140622 Into All the Earth

 Acts 8:26-38 Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” This is a desert place. ²⁷ And he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship ²⁸ and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. ²⁹And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and join this chariot.” ³⁰ So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” ³¹ And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. ³² Now the passage of the Scripture that he was reading was this: “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth. ³³   In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.”

³⁴ And the eunuch said to Philip, “About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” ³⁵ Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. ³⁶ And as they were going along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?” ³⁸ And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. ³⁹ And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. ⁴⁰ But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he passed through he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.

Jesus’ last command to his disciples was to go to all the world with the gospel. I usually think of the beginning of “going to all the world” as the first missionary journey by Paul and Barnabas. However, it really began on the day of Pentecost when visitors from all over the Roman world first heard the gospel and later took it home with them. The next step was taken by Philip when he took the gospel to Samaria. Now, we see Philip being placed in a strategic position to make contact, at just the right time, with an official of the Ethiopian government. The Spirit of God began right away to move in the church to get the gospel out of the confines of Jerusalem.

Under normal circumstances it would have been many years before a missionary went to Ethiopia with the gospel. Here we have an Ethiopian government official whose heart is open to know the Lord. When God moves in a person’s life to bring them to salvation he will bring them into contact with someone who can tell them about Jesus. He doesn’t send an angel instead he sends one of his people. There’s a lot of things going on in this story. Let’s begin with Philip’s…

Unquestioning obedience. Philip may have been present when Jesus ascended into heaven. He may have heard the Great Commission as recorded in Matthew. It is not impossible that he was with the group when Jesus gave them the words recorded in Acts 1:8. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

If Philip did not hear the words when they were first spoken he surely had heard them in the discussions the disciples had about Jesus. The point that I want to make is this, Philip understood that the gospel was to go to the end of the earth. I do not believe that God sends angels to bring people to Jesus but I do believe that he sends angels for many reasons. In this case he sent an angel to give specific directions to Philip. There are at least two reasons why Philip needed directions. Number one, the place he was instructed to go to was desert. Second, he was busy obeying the Lord! He had taken the gospel to Samaria and that was a place where the average Jew wouldn’t go and when he told them about Jesus they listened. He had a very successful ministry there.

When everything is going great we don’t normally become restless and want to move on. It may be that Philip had had some sense of need to move on but he was successfully preaching the gospel among a people who were listening to him. In order to make things specifically clear an angel was sent to be his GPS. I am not sure Philip would have decided on his own, or even when impressed in his mind, to go to the south into the desert. So far as Philip knew, no one was there! He did not realize that this was…

A strategic location. That spot in the desert was a lot like Jesus’ encounter at the well of Sychar. It was the right place at the right time even though no one, humanly thinking, would think so. Listen while I read John 4:5-10. So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶ Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. ⁷ A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” ⁸ (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) ⁹ The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) ¹⁰ Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

Jesus was in the right spot to meet with a needy woman. There is an old song, part of it goes like this:

There was a thirsty woman, Who was drawing from a well;
Her life was ruined and wasted, Her soul it was bound for Hell.
But then she met the Master, Who told of her great sin;
He said if you'll drink this water, You will never thirst again.
Yes, there is a river that flows from God above,
There is a fountain that’s filled with His great love;
Come to the water, there is a vast supply;

There is a river that never shall run dry.
Yes, Jesus was in the right place for an outcast woman to come to faith! In the same manner Philip was placed, by the instructions of an angel, at just the right spot to intercept a man whose heart was ready. Philip was not just at the right spot he was there for…

A timely contact. Philip arrived beside the road just as the government official was reading Isaiah 53:7-8. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. ⁸ By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people?

I think Philip began to understand what he was there for when he saw a chariot coming down the road. The Spirit of God took over where the angel left off. As Philip saw the chariot approaching the Spirit said, “Go over and join this chariot.” Philip had to run to catch up because he had to be there at the right time! Hearing the man reading from the scroll of Isaiah Philip knew why he was, where he was, when he was! Philip asked the obvious question, “Do you understand what you are reading?” The government official said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” The Lord had opened the door for Philip to do what he was there for. It was time now for Philip to be about…

Telling the good news. On the day of Pentecost, while Peter was preaching, many of the people began to ask, “Brothers, what shall we do?” Listen while I read the answer from Acts 2:38-41. And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. ³⁹ For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” ⁴⁰ And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” ⁴¹ So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.

We are not told exactly what Philip said to the Ethiopian. We’re left with some room for the imagination by the words, “he told him the good news about Jesus.” On the day of Pentecost Peter had said that they should “Repent and be baptised ”. You see, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. The consequence of our sin is very serious because the wages of sin is death! Realizing that we have sinned and are condemned to eternal separation from God we need to repent. Wayne Grudem in his Systematic Theology textbook gives this as the definition of repentance: “Repentance is a heartfelt sorrow for sin, a renouncing of it, and a sincere commitment to forsake it and walk in obedience to Christ.”

We are not told the exact words used by Peter but we do know that on the day of Pentecost many in the crowd became convicted of their sin, many of them chose to repent. Because of the forgiveness of their sins they were instructed to be baptized and on that day about three thousand were obedient and were baptized.

Peter was preaching to the thousands on Pentecost. Philip was teaching one man on the road to Gaza. In both cases, the Spirit of God rewarded the preachers with a wonderful harvest. As Philip was telling the good news, he obviously had told the true meaning of baptism, the Ethiopian man said, “See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?” You will find in the KJV that there is a verse added to the text that includes a statement of faith by the government official. It goes like this, “If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God.” It is believed by many Bible scholars that these words were inserted by a person who was making a copy of the Bible. It was simply a matter of clarifying what needed to be believed in order to be baptized. Those extra few words conformed the text to the practice of the church in the first century.

Philip and the Ethiopian went down into the water together and Philip baptized him because of his…

Obedient belief. Philip would have known about the words found in Matthew 28:18-20. Let me read them. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

This passage is called, The Great Commission. It summarizes the process that men and women have been going through for the past two thousand years.

Jesus has all authority in heaven and on earth. He is the one mediator between man and God. He himself said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Since Jesus has all authority he says that we can go because of that and make disciples of all nations. Then he outlines the process by which we do this. First, we are to baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Then, we are to teach them to observe all that he had taught his disciples. Then Jesus promises to always be with us to the very end of the age.

Today many people are taught a great deal before they are baptized rather than afterward. In fact, many of the missionary agencies make it a policy not to baptize a person who accepts Christ as Lord and Savior for several months. This is done to give them an opportunity to prove that they are genuinely Christian. That is a little bit like the practice of marriage in the 21^st century. First you live together until you know that you can make it and then you are married, or not.

Second, the majority of denominations teach that infant christening is baptizing. Sprinkling water on a baby does not make them a Christian and it is certainly not baptizing.

If christening produced Christians the Mafia would not exist! I think I’m safe in saying that the vast majority of the Mafia grew up in Roman Catholic homes and were christened as infants. The infant had no choice in the matter and, most of the time, protested pretty loudly.

Sometimes, people who grew up in churches that practiced infant christening come to me to ask me to “baptize” their baby. I don’t want rebuke them so I try to gently explain that our church doesn’t practice christening. And then I refer them to the other churches in town that do. I explain the biblical basis for baptism and tell them that if they have committed their life to Christ then we would be glad to “dedicate” their family to bring up the child in the knowledge of the Lord. Usually they politely thank me and go on their way.

I have said that infant christening is not baptism. Let me explain, in Romans chapter six Paul explains that all of us who’ve been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. He then explains that we were buried with him by baptism into death. And we are raised up again to walk in newness of life. Baptism symbolizes spiritual burial and resurrection. Sprinkling water on the baby certainly doesn’t symbolize spiritual burial and resurrection.

The practice of baptism in the New Testament was carried out in one way: the person being baptized was immersed or put completely under the water and then brought back up again. The Greek word for baptize means to plunge, dip, or immerse something in the water. In the Gospels we are told that people were baptized by John “in the River Jordan” in, and not beside, or by, or near the river. When Jesus was baptized “he came up out of the water”. It does not say that he came away from the river. The words “he came up out of the water” strongly implies that he had been immersed in it.

Baptism pictures, or symbolizes, our union with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection. Aside from Romans six we have Paul’s letter to the Colossians where he says “You were buried with him in baptism in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead”. There is a clear emphasis in both these passages on dying and rising up with Christ.

A person is saved by grace through faith. We are not saved by any works of righteousness that we have done. Therefore, baptism does not save us. It symbolizes our salvation. On the day of Pentecost three thousand people pictured their death, burial, and resurrection with Christ by going down into the water, being buried with him, and raised up to walk a new life. On the road to Gaza Philip and the Ethiopian went down into the water where the Ethiopian was buried with Christ and raised up to walk a new life.

I often compare baptism with a wedding. The marriage ceremony is a very important event! But it doesn’t cause a person to love another person. Sometimes I think that that is what some people expected and it didn’t work. The marriage ceremony publicly proclaims to the world, “We love one another and commit our lives to each other.” This is done publicly for all the world to see.

In the same way, the ceremony of baptism doesn’t cause a person to be a Christian. What it does do is publicly proclaim to all the world, “I am a Christian.” It’s a present symbol of a past experience. If love is not present the marriage ceremony means nothing! If faith is not present the ceremony of baptism means nothing! Therefore, biblical baptism involves a person who has made a confession of their faith in Christ Jesus and has begun to live it out in the world. The picture is only perfect when a person -- man, woman, or child, has come to believe in Jesus and wants the world to know about it.

If faith is not present the only thing that happens in baptism is the person gets wet all over! On the other hand, if that person has come to believe that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead and He is now their Lord and Savior then baptism symbolizes that fact.

Philip was a man who was full of faith and the Holy Spirit. He had been chosen by the congregation of believers to help solve the problem of caring for the needy. He was probably one of the men who took care of Stephen’s body after he was martyred. Philip was one of those who scattered upon the persecution of the church after Stephen’s death. He didn’t just run away he listened to the Spirit of God and went without question. God made sure he was in the right place at the right time to give the gospel to a hungry heart. There is no question in my mind that this was the beginning of the Ethiopian church. This beginning rested on an obedient messenger, a clear message and a receptive heart. This witness resulted in believer’s baptism and a new missionary.

Have you been obedient to the Lord in baptism? Have you received the Lord Jesus? Baptism is part of confessing him before men in the same way that the wedding ceremony is a public confession of love for one another.

All scripture quotes are from: The Holy Bible: English standard version. 2001. Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.