To The Ends Of The Earth

I invite you to please turn in the scriptures this morning to Acts chapter 8. Acts chapter 8, as we're continuing our study in Acts, and I want you to know, I understand this is Palm Sunday. This is the day where we think about the Lord riding in and coming on that donkey, and how when He entered into Jerusalem, the Jews were troubled, they were bothered. Many of them, of course, had thrown down palm branches as he rode. Think about anticipation of him opening up the door to the Gentiles. This all is unfolding what Palm Sunday was about and what we're about to celebrate this week and the death and the resurrection. All of this we're looking at this morning are the implications of that. What did it mean? What was he doing? What was he accomplishing? I think Acts 8 and the Ethiopian eunuch is so beautiful for when Jesus preaches after the resurrection. You know, it's fascinating. You'll see this today. This very structure of this text is taken from Luke 24. Everything that follows, you could almost set it up side by side and see that in Luke's mind is exactly what Jesus fulfilled and that the apostles are continuing to do. So let's read verse 26, and we'll read all the way to the end of the chapter. 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, 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 and was returning seated in his chariot and he was reading the prophet isaiah and the spirit said to philip go over and join this chariot so philip ran to him and heard him reading isaiah the prophet and asked do you understand what you are reading and he said how can i unless someone guides me and he invited philip to come up and sit with him 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 shear is silent so he opens not his mouth in his humiliation justice was denied him who can describe his generation for his life is taken away from the earth and the eunuch said to Philip about whom I ask you does the prophet say this about himself or about someone else. Then Philip opened his mouth and beginning with this scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. 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? And he commanded the chariot to stop and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him and when they came 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 but philip found himself at azotus and as he passed through he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to caesarea and there ends the reading of God's Word. We often talk today about how the church fails at evangelism. This is a big current discussion that is happening right now in the church as we look at a divided culture. And as all these discussions constantly come to us about race and culture, we are feeling the pressures. I don't think in my ministry I felt it quite like this since I began. The pressure of everything from the world dictating its speech to us to think through how to handle the mess that we're in. It's racially divided. All discussions right now are all about race and division and the complications that come from it. And there have been articles. There have been articles, one in the New York Times about how blacks are leaving the evangelical church because they're saying they have, they're not being welcomed in it anymore. The particular example that was used was a megachurch where the pastor was promoting Trump. He shouldn't have been doing that to begin with from the pulpit. But that just fuels the separation. And so we're having all these discussions right now in our culture about all of this. And the church is taking a heavy beating right now heavy beating all the the problems that are going on has launched the church into a sort of panic mode that is actually having the effect not of unifying us in the discussions it's actually having the effect of transforming us into looking and sounding a lot more like the world in its own divisions yes the church has failed i could rehearse a lot of ways the church has failed but not always not always is there hope in this mess that we're in right now this is why i love acts i think acts is a very timely book for the church uh because the things that they were facing in the first century at least in terms of persecution uh they had it way worse and they are committed they are committed They're not deviating from the mission. They're not absorbed in all the world's discussions. It is so focused and driven by what Jesus commanded them to do and to let the results fall to the Lord. This book is so helpful in that regard. The Roman Empire was against them. They're being persecuted. From a human standpoint, they don't stand a ghost of a chance to advance the gospel to the ends of the earth. This is what Acts is showing us though. showing us something really important this morning uh and i was thinking how do i summarize this particular passage you know what we have here simply stated in the in the section that we just read is a determined god to fulfill his great commission this is all about the sovereignty of the lord to do what he said he was going to do we're getting a good dose of the sovereignty of god in missions and the great commission nothing's going to stop him he's going to fulfill his his word he's going to fulfill his purpose and before us this morning already early in acts he saves an ethiopian man a black man very important to the lord wanted us to understand this wanted us to appreciate what he's doing that this man would have a huge influence back in the region in which he would go a place though where he was sent by the greek world was considered the ends of the earth this is so important for the structure of acts and what acts is doing in a sense this is giving us an early forecast of what is to come and i believe has a powerful reminder to us it comes this way in all of our frustrations that are happening in the world just like they had frustration just like they had complications just like they failed remember last time the apostles were having a hard time accepting the gentiles you'll see that with cornelius they had a hard time last time the lord's pulling them out of jerusalem we have a sovereign god who is showing us he's not going to lose one of his sheep it will be immensely successful when we stand back at the end. But we should consider carefully what he's telling us to do and listen and see how focused the apostles and the early church was so that in all of this dialogue that's going on now, everything's about dialogue, everything's about talk and dialogue and talk, trying to figure all this out. Maybe it's our own lack of confidence in the power of God to do this and our impatience that is our greatest hurdle our impatience that is our greatest hurdle and looking at this text this morning that's what i want to see this this comes as an encouragement to us when everything is against us to look to god in his power to to fulfill what he said he was going to do when it's humanly impossible when it's humanly impossible that's this passage he will build his church and the gates of hell will not prevail in looking at this text we have christ capturing for us his purpose in the great commission and you'll notice today i heard a few comments that some people would like outlines so i'm being very nice to you and i gave you an outline okay uh you'll see that there in the sending of philip and the hearing of jesus and the entering of his kingdom. And please keep all that in front of you. I'm going to refer back to it. All these things are set in front of us today. And you'll notice then the close tie to what we studied last time. You'll see that the tie that the apostles were found in the Samaritan villages. The very one that John had said, do you want us to call down fire from God and destroy them? And Jesus said, you don't know what manner of spirit you are of. And what I'm doing. There they were in the Samaritan villages preaching the gospel. Now, in that connection, as they were evangelizing, an angel of the Lord comes to Philip. Notice in verse 6. An angel of the Lord spoke to Philip. Get up and go south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. This is the desert road. So he got up and he went. I love this particular beginning of sending of Philip here because it has everything to do with what we've understood from Romans 10. How shall they believe? How will they hear without a preacher? How will they preach unless they are sent? God has to send. And the sending is done by God, but also the direction and the place is done by God so that what we have is a divine calendar and a divine map that is being fulfilled by the Spirit. You always have to keep that in mind. This is the Spirit working here and guiding and directing the church to go where He goes. To go where no man has gone before. And I understand, as many of you jumped on me last week, that was not Star Wars, that was Star Trek. So, when we think about this, Jesus said the same thing when He was in Samaria, That I have to go there. That he was on the Lord's divine calendar and map to go where he was sent. Fulfilling the Father's will. It's the same thing. And we should remember this. The Lord has it mapped out. The Lord has it plotted out. The Lord knows where he's going to take his gospel. The Lord is telling us where we should go. Now it's an interesting choice because of where the Lord is sending him. When we look at the ancient world, we tend to think in categories of Greek and Jew and Romans. But there was another category, if you talk in the ancient world, that they knew all too well. In the language and a phrase that they knew all too well, there were those who lived beyond the fringes of the Roman Empire. It was known as, these places, the ends of the earth. rome was the center the ends of the earth this is where he's being sent already we have already in acts a sort of premature fulfillment of what jesus said and you will be my witnesses in all of jerusalem and judea and samaria that was last week to the ends of the earth and here we are uh this is um very much taken from the book of isaiah that certain promises were made in the book of Isaiah. Remember Isaiah 52 verse 10 said, The ends of all the earth shall see the salvation of our God. Here we are. This is fulfillment. We're now at the time the Old Testament looked to as the time of fulfillment. This was promised. Well, who does Philip encounter? There was an Ethiopian man. A eunuch. It says, an high official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to worship in Jerusalem. We read that he was an Ethiopian under Candace the queen. The name Candace was a title, an important title, like we would talk about Pharaoh as a title in Egypt. You'll notice here that this man was the head of the treasury and a man of great power in Ethiopia. He had obviously been, at least as I looked at this and thought about this, a Gentile proselyte to Judaism, but this comes with many problems in the text. We know from Acts chapter 2 that 15 nations were mentioned there at the Pentecost event, and they were known as proselytes of the gate. These proselytes of the gate would travel 200 miles, some of them, to come to Jerusalem at their seasons of celebrations and all the events, especially the Passover, understanding they needed the God of Israel. They needed the God of Israel. They were believing in the God of Israel. There's a big problem, though, the text is establishing. Under the old covenant, there were barriers that prevented certain people from getting close to the God of Israel. Now, we know it prevented everyone from getting close to the God of Israel. But the Jews didn't quite understand that, did they? Under the structure of Judaism, he was outside the kingdom. First, there are a series of barriers here. First, the temple itself was a barrier. Remember there were these series of courts in the temple and you would come and you would first have to enter the court of the Gentiles and then you'd come up to the court of women and then you would come to the court of the male Jews and then the priests and then you'd get up all the way to the Holy of Holies. It was a step system, wasn't it? It was a hierarchical system. The most holy place was sealed off by this big six-inch thick curtain. The farthest he could go was the court of the Gentiles. He might have been able to come in there, but there was another barrier here, and it was the fact that he was a eunuch. Now, in our context, we can't process this. In the ancient world, a eunuch was somebody who was castrated and dismembered. I've always been kind of intimidated to preach this text for obvious reasons. It's just a challenge to talk about because we can't imagine these kind of things. Why would somebody do this? Well, it's not hard to figure out. He was a servant in the kingdom of Candace the queen. The king risked nothing. He made sure there was no threats to his wives or little children coming along who might take his kingdom. So this is what they did in these kingdoms. this is what eunuchs were who served close in those kingdoms so that there was no nothing that would threaten the kingdom but it's a colossal problem the text presents for us that i think we have to think about remember in the old covenant uh what had to happen is you had to be circumcised if you were a gentile like him you had to be washed and and circumcised to become a Jew. He's a eunuch. That's a big obstacle to entering the kingdom. The Old Testament on purpose raises this issue in the law as one of the greatest barriers. And I'm going to read the law just for a minute. This is Deuteronomy 23.1. No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the Lord. If you're a visitor this morning, we don't usually talk about these things i i assure you i um you can come back next week and we won't be talking about this this was total defilement you have to understand this was inspired by god for a reason this was total defilement no eunuch could be more than this proselyte of the gate he's restricted he's restricted he couldn't enter the assembly of the lord they had no access to uh the inner courts and ultimately what led to the holy of holies and we talked about really nobody did he couldn't submit to circumcision this all about defilement and barring and and the the main point being here god was teaching you have a situation that's presented that makes something humanly impossible for him to enter the kingdom in the old order that's the point he can't do it it can't happen now the covenant of grace which always was you'll see in a minute was in place but i want you to think about this for a minute this is a huge teaching point this man epitomizes the question how could this situation be overcome when looking at it from a jewish perspective he exhibits the greatest obstacle in the old testament he exhibits the single greatest obstacle in the old testament to entry it's similar to david i remember preaching psalm 51 and saying when david committed his sin with basheba and then the murder that he committed you know what the law required death death how in the world could he get out of that there's always these tensions the old testament is showing us and teaching us so that we're we're prompted to ask these kinds of questions how how the impossibility of the law intended to force people into this dilemma so that we think about it which the jews often didn't think about for themselves this man was not only on the fringes of the world he was not only on the ends of the earth he was on the fringes of judaism and couldn't get in that's the dilemma so here's the imagery he comes 200 miles to worship what a picture he's searching for a way to the god of israel i find this so powerful and so moving this man's searching and yet he had no access you know what paul would say in ephesians to us you now have access but at one time you had no access you were aliens and strangers to the covenants you were those people you no access this is a powerful moment isn't it you think of stephen for a minute now and why his sermon was so important what was his point about the temple, stop localizing God in that box. Stop that. Stop it. God was never bound up in a box. Moses learned that at the burning bush event. Here's a Gentile searching for the God of Israel, but he couldn't find him. The God of Israel would have to go find him. That's this. That's the beauty of this. There's one more great obstacle here. I've given you two. Here's a third. This obstacle is the greatest. But it's the obstacle that levels the playing field. It's the obstacle that levels the playing field for the Jews. What's he doing? He's reading the Jewish scriptures. And he can't understand it. He just can't understand it. And right at this moment, in God's wonderful providence, this is why the doctrine of providence is so beautiful, for boys and girls, nothing happens by chance. He tells Philip, the spirit, go right now, overtake the chariot, right now. Obviously, he had obtained in Jerusalem a scroll of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, and he's reading it. It's the Greek translation of the Old Testament. Luke records that, in verse 28, that he was sitting in his chariot and reading Isaiah the prophet of all choices. Now, you and I take for granted sermons and hearing this all the time and learning the Bible. Let me ask you, you have the scroll of Isaiah, and now you have sat down to read it. You're going to begin at verse 1, right? Chapter 1. Imagine what he would have been exposed to as he goes through Isaiah. He starts in verse 1, and there's this severe indictment against the nation of Israel. I am tired of your worship. I am so sick of it. Your new moons and your sacrifices. My soul loathes. You're just going through the motions. There's no heart in that. I can't endure iniquity in the sacred meeting anymore. I'm weary of bearing them. Then he comes to chapter 1, and it says, now you let's reason together says the lord though your sins are like scarlet they shall be white as snow how how comes to chapter 6 in the year that king uzaya died i saw the lord high and lifted up and the train of his robe filled the temple and when i saw that and i heard them say holy holy holy i dropped and covered before the god of israel he was breaking me up in his holiness he was crushing me in his glory woe is me i'm undone i'm a man of unclean lips and i dwell among all those in israel who are of unclean lips go isaiah i'm sending you to them to speak that word but guess what hearing they will not hear and seeing they will not see or understand he's he's he's walking this whole path of isaiah then he comes to the judgment sections on the nations imagine hearing that fear and the pit and the snare are upon you oh inhabitant of the earth ethiopia he's searching he's searching this is a big problem i haven't listened do that do the jews know who their god is immense in his holiness and no one can get near him because of sin their sins have barred them from god he wants to come to worship god and the text says that he's leaving without ever really having worshiped god what a picture of the hopelessness of the human race. He can't remedy a situation. All the talk, nobody can remedy their misery, can they? But is anyone even asking the right questions anymore? Is anyone even thinking about what's most important? What does searching look like? This is the best example of searching you'll ever find. It's at this moment, the Lord starts seeking him. Philip, go. Go out there. Go down to the road. Go to the road. I've got one for you. It's just so beautiful, isn't it? I've got one for you. And as Philip makes his time, he starts running because that's what, you know, beautiful are the feet of those who bring you the gospel of peace, right? We run to you. We like preaching. We want to give you good news. He runs. And in God's providence, guess where he is in the book? Isaiah 53. What a moment, huh? Isaiah 53. Which is so interesting because the Spirit, and Luke understood so clearly, this was a great moment for reminding the church how they were reading the Bible and what the mission of the church always was to be. Which means that right here, as we come, we really have probably one of the most important sections in the entire book of Acts that captures the whole great commission so powerfully and so beautifully as the solution to everything in this world. The solution. And God has sovereignly arranged it all. He's stuck at Isaiah 53. He's read the whole book and he gets to Isaiah 53 and he's stuck. He can't move. stuck he had heard about the holiness of god he heard about judgment all that he moved on he moved on but he gets here and he cannot get out of it here it was he was led as a sheep to the slaughter and as a lamb before its shear is silent so he opened not his mouth in his humiliation his justice was taken away and who will declare his generation for his life is taken from the earth the writer of acts stopped short in finishing the quote of isaiah 53 he cites verse 7 and 8 and the last line of verse 8 and isaiah 53 is this for the transgressions of my people he was stricken he can't get away from it you see you see where he is imagine all that he had read all around it he has no form or beauty that we should desire him when we see him there's no beauty he's despised and rejected by men a man of sorrows acquainted with grief and we as it were hid our faces from him he was despised and we did not esteem him surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows yet we esteemed him stricken smitten by god and afflicted but he was wounded for our transgressions he was prused for our iniquities the chastisement for our peace was upon him and by his stripes we are healed who is this who he can't get it out of his head that's one question he can't move on from who would face that who would be wounded for our transgressions this way pierced through a sword would go right through him of God's wrath who would be accursed in such a way who would be stricken so that by his stripes I could be healed if God's rejected all the sacrifices of his people which chapter 1 said if his holiness fills the temple this much we can't get there so that even the prophet cries out and says woe is me and he ducks and covers in the presence of the Lord even the prophet Isaiah who is this Calvin makes such a big moment of this in his commentary he contrasts the modesty of this man with those who are arrogant and prideful in never searching or reading the Bible. In other words, he's saying those who never open the Scriptures and read it are just arrogant people. Prideful people. He says, that is also why the reading of Scripture bears fruit with such few people today. Because scarcely one in a hundred is to be found who gladly submits itself to its teaching and asks questions like this. Who even care? right who cares look at him searching look at the search jews were um were all about club life they didn't even understand their own scriptures it was just formalism they didn't care to read them that's all it was in the jewish community they didn't care about sunday school why go to that we don't need to grow we know all this they didn't know their scriptures. It's really amazing to me how many years we've had catechism preaching. In our churches, we find overwhelmingly people still don't know the truth, the basic truths of these things. So, guess what the Jews did to it? It's Isaiah. Isaiah 53, Isaiah's talking about himself. This man's sitting there thinking, there's no way. Did you read chapter 6? There's no way. He is struggling. He's guilt-stricken. He's wrestling with it. Is this the prophet or somebody else? It must be somebody else. It's got to be somebody else. No mere creature could pay this debt and release others from it. They couldn't release God's eternal anger against sin and free somebody else. Who could do that? Oh, that's in the catechism, by the way. God in His wonderful sovereignty has arranged every circumstance here in His providence, but it's a heart completely soft. It's a heart humble, ready to hear, at some point we have to come here. You can be of the tradition a long time and not come here. You understand? You have to come here. And that leads to the solution. Verse 35, we read that Philip opened his mouth and beginning at this scripture preached jesus to him he preached that christ is that lamb christ is the lamb jesus he's the one who who put on all on his back all of our burdens and all of our sins and notice the emphasis here on proclamation that he's preaching how will they here without a preacher and how will they preach unless they're sent philip went through everything philip went through the story of the life death and resurrection of jesus and and and he did what jesus did on the road to emmaus uh when his own disciples were confused and the whole thing structured the same if you put it up side by side the eunuch hears this and he says if that's true what hinders me why can't i enter why can't i enter i want to enter the kingdom i believe it and verse 636 sets it up now as they went down the road they came to some water wasn't holy water was it i came to some water now now i gave you a chiasm this morning you know i even went further than my outline i drew you a picture you believe that you can put it on your refrigerators i want to see and i put a little copyright there to tell you that i copyrighted right here in the office okay it's a beautiful chiasm here did you see it the reason i love to point out chiasms is to tell you no man could do this stuff this is the holy spirit beautifully structuring a text to show you his imprint all over it you find this all over the bible look at it you'll see it there philip sent philip departs outside the kingdom enters the kingdom you see it there um the whole thing he's he can't understand philip preaches and the center of it being what does he preach who does he preach isaiah 53 jesus that's the center he's the answer he couldn't be circumcised he couldn't present himself before the holy god of israel He couldn't enter the temple. What was the solution? I said earlier, where Jesus is, there the temple is. That was Stephen's whole point. Where Jesus is preached, there Jesus is. This is why all the reformers understood where the Word of God is preached and Jesus is heralded, there Jesus is. Where the Word of God is not preached, it's not a church, if you understand. So Philip opened his mouth, and he preaches Jesus. And the kingdom opens up right there. What hinders me? Answer, God has taken down every obstacle, dear Ethiopian eunuch. He's just taken it all down. Remember what Peter said at Pentecost? Repent and be baptized for the promise is to you and to your children. and I'm going to bring them in right there and to all who are afar off. Philip stops, the chariot stopped. Seeing that he believed, they go down into the water and Philip for sure sprinkled him, by the way. I thought you'd laugh at that. Mode of baptism is not the issue, is it? The answer is nothing hinders God from receiving you. But you might stand in the way of that. by not believing as so powerful? He believed. And Philip administers upon him the new covenant sign of washing. A sign that demonstrates God doesn't exclude but the new covenant is so wide. And that you can enter that kingdom today by what? Faith. That's it. Faith. Believing, depending and believing in this king and his kingdom that the Lord has brought to you in the preaching of the gospel. Right where you are right now. You see, this is what we have the hardest time accepting. This is, got to be more, got to be more. Can't see enough right now. Stephen learned Jesus is right here. And if he could open your eyes, you'd see, I see him seated right now. And if you die, he's going to get up. You can be born again in Zion, right here, right now, and enter the kingdom. Do you know how wonderful that is? You don't have to go up on this mountain or that mountain. You understand what Jesus was saying. Right here, right now. Luke has structured this all after what Jesus did. Right on the road to Emmaus, he didn't need to go up to a temple. He didn't need to do any of that. And we read, he went away rejoicing. Why? Well, here's what I envision happened, by the way. May I be a little speculative for a minute? He's just left, Philip, he departs. He gets back up in his chariot and he grabs the scroll again as he's riding home. And he keeps reading. Guess what he comes to? Chapter 56. To my eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths and choose what pleases me. and hold fast my covenant even to them i will give in my house and within my walls a place and a name better than that of sons and daughters i will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off to my eunuchs who delight to worship me and honor my sabbath they're going to ride on the high hills of the earth the time of fulfillment to the ends of the earth had just begun you see it it had just begun isaiah 53 and isaiah 56 and isaiah 52 the ends of all the earth shall see the salvation of our god had just happened just started and this man would go over and look at the church fathers from africa who influence us to this day augustine look listen to them read them they all look back to this guy how his influence was this ethiopian eunuch what hinders you not god not god he's put everything in place he has brought the temple to you and he's opened it to you today in jesus and he's brought it to the ends of the earth today and as we look at a world in shambles and racially divided, remember what God is telling us here. He will have the success of his church. He will accomplish it. But remember how that success comes. That's so important for us. You have to enter through the preaching of Jesus. You jettison that, you're going to have major problems. And maybe that's why the American church is such a mess. What an encouragement that the Lord is building his church today. Stay focused. Receive Jesus. He can break down the greatest of divides racially, nationally. And having this ministry, he reminds you, don't lose heart. Preach the word in season, that is, when everything's convenient, which you've had a lot of time of, and out of season, which means untimely. When everything's against you, it doesn't change your mission. May the Lord give us this kind of confidence this morning in His powerful Word. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we don't deserve to hear such a message like this or to have Jesus brought to us like this, but You've been faithful and You have sought us. You've come and You've reached down this day and done the very same thing You did so many years ago to the Ethiopian eunuch. how good you are how wonderful you are forgive us for not listening and trusting in your powerful word and your spirit who will build and send the gospel to the ends of the earth in this way give us confidence in what you are doing and let us not lose heart we humbly pray this in Jesus name Amen