When I was a kid, I was going to this small little private school and it was like a half mile from my house. I was there for a couple of years and I was excited because I grew up in Alexander and Rappie's Parish. The year before my school was a 45 minute bus ride away. It was across town.
If you know Alexandria, it was like five miles down Jackson Street. It was crossing the Carter there. It was crossing down in like South Third Street. I mean a complete, huge long way.
When I was a kid, you're a kid, you romanticize certain things you see from movies, right? When I was a kid, I could not, I never had the chance I wanted to ride my bike to school. And starting seventh grade, I could ride my bike to school. I was so excited about that.
And I was, y'all probably make fun of myself before. I was a really awkward kid, like really, really awkward. And all I wanted to do was I wanted to be able to ride my bike home with the cool kids. But, I was also scared to.
This is my routine, every afternoon, school let out. I would let them get their bikes first. I would let them get a head start and I would start riding. In my dream, I'm going to catch up to them and get to ride my bike home and they won't know I'm with them.
I want to be close enough to feel like I was one of them but not so close that it was dangerous. You think of me, the Christmas story, I can meet the redheaded kid and the snowy alley. That's the kind of thing that typically happened to me. I want to be close enough to feel cool but close enough to be safe.
I didn't trust them. When you're a kid, trust can be a simple thing. I feel safe, I don't feel safe. When you're an adult, trust can be very, very complicated but still boils down to the exact thing.
I feel safe or I don't feel safe. Y'all heard me joke before about my fear of fish. Everybody knows about that. Ben Nicholson is not here this morning.
They're on the feed. I saw him earlier. The first time I'm Ben when my fear of fish, he chased me down a dock with about a two pound bass. And then he was in the behavioral therapist.
Okay, no, he actually is cognitively scared of fish. A couple years later, she told me about her dish story. Me and him were out on deluder doing scouting for duck season. And about a 40 pound carp jumped into the duck boat and got underneath my feet.
And I'm screaming. I'm screaming. I almost jumped out of the boat but I realized that's where the fish had come from. I did not want to be in that environment.
And so I'm going to sit down and show you all this. I'm sitting at the front of the boat and the fish gets underneath my feet. And I'm like this trying to hold my legs up screaming for Ben to come get the fish out from. I trusted Ben in that situation.
I make the joke before. I'm not going to trust the people I'm fishing with. No, trust is really, do I feel safe with you or do I not feel safe with you? This is a powerful thing.
Feeling safe is a powerful thing. For the last six or seven weeks, we've been going through the book of Acts and really kind of looking at Acts with a specific question in mind of what does it mean to be part of a movement of permanent and eternal consequence. We realize that Acts provides that blueprint for us for what that looks like. But we've also been realizing that almost everyone in these conversations has been a conversation about shifting boundaries and shifting borders.
And if we're asking God to expand our world and expand the kingdom and order for us to serve Him, that means that we have to be doing things to cause that expansion and to seize that. This past week, we were only virtual, but we started talking about the story of Philip, the evangelist. We're going to pick up the second half of Philip's story today. Look at the screens with me, Acts 8, verses 26-38.
That's what we read. As for Philip, an angel of the Lord said to him, goes south down the desert road that runs from Jerusalem to Gaza. So he started out and he met the treasure of Ethiopia, a unique of great authority under the candic of the queen of Ethiopia. The Enoch of Jerusalem to worship was now returning.
And seated in his 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, heard the man reading from the prophet Isaiah, and Philip asked, do you understand what you're reading? A man replied, how can I, unless someone instructs me, and he urged Philip to come up into the carriage and sit with him.
And the passage of scripture he had been reading was this. He was laid like a sheep to the slaughter and lay him silent 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 unique as Philip told me 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 some water and the unique said, look, there's some water, why can't I be baptized? He ordered the carriage to stop, and they went down into the water and Philip baptized him.
So this really is a story about trust. It's a story with a couple of different movements of trust. And you might be saying, Chad, you know, this just seems pretty normal. I don't see where trust is a big play here.
And what we really have is we have a simple moment of trust and we have a complicated moment of trust. Just like life, when you're a kid, trust is simple. When you're adult, trust can be complicated. We find both of those two things going on.
So first of all, we have Philip. We talked about Philip last week. We read Philip's name the week before with the seven people who were chosen to serve and how Stephen and his boundary shifting, we saw what happened with the second name on that list was the name of Philip. Last week, I talked about the fact that we might be hearing Philip's name expecting like some disastrous end.
Like what happened to Stephen, we find something very different with Philip. Philip actually shows up way farther later, years down the road in the book of Acts in the town of Caesarea. Philip's life was a long full life of serving Jesus. But in this moment, we find he's there and Holy Spirit comes to him and says, listen, I need you to go up, it's in verse 26, older translations, use the word arise.
Now this is not an idea of, hey, listen, can you take care of this for me or a physical action of like standing up to go do something to go up to arise? That's intentional and that's deliberate. I also said that he had an angelic visitation that told him to go do these things. Now let's think about angelic visitation.
The book of Acts was written by Luke, Luke also is Gospel Luke. Every single time we find angelic visitation in Scripture, the next thing is the angel is on the person, hey, don't be afraid. Nothing back to the Christmas story. The angel coming to Mary and angel coming to Joseph, it's always like, hey, don't be afraid.
There's something about those angelic situations where you're having a visitation with the supernatural being that I mean, I would be a little scared, wouldn't you? That's what happens in Scripture. The biblical pattern is angel shows up, people get scared, angel says, don't be scared. Let me tell you cool things.
That's how it works. Y'all know me by now, not long enough to know that I'm going to look at, hey, when did similar things happen in Scripture, how do people behave then? What is the pattern here? Angel shows up, people get freaked out, angel says, don't be scared, angel says cool things.
That's what works. Here is angel shows up, angel says cool things, Philip says yes. Now there's a lot of things that are going on here and this is just me, this isn't Scripture, this is just what I think. You know, what if the reason Philip, what if the reason that angel did not have to tell Philip to not be afraid was Philip wasn't afraid?
And what if the reason Philip wasn't afraid was because situations where he would have supernatural or not just him, maybe the whole early church in Jerusalem where they were having enough supernatural experiences and visitations that the idea of having that level of faithfulness and trust in connection with God, they just simply become normalized. What if that's the reason, you're afraid of things, you're not around that much, right? If things scare you, you try to not be around, like I avoid water. Don't someone can see the bottom of?
Philip's not scared because I think Philip probably was used to things like this. This trust level had changed because of his experience with God. That seems like a pretty simple expression of it, but a lot of times the simplest thing is the truest thing. Philip trusted because Philip had learned the benefits of trust.
That sounds like a boundary shifting thing in life, doesn't it? Now I'm going to complicate that idea of trust. No, this eunuch. It never gives his name.
It says that he worked for the candic. That's kind of complicated. Anyway, an Ethiopia shows up in scripture. It's not modern Ethiopia.
It's not where we think Ethiopia is. At this point in time in the Roman world, Ethiopia was a kingdom. It was in the southern end of Egypt. It was not under Roman control.
They had never been able to like conquer or penetrate into it. They were a very rich, very, very wealthy kingdom. And this eunuch was essentially the CFO of the kingdom. They believed that their king was divine.
Therefore, he should not be taking care of any business things inside the kingdom. The king's mother always ran the business of the kingdom. This eunuch was a person who managed all of the money for the entire kingdom. He was trusted, right?
Don't you trust people to handle your money, right? We can do it. If you leave your purse with somebody, ladies, you trust them, right? Guys if you leave your wallet somewhere, you trust somebody with that, right?
You don't trust people who handle your money. So we find this. But we also find that part of the situation was that he was a eunuch. You know, eunuch's in the ancient world where whenever men would work alongside women in very close ways, especially in royal situations, there was always, let's just say something to make sure you could put your trust those men.
For the lack of better term. This person was trustworthy 100%. Right, dressed in a certain way people knew exactly who he was. He looked like he was royalty.
He was royalty. He was a very, very important trusted person. Possibly the most trusted person in the entire kingdom. But he'd gone to Jerusalem to worship because he wanted to worship Yahweh.
He was not a Jew. He's what they call a God-fearer. He was a person who had not been able to make the spiritual, but also the physical ways of converting to Judaism. No it says in Deuteronomy 23 that any man who's a eunuch can't come inside the presence of God.
It's a Jewish people that the thing that makes him so trustworthy would actually stop him from being able to worship God. That he could not be trusted inside of the presence of God. So he goes thousands of miles and he goes to the temple and the temple had multiple layers. But to put it in 21st century term, he traveled thousands of miles to go hang out in the parking lot of the temple.
Let me ask you this. Do you want to take days, if not weeks, to go somewhere and you're used to being a very, very important person possibly the most trusted person in your entire kingdom and you're going to show up somewhere and not only is trust not going to be given to you, but you're going to hang out in the parking lot for the very thing you showed up for. Do you see the complicated relationship with trust that's living in this person's life? We also have to think about this.
How was he treated when he was in Jerusalem? People could probably look at him and could tell exactly who he was, but exactly what he was the same time. It wasn't going to be just this complicated relationship, this situation of trust, this one is an inconsistency. So Philip shows up, I know he's probably traveling in an ops driven cart.
So Philip isn't like super naturally fast runner. It's just a very slow moving. He's probably a caravan. He probably brought an entire retainer with him, all these things.
So Philip hears what's going on and Philip walks up alongside of them and can tell what's going on to begin having this engagement. Just the way they engage, you show that lines of trust are being rewritten between the two of them. And the way Philip interacts with this unit, the conversation shows trust. There are a lot of ways that Philip and religious self-righteousness or other ways could come into this conversation, probably even manipulating this conversation.
But instead, we see Philip rewising, hey, God has put this person in front of me. My only job right now is to lead them. There's a couple of different ways that we can lead people. A faulty way of leading people is when we run far ahead and we just kind of holler at them to catch up.
You're seeing that happen before, physically, but also just in your work relationships or in your life together. So you're not where I am yet. So I'm just going to keep on doing what I'm doing and you try to keep up. That's an unhealthy way.
That's a manipulative way of doing things. Instead, we see Philip doing what we should do in leadership. We come alongside and realize I'm being called to be with this person, to sit with this person, to help this person, to disciple this person. So my job is to simply hold them by the hand and we go at their speed.
That's what you see Philip doing. So much in this story. We follow along after the story. You see Philip moving very, very quickly.
Instead, we see him now engaging this person in a very slow way. So Philip steps into this relationship, realizing there's going to be a trust issue here and I have to act in a way that causes trust to happen. There are also a couple of questions that this person says that you can even say that there's some trust going on. The first thing the unit says to Philip is, hey, can you explain this?
People might not even be willing. I mean, if he's going to travel thousands of miles because he's curious about what it means to worship the Lord. He's going to go to the place where the Jewish people believe the Lord's physical presence is at. People might probably want to talk to this guy though.
You're in a situation where people aren't willing to talk with you. Like that awkwardness of when you walk in, you can tell, man, I really don't belong here. And there's a difference between like when you're a kid and it's like stupid kids stuff. But also as an adult, like when you go into places and you can tell pretty quickly, man, this is, is it my scene?
It's going to take a lot of work for me to fit in here. Sometimes I have to make the decision that this work isn't worth it. I think that's what this unit for probably days, if not weeks, is experiencing this in Jerusalem. So he says, hey, will you explain this to me?
So it's not a can you do this. It's a will you do this. Will you trust me enough? Even though who I am says, I can't be in the presence of your God.
Will you trust me enough to answer these questions and to talk with me and to have an honest discussion about these things with me? We see Philip doing that. And yet again, at his pace, holding him by the hand, not running out far in front, using this passage to explain who Jesus was. And the next question, if I have even the bigger question, he says, well, there's water right there, it cannot be baptized.
And again, it's not a can question. It's a will question. No, to your honest, 23 says, you know, if you are a eunuch, you cannot be in the presence of God. There's a barrier.
There's a boundary of participation that has been placed. He's asking Philip, will you baptize me? It's under place of trust. Like, if you're in a conversation where things can be going and going well and the anxiety you might have, is this going to work?
Is this not going to work? It goes away and at the last point you find out the wall falls right down again in front of you? Will you baptize me? Is there any reason I can't be baptized?
You all see the difference between a can question and a will question right there? Philip, let's go take care of this right now. See, movements are about an expansion of trust that begins with those who desire more of God for us to create hearts that drip trust. For us to completely and fully trust God.
We realize we do that because God is going to lead us to other people that need our trust. They're not there just yet. Our trust, our stability, our faithfulness provides the step up that they need in life. Philip was sharing his trust.
Philip was dripping trust in a way that allowed him to have this conversation that God had led him to. Our trust is activated and our belief that God is always faithful and that he is able to not be moved. Psalm 1658 just really just kind of cast a vision of what that statement looks like from the heart of a person who has a good relationship with trust. This is what it says.
The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup. You hold my lot. Say, hey, listen, I have willfully chosen you. I'm allowing you to pour everything into me and you have got my life in your hands.
The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance. This trust is paid off for me. I have bent and bet it on the right things and it is working next level.
I bless the Lord who gives me the counsel in the night. Also my heart instructs me. I've set the Lord always before me because he is at my right hand. I shall not be shaken.
He's able to move forward because of our experience with God. Our trust exists in past, present and future. This is what a person who's heart drips trust, who is able to share that trust with others for the sake of the gospel. This is what that looks like.
This is assurance that we have as God's people that allows this movement of the Spirit to happen through us and to around us. To get to this place, we have to realize that our relationship with trust or we might struggle with trust or we don't struggle with trust that this is a spiritual issue. One of the things we said last several months is we need to be calling things out as spiritual and supernatural issues. For far too long, we've not treated them as such and because we're paying the consequences of it right now in our world.
Everything goes around us. We've seen the consequences of people who follow Jesus not calling things as supernatural issues and not living as things as supernatural issues. So how might we get to the place in our current cultural moment where we stop seeing things as political issues? We stop seeing things as racial issues or economic issues?
We start seeing them as a spiritual dynamic in our life. Where we realize sometimes that the consequences of our sin gets us into the places where we are now and so many things just simply boil down to trust. Who do you trust? What do you trust?
How do you trust? How do you or is it a trust issue? You know, our communities need us to be trusting. Our communities need us to be holy.
Stainations of the oil that says this, sin is the willingness to trust what God wants is our deepest happiness. Sin is an unwillingness to trust that what God wants is our deepest happiness. And trust is the bedrock that allows us to move into this world as followers of Jesus in a transformed way. Think about when you don't trust a situation or a scenario or a person, what do you do?
You step in yourself. You're allowing yourself. You try to do it yourself. If those of you all know me decently well, you know I'm really bad at this.
I'm one of those I will take care of it myself people. Friends that doesn't work out in the long run. It's the easiest thing. But it's far too often not the best thing.
Trust takes time, trust takes energy, trust takes effort, but trust is the way of the kingdom and the way of the gospel. If we can't trust God, why do we say we follow Him? So how can, how can, how much trust have we destroyed because we're just trying to control these things? What does it mean for us to realize that trust is stronger than control?
Trust is learned. Trust is gained in the power of prayer. We've talked about prayer a lot lately. We've started our monthly prayer meetings in the evening.
If you watch the videos about the consecration of the new worship center, you've seen that we're designated two specific times to have unbroken 24-hour blocks of prayer. Jack Lockby is running the prayer course every Wednesday night now. No, why are we talking about prayer so much? Because prayer is the beginning point where we learn.
Trust is the beginning point where we learn to step into a mature spiritual life. Prayer is the place that we find the stability in this foundation. Prayer is everything. Prayer is the essential building block for who God has called us to be as people.
Friends, 2020 needs prayer. We need prayer. We don't learn how to do any of these things without prayer. The prayer is what we want to trust.
Trust is the fuel for boundary expansion. Friends, we can't offer other people the trust that they need if we don't have that trust built up strong enough inside of ourselves. My family was in Wyoming this past week on a vacation. My six-year-old, several-year-old nephew, his favorite thing when he's flying is the safety card.
Actually, I took one from him, went to Israel last year. We have one in Hebrew. The kid loves a safety card. You look at that safety card.
Remember the first time we looked at a safety card. He was like four or five years old. I was like, I have to explain to him why I have to put my mask on first before I put his mask on. We have to help.
We have to be safe ourselves and trusting ourselves before we can create situations where others can trust. We have to put our own mask on first. We have to realize where our trust is insufficient, where our trust is inadequate. We don't treat it like it's a personal problem.
We don't treat it like it's a resource problem or a relationship problem. We have to treat it like a supernatural problem. It's a problem of prayer. It's a problem of, hey, I have not put in the work yet to have this to be as strong as I need it to be and I know I need this to be strong because other people are going to need me to be strong.
When I look at the Philip store, when I come back to this, the thing that's still is sticking out in my mind so much is this is just that simple trust that Philip had that trust. It's like, man, he was so expecting to experience God in transforming changing ways that when he had the angelic visitation show up in front of him, he wasn't freaked out. He had done the tough work of building up those layers of trust. That's what I want my life to be like.
I know I've got some work to get there. I don't know where you're at. But all I know is this sort of trust seems to work out a lot better than my sort of control always had. I know where that gets me.
I want that kind of trust and that kind of trust that changes things, not just ourselves. But those we care about, those we love and those we don't even know yet who God is inviting us to realize that he has placed them right before our eyes. No one wants to trust like Philip trusts. Let's pray.
Father, we are here in this space, Lord, when we trust you to love him, trust you enough to be here. Or maybe we trust the person that invited us or brought us here into this space. But God, no matter who we are, no matter where we are in life, no matter what has happened or not happened for us or we realize that our trust can never be big enough. But God, I think of those words of the Psalm, Psalm 16, God, I have made much of a choice to bank on you and it has never failed me yet.
God, those handful of verses, that provides a lot stronger revision of life than the one I have known on my own. So my prayer this morning as we have finished up, God is for us just to understand trust and the dynamic way. God, there are some of us who are in here, we have had a lot of broken trust in our lives. God, some of us in here have been the ones who have broken trust often.
When we realize that without you and your spirit, we have a dysfunctional relationship with trust. So Jesus, my prayer this morning is just for us to begin, just reorienting our hearts, our attitudes, our expectations. God, let us anchor ourselves to the trust that we have found in you. It would help us to begin building up the spiritual patterns for what trust needs to look like and order for it to grow.
But God, I also pray that you open our eyes to help us to see God, who is that unit that you've placed in front of us? God, where are you visiting us and saying, I need you to go here and how can we simply respond by saying yes and standing up and going and doing it? God, we pray as we ask, as we want to be part of an awakening of your spirit here in our community. God, we know that can't happen without trust.
What's we pray for the buildup of trust? We thank you for that. I shouldn't pray. Amen.
Let's stand.