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March 29/30, 2014
Jason Meyer | Acts 8:1-8
And Saul approved of [Stephen's] execution.
And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him. But Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.
Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word. Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ. And the crowds with one accord paid attention to what was being said by Philip when they heard him and saw the signs that he did. For unclean spirits, crying out with a loud voice, came out of many who had them, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed. So there was much joy in that city. —Acts 8:1–8
Introduction
Last week I sketched a road surrounded on either side by two ditches. The sermon was on wartime lifestyle. You may have noticed that I spent more time stressing the danger of what I called the “under-indulgence ditch. This was intentional. Let me direct you to the bookmark. Look at priority #12. It says, “wartime lifestyle.” That is the abbreviation. In our DNA document, the fuller title is “God-centered enjoyment and wartime lifestyle.” Allow me to explain. This priority is like a car that has tires on both sides of the vehicle. We don’t spend our time arguing about which set of tires is more important, the drivers' side tires or the passenger's side tires. My point is that we are not going to argue about which one we need—we need both!
We have labeled these two things as one priority, because I believe that we separate them to our peril. They belong together to protect our joy, because we are wobbly and imbalanced when we stress one over the other. When we blow a tire on the right or the left, we immediately begin to veer toward one of the ditches. Last week I stressed the danger of the ditch of under-indulgence to a greater degree than the other ditch. I wanted the phrase, “God, who gives us all things richly to enjoy” to ring in your hearts! Engage with the creation in such a way that purifies your picture of our Creator as a full-of-joy Father. His children are called to be enjoyers, because he is a Creator, not a forbidder. We must protect the truth that everything God made is good and nothing is to be rejected if received with thanksgiving. God’s aim in giving is our joy! We have a college and not just a seminary because we believe Christ puts his finger on every square inch of this universe and says, “Mine.” His works are studied by all who delight in them (Psalm 111:2). So we study all of them. Here is the great part. He puts his finger on all of it and says, “Mine”—and then he says, “yours.” He shares it because he is that kind of Savior. He is not glorified as much in his giving without our delighting. Our delight in what he has given gives God more glory!
As takers of what God has made, we can be either ungrateful (we consume without gratitude to our Creator) or guilt-ridden (we doubt that God really wants us to enjoy what we have). As rejectors of what God has made, we can wrongly believe that they are bad (as if some part of creation is bad), or we can wrongly think our self-denial makes us look good.
Make no mistake, dear friends. This is spiritual warfare. Gratefully receiving what God gave you to enjoy is part of the fight of faith. I drank a root beer float last week to the glory of God. It was spiritual warfare. I drove a stake through the heart of asceticism and boastful self-denial. I got emails and pictures on Facebook from some of you to show that you ate Oreos or root beer floats. That was the best sermon application ever.
This week I am stressing the ditch of over-indulgence. I put wartime lifestyle as the last In-reach priority as a transition to our outreach priorities. Let me explain. Wartime living really means wartime giving. Our giving reflects whether we value the spread of the gospel and whether we really believe that we are in a war worth winning. Wartime living exists for wartime giving for one simple reason: The mission of spreading can’t happen without supply lines. We hinder the mission when our spreading outruns our supply lines. As Douglas Wilson said, we don’t want to make the mistake that Napoleon made in which we find ourselves in Russia in the winter having outrun our supply lines. That didn’t work out so well for him.
The over-indulgence ditch has that loud warning: Look out! Enjoyment can become an excuse. It is relatively easy to trick ourselves into excusing over-indulgence in the name of enjoying all that God made. Last week I stressed childlike giving. When we look at our Father, what do we see? We see that he loves his children and takes care of them. We also see how much he loves his Son and his plan for his Son to have the first place! We need gospel gauges. Our church and mission budget is a gospel gauge. It asks us penetrating questions. Can we let go of lesser things for the greatest cause? Do we have desires that match our Father’s delights? Yes, he delights when we richly enjoy all that he gave. But do we enjoy most what our Father enjoys most?
What he purposes reveals his pleasures. He shows us his pleasures through his purposes. So what is his sovereign purpose and plan? I love the way that Paul puts it in Ephesians 1:10. He aims “to sum up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.” He is going to unite heaven and earth under one head. Did you catch the resonance with what we sang last in the hymn last week?
This is my Father’s world. The battle is not done.
Jesus who died shall be satisfied and earth and heaven be one.
Our Father is working to make earth and heaven one by summing up all things in his Son. Our Father’s purpose is that Christ would have first place in every part of our Father’s world. Is that of first importance to us? Wartime giving is a gauge to see if our hearts are where his heart is: The spread of the gospel of Christ is the centerpiece of his plan to sum up all things in Christ.
So let us gaze at the spread of the gospel in Acts 8. Check your pulse as we go. Is your heart where his heart is? We see God’s sovereign purpose and plan everywhere here to sum up all things in Christ. You can see it in at least five ways: 1) suffering, 2) circumstances, 3) sharing, 4) salvation, and 5) signs of salvation. An equation might help put them together. God sovereignly uses suffering and circumstances plus the sharing of the gospel to bring about salvation and the signs of salvation.
And Saul approved of his execution. And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him. But Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.
God used suffering to bring about scattering to bring about spreading! Saul approved of the execution of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. It looks like such a setback for the gospel. O, but God’s sovereignty is so amazing that seeming gospel setbacks are actually strategic gospel advances. Yes, an outbreak of persecution led to scattering. But it was sovereign scattering because they “scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria” (v. 1). That should ring a bell for the reader of Acts. Listen to 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.”
God determines where we go. He could have told them to go directly, but he works his sovereign will in ways that seem indirect to us. No human gets the credit for this gospel advance. God alone gets the glory. God is sovereign over our suffering and he even uses suffering to spread the gospel. One of the biggest roadblocks was an ethnic one. The gospel had to break through to Samaria. No one was signing up to go to Samaria. So God sent them through suffering and scattering. God also uses circumstances in his spreading plan.
This point is so obvious that you will get it if I just read the verses!
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 shearer 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?”
God sovereignly uses both suffering and circumstances for spreading, but the picture is far from complete. Spreading also requires sharing the gospel.
People must scatter and share the gospel in order to spread the gospel. God fulfilled his mission of spreading through suffering, scattering, and sharing. Did you notice the link in verse 4? “Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word.” That verse is a pattern that gets repeated in every story that follows. Wherever they scattered, they shared the gospel. The next verse helps us understand what exactly was shared and spread: Christ! “Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ.”
We read exactly the same scenario after the apostles came from Jerusalem to receive the Samaritans into the church. On their way back to Jerusalem what did they do? They preached the gospel to many villages of the Samaritans.
Now when they [the apostles] had testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel to many villages of the Samaritans.—Acts 8:25
What did Philip do when the Ethiopian eunuch asked him the million dollar question from Isaiah 53? He preached the gospel of Christ!
Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus.—Acts 8:35
What did Philip do in the rest of his travels? He preached the gospel to all the towns he passed through.
But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he passed through he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.—Acts 8:40
Sharing the gospel is a way to test our belief in God’s sovereignty and the power of the gospel to save. God is sovereign over salvation. He is pleased to save through the gospel, which is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes—both Jew and Gentile.
We get something of a repeat of Acts 2 in Acts 8. The Spirit is at work when Philip preaches. They with “one accord” pay attention to Philip as the Jews paid attention to Peter.
And the crowds with one accord paid attention to what was being said by Philip when they heard him and saw the signs that he did.—Acts 8:6
But the Spirit didn’t just give the crowd a good attention span. He opened their hearts to believe and receive what Philip was preaching!
But when they believed Philip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.—Acts 8:12
God did the same thing in the heart of the Ethiopian eunuch.
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.—Acts 8:36–38
This scenario is repeated countless times in the book of Acts. Where does believing come from? Acts 13:48 gives the answer: “And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.”
Where does the ability to “pay attention” come from? Acts 16:14 gives the answer: “One who heard us was a woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.”
Hopefully you see that these last two examples beg a very big question. Who is this Paul that is preaching? He is the same one that was persecuting the church at the beginning of Acts 8. The biggest sovereign turning point is the conversion of the persecutor-turned-apostle Paul in Acts 9. What looked so bleak at the beginning with Saul in Acts 8 was only a strategic advance for the gospel as King Jesus calls Saul the persecutor into Paul the preacher of Christ in Acts 9.
If we love salvation, we will love the signs of salvation as well. Gospel signs are not the gospel, but they are evidence of the gospel at work. These are some of the things that happen when the gospel breaks through and begins to bloom in a city. I call these gospel blossoms. The preaching of the gospel of Christ brought Christ to bear on all of the situations we see in Acts 8. Acts 1:1 says that the first volume (the Gospel of Luke) was about “all that Jesus began to do and teach.” That means that Acts (the second volume) is about what Jesus continued to do and teach. He is reigning from heaven and pouring out all that is seen on earth. He is bringing about “on earth, as it is in heaven.” What did he do? He did exactly what he did when he was on earth. He cast out unclean spirits and healed many who were paralyzed or lame.
Victory over demons and sickness
For unclean spirits, crying out with a loud voice, came out of many who had them, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed.—Acts 8:7
In the same way, King Jesus works within us a heart for healing and mercy wherever we scatter and we see people that need mercy. But Jesus also works within our hearts a hunger for justice. One injustice that Jesus hates is ethnic enmity. The cross has put the enmity to death. Ethnic enmity is accomplished at the cross and applied by believers as they scatter.
Victory over ethnic enmity
Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John, who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, for he had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit.—Acts 8:14–17
Why had no one gone to Samaria yet? Didn’t they hear what Jesus said in Acts 1:8? The problem was that Jews hated Samaritans. Truth be told, they hated each other. It is no surprise to hear Acts 1:8 on the lips of Jesus. He had already demonstrated his heart to reach the Samaritans. Remember the Samaritan woman? Jesus had to go through Samaria because he had set his sights on seeking and saving her! God uses suffering so that his people would scatter among the Samaritans because he had set his sights on seeking and saving them!
Jesus is reigning from heaven and directing the mission. No surprise that he would send his people to the Samaritans. The Samaritans could have received the Spirit when they believed, but God ordained that the Jews would have to lay their hands on the Samaritans. Why? He wanted equality in the body. He didn’t want the Jews to say, “we have something you don’t have.” The Jews had to be convinced that God had baptized the Samaritans into the body.
The same thing would happen later in Acts 12 with the Gentiles. Gentiles are brought into the body the same way that the Jews were in Acts 2. It happened this way every time the gospel crossed a major cultural or ethnic barrier.
Jesus brought joy!
Receiving the gospel brings gospel joy
So there was much joy in that city … 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.—Acts 8:8, 39
What is the result of the gospel? Joy! But it is not generic joy. It is joy in Jesus. Joy in salvation. Joy in the Savior. This is something that goes with our salvation. King David repentantly prayed that God would restore to him the joy of his salvation. Joy flows from salvation’s spring.
Notice that in both stories that gospel sharing and gospel receiving leads to gospel rejoicing! Philip shares the gospel, Samaria receives the gospel, and Samaria is filled with rejoicing!
Philip shares the gospel with the Ethiopian eunuch and it leads to rejoicing! We could show how this theme is repeated countless times, but I will limit myself to one very familiar picture in Luke’s first volume.
Luke 15 is a stirring reminder that when something that is lost is found there should be rejoicing, not just on earth, but in heaven! Pharisees are refusing to join heaven’s rejoicing because they have rejected the gospel of joy.
Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”…Jesus said, “And when he has found [the lost sheep], he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
“Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”—Acts 15:1–2, 6–10
Jesus then tells the climactic story of the two lost sons that need to come to repentance. One does and there is a feast to celebrate!
Our call to this city and every city is, “Rejoice with us!” Christ is seeking and saving the lost. He is going out and finding them through the gospel and laying people on his sovereignly strong Good Shepherd shoulders. Rejoice—again I say rejoice!
Application
See the opportunities that God’s sovereign scattering has provided. Believe that proximity implies responsibility for proclaiming Christ.
I love the ministry of campus outreach. One of the biggest reasons they came to the frozen tundra of Minneapolis from the balmy South was because Minneapolis has more college students per capita then anywhere except Boston. And they all need Christ.
I wonder if you see God’s sovereignty behind the scattering that happens among college students. Students come from many places. International students are almost a carbon copy of the picture we have in the Ethiopian eunuch. A foreigner comes within the reach of the gospel when they come to visit for a temporary purpose. Do you see the opportunity to proclaim Christ?
Think about the sovereign displacement of unreached peoples. They have come to Minneapolis. How can the Somalis not come to mind at this point? Look for ways to share Christ in the sovereign circumstances he provides.
Don’t ignore peoples that are different from you. Don’t ignore those who are Samaritans to you. Who are those that are geographically near and yet culturally far from you?
Do you ever think of God’s sovereignty in where you scatter at work? Think about your co-workers. You have contact with them weekly. God is sovereign over where you work and who you work with. Don’t go to work with your head down in a task-oriented way. Look up at God’s purpose to sum up all things in Christ and then look around for someone to proclaim him to!
Believe that if you are a Christian, you have what it takes to share Christ personally.
You know what I love about Acts 8? Here is what you don’t see. You don’t see Philip (a non-apostle) say to people, “You all need to come to Jerusalem and hear these gifted preachers we have called apostles. I wish you could have been there to hear Peter back in Acts 2. If only Peter were here!” No, Philip had the risen Christ, he had the gospel of Christ, and he was filled with the Holy Spirit.
We are not going to trust our technique for sharing the gospel, because the power is in the gospel itself—not in the way we proclaim it. My evangelism professor once shared a story of how he was at a gas station and he was trying to figure out just the right way to share the gospel with the gas station clerk. While he was trying to figure out a good gospel bridge, a truck driver just barreled up to the clerk and said, “Do you know Jesus?” My professor said he groaned at that point and wished that the truck driver had taken his class so he could fix him! But the clerk answered, “No, but I have been waiting for someone to tell me about him.”
How are we going to share the gospel? Share the gospel as an overflow of joy. It is good news! We shouldn’t share the gospel like we are filing our taxes. Here is one of the most profound lessons about evangelism I ever learned. My passion for outreach only grows as I get as close to Christ as possible. That is exactly what the noted missionary Henry Martyn said. “The spirit of Christ is the spirit of missions. The nearer we get to him, the more intensely missionary we become.”
Draw as close to Christ as possible. Be able to say, “Hallelujah. All I have is Christ. Hallelujah. Jesus is my life.” Think about what you have, not what you don’t have. Where would I be without Christ! Then think about what they do not have! Imagine living without Christ! That has consistently been the most motivating thing in my evangelism. I want Christ to be honored. I want him to have first place in that person’s life. But sometimes my compassion for people is lacking. Sometimes I am more afraid than compassionate. But when I stop to think about what I have and what they don’t have, suddenly compassion starts to surge. Jesus had compassion on the people when he saw that they were like sheep without a shepherd. We can too when we see that they don’t have a shepherd. They are running a hell-bound race!
Please don’t make the mistake of limiting outreach to a church program. Too many people limit outreach to a program as if our outreach only happened on Tuesday nights. Sharing the gospel on Tuesday nights is great, but don’t limit outreach to a program of outreach. We need a culture of outreach. We must see everything moving through the mighty cycle of Up-reach, In-reach, Outreach. Think about some examples.
We want a culture of evangelism. A culture of evangelism is a culture that loves the gospel and is intent on sharing it. Mack Stiles is coming to speak for global focus. He wrote a book on evangelism that called for a culture of evangelism. As you come across people, they should discover that you are a gospel person. When they come to church with you, they should discover that we are a gospel church. When we sing songs, they should be gospel songs. When they hear sermons, they should be gospel sermons. We want them to have multiple contacts with Christ when they come into contact with Christians.
Conclusion
Unbelievers, some of you are here today through a variety of circumstances. Did he bring you here to hear the gospel? I call you to come to Christ. Receive forgiveness of sins. Receive the joy that comes from knowing Christ. I declare to you what Paul said to his jailor: “Believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31). Jesus came to set the captives free, even those who do not know that they are captives. The jailer thought he was free and was watching men who were prisoners. He asked Paul and Silas what he had to do to be saved because he saw that he was a prisoner to sin and death. He was set free by Christ. The gates of your prison can swing open as you see Christ pay the price for your freedom! Do you see? O come and see!
Professing Christians, what do you see all around you? Do you see eternity? Someone said that Jonathan Edwards had eternity stamped on his eyeballs. O, how I pray for that as a church. Joni Erickson Tada used a similar image, but instead of seeing, she spoke of feeling or experiencing the splash over of eternity. She asked us if we felt the splash over of hell and the splash-over of heaven?
She mentioned chemotherapy as a splash over of hell. Some of you are going through that even now. Present sufferings are a splash over of hell, reminding us of how horrible eternal suffering would be. Then she said that the splash over of heaven is not the warm spring days or the feeling you get when all the world is right (though I would stress that those havings surely do point to the longing for heaven’s joys). She said that the greatest taste of heaven is when Jesus comes to you in your suffering—the splash over of heaven in the very midst of the splash over of hell. Even in the darkest moments of hell’s splash over, God shows us the light of his love in the splash over of heaven. There is nothing so tender, kind, compassionate, and strong as when faith comes alive and God feels more real than ever.
Believe that you are where you are for a reason. You are going through what you are going through for a reason. Our culture cultivates discontentment. We are always looking for the next thing—the next thing to buy, the next relationship to find, the greener grass on the other side. I am calling you to blossom where you are planted. Look for the opportunities for sharing the gospel that God sovereignly brings into your life. Proximity implies responsibility. Who has God put in your path? Are there unbelievers in your sphere of influence?
What has God brought into your life? Can he use difficult circumstances? Yes! The enemy might mean it for evil, but God will use it for our good and for his glory. Think about all the ways that God uses suffering to advance the gospel. We see it here in Acts 8. We see it at the end of Acts. Paul is in prison and he is proclaiming the gospel. When Paul and Silas were thrown into prison in Acts 16, was that a setback for the gospel? No way. A Philippian jailer is saved. What about at the end of Acts? Paul is in chains, but the gospel cannot be chained. Paul even says that the praetorian guard has heard the gospel and even some from the household of Caesar have come to faith.
How about you? You might not think of a single way that God is using what you are going through for his glory. That is not an argument. That is simply an acknowledgement of our limitations. You don’t need to know. You just need to know that he knows. You don’t need to see. You just need to see that he sees. You don’t need to know the plan. You just need to know that he has the plan. Keep taking the next steps and looking for opportunities to share the gospel.
Closing Song: "Sovereign Over Us"