All right, we have enjoyed our
observation of the unique and remarkable ministry of Philip
as he has moved out to do a marvelous work in preparation for the gospel
going to the African nation. And we are now going to consider
points four and five in our outline points one, two, and three. stated
closing with Samaria. We talked about that at length.
Secondly, the obedience of faith. We saw that he was led of the
spirit into the will of God from the city to the desert, which
required faith. Faith being the substance of
things, what? And the evidence of things, what? We also saw
that everything is beautiful in its own what? In its own time. That's right. Because God is
in control of everything. So even though our circumstance
may appear one way, In all reality, God is working everything after
the counsel of his own will and for God's people, everything
is working together for good to them that love God. You believe
that, right? It doesn't feel good, doesn't look good, but
it is good because it's moving us closer to God. We're learning
more about him and it brings us to a place of learning what's
important to God. And that's really a big lesson.
And one of the things that we are going to be able to take
away from this ministry of Philip before he disappears from the
pages of scripture in the book of Acts for a while is the importance
of the preaching of the gospel. The importance of being in a
place in our soul where the Lord can use us to share the gospel. And what's going to be unique
about tonight's study is the one-on-one. The one-on-one blessing
of ministry. Some of us are good at large
groups, sharing the word of God with people in groups. Others
of us are not good with groups. We're better one-on-one. Some
of us are not good at all one-on-one, because one-on-one means that
you have to let your guards down in a certain way and be much
more authentic than we are comfortable with in large groups. But we
will see that Philip will do a fantastic job and set for us
a model of being prepared to share the gospel with those whom
God brings into your path. And certainly that's what happened.
Longitude and latitude met at one point, and Philip and the
Ethiopian met, didn't they? That was the sovereign act of
God. It couldn't have been better. Philip couldn't have had a watch
or a timepiece or some human mechanism that would have caused
him to run into the Ethiopian the way he did. He had to be
on God's schedule to meet this man at this time. And upon doing
so, we then echo the words of Ecclesiastes 3.1, everything
is beautiful and it's time. And we saw that this Ethiopian
would be a precursor and a foreshadow of the grace of God being brought
to the African nation. And I can say it again, if you
don't know it, that the first people group that received the
gospel as a nation outside of Israel, Jewry and the proselytes
who had come in under the Pentecostal eclectic, remember 15 to 17 nations
had come to Pentecost And they heard the gospel in their own
dialects, their own languages at that time. So they were blessed
to come in here. But God's objective, as we saw
in Genesis 2, 10 through 14, Matthew 24, 31, Psalm 68, 31,
especially with a beautiful expose of the time when the African
nations, the Kushites would reach out and run to God and open their
mouth wide and confess him as Lord. That happened in the early
centuries of the church. And so names like Augustine,
Tertullian, Irenaeus, and others were early African bishops who
had become prominent in the establishing of the gospel in major portions
of Africa as the gospel had gone back through this Ethiopian tradition,
had stated that he had went back and was very instrumental and
the establishing of the gospel in Ethiopia. And then he died
a martyr for the gospel. He died a martyr because the
gospel is an alien message when it goes into a people group and
it demands lordship on the part of sinners. And you and I, by
nature, do not want to submit to Christ. Now, you know, you
and I have to think about it today. How many of you enjoyed
our missionary last Friday night? Wasn't that a fantastic time
of sober, sober, soul-reflecting ministry. And me and Lance talked
at length until him and his wife Robin drove off to LA and to
go back to Texas before he will go back to Papua New Guinea in
about three weeks. We talked at length about the
arduous, difficult nature of missionary work. And one of the
things he told me as we prepared to deal with Philip and this
Ethiopian was that much of the missionary work that's going
on in our present world today is useless. Because our missionaries
are not taught extensively the importance of the people groups
to which they are going, the need to be able to actually identify
with that culture pervasively enough to learn the languages
and become them. Essentially, you have to become
them to reach them. Most of our missionaries are
taught a shallow missiology that basically is kind of doing a
survey when they go into different cultures. And when they realize
that the barriers are too difficult, then they pull out. Lance told
me that there were numerous missionaries who had come into Papua New Guinea
over his 20 years there who came for a year or two and pulled
out. They came for a year or two because they didn't have
Holiday Inns and McDonald's restaurants and inside toilets The people
didn't have a history of language that was written and it was too
hard. Like you guys learned 12 hours
to go to the grocery store over the mountains. 12 hours. See, that's real missionary work.
Your Bible says, blessed are the feet of those that preach
good tidings upon the mountains. That's serious missionary work.
So I've told my brothers and my sisters before, there are
not really that many missionaries in the world today. Many of them
are dying out. And what that means is people
groups are not being reached right now. They are not. I'm
not turning this into a rah-rah class for missionaries. I've
already stated that I hope that when we grow up as a church,
we're a teenager right now, that when we grow up as a church,
that God would smile on us enough to send out missionaries into
the world, authentic missionaries. real men and women who are committed
to the salvation of the ethnos. So long as the world is still
going, one thing we know God is passionate about, the salvation
of souls. So long as the world is still
going, God is passionate about the salvation of souls. He has
never been apathetic, cold, distant, aloof, or withdrawn from the
salvation of souls. Since you and I know that men
and women die to the tune of 250 to 350,000 every year, sorry,
every day. Are you hearing me? Every day,
hundreds of thousands are dying, sicknesses, natural death, all
kinds of reasons. Hundreds of thousands are being
born every day. Every three seconds a child is
born in the world. So people are being born, people
are dying. Eternity is confronting people
by the hundreds of thousands every day. And is not God concerned
for their souls? According to the disposition
of the revelation of scripture, wouldn't he be concerned with
them? So isn't the message, who shall go still relevant today? Very much so. And this is what
makes our text so germane because Philip was ready to go. He was
a deacon in the local church. but he was ready to go wherever
God sent him. And he's going now to the desert and he has
his assignment here. And this assignment is absolutely
phenomenal. So under this particular rubric, point number four, do
you understand what you are reading? A lot to learn. The implications
are there. Let's look at verse 30 and make
our way through. I'll start at verse 29. Then the spirit said
unto Philip, go near and join yourself to this chariot. Do
you guys remember what I said about that command? that that
command required both faith and boldness. That faith in that,
Philip does not know this man. Philip does not know particularly
what this assignment incurs, but he does know that if he obeys
the spirit of God, it can put him in a potential hazard and
danger because this was an authority of Ethiopia, which means he would
have had an entourage of soldiers with him so that an alien stranger
drawing near to the chariot would be in danger of being assaulted
by these soldiers. Stopped, halted in his tracks,
right? So sometimes God throws us in
the middle of dangerous situations in order to share the gospel.
But Philip was willing to go. I thank God for him. Listen to
what it says. And Philip ran thither to him. And as he ran there, he heard
him read, the prophet Isaiah and said, Do you understand what
you are reading? Phenomenal. Again, are we not
talking about the exquisite nature of God's sovereignty to put a
person in the right place at the right time to observe someone
doing something that is so apropos to the goal of a servant? I mean,
he's not praying. He's not chatting to pagan gods. He's not eating. He's reading
the scriptures. We're talking about an open door,
aren't we? We're talking about a door so
wide open that Philip doesn't have to try to figure out something
to say to start a conversation. I've said it before. The preparation
of the heart of man and the answer of the tongue, they come from
the Lord. That God prepares a heart and then he opens a mouth and
the two coming together result in a wonderful thing taking place.
Philip, all he had to say was, do you understand what you're
reading? What an open door. You and I wake up in the morning
and say, Lord, use me. And then somewhere along the
day, you come across somebody and you can't even get around
them and they're reading the scriptures. What an open door. Now, if I don't say, hey, my
brother, hey, my sister, what you're reading, I don't want
to witness. Is that true? I have no desire
to make sure that this is an eternity bounce hole going in
the right direction. When I know the word and he or
she is reading the word and I don't confirm that word they're reading,
I don't want to witness. But Philip was more than ready
to engage. And his question was, do you
understand what you are reading? This now brings us into our contemplation
under this fourth point. Do you understand what you're
reading? I want us to deal with five or six things. First, the
scriptures, the scriptures have been given. That's the first
proposition I want you to get. What I want you to understand
is that what verse 30 tells us very plainly, verse 30 tells
us that God's word has already gone out to the known world at
that time. Are you hearing me? And what
I mean by that is this, that the word of God has already been
declared in Psalm 19, that it runs throughout the world. It's
line is drawn forth. There's no place where the word
of God has not gone in terms of the oracular voice of God,
the living word. And then in terms of the written
word of God, we know that by the time we get to Acts chapter
eight, which we are around AD 37, AD 38, AD 39 here, We are 1,500 years removed from
the Old Testament. Moses wrote the Old Testament,
the Tanakh, and then the prophets wrote with him over a 1,500 year
period, 1,500 years before Christ. And so we have the Old Testament
scriptures. They were Hellenized by Alexander the Great 300 years
before Christ. So we have what we call the Septuagint
version, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. which could
have been the translation that our brother here is reading.
He could have been reading the Greek translation or the Aramaic
translation because the Aramaic was the living language of that
culture, which would have been a derivative of the Hebrew. The Hebrew having began to die
out when Israel was in the dysphoria or the captivity under Babylon,
Medo-Persia, the Grecian kingdom and finally the Roman Empire
so Primarily our most likely what this Ethiopian was reading
was a Greek Translation of the writings of Isaiah now they were
in scroll form They weren't like you and I have a full Bible you
I've got five. I got 50 Bibles of all sorts
Greek Hebrew Aramaic, you know coordinate Greek classical Greek
lexicons in the linear is all Bibles all over the place And
I don't think I have one loose leaf Bible in my collection.
I think I got one years ago, loose leaf, meaning that they
came in independent books. But in the first century, very
seldom would a person have had the whole of the Old Testament,
which we would have called in that language at that time, the
Tanakh. The Tanakh, remember that? That's a contraction of
three forms. of the literature or writings
of the Old Testament, the Torah, the Keteim and the Neviim, the
law, the prophets and the writings or the writings in the prophet
that would have been from Genesis to Malachi. Very seldom would
a person have the whole compilation and probably not they would have
had portions, scrolls, like in your synagogues, there would
have been scrolls. So when Jesus started his ministry,
in Capernaum are in Nazareth. Remember, he took the scroll
of Isaiah, the prophet, and he read from it where it quotes
in Isaiah chapter 61, the spirit of the Lord God is upon me. And
so they would have had scrolls. And so this brother would have
had a scroll, which means God's word has gone out into the world.
Go with me in your Bible to Psalm 68, 11. I want you to simply
mark this, that when God plans on saving people, he sends his
word before them to prepare them for his revelation. I want us
to mark that because important to the conversion of sinners
is the presence and the influence of God's word. This is one of
these passages, too, that if you're going to be a sound presuppositionalist
and you guys hear me talk about this on the radio a lot. If you're
going to be a biblicist, it's called being a biblicist. If
you're going to be a person of the Bible, you're going to have to
be able to defend the origin of scripture. And the way you
defend the origin of scripture is by letting scripture tell
you about its origin. You don't defend the origin of
scripture by secular writings and secular archives and secular
scholars. You defend the scripture's origin
by scripture. So scripture is what we call
self-authenticating. Scripture affirms its own origin. Psalm 68, 11 says what? The Lord
gave the what? So we'll stop right there. So
when people say to you, how do you know that's the word of God?
Psalm 68, 11.1. Isn't that what it says? So so now so now now stay with
me for a moment. Why would you argue reason rationalize
with a person who is questioning the origin of scripture when
you can simply open the book and show him right there? Can
you read these simple words? We learn this in Greek. The Lord
is the subject. Gabe is the verb. The word is
the object. That's not hard. The Lord gave
the word. And is the conversation. For
us who believe the word, who gave us this Bible? Jehovah. He gave us his Bible. The Lord
gave the word. Now, how did he give us give
it to us? Here's the second line. And great was the company that
what? What do you mean, preacher? We
mean Moses, Joshua, David, Jeremiah, Isaiah. All of the Old Testament
writers are the publishers of that word. They gave us under
inspiration of the spirit of God. the compilation of scripture
called the Old Testament. I don't have to go any other
text, but right there. I let a person struggle with
whether or not the Bible is the word of God by the claims of
scripture. I don't necessarily have to go
to 2 Timothy 3.16, all scriptures given by inspiration of God,
profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness
that the man of God might be thoroughly furnished under all
good works. I know that's true. That verse is not for them. That
verse is for us. That verse is not for the skeptic,
that verse is for the believer. That verse tells us the purpose
and utilitarian nature of the scriptures. But we already believe
that the scriptures origin is from God. Now tell me why you
gave it to me, to build me up, to give me an inheritance among
those that are sanctified and to qualify me for ministry. But
the point that you and I are developing right now is that
Why Philip is going to be successful in his ministry to the Ethiopian
is because God in his mercy has allowed the Living Word to become
the written word and the written word to be spread throughout
the world Isaiah chapter 8 verse 20. Here's another axiom our
principle of interpretation critical to the authority that the believer
has when he shares the Word of God So let me just kind of constrain
you as we are contemplating the structure and the premise, the
framework of this witness that's about to take place between Philip
and the Ethiopian. What God will do is make sure
that his true is the conversation piece, the final authority, the
basis upon which legitimate and eternally significant dialogue
will take place. In other words, If a man or woman
pretends to want to talk to you about God, but is not interested
in the scriptures, they are fooling themselves. If a man or woman
pretends to want to talk about God, but do not actually want
to deal with God's self revelation, they are pretending they are
fooling themselves. There is a lot of people talk
about being zealous for God, but as soon as you talk about,
Hey, I got a copy of the scriptures and then they start to back up.
They're not serious about God at all. Are you hearing what
I'm saying? Because now we are moving from
the realm and dimension of mere opinions to that, which is written
on white paper with black ink and the words don't change. They
say what they say. and you can read them and I can
read them and we can go both go what say ye of the scriptures. Cause that's what these guys
are about to do. What Philip does is he simply launches in
on a ready-made conversation. But what Isaiah says to us in
Isaiah chapter 8 20 and you see it up on the board, this is important.
Are you ready to the law? That's the word of God in the
old Testament. When you see the word law, Don't think of the
word law always in the strict sense of the Decalogue or the
Ten Commandments, Exodus 20. Think of the word law in the
usual sense in which Hebrew people thought of the word law from
Genesis to Malachi. It was the whole of God's written
revelation. It's called law. To the law and
to the testimony. Now the testimony is the inherent
witness of that law. Your Bible is a testimony of
God. It's a record of who God is and
how he made the world and how he sustains the world and what
has happened with regards to humanity, his dignity, his calling,
his fall, his need for a savior and how God has entered into
the brokenness of humanity with a redemption scheme we call biblical
theology, right? Biblical theology is what we
mean by the testimony of God. So the law has inherent in it
the testimony of God. And by the way, if you want to
bolster up your understanding of that concept, just read Psalm
119. David will help you understand
the benefits of God's law being a testimony of God's faithfulness
to his people. So we see in Isaiah chapter 8,
verse 20, a rule for conversation. Here it is. To the law and to
the testimony, if they do not speak according to this word,
watch this, it's because there's no light in them. So now when
you and I begin to have a conversation with people about God, but we
fail to utilize God's word, we are both in darkness. Our conversation is speculative
at best, blasphemous at worst. You and I are purely speculating
when we set aside God's written revelation and go to talking
about God. Your brain and mine is not calibrated
to stay on point when it comes to talking about God. You understand
what I mean by that? Our plum line is faltered by
a sin nature that constantly needs to be calibrated by the
word of God itself. Have you ever found yourself
talking about God and something deep down inside that intuition
said, brother, you off course. You are of course and the reason
why is you don't have the book in front of you You are daring
to talk about god as if somehow you are the white paper upon
which the black print is in your own conscience But now if as
david said in psalm 119 verses 19 11 thy word have I hid in
my heart that I might not sin against thee wherewithal shall
a young man cleanse his way by taking heed thereto unto thy
commandments with my whole heart have I sought thee. Oh, let me
not wonder from your commandments. Your testimonies are my delight. They are my counselors. Once
when, once we have divulged the word of God are fed on the word
of God and inculcated the word of God in our system and committed
it to memory as we're supposed to do. Once we committed to memory,
comprehending it, then we can actually have an intelligible
conversation with people because our understanding Now it's framed
by the word of God. It's hedged in by what we know.
It's hedged in by what we know. It's quite possible, and I believe
it to be true, that Philip didn't have a Bible with him. Philip
was just running. Philip means horse. That brother
could run. Philip means horse. And he ran
with the word in his heart. He ran with the word in his heart.
So as the proverb says, that if we were to hide his word in
our heart, God then will allow it to come back for out of the
abundance of the heart that the mouth what? That's right. And
so Philip is prepared to actually reflect his knowledge of biblical
truth while the Ethiopian has the literal text in front of
him. What a wonderful situation. Again, Proverbs chapter 16, one,
the preparation of the heart of man and the answer of the
tongue, right? The answer of the tongue. for
God to have graced you to have taken the time out every Friday
for 10 years to become deeper and more profoundly committed
to biblical truth and then set you in front of one eternity
bound soul where they are contemplating a biblical text of what you have
been studying for years. You are now prepared to help
them understand the word of God and set them on a trajectory
for eternal life. See how important studying God's
word is. in that regard, and so Philip becomes for us a model
of that. The scriptures have been given.
They were given to the Jewish people on Mount Sinai and beyond. They were given to the proselytes
who came into Judaism 1,500 years before Christ. They were given
to Philip graciously as he grew up under the gospel. They're
given to the Ethiopian who's a wealthy, prominent servant
the king a queen of Ethiopia who can purchase his own scriptures
and apparently he had an Acumen for reading because that was
not prominent for black men back then is worse now is worse now
But this black man can read and he audible eyes the scriptures
in what we call Jewish Formed obedience because the scriptures
were designed to be read Those were structured writings, uh,
syntactically designed to be read here. Oh, Israel, the Lord,
your God is one Lord. And so God meant for his people
to hear the reading of the word. And so to hear it, you have to
audibilize it. That's what he did. He's reading
the scriptures as he's headed from Jerusalem, going back to
Ethiopia, down this bizarre, strange road called Gaza, because
it doesn't have as many people on this road going the way of
Gaza. It's desert and so it's quite a solitude area for him
to go down and he can read the scriptures. And Philip is hearing
him reading the scriptures. So the scriptures have been given
to us. Point B, hunger for the truth is a gift. Hunger for the truth is a gift.
Let me say that again so it can actually penetrate the soul.
Hunger for the truth is a gift. We do not naturally hunger for
the Word of God. Here in the West, we are anemic
when it comes to the Word of God. Our people are sick. You see it every day. Sick because
we feed on junk 23 hours a day. And so over the course of a week,
our diet is so distorted and dysfunctional and so bad, we
have no hunger for God's word. You know what we have hunger
for? Entertainment. We can sit up and be entertained,
captivated, held in suspense for hours by lies. and can't endure propositional
exposition or exhortation for more than a few minutes before
our body starts falling asleep. We are sick and effete spiritually. I'm telling you the true condition.
I've been seeing this for years. Breaks my heart. Breaks my heart. I still say, you know, I still,
and I've been praying to the Lord for this and he never, he
does not answer this prayer. This is one prayer the Lord does
not answer. And I've been asking him to answer
this prayer for me for the longest. Lord, you know, I live in a state
where people can't handle the word for more than 30 minutes.
I've been wanting to become one of those preachers where I can
finish in 45 minutes flat. Let y'all out of here. That's
a prayer the Lord has never answered. He has never answered that prayer.
I can't get out of here under an hour. It's a remarkable thing
too, because really I have seen people who just come apart at
the seams after 20, 25 minutes. They can't hold it together.
Cogency is not an apparatus in our thinking when we're not hungry
for truth. Is that true? Yeah, so we're
in bad shape. And see, what I am getting at
is this. I guarantee you that Isaiah 53, which is the text
from which Philip begins to expound and explain and exhort and exegete
for this brother took longer than 45 minutes before they came
to water. I guarantee you they were there
for hours as he went line upon line, precept upon precept, word
here, word there, explaining the jot and tittle of Isaiah
53. I guarantee you they were writing
for hours. And the Ethiopian didn't even
say, can we stop for a bathroom break? And I'm simply saying that, you
know, we kind of laugh about it, but we are anemic. Our country is anemic. It would be one thing if we didn't
have anything else to do, but we do so many other things over
the top. So it's kind of alarming, isn't
it? That we don't have a hunger for God's word as we ought. Well,
let me just nurture your thoughts with just a few of them in Psalm
119. Let's go there. Psalm 119 is what we call the
alphabet Psalm, for us who are studying languages, right? Psalm
119 is the Hebrew what? Alphabet. So let's look at Psalm
119 verses 20 and following just to nurture our thoughts under
this proposition that hunger for truth is a gift. So if a
person tells you that they are seeking the truth, but they are
not hungry for God's word, tell them that they are not telling
the truth. You're not hungry unless you're
hungry for God's word. Psalm 119 verse 20 listen to
what David says my soul Breaketh for the longing that it hath
unto your judgments from time to time. Do you see that? Is
that what it says? What does it say all the time?
Notice what he said my soul breaks That means he's bent over in
pain for hunger for God's word. Have you ever been there? Have
you ever had a small season where the hunger for God and his word
was so profound? That's what David is saying.
My soul breaks for the longing that I have for your judgments
at all time. Again, the judgments are God's precepts. Look at verse
18. I don't know why I went backwards,
but look at it. Open thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous
things out of your what? Amazing, because David is a prophet. He is a priest. He is a king
in his own right. He's a revelator. He receives
revelation. He gives revelation. He is acquainted
with God. He's been knowing God in his
providence, in his power, from his youth. And yet he's saying,
open my eyes. You know what that means? He
wants more revelation. He's not asking for initial revelation. He's asking for more revelation.
You know what he's saying? I want to go deeper into your
truth. I want to go deeper into your
word. Doesn't that constitute hunger? See, because I can say
to you that when we don't have a serious commitment to biblical
truth, we don't want to go deeper. This is why I know my present
generation is in trouble because we don't want to go deeper. Deeper
has a number of implications. So I want to do more than read
my Bible. I want to be able to study my Bible. But if I'm going
to study my Bible, I'm going to have to learn how to study.
But if I'm gonna study, I'm gonna have to have a hunger that's
gonna give me the grace to learn the tools for breaking that word
down and going deep into God's word. Like a handful of us are
learning Greek, are we not? And it's killing us. Because
this is all about retraining your brain to think through with
the objective of penetrating the English language so that
we can get to the original language, so that we can see the deep nuances
in that original language that the English language does not
give us. This is not about some type of morbid pursuit of intellectualism. This is simply about wanting
to know God on a deeper level. That's all this is about. There's
a point at which when you study the word of God so much, you
realize there are limitations there. You hit walls. Like a
lot of you got really, really, really bad translations of the
Bible. And because they're really bad,
you can't go deep. Because they are designed with
a certain set of assumptions. And you know what that set of
assumptions is? You don't want to go deep. Give me a shallow
Bible. Give me a Bible that says what
it means on the surface so that I don't have to search it out.
But that kind of thinking is actually contrary to what God's
word says. Doesn't God's word say in the
Proverbs, if you seek me as silver and as gold, as fine jewels and
rubies. If you search for me with that
kind of diligence, you will find wisdom, you will find understanding,
you will find knowledge, you will find the fear of the Lord,
you will find the treasures of wisdom and knowledge if you pursue
God like that. Isn't that what it promises?
Now watch this, but if you're gonna pursue God like that, you
gotta get the tools. Because you're not excavating
any kind of minefields without being ready to dig, without being
ready to work, without being ready to go, without being ready
to plumb through the hard, rocky veneer that has behind it that
truth that the soul is longing for. You don't mind somebody
else doing it. Like, I watch the mining shows. How many of you watch those mining
shows? The shows where these guys go up into the hills bore
out the ore and find these exquisite diamonds and rubies. And I love
that. I love that. I ain't going. I love it. I ain't going. Can I tell you why I'm not going?
Because I ain't hungry for that. Now I love watching it, but I'm
not going because I'm not hungry for that. Now I like watching
it, but I'm not going. Cause I'm not hungry for that.
I'm going to say it one more time. Now I like watching it like religious folk, like watching
preachers, but they're not going cause they're not hungry like
that. Are you hearing what I'm saying? And so we live on a shallow
diet that's limited in a certain capacity. Now I think good pastors
and good preachers and good teachers are both a curse and a blessing.
Isn't that true? They're cursing a blessing because
if you have a really good pastor who teaches well, you get a very
solid meal. You, you actually get enough
to work with for the whole week. If you just took his outlines
and he didn't already shoveled and broke it all up. All the
jewels is laying out there for you to just scoop up, go home,
watch off and put them in order. You won't even do that. Open
down my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.
Now granted, Granted, this symbiotic relationship between the preacher
and the hearer is critical. You are highly blessed. You're
saved by it. You're sanctified by it. You're worn by it. You're
built up by it. You're broke down by it. You're
strengthened by it, kept by it, and eternally glorified by it.
It's true. What we're doing right now can
save your soul. There's no doubt about that.
We thank God then for just feeding us by opening our mouths wide
and putting it in. Isn't that true? But I'm just
simply saying now, I'm just simply saying that there comes that
time when just a little bit of work is indicative of the hungry
soul. Look at verse 33. Here's what
David says, and it's all in Psalm 130. Teach me, O Lord, the way
of your statutes, and I shall keep it to the end. Now he's
hungering for God to work in the midst of his labors. You
see what David is saying? I can't teach myself. Even if
I have the tools, I can't even use those tools properly unless
God assists me. So a humble person, and this
is what you're getting ready to see with the Ethiopian, will
recognize I must be taught of others in order to be able to
teach. So teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes, and I shall
keep it to the end. Verse 34, give me understanding,
and I shall keep thy law. Yea, I shall observe it with
my whole heart. Do you see how David is dependent upon the paraclete
work of the Spirit of God to teach him how to understand the
Word of God and that in understanding the Word of God, then he can
observe God's standards with all that's in him? Look at verse
35, make me to go in the path of your commandments, for therein
do I what? Incline my heart unto your testimonies
and not to what? Turn away my eyes from beholding
vanity and quicken thou me in your what? Establish thy word
unto your servant who is devoted to your fear. Turn away my reproach,
which I fear for your judgments are great. Do you notice from
verses 33 through 39, David is acknowledging the passivity on
his part when it comes to the advancement of biblical truth
in his soul, that he needs God to minister truth to him. that
is not in the first sense, his own strength that breaks through
the rocks of biblical truth. You notice what he says? He says,
teach me, give me, make me, incline me, turn me, establish thy word,
turn away my, do you understand what he's saying? He's saying
left to myself, I will never get the job done. He's telling
the truth. And really he's imploring the
third person to enter into his labors to make them productive
and fruitful. This is what we mean by hungry.
This is a hungry prayer. This is a hungry prayer. A hungry
prayer is teach me, give me, make me, incline me, turn me.
Establish your word unto me. That's a hungry pair hungry hunger
for the truth is a gift verses 38 through 40 We've been there.
That's great Now the third point that I want you to see is not
only have the scriptures being given Not only is it a gift to
be hungry for the truth as we have in the Ethiopian before
us But an expositor is the next gift. Don't you think? What is
it? What is an expositor a teacher? someone who explains the scripture. Don't you feel blessed? Let's just use the religious
term. When God gives you really good teachers, isn't the person
or persons or people or individuals who are gifted with explaining
the scriptures a gift to us? It's a real blessing, isn't it?
And isn't exposition a wonderful experience. It is because exposition
is what God would have done in order for us to know truth. And
it simply means to expose. That's what exposition means.
And when we talk about expository preaching, we're talking about
taking the text and working with it until it's exposed. Until
the meaning of the text is exposed. And that requires a giftedness
on the part of the teacher to be able to work with the text
to the point where he brings out, they bring out the truth
in that text. Which means when we look at the
text, the work is not done until the text is explained, correct? So go with me in your Bible to
Jeremiah 3.15. Let's look at this. You've heard it before.
Let's see it. This is one of God's promises
to you and to me. And by the way, I think it's
true of every one of us in here If you have a love for the gospel
and the truth claims of Jesus Christ through the gospel, it's
because God and his providence has allowed you to be exposed
to good preaching and good teaching. I'm confident that solid Christians
are the consequence of solid teaching. Listen to what the
word of God says in verse 15 of Jeremiah three. Are you there?
This is after you pledge with Israel to come back. He says
in verse 15, And I will give you pastors, see the word pastor?
That means shepherds, people who care. According to my heart,
which shall feed you with what? Knowledge and understanding. I will give you shepherds. That
means they are gifts to the church. One of the things that was stated
in our Saturday men's meeting with Lance when the questions
where we did a Q&A on Saturday, And one of the questions that
was raised to Lance was, how did you know when you were called
to go into the mission field? And Lance said, I knew when I
was called to go into the mission field when I was sent. When I
was sent by God. And he said, that's the difference
between authentic missionaries and the people that just go.
See, people just go. They never even determine whether
they are first called. And then the idea of being sent
doesn't even cross their mind. If you're not called, you're
not gonna be sent. And if you go, you are running
without authority. Remarkable, isn't it? He said
this, and this was quite insightful, and I'm so thankful that we had
a chance to work with him because he's an accomplished man in a
number of ways. But when the question came up
by, guys, so when did you sense your calling to go? He says,
when I was sent, when the church saw that I had the qualifications
and then gave the suggestion of where I should go. And simultaneously
with being sent by the church was the call of God in my life.
It was a combination of his heart being tugged by the spirit of
God to actually do what his dad does. He had already been working
as an engineer. He had a very good job making
good money. And he woke up one day and he raised a question
to himself. What am I doing? Why every man and every man in
our church should have been there that Saturday night, he said,
I was making good money, my life was well, I came from a very
prestigious college with an engineer's degree, so did my wife and money
was available. But I woke up one day and I said,
what am I doing? And what happened was a dump
truck from God had backed up and loaded on him conviction
because he grew up as a missionary's child. But see, he did what a
lot of young people do when they go to school. They lose their
mind. And he started pursuing secular
success. But before it got a hold of him
very well, the spirit of God caught up with him and dumped
on him a whole truckload of conviction, which brought about the culmination
of this question. What am I doing? Remarkable, isn't it? Remarkable
the thought of what am I doing? Because most people are wasting
their life. Truth be told, we're not, listen,
truth be told, God help us, me first. We aren't doing anything
in terms of a real eternal destiny with the majority of our time.
We're just wasting our time. I'm just here to tell you. We
are abiding our time till we get old, decrepit, helpless,
then become somebody else's problem, and then die. Die a miserable
death because we lived a useless life. Die a miserable death because
we lived a useless life. because we hoard it to ourselves,
tried to. And you guys understand this
game, right? You understand that this monopoly game called life
makes 85 to 90 percent of us losers. That means as much as
you're trying to acquire, the enemy is taken from you. So you're
distracted by pursuing things that you never really acquire
in mass, complaining about not having enough. When in fact,
the matter really what we are doing is wasting our time. In
the larger scope of things, ladies and gentlemen, we are wasting
our time. So what Lance said was, when that dump truck backed
up and loaded on him a conviction of the question, what am I doing?
He had to really think through what would be a worthy calling. And think about how he went from
being an engineer to being a missionary. See, he could have actually compromised
and just became a popular preacher. See, because there's a lot of
secular trappings and just being a popular preacher, like your
present day preachers are myopic. They don't think in terms of
missionary work. They don't have second and third generation.
They don't think in terms of impacting the world. They don't
think in terms of nurturing the body politic and giving them
a projectory of perspective and thinking of making sure that
we raise our children up so soundly in biblical truth that they would
even contemplate leaving America to spend their life in the salvation
of other souls. Now, churches used to think like
that 50 years ago, 60 years ago, a hundred years ago. You know
how churches think today? How big we can get, how modern
we can be, how fancy we can have it. This is why you and I are
in the book of Revelation right now. And I know it hurts because
it's a big old mirror exposing us for what we are not. And so
I'm just thankful for an opportunity to be exposed to a legitimate
missionary because he follows this particular prescription.
And I will give you pastors according to my own heart. which shall
feed you with knowledge and understanding. Go with me in your Bible now
to Ephesians chapter four. Let's look at a few more. And
then we'll make our way back to our text and begin to gradually
do an expository analysis of the verses that comprise the
witness and preaching of Philip to this Ethiopian. Ephesians chapter four, you've
seen these verses before, but let them once again resonate
in your thinking. What did God do? when he raised his son from
the dead in preparation to bring the church to be what the church
is supposed to be. He raised his son from the dead,
sat him at his own right hand. And notice what it says over
in verse eight. Wherefore, he said, this is Ephesians
four. Wherefore, he said, when he ascended
on high, he led captivity captive and he gave gifts unto men. Do
you see that? So The vision is of our master
plundering the depths of hell by his atoning work, bringing
into captivity all things under him. This is what he meant when
he rose again from the dead and says, all power and authority
has been given unto me in heaven and in earth. So he has authority,
but he also knows now in order to bring about the church's reality,
existence, fullness, and functional ability, he has to give gifts.
And he gave gifts unto men. Now, that he ascended, what is
it? But that he also descended first
into the lower parts of the earth. He that descended is the same
also that ascended up far above all heavens that he might fill
all things. Do you see verse 10? So gain
the largest nature of this objective because you need to see it. He
rose again and he ascended on high that the net consequence
of all of his work is that he would fill everything. The whole
universe will be staffed by the Lordship and rule of Christ. There will not be one place in
this made universe of which the triune God made that Christ's
handprint of redemptive purpose won't touch. That's a massive
agenda worth contemplating. He's going to fill the universe
with his rule. This here is the restoration
principle. This here is the redemptive work
of Christ and it's pervasive and expansive nature. Can you
contemplate it? See, if we were to just think
about, again, the enormity of that statement, you and I could
be around for another 10,000 years. The enormity of the statement
that Christ is going to fill the universe Are you hearing
me? Because we're learning more about
the universe every day. We're learning more about this massive,
almost unending entity called the universe because it reflects
the nature of God. God's infinite in his nature.
So it's not uncommon for us or wrong for us to contemplate that
an infinite God would create a universe that would appear
to be infinite to us. In any event, the universe is
corrupted by what? Sin. Down to the last corner
of it. And that universe has to be affected
by the rule of Christ and how he's going to affect that. You
and I don't know, but this we do know he's ascended on high
ruling over all things to the point where he's going to fill
it. He might just do that when he comes back or he may be doing
it now. There are so many plausible ideas
that you and I could work through with regards to the manner in
which that might take place. We'll let that be for another
day, but centrally, It's going to be done in the redemptive
purposes of Christ through the church for which we have verses
11 and following and he gave some here the gifts. Are you
ready? Apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some
pastor teachers. Do you see that? These are fundamental
gifts. to the establishing of the church
and the church becomes his beacon. It becomes his centerpiece. It
becomes the entity by which his glory is manifested universally,
both in terms of the physical world and the angelic world.
Let me say that again. The Paul has already concluded
his argument about the superlative nature of the church It's measure,
it's height, it's width, it's depth in chapter three. He's
already talked about the superlative nature of the church, which concept
is really worthy of our thinking as well. Cause you know, we naturally
play the church down. We naturally diminish the church's
significance. We naturally, we don't say it
in words, but we'll act like the church is kind of a stepchild
to God. Yes, we will. We will treat the
church like it's a secondary issue. We do it in our life.
If you really saw the church the way Christ saw the church,
you would never do that. You would know that everything
is to be accomplished through the church. If you, if you were
thinking like God, but we don't in our present generation because
of our individualistic nature, our, our very autonomous nature
where, you know, most of us can actually provide for ourselves
and live on our own and die on our own. Most countries can't,
we, they have to help each other. But in our country where you
can have your own house with your own two car garage, with
your own bedroom, with your own bathroom, your own bathroom,
you can live and die without anyone's help. That kind of mentality
makes us make the church, at least on a practical level and
a philosophical level, watch this, disposable. I'm just telling
you the truth. See, the center of our world
is our own homes. It's not the work of the church,
but for Christ, it's the church. And for the apostles, it was
the church. Listen to what he said. Listen to what he said.
Over in chapter three, are you there? I'm just going to show
you just a little bit of what he said in chapter three. He
says over in chapter 3 in verse 17, which was his prayer. Now
I'll start at verse 16. Here's my prayer that God would
grant you according to the riches of his glory. To be strengthened
with might by his what? in the inner man. I'm praying
that according to the abundance of the riches of his glory, which
are inexhaustible, that you and I would be strengthened with
might by his spirit in our inner man. Do you understand if that
prayer gets answered, what kind of revolutionary change takes
place in us? Do you understand that? That
if we're strengthened with all might in the inner man, that
you and I would think differently. What Paul is saying is in order
for you to see the work of God the way the apostles saw the
work of God God has to change your mind from the inside. He
has to change your heart from the inside. He has to change
your affections in order to see what he sees This verse actually
corresponds with Psalm 119 open down mine eyes that I might behold
wonderful things out of your law You see how we can lose our
view We can actually take off legitimate glasses that give
us a closer view and put on our shades You know what you look
like in here right now with shades on You had on shades, you know
what you would look like right like a blind man Stevie wonder
listen I'm praying that you would be strengthened with all my in
your inner man that Christ may dwell in your hearts by what
that you being rooted and grounded in love and may be able to comprehend
with all saints what is the breath, length, depth and height. What
he's talking about, the measurement of an edifice. What is the breath,
length, depth and height? And to know the love of Christ,
which passes what? That you might be filled with
all the fullness of God. Now watch this. And when he says
that you might be filled with all the fullness of God, this
is what we call a synecdoche. What he's saying in verse 18,
objectively, is the edifice of the church. He's making you and
I that object in verse 19, that you might be filled with all
the fullness of God. Should not the church be filled
with all the fullness of God? Should not that edifice that
has a width, a length and depth and height, Be filled with all
the fullness of God. If it's filled with all the fullness
of God, would not that be called the temple of the living God?
Wouldn't it be called the church of the living God? And what that
would mean is that you and I, who are living temples of God,
we would remain in heightened sensitivity to the blessed, blessed
privilege of being a part of this body of Christ, which is
so precious to the true and the living God. Am I making some
sense? so precious to the eternal living.
Now watch it. Now unto him who was able to do exceedingly abundantly
above all that we ask or think according to the power which
works in us, unto him be glory. Unto him be glory. Who is to
him? The father. Unto the father be glory. Where?
In the church. By whom? Jesus Christ. Throughout
all the ages. Crazy. You know what he just
stated? That the mechanism by which God
the Father is glorified is the church of the living God as Christ
who is the steward and head of that church is filling that church
up from generation to generation, world without end. World without end. So for me,
just based on this text alone, you know what I'm bound not to
do? Put a limit. on the purpose and relevance
of the church anytime in human history. I'm bound not to because
the text said don't. World without end. What that
means is so long, and I said it earlier, so long as there
is a humanity, the church will be significant in the eyes of
Christ. For those who understand the correlation between the gospel
received as this Ethiopian and the gospel manifested as the
servant Philip is going to develop. All right, let's go back to our
text. Let me just touch on one thing. I got five minutes. Let
me touch on this. Let's see here. So we already
have looked at the scriptures being given. Hunger for the truth
is a gift. An expositor is a gift. I could
go to 2 Timothy 1, 11, Titus 1, 9, many other places that
affirm that. Here the apostle Paul is making
it very clear that Christ gave us these teaching gifts to establish
the church and we now are going to look at just a few verses
where we see the functional manifestation of the gift of teaching in the
context of evangelism on the part of Philip with the Ethiopian. We'll just look at a couple of
verses and we'll shut it down for tonight and we'll come back
and unpack it a little bit more next week. Now that we've had
our thoughts marinated with the importance of this work, Here's
what Philip says. Philip, having run to the chariot,
raised the question, do you understand what you read? And he says over
in verse 31, how can I accept some man should guide me? Do
you see that? How should I accept some man
should guide me? So that brings us into a very
apropos question again, or an apropos consideration. This man
is agreeing with Philip that though he has read the text audibly,
Isaiah 53 verses one through 12 audibly, and he heard him
reading the scriptures, he's agreeing with Philip before they
even open up the conversation that he really doesn't understand
what he's reading. He's agreeing with him. See, in other words,
Philip has actually raised a question that actually affirms the mental
state of the man while he's reading. And you know, there are lots
of people who read their Bibles and don't understand what they're
reading. They just don't. And you and I don't always understand
what we're reading. And so there is a humility here
on the part of this Ethiopian that is remarkable, but this
also goes back to Proverbs 16, one, the preparation of the heart
and man. The preparation of the heart and man. I've said it many
years preaching and teaching out of this text. The average
individual out of his pride or her pride would say, yeah, I
understand what I'm reading. the average individual who would
not be ready to have a stranger actually give them insight into
the text because that would require humility on my part. I'm not
going to necessarily let you in the door. I'm cool, man. I don't need your help. But see,
to have said that would have indicated that he really was
not hungry for truth. See, when you're hungry for truth,
your ear is always ready for an answer. When you're hungry
for true, the ear is ready for an answer anywhere. You just think about this now
and this help me, Saints. I have five minutes. Help me
now. There we call this an ellipsis in writing and grammar. These
are the things that are not said in the text. You got to read
this text. There's a bunch of stuff not
said. Like, I don't know how many soldiers were guarding this
chariot. I don't know how he pulled up
to the chariot and just asked that question. You know, I don't
know. I don't know how this happens.
And didn't the brother go say, how can I accept some man guide
me? Unless, of course, there again
is such an exquisite harmonizing of events that this Ethiopian
is already ready to welcome this stranger in. Now think about
that for a moment. Am I boring you? Five minutes,
just five minutes. Just think about this one. Think
about this one. Think about how we lose and gain blessings because
of our flawed cultural prejudices. See, in many cultures, when you
meet a stranger out in the middle of nowhere, arid desert like
that, you welcome that individual. There's not a sense of apprehension,
alarm. Like see here in the Bay Area,
you're not running up on my car like that. Sorry. Right. Hold another thing, get ready
to happen. Right. Hold another thing. Even if you
do want to talk about the Bible, you've got to come another way.
But in this context, think it through, just think it through.
Now, I want you to think through the exquisite work of the spirit
of God when he makes a man or woman authentically and genuinely
hungry for the truth. He makes them bold. He makes
them bold in their trust in God's providence. He makes them vulnerably
bold. Cause see, it requires a certain
boldness to be vulnerable. Ladies and gentlemen, is not
this Ethiopian who is a dignitary making himself vulnerable? Here
come this wild eyed Jew who nobody knows. He don't have papers. He's just running up alongside
the escalade while the window down and raising the question. Hey, you understand what you're
reading? Think about that. See, so with the elliptical nature
of the text, it forces me to contemplate not only the exquisite
nature in which God works providentially in a kind of unique way that
only God could do it, but how he prepares people to engage
in conversations that are gonna advance God's glory in our life.
It really simply goes back to how prepared this Ethiopian was
for truth. that he did not let his position,
his rank, his authority, his power, inhibit his capacity to
receive a revelation from God, even by a weird servant who's
running alongside of his chariot. He invited him in. Are you hearing
me? He invited him in. Now, you and
I do it a very practical way today. You know how we do it.
Most of the time, the anonymity of radio is the way you end up
hearing good teaching. Tell the truth. I need a witness.
And that's how God works. Tell the truth. Most of us have
been blessed by listening to good teachers on the radio. I'm
just showing you how God condescends to our weakness, because we are
Americans. We are Westerners. We're not letting anybody in
our space. You ain't coming up to my door.
I don't remember the last time someone knocked on my door wanting
to talk about the scriptures. And I probably wouldn't let them
in no way. I would step out the door, shut the door and say,
we can talk right here. See, but that's not Middle Eastern
or Eastern hospitality. Am I making some sense? So what
we're seeing here is a structure of a culture that allows for
this kind of engagement to actually come to pass Philip, who is not
qualified, the Ethiopian Yuna, who is more than qualified to
stop Philip in his tracks. Both are so hungry for the will
of God that all of those barriers are broken down for this one
objective, for this man to have his hunger answered. The Ethiopian,
his mouth is wide open for true. And God sends an angel to him
in the form of a man. That's what happened to us. Tell
the truth. And now what happened to us?
Hungry for the truth. Been doing religion for years.
So famished with an empty Pentecost, an empty tabernacle service,
an empty atonement service, an empty Passover service. And all
of a sudden God brings the servant in a personal way to you to open
your understanding because the soul now is prepared for that
truth. You are not gonna question the
context or the methodology. You're gonna thank God for it.
Cause now he's actually speaking to my heart. I don't understand
this text and I want to. Powerful. The preparation of
the heart of man and the answer of the tongue is from the Lord.
So next week we get to watch the engagement of rules of witnessing
evangelism, expository preaching and teaching that opens a man's
eyes so radically that he says, what does hinder me from being
baptized? Let's pray. Father, thank you
for this hour. Thank you for my brothers and
sisters. Prepare us to go our way now and prepare us to worship
you as you ought to be worshiped on Sunday. You are good. And we know that right. Well,
we pray it in Jesus name. Amen. God bless you guys.