whenever you drink this cup, do it in remembrance of me." Let's pray, Lord, thank you for purpose, God thank you for mission and thank you for permission to ask good questions. Thank you, God, that you're bigger than all the musings and wonderings of our mind. Thank you God that you're faithful and true and graceful. God forgive us when we doubt, in Jesus name, Amen.