The Good News About Jesus

Let us come to our God in prayer. Gracious God as an expression of our dependence upon you and our expectation of being heard. We approach your throne of grace again in prayer. And now we ask for a blessing on Your Word. We feel the weight of the Bible’s authority because you are its author. Only you command full obedience and confidence. You are truth itself, and your testimony compels our consciences, compels us this morning, work in and through the written word today. We ask by your Holy Spirit, open wide the gates of scripture so that already in the reading of your truth you will pour out from its pages like a mighty army all that we need. You will overwhelm our doubts, conquer our hearts, and embolden us to serve you, will you do this, and we are emboldened already to ask more. We also ask that you bless the preaching of Your Word. Long ago you rebuked Moses for his fear before speaking, and you called him to have courage because you are the one who makes our mouths, you are the one who gives us our words. Give me this morning not the hesitation of Moses, but the readiness of Philip and may you work in us now as you have done in other seasons of great outpouring of your grace. We ask this humbly, joyfully, and in Jesus Matchless Name. Amen.

I encourage you to turn with me this morning to Acts chapter 8. The first half of Acts 8 offers an account of mass evangelism. The second half of the chapter describes an opportunity for personal evangelism. The continued outreach of the church, the spread of the good news about Jesus is the thread that binds this chapter together. We will be reading together verses 26 to 40, and in these verses a man named Philip is a major figure. As we walk, run, and ride with Philip this morning, we’ll observe an unexpected assignment, an exposition of Isaiah, and encounter with water, and a very encouraged African man. This was the word of the Lord. Let’s begin reading verse 26.

“Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. This is a desert place, and he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, Queen of the Ethiopians who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isiaih, and the spirit said to Philip, go over and join this chariot, so Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the Prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you’re reading?” And he said, “how can I unless someone guides me.” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this, “like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb before it shears is silent 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.” And the eunuch said to Philip “About whom I ask you does the prophet say this? About himself or about someone else?” Then Philip opened his mouth and beginning with this scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. And as they were going along the road they came to some water and the eunuch said “See, here’s water. What prevents me from being baptized?”, and he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch and he baptized him, and when they came up out of the water, the spirit of the Lord carried Philip away and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus and as he passed through, he preached the Gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea. This is The Word of the Lord.

If you know the first part of Acts 8, you’ll know that Philip had just returned to Jerusalem from an enormously successful missions trip to Semaria. If TikTok had been legal his story would have been viral. One can only imagine where the Philip crusade would go next, perhaps Damascus or Antioch or Caesarea or some other great city of the Empire. As it happened, the evangelist didn’t get to choose his destination, he was given an unexpected assignment. He was told to leave town and head south down a road that cut through the middle of nowhere. The deserted location is emphasized at the end of verse 26. Philip’s obedience is emphasized at the beginning of verse 27. A bit like Abraham, Philip simply got up and walked away not really knowing where he was going. It didn’t make sense, but it did make sense because God knew that if Philip left Jerusalem just when he did, he would meet someone just as he was reading a choice passage from an Isaiah scroll and Philip would be right there to help him understand it.

Now there’s no reason to think Philip knew all of that, but God knew this because he had planned it as he plans all the moments of our lives and his plan was a good one because God does all things well, and so as Philip walked along an unnamed official, in fact the chair of the Federal Reserve of Ethiopia, happened to be riding by in his chariot. Predictably the queen for whom he worked was named Candace. That was a familiar title. Ethiopians had Candaces like Romans had Cesars and curiously places sometimes change names and the Ethiopia of Acts 8 is not likely our Ethiopia way to the south of Egypt, but what we now label the Sudan just to the south of Egypt.

To keep us all on our toes, I’ll keep saying Ethiopia, you keep thinking Sudan this morning. This man in the employment of the queen was a eunuch as many important officials were. Usually, a eunuch was someone who had been deliberately and brutally mutilated as a young boy, losing the ability to have a family through a cruel process that many did not even survive. In theory survivors would be less trouble to their master or mistress, and more trustworthy because he could never have lovers or a family to rival loyalty to a master. That was a hard way to begin life, but as Samuel Rutherford once wrote, “Grace grows best in winter. God often uses suffering to draw us to himself or to help us grow as Christians.”

As it happened, eunuchs could become high ranking slaves with great authority, which is why, and boy this is an uncomfortable topic, some people would castrate themselves, some men would castrate themselves with the hopes of high promotion. We don’t need to spend any time on that. This is one eunuch who one way or another became so trusted that he was permitted to take a long, private journey to Jerusalem. Here was someone who had risen high in authority indeed. He must have been wealthy, for civil servants used to get a cut of state revenue back then. He must have been a Jew, either by birth or by conversion, knowing enough about God that he wanted to go worship him in the Holy City. He must have been diligent because he was managing to do his daily devotions while traveling, not something we all could succeed in doing even after New Year’s resolutions, and he must not have suffered from motion sickness because he’s reading his Bible on a road that would have had more bumps than northern cities have potholes. When he saw this man Philip was once again given a direct whisper from God for here the angel of The Lord or the spirit as we see in verse 39, The Spirit of The Lord, that they’re all one and the same and the spirit’s instruction for Philip was to join the official.

Philip didn’t need to be in an Olympic track star to keep up with the diplomat’s chariot. This would have been not a sleek, fast moving war machine, but an elegant wagon with cushions for the bumps and curtains for the heat, nor did Philip really need sort of CIA level surveillance skills to notice that the official was reading. Everybody back then read out loud and the eunuch would have been no exception. For people who like to think out loud, for people who dictate all their texts out loud, this kind of background noise would have been familiar or comfortable for you as it would be familiar for them. So, he’s reading out loud and the evangelist strikes up a conversation.

As it happened, as you can see in verses 32 and 33, the official was reading in Isaiah, “But a lamb led to slaughter, but a humbled man denied true justice and cut off before he could ever have children of his own.” A way of saying that he was cut off in the prime of life. Now I’m hoping that you already know that if you’re traveling and if you meet someone with a Bible reading a prophecy about Jesus out loud, and if they ask you for help understanding it, you have what experts and evangelism call a good setup, just ask Eric Ross. Now when something like that happens, we give thanks to the one who set us up because moments of seeming serendipity are actually monuments to divine sovereignty. Philip knew that the desert was not a likely location for Christian work, it still isn’t, only the plan of God could make it otherwise.

This morning with the benefit of some hindsight we can see in all of this the thoroughness of God’s plan and the graciousness of God’s ways. First, he ensured that some knowledge of Him had reached Africa long before Christ or any Christians were born. There were people who had Bibles in Africa because God had exiled and scattered his people around the world centuries before. Second, God made his word accessible, the words of this prophecy had been written down. Of course, not everyone could afford a copy of Isaiah from the local scroll store and downtown Jerusalem, but some people, some communities could, and the apostles often found in their travels communities already familiar with the Old Testament. Perhaps this man had purchased this scroll in Jerusalem for his synagogue back in Ethiopia. Third, God made this man part of that small subset of people who do not actually own a bible but read it. This man studied the Word of God and so he wanted to know the one about whom the prophet was speaking.

A protestant reformer once wrote that if we are not wearied with reading it will at length come to pass that the scripture will be made more familiar by continual use. Now there’s going to be moments where we have difficulty digesting some hard part of the Bible. Maybe like this man we’ll sometimes get stuck even on the easy bits, but the more we consume the easier it gets. Fourth, an essential part of this effective encounter was that God gave a great man a humble heart, he made him willing to wonder not to pretend he knew it all already. He was even willing to ask for help from a stranger. Fifth, God gave this man a commitment to biblical authority, but why would an African man, probably reading a Greek Translation of a Hebrew book written centuries before, containing prophecies he did not understand persevere? Well, there’s only one answer. He was committed to the importance of any part of scripture because he recognized the authority of every part of scripture. Don’t miss this point. If he didn’t have that commitment, he would not have asked for help, continued to read, or even cared to own a Bible at all, and nor will we.

Well as much as Philip must have loved to tell this story about the Ethiopian, that man he met in the desert that day, when he met the Ethiopian, he told a story about someone else. Philip did the easy thing; he began with the very passage that the Ethiopian was reading. He understood now that his unexpected assignment was to expound the Gospel according to Isaiah, which is a particularly easy thing to do if you begin with chapter 53. Isaiah 53 is not just for experts; it’s for all of us. Isaiah speaks of someone who is despised and rejected by men, one so burdened that he was best described as the man of sorrows. This man would be acquainted with grief, someone who would suffer so horribly that people would hide their faces from him with their hands rather than look at him, but they still would not have pity. In fact, Isaiah 53 verse 3 tells us that he would be despised rather than esteemed for what he would endure. The statement that this man of sorrows would not be honored is not a minor point, it’s a main point, because as Isaiah 53 verse 4 explains, this despised man was bearing griefs and sorrows that did not actually belong to him. These burdens belonged to his people. Those who watched him suffer, thought that he was struck down by God in a fierce judgement. The prophet says we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted, and they were right, but it was no fault of his own. No, he was wounded for our transgressions, he was crushed for our inequities, upon him the chastisement that brought us peace came and with his stripes we are healed.

So, what is our transgression, what is the inequity that Isaiah speaks about, from what do we need to be healed? I suppose we can put that in our own words, couldn’t we? We are created to live with God, but we act like he’s not there. We were designed to know his truth, but we don’t actively pursue it. We’re guided down good paths, but as soon as the going gets hard, or the slope goes uphill we assume God is doing something wrong. We could say it in our words or even better, we could say it in Isaiah’s. The truth is that we’re like sheep who have gone astray. We’ve turned each one of us to our own way. We’re made to walk with the shepherd, but we tend to wander. We’re made to follow, but we want to lead. We’re set in the right path and a good pasture, but it’s never quite green enough for us. That’s just to say we’re rebels who like to march to the beat of our own drums, that’s our fault. It’s a responsibility that is fairly laid on our shoulders, but this is where God astonishes us because Isaiah looked in the future and saw that The Lord had laid on Him, on someone else the iniquity of us all, the sin is ours, we need to own it and accept it’s consequences. But then the judge of all the earth speaks and what does he say? No, The Lord says, your sin is now His and so to His sins curse He is oppressed and afflicted for your sake, in your place.

It is after reading this far in Isaiah 53 that the African official had got stuck with the words that are paraphrased for us in Acts 8. “This innocent man was like a lamb lead to the slaughter and yet he did not protest. He was like a sheep before it shears, silent, and that’s all the more astounding, isn’t it? Because it was by oppression and judgement that he was taken away to be executed.” In other words, in the midst of his humiliation justice was denied him. He was suddenly cut off with no generation to follow him. His life was taken away from the earth. Do you see why the man was asking his question? Can you see why he wasn’t asking what the passage meant, but wanted to know who the passage was about, and can you see why those who have heard about Jesus have only ever recognized just one candidate, only one who perfectly matches the description of this prophet.

When Emily and I were first married, we had Isaiah 53 hanging up in one of the rooms of our home. Her father, who was not a Christian and still is not, came to visit us in that first year of our marriage and asked why we chose to hang up a tragic poem about Jesus in our house. Well, he asked because it was obvious with even a bare knowledge of Christianity that this prophecy hundreds of years before Christ was about Christ. But for those who know why Jesus suffered, it’s both a tragic poem and good news. It is Jesus who is both the shepherd we’ve not followed and the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. It is Jesus who gave his life for wandering sheep. It’s in his life and death that there’s power. There’s a wonder working power in the precious blood of the lamb. That’s the Gospel according to Isaiah and to people, people like that man, people like you and me, people like those described in Isaiah’s prophecy have found what we most need when we have found Jesus.

The Bible can be read in two ways. Either as a mirror to see ourselves or as a window through which we see others. What do you see when you read Isaiah 53 or its summary in Acts 8? That’s a hard question, it’s not particularly polite, but do you see a wandering sheep, a transgressor, a guilty person in yourself, or do you tend to see through this passage and only see others that way? Are you willing and able to see who you really are before The Lord, the one who made you, directs you, calls you to serve Him? Are you able to sit here this morning and slowly turn the pages of your own autobiography and see that you need this savior, the only savior, the one described here.

Basic to Christianity is that some understanding of bad news needs to precede a powerful appreciation of good news. The tragedy of humanity is that most people don’t get this and surely that’s true too in our town and in our time. There are sad themes and deeply imbedded patterns of sin in all of our lives, and we need to recognize this, it runs deep and dark in all of us. That’s the bad news. But it’s not enough to recognize sin, we need to know what to do with it. That’s a good question. What do you do with your sin when you see it? Do you somehow make your behavior, your desires, even your rebellion more acceptable to your conscience? Do you tell yourself that next time you’ll just do better, or do you admit your sin, confess it to God, and where necessary, to others and place yourself under the mercy of Jesus?

I want you to see this morning that these two ways of dealing with sin are really two different Gospels, two different religions, the one faults the other. True we can dress up self-justification, we can dress up our excuses with all kinds of Christian theological jewelry, but it’s not Christianity. As Isaiah and Acts teach us, the good news of the Christian Gospel is found in what’s costly, not in what is cheap. The solution is nothing else than Jesus Christ, the Son of God becomes son of man, a sacrifice and substitute, not self-improvement and easy excuses. Jesus Christ alone offers a remedy for sin that rises above our cosmetic human solutions. And we know by the way that these are two different religions because they offer two different ways of dealing with the bad news of sin, and we also know that they are two different religions because they create two different kinds of people.

If we excuse our faults there is no space in our lives for gracious relationships because we teach ourselves, our spouses, our friends, our children to hide sin, to explain away sin, to deny its existence or to blame others. But if we confess our sins, we teach ourselves and others to rely on Christ, to believe that where sin abounds grace can abound even more, and we help one another to grow up as people of hope who have believed and have seen that there is no pit of sin that is too deep for grace to shine. So what is your religion?

It was because he had the Gospel of Isaiah in his heart and Christ in his life that this newly saved sinner knew what to do when he encountered some water. Having heard about Christian baptisms in Jerusalem maybe, or having been called to baptism by Philip himself, the eunuch knew what to ask for when he came across a wade or a watering hole along the road. His first thought wasn’t water for the horses but water for himself. As an unbaptized believer, he wanted to be baptized and that is right and good for anyone who has come to see who they are and who Jesus is. Baptism is the right response for anyone coming to the Christian faith from outside the Christian community, and so Philip and the man walked into that water together, Philip baptizing him, and they both came out. But how wet were they, don’t you want to know?

Classic paintings of the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch show two men standing in shallow water with Philip pouring water over the head of the officials, but on the other hand, Baptist story Bibles show Philip immersing the eunuch completely under the water, so we have a draw or a tie. Well I do want to mention that the words went down into, in verse 38, and came back out of, in verse 39, refer to both men, so if coming out of the water must mean that emersion just happened, it looks like both men got immersed which seems somewhat unlikely, which is why I don’t read too much into this passage. The fact is we don’t know how deep the watering hole was, it depends on how much rain there was recently. The main point is that this man now like those in Samaria earlier became a visible member of the Church of Christ, brought into the Christian family by trusting in Jesus Christ with all his heart. Baptism symbolizes the grace of God and washing away his sin, according to God’s gracious promises preached in that very symbol and promised in Christ.

As it happens, most individual baptisms of the New Testament are followed immediately by household baptisms. We will joyfully witness as a church and expanding household bringing a new little member to baptism next week, and that’s because those who are now children of Abraham by faith, just like those who were once children of Abraham by birth, should give their children the sign and seal of the Gospel and pray that they’ll come to understand and cherish the Gospel that their parents hold so dear.

Here was the child of Abraham by faith, but he would not have children of his own. He would not bring a family along to Jerusalem on a future trip, kind of tagging along one of those vacations with work trips that we like to do, but he could go back and support the children of the future First Presbyterian Church of Ethiopia by praying for the parents there and for their children. Perhaps he would eventually use his growing Bible knowledge and his good Christian connections to teach parents about how their children are special to God too.

The apostle Paul once wrote that not many Christians are wise or important by worldly standards, but some are, and this account of the salvation of a leading official in the court of Queen Candace tells us about one of them. We can be so thankful when impressive converts offer an undiluted example of Christian faith and piety, but this is not simply the story of the conversion of one man, is it? Here’s a man who would bring the Gospel back to his community where he was a leader. It’s a key part of the history of the good news about Jesus reaching and expanding across the continent of Africa, which is why the chapter ends not with the encounter with water, but with this encouraged Ethiopian.

What remains in verses 39 and 40 is a brief telling of how the two men parted. We don’t need to multiply miracles where there are none, but verse 39 tells us that Philip was immediately and miraculously removed from the scene. You can see that from the language used here. An event without parallel in the New Testament or since. It’s surprising to hear of the spirit whisking Philip away, but it’s at least as surprising to me, perhaps more, and maybe to you too that Philip had to leave this man at all. After all, God cares about missions and missionaries more than we do. Why couldn’t Philip be the first missionary to Africa, why couldn’t he stay with this man, why not help this person of influence establish the church in a new place? And yet, God had purposes for Philip as we see in verse 40. He continued his itinerant ministry until arriving in Caesarea. And Acts 21 tells us that he was still there many years later and it was there that he would one day meet at apostle named Paul, and a historian named Luke who would write these things down in the inspired book we now read.

Philip was not permitted to travel to Africa, but this did not seem to give any discouragement to this Ethiopian eunuch. He could be a missionary to his own city. He had heard the Gospel, he was now traveling home with the scriptures in his hands, and the good news about Jesus in his heart, and he was ready to travel further because now the journey of eternity was marked out before him, and he had heaven as his final home.

So what about you? Where are you heading this morning, where’s your home, and what are you carrying on your journey? Is it one of those Gospels according to you, or is it the Gospel according to Isaiah and Acts and the whole of the scriptures? Is it the good news about Jesus that sets us free, changes our lives and readies us for heaven? I hope so. Let us pray so, for in the end nothing but that Gospel will do. Let us pray.

Our Father in heaven help each one of us today to recognize our real need for the good news that is found only in Jesus, the one who is our substitute and sacrifice, teach us to trust in Him so that we will find ourselves at home with you in your glorious presence and not at the destination that we in fact deserve. Give us confidence in the word we’ve read and heard and be gracious to each of us as you were to that unknown man so long ago. Will you do this by your powerful spirit? We know that you will because we ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.