Acts, 8:25-40

We have some questions that we are left with. This is 825-40. This is on page 3. We begin with three questions here. Philip was with the Samaritans here. This is Philip the one who was the deacon turned evangelist. Philip was with the Samaritans and then with this Ethiopian eunuch It didn't seem to bother him at all that he crossed these forbidden social lines. Jews didn't talk to the Samaritans. They didn't walk through the Samaritan's country. He says, I'm telling them the gospel. And one of the things we noticed before is Jesus did as well.

And now here, the Ethiopian, that wasn't so much a problem because he was sort of a Jewish convert, if you will, but a eunuch. And socially speaking, eunuchs were outcasts. We had this strange anomaly that we brought up last week. The eunuch on the one hand would have a high social position, and often times along with that, high level of financial compensation, but socially outcast. It's like they didn't fit. So the question, why do you think Philip didn't just go directly and openly to the Gentiles? What stopped him? Why didn't he just say, I'm taking a gospel of the Gentiles and just leave it at that? What did you come up with? He had to pace himself. Good answer, Dave. That's a good point.

One of the things you'll notice with the eunuch The whole event with the eunuch appears to be directed by the Lord, doesn't it? The Lord even, at the end of his time with the eunuch, snatching him up. We mentioned last time that the word harpazo is used. It's the word used for rapture, as Paul writes later. It implies a miraculous taking away. It seems to be the Lord's appointment.

So yes, that's a good point. Is there another one? Yes, Todd. Okay, there would have been a problem with the Jews. Now, it's interesting, you're correct, and yet the Jews may well have had a problem with the people they did talk to. But that may have been a line that's like, hey, Philip, you've just gone too far. So yeah. Think also of something else. What did the apostles understand at this point in time? Yeah, Todd? Interesting, huh? Yeah, the ones who are outcast certainly didn't seem to question this coming. Good point, good point. Yeah, Lavin? Yeah, what's interesting is when that time comes, and we're not too many weeks away from looking at it, And we're going to kind of take a pause at the end of April and kind of look back and say, you know, what's happened? What do they know?

But yeah, the Gentiles being directly presented with the gospel and that whole mindset, which to us we'd state, well, of course, it still had not sunk in and the Lord had not taken the steps from anything that we see revealed in scripture yet to say, okay, now, okay?

It was certainly in the Lord's plan, intent, that's what he had in mind when he said Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. But they didn't know it yet. Even the apostles back in Jerusalem. Did they not know it because of their lack of knowledge? Or because it wasn't the right time to be taken as a Gentile?

But I think one of the things we have to look at, you ask a good question. Was it the apostles' problem, or was it the Lord just saying, I've got a certain timing on how this is going to happen? And as we go on, we'll take a direct look at this question, but let's take a sneak peek. What do you see going on there that gives us some kind of a clue? What goes on as we go through the book of Acts?

Pardon? This is, as you see up here, these are the handouts that we've had so far. If you're missing any of them, fill in your name and what will happen is Nancy will pull together a package just for you. If you've got two that you're missing, she'll pull that together and get a name on there. Everybody had a chance to take a look at this? Okay. All right. Good. Thanks. Well, think about this.

The Lord very, you can see especially in the last half of Acts chapter 8 that we're looking at here, the Lord very deliberately seems to have pointed Philip in the direction of this Ethiopian eunuch and working with him. And the crossing of paths is more than incidental.

And even the ending of the meeting appears to be miraculous. But it's going to be the next chapter that we'll be looking at here this morning. Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, is going to be prepared again miraculously. And then we're going to see in chapter 10 where Peter, and this is interesting, there's a double vision.

I don't mean cross-eyed. What I mean is this. Peter is going to have a vision that is going to say, okay, it's time to cross a line here that you haven't. It is going to be a miraculous work of the Lord to make it clear to Peter. And the centurion is also going to have a vision. And it's like the Lord's working on both ends. And that underscores Todd's point, who's accepting of what? And that's going to come together where the Lord is actually working on both ends to get these people to understand what's taking place. And I think that's one of the things we see the Lord working miraculously, deliberately, within a certain timing.

And I think it's also a matter of adjusting to the mindset. Here these Jews have centuries of you know, tradition and background that tells them, you know, stay away from these people, don't wear what they wear, don't eat what they eat, don't go where they go, and then all of a sudden you're supposed to walk into their house and tell them the gospel that so far you've not just been walking into Gentiles' houses and doing.

So it's a major turning point that the Lord has to work miraculously in order to bring it about, both with Peter, and with the Roman Centurion. So we've got both of those, Cornelius. Okay, so as we look at this, what stopped him? What stopped him was a number of things.

There was background, there was also, it's apparent because of the Lord's having to work visions on both ends, there was a major change of mindset and understanding that was going to have to take place for this to come about. Let's look at the second question there on page three.

We never hear anything more about what happened to the Ethiopian eunuch. That's it. Now, it's clear here that he was saved, right? Yeah. Pardon? Well, yeah, there's... Pardon? What's interesting is it's like Philip baptizes and all of a sudden You know, this is it. It brings up a question about the character of the Book of Acts. Is the Book of Acts intended to be a complete objective history? No. We call it the Acts of the Apostles. Most of the Apostles are never named again after chapter one.

So we get into the rest of the book of Acts, we find up until chapter 15, we see Peter. Interestingly, from that point, Peter disappears from the book of Acts. Paul doesn't even encounter him when he gets to Rome. Then, what we see is chapter 9, which we get to this morning, Paul is introduced Just a quick glimpse of him before that, but Paul is introduced and we see how he becomes a believer. And then for the rest of the book, Paul becomes increasingly prominent. Other than the mention of John and James, where James is killed by the sword, most of the apostles just disappear from the scene by name. And so it's real interesting as we look at the the picture that we get out of the Book of Acts. It's not intended to be an objective, complete history. Now, let's get back to our question. Here's the Ethiopian eunuch. Did not the Ethiopian eunuch need some additional teaching, fellowship? How is he going to grow? Yeah, James? Ah, okay. There are lots of situations we don't have, you know, in this we don't have the rest of the picture.

Obviously he had become a convert to Judaism by some influences already way down where he was. And so one of the things we'll see as we go through the book of Acts, it was quite likely that there was also the gospel message spread down that far as well, perhaps not too much later. Good point, because it's difficult to put some of this in chronology. We have a sequence, but there isn't anything in it to tell us it happened here, other than bracketing.

The first martyrdom that we have indication of a Stephen, who is actually a deacon, and the first martyrdom of an apostle, we'll see later on in the book of Acts, where James was killed by the sword. And that's the first and only martyrdom of an apostle recorded in scripture. The rest of the accounts of the apostles, we looked at this somewhat in Bible background and in the church history elective, the rest of the apostles' deaths are recorded elsewhere, outside of scripture. So, Stephen is the only one that we know of at this point who has been martyred, but there is implication that this is increasing. One thing as we get into chapter 11, there will be a reference back in chapter 11 to the martyrdom of Stephen.

So chapters are going to go by. There's something else That's a part of the picture too, and Paul says multiple times That he was a principal persecutor of the church persecuting the church even to the point of death He says whenever it was up to me to vote I Voted for death so so and we don't have every recording of that instance so it while we don't have a recording of other apostles being killed aside from James in the book of Acts and that other believers may have died, could well be. That's what Paul pursued. And the end of that would be here in chapter 9. So more believers being martyred for the faith? Yep. Specifics? We don't have it. Other than the pretty strong indication, the way Paul speaks and writes, that yeah, that's what he went for. That's what he was going for. Yeah, Dave?

Certainly he had a copy of at least Isaiah to begin with and think about it at this point in time were there any other New Testament books? No. Something else and that is that there were a class of apostolic era gifts that the church was given that was conveying truths in advance of the giving of the New Testament that we look on as God's revelation for the church era. And so there were gifts given, miraculous gifts given to reveal specific to each church and church situation that are not in operation now because we have the New Testament. They didn't have, at this point in time, so far as we have any record out They had not one of the New Testament books by the time this was here, but they did have the miraculous gifts which gave them specific revelation. New Testament truth, but just not recorded in the New Testament yet because it hadn't been written.

Other thoughts there? I think one of the things we have to look at is, because Acts is not a thorough, complete, objective history, but it is a deliberately skewed snapshot, if you will, at different points. A lot of what would have taken place is not specifically spelled out, but we can assume that the Lord provided for it, whether miraculously, through these gifts that we mentioned, or through other means that we aren't told about specifically. Let's look at the third question.

Here's Philip. He had been appointed a deacon in chapter 6, and here in chapter 8, we see Philip, it doesn't seem like he's a deacon in Jerusalem taking care of the widows at all. What's going on? Is he neglecting his duty? What's going on here? Why is it that Philip, just two chapters after being appointed, we see most of the chapter taken up with describing his evangelistic activities, and he's not in Jerusalem for any of it.

Because we're not given a specific chronology, a period of time may well have followed. Good point. What else have we got here? What else have we got to work with? What happened between chapter 6 and chapter 8? Ah, we see between 6 and 8, we see the martyrdom of Stephen. We have reference again to that martyrdom, Acts 11, verse 19. We see reference back to this martyrdom and persecution that just hit like an explosion against the church upon the martyrdom of Stephen.

They won at that time, it was a great persecution, and they were all scattered across. Yes. So what happened initially here, we've got all these Jewish widows, some of them from Israel, some of them of Hellenistic background. The deacons were appointed to address that issue, and all of a sudden, just like flapping mercury, the persecution hits, and you don't have the gathering of the Christian widows there in Jerusalem, because everybody's moving out. In great part the church was scattered, and so the ministry that was located there in Jerusalem had changed.

And I think that's something for us to note too. At times, whether in the church or in our lives, the Lord may move us from one ministry to the next. He is free to do that. He can do that. I mentioned a week or two ago, about a young mom that I was talking to, and she said, you know, it's everything I can do to take care of my kids.

I said, that's your ministry. That's what the Lord's called you to. That wasn't true five years ago. Right now, that's your ministry, and you'd better put your time into it. Because that's exactly what's called for. Later on, that'll change. Later on, that'll be different. But for right now, that had better be what you focus on.

And just like we see changes in the church, we see changes in the ministry of this guy, Philip, I think both at a church body level and at a personal level, those changes in ministry are going to be the norm. The Lord will indeed change your ministry over time. And the Lord will change the character of the body over time. This body has changed since I first came here.

And that's a good thing. It's all in the Lord's plan. He's got reason and purpose for it. It also goes back to what we've been looking at at Ephesians. The body is a living, dynamic organism. It is not simply a static organization. Let's page ahead here. We're in Acts chapter 9, and this is obviously a massive sea change kind of an event. This is the conversion of Saul.

This is the one who says, whenever I had a chance to vote for death, I did. Whenever it's time to cast a vote, he says, death. Boy, that guy's biased. If we were to put him as a judge, he'd call him Maximum Max or something. His sentence is, if I had a chance to vote for death, that's what it was. Yep. He went for it. So here's Saul, and he is an opponent, a vigorous opponent of the way.

As a matter of fact, in terms of being zealous and missionary as an opponent to the faith, he was probably at the forefront, probably the name. If you think of some movement or organization here in the United States, or even internationally, there's frequently a name associated with, hey, that's the guy that heads this thing up. Even here locally, we say, focus on the family. What do you think? Yeah, you think of this name crops up. And we think of that often about various organizations.

If I say Al-Qaeda, who heads that up? We typically say, well, here's the guy, here's the first name that pops in my head. It is quite likely that if you said, opposition to the way, these Christians, what name pops in your head? At this point in time, it very well may have been Paul, or Saul, as it was called. That would be, you know, they say, well, who's heading up that movement? This is the guy. You're looking at him. Acts chapter 9. This is the guy that heads it up.

It would be perhaps as shocking to have some news come out and here's Osama Bin Laden and they say, hey, we've captured him. He voluntarily gave up and he's become a Christian. I mean, wouldn't that just shock you? That would be shocking news. That's the magnitude of this news. Okay? The magnitude of this news. That's phenomenal news. Amazing stuff. Okay. So here's the deal. Let's step through the background. He has some qualifications there that we see there bulleted.

Born a Jew. Tribe of Benjamin. Benjamin and Judah were the two tribes that were of the Southern Kingdom. the tribe of Benjamin, because Benjamin remained faithful while the rest of the tribes, aside from Benjamin and Judah, took off. So being of the tribe of Benjamin was something that he was proud of, as a Jew anyway. That was a key thing.

Born in Tarsus, which is in what is now the southeast area of Turkey, obviously quickly getting connections as a zealous Jew with those in Jerusalem. He says he was educated in Jerusalem under Gamaliel, and we've seen some about him. The grandfather of Hillel, and Hillel among the Jews highly revered, recently went to hear a Jewish fellow speak up at the Boulder campus. And the organization that sponsored his speaking was the Hillel group up there.

And who's that? This guy. So here's Gamaliel, the grandson of him. And remember we said of Gamaliel before that in order to underscore the importance of Gamaliel, they said when Gamaliel died, the law did die as well. That was how how much they thought of him. A Roman citizen.

We don't know how he got his citizenship. It was a rare thing for a Jew to have it. He apparently did. Tent maker by trade. That was his claim in Acts 18. We'll see that. Fluent in Greek, obviously, having written the letters that he wrote. Latin, because of his Roman citizenship. That would have been an assumed thing. Hebrew, because of his training in the law. in Aramaic, which would have been the native tongue of Israel. So those four languages, obviously the Greek is the one most strongly implied, but the others are pretty easily deduced as well.

And an aggressive persecutor of the church. We see that in Acts chapter 8. First few verses there, it shows up. And we see it later, of course. Here's Dr. Luke. He records his conversion. This is the one we're looking at here this morning, but in Acts 22 and 26 we have reference.

Paul himself is speaking of that conversion, so it's interesting to get his own account of what took place. And he refers back to what we're looking at here this morning. Then, as Paul is writing to the churches, he writes of his conversion. So we have not only two instances of Paul talking about his conversion in Acts, but we have multiple references, and we see these Galatians, Philippians, and 1 Timothy, where he writes to the churches, or to individuals, Timothy in this case, about his conversion. So this is a pivotal event with multiple references, lots of perspectives, given not only by Dr. Luke here, who is probably getting it from Paul, but also in Paul's references himself. Here's this guy Ananias. Put yourself in an Ananias place. You're a believer. Let me take you forward to the modern analogy.

Here's Dave. Dave gets a message from the Lord. Dave, I want you to go talk to Bin Laden. Here's where he is. You'll find him here. I mean, people have been looking all over for this guy. No, you'll find him here. And when you find him, I want you to do this.

You want me to do what? Previously, this fellow would want me dead. Good morning. We're studying through Acts. Feel free to join us. There's some handouts and a couple packages up front here if you'd like to grab those. My name is Vern. Okay. Good to have you with us. Alright.

So here's this guy Ananias. Do you think you would respond like Ananias did? What do you think would be your response? You know, I carry it forward to the modern picture. Okay, you're going to walk up into some mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the Lord says, you'll find him here over in this cave. Go talk to him. What would be your reaction? You got the wrong guy. Yeah, it's interesting, Ananias, other than Paul's mention of him, isn't mentioned anywhere else in Scripture.

I think that's something for us to think about. the Lord may in fact choose to work through someone who is otherwise pretty obscure to do something that will impact the church for centuries until the Lord comes. Isn't that amazing? So I think it's one of the things, you know, we may say, you know, Lord, yeah, like James put it here, you got the wrong guy, you know, hey, pick somebody else. It's really easy to look at it and say, boy, why did I get picked for this thing?

This is not only difficult, but crazy. So here's Ananias. Ananias could have said, nah, Lord, that's out of my scope. I'm not up to that. It may also be that The things that happen in our lives have differing weights of importance. You ever think about that? Ananias had done a whole bunch of things up to this point.

We don't know what they are, but I'm sure he did. He didn't just show up on planet earth at that moment. He had done a number of things up to this point, and he probably did other things later. We don't know much else about him, other than he was a believer here in Damascus.

But this is what we have recorded, and I think it's another valuable insight that you get out of the Book of Acts. Our sense of what's important, our sense of what might be appropriate, the Lord may say, hey, I've got something entirely different in mind. It may blow your socks off, but that's okay. That's okay.

In the middle of page two, There's a picture of Straight Street, that's where Ananias was told. It's today, as I understand, still a main street in Damascus. So this is a shot along an ancient portion of it. So you can imagine, here's Ananias, he's walking up and down this street, and he says, you'll find him here, along this place.

And can you imagine the Lord just saying, here's where he is. This is the impossible guy I want you to talk to and deal with. What we read in the account of Acts is that Ananias first gave the Lord all the reasons why, hey, this is a problem. And the Lord just put it all aside and says, he's the one I've chosen. He's the one I've chosen. He's the one I'm going to work with. Something very interesting, too.

What gets pointed out about what's going to happen to him? You look in the passage, and we may say, well, of course the Lord's going to tell Ananias, look, he's going to write half the New Testament books. No. He's going to be the one to go to the Gentiles. Ananias doesn't even know about telling the Gospel to the Gentiles yet, right? What does he say? He's going to suffer a lot. How about that? He's going to suffer a lot.

An interesting thing to point out, isn't it? There are things Ananias is yet to discover, but what the Lord tells him is, that's my appointed one, and he's going to suffer. And we pointed out elsewhere that that's one of the characteristics of an apostle, that they are given a special capacity to suffer greatly. and from any record that we have, they all did.

Now, Damascus, if you were to go from the area to the east where a lot of the Jews were still located, remember because a lot of them had gotten carried over to Babylon, and a lot of them remained around Babylon and Persia, at the time of Ezra, When Ezra brought a lot of Jews over, about 50,000, went back with him, a great number of Jews remained in the area over Babylon. They did not come straight across from Babylon over to Jerusalem.

What they did is they made this kind of northern arc route because there you had some terrain, including some rivers and water and things of that sort. And so the path made a northerly arc that went through Damascus. So that would have been the typical route that Jews would have come through. So to have Jews in Damascus would have been, following that route, yes, a fairly expected thing.

And also to have the gospel having gotten there to Ananias, so that Ananias is a believer, would have been an expected thing. Acts chapter 2, one of the languages that we see on that very first day, is Parthian. takes them back over to Babylon. So that Ananias is a believer, that he's a believer of Jewish background in Damascus, perfectly normal. That Ananias would be asked to see this Apostle Paul, the kingpin of the persecutor of the church, was not at all historically ordinary.

That was absolutely extraordinary, not ordinary in the least. Okay, then as we look at this here, consistent with Saul's radical change of spiritual perspective, I'm reading from the very last page two there, there was an understandable confusion as his former targets began to hear of his conversion.

What would you think? We talk about what was in Ananias' response as he discovered, hey I'm supposed to go see this guy, now think of what's the rest of the Yeah, Tom? Ah, okay, yeah, now he's going to pretend. You would be very timid about this, wouldn't you? You'd say, you know, to carry it forward into our modern analogy, if all of a sudden Bin Laden says, you know, says, hey, I'm a Christian, and I want to come among you. And matter of fact, I'd like to come here at Holly Hills and fellowship here this morning.

What would you think? You'd be sure to bring all your kids in, right? As a parent, you'd be a little nervous? Would you make sure that, oh, of course it's, you know, here's the special Sunday of the year, we'll invite all our friends and whatnot, right? There would be a definite nervousness about that. Real tough. The switchover would be hard to believe. Hard to swallow.

So here's the rest of the Christians. We know this guy. We know who he is. We know what he stands for. It would be a rather difficult thing to adjust to in your thinking. It's like we mentioned before, we tend to associate a name with some movement. You say, this guy, the first thing that comes to my mind is he's trying to kill me. And now you want to welcome him into the fellowship?

This is radical stuff, folks. This is radical stuff. Have any of you known of, personally, a conversion of that sort where this person should have been an enemy? Do you know anybody personally where that was the case? It's real interesting to encounter. Real interesting to encounter. Perhaps not so outward an enemy, but the Lord can do those kinds of things.

Some months back I mentioned when I was in college I took a course in Eastern religions. My intent was to study them objectively. That was not the professor's intent. The professor's intent was, you're here to dabble. And of course I wouldn't do that, but I would go ahead and do all the assignments and the reading and everything else.

And about a month into the class, the instructor was taking the last roll call, because when you get into college, they usually don't continue to take roll call. But he was taking the last roll call, and he got down to my name and said, Peter, you're a Christian, aren't you? I said, yeah. He said, stand up. So I stood up, and he stood up, because he had been sitting down. Anyway, to shorten the story a little bit, he proceeded to whack me across the face. Hard. Really good whack. And some of the other students were saying, hit him again. And some of the others were saying, oh, this is stupid.

Of course, there wasn't a lawyer there, and I wasn't interested in that. Because had I had some kind of a legal response or whacked him back, it certainly would not have been the message that the Lord had in mind. Strange irony, it wasn't that much later that I found out his son had become a Christian. I even had a chance to meet him and talk to him.

The Lord can pull some interesting reversals. I could tell you other accounts and stories. We have even in our own church believers here who have been former atheists, who are former atheists. People who are not only negative towards the gospel, but adamantly opposed. So it's interesting to see those kinds of changes.

This is kind of a classic case. Here's Paul, not only opposed to it, but opposed to the point of death every chance he gets, death sentence. This is the one that God picked. So here's this adjustment. We'll find the adjustment doesn't just take a few days or a month, that in fact it goes on for some time. Chapters. We'll continue to see the adjustment taking place to Paul changing from one who persecuted the church to the point of death to becoming a believer. We'll see that adjustment taking place for chapters to come.

Alright, let's look at the questions here. Page 3. We haven't heard of this Ananias guy. This isn't, by the way, the same one that was Ananias and Sapphira in chapter 5. Different guy. It's just like we have now. People of the same name, different persons. Not the high priest of the name either. And we're not going to hear him again except for a brief place where Paul mentions him. So think about that. That means that in the big picture of things, Ananias wasn't very significant, right? Think about that. Question two.

Ananias does end up doing exactly as the Lord tells him. Ananias first tells the Lord, here's all the reasons why what you're asking me to do is crazy. The Lord puts it aside. Do we have times like that? All the perfectly normal, sane reasons for something. The Lord says, no, I want you to put that all aside because I have something specifically in mind for you. I want you to discount all those perfectly good reasons why you shouldn't do this. Do we have those times? Think about that.

And then the third question. Here's Paul in Acts chapter 9. He's obviously a very young believer. Yet he seems almost immediately able to explain the Old Testament passages. Bang! Here he is. He's just got his sight back, and he's talking to these people, explaining these Old Testament passages, saying, this I am proving and demonstrating to you, this I am telling you, is speaking of Jesus, the Messiah, the very one that I was persecuting.

And so he didn't seem to be having any questions, doubts. Should we expect that for everybody? Todd's shaking his head. No, no, no, no, no, no. Right? Okay. Well, think about that. That's one I want you to give some thought to. There's one more question I didn't put in here. I'll add it verbally here.

And that is that when the Lord encounters Paul on this road to Damascus. Here it is, just north of Galilee, about 60 miles north of the Sea of Galilee. Here's Paul on the road, and the Lord Jesus says, Paul... He didn't say, Paul, why are you persecuting the church? Paul, why do you persecute me? Think about that. Give that some thought. Now, have you got any questions? Questions for me? Questions for the group here? Yes? No? Thoughts? Insights? Alright, let's pray.

Lord, at this pivotal passage, we see that you have intervened in what would have been history. Had it not been for your intervention, it's easy to see that Paul would have continued to persecute the church to the point of death, to his last day, to his last breath. His human zeal was that intense, and yet you have decided to intervene. perhaps less miraculously, perhaps less notably in terms of the history that we know of, you've intervened in our lives. You have come to us and presented us with the essential gospel. And we've come to a place of belief. And we don't know, as Paul didn't, as Ananias didn't, what will be the outcome of that. and yet we look to you to work your will and count upon you to work all things for good because you love us and we love you. In Jesus name, Amen.