The Gospel of Jesus
Download MP3Tonight's reading, comes from Acts chapter 8 verse 26 through 40. To 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.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 1: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 this prophet say this?
Speaker 1: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's water. What prevents me from being baptized? And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water.
Speaker 1:Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. 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. But Philip found himself in Azatas, and as he passed through, he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.
Joel Brooks:This is the
Speaker 1:word of the Lord.
Joel Brooks:God. Pray with me. Lord, we thank you for your word. We pray that through your spirit that your word would find root in our hearts, that it would change us. Spirit of God, we do ask that you would come, and we are in desperate need of your help because our hearts are hard.
Joel Brooks:They're resistant to truth and to your word. Lord, I pray that where we need healing, you would heal us. Where we need convicting, you would convict us. Lord, you would have your way with us tonight. I ask that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore.
Joel Brooks:Lord, may your words remain, and may they change us. And I pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. At the heart of the Christian faith, we find something that is utterly unique among all religions. A matter of fact, it's it's so unique, it's probably best not even to describe Christianity as a religion.
Joel Brooks:Because every religion out there believes that we have to do certain things in order to go to heaven or to or achieve Nirvana or whatever eternal bliss is offered. Christianity does not teach this. For instance, Buddhism teaches that one needs to follow the eightfold path, which is things like practicing good morals, meditation, compassionate acts, and a lot of the these this eightfold path are good things. And they believe that you have to do all of these good things if you're gonna be set free from this cycle of life and death, and finally are to reach Nirvana. Hindus believe in reincarnation, and that the form of your reincarnation depends on your your good deeds, your morals in this life.
Joel Brooks:And ultimately, one hopes to be good enough, to escape this cycle, and they don't believe in heaven, they believe you you become one with God. Islam has the 5 pillars that one must follow, and and you could go on with all the religions. And all these religions, their their founders or their main prophets, they all point to what they believe to be the way of salvation, or the way to heaven. And Christianity is is utterly different than this because we believe the founder of our faith, Jesus Christ, does not point to any way that you might be saved. He says, Look unto me, I am the way of salvation.
Joel Brooks:And in John 14, he says, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life. No one comes to the father except through me. And so what we believe is unique. We believe that a person actually provides salvation for us. He does not point to the way of salvation.
Joel Brooks:He is salvation. He does not point to any work that must be done, because he has done all the work that there is to do. He doesn't point you to some holy place or to some temple that you have to go and worship God because he says, I am that temple. You wanna worship God, you come to me. To me.
Joel Brooks:This message that we believe about Jesus, his life, his death, and his resurrection, is what we in this room call the gospel. The gospel. I'm finding more and more that the gospel is kinda like the word church that we looked at last week, we use it a lot, but it's kind of hard to put your finger on, kind of hard to define what this word gospel really means. If I were to say, next week for Palm Sunday, we're gonna have a gospel quartet up here. There there there's a certain image that immediately just pops to your mind as to is what that's going to look like, and that's not the image I want you to have of gospel.
Joel Brooks:If I say we're gonna turn into a full gospel church, that's gonna have a certain connotation to it. That's not what I want you to to walk away with. The word gospel in Greek in your Bible is the word, euangelion. Euangelion, and this is where we get the word evangelism or evangelistic. It it's a word that was well in use by the 1st century.
Joel Brooks:It was very common word. If you look in your Bible, that's probably translated good news a lot of the times. But this word gospel was first used to describe something else. It was used to describe the decree of a king or news received from a battle. A decree from a king or news, from a battle.
Joel Brooks:And and it was a good news because when he had a good king and he sent forth his decree, his gospel message, it was good news. And this was the authoritative message of the king. And when there was a a victory on the battlefront, they would send a herald to come back and report to the king, and he would give the king the gospel, the good news of this victory that had happened. And then the king would spread this gospel throughout his kingdom. And and it's really important to understand kind of the roots of this word gospel if we're to understand how it pertains to the central message of Christianity.
Joel Brooks:Because the gospel is a proclamation of an event that has happened. Not something that will happen, it is a proclamation of something that has happened that is really good news. It's not a proclamation of what needs to change, or what needs to happen. It's an about event that has taken place. It's about a battle that has been decisively won.
Joel Brooks:It's about a king's authoritative word going forward. That is the gospel. And when one hears the gospel, everything changes. People who might have been living in fear, now they receive this herald comes and he proclaims the gospel. Now they know they can live at peace.
Joel Brooks:Everything changes. They can now rejoice. And so the gospel message that we we hold to as Christians, that we believe is the life and the death and, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is the son of God. That's the message. But we have to understand, this is a historical event.
Joel Brooks:It's good news when we proclaim it out, and it changes everything. This is an event that changes our life, it gives us hope, it gives us peace, it gives us meaning. I want us to look at this text to see how. We just read, Dwight just read from Acts chapter 8, which is the story of Christianity's 1st non Jewish convert. Last week, if you remember, as we looked at the doctrine of the church, we we saw how after Jesus had ascended, He told His disciples, Wait for the Holy Spirit.
Joel Brooks:And they waited and then Pentecost happened, they were filled with the Spirit, and then they went out, Peter like a man on fire, and he just preached the word of God, but it stayed in Jerusalem. And so God allowed persecution to happen through Saul. Stephen is stoned, and after Stephen is stoned, it says that the disciples scattered. Philip is one of the people who scattered. Who started taking the message of the gospel outside of the walls of Jerusalem.
Joel Brooks:And so if you look at chapter 8 verse 1 it says, And Saul approved of his, that 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 for the apostles. Look at verse 4, it says, now those who were scattered went about preaching the word. Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them Christ. And the crowds with one accord paid attention to what was being said by Philip, and when they heard him and saw the signs that he did. For unclean spirits came out of many who were possessed, crying with a loud voice.
Joel Brooks:And many who were paralyzed or lamed were healed, so that there was much joy in the city. So Philip, he's a, he's actually a deacon, and we use that phrase now, just a deacon. But look at what this deacon does. I mean, we don't have deacons yet. When we do, this is my standard.
Joel Brooks:This is what I expect of the deacons from this church. Their mere acts of service or mercy ministry is just to go and proclaim the gospel into all these cities to heal people and to cast out demons. Stephen set, and Stephen and Philip set the bar high when it comes to deacons. An angel the Lord comes up to Philip, and he says, I want you to go south to that road that goes to Gaza. And I love verse 27.
Joel Brooks:It says, and he rose and went. He didn't ask questions. He didn't, you know, need some more details. He he didn't need to know, well what exactly am I gonna be doing? Who exactly am I gonna meet?
Joel Brooks:All the questions that we like to ask for all of our lives when discerning God's will. Okay God, I will go, but tell me who am I gonna meet? What am I gonna do? How long am I gonna be there? How am I gonna be provided for?
Joel Brooks:Am I gonna find my spouse if I go? You know, there there's like all these things, these questions we bring to God. Answer these and I will obey. He just goes. He just goes.
Joel Brooks:And once he hits this road, he sees an Ethiopian and a chariot who is who's reading from the prophet Isaiah, and the spirit of God says, I want you to go talk to that person. And we learn a number of things about this Ethiopian man in just a few sentences. Says he's from Ethiopia. This is not the Ethiopia of today. This is a different region just south of Egypt.
Joel Brooks:This man is likely a black African. He he worked for the Queen of Ethiopia as the treasurer, which is a very important position. You would call him like the minister of finance for Ethiopia. And this position came at an enormous cost. Because if one is to work with in close corner quarters with the queen or with the royal family, then one had to become castrated.
Joel Brooks:They had to become a eunuch. And so this position of power had cost him a lot. And we know that this man had to be spiritually dissatisfied. He had to be searching. I mean, because he takes a leave from office to go on a 5 month journey by chariot, which is how long it would take one way for him to get to Jerusalem.
Joel Brooks:5 months. And you don't spend 10 months traveling in a carriage if everything's fine. You're desperate, you're searching for something. And the text here says that he was returning from Jerusalem, which means that he just received some devastating news if he's returning from Jerusalem. Because when he would arrive at the temple, and if you know anything about the temple, there's all these different the different courts that you can go into.
Joel Brooks:You know, there's the Holy of Holies, there's the the priestly court, there's the court that the Jewish men can go into, then there's a court of the women, then there's a court of the Gentiles, which is the outer court, and maybe he's hoping he could get into there. But this court, they had Levitical, guards at the gates to make sure that only people who were ritually pure could enter. And Deuteronomy 23 says, there are no eunuchs allowed. No eunuchs allowed into the assembly for worship. So this man would have traveled 5 months, got to the temple to worship, and he would have been turned away.
Joel Brooks:And now he's coming home. And he had to be absolutely devastated. He decides to read from Isaiah 53, which is about suffering, because I'm sure that is what he feels at this moment. He is suffering. He's trying to serve the Lord, but he is suffering.
Joel Brooks:For him to own a scroll is a huge deal. They're expensive and they're rare, but he owns 1 and he's reading it. And he comes to Isaiah 53. And then let me read to you from Isaiah in context what he's reading. If you have your Bibles, 535-08.
Joel Brooks:It says, but he was wounded for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was a chastisement that brought us peace. And with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray.
Joel Brooks:We have turned each one to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. Like a lamb that has led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shears is silent, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment, he was taken away. And as for his generations, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people.
Joel Brooks:And that's what this man is reading. And Philip runs up to them and he's running, and he's just running, and he's listening because when you read in that day, you would read out loud and so he can hear this. And so he has boldness to ask, do you understand what you're reading? And the man has humility to actually say, how can I Unless someone teaches me? Come in, sweaty, running traveler.
Joel Brooks:Come in, Get into my carriage. Teach me. And so he invites Philip in and he asked Philip a question, verse 34, he says, is this prophet talking about himself or somebody else? And this is a great question. It's one that shows that this eunuch has not been casually reading God's word because this is a huge question that forms when you read chapters 40 through 55.
Joel Brooks:There's this, suffering servant that comes to the picture and he's this mysterious picture. A mysterious man, you don't know what to make of him. Jewish scholars today still don't really know what to do with him. Because here you see this man, it's a servant. He trusts in God fully, has faith in God fully, and yet he is executed in the most painful way.
Joel Brooks:Isaiah uses these words to describe what happens to this man. He was despised, rejected, smitten by God, afflicted, wounded, crushed, chastised, oppressed, judged, cut off from the land of the living, stricken, put to grief. He doesn't he doesn't wanna just say he was killed. What it happens to this man is horrible. It is beyond comprehension.
Joel Brooks:What happens to this man who loved the lord, who put his faith in the lord. And this goes against what the Jews believe should happen if one trusts in the God. God doesn't turn around and smite them. And apparently the reason that the servant goes through all this is he thinks he is somehow taking the punishment that is due all of Israel. Punishment that's due for a nation, he is somehow absorbing it himself.
Joel Brooks:And he he actually sees his life as a guilt offering. And there's huge problems here, for Jewish scholars. For 1, God does not judge people who have total faith in Him. And 2, God has strictly forbidden human sacrifice. And yet this man says, he gives his life as a guilt offering.
Joel Brooks:He gives his life as a sacrifice. And so when the eunuch asked this question, who is this man talking about? This is a educated, good question. He's pondering this. He's intrigued by the suffering man that somehow can bring redemption.
Joel Brooks:Philip says that he's not talking about himself, he points to Jesus. Now it's no coincidence that this Ethiopian man is reading from this passage right after he has been turned away from the temple, and is going home. This man had given up a lot to be in the position he was in. A lot. I mean, it would have been worth it for this Ethiopian.
Joel Brooks:It'd have been worth being a eunuch if he still actually believed in the religion of his homeland. It would have been worth it. Because, to give your your service and your absolute devotion to the royal family is a way of worship because they believe that their kings were gods. But he obviously no longer believes that because he's searching and he's traveling and now he's given up, he has sacrificed in a huge way, and he no longer even believes the people he serves are gods. He no longer even believes the religion from his homeland.
Joel Brooks:And he gave up his ability to have children. And children in this culture were everything. They were absolutely everything. Every society in this day depended on somebody having as many children as they could. You needed children to to fill the armies that you had.
Joel Brooks:You needed children to work the crops in the field. You needed to out populate all of the neighboring regions around you so you could be safe and you could be secure. And if you wanted to be provided for when you were older, you needed to at least have 8 or 10 children because only 3 to 4 would make it to live as adults. Children were everything. To to not have children is not an option in in this day.
Joel Brooks:If you were to to go to the the local well or the, and just eavesdrop on the women talking around the well, you would never hear some of the conversations that we hear today, you know, like, you know what, I think my husband and I are just gonna wait a few years before we have kids. Like, what? Are you crazy? Or maybe old woman saying, you know what, we're fine with just 2. 2 is a handful, we're just gonna keep 2.
Joel Brooks:There's are you do you have a death wish? What are you doing? No. If they only had one kid or if they had no kids, they're a they're a drain to society. They're a drain to their husband.
Joel Brooks:And that's what you find in some women in the bible, like in first Samuel, Hannah crying out to her husband, Give me children or I die. Give me children or I die. And she is not speaking in hyperbole. She needs those children. Without children, she has no purpose.
Joel Brooks:She has no identity. Also without children, your name died with you. Your name would never carry on. And your name is closely associated with your honor, and you work hard to get a good name. So that might be carried on from generation to generation.
Joel Brooks:This eunuch's given up his name. Now every culture has something that gives people their identity, it gives people their honor. You know, it's kind of easy for us to sit in our little, you know, 21st century couch and look down at those primitive 1st century people and how they abused women and things like that. But we all have these these pressures that give us our identity. You know, their society did not push women, you know, to diet 6 months of the year and to put on shoes and jeans that are torture devices just so they can impress people.
Joel Brooks:Their society didn't do that, we do that. Why? Because there's different pressures. It's looks that we present, that's how we find our identity. Or it's financial success, that's how we find our identity.
Joel Brooks:I have no doubt that a 100 years from now, people are gonna look at the way we dress, the way we act, the things that we do now, and they're gonna call us primitive. Primitive. When they look at some of the things this culture values. And here we see this eunuch, here's a man who's given up everything, in which the people of his day build their identity on. Children, marriage, his name.
Joel Brooks:In the hopes of serving something greater that he now no longer believed in. And so he's having an identity crisis, and so he hears about Yahweh. Yahweh. You know, there's this there's this other there's this relational God, and so he makes this great pilgrimage and he goes there, and he's turned away at the temple, even after this pilgrimage. And so now he's in this absolute crisis, and he gets this scroll and he turns to Isaiah, where he finds a suffering servant who can bring redemption.
Joel Brooks:And it's no coincidence that he turns here in Isaiah 53:10. It says, yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him. He has put him to grief. When his soul makes an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring. He shall prolong his days.
Joel Brooks:And here's this servant who is a victim of even worse injustice than this Ethiopian. A man who suffered a terrible death is cut off from the living, yet he says, he shall see his offspring. He shall prolong his days. He's got to be wondering, now how the heck is that possible? He's cut off from the living, he can't have kids.
Joel Brooks:And yet, he does have kids. He's cut off from the living. He doesn't have any more days, yet now his days are prolonged. And how is chapter 54 of Isaiah possible? You know, there were no chapters, in the, in an old Bible, in the old scrolls.
Joel Brooks:This is one thought that goes together. But listen to this, chapter 54 begins, sing, oh barren one, who did not bear. Break forth into singing and cried aloud, you who have not been in labor. For the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of her who is married, says the Lord. And so these verses are just, they're they're going around in his head.
Joel Brooks:He's going, what does this mean? How can this barren one have more children than one who's already had children? And what Isaiah is talking about is, where you find your identity, where you find your value. The the one who who once found their value in children no longer is gonna find their value in children. They're gonna find it in something else, and the barren woman is going to sing more than the one who has children, because her identity is based on something else.
Joel Brooks:Not what culture and society says it has to be identified with. Then you look at Isaiah 56, which he had to come across, which is just amazing. 56 verse 3 says, let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say, the Lord will surely separate me from his people. And let not the eunuch say, behold I am a dry tree. For thus says the Lord to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbath, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant.
Joel Brooks:I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters. And I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. And I'm sure that this eunuch, he's reading this, he goes, I want that. How is that possible? Tell me who is this man talking about?
Joel Brooks:Is it is it him? Who is it? Because I need what he brings. I need what he brings. So in acts 835, Philip, he opens his mouth and he begins with this scripture, And then he tells them about the good news of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:It says, Jesus is the suffering servant. You cannot understand this passage any other way. Jesus was the victim of incredible injustice. He was the lamb that was led to a slaughter, and yet he did not open his mouth before his accusers. Jesus is the one who bore grief.
Joel Brooks:Jesus is the one who was wounded for our transgressions. Jesus is the one who was crushed for our iniquities. And it's the punishment that went on Jesus that has brought us peace. That's the heart of the Christian faith. That's that's the heart of the gospel.
Joel Brooks:That we believe Jesus is the suffering servant foretold 700 years before the events. Jesus is the one who took the punishment that was due every single man. And then he laid down his life as a guilt offering, and yet it wasn't wrong for him to make human sacrifice. For every other person, it's wrong to make a human sacrifice because it's not your life to give. Your life is a gift from God.
Joel Brooks:But Jesus, when He comes, He is the author of life. It is His life, and so He has the power to take it up, and He has the power to take it down, and so He willingly lays down what is His, His life for our punishment. And when we begin to understand this, we are changed. We're his offspring that Jesus sees and we believe this. Our identity begins to rest on Christ, his love for us when we believe this.
Joel Brooks:We no longer fear punishment because we look at Christ and we look at all the things that happened, and we realize that's not gonna happen to us, that happened to Christ. We don't ever have to doubt if we're loved or not. Man, what sacrificial love. Our identity can rest in that. Who cares what the world thinks when the creator of the universe has gone through that for us?
Joel Brooks:Who cares what society says my identity should be built on? It will fade away. My relationship with the lord will last forever. And this is why we can sing with the barren woman in 54. We can sing because what our identity is built on is nothing that the world tells us it has to be built on.
Joel Brooks:It is built on Christ and we can sing and we can rejoice. We can break forth in singing and cry aloud for joy because of this gospel message. Pray with me. Lord, I pray that your word would find a deep root into our hearts. I pray we would break forth in singing, that we would rejoice, that we would be passionate in our worship.
Joel Brooks:Our identity is in you. And I pray that we would remind one another of this proclamation, this authoritative word, this news of the decisive victory that has been won and that Jesus, the son of God, has taken the hit for us and he has come back alive and he'll bring us all home and in victory. And we pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
