I'm not apologizing for the heaviness
of what I just said, but part of the reason that it weighs
heavily on me is that a young fellow who I was very fond of
and had several warm conversations with about the Gospel and he
seemed to take some interest in the fact and knowledge of
the fact of the eternal covenant and the blessings of that and
the entailments of that in terms of the necessity of particular
redemption. And he was a young fellow who
was extraordinarily gifted, a singer and a songwriter and a charismatic
young man and he went through the climbed the ladder of modern
day ecclesiology very rapidly, being a bright guy, and went
through Bible college and then became a man who planted a church. And we had some connection with
him for a while. I tried to talk to him about
the seriousness of what he was doing, the seriousness of the
fact that on what basis do you plant a church when you declare
that all the churches around you are preaching the Gospel?
And on what basis do you find yourself doing these things? And he became incredibly popular
and the church, which began at a similar time to ours, grew
like a mushroom to the point where it has several pastors
and hundreds of people along. And he's fallen. He's fallen
in this last little while. to the effect that his family
and his life will never be the same, it will be changed. And
it might be a great, great blessing from God, but he was one who
was caught up in this whole business that if you can do fleshly things
and you can compromise the Gospel to be popular and you won't heed
the warnings from silly old farmers at Tarrera about things that he was caught up. He was
caught up in a movement that esteems the activities of men,
and it does so on the basis of popularity and compromising the
Gospel. And I feel for him and his wife
and his two little kids, and I trust that this might be a
great, great blessing. If he's the Lord's, it'll be
worked for good. But he was caught up in a religious
system, a religious system of decisionism, a religious system
of man's abilities and man's activities, a religious system
that was founded and based on compromise. Compromise, fundamental
truths of the Gospel, hide from people notions of election, hide
from people issues of particular redemption, hide from people
those things. and play lots of nice music and
be charismatic and gather a great following. And there is something
that's extraordinarily healthy in the fact that the Lord has
kept us small. One of the joys and the delights
of it is that we are protected from thinking that somehow we
have had success because of our abilities. We trust the Lord
will bring more along, like Brad has come and enhanced our lives
and our fellowship, and more may come. We trust the Lord to
bring them along. But we trust the Lord also to
bring them along on the basis of us not compromising the Gospel
to win the approval of men. I was told by someone some years
ago, not long after we began, that if we weren't so serious
about doctrine, about the truths of Scripture, we would have had
hundreds of people join us. I see it as a compliment, brothers
and sisters. May we be kept by God, holding
fast to the fundamental truths of the scriptures, the fundamental
truths that define our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ
whom you and I shall meet in the blink of an eye, and when
we meet him, we will meet him exactly as he is described in
the scriptures. not a little tiny bit changed,
and nor would the children of God want to see Him changed at
all. There's not one thing that you'd
want to change about our great Redeemer, our great Lord and
Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will appear to some as the
most wonderful being on earth and others he will appear as
a consuming fire. May he consume the fire of our
flesh here that we might find him, one as
John found, one to whom we can lay our heads on his chest and
feel the warmth of his love and embrace. Our great God. The Acts of the Apostles, of
course, are the Acts of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is why I
wanted to say that. And it's the Lord Jesus Christ
who reigns from heaven, and it's the Lord Jesus Christ, according
to Acts chapter 3, who comes, isn't it? He comes. It says in
Acts 3, verse 11, repent ye therefore and be converted, your sins may
be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from
the presence of the Lord." This city in Samaria had times of
refreshing from the presence of the Lord. There was great
joy in that city. There was joy in Jerusalem because
they'd now at last, well these Pharisees got their hands on
Christians and they can kill them and persecute them and silence
their witness. Times are refreshing shall come
from the presence of the Lord. And verse 20 is remarkable. And
he shall send Jesus Christ, which was before preached unto you. That's the promise of the gospel,
isn't it? That he shall send Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ comes
personally. Jesus Christ comes. into the hearts of his people.
He's revealed in their hearts, and he's revealed through the
proclamation of the Gospel, and he's only revealed through the
proclamation of the true Gospel, and we have no doubt that these
people in Samaria heard from Simon. Simon was declared to
be a man full of wisdom and the Holy Ghost, a man, an upright
man, a man who was honourable, a man who wasn't deceptive in
any way at all. And he preached. He preached,
I love the description of it in verse 5, the preaching. And
Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached Christ
unto them. He preached the Lord Jesus Christ
in his deity, in his sovereignty, in his substitutionary death.
He preached the Lord Jesus Christ who showed men what they really
are. Men were exposed as having been
fallen and so badly, badly fallen. that only, only the death of
the Son of God on Calvary's tree under the wrath of God the Father,
the determinate counsel and full knowledge of God the Father,
could allow for God to call these people back into fellowship with
himself in manifest ways. But in the midst of it, there
was this certain man, this man, let's read about this man, this
man Simon. We know him often in writings,
it's not in the scriptures, but he's often called Simon Magus.
And the word Magus is simply the singular word of magi, plural. He was a magician, he was a sorcerer. But there was a certain man called
Simon which before time in the same city used sorcery and bewitched
the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great
one. We see the power of the Gospel,
don't we, in the fact that this city that had come and this city
in which there was now a great joy was a city that was held
captive by all sorts of things. Not only was it held captive
by the normal things of sin and depravity of man and the worldliness
and all of the other things that hold people captive, but it was
also held captive by this man, Simon. He'd bewitched. used sorcery
and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some
great one. Wherever there is a bewitching,
brothers and sisters, whatever form it takes, whatever form
it takes, whether it's sorcery or magic or whether it's false
religion, there will always be the esteem of the flesh of men. You esteem this man's flesh so
that you can enjoy being under something of his esteem. You can join in it somehow, can't
you? And that's what happens, doesn't
it? There is, in the exaltation of
the flesh, there is a captivity, an extraordinary captivity. Verse
10 says, to whom they all gave heed from the least to the greatest. One of the things that's remarkable
is that when it comes to spiritual matters, it makes absolutely
no difference whatsoever what someone's intelligence is, or
what someone's learning is, or what someone's position in society
is. They'll all end up being as silly
as rabbits. I remember reading an article
in a newspaper in in Malaysia some years ago, and I kept it,
I don't know where it is, but Lord willing I could find it
again. There was this guy, a physician, he was a, I think he was a children's
brain surgeon. He was an extraordinarily specialised
paediatric neurologist or something. And he did this remarkable groundbreaking
science and work during the week. And he was esteemed around the
world for the work that he did. It was just remarkable. Do you
know what he did on weekends? This was the article. On weekends,
he went out into the forests of Malaysia to commune with people
from alien spaceships, UFOs and things. And they put it in the
newspaper like our Weekend Australia newspaper will herald as this
article where this is perfectly reasonable for this guy to have
all this. My point is simple, isn't it,
that when it comes to spiritual matters, your intelligence and
your capacity for understanding the things of this world is absolutely
no protection whatsoever against being deceived. Please don't
think that intelligence equals knowledge in these areas. From
the least to the greatest, the Holy Spirit testifies. And what
were they saying? This man is the great power of
God. This man is the great power of
God. This man is God himself. He manifests
all the power of God. Because who on earth but God
could do these things? And to him they had regard because
of that a long time he had bewitched them with sorceries. So he held them captive. It is
remarkable, isn't it? We think that this is a pagan
generation, that these people These people were ignorant, enslaved
people in superstition of that ancient time and now we are wiser
and we have science and we have learning and we have all of this
history. And yet we are as silly as they
are and as captive as they are. You see all of this sorcery around
today, don't you? How many people in our society,
intelligent people, read their horoscopes each week and each
day and actually are captive to them in some way? Intelligent
people, all they have to do is spend a few seconds on the internet
and you realise that all of those constellations are absolutely
nowhere near where they were the whole As we've moved, as
our solar system has moved, and our galaxy has moved around the
universe, all those stars, they're way out of whack. By months and
months and months, there's absolutely no bearing on it whatsoever.
And yet intelligent people read them, and intelligent people
are taken captive by them, just as they are. I saw a guy out
at the beach yesterday with a great big gold cross on his chest. Why has he got a gold cross on
his chest? So the thing is, you would only know how captive he
was to it if you took it away from him. Then you'd find out
how captive he was to it. It's superstitious idolatry,
isn't it? It's superstitious idolatry.
And here we are in this so-called modern age and we are captive
to those and you can think of countless others no doubt as
we go along. Bewitched them with sorceries. There is, in this complex world
that we live in, there is a reality of these activities, isn't it? There is a mystery to the realms
of what it is to be human, which involves things which are beyond
the normal understanding and beyond science. and it is captivating
of people. And such is the darkness of man's
heart. that without the light of the
Gospel people will remain bewitched by those sorceries of all sorts. The simple word from God is to
stay away from all of them as far as you possibly can. I remember
the story of a wealthy man who was looking for a new chauffeur
and he had three potential candidates for the job of chauffeur and
he took them and he had a a house on a driveway that had sort of
steep ravines near it and so he was testing them to see how
carefully they could get him to and from his house and he
said to one of them, One of them, he wanted him to see how good
a driver he was, and he said, well, I can drive you safely
within a metre of the edge of that and still be okay. And the
next guy came along and said, well, I can drive you within
six inches of it and still be safe. That's how good a driver
I am. The third driver came along and said, I don't know about
any of that, but I'm going to keep you as far away from the
edge as possible. All I'm saying, brothers and
sisters, is stay as far away from the edge as possible. The heart of man is deceitfully
wicked. We must not necessarily assume
that these people of Samaria were ignorant pagan savages just
crawling out of caves and things. They were intelligent people
who lived in a world where they encountered both Hebrew understanding
and they had the first five books of Moses and they also encountered
Greek philosophy and Roman worldviews and things. They weren't ignorant
pagans. They were just like us. Bewitched
them with sorceries. There is in the nature of the
fall of man, the heart of man is deceitfully wicked and beyond
cure. They will, we can, we can be
led captive, all of us. All of us who are children of
God will testify to the fact that before the Lord saved us,
we were captive to things that bewitched us. We thought that
we were righteous. We thought that our religious
activities earned some esteem with God. We thought that our
position and our reputation and our morality in this world were
things that God esteemed and surely if God He's only going
to condemn people like Hitler. Surely I'm going to heaven on
the basis of my goodness. We have been bewitched. We have
been bewitched by religion. We have been bewitched by all
sorts of things of this world. And woe to us if we think that
we are beyond it, that somehow by our activities we've got beyond
all of that. And such is the darkness of man's
minds that they will attribute to God. Listen to what they say
in verse 10. This man is the great power of
God. See, these Samaritans are not
ignorant. They had the first five books of the Old Testament.
They lived right beside Jerusalem, just down in the valley nearby. They weren't strangers to all
of the promises and all of the covenants and all of the history
of God's people. They weren't strangers to their
own history. But they there were attributing.
Such is the deceptiveness, isn't it, that people will attribute
to God what is really from the devil. In deceptiveness, devils
pass for deities. We lived in India where everything
you do all the time out in the world is under the eye of some
demonic thing. You can't drive a car without
the car in front of you having some demonic thing in front of
it. You can't walk into a shop and buy anything without there
being a god above the till somehow. You can't drive down the roads
without seeing shrines to all sorts of things all over the
place, whether they're shrines to Hindu gods or Mary. These
shrines are exactly the same and people are bewitched by them
and held captive. A billion people in that land
are held captive right now by deceitfulness and sorceries.
And they attribute to them, don't they? They're devils in that
land and in our land past the deities. And it's the promise of God,
isn't it, in Revelation 13, the promise of God in terms of what
will happen in these days that we live in. In Revelation 13,
John says, I stood upon the sand of the sea and saw a beast rise
up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon
his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.
And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his
feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of
a lion. And the dragon gave him power
and his seat and great authority. And I saw one of his heads, as
it were, wounded to death, and his deadly wound was healed,
and the world wondered after the beast. And they worshipped
the dragon which gave power unto the beast, and they worshipped
the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? able to make
war with him, so big and powerful and overriding is the influence
of it. And there was given unto him
a mouth speaking great things and blasphemy, and power was
given him to continue forty days and forty months. And he opened his mouth in blasphemy
against God, to blaspheme his name and his tabernacle and them
that dwell in heaven. And it was given unto him to
make war with the saints and to overcome them. And power was
given him over all kindreds and tongues and nations that dwell
upon the earth. And all that dwell upon the earth
shall worship him whose names are not written in the Book of
Life of the Lamb, slain from the foundation of the world.
And a beast out of the earth, if you continue on, a beast out
of the earth, he does great wonders. He does great wonders, He exercises
all the power of the first beast, and He does great wonders, verse
13, so that He maketh fire to come down from heaven on earth
in the sight of men. And He deceiveth them that dwell
on the earth by means of those miracles which He had power to
do in the sight of the beast, and saying to them that dwell
on the earth that they should make an image to the beast. and
which had the wound by the sword and did live. And he had power
to give life under the image of the beast and the image of
the beast should both speak and cause many that as many as would
not worship the image of the beast to be killed." Such is
the capitulating power of these sorceries, isn't it? We read
in 2 Thessalonians 2 verse 9 that Satan The Antichrist comes with
all sorts of deceptive wonders, doesn't it? Even to him whose
coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs
and lying wonders, with all the deceivableness of unrighteousness
in them that perish, because they refused They receive not
the love of the truth that they might be saved. There is in the testimony of
the scriptures, isn't it, there is the ability of those who are
deceptive to exercise great power in all sorts of wonders. When
Moses went back to Pharaoh's court, those magicians could
do remarkable tricks. I don't know what's involved
in throwing a stick down on the ground and turning into a snake.
And I'm just so thankful that when Aaron put his stick down
on the ground, it turned into a snake and gobbled up all those
snakes. They could turn the Nile red. I don't know how they did
it. The reality is that that's the
testimony of God, that people have had the capacity to do these
sorceries and to bewitch people. And they bewitched the greatest
to the least. In the great courts of the kings
of those days were magicians. and they have almost always been
until recent times. Nebuchadnezzar had magicians
in his court, people that could understand dreams and could do
mighty tricks. Pharaoh had them, they were around
all over the place and here they are in Samaria under the guise
of this man called Simon. But here Here's another great
bat, isn't it? There is, I love these bats in
scripture. But when they believed Philip
preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God and the name
of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women." It's interesting,
isn't it? Philip speaks of that dominion
of our great God. The king's dominion is what kingdom
means, isn't it? This is God's land, this world,
this universe belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ. and thankfully
He rules and reigns as a King over it, and He rules and reigns
as a King for His people. He is. He preached the Kingdom
of God, and He preached the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. He
preached the character of the Lord Jesus Christ as described
in the Old Testament Scriptures, which is all they had. He preached
as Peter did on the day of Pentecost and their subsequent sermons,
and as Stephen had preached. They preached his deity. They
preached his humanity. They preached his substitutionary
death. They preached his current reign
and rule over all things. They preached the name of the
Lord Jesus Christ. all of his attributes. They were
baptised, both men and women, verse 13. Then Simon himself
believed also that when he was baptised, he continued with Philip
and wondered, beholding the miracles and signs which were done. You see, even the false realise
the depths of their faulty activities, don't they? Simon bewitched people. Maybe there were some real things
that happened, maybe there were just some counterfeit things.
He happens to be a clever magician. If you see magicians, they do
things that just leave you spellbound, don't you? How on earth could
you possibly do that? And they can do another one and
another one, and they can make things appear out of nowhere.
Seemingly so, lying wonders. But when Simon saw these things,
he was beholding the miracles and the signs. which were done."
That's one of the great declarations of the Gospel, isn't it? That
Satan holds people captive in that house, that strongman's
house, in his palace it's called, Satan's palace in Luke chapter
11, and then a stronger one comes along. A stronger one comes along
and he robs him of his goods. And that's exactly, it's a great
picture of the Gospel, isn't it? Our Lord Jesus Christ comes
to this land, which is this world, which is dominated by Satan,
where he keeps people held captive. And he comes and he just robs
them. He's a stronger one. One of the things that is extraordinary
in Luke chapter 11, it talks of this strong man armed, keepeth
his palace, He keeps his palace, he's armed and he keeps his palace. And what's the state of the goods,
Satan's goods, when he has them in his palace? They are in peace. It's one of the characteristics
of the people of this world in their deception, isn't it, is
that they are in peace on the very edge of the most cataclysmic
things that could come upon them, to meet God and to die, and they
are kept in peace. There is a peace that Satan brings
to people. He brings it through the things
of this world and the success of people and the esteem of their
flesh. People thinking that there is this great power and this
great man. People thinking that they, like
Simon, are great ones. He keeps them captive in all
those ways. He keeps them captive in religion.
You think of the billions in this world today who are held
captive by religion. You think of the billions, that
over a billion people are held captive by the power, the satanic
power of the Pope over their lives. The multitude, hundreds
of millions kept captive by Pentecostalism, by free will, works, religion
of all its sorts, and it holds them captive. And what does Luke
11 say? The Lord Jesus says, they are in peace. They have
enough religion, they have enough of the world, they have enough
sense that things somehow, they keep believing that things will
work out. Somehow we will get the cogs of this mechanism of
life and this economy and this world. Somehow we'll get them
all aligned and we'll have worldly peace. And God is in the business
of destroying it all the time, brothers and sisters. He will
not let man build a tower of Babel here again. That's what
wars and pestilence and all the other things are. God is frustrating
the purposes of Satan together. this kingdom to himself, to keep
his palace and to keep his goods in peace. But the Lord comes,
when the Lord comes as he did on the day of Pentecost in Manifest
Tower, when he did in the preaching of Philip in Manifest Tower,
there is a stirring. There is a stirring amongst people. There is an unsettling activity. When the Gospel comes, it's unsettling. People are at peace. You ask
Norm and his Bible study group, there was a sense of peace. We
were the greatest singers and the greatest doers. And then
the Gospel came along and there was a stirring. You don't wish
for there to be a stirring, but the reality is there's a stirring
when the truth of who the Lord Jesus Christ is declared in the
Scriptures, when there's a stirring that comes along. There is a
stirring in the lives of all of God's saved people. The strong
man, the stronger one comes and that peace is disturbed. And God's people find themselves
unsettled, they find themselves disturbed. What was peaceful
for them is now unsettling. They are, as Proverbs 30 verse
12 says, they were a generation that are pure in their own eyes.
yet not washed from their filthiness, and they have that filthiness
exposed by the Gospel, and they have the fact that their righteous
deeds that they were relying on and keeping themselves at
peace, they find that their righteousness is a filthy rag, and they're
nothing but sin, and they can't do anything about it. There is
a disturbing, there is a stirring. They are made, as the Lord Jesus
Christ declared, isn't it? They are made to be weary and
heavy laden. weary and heavy laden under the
burdens of trying to maintain their own righteousness and parade
it before men. They are led, as Jeremiah 31.9
says, they are led with weepings and supplications. There is a
disturbance that comes along. The strong man, the stronger
one comes. And He disturbs that peace and
He plunders that good, those goods. He takes them for Himself.
I love that picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. He just comes and
He triumphs so majestically and magnificently and He takes His
people. He doesn't ask for their permission.
He doesn't come and offer them something, he comes and he takes
them to himself. The stronger one is here and
he leads captivity captive and he divides the spoil. And those
who were captive are now triumphs of grace and there is joy in
that city. But in the midst of that joy,
in the midst of that throng, there was this man, Simon. And
Lord willing, as I said earlier, we'll look some more at him next
week, because the challenge, the challenging phrase is in
verse 21. The apostles say, thy heart is
not right in the sight of God. Now one of the things I wanted
to finished talking about was the fact that there is a remarkable
witness in these verses to the apostolic authority, the position
of the apostles. The scriptures declare, don't
they, that the foundation, that foundation stone of that city
in Revelation 21, the foundation stone The wall of the city had
twelve foundations and in them the names of the twelve apostles
of the Lamb. Revelation 21 verse 14. There was a great, you know,
the great gates. There were twelve gates and on the gates were the
names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel. And so
this city, this city is bounded by and surrounded by the apostolic
testimony and the entrance into that city is through the testimony
of the of the Old Testament witnesses, the names of the 12 tribes of
the children of Israel, which describes the fact that in the
Old Testament and the New, God had an elect people, the 12 tribes
represent the elect of God. But this city is built, the city
is built on foundations. The foundations are the twelve
apostles. And here in these verses we have
an interesting thing to ponder, isn't it? There is, there is
in the bestowing upon Philip of these remarkable gifts. There
are gifts for ministry that are given to him in Acts chapter
6, verse 6. We see these men were chosen
and whom they were set before the apostles and when they prayed
they laid their hands on him. Philip's ability and power to
do these miracles and things came directly from the apostles
laying their hands upon him. But Philip did not have the power
to pass that on to anyone. He had no power to pass that
on. Philip, as much as he's highly
esteemed, and we'll go on in the next few weeks to look at
the remarkable conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch, there is
no fault in Philip for proclaiming the Gospel. There is no fault
in Philip for baptising Simon. The best that all of God's servants
can do in this age is to take people upon their personal profession.
We encourage people to be baptised. And we do want them to be baptised
on the basis of hearing the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and
hearing it clearly and plainly. We want there to be, in a sense,
from them when they're testifying by their baptism, we want there
to be a testimony that they can say, I know whom I have believed. But nevertheless, nevertheless,
we baptise people in faithfulness to the Lord's command and just
trusting what we hear from people. And then we wait and pray. See, Simon in verse 13 believed. Simon was baptised. And Simon
wasn't someone in verse 13 who just stayed for a little while
and went off to do his own thing. You read there in verse 13, he
continued with Philip. He wasn't someone who was there,
he hung with Philip and with those other people who were with
him. And he wandered beholding the
miracles and signs which were done. He who was a sorcerer and
a miracle worker himself knew genuine miracles. And so there
was something remarkable about the power that Philip had, that
this deceiver knew more about than probably many others in
Samaria. And so Philip had every reason
to baptise him. And he wasn't deceived. We take
people, as I said, upon their profession and then we wait and
we pray and wait for the Lord to do a work which he alone did. Paul baptised people. Paul possibly
baptised Demas. John may well have baptised Deotrephes. Judas was baptised by John the
Baptist. and there was no harm done to
the Church of God by any of it. Judas was there at the Last Supper,
and no harm came to the cause of God, nor did any harm come
to the apostles. They will not touch us, brothers
and sisters, those who are protected by the Lord, as much as these
things trouble us. They don't touch us, they don't
cause any harm. The Lord's little ones will not
be harmed, they are kept in His arms. So Philip was not in error
and Philip was not deceived. Philip was just here to reveal
to us there are limitations for these people. But in verses 14
to 17 there is A remarkable example of apostolic
authority. Across the road here is the church.
under the library that claims to be an apostolic church. And
the reason that they are over there is because all true churches
are pastored by people who have apostolic gifts today. And if they don't have apostolic
gifts, then it's not a real church. And when I've asked them to come
over here, they won't come over here because we don't have an
apostle. We don't have someone with apostolic gifts. The charismatic
movement and the Pentecostal movement are full of this nonsense,
and this verse is one of several in the New Testament that puts
an end to it completely. The Pentecostal movement all
over the world, particularly in places like India, has bishops
and it has apostles. I've met one. I know one personally. There's an apostle. He calls
himself an apostle. His friends call him apostle.
Tens of thousands of people in Bangalore call him an apostle.
Okay, let's just read what these things say and let's just contemplate
Philip's limitations and the apostles' abilities and their
position. And one of the things I want
us to note, as I spoke earlier about the Word of God, is that
we have the testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ through the
hands of these apostles. We have handed down to us all
of the promises and all of the declarations that we make about
the name of God have come to us from the apostles. They have
a special and highly esteemed place. They are those foundations. And to build your life and to
build your faith on anything other than those foundations
is to be on very, very dangerous territory indeed. We want to
keep going back to the apostolic testimony. Now, verse 14, when
the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received
the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John, who, when
they were come down, prayed for them that they might receive
the Holy Ghost. For, verse 16, for as yet he
was not fallen, he was fallen upon none of them, only they
were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid
their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost. Several things you want to note,
isn't it? They had heard that the Samaria
had received the Word of God. To be believers is to receive
the Word of God. The Samaritans had said the Word
of God is restricted to the first five books of the Old Testament.
They had received the Word of God, but they had received the
Word of God from a man. They had heard a man preaching
the Word of God and they had received it. When they heard
that, they came down. And so the first thing they do
in verse 15 is that they pray for them. They pray for them. They pray for them to show that
the power that they had to do what they were going to do was
not in themselves personally, but it actually came from God
Himself. They prayed for them that they
might receive the Holy Ghost. I don't have time, precludes
me from looking at this in the detail that it probably requires.
But in the context of the passage, it's not the receiving of the
Holy Ghost in terms of believing the Gospel and repenting and
coming to have the Holy Spirit reveal the Lord Jesus Christ
as he's promised. It is these manifest signs, because
the rest of the passage goes on to talk about that. He was
not yet fallen upon them, only they were baptised in the name
of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not saying they weren't
saved, that they hadn't at this stage had those manifest gifts. And those manifest gifts are
gifts for ministry. They are gifts that testify to
the proclamation of the Word of God. They are gifts. They
are the gifts that the Lord Jesus Christ had, that his apostles
then had, the gifts. of healing, the gifts of speaking
in tongues, those gifts that were particular for the early
church because it had no written word other than the Old Testament,
how do you know that these people are telling the truth? Now Philip, in verse 13, he had
miracles and signs that were done. And there were miracles
and signs that caused, in some measure, these people to see
that the preaching of Philip was a preaching that had power
from on high, that the Gospel came not just in word only, but
power upon them. So the gifts that Philip displayed
were gifts that Philip had received from the apostles, and they were
gifts that Philip couldn't give to anyone. Philip could not pass
them on to anyone. And they were gifts for ministry,
they were gifts confirming the Word, they were gifts confirming
the Gospel, they were a priest. They were gifts that were given
by the laying on of hands, as Phillips were given by the laying
on of hands, and they were evidently not given to all, because Simon,
who was there and continued with them, didn't receive them. They
were gifts given at the direction of God the Holy Spirit to a particular
group of people. They are the ascension gifts
of the Lord Jesus Christ that are given to a particular group
of people. And then they received the Holy
Ghost when the apostles laid their hands upon them. So there
is, there is in these verses a declaration of the power and
the position of the apostles in the early church. And when
the apostles died, and the testimony of God was finished, there was
no need for those gifts ever again, because only living apostles
could pass them on, and when the last of the apostles died,
they died with them. That's the testimony of this
passage of Scripture, brothers and sisters. Hebrews 2 says similar
things. They were particular gifts. that
someone even like Philip, who is a remarkable character, someone
like Stephen who is remarkable, there were gifts that they didn't
have. It just reminds us again, brothers
and sisters, of the position of the apostles, but also the
position of the Word of God that comes from the apostles. How
do we know about the Lord Jesus Christ? How do we know what happened
on Calvary's tree? How do we know about the fact
of all of the remarkable promises in the scriptures. We know them
through the apostles' words. The promises of God, which warm
the hearts of God's people in troubled and trying times, are
apostolic words, aren't they? They're precious words from God,
but they're words from God that come through the apostles. Everyone
wants to think that they're going to heaven, but where do we get
to hear about heaven? We get to hear about heaven from
the apostles' testimony about heaven. Where do we get to hear
the words of the Lord Jesus Christ? We get to hear the words of the
Lord Jesus Christ from the apostles' testimony, because the Lord promised
that you don't have to trouble yourselves about trying to remember
everything. It will be brought to your notice what you need
to write and what you need to say. I suppose to go back to where
we sort of started earlier is that our comfort in this world,
our comfort in this world is a comfort that comes from going
back to that foundation, the foundation of the apostles and
the foundation of the apostles' declarations about the Lord Jesus
Christ. It is to the Word of God. I love,
Jenny and Simon gave me a little thing that I have on my desk
and it's Psalm 18, 28. They might have forgotten it but I haven't
because I look at it every day. For thou wilt light my candle,
the Lord my God will enlighten my darkness. If you want to have
light in the darkness of this world, if you want to have a
foundation, a place to walk in the midst of all of the deceptiveness
of the likes of Simon and the deceptiveness of Satan and all
of the falsehood of this world, we have just one place to go,
and that is back to the apostolic testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We go again and again and again back to the Word of God. It is
the light to our path. It is the foundation. It is that
stone, that stone that we rest ourselves upon. And just to close,
I love Sometimes what's said and sometimes what's not said
in the scriptures, it's interesting isn't it, there are these Samaritans,
idolaters. And here was an opportunity wasn't
it, here was an opportunity to bring these people back under
the law. If you read what it says about them. They received
the Holy Ghost. So it's not a law that's given
to them to do, isn't it? They're not told to perform anything.
There are no rules and regulations given to the Samaritans. If you
look to the Lord Jesus Christ, and keep looking to the Lord
Jesus Christ, the love of God, the love of God for His people
compels and constrains. You keep looking to Him as He's
declared in the scriptures, keep looking to Him, they received
the Holy Ghost. They prayed for them that they
might receive the Holy Ghost. Salvation comes as a gift from
on high, doesn't it? A gift given by a giver. And when the giver gives the
gifts, the recipients get the gift in their hands and in their
hearts. Not on the basis of them doing.
All that the Samaritans had to offer God was pagan idolatry. And yet they received the Holy
Ghost. They received the Lord Jesus
Christ. They received the testimony of
our great God and Saviour. Let's pray.