I just suppose that there is more hypocrisy and more put on and more shame in religion than
in everything else put together. Religious people somehow seem
to have the idea that we're always supposed to be happy and therefore
they try to do it. We're always supposed to be saying
praise the Lord and hallelujah and therefore they try to produce
it. That we're always supposed to
be saying something religious and something biblical and something
holy. and therefore they try to put
on that particular front. I'm sure the Lord is displeased
with this. I'm sure that that which pleases
him is an honest heart and a truthful, honest relationship
with him and with others. I jotted down some things a few
nights ago. You know, most of those things
which we say that amount to anything are born of experience, as well
as the Scripture. Of course, they have a scriptural
foundation, but you can't tell what you don't know. You can't
preach to others what you have not personally experienced. But last Thursday Well, I'd preached
here Sunday and then drove down to Madisonville and preached
Sunday night, visited with folks after church, and Monday was
a repeat of the same thing, studying and then going out for supper
and then going to church and preaching, going out to somebody
else's house after church and staying up half the night. It
went on to Thursday night, and I was sitting on the front row
waiting for the service to begin, and I thought, I'm so tired.
I feel 58 years old. Every bit of it. Tired. I wish I was someplace else.
That's the way I felt. I wish I didn't have to preach
tonight. Your body just gets weary, and then I looked back
over the congregation, I saw the people, and I thought, there's
some folks got up 5.30 this morning. Went to work. There's mines around
there, you know, worked all day, came in and grabbed a bite to
eat and came to church and I looked at the pastor's wife, she gets
up at six and gets the children off to school and goes down to
the bank at eight and works till four and comes in and gets supper
ready and feeds us preachers and goes to church and sits there,
you know. And have you ever sat down in
church and wished the preacher would hurry up and get through?
And you thought, well, I'm not very spiritual. I must not be
saved. Just weary. Brother Scott Richardson
called me about 20 minutes before 6. We were talking about his
son, who's in the hospital. Another matter, but he said,
I said, how's your services today? He said, so far, all right. I've
got one to go. He said, do you ever get tired
of placing two sermons on Sunday? I said, yeah, I do. It's hard
to rise twice, you know. You rise once and you come down.
It's hard to get back up there where you were. But that Thursday
night I was sitting there and I thought, and I jotted these
notes down, there's some unusual and great discoveries that people
make who know Christ, who come to Christ the Lord, who are saved. They make some unusual discoveries. Some of them are pleasant, some
of them unpleasant, and some of them take a while. For us,
from the dawn upon us, we learn so slowly. This is for honest people now.
Anybody else can turn me off for a little while. You play
in religion, you turn me off. But here among the pleasant things
that have occurred to me in my relationship with the Father
through his son, as Richard prayed. But I've experienced the joys
of forgiveness. The joys of forgiveness. Happy
is the man to whom God will not charge sin. Happy, blessed is
the man to whom the Lord will not impute iniquity. Now that's
something. I'm thankful. I have a joy in
my heart that on the books of glory, because of Christ's precious
blood, there isn't one charge against me. That's what Paul
said. Who can lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It's
Christ that died. Do you believe that? But he can't
have any peace if you don't believe that. To offend in one point
is to give ego to the whole Lord. If you've got one point against
you or one charge, you're responsible for the whole curse. But in Christ
we're free. That's a joy. And secondly, among
the pleasant experiences, is the preciousness of Christ. Most of us were in religion before
we learned Christ, and religion is not very precious. Religion
is a burden. It's just a flat-out burden,
but our Lord Jesus said, come unto me and learn of me. My yoke
is easy. My burden is light. The yoke
of Christ is easy. The yoke of religion is heavy
and hard, and we chafe against it. But the yoke of Christ is
so easy. He's precious, merciful, gracious,
and a friend that sticketh closer than a brother. the preciousness
of Christ. And then thirdly, we discover
the comfort of the Word. We rob ourselves of comfort if
we don't frequently come to the Book. No matter what the difficulty,
if you're sick of body, get in the Book. If you're weary of
soul, get in the Book. If you're depressed, get in the
Book. Whatever it is, get in the Word.
If you're in doubt, come to the Word of God. I don't come to
the word of God as some magic formula. Come to the word of
God as the word of the living God to the hearts of his people.
God speaking. It's like a little girl or a
little boy comes to a father and says, Dad, this is wrong.
Well, I'll help you out with it. I'll straighten it out. This
is what we'll do. Instruction, you see. Instruction. And that's what we found in his
word. His word, we're called for comfort one another with
these words, God's word No matter what the distress, or what the
problem, or what the heartache, or what the trial, his word will
give you a reason to be comforted. He hath said, I will never leave
you, nor forsake ye. Therefore we can boldly say,
the Lord's my helper. And then fourthly, I find the
fellowship of believers to be a very pleasant experience. What
a family! We were talking about that at
lunch today. What a family God's given us
here. What communion, what fellowship,
what unity of spirit and unity of heart and unity of purpose. And we've got some friends here,
some people that are loyal and faithful and dependable, loyal
to Christ, faithful to Christ, therefore dependable. And they're
loyal to one another. You can count on them. You can
count on them. They'll be here. They'll be behind
you and with you and undergird you and support you and pray
for you and love you in spite of what you are. As somebody
says, a friend is a fellow that knows all about you and still
loves you anyhow. And that's what we have. All
right? Fifthly, another pleasant discovery is the hope of eternal
glory. The hope of eternal glory. If
I die before I wake, I know the Lord my soul will take. The hope
of eternal glory. How do people die who don't have
any hope in Christ? I don't know. How do they face
the, not possibility, but certainty of this being the end of the
life, you know? We're coming down to the, we're
in the sunset years, some of us. What do you do if you don't
have Christ? Well, those are the pleasant
discoveries. Every day those become more precious, the joy
of forgiveness, the preciousness of Christ, the comfort of the
Word, the fellowship of believers, and the hope of eternal glory.
But here are some of the unpleasant discoveries, and sometimes it
takes people a while to find these things out, some not too
long, some a little longer maybe. But we discover, when we come
to know Christ, that the old nature is not plumbed in. We've heard folks talk about
living above sin, and hear folks talk about the eradication of
the old nature, and hear folks talk about accept Jesus and your
troubles will be over, and all this sort of thing. And a man
who gets religion, now he may go through that sham and hypocrisy,
but a true believer finds out that his old man is still very
much alive. That he can still get just as
mad as he did before he got saved. Maybe a little mad or something. And that he still has the same
eyes he had for God's safety. That he still has some of the
same struggles he had before. He has some victory. He has some
strength and grace. The love of Christ restraineth
and constraineth us and so forth. But it's still there. There's
still that awful conflict. In fact, actually it's greater
because the new nature was there before. It's a conflict. Terrible conflict. And then secondly,
we find out that spiritual growth is so slow. You know, sometimes a man comes
to know Christ and he thinks, well, I'm going to master this
Bible in about six months. I'll have it. I'll be teaching
Sunday school. I might even be pastoring. But
it doesn't come that way. Now, you can take a crash course
in economics, five or six years, get to be a pretty big wheelhorse. You can take a crash course in
electronics or plumbing or anything materially or anything of the
world and you can learn it pretty quick, but I'll tell you, you
can hang around the Bible for 40 years and feel like I haven't
grown much. I haven't grown much. But see
this spiritual growth. The Word, we get into the Word. desire the sincere milk of the
Word that you may grow. It's the Word upon which we grow.
That's the green pastures, that's the children's bread, that's
the food. But even when we preach the Word and study the Word,
you have to experience the Word. Now that's what it is. You have
to experience the Word. You can't learn in your head
what you have to learn in your heart. And God has to send certain
things your way. So that you say, oh, that's what
that means. That's what that means. How can
you learn about the grace of God in sorrow until you have
a sorrow? And I mean a real one. I don't
mean because you lost your dolly. But I mean a real one. How can
you experience the strength and power of God in a certain trial
unless you have that trial? You see? So really learning and
understanding of the Word awaits that time in our work when God
is pleased to make it real to you. We know it in theory, we
know it in doctrine, we know it in theology, but when our
paths, led by the providence and Spirit of God, come to that
juncture, or that time when He really lets us learn that, We
learned that. I got a hold of it now. And God
teaches, when he teaches us in this spiritual growth, he teaches
so you don't ever forget it. Never forget it. But you can't
memorize it. I just can't do it. I'm sorry.
That's just it. That's the reason there are babes
in Christ and young men in Christ and elders. It's not just elder in age, but
elder in experience who's been down the road, you see. That's
where it is, it's down the road. And you have to stop at all these
different places in life while God teaches you. For example,
you can hear a message from a certain scripture and pass right, in
theory you believe it, but in practical experience you really
don't understand it. You don't. And then down the
road somewhere, that same scripture, God uses it at a certain hour
of time. He makes it to be yours. That's
what I'm talking about. Spiritual growth is slow. So
don't be discouraged. Wait on the Lord. Wait on the
Lord. I tell you this, I gave this
illustration one time. You go out at night and you look
at stars in the sky. And how long they've been there
would be beyond my imagination, but they've been there quite
a spell. And some of them are faint, and some of them are bright,
and some of them just sit there. They're always in their place,
always faithful, always there. God calls them by name. But as
you're standing there looking at those stars, they're very
pleasant to look upon, stationary, faithful. Zoom! One goes across the sky. Why? Boy, if it's over yonder, you'll
see it, because the shooting star, you can drive along the
highway at night and not even be looking at the sky, be looking
at the road. Man, there's a shooting star. He gets everybody's attention.
And he just almost blots out those other stars. They just
fade, because all you can see is that blaze of light. But after
a while, it's nothing but a cinder. It's not there anymore. And that's the way these mushroom
professors of religion are, you know. They suddenly blaze out,
take over, take charge, they know everything, they're giving
testimony and all this gets saved yesterday and they're masters
of theology today and teachers tomorrow and they just put everybody
to shame, you know. They're so loud and so Obvious,
and I start to say obnoxious, but obvious is a better word,
that you just don't see or hear anybody else. But that's why
they're gone. And there sits the folks that
have always been there. Always been there. The faithful.
They don't grow real fast. They don't mushroom. They're
not... Yesterday they weren't there, and the next day they're
two feet high. God's people grow slowly and permanently. So don't
be discouraged. They grow slowly and permanently.
See what I'm talking about? So don't be discouraged. Spiritual
growth is slow. Tell you something else that
you discover when the Lord saves you, and that is that after a
while that religious people don't rejoice in your commitment to
Christ. That's right. You may even have family members
that have prayed for you to get saved. That's the way they term
it, get saved. I don't particularly care for
that term, They prayed that you'd get religion. That's what they
wanted you to get. But when you come to a knowledge
of grace in Christ, God's immutable sovereignty, man's lostness,
Christ's sufficiency, the efficacy of the Spirit's work, the glory
of Christ in all things, the substitutionary work of Christ,
justification by grace through faith, and you come to those
things and love them and become and become very pronounced in
your belief in them. Well, they liked you better before
you got saved. Now, they didn't want that. They
just wanted you to get religion. They wanted you to quit drinking.
They didn't want you to get Christ, you know. They wanted you to
quit, as the fella says, swarping around, but they didn't want
you to come to the knowledge of, not, your religion bothers
me now. See, now, with what you're saying,
so I'm not saved. So they don't like that. Like
Ken Wymer, his father told him, this young man's a missionary
to Africa. His father's been a missionary
to Africa 30 years. And Ken came to the knowledge
of grace, God's grace, God's sovereign grace, Christ's effectual
sufficient work, and started preaching it. And his dad told
him, he said, now son, he said, what you're preaching is so.
I've been preaching a lie for 30 years. So we're not going
to have this. See what I mean? Religious people,
our Lord said, I didn't come to send peace, but a sower. The
man's enemies shall be those of his own household. And yeah, you can get religion,
everybody'll rejoice. You can accept Jesus and, you
know, don't let it upset your life too much. But if you make
a commitment to Christ, to the Christ, the sovereign Christ,
the reigning Christ, the preeminent Christ, the King of kings and
Lord of lords. Now the greatest trouble you'll
have is with religious people, especially in your family, especially
in your family. You know, I got to thinking a
little while ago about some of the parents in this congregation
who have hearts that are disturbed and broken over their children
because their children don't have a great deal of interest
in the gospel of grace. Well, they may someday. God,
they may. But you know there's some children in this congregation
whose parents don't know anything about the gospel. And that's
a heartache now. Some of you know that, don't
you? Can't even sit down and talk to your mother or dad about
Christ. They ain't talking about religion. You can talk to them
about whether or not you ought to go to show on Sunday. You
can talk to them about the book of Revelation and who is 666. And you can talk to them about
whether it be a Baptist or a Methodist or whether baptism by immersion
or sprinkling or something else. You can't talk to them about
Christ. And it creates a problem. And you find out in the next
place, now here's what I'm coming to. You find out, and this is
so, that spiritual exercise, spiritual exercise, now this
I believe I know Christ. I believe I know Christ. I believe
the gospel. He is the Son of God. I know
the gospel, and we'll talk about it in a minute. But I'll tell
you, spiritual exercises such as prayer, and I don't mean just
the repetitious words that we say You know, because
we have to say, and I'm talking about prayer, I'm talking about
that intercession, that laying hold on the horns of the altar,
that communion with God, that secret closet petition, an intercession. Sometimes that's wearisome and
difficult, do you know it? That's right. Sometimes the study
of the Word, the reading of the Word of God, especially, you
go out to work in the morning, work all day, you know, and come
in the evening, have a meal and tell your wife, I'm going to
sit over here in the chair and read the Bible. And you sit around
about five minutes, you're in Wonderland. The Bible's on your
chest and your mouth's open and you're snoring. She said, I thought
she was going to read the Bible. Had good intentions, but the
flesh is wicked. Huh? Well, it's just so now,
that's all there is to it. Reading the scripts, sermons,
sometimes sermons seem so long. I've been in church and Bible
conferences and I thought they'd never get through. Do you ever
go through that? Well, sure you do. It doesn't
mean that you don't love Christ. You know, our Lord took three
disciples and went to the mountain to pray. And here it was on the
eve of His death, on the eve of His agony, on the eve of His
suffering, He was going through such great agony and trial and
suffering that He sweat as it were great drops of blood, agonizing
before the Father. And He came back and there lay
Peter, James, and John sound asleep. Now, let's don't fall
out with them. It was late. And they were tired,
and they were mean. But they loved Christ. Peter
said, Lord, you know I love you. You know I love you. Let's be
firm and dedicated on the true principles of faith, but let's
not be too hard on one another on these things that people say,
okay? It won't be too hard. Because
we're dealing with people now. They're still people. They're
still people. And this thing of spiritual exercise,
it's difficult. But now, I'm not delivering this. I'm not excusing us. Not at all. Don't misunderstand me. I want
to pray more and read more and study more and be small in the
things of God. I want the strength that God
gives and the grace that God gives. But I'm simply saying,
let's be honest while we're doing it. Let's be straightforward. Let's deal with things not as
they're supposed to be, or ought to be, or we want them to be,
but as they are. And God gives the grace. Look
back at Acts chapter 8. I've selected this passage, and
I'm just going to give you an outline on it, but I've selected
this passage of Scripture because I sincerely believe that it clearly
reveals how God generally deals with those who are savingly brought
to Christ. Could I say that again? I've
selected this passage because I believe it clearly reveals
how the Lord generally deals with those who are brought to
a saving knowledge of Christ. Now, I know this man was saved.
I read you a while ago about the Ethiopian eunuch. He was
saved. I know that he was. God said so. The Lord said so. I don't doubt his salvation.
Whatever pattern develops here, you can be sure of this, it is
from God. This is the Word of God. This
man was saved, John. This man knew God. And the way
that God brought him to faith deserves my attention. Now, I
know I hear men give the experiences and all these things, but this
is the record. This man was saved. All right. Secondly, this man
was saved that day. That day. There was no waiting
period, no mourning period. I know Joseph Hart said he mourned
for 11 years seeking the Lord. Well, that doesn't mean I have
to. This man was saved that day. I know there are people who say,
I was under conviction for a year, six months, eight months. Well,
all right, that's fine. That's fine. But that's not the
pattern. This man was saved that day.
He heard the gospel and believed. And thirdly, this man was not
a religious man by background. He was a black Ethiopian. He
was a businessman. He was the treasurer who had
charge of the queen's treasury. He wasn't raised in a synagogue.
He wasn't raised under circumcision or the law. This man was raised
in a pagan country called Ethiopia. And I want us to look at him
now. I'll just give you the outline and you can do with it what you
want to. The first thing I note about this man is he was concerned
about his relationship with God. Look at verse 27. It says, And
Philip arose, and went, and behold, a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of
great authority, unto Candacy, queen of the Ethiopians, who
had charge of all her treasure, had come to Jerusalem to worship.
And he was going back home sitting in his chair reading the Bible.
Now this man was concerned about his relationship with God. Because
he had made this long journey, I don't know how far it was from
Ethiopia to Jerusalem, but it must have been a long way. But
this man was seeking some knowledge of the living God. He heard that
in Jerusalem they had the feast days and the sacrifices and the
ceremony and the scribes and Pharisees and the law, and he
went all the way up there to hear them. He didn't get anything,
but he went there, he was concerned and awakened and troubled about
his relationship with God, and he went all the way to Jerusalem
to attend those meetings. And he went there, it says, to
worship God. And on his way home he was reading
the word of God, he was reading the book of Isaiah, he was studying
the scriptures. Now brethren, I believe that
a man who's concerned about his soul will avail himself of the
means that God's provided. How refreshing to find a concern
center. How refreshing to find a seeking
center. I brought a message one time
and did a study on this business of seeking the Lord, seeking
the Lord. And I find the Bible refers to
it frequently, but I'll just give you a few passages. In 1
Chronicles 16, it says, those who seek the Lord seek Him continually. It's not a spurt thing, it's
not a sudden impulsive thing. You know, everybody gets religious
at funerals or weddings or special holy day, but this man who's
seeking the Lord has this on his mind continually. He must
have Christ. And secondly, it says, those
that seek the Lord seek him with the heart. Jeremiah 29. You shall search for me and find
me when you search for me with all your heart. It's a heart
business. I'm seeking the Lord with my heart. And thirdly, in
Psalm 145, it says those that seek the Lord seek Him in truth.
They want His truth. They don't want what they want
to hear, what their ears would like to hear, what they think.
They seek the Lord in truth as He reveals Himself in His Word.
And fourthly, those that seek the Lord, Isaiah said, seek Him
remembering the pit from which they were digged. They remember
their sins, never forget them. And then in Psalm 27, it says,
they seek the Lord with a single purpose, that I may dwell, that
I may dwell in the presence of the Lord. Oh, that's my single
purpose and objective. And then it says in Isaiah 55,
those that seek Him in this way shall be found. Blessed are they
that hunger and thirst, They shall be filled. All right, this
man was seeking the Lord. All right, secondly, God sent
his servant to him. Look at verse 26. And the angel
of the Lord spake to Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward
the south unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem to Gaza,
which is desert. And then in verse 29, the Spirit
of God said to Philip, Go and join yourself to this chariot.
Now, my friend, God is sovereign in all His ways and in all things. And God will save whom He will,
when He will, and where He will, but I tell you this, I believe
every person whom God redeems, He uses means. He uses His servants
and His Word. Now that's right, His servants
and His Word. Romans 10 says this, listen,
let me quote it. Whosoever shall call on the name
of the Lord shall be saved, but how shall they call on Him in
whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in
him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without
a what? A preacher. In 1 Corinthians 1.23, I read
it this morning, God had chosen by the foolishness of preaching
to save them that believe. Ephesians 4, our Lord, when he
ascended back to heaven, he gave some apostles, some prophets,
some evangelists, some pastors, and some teachers in order that
the people of God might hear the gospel. Paul said, I endure
all things for the elect's sake. I'm saying that God usually uses
one of his servants to take the gospel to the sinner. But I know
he always uses his word. Now, always. In James chapter
1, listen to this. I want you to turn over here,
James chapter 1. He always uses his word. Most
of the time he'll send a preacher or a witness, a servant, But
whether there's a witness there or a servant there, His Word
has to be there. Because we're born of the Spirit
and of the Word of God. In James 1, verse 18, listen,
"...of His own will beget He us with the Word of truth." With
the Word of truth. Now, 1 Peter 1, verse 23, turn
over there a moment. 1 Peter 1, verse 23, listen to
this, "...being born again." Not of corruptible seed, but
of incorruptible. Now, the first birth is a fleshly
birth. And the fleshly birth is by corruptible
seed, the seed of the Father, seed of man. There can't be any.
There can't be any birth. Mary said that, how can I have
a child? I don't know a man. There's got to be the implantation
of the seed in order for a child to develop and grow. And our
Lord said, even so, we're born again of the incorruptible seed,
the Word of God. Now, I know there's been a lot
of argument about begetting and birth over the years. They say a man's begotten by
the Spirit of God, then he hears the gospel later and he's saved.
But I'm telling you this, and I don't understand it or know
how it takes place, but I just know there's no begetting without
the Word of God. Now, he's write that down. Life is in Christ, and Christ
is life. And this is the word of life.
And I know it's to see, in other words, a man not running around
here, spiritual life, who doesn't know who God is, or who Christ
is. And we're begotten of the word
of God. I was in Spain in 1968, traveling with Bill Clark and
David Estrada and Farrell Griswold. And we were preaching in different
places. We preached in England, and we preached in France, and
we drove down to Spain, to a town called Carcahente, Spain. And, uh, Farrell and I were going
to preach that night, and Brother Strouder was going to interpret.
And, uh, that's Catholic country, and the Baptist church had a
strong Baptist church. There were more people there
that night than there are here tonight. Only had two rows of
seats, but that place was packed. Off in a dark place, they couldn't
have a sign out front and all that sort of thing that a pirate
just wouldn't allow it. But I went in there, and they
had an organ. There was a man playing the organ. Oh, he could
play that organ. And I sat down up on the platform
with Brother Stratton. I looked over at that organist,
and just before the service started, he was just playing so beautifully.
And I turned to David, and I said, Who's he? Well, he told me, he
said, he's a believer. He knows Christ. He knows grace. He's been saved. I said, how
did it happen? He said, well, he was the organist
down at the Catholic Cathedral. He played the big organ, down
at the big place, you know, down there at the Catholic Cathedral. And one afternoon, he went over
to the Catholic Church to practice the organ. He was sitting at
the organ, playing that big old pipe organ, you know, and practicing. And the priest opened the door
and walked in the auditorium. And the priest had a whole stack
of books in his arm. And he walked down the aisle,
and this organist said, what do you have there, Father? He
said, I've been in some of our homes picking up Bibles that
these evangelicals have left. from our mission here, as you
know. Been in homes around there leaving Bibles with people, and
the priest come along and pick them up, take them away from
them. And that organist said, uh, I've never seen a Protestant
Bible. He'd never seen a Bible, probably.
Said, let me see one. And you know what the priest
did? He reached and took one off the stack and just threw
it to it, like that. And that old boy took that Bible
home, and started reading it, and God saved him. God took him
out of that idolatry and works and flesh and brought him to
see Christ, Christ the one master, Christ the one mediator, Christ
the one lifted up for sinners, Christ, he saw Christ, and God
saved him. Little did that priest know that
day, when he threw that Bible to that organist, he was throwing
him eternal life. towing him salvation. But that's
where it is. It's the Word of God. God uses
His Word. This man was sitting in that
chariot reading the Bible. I don't know where he got Isaiah
53. I don't know where he learned
Hebrew. But I know the Scripture says he was reading this book.
And Philip walked alongside, and it brings me to the next
point. And Philip came alongside of him. He said, Do you understand
what you're reading? Now watch this. I wish we had more of this
today. How can I except somebody show me? Most everybody I run
into, they pretty well understand it. They pretty well got their
own idea. Well, this is what I see. This
is the way I see it. Boy, I wish we had some open
ears and open hearts and people said, what's he talking about?
Who's he talking about? That's what this Ethiopian here
said. Here, look at Isaiah 53. Isaiah 53. Philip just began right here,
and preached to him Christ. Who hath believed I report, and
to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed. Isaiah 53. I'm not
going to read it all, but. He shall grow up as a tender
plant, as a root out of a dry ground. He hath no form, no comeliness,
no beauty. Despised and rejected of men.
Man of sorrows, verse 4. He hath borne our griefs and
carried our sorrows. And I know Philip took him to
Calvary, took him to the cross. We did esteem him stricken, smitten
of God. Philip told him how that he died
on that cross fulfilling the eternal purpose of God. Smitten
of the Father, he's God's sacrifice, he's God's lamb, God's sin offering,
our substitute. Charlie took him right through
that scripture. Stopped on every word. Every word, every phrase, he
preached Christ, Christ, Christ. Our sorrowing Savior, our suffering
Savior, our sovereign Savior, our silent Savior, our sinless
Savior, our successful Savior, took him right through it. Isaiah
53. And boy, I tell you, when he
got through, when he got through, this man at the little carriage,
whatever he was in, chariot, carriage, whatever, They passed
some water out there. You say, you reckon Philip talked
to him about baptism? Yeah, he talked to him about
a confession of Christ, baptism. They had a long time together.
He told him, he preached the gospel to him of Christ. He came
to that water. And I don't hear Philip saying,
now, if you've accepted Jesus, give me your hand. And I don't
hear Philip putting any pressure on him. There was no pressure
from Philip. Philip didn't say, now, here's water, and you know
water's scarce in the desert. And you know, we might not pass
anymore, this may be your last opportunity. No. Philip wasn't
like our modern evangelist. He'd just sit there, he'd preach
Christ to him, he knew that's all he could do. But this man
responded, he said to Philip, here's water, what doth hinder
me from being baptized? And Philip didn't rush into it.
He didn't say, well, you know, that's another soul I've won
to Jesus this week. I'll have to get that down and
report it in Jerusalem." Philip said, well, he said, I'll tell
you, if you believe what I've been preaching to you, and if
you believe it in your heart, I'll baptize you, otherwise I
won't. That's exactly what he said. He hedged baptism about
with solid faith. Now, I want to know. Because I'm not in the business
of counting heads and counting numbers and counting statistics.
If you believe, if you believe with all your heart, and that
man knew what he was asking him, knew what he was, the proposition
he was putting to him. And he answered and he said,
I believe that Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus who
died on that cross of Baird and Rose again, I believe he's the
Son of God. I believe he's God Almighty. Brother, I tell you, Philip said,
whoa, Dobby. And they went down, both of them,
into the water. Watery grave. This wasn't a sprinkling
time. See, baptism's for believers.
Baptism's not for infants. Baptism's not for anybody but
a believer. Philip would not baptize that
man unless he was a believer. Because you can't confess in
baptism what you hadn't experienced in heart. And he baptized him,
and when he came up out of the water and they walked to the
shore, Philip was gone. But you know what? The eunuch
didn't feel that his salvation was gone when his preacher was
gone. He wasn't trusting Philip. He
wasn't resting in Philip. When Philip left, he said, don't
leave me now! No. He went on his way rejoicing. He'd met Christ. He found Christ. He rested in Christ. And he had
a start in the Word. He saw Christ in the Word. And
God took Philip away from him, but he went right on his way
rejoicing, because he wasn't resting in Philip. His confidence
wasn't in Philip, it was in Christ. I believe that's the way God
saved me. That's the way God saved me. May he be pleased to
do that same work of grace for some here tonight. Let's pray
together. Our Father, we thank you for
this account. We thank you. We praise your
name. We're just overcome and awed when we think about it that
you've preserved this book for us. By your providence, you've
kept it. And down through the years, faithful
men have translated it and printed it. And by your grace, you've
put it in our hands. And you've given us a love for
it, an appreciation for the book, and some understanding of it,
some insight into the things that are written. But chiefly
and most of all, we thank you that You've given us eyes that
see Christ in this Word, and ears that hear Him speak through
the Word, and a heart that believes the Book, believes the Word. We're persuaded that what God
has promised, that He will do. And we pray tonight you'd use
this message for your glory and for the good of the congregation. Create some concern, some conviction,
some seeking hearts, some people that reach out for Christ. Get
our minds off of this world. Take our confidence out of this
flesh. Turn some hearts toward Christ.
I will not let thee go to allow this blessing. I will not. We pray for Christ's sake and
in his name, amen.