Acts 8:26-40 - Dunking and Dipping

Podcast Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

Hello, and welcome back to Tabernacle Talk. Yesterday, we saw what happened to the early church when they were scattered by Saul the persecutor.

And one of the things that happened was that the deacon, Philip, after seeing what had happened to his fellow deacon, Stephen, when he preached the gospel, he decided the best course of action was to go to the area of Palestine that everyone hated,

that they didn't like the people, that they worshiped kind of a different God there, not the God of the Jews. And he decided that he was going to preach Jesus. And in that, there was a wonderful revival in the city.

There was even a sorcerer that got saved. And Peter and John came down from the apostles at Jerusalem and God really mended some of the old wounds that were there, the old animosity that existed between the Jews and the Samaritans.

The Samaritans received the Holy Spirit. It was a wonderful time. God is doing incredible things in Samaria.

Gonna start reading in Acts 8 and verse 25. Then after they had testified and spoken the message of the Lord, they traveled back to Jerusalem, evangelizing many villages of the Samaritans. It's all going great.

Lots of people are getting saved. So what do you think that God would have Philip to be doing? What is he supposed to do now?

Is he starting a church? Is he becoming a pastor? What's gonna happen?

Verse 26, 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 went.

Whoa, if we're experiencing this amazing revival, tons of people are getting saved. They've got the Holy Spirit. I'm sticking around.

I'm saying I want to see what can happen here. But God said, Philip, I want you to go. And Philip went.

There was an Ethiopian man, a eunuch and high official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of her entire treasury.

He had come to worship in Jerusalem and was sitting in his chariot on his way home, reading the prophet Isaiah aloud.

So here there is an Ethiopian man and as was common in that time, many of those that were in the courts of royalty were made eunuchs, both as a show of power over these people that basically enforced you need to stay in line because we can even take

any family, any future away from you. Your only purpose is to serve the crown. That's what had happened to this man. And he was in charge of the treasury.

He was a high official. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and he was reading the Prophet Isaiah. And I'm sure many of you are going to understand what this Ethiopian eunuch says next.

The Holy Spirit told Philip in verse 29, go and join that chariot. Verse 30, when Philip ran up to it, he heard him reading the Prophet Isaiah and said, do you understand what you're reading? Verse number 31, how can I?

He said, unless someone guides me. So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Now, the scripture passage he was reading was this.

This is from Isaiah 53. He was led like a sheep to the slaughter and as a lamb is silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation, justice was denied him.

Who will describe his generation or his offspring for his life is taken from the earth. The eunuch replied to Philip, I ask you, who is this prophet saying this about, himself or another person?

So Philip proceeded to tell him the good news, the gospel about Jesus, beginning from that scripture. And man, what a great portion of scripture to describe Jesus' sacrifice for sin on our behalf.

He was tried and punished and killed and yet through his death, God bought redemption, purchased redemption for all of us. What an incredible thing. Verse number 36, as they were traveling down the road, they came to some water.

The eunuch said, look, there's water. What would keep me from being baptized?

And here, there's a section, if you're using maybe the King James version, the New King James version, the Modern English version, the New American Standard Bible, the Holman Christian Standard Bible, there's a verse here, might be in brackets, might

not, because right after that statement, look, there's water, what would keep me from being baptized? Most of the manuscripts, all of the earliest manuscripts that we have of the Book of Acts that were written in Greek, as if you pulled up a Greek

manuscript of the Book of Acts, you would read, what would keep me from being baptized? Then he ordered the chariot to stop, and both Philip and eunuch went down into the water and he baptized it.

However, some people that were transcribing and writing down and copying down the Book of Acts felt like, hey, there should be an answer to this question, right? So, they inserted this portion of the text.

And Philip said, if you believe with all your heart, you may. And he replied, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

Obviously, hear a good statement, a good answer, not part of the inspired text that was handed down to us, but a helpful addition, much in the way that the Apocryphi have a couple additions of the Bible that have the intertestamental books that tell

some of the history of the Jewish people between Malachi and Matthew. They were very helpful things.

They were often included in Bibles so that people could get a better idea of how the Jews were thinking in the time of Christ, to learn about some of the things that had taken place. But the Apocrypha wasn't inspired scripture.

Here this short sentence, what is marked here because of the verse divisions from the 1500s that are retained in all of our English translations, verse 37, that sentence is an addition to the text.

So the eunuch orders the chariot to stop and both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and he baptized him. We're a Baptist Church and people might ask, okay, why don't you just sprinkle someone?

Why don't you just pour some water over someone's head? Why do you go into a Baptist tree?

Why do you, at some points, I've got a great friend, Micah Bosworth, who is a church planner and they've got a river in their city and occasionally they'll do baptisms down at the river itself.

My last church in Moses Lake, we did some lake baptisms where we went down to the lake and baptized people. Why would we go into the water?

Well, it's because of places like this where baptism is described as a plunging and immersing, a placing into, and it pictures what the Holy Spirit does with us, that He places us, He puts us entirely in the body of Christ, that we are buried, we are

laid down with Him. So this is why we do that. We follow that because that is what Christ did. He went down into the water when He came out of the water.

You know, the Holy Spirit came, God's voice spoke from heaven, all of that. So here, that is why we baptize in water, why we don't just sprinkle, because God calls us to baptize. He didn't say that He wanted us to sprinkle those that believe.

He said He wanted to baptize. He didn't say we wanted to do poor or anoint. He said He wanted us to baptize.

So that's why we do that. When they came up out of the water, verse 39, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him any longer, but he went on his way rejoicing.

Philip appeared in Asitas and he was traveling and evangelizing all the towns until he came to Caesarea. So here, God does really a miracle and takes Philip from right where he was and places him in a new area.

And I could imagine that Philip, before the Holy Spirit took him, might have thought to himself, okay, man, this is a treasurer of an entire kingdom.

What authority that he would have that I would be able maybe to share the gospel with many people in the court of Candice, queen of the Ethiopians.

And perhaps I might be able to even share the gospel in the court to many people who knows how God might use me. And God said, well, I have some work for here, the Ethiopian eunuch to do.

I have some work for him to do, but I've got a different job for you to do. And he takes him. And Philip's response is not to mope, it's not to say, oh, but God, what could have been?

He simply takes what God has actually done and says, okay, Philip was traveling and evangelizing all the towns until he came to Caesarea.

And man, I want that to be my testimony that wherever I go, that I am sharing the gospel, that I am telling people about Jesus Christ. So lots of fantastic things that are happening here. What can we learn from this story?

What can we learn from Philip and the Ethiopian unit? Number one, wherever God puts us, be all there. Don't wait to dive into what God has for you.

Don't say, I'm not gonna be here for a long time, so I'm just not really gonna get involved. Maybe you're a person that you have a job that takes you from place to place, and you might say, okay, I'm only gonna be in this location for three months.

I don't really know that I want to dive in and join a local church and try and serve there and benefit people and invite my coworkers that are in that location there, because I'm gonna be gone in three months anyway. Can I encourage you? Jump all in.

This is what Philip models for us, that as he's in Jerusalem, he is full of the Holy Spirit, he's full of wisdom, he's serving, he's taking care of widows, he's sharing the gospel. He gets kicked out of Jerusalem because of persecution.

He goes to the most hated people that he knows, and he shares the gospel with them, and he loves them, and he does miracles, and God is working, and the Holy Spirit is given.

And then God says, okay, I want you to go down south to the Ethiopian eunuch, and he has to walk all the way down to that road. He has to go to that road. The Holy Spirit doesn't take him and drop him there.

He says, go. So he goes, he takes this very long trip from Samaria all the way down to that desert road down to Gaza. And as he is doing that, who knows what he was thinking?

Who knows what regrets that may have been going through his mind, but as soon as he sees the Ethiopian eunuch and his entourage, God says, okay, go talk to him. And so he goes up and he talks to him and he takes time to talk about scripture with him.

And can I encourage us, let's intentionally spend time talking with people about scripture. That can be difficult for us. For most of us, that's not a natural thing.

It doesn't just flow out of us. But as Christians, as people of God, it should be natural for us to talk about what he has said, especially with other believers.

Can I encourage us, let's make that intentionally a part of what we talk about every week. So he goes, he's with the eunuch, he speaks the gospel. He baptizes him because he believes on Christ.

And then the Holy Spirit takes him and he doesn't spend time moping. But he evangelizes all the towns on his way up to Caesarea. Wherever we are, let's be all in.

Let's dive in entirely. Let's share the gospel. Let's serve.

Let's attend. Let's encourage other believers. It's a wonderful thing to do.

What other lessons can we learn from this passage? God's Word can make a difference. Here, the eunuch is not asking, hey, I really want to know the Messiah.

I want to know how to be saved. No, he just has a small portion of scripture that he's reading and thinking about. I encourage you, maybe post once a week, once every couple of days, once a day.

If you're doing some devotions, if you have a verse that sticks out to you, just post it.

Maybe it might not be something that you put a lot of commentary with and you're saying, hey, here's all of my thoughts on this thing, but it can literally be just as simple as the Bible app on your phone, and you just click the verse, you hit share,

tap the little image thing, and you can post it to your Facebook, you can post it to your Instagram, you can post it to whatever your social media thing is. And when you do that, it is a light to the people that are on your social media accounts that

they see, oh, this person's a Christian. Maybe you've never done it before. Maybe it would be something brand new. That's okay.

All of us have to start somewhere, but you don't know what a difference, just a little verse here, just a little thought there, just a little sermon shared, or just maybe a devotional podcast like this year.

You don't know what that might do for a person.

Then lastly, if you're here listening or watching, and maybe you're like the Ethiopian eunuch, where you say, I have never, maybe I've never heard about Jesus or not heard in this way that he was the Savior, he was God himself who came, who lived a

perfect life, died in our place for our sins, with all the sins of the world placed on him, he paid for our redemption so that we could have a relationship with God, so that we could have a home forever with him. Maybe I've never heard about that

before, maybe I've never followed the Lord and believers baptism. Can I encourage you?

I would love to talk with you about how the Gospel says, how the Bible says that we can be saved, that we can know that we have a relationship with God, how we can know that maybe if we were to die, that we would be with the Lord.

Maybe if you need to be baptized, like the Ethiopian eunuch was baptized, or like Jesus was baptized, or like all of the early Christians were baptized.

If you say, I have never done that, I've never been immersed, I would love to talk with you about making that happen, particularly if you are here in kind of the Baltimore, Essex, Middle River, White Marsh, Rosedale, Dundalk area.

I would love to talk with you about that. Tomorrow, we get to see the number one bad guy, one of the beasts from Daniel 7, that all of a sudden turns into an adoring worshiper of Jesus. And we get to see how that happens.

One of my favorite portions of Scripture. I know it will be a blessing to you. See you tomorrow.