I need to be a little forthright with you. Those last few weeks we've been talking about some different things. I need to let you in on something I didn't let you in on a few weeks ago, but where are these messages? We've talked lately, we've been in some of the Old Testament prophets, and today we'll be reading out of Acts.
Where these came from was intentional. Earlier this year I knew, I was looking for 2019, and I knew that 2019 was going to be big. What do we need? The biggest thing that we need is leadership.
The biggest thing we need, as the church grows, is we need more leaders. I'm being praying, my God, what is this going to look like? What does this going to sound like? And what I began finding out was just in my own devotional reading, we're seeing all these different layers of leadership and what leadership looks like in the church.
A few weeks ago we read out of Nehemiah, and we learned that burdens break us for the mending of others. God's going to call us specifically two things. And last week we read out of the Prophet Jeremiah, and he talked about how our own repentance creates a path through our life where God takes us through, almost takes us backwards from where we have once failed, and then takes us into flourishing in that direction. This week we're actually jumping forward pretty far away, talking about the book of Acts, and what does it mean for people to be expecting to experience God.
I've been reading Acts for the last eight or nine months, really slowly, actually finished it this morning. And one of the things that just across the whole book of Acts is this is what happens when people are expecting to have and see God in their life in an active way. That expecting to see God is the norm for them. It leads them into amazing, just beautiful places.
We're going to finish up these conversations on spiritual leadership. By looking, what does that mean when we expect to experience God? Acts, chapter eight, we're going to focus ourselves on the majority of this morning. This is the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch.
And so let's just jump right in and get started. This is what it reads. That's where Philip and Angel the Lord said to him, Go south down the desert road that runs from Jerusalem to Gaza. So he started out and he met the treasure of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority underneath the Candice, the queen of Ethiopia.
The eunuch had gone to Jerusalem to worship and was now returning. See to this carriage, he was reading aloud from the book of the Prophet Isaiah. The Holy Spirit said to Philip, Go over and walk beside the carriage. Philip ran over and heard the man reading from the Prophet Isaiah, and Philip asked, Do you understand what you're reading?
The man replied, How can I unless someone instructs me? Then the urge filled up to come up into the carriage and sit with him. The passage of scripture he had been reading was this. He was led like a sheep to the slaughter.
As a lamb assigned before the shears, he did not open his mouth. He was humiliated and received no justice. Who can speak of his descendants for his life was taken from the earth. The eunuch asked Philip, tell me what was the Prophet talking about himself or someone else.
So beginning with the same scripture, Philip told him the good news about Jesus. As they wrote along, they came to the water and the eunuch said, Look, there's some water. Why can't I be baptized? He ordered the carriage to stop and then went down into the water, Philip baptized him.
And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away. The eunuch never saw him again, but he went on his way rejoicing. So we have a cast of characters here. These two people are engaging with God in very, very different ways, very, very different steps.
So we can say that you have someone on this side of the journey of somebody on this side of the journey. It's very interesting dynamic. But we know that, we met him a couple of chapters beforehand. Philip was one of the first deacons.
As early church was growing, one of the things that was rapidly getting too big for its britches was the feeding of their widows. And the apostles got the point to realize we had to find people to be just in charge of this. Because it's taking us too much time and we can't do what we really need to be doing. So let's find people who are full of the Holy Spirit.
It was the first qualification. Full of the Holy Spirit. And let's call them to serve at these tables. That kind of funny thing about that is, you know, you wouldn't figure someone who needed to wait on tables would have to be full of the Holy Spirit.
What did you kind of think of that being like the beginning point? But we see the early church realize these people are going to be important. These people are going to be necessary. But we also realize as they just expect anyone who's part of the church to be full of the Holy Spirit.
Part of how this church is growing and moving and shaping and shifting. And so they named seven men as deacons. And what's interesting is only two we know anything about. We don't find out how good they were at table service.
But Stephen, the first one who was named ultimately in chapter eight of Acts, chapter seven of Acts. And eight, he ends up becoming the first martyr. He's called as a table server. And what we find out is he's an amazing evangelist and amazing preacher.
And ultimately the first person killed for his faith. Stephen is a Philip, is the next one that's named who we're talking about today. And what we see him do is he goes into Samaria and begins this amazing ministry among the Gentiles and the Samaritans. We don't find out anything about how good they were at serving tables.
What we find out is they're full of the Holy Spirit. And we're part of this this rapid expansion of the message of Jesus in just a short amount of time after his resurrection. It's almost as though expecting to experience God was just a prerequisite for any role in the church. No matter who we are, expecting to experience him, he was the first assumption that was made about this.
But we can tell that Philip, just from the way that he's responding, and just this little bit that we know about him, that Philip intentionally lived a life to where hearing from God was the norm. That was normal to him. And what we see so much across Acts is that's the case of the early church. They just, they were going to hear from God and they understood that and they looked for that.
We also see though Philip was leading a thriving ministry in Samaria and heard the call of God saying, I need you to leave this place where things are going great and instead go out like this desolate wilderness road this is in the middle of nowhere and just wait. We don't see any back and forth with Philip, we don't see any questioning. We see as Philip saying, all right I'm going and I'm going, he's there hanging out on the wilderness road in the area of God's. This is pretty much like if you think of like the Mediterranean, the Middle East, this is just like this desolate highway between Jerusalem and Egypt.
And he's just there waiting and he meets this Ethiopian unit. Now here's what kind of the awkward part happens. It's awkward but we have to talk about it. Does everybody here know what a unit is?
Does anybody not know what a unit is? Okay. A unit is a castrated male for the purpose of service in a royal court. Typically at this point in time in certain parts of the world they believed that the king was divine because the king was divine.
The king should not handle any administration. So the queen was the one who had to run the country. And there's always a couple of people who were put in service of the royal family to keep up with the administration. And so eunuchs were used so they would not be distracted by the queen.
We all got to get the drift here. Okay, make it sure. Sorry about that. Yeah.
So we had this Ethiopian unit. Now we think Ethiopia, this isn't modern day Ethiopia, this is probably more on the lines of what this Sudan is. But he was the treasure. He was the third most important person in the country.
And he had come to Jerusalem to worship. But there's a couple of things that are kind of weird about that that really don't make any sense. There's three types of people who could worship Yahweh, the Jewish idea of God. The first were good Jewish people.
They're descended from their mother's Jewish people. Mark of Jewish males with circumcision. The next level is what's called the proselytites. These were people who were not Jewish who had aligned themselves with Jewish teaching and the Jewish religion and had made the decision as adults to become circumcised.
The next layer of this was called the God-fears. Now we see these in the book of Acts in the New Testament. All the time it was Roman officials or other countries officials. And they have aligned themselves with the Jewish teachings, but it made the decision to not be circumcised.
There's a lot of awkward male conversations here today. But it's important because here's the thing. In Leviticus, one of the rules that bans people, not just from the worship of God, but bans people from the body and the people of God, was either intentional or unintentional male deformity. So this man who traveled hundreds of miles probably took months probably had a retinue of 50 or 60 people with him as part of this journey went all the way to Jerusalem, but could not worship.
In fact, the way that the temple worked, and so he went to go worship at the temple, there's the outer courtyard, which is called the courtyard of the Gentiles. This is where Jesus flipped over tables and I whipped the money changers, that story. That's the parking lot of the temple. That's what it is.
It actually was a road. The next layer is where the court of women were Jewish women could go, but could go any further than the court of women. The next was the court of men where Jewish men could go, but they could go any further than that. And there was the court of the Levites, the priesthood.
And then there was the holy of holy, were only the high priests could go. So the whole temple was actually just like a grid that's been laid out to tell you where you don't belong. You got this guy who took 50, 60 people with him and took probably six months, eight months out of his life to go hang out in a church parking lot. Would you do that?
He was expecting to experience God though in some way. Something was telling on his heart where he said, I'm going to go do this. I don't belong. I don't matter.
I'm not even allowed to be here, but I'm going to go. In Philip, we see a story of how he's responding to God. Philip is able to jump and go and do these things because he already has previous history of knowing what it's like for God to call and ask him to do something for him to go there and respond and see what happens when you live this sort of life. We have sufficient experience and knowledge to accomplish why God places us in situations.
In the book of 1 Peter 3.15, it reads this, instead you must worship Christ as the Lord of your life. If you ask you about your Christian hope, always be ready to explain. It's asking you about your Christian hope, asking you about your experience with God and his faithfulness. Be ready to answer it.
So sometimes if we feel like we don't have sufficient experience, what we probably need to be asking ourselves instead is are we experiencing him sufficiently? This is about our personal story, our own personal engagement with God. Just telling the story of, hey, this is how I've experienced him to be working in my life and to know that is good enough. You've heard me say this before, you're the best person to reach the people that you know.
There's someone who needs to know your story and your experience. Expector's experience, God. Now, the unit, this interesting thing that's going on here with this, I mean, he had a pretty hard life. He was cursed from the presence of God and from the assembly of God and the people that he did not belong.
And because of the way he was dressed, where he was from, people knew who he was and they could pretty much assume this is a court official from another country, that means one thing. He did not belong. And it was desperately clear. Now, honestly, when I was reading this story earlier, when I first started reading this, that verse 36 and says, look, there's some water.
Why can I not be baptized? I read that. Honestly, I thought that was kind of corny. That's a Sunday school story to me.
It was way too enthusiastic. There has to be something that's going on here inside of this. Now, what we do know is that Philip, beginning with that passage, then proclaiming to him the message of the gospel of Jesus. Well, in Isaiah, chapter 58, where that passage is coming from, 59 begins talking more about the sacrifice of who Jesus is.
In Isaiah chapter 6, he begins talking about baptism in the meaning of baptism in the way that baptism changes things. So he had heard about this. We can also assume he was reading beforehand, which what Philip heard, let me read to you what is just two chapters behind what we read earlier today. He was reading from Isaiah.
I want you to hear these words. I want you to place yourself in that carriage, imagine you are the Ethiopian eunuch. You just wasted six, eight months of your life, traveled hundreds of miles to be an obvious not-belonger because of something you can't control. And then you begin reading this.
This is Isaiah chapter 56, verse 3 through 5, and says, don't let foreigners who commit themselves to the Lord say, the Lord will never let me be part of his people. And don't let the eunuch say, I'm a dried up tree with no children in no future. For this is what the Lord says, I will bless those eunuchs who keep my Sabbath days holy, who choose to do what pleases me and commits their lives to me. I will give them within the walls of my house a memorial and a name far greater than sons and daughters would give.
For the name I give them is an everlasting one. It will never disappear. So he's reading, he reads across that and then he gets this point where he reads this person who's scorned and hated and shamed, who doesn't belong, but he can tell something's going on and then Philip shows up all of a sudden. That instead of physical wholeness being what keeps you in and out of a relationship with God, he'll tell us what's in the character of your heart that matters.
The character of your soul and of your mind that matters. That is what God is looking for here. He says, I'm not shown by this God. I've been waiting to experience this God.
And now I can't experience this God. So this enthusiastic claim about baptism, I should tell this saying, well, there's water right there. And I imagine with hesitancy and his voice he said, why can I not be baptized? Because he was used to telling people, telling him why he can't do something.
Well, you can't do that. You're not allowed to do that. You can't go this place. You can't spend time with those people.
I can't ask. He was used to you can't. You can't. You can't.
You can't. You can't. You can't. You can't.
You can't. You can't. You can't. Why can't I be baptized?
Because he was waiting for it. Almost gets too good to be true. Now, if you read along with your Bible or you had your phone out reading, what you might have not realized is we didn't read verse 37. Some translations of the New Testament, Acts 837 is not in there.
We're not going to go down that tangent today of why I'm going to make a video from Facebook later this week talking about that. I'm going to read to you what Acts 837 says. This is the secret part of stories that we don't know about. It says, why can I not be baptized?
Philip's response to him is, if you believe with all of your heart, you may be answered. I believe that Jesus Christ is Lord. And he went to be baptized. See, there's no hair splitting in the Kingdom of God.
And we've heard stories. If you can't, you won't. You're not. The Kingdom of God says it's come.
It's our heart that matters. Not the claims that have kept us from experiencing God in the past. This, the characteristic of our heart is what he's looking for. Now, every one of us has been stopped at times before.
They've been given a reason to say, well, you don't belong. You can't come in here. I think from, I'm 38 years old. I remember the big eye-rolling joke that everyone made fun of when I was a kid, but everybody had happened to them was far as the young little girl, can't sit here.
We all have can't-said-here stories. What Philip's saying here is that you absolutely can't sit here. He's inviting you to come to this place. He's inviting you to sit here.
Come and experience God in the fullness of all he is and all he has. Expectors experience God. Let's pray together. Lord, you know, we've all had time for we don't belong.
God, we also have to confess that there might have been a time for we were the ones who say you don't belong. Where we've experienced walls, all of us. We've experienced life on both sides of those walls. In Lord, just as last week, we talked about redemption and restoration looks like, and it means that we realize that part of repentance is us turning and facing our sins.
We have to claim the fact that we've been on both sides of that wall. But God, as we finish up this book at what leadership looks like. We realize that when we step into a relationship with you and say we want to experience you, that we have to be prepared for wildly different things. And the more that we experience you, the more that we see the fullness of your life, and the fullness of what this world is like, what you want the fullness of what the kingdom is like.
God, and so we open up our hands to you and ask you for more of this. How we can do this because we've been forgiven. We've done the tough work of our pen tents. We've allowed you to begin restoring us every step that we take.
God, we now ask to just experience you. God, to give us each a chance and also a chance to church to say, yes, I will come. Because we don't know who you're going to put in front of us. But we know that we're prepared for those conversations because of the ways that we have experienced you.
God, that you're sufficient for us completely. We're just simply asking to experience even more of you.