If you have your Bible, why don't
you turn with me to the book of Acts, chapter 8. The book
of Acts, chapter 8. I'd like to begin reading with
verse 25, and read down through the end of the chapter. A very familiar portion of Scripture,
one I trust that the Lord has directed us to today. And they,
that is, the disciples, when they had testified and preached
the word of the Lord, returned to Jerusalem and preached the
gospel in many villages of the Samaritans. And the angel of
the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south
unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which
is desert. And he arose and went. And behold,
a man of Ethiopia, and eunuch of great authority under Candace,
queen of the Ethiopians, who had the charge of all her treasure,
and had come to Jerusalem for to worship, was returning, and
sitting in his chariot, read Isaiah the prophet. He read Isaiah the prophet. Then the Spirit said unto Philip,
Go near, and join thyself to this chariot.' And Philip ran
thither to him, and heard him read the prophet Isaiah, and
said, Understandest thou what thou readest? And he said, How
can I, except some man should guide me? And he desired Philip
that he would come up and sit with him. The place of the scripture
which he read was this, he was led as a sheep to the slaughter,
and like a lamb done before his shearer, so opened he not his
mouth. In his humiliation his judgment
was taken away, and who shall declare his generation, for his
life is taken from the earth. And the eunuch answered Philip,
and said, I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this? Of
himself, or of some other man? Then Philip opened his mouth,
and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him, Jesus. And as they went on their way,
they came unto a certain water. And the eunuch said, See, here
is water. What doth hinder me to be baptized? And Philip said, If thou believest
with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe
that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And he commanded the
chariot to stand still. And they went down both into
the water, both Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. And when they were come up out
of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, that
the eunuch saw him no more, and he went on his way rejoicing.
But Philip was found at Azotus, and passing through, he preached
in all the cities till he came to Caesarea. It was indeed a joy to me to
be able to read this portion of the Word of God. It was a
real blessing to my heart to think on this again in the last
few days, this story about the Ethiopian eunuch. And I trust
that the Lord will meet with us this morning around this story
and the truths that are revealed here and that we'll receive a
blessing. Now, beloved, how this man, this
Chamberlain of the Queen of Ethiopia, came to be a proselyte, we do
not know. Now the book which he was so
fond of reading may have been the means of leading him to worship
the God of Abraham. Now we know he was reading the
book of Isaiah. I told you the other day, a few
weeks back, that Isaiah was that prophet who said more about the
Lord Jesus Christ than any of the prophets. And the Ethiopian
eunuch was fond of reading, he was fond of reading the book
of Isaiah. Now certainly, the book of Isaiah
has answered that purpose thousands of times through the centuries. It has led men to worship God. As they would read it, the Lord
would speak to them and bring them to the knowledge of the
truth, and they were enabled to worship even that Christ which
was to come 800 years after Isaiah wrote these words. And so this
book is alive, brethren. This is the living Word of God.
And one of the things that just blesses me about reading from
the book of Isaiah, just any place in the book, is that there
seems to be a special blessing granted by the Spirit of God
as we meditate upon it, and as the truth of it is unraveled
to our souls. Now the Lord had begun a work
in the heart of this Ethiopian eunuch. It is plain to see. It is plain to see. Now this
cannot be overlooked. We must be aware of the fact
that there are many that the Lord has begun a work in and
yet they have not come to the full glory of the truths of saving
grace and mercy. But they will come as they follow
on to know the Lord, and they most certainly, if they be those
chosen of God, will follow on to know the Lord. But this man,
there had been a work of grace begun in his heart, and he was
following what light that he had. I believe that God had given
him some light and he was following that light to the full. He would follow truth wherever
truth would take him. And my admonition to you this
morning would be, be true to truth. Be true to truth as it
comes to you. You say this morning, well, you
know, Preacher, I just don't have much light. I've read the
Bible, I've read parts of the Scriptures, but I don't have
much light. Well, my friend, do not spend
your time lamenting your inabilities to understand the Scripture,
and don't be talking all the time about that you have such
little light. My friend, instead of complaining,
Make good use of the light that God has given you. Make good
use of it. I mean, continue to read. Continue
to meditate. Now, I don't know whether you
read much or not. I do hope that you're reading
the Scriptures. I hope that every one of you
take time daily to read a portion of the Word of God. To meditate
upon it. Now, this man was coming back
from Jerusalem. and he was riding in a chariot,
and I'm sure that it was, you know, there were two ways to
go, according to the historians, from Jerusalem back to this man's
hometown, and he had taken the back road that led down through
the desert. And I'm sure it was a rough road,
riding in that old carriage, but nevertheless, he was reading
and meditating upon the Word of God. Now then, on his way
back, as he was traveling along, he read the Word of God. Is there any place that we should
not read the Word of God? I say read it any place that
you have opportunity. Reading, I believe, can be a
very hopeful sign in a man's life, especially the reading
of the Word of God, reading good books, and reading about the
truths of the Gospel, but especially the pure word of God itself. Now this eunuch was an emasculated
man. That's what a eunuch was. He
was incapacitated, maybe by his choice, and maybe not by his
choice, but he was, as we read here, the treasurer, the one
who handled the finances of this queen of Ethiopia. And there
had been something going on in the background. As this man had
been up to the feast and had left to come back to his hometown,
something was going on. Now it is evident that it was
because in verse 26 we read where that the angel of the Lord spake
unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south, unto the
way that goeth down from Jerusalem, unto Geza, which is desert. Now
the angel of the Lord is involved in this. Now, the word angel,
of course, means messenger. And there was a message came
from the Lord, telling Philip that he was to go over into the
desert, to this road, And he was to go over there, and some
commentators say that there's enough evidence in the original
to say that you were to be there around noon. Well, I never could
see that in what I've read, but nevertheless, go over there and
meet this chariot. It's coming back from Jerusalem,
and it bears a man who I've begun to work in, as it were. And so
he arose and went in verse 27, Behold, this man of Ethiopia,
this man under great authority, under the queen, in charge of
all the tribes, he had come, as we mentioned earlier, to Jerusalem
for to worship. He was returning, sitting in
his chariot, and he read the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit
said unto Philip, Go near and join thyself to this chariot.
Apparently, the Spirit of God said to Philip, you run alongside
this chariot and see what happens. And so he ran alongside this
chariot and he heard this man reading out loud. Heard him reading
the prophet Isaiah. And so he spoke through the window,
I suppose, to this man and asked him a question. And he said,
Understandest thou what thou readest? Do you understand what
you're reading? Now, we know and recognize that
this brings up the subject of evangelism. When we read this,
we see the mighty workings of the Holy Spirit in bringing Philip
to this man, and in preparing the heart of this man in order
to be able to have been asked a question that would lead him
to further inquiry as to what's going on in the 53rd chapter
of the book of Isaiah. Now here what we find is a picture
of true evangelism in practice. Now we do believe that we're
to go into all the world and preach the gospel. We believe
that we're to preach the gospel to every creature. We do not,
or while we believe in the doctrine of election, we do not know who
the elect are here or anywhere else. We know not who they are
until God sovereignly have brought them to faith in His Son, the
Lord Jesus, and until they openly have declared that they believe
that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And so our commission
is to preach the gospel, and that's what we are attempting
to do. But evangelism arises, true evangelism,
from a firm faith in the efficacy of God's election. Christ and
also of the atonement of our Lord Jesus Christ and of the
effectual call of the Holy Spirit. I mean by that, that we believe
that God has a people and that he's going to save those people
and we believe that this man, this Ethiopian eunuch, was one
of them. And so that's why the Spirit
of the Lord was involved in this, directing Philip to this man. Now my friend, as we believe
in the doctrine of of electing grace, we are moved, motivated
to preach the gospel. Now you've heard it been said,
and I've heard it said a number of times, that if people say,
if I believe what you did, I would never preach again. No, my friend,
that is not the case. That's just the reason why I
continue to preach, is because I know God has a people, and
I know He can save them. There ain't any question about
that. I know He uses instruments, but I know He will have His own. He will save His people from
their sins, and He'll use the gospel to call them out and to
bring them unto himself. He will do this. And that's why
we go on in the preaching of the word, in the firm conviction
that God has a people and will save them. Now we remember in
John chapter 17, and I just want to mention this to you. where
the Lord Jesus Christ said that He had been given power over
all flesh. Now, most of you, if you're familiar
with the Great Commission, you know that the Lord Jesus made
this statement to His disciples. He said, you go to all the world
and preach the gospel, baptizing them in the name of the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit, and lo, I'm with you always to the winding
up of the ages. He made this statement. He said,
All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. All power is given
to me. You go, but all power is in my
hands. And in John chapter 17, the Lord
Jesus made this statement. He said, He had power over all
flesh. that He might give eternal life
to as many as the Father has given to Him. Now my friend,
if that shuts off evangelism in your life and in your soul,
then you have misunderstood what the Lord Jesus Christ was saying. That will not destroy the spirit
of evangelism. Let me say this to you. Isn't
it a wonderful consolation to know that when you go out to
preach and you don't know to whom you're preaching, you don't
know how hard-headed they are, you don't know how hard-hearted
they are, you don't know how far in depravity they have been
allowed to go, you know nothing about them, but you do remember
this promise the Lord Jesus said, I have power over all flesh that
I can give eternal life to as many as the Father has given
to me. Now if that don't encourage evangelism,
I don't know what it is. Christ has the power to give
eternal life. Oh, you say, I know some hard
cases. Never mind. Never mind, my friend, about
how hard the case is. Just believe what Jesus said. He said, I've got the power and
I can give the gift of eternal life to whoever I please. I've
got power over all flesh. Now, my friend, you should honor
your Savior. You should honor your Savior.
You go on and speak up for the Lord Jesus Christ. But believe
Him, wouldn't you do? Believe Him. And believe Him.
And you say, well, I haven't been very successful talking
to people. And I know a whole lot of people,
if they were honest, they would tell you they haven't been very
successful either in talking to people. They never got very
many people down on their knees and never got very many people
worshiping God by what they had to say. But my friend, you honor
your Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. You honor Him by believing. that
he will save his people. He will have this Ethiopian eunuch,
and he will send Philip out into the desert, and he'll guide him
step by step until he gets there with the message, and this Ethiopian
eunuch will be converted. And so will God's people in the
city of Great Falls. So will God's people in other
places. The Lord Jesus Christ is a sovereign
Christ, and He has power to give eternal life. That's the only
hope there is, my friend. There is no other hope of rescuing
the perishing and caring for the dying. The only answer is
the Lord Jesus, as He intervenes, and saves his people, then, my
friend, we'll see the movement of God's Spirit. But this evangelism,
true evangelism, now there's three things quickly that I see
here in Philip going out here into the desert. First of all,
in true evangelism, you have a preacher that's been sent by
God. Now this man, Philip, was a deacon,
but he was filled with the Holy Ghost, and he would preach when
he had opportunity. When the door opened up for him,
he would preach. And so he finds himself being
led by the messenger of God out to this chariot, and so he would
speak the message of the Lord. He was sent by God on this errand
of mercy. And the man of God chose to use,
the man here that God chose to use was one who was committed
unto God and to his cause and to his purpose wherever it took
him. Now brethren, the point that
I'd like to make here is that a preacher needs to be sent by
God and he needs to know that God has sent him. He needs to
know that. Now the Bible says in Romans
chapter 10, how can they preach except they be sent? Now that
does not mean, not that I believe that the Bible doesn't teach
that a preacher or missionary ought to be sent out by the church,
because I believe they ought to be whenever it's right and
proper and it's time to do so. And right then I think they should
be. But that's not the scent. that
the writer Paul is referring to. No, no, my friend, being
sent of God. You must be sent of God. Now,
where in would a man know that he's sent of God? He'd know it
in his own soul. And he cannot expect others to
know whether or not he is sent of God. Now, if he is sent of
God, there will be others that will know it. There will be other
honest people who will know of a certainty that this individual
has been sent of God. But this is what is necessary.
Now, here's my advice to a man who says, that he sent of God. My friend, wait on the Lord.
Wait on the Lord. Cry out to God. Ask God to make
it known to others around you by leading you and directing
you into the salvation of the Lord's people. Pray that God
will open doors for you and make it obvious. that God has called
you to preach. If there is any question in your
mind about it, leave it alone. Don't get dabbling around in
something that God is not in, because you're going to live
to regret the day that you stepped out on such ground wherein no
man is able to deal with the circumstances and the difficulties
that come into a man's life as he tries to preach. No man is
able to do that on his own. He needs God's help, God's grace,
God's mercy upon him day by day, and he must know of a certainty
that God has sent him. My friend, if I did not know
that God had sent me to this place, About thirty-three years
ago, I would have been gone in three months. I'd have been out
of here and gone. I wouldn't have stayed because
too many hardships, too many difficulties. I was on my own. I was left alone. And I had to
deal with this day by day. God, have you sent me? If you've
sent me, then provide this, provide that. Open this door, open that
door. And God throughout the years
has owned this servant and his servant. and he's led the way.
But my friend, listen to me. You've got to know. I told my
family before we ever left Brownsburg, Indiana, we've got to know of
a certainty that God is in this because the trials will come. And we are going to be on our
own. And we can't expect somebody
else to come along and bail us out. We are on our own before
God. If God sent you, then you're
on your own before Him. And you must, you're duty bound,
obligated to pray up what you need to stay where you go. You're obligated to do it. to
pray it up, to find it before God. You're obligated to do it.
Okay, so a man must be sent of God. Philip was. And then secondly,
he must have a message ordained by God. A message ordained by
God. Every man sent by God to preach
to anyone is sent with the same message that Philip had to preach
to this eunuch. The Bible says that he opened
his mouth and at the same scripture that this man was reading about,
this man was reading out of this 53rd chapter of the book of Isaiah,
and the place of the scripture was, he was led as a sheep to
the slaughter. That's our Lord Jesus Christ
in humility and in submitting himself even to the death of
the cross, humbling himself before God, and taking that way which
the Lord led him. He was led as a sheep to the
slaughter, like a lamb done before his shearers, so opened he not
his mouth. The Lord Jesus Christ was silent,
submitting himself to the will of God, which will, we know,
was the will of the Father in that What happened on that gory
tree? And you may not be able to explain
it, and maybe I can't explain it as well as I'd like to, but
what happened on that gory tree when the Lord Jesus Christ, when
He was led there as a lamb, and when He gave His life, This was
what the Father had determined to be done. This was the will
of the Father. This had been determined in old
time. This had been determined by the
determinate counsel of God. This was what God had purposed
that He would set forth His Son. And so the message was about
Christ. It was about Christ. In His humiliation,
this is what He read, His judgment was taken away. In that that
He was humble, In that that he was submissive, he was not done
justice. He was not done justice is what
this means. And who shall declare this generation? Who will declare how wicked,
how mean, and how degenerate, and how depraved this generation
is that took the life of our Lord? Even though he was delivered
up by the counsel of God, he was slain by the hands of wicked
man. Who shall declare his generation? Who will say about how wicked
that generation of people were that slew our Lord? And then
he goes on to say his life is taken from the earth. The life
of the Lord Jesus Christ was laid down. Well, this man, he
didn't understand this message. But Philip understood it. He
knew what this was all about. And so he began at these scriptures
here and preached. unto him the Lord Jesus Christ. Now this is so important that
we see this, that we understand this, that he had a message.
He had a message, and that message God had given him. That message
was the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, is the message clear to
our hearts that we might be able to spread it to others? I'd like
for you to turn with me to the book of Romans. The book of Romans. There is no other message but
Christ and Him crucified. The Lord Jesus Christ, Him crucified. There is a message that we need
to preach. And that is we need to set forth
the sinfulness, the sinlessness of the Lord Jesus Christ, the
suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ, certainly His silence we've mentioned,
and then how that He was satisfied. But here in Romans 3, I want
to read beginning with verse 23. It says, For all have sinned
and come short of the glory of God, being justified freely by
His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom
God has set forth to be a propitiation, whom God has set forth to be through faith in his blood, a
propitiation to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that
are passed through the forbearance of God. Now this statement in
verse 25, let me just talk a little bit about that because it's so
important for us to see that in connection with the message
that Philip brought to this Ethiopian eunuch. whom God has set forth. Think of God setting forth His
Son, putting His Son on display before the universe on this day. On Calvary's cross hangs the
Son of God, the Son of Man. Here the Lord Jesus Christ hangs
between heaven and earth. God has set Him forth. It's been
God, this was God's will, the Father's will that His Son become
a sacrifice. Now, this word propitiation,
I want to say a word or two about that because you can understand
the death of Jesus and the message that Philip gave to this Ethiopian
eunuch so much better if you understand a little bit about
this word. But there's at least three things involved in this
word propitiation. The first thing that is involved
in it is there is an offense. An offense must be an offense. Well, who is the offender? The
offender is us. We've offended God. Every one
of us. If you notice over in verse 10,
it says, Paul says, as it is written, there's none righteous. No, not one. He says, There is
none righteous, and before you can say, except me, he says,
no, no, no, not one. Not one. We're all offenders. All have sinned and come short
of the glory of God. We've all offended the God of
the Bible. We've all broken the holy law
of God. It takes an offense, an offense
to have before you can have full propitiation. The second thing
is, there must be one who has been offended. And who has been
offended by our sin? God Himself. We've sinned against
God. You remember what David said?
Against thee and thee only have I sinned and done this evil in
thy sight. Against God. When God punishes
sin, what's He going to do? Is He going to punish sin? And
then you're going to stand over here and watch Him do it? No,
my friend, when God punishes sin, He punishes you. When He
punished sin in the Lord Jesus Christ, He punished Christ. It was Christ who was punished
because God had been offended. And that is the next thing in
propitiation is that must be satisfaction. This offended one
must be placated. He must be satisfied. His justice has been sinned against. His holy character has been sinned
against. And God will be just. And He will bring His wrath to
bear upon sin. How can He be placated? How can
he be brought to the place where he's now satisfied, where he
can justify the sinner freely by his grace? It's as the Lord
Jesus Christ died, shed his blood in order that God would be able
to be just and justifier. And so those three things, you're
the offender, God is the offended one, Christ is the one who made
the sacrifice and the offering whereby God has been appeased
and placated and you, my friend, have been the recipient of the
mercy of God through the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is the
message that Philip gave to this Ethiopian eunuch using the scriptures
in Isaiah 53 and others as the Lord directed him to do so. But you know I think about the
Lord Jesus Christ and I think about what he's done. How that
he placated God and satisfied God and you know the Lord Jesus
was sinless. He was sinless. There was no sin found in Him,
no guile found in His mouth. He was sinless. But my friend,
do you know that you must offer to God a sinless life or you'll
go to hell? You must offer to God a sinless
life. You can't do that. You've sinned. None righteous. No, not one.
Well, how's that going to happen? Well, we must be found in Him
who is sinless. Now the way we are going to be
found in Him is through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Believing
on Him, God puts us in His Son and we are sinless in Christ. You know the Bible says, God
speaking from heaven said, this is my beloved Son in whom I am
well pleased. Now my friend, he was talking
about me there. Ah, you say, no he wasn't. He's
talking about Jesus. He's talking about me too. In
him, in him, I am a beloved son well pleasing unto God. You remember
when the Lord Jesus looked up and said to the Father, He said,
I do always those things that pleases you. He's talking about
me. I do always those things that
pleases Him, in Christ the Beloved One, in Him. Now my friend, you
either believe this, or you cannot believe that God has been placated. You cannot believe that He has
been appeased. Listen, the wrath of God is still
on you, unless you're in Christ, and unless whenever you're called
upon, you offer that sinless life of the Lord Jesus Christ
unto the Father. My friend, we'll go to hell unless
we're as perfect as Christ. We must be sinless in Christ
Jesus. We cannot go to heaven offering
to God a life full of sin and rebellion. We offer Christ. Christ. Christ is our message. Oh may it ever be that we'll
be preaching Christ. Salvation is the gift of divine
mercy to those who are guilty and is never, never the reward
of sin. of human merit. Salvation is
the offer and the gift of God to sinners. And he comes through
the divine mercy of the Lord. Now, Isaiah said further, and
we won't have time to get into all this. I'll probably have
to preach another time on this, but we know that Isaiah said,
The Lord hath laid on him. The Lord hath laid on him. This
is an act of God. God laid on Christ our sin. Now aren't you grateful? Aren't
you thankful that sin cannot be two places at once? Aren't you grateful? It's been
laid on him, therefore it's not laying on me anymore. It's been
laid on him. And we need to believe it to
the rejoicing of our hearts and our souls. We need to believe
it to the joy of our salvation. Believe it. Sin has been laid
on Christ Jesus and He cannot twice demand. Once in our bleeding
surety's hand and then again at mine. You know, I think about
the name of Jesus and I thought about this the other day. How
His name spells out his mission of mercy toward God's chosen
people. It spells it out. Jesus, Savior. And Savior He is in a grand way. In a grand way. He saves all
of His people from the black sin they've committed all their
life. He saves them from it. He delivers
them from their sin. And He takes their sin into judgment. And He suffers punishment at
the hands of the Father. And the Father is now satisfied.
And He saves His people He saves His people and they're saved,
grandly saved. Now you know that name, it means
Savior. And don't forget that. That's
what it means. Now I was reading the other day
about a baby. The name of this baby, well let
me tell you this part of the story first. The baby lived six
months and died, a little boy. And on the tombstone it read
Methuselah Cone. was his name. Now beloved, let
me say to you that that baby was, he was named inappropriately. Wouldn't you agree? Methuselah
Cone, he was named inappropriately. But when we come to the name
of Jesus, he was named appropriately. He is Savior indeed. And we need to believe it We
need to believe it. You say, well, I thought I believed
it. Well, my friend, I hope you believe
it. I hope you believe it. It's salvation
to believe it. It's salvation to believe it.
Okay, so then we have, we talked about a man being sin of God,
and we talked about a man having a message. And that message is
Jesus Christ. That is the message. God has
connected saving power to the name of Jesus Christ. Preach
Christ, beloved. Somebody accused a good friend
of mine, Brother Mahan, of not preaching the gospel. And old
brother Mahan got up and said, I don't know how not to preach
the gospel. And my friend, if you know Christ,
you must preach Him. You must preach Him. Preach Jesus. Preach Him. That's the message.
Okay? And then thirdly, the third thing
that's involved in true evangelism is number one, the man sent. Number two, the message. And
number three, the sinner chosen by God. Now you tell me what
good old Phillip could have done if this fella would have been
riding in a chariot and old Phillip just said, I'm going out in the
desert to see if I can find somebody to witness to. Why he might have
found this old boy riding in that chariot coming back from
Jerusalem drunk. Oh, my friend, you've got to
see that God must go before a man. Now, the Bible says that the
book of Acts is the Acts of the Apostles. But in truth, the book
of Acts is the Acts of the Holy Ghost, the Acts of the Holy Spirit. And so you see then that we've
got to have a man, a soul here, because He must be chosen by
God. And this Ethiopian eunuch was
saved because God had saved him. You remember in Acts 13.48 where
the Bible says that and as many as were ordained to eternal life
believed. Well that's what this old boy
is fixing to do. He's fixing to believe because he's been
ordained to eternal life. And I like that. I really do.
Well, you know, we could talk a great deal about what this
fella understood from what Phillip had to say. And I thought a little
bit about, oh, I've got to hurry here, but what the test of a
man. You know, Phillip asked him,
he said, understandest thou what thou readest? Do you understand
what you're reading? And I wondered, what is the test of a man understanding? what is written in Isaiah chapter
53. What would be the test of it?
How would you know whether you had believed the message of the
gospel or not? Well, number one, I'll go through
this quickly. Jesus Christ is all. Top, bottom,
and middle to you if so be you've understood rightly Isaiah chapter
53. Christ is all. He's all. He's
the Savior. He's the Deliverer, He's the
Savior. Now, somebody wrote this, said
you cannot be right in the rest unless you think rightly of Him. You've got to think rightly of
the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, we can test our knowledge
of the Scripture then if Jesus Christ is everything to us. Somebody asked you about your
salvation, what's your hope? The Bible says, Be ready always
to give an answer to every man that asketh us a reason for the
hope that is within us with meekness and fear. What's your hope? I
hear you go to a Baptist church. I hear you drive to Great Falls
to church. I hear you talking about the
scriptures all the time. What is your hope? Now my friend,
if Jesus Christ is not your hope, not your whole hope, the Bible
says it's Christ in you that's the hope of glory. And if Christ
is not your hope, then you don't have any. Because there is no
hope outside of Him. Is that right? Amen? No hope
outside the Lord Jesus Christ. And then, too, I believe another
test would be that they've made you glad. Because this man, you
know what the Bible says? After Philip preached to him,
and after he was baptized, the Bible says that he went on his
way rejoicing. He went on his way rejoicing,
made him glad. If you take the 53rd chapter of the book of Isaiah
and pray over it, read it, meditate upon it, pray over it, and study
it out, my friend, it cannot help but make you happy and glad
that you are in Jesus Christ, that you're in Him, and that
you have everything that God has for a sinner because you're
in Him, and that God is looking upon you with favor like he would
look upon his dear and precious and lovely son. How can you not
be blessed by that and be made to rejoice by that? Now then, I want to skip right on to the
very last thing. The end result of understanding
the gospel by this Ethiopian eunuch who had been addressed
by God-sent messenger with a God-given anointed message. This man being
a chosen sinner by divine grace, what was the end results of his
understanding the gospel? Well, now some commentaries are
reluctant to use this verse. Verse 37. They went on their
way, they came to this small pool of water, and the eunuch
said, See, here is water. What doth hinder me to be baptized?
What's hindered me from being baptized? And Philip said, If
thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered
and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Now,
like I said, I have a commentary at home, not a commentary, but
a translation. You know, they said, somebody
did, that a rose by any other name is still a rose. But a Bible,
sometimes, is not the Bible, even though it's called the Bible.
I know of some translations that are terrible. And here, I was
reading yesterday in the Phillips translation, and they just skipped
this all together. You know why? Because, my friend,
first of all, it's awful hard on infant baptizers. If thou
believest with all thine heart thou mayest. Well, how are you
going to get a baby to spit out that line? He's not going to
do it. He's not going to do it. And
also these people that don't believe in immersion for
baptism or against anything like this being in the Bible. You
say, you think people would do that? Actually, my friend, there
ain't nothing that people won't do when it comes to butchering
the Word of God. Nothing. And you remember that. Okay? What did he say? He said,
I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. I believe it.
I believe it. All right, now what are we going
to do with this man? He commanded the chariot to stand still, and
they went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch,
and he baptized him. He baptized him. Now, baptism
is very important. Baptism is for believers only.
It is a test of submission and obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ
as Lord. It is the believer's symbolic
confession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Baptism by immersion
only. Immersion is not a mode of baptism. Immersion is baptism. Commenting on this passage John
Calvin wrote these words Hence we see What was the manner of
baptizing with the ancients? For they plunged the whole body
into water and That my friend is baptism
that's it and so the true test I'm just telling you the way
I see it and The true test as to whether anybody has understood
the gospel or not is that they come to the waters of baptism
and submit themselves to portray the Lord's death and resurrection
in water baptism. And so I believe this man fully
understood the gospel. I believe he did. I believe Philip
had the message. And he was sent of God, and this
sinner had been chosen of God, and God worked salvation in his
heart. There are those of you here this morning that's heard
the gospel, and you heard it over and over. You've heard that
there's not any good in you. Not any good in you. Not any
good in any of us. Not any good. I'm talking about
from God's standpoint. I'm not talking about your grandma,
what she thinks of you. I'm talking about what God thinks
about us. Now, don't you all agree that
the soul is the part of us that's most important? The soul of a
man is most important. And I'm here to say to you at
the close of this meeting this morning, you heard the gospel. You heard the gospel. It's no
accident that you heard the gospel. And it's no accident that the
message that went out here this morning is all about Christ. About Christ. Him being the Savior. Him being the one that appeased,
placated God. He's the one that fixed it so
God could reach out His hand of mercy to your soul. He's the
one that did it. My friend, I call upon you in
the name of Jesus to believe the message of the Gospel and
submit yourself. from water baptism. If you believe
what the Word of God says about the Gospel, this is the ultimate
test, whether I believe it or not. Father, we thank you for
this time. It's been a hurried time. Many things we'd like to have
said, we just didn't get around to saying, but Father, the truth
of the Gospel has went out, and I pray this morning, Lord, that
you'll own this message and use it And I pray for those dear
ones who are standing back, that they might rejoice in full salvation
today, believing that the Lord Jesus Christ has truly done all
that the prophet of God said that he did, and that they might
rejoice in a work fully accomplished, a work finished. I pray it in
Jesus' name, for his sake. Amen.