Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

**Scripture Reading: Acts 8:26-40**

Please stand for the reading of God’s word. And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south, unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert. Then he arose and went. And behold, a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who had the charge of all her treasure, and had come to Jerusalem for to worship, was returning, and sitting in his chariot, read Isaiah the prophet.

Then the spirit said unto Philip, “Go near, and join thyself to the chariot.” And Philip ran to him, and heard him read the prophet Isaiah, and said, Understand thou what thou readest? And he said, “How can I? except some man should guide me. And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him. The place of the scriptures which he read was this. He was led as a sheep to the slaughter. And like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so openeth he not his mouth, and in his humiliation his judgment was taken away.

And who shall declare his generation? For his life is taken from the earth. And the eunuch answered Philip and said, I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this, of himself or of some other man? And then Philip opened his mouth and began at the same scripture and preached unto him Jesus. And as they went on their way, they came into a certain water. And the eunuch said, see, here is water. What doth hinder me to be baptized?

And Philip said, if thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God. And he commanded the chariot to stand still. And they went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. And when they were come up out of the water, the spirit of the Lord caught away Philip that the eunuch saw him no more and he went on his way rejoicing.

But Philip was found at Azotus and passing through he preached in all the cities till he came to Caesarea. Let us pray that God would illuminate to our understanding. Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your scriptures. We thank you Lord God for the gift of the Holy Spirit who teaches us what our self and our natural man cannot understand. We understand that it is your word. We thank you for your scriptures that they do indeed impart life to the hearer and the Holy Spirit moves in our hearts.

And so we’d ask, Lord God, you would move in our hearts. Cause us, Father, to be convicted by your Holy Spirit of sin through the preaching of your word. Cause us to be edified and built up to the exhibiting forth of the Christian graces and virtues. And cause us, Lord God, most of all, to rejoice in this one in whom we have read of in your scriptures being preached, Jesus. We pray also your blessing upon the Sabbath school teachers that you would enliven the word through them to the students that they may hear at their level of understanding from your scriptures.

Come to rejoice in them and repent of their sins and live in righteousness, holy and happy. We thank you Lord God for hearing this prayer, for assuring us that you will indeed answer it. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. You may be seated.

And really I’m going to try to do two things today and the bulk of which is to review what we said last week in terms of is what this account, this historical account of the events that led to the Ethiopian eunuch’s salvation. And then secondly, the relevance of this to our day and age particularly this time of our lives, this time of the season as we move from thanksgiving to the time of Christmas joy, rejoicing in the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the joyous time of the year but it’s also can be a troubling time of the year for many as well.

And the second thing I want to mention I will probably do it briefly at the end of the sermon is looking at a financial aspect to this story and kind of reminding ourselves that we have here a whole section, these first eight chapters of the book of Acts. Chapter 9 begins another section with the conversion of Saul and then the preaching of the gospel in an extended fashion to the Gentiles. And so I want to touch briefly on that at the end of the talk.

But first we want to review a little bit and then talk about what we didn’t really get too much last week which is the joy of the Ethiopian eunuch in the propagation of the gospel and that ultimately in the person of Jesus.

And so let’s just review what we said last week. We said that this story can show us that the Ethiopian eunuch—we really, I decided to focus on the last verse where the Ethiopian eunuch goes on his way rejoicing. The spirit apparently according to the text miraculously transports Philip away and leaves the eunuch going on his way and he goes on his way rejoicing. And so what is he rejoicing in?

And what do we rejoice in as we read this story and contemplate what it teaches us about the person of God and about the elect community of Jesus Christ and about Jesus himself. And I think one of the things we surely must see in this story is the clear demonstration of providence.

Before we get to that, however, I wanted to make one other comment. I promised I would do this last week. I don’t remember if it was in the sermon time or the question and answer time, but I did want to read a quote from Larry Y. Vos on office. We see in this story the Ethiopian eunuch that as he professes faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, he is baptized and he is apparently converted here and that of course is the source of joy is that conversion and is coming to rejoice in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

And he’s baptized by Philip and this we talked a little bit about this. We don’t know you know Philip’s specific office. There’s been discussion that the seven are deacons. Other people think the seven are sort of the elder component, or maybe there’s something altogether different. And I don’t want to dwell on this but I did want to read this one quote from Larry Y. Vos for those of you who have been intrigued by this topic and just to cause you to meditate upon this perspective on this office.

Why would he writes this he said it might be possible that the seven held an office derived directly from the apostles that doesn’t appear again in the church as the apostolic office does not. The church as it came into being was laid on the foundation of the apostles and prophets Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone according to Ephesians 2:20. The offices of the church can be seen as fitting within one another in order of hierarchy as those Russian dolls of descending size nestle inside each other.

And this last week in the providence of God, I saw one of these, I don’t think it was a Russian doll necessarily, one of these dolls that nests inside itself. It reminded me of this quote that I was going to read. You’ve seen these, I’m sure, where you open it up and there’s a smaller egg or a smaller doll inside. You open that up and there’s a smaller one inside, etc. Well, Vos said these offices may be kind of like that nested within each other. Deacon inside elder, or bishop, or presbyter. All three in the designate this office in Acts and the Epistles.

So deacon inside whatever you want to call them elder, bishop or presbyter depending upon the function they’re fulfilling. Same office however, elder inside perhaps the seven and this office inside the apostle. Each apostle clothed in the power of Christ and under his head and as any builder knows once you’ve laid the foundation you don’t dig it up to build a belfry. The apostolic powers have ceased. So that’s an interesting comment by Larry Y. Vos on the office of the seven and perhaps Philip’s office and perhaps out of that office flows the elders that we see functioning in the early church later in the book of Acts.

Well in any event this story is primarily not given of course to teach us about office although it is interesting that Philip does baptize this eunuch. He is preaching. He’s evangelizing. He acts in a prophetic ministry in some ways and later we’ll find him in Azotus later on in the book of Acts and he’s got seven daughters all of whom are prophetesses which is also quite interesting.

In any event what this story certainly—one of the predominant themes in it—is the providence of God bringing supernaturally Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch together. And while we speak of providence in terms of supernatural occurrences really of course it is the overarching providence of God that brings all things to pass.

I came across this old Sunday school book we had gotten and tell you the truth I don’t even remember where we got this from. It might have been Reformed Presbyterian. The little set of five lessons each on God’s providence and God’s covenants. And you see the picture for God’s providence are the hands and then the world within the hands and the picture of God’s covenants are the ten commandments in God’s hands.

Well, in any event, the beginning lesson of this, it gives this definition for providence: “Providence is the constant activity of God the creator in upholding his creatures in ordered existence, guiding and governing all events, circumstances, and the acts of angels and men and directing everything to its appointed goal for his own glory.”

And they suggest that as you teach the doctrine of providence to children, you focus on several key words here. One is constant. The providence of God is a constant activity. We speak of special providence at particular times as this story indicates. But God’s providence is constant. God’s providence upholds all things. Okay? And so it’s undergirding everything in terms of his purposes and working out his decree.

He guides and governs. It’s more than just guiding. It is governing as well. The impulses of God are not sort of a gentle shove. And that’s the extent of his providence. No, his providence guides and governs all things. Things cannot occur outside of the providence and decree of God. The decree, the plan and the providence, the working out of that plan in history. So constant upholding, guiding and governing, directing everything to a particular end.

That end is not the well-being of man because some men end up in hell in eternal damnation. No, the goal of directing all things is to the glory of God. The purpose of all things is God’s glory. And so the doctrine of God’s providence is very important for us to understand in scripture and this seemed one particularly good text in which to point that out.

So the Ethiopian eunuch I’m sure rejoiced in the providence of God and bringing Philip into his path. He rejoiced also of course that providence is mediated through the work of the Holy Spirit. We all confess the Holy Spirit. We just sang about that. And the Holy Spirit is the agent of God through which providence occurs. And so the spirit is involved in our lives. It is not an impersonal providence. It is a personal providence in terms of the Holy Spirit being a person of the trinity.

The Ethiopian eunuch rejoiced in God’s word. After all, the spirit worked through the word to bring the Ethiopian eunuch to salvation. And the spirit works through the word to bring us to a position of obedience and joy being holy and happy in the words of the confession, or the catechism rather, the Westminster Catechism. And then fourth of course we talked about how the Ethiopian eunuch rejoiced in the agency of men.

The spirit works through the word but usually that is in the context of men. And so we see, we’ll see for instance in the story of Saul of Tarsus even though we have this incredible event with the vision of the Lord Jesus Christ coming to him, yet he works through another, Ananias, a second Ananias for us in the text of the book of Acts to bring Saul to a position of salvation, regeneration and then new life. And so God works through the agency of men. Well, we don’t want to limit God in that way, but that is his normal means of working.

And we should be very appreciative for the fact of the church that the word is a means of grace primarily in the context of the temple. The temple being a picture of the gathering of the church together as it was in the Old Testament and then the gathering of the church together, the temple of the New Testament into the body of Christ.

Additionally in terms of this then we have to understand that the word frequently we’ll find things in it we don’t understand. As Matthew Henry said last week, I think we might have quoted this, I’m not sure: “The way to receive good instruction is to ask good questions.” And that of course is important to put in the qualifier of good men. God works with the agency of men that his word might be planted in our hearts. We might understand it, rejoice in it, and continue to grow in it.

We should often ask ourselves also, as Matthew Henry said as a corollary to this, if we have understood what we have read. And if we have not, we should be humble enough to ask people to explain it to us. Those that would learn much, Matthew Henry said, must see their need to be instructed. And so in the same way that remember the lame man had to recognize he needed to be restored to health in order to carry out vocational calling and the other things the worship of God in the temple at which he sat. So in the same way the eunuch has to recognize his need for instruction and the illumination of the Holy Spirit in the context of the Bible.

Kistemaker said in his commentary on this particular text: “In ancient times, people read out loud and thought it strange when a reader would not do so. Indeed, the rabbis are of the opinion that reading the manuscript aloud was an aid to memorization. In silent reading, a cause of forgetfulness.” That’s a very interesting quote. We read this account of the eunuch reading aloud. Philip hears what he’s reading and so asks him if he understands what he’s reading.

And it seems to us an odd thing that the eunuch would be reading out loud. But according to Kistemaker, historical research shows that was the normal way of reading. Reading was maybe more directed toward a community event as opposed to simply an individualized event. And today we have a culture of silent reading primarily, very little reading out loud. But this is not the case in the cultures of the past.

And as he said, the rabbis actually said it’s better to read out loud even if you’re by yourself because you remember more of what’s read. God gives us the ear. And he always talks about how being circumcised is to be circumcised in your ear—to have it opened up—the difficulty in hearing cut away so you can hear the word of God. And so it’s very useful in terms of personal devotions to read the word out loud.

It’s interesting that as I was typing this quote in to the computer so I could read it to you in the big print at which I needed to be blown up in—you normally I look at the text, look at the computer. I’m not that great a typist as you can tell. Type in a phrase, look back at the next phrase, type it in. I can’t look at it and type at the same time. That should be able to do. But in any event, in this case, I read a phrase, then typed it in, read out loud, that is—read another phrase out loud, typed it in, and I could read my typing.

I could type a much longer phrase if I read it aloud than if I read it silently to myself. And so, even in very short-term memory situations, reading out loud gives you a double reinforcement to what you’ve read. And so it reinforces the idea. What I’m trying to get at here is that the agency of men, the agency of the human voice, is part of the providence of God. And frequently, it’s good to read our scriptures out loud instead of just to ourselves or other things that we read as well.

And I’m sure that probably most of our wives would greatly appreciate it if we read things out loud and included them in our knowledge, understanding, and conversation about what we read as men, for instance.

Well, in any event, so the Ethiopian eunuch rejoiced in the agency of men. Again, to quote Larry Y. Vos, he said that the eunuch reminds us here that every church member must rely on at least one other person to hear the gospel. And as Augustine said, he would not have known God as his father if he hadn’t known the church as his mother. And so the eunuch rejoices in these things and we should as well.

And we should be encouraged and exhorted to make use of the means of God’s word, praying for the illumination of the Holy Spirit, understanding that illumination normally comes in the context of men and in the context of the church particularly. And so we understand and rejoice in the providence of God worked through his spirit, through his word and then through the secondary agency of men as well.

But then fifth, we said that the eunuch rejoiced in his salvation and we said that in his particular case the salvation was a matter of great joy. This great joy of the eunuch and his salvation is evidenced in his rapid obedience to the word of God. He hears the word expounded by Philip. Philip preaches Jesus to him. He then sees water and he says, “What prevents me from being baptized?” He rushed to obedience.

Psalm 119:60 says, “I will make haste and delayed not to keep thy commandments.” And so we have the eunuch as an example of that to us. He makes haste to keep the commandments of God by moving quickly to obedience to God’s word. And Matthew Henry here says that in the solemn dedication devoting of ourselves to God, it is good to make haste and not delay for the present time is always the best time for obedience.

And so the eunuch is an example of that to us. And I think that it’s important to think beyond this a little bit as to why he made haste to delay not to keep God’s commandments. You know, the scriptures tell us, Jesus tells us that he who is forgiven much loves much. The motivation for our obedience to the scriptures is to be the love of the savior. The love of the savior and the gratitude we have for him saving us from our sins.

But all too often, people are like the Pharisees, we don’t think we’ve got that many sins. We have a few sins. We had sins before we were regenerate, but you know, we’ve been forgiven some. But if we understand the depth of our depravity more, then we understand greater the love of God for us. And as a result of that, move in quicker obedience to the call of God in his word. Whether it’s in the case of the eunuch, the initial demonstration of obedience and baptism, or it’s the smaller steps rather, shouldn’t say minor, the smaller steps of obedience to the rest of God’s word as it applies to our lives.

The motivation for the eunuch’s quick obedience, I think, is the understanding of his salvation, a proper understanding, at least a deeper understanding than many people have. We will not totally understand that, I don’t think, until we are in the presence of Christ himself and they’ll be weeping over our sins and he’ll wipe away every tear. But in the meantime, it does good to us to understand in a deeper sense our depravity. It helps us to understand that the scriptures say that unless we know that we won’t love much as Jesus said to the Pharisees and so it’s important again we’ve quoted this time after time again, several of us are quite fond of quoting this first several questions of the Heidelberg Catechism, you know what three things? The second question: “What three things must thou know to live and die happily in this comfort?” The first question being “What is your only comfort?” and the first thing is “how great my sin and misery is.”

The eunuch was a picture of the greatness of that sin and misery and we mentioned that last week. Matthew Henry said that those that are far off have been brought nigh to the Lord Jesus Christ. “The ends of the earth in terms of the story now. The ends of the earth shall see the great salvation. The Ethiopians were looked upon as the meanest and the most despicable of all nations. Blackamoors as if nature had stigmatized them.” This is Matthew Henry writing. “Yet the gospel is sent to them and divine grace looks upon them.”

And so the eunuch was a picture in many ways of those cut off from the Lord Jesus Christ. Understanding then that—not you know we’re trying to make excuses for that. I’m sure the Ethiopian eunuch saw these things as a demonstration of the vilenesses of his own heart and his own rebellion and thus moved to love the Lord Jesus upon an understanding of his salvation moved in quickness of obedience.

I listed some scriptures on your outline. Deuteronomy 23:1: “He that is wounded in his stones or hath a privy member cut off shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord.” But then we read in Isaiah 56:3-4: “Neither let the son of the stranger that hath joined himself to the Lord speak saying, ‘The Lord hath utterly separated me from his people.’ Neither let the eunuch say, ‘Behold, I am a dry tree.’ For thus saith the Lord, unto the eunuchs that keep my Sabbaths, and choose the things that please me, and take hold of my covenant. Even unto them will I give in mine house, and within my walls a place, and a name better than of sons and of daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.

Also, the sons of the strangers that join themselves to the Lord, to serve him, and to love the name of the Lord, to be his servants. Everyone that keepeth the Sabbath and polluteth it not, and taketh hold of my covenant, even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings, and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine altar, for mine house shall be called a house of prayer for all people. The Lord God, which gathereth the outcasts of Israel, saith, yet will I gather others to him besides those that are gathered unto him.”

And so Isaiah 56 is a great passage that shows us both the depth of depravity of a eunuch, a stranger from a far nation, as a result cut off from the presence of God and his special presence in the context of the temple and yet grafted in as God promises to bring in the eunuch and the stranger.

Now certainly that was seen in a partial fulfillment as the eunuch goes to Jerusalem to worship but he is a proselyte of the gate. He cannot go into the inner recess of the temple as the Israelites could not either because something greater was coming. The greater temple had come—the Lord Jesus Christ—and he comes now into the Ethiopian eunuch’s life and he understood in a fuller sense I’m sure the prophecy of this passage from Isaiah relating to his salvation, that he who was far off had now been brought very near and these prophecies were tremendously fulfilled in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and then the coming of Jesus Christ his advent into the life and as the king of the Ethiopian eunuch.

And so his salvation of course he rejoices in. I list other texts there. You might want to read them for Sabbath readings today in 1 Kings 8 for instance verses 41-43, Isaiah 52 “you’ll sprinkle many nations.” Psalm 68 talks as well about those who are far off being brought into the company of the Lord and salvation. We have of course a picture of this with the Queen of Sheba in 1 Kings 10. I think I also list that scripture reference for you.

If I don’t, it’d make good Sabbath day reading as well. 1 Kings chapter 10, the first 13 verses or so. And so we have the Ethiopian eunuch rejoicing in his salvation as we also should rejoice in our salvation recognizing that our sin and depravity were great. And so as a result of the salvation of Jesus Christ, we come to love him much and thus are motivated to quick obedience.

Okay. And then sixthly, we said that the eunuch rejoices not simply in his own personal salvation, but recognizing that he is a model, a picture, a type for us if you will, of the gentile world, the world of the eunuchs, the Ethiopians, the Gentile people. Usually, most of us are non-Jewish in lineage or in race or even in culture, being brought nigh.

And so, as we read in the prophecy from Isaiah earlier, it’s too light a thing to bring just in the nation of Israel salvation through the coming of Messiah. No, he’s also given as a light to the Gentiles. And here is a Gentile whose life and heart was enlightened by the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, it’s a picture of the propagation of the gospel throughout the world.

Indeed, in this very text, there are markers at the beginning and end of the text that properly understood, I think, give us this picture. You know early on in the first verse the angel tells Philip to go to Gaza which is desert and then at the end of it we see Philip going to Azotus and he preaches in all the villages there and he comes to Caesarea as well so we have mentioned Gaza and Azotus. These are old names of cities and places in the context of this particular geography where most of the scriptures take place and these were two of the five names of the principal Philistine cities and so in these principal cities of the Philistines in the area of Gaza, the city of Azotus, we see then Philip going preaching the gospel, the eunuch being saved and the gospel being preached in Azotus and other places as well.

And so we see in the context of the eunuch story then markers of beginning and end of two of the five cities of the Philistines because all the cities of the Philistines will be converted through the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is the great message of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and the indications of what it is there.

Azotus actually the term actually means spoiler and the Miracle Bible says that from there with the joy in his heart of one who is taking the spoil from the strong one, whom a stronger has overcome, he evangelizes all the cities as far as Caesarea speaking of Philip spoiler once meaning the spoiled ones in Philistine who were spoiled in terms of their own rotten sin so to speak and now Philip comes as the greater an emissary from the greater power who would spoil those, take rather the hordes of treasure, the men that Satan had dominion and control over.

And so he takes the spoil from the strong man when the stronger one has overcome the Lord Jesus Christ. And he evangelizes as far as Caesarea. And of course we have there a picture by way of just the name of the town that’s used there. This is a city. Caesarea was a city that was rebuilt by Herod and devoted to Augustus Caesar and so had his name on it. But it’s in that very name where you have to understand that Augustus Caesar was the great false messiah, false Christ.

Coins were said that salvation comes through no other than through Augustus Caesar for instance. The idea of hills being lowered and valleys being exalted—that’s what they would do when a Caesar came through and Augustus Caesar was the great Caesar. And so he was the picture of the false salvation of man through man becoming God. But instead of that, at Caesarea is now invaded with the gospel of the greater Caesar, the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who is truly God and man, not man becoming God, but rather both fully God and fully man.

And so we have the picture of the propagation of the gospel, the promise that all the world will be converted to the Lord Jesus Christ through the symbols given to us in this piece of literature from the scriptures. It’s interesting that many people have understood the implications of course of the story of the Ethiopian eunuch for a missionary activity and that’s what’s being spoken of here to some extent.

Let me just read a quote from one commentator. He said that in Ethiopia the royal descent was by way of the mother. This is speaking of the term Candace where it says the eunuch was a steward of Candace the queen of the Ethiopians. The queen mother transmitting the inheritance to her son came herself to exercise the rule. And though the son was regarded as king and given divine honors, he was confined to the palace while his mother reigned.

In the years 25-21 BC, a one-eyed Candace fought the Romans and conserved her empire her kingdom by a favorable peace. This rule of queens continues to the present time. I don’t know if it does anymore or not, but it did at the time of the writing of this commentary, which I think is about 50 years old. Candace is only a title. It’s not a personal name. Candace is a title like Pharaoh or Sultan or Czar. The history of missions has made this particular title Candace famous.

In 1853, Pastor Louie Herms of Hermansburg in Hanover, Germany, a small inland town, had a vessel built with funds he collected and sent the first missionaries he had prepared to their destination in Africa. And he called the name of this vessel the ship that would carry them to Africa the Candace. This missionary enterprise was highly successful and stands out as one of the great monuments of faith in the history of modern missionary endeavor.

And so for hundreds of years Christians have seen the implications of the story of the Ethiopian eunuch and in this case named the ship to carry the gospel to Africa. Candace reminiscent of this story, the promise that the gospel would indeed be preached to all lands and be successful and we know at the very text the eunuch himself reads that the generation shall not be able to be told because of greatness of number.

So the Lord Jesus Christ will have tremendous seed so to speak through the preaching of his gospel. And so the eunuch rejoices in the propagation of the gospel. But then finally, most of all, of course, at the center of both the eunuch’s rejoicing and our rejoicing at this time of year is the person of Jesus Christ.

And I just love this verse where it says that Philip preached to him Jesus. Jesus—he takes the text from Isaiah and applies that text then helps the eunuch to understand that it is indeed the Lord Jesus Christ who is being spoken of. In verse 32, we read this text that it says in verse 35, “he began with to preach unto him Jesus.”

The text reads this: “he was led as a sheep to the slaughter and like a lamb dumb before the shearer so opened he not his mouth.” This text in Isaiah clearly indicates that one would come who was like the sheep or the lamb the offering that was required on the altar of God’s sacrificial altar in the old testament. It said that one will come like those sheep are like those lambs who were offered. It pictures the coming of one who in his very body would be the lamb, the sheep that would provide the sacrificial atonement that all the other lambs and sheep simply were prefigurements of in the Old Testament.

And of course, John the Baptist when he sees Jesus in the gospel accounts says indeed that he has seen the lamb of God who comes to take the sin of the world away. And so in John 1:29, this is what John’s declaration of Jesus is: “Behold the lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.”

That phrase is repeated twice in the opening chapter of the gospel of John. A double witness to the fulfillment of this prophecy in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 1:19 says that we’ve been redeemed with the precious blood of Jesus Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. 1 Peter goes on to build upon that. Then the necessity to submit ourselves under the providence of God as Jesus did in 1 Peter chapter 2.

He begins to talk about in verse 20 about suffering for the sake of God and his purposes. In verse 21 tells us that “even here unto were ye called because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that ye should follow his steps. Who did no sin neither was guile found in his mouth. He was that lamb without spot or blemish. Who when he was reviled, reviled not again. When he suffered, he threatened not, but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously.”

See, this is an exposition on the part of Peter now of the same text. Really: “he was led as a sheep to the slaughter. And like a lamb, dumb before the shearer, so opened he not his mouth.” He didn’t revile. He didn’t cry out. Why? Because he was stoically passive? No. Because he was entrusting himself, as 1 Peter tells us, to him that judges righteously, God the Father. He knew that men are not the final arbiter or judge of righteousness. Rather, the one who judges correctly and justly is God the Father.

That then becomes the model in 1 Peter 2 for how we’re supposed to submit ourselves to the authorities that God in his providence gives to us. Whether it’s our employers, whether it’s to one another in the context of the body of Christ, also the case of a wife submitting herself to a husband, even an unbelieving husband. The whole basis for that submission according to the scriptures are also the same basis of the submission to ungodly rulers such as we have in our land repeatedly in state and local government and also federal government.

We have ungodly rulers and yet the scriptures tell us to submit to them in the same way that Jesus gave us the example that the Ethiopian eunuch tells us about. He opened not his mouth. He submitted entrusting himself to him who judges righteously.

And so Jesus Christ Jesus is pictured in this text from Isaiah. In his humiliation, his judgment was taken away. The judgment of men was unjust. Jesus was killed though he had done nothing wrong. And so his submission, his sacrificial work on the cross, his submission to God the Father, his death is pictured in the passage from Isaiah that the eunuch here quotes. His humility before God the Father is pictured.

And then also his victory. “Who shall declare his generation? for his life is taken from the earth.” His death, but also his victorious resurrection and the preaching of the gospel is what is central to this text from Isaiah. And all these things are central to the gospel, the good news that Philip evangelized the Ethiopian eunuch with. And that’s really what the word says here in verse 35 where it says that “Philip opened his mouth and began at the same scripture and preached unto him Jesus.”

That word preach means to evangel, to give an evangel, to give a good and joyous message to one. It’s not preaching in the sense of just you know expositing the scriptures or something. It is instead the evangel that is provided here, the good news. Let me read a fairly extended quote here from J. Alexander on this point.

“This term,” he said, “must suggest to every reader of the Greek the joyous and exhilarating nature of the truths taught as good news or glad tidings of salvation. An idea not by any means inseparable from the simple act of preaching either in its first sense of proclaiming or in its secondary sense of exhortation and religious teaching. This idea so distinctly legible in the original has been retained by some translations for instance in the Rheims translation with its usual violation of the English idiom ‘evangelized unto him Jesus.’ That’s the Rheims translation but it tries, it does that for the purpose of getting across this idea of joyous glad tidings of salvation or by Luther’s translation. Luther translated this ‘preached to him the evangel of Jesus.’

There’s also a meaning in the name itself of which we are continually tempted to lose sight by the inveterate habit of regarding it as a mere personal designation no more distinctive or significant than those in common use among ourselves. Whereas Jesus as we have often had occasion to observe was designed from the beginning to be not a mere convenience like a label or a number, but a pregnant description of him to whom it was applied before his birth by an angel as the savior of his people from their sins. That he was such a savior and the very one predicted in the Hebrew scriptures was the doctrine now propounded and established in Philip’s exegetical and argumentative discourse to his companion Jesus—his name is Jesus.

When the angel tells his parents that his name shall be Jesus for he shall save his people from their sins. Salvation from sins is at the center of the evangel of the Lord Jesus Christ. You know the I mentioned and I tried to drive home the fact that we’re all wicked, terrible sinners. We’re like that Ethiopian eunuch cut off, no ability to generate positive seed, wrath of God biting against us. That’s who we are in our natures. You must know the depth of your sin and misery. But you also must know the second of the three things required to know is how I am redeemed from such sin and misery.

And when we hear that Philip preached Jesus, we see that the person of Jesus Christ in his suffering for the sins of his people in his lack of pride and humility before the Father, humbling himself to the point of death and then his victorious resurrection. This is good news to our souls that there is a Jesus who comes to save us from our sins. And we’re not saved by a doctrine ultimately or a systematic theology.

No, we’re saved by the very personal actions of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and his—what is emphasized in the preaching of Philip is the person of Jesus and that person being the one who would give salvation from sins to his people. And so we have here tremendous news of great joy to all of us that understand this correctly and who are brought to that understanding by the power of the Holy Spirit who illumines it to our heart and causes our hearts to rejoice in the knowledge of Jesus.

At the end of the day, as we face our, as we lay on our deathbed, it must be Jesus who comes to mind to give us the assurance and comfort and knowledge that we are indeed redeemed from our sins and misery. One of the, you know, it is extremely difficult for us to get a grasp on how great our sin and misery is. We continually think of ourselves in much higher terms than we ought.

But as hard as that is, somehow the knowledge gnaws at us back behind that. And it seems to me, at least in our day and age, to be even harder sometimes to acknowledge that indeed God has forgiven us our sins through the work of Jesus. So difficult to believe that. And so we lash out, not thinking that God loves us. I had a situation a couple weeks ago. It really bothered me tremendously. And I thought, well, you know, here we go again and another time of difficulty and trouble.

This is a couple weeks ago and I was driving back to my office and I thought, “Wait a minute, Dennis. God loves you. He’s provided salvation in Jesus Christ. He’s forgiven you. You know how crummy a sinner you are, how you screw things up. God loves you and God brings into your life only that is good and profitable to you, glorifying to him, but edifying to you as well.” We have a hard time believing both those two things.

And as a result, we have a very difficult time to do the third thing that Heidelberg Catechism speaks of, how to be thankful to God for such redemption. We either don’t acknowledge our sin or we don’t acknowledge the love of God. Instead, we go by our feelings either of self-righteousness or our feelings of complete worthlessness and we usually bounce back and forth between the two.

The Ethiopian eunuch here rejoices as we should rejoice in the person of Jesus Christ. Matthew Henry said that he believed that Jesus was the Christ, the true Messiah promised, the anointed one. That’s what Christ means here. That’s the confession of the Ethiopian eunuch in the couple of verses following in verse 37: “believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God.” He believed that this Jesus was Christ, the anointed one, Messiah, the king. Secondly, he believed that Christ is Jesus, a savior, the only savior of his people from their sins.

And third, that this Jesus Christ is the son of God. That he has a divine nature. As the son is of the same nature with the father, and that being the son of God, he is the heir of all things. This is the principal, peculiar doctrine of Christianity. And whosoever believes in this with all their heart and confess it, they and their seed are to be baptized.

Well, and that of course is the central declaration is under attack and is always under attack from the world. What do we have today? For instance, I just put out a mailing on outcome-based education. What is the point of outcome-based education? It’s produce politically correct children who say, “Yeah, it’s okay that you’re a Christian and it’s okay to believe in the scriptures and it’s okay that you believe in Muhammad and it’s okay that you believe in Satan. It’s okay that you believe in yourself and you believe in the civil state. Everything’s okay. I’m okay. You’re okay. Everybody’s okay.” The one thing that is not okay is that a discriminatory faith.

And yet that is at the heart of what the Ethiopian eunuch confesses here that only Jesus Christ is the son of God is the son of God. Peculiar and distinctive to the Christian faith is this doctrine of exclusivity. And it is the doctrine that the world hates and abhors. And so we may want to look at the public schools and they may clean out the drugs. They may clean out, you know, sex and the bad things that might happen there. They may clean out the violence from the public schools. They may produce they may they may produce real well-mannered children, but who grow up really hating the God of the scriptures by denying the exclusivity, the claims of Jesus Christ and the need that for all men to be saved only through the name of Jesus Christ and his blood given on the cross for sins.

It’s no different in our day and age than it is in another other day and age. The spirit of the world denies the central affirmation the confession of faith that we’ve just read of the eunuch making and of Philip preaching to him from the book of Isaiah. Philip preached that Jesus must die that he would die unjustly and that he would die patiently but the effects of that death would be the salvation of the world and that eventually the world would all be evangelized receive that evangel of good news and glad tidings of the resurrection and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Philip applies the old adage: He expounds the scriptures. He exhorts the sinner. Surely he exhorts the eunuch to repent. But finally, he exalts the savior. And so it is in our preaching. This is what should be done. And in our devotions, in our lives, this is what should be done one to the other. We should be exalting the savior. And if we leave out Jesus out of our systematic theologies and our analysis of sin and of the application of God’s law to our sins, if we leave out Jesus, we have utterly failed in our mission as Christians to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ.

The book of Isaiah exalts him. I’m going to read in a series of quotes here from Isaiah. And you find throughout these prophecies the person of the Lord Jesus Christ being exalted. And the same message is hammered home over and over.

Going to begin reading Isaiah 52: “Behold, my servant shall deal prudently. He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high. As many were astonished at thee, his visage was marred so marred more than any man and his form more than the sons of men, so shall he sprinkle many nations. The king shall shut their mouths at him.”

You see the process there just in those couple of verses is the same thing that the eunuch is reading about here. That there is a personal work of God. He becomes incarnate in his son and he is indeed exalted and extolled but it is through his humiliation that occurs. Many were astonished at him. His visage was more marred than any man and his form more than the sons of men—beaten, smitten, till he could not even be recognizable in his face practically that he was a man at all. And yet because of that, God highly exalts and extols him. He makes satisfaction for the sins of his people by doing this. And so as a result of that and God’s blessing of that, he sprinkles many nations. The kings shall shut their mouths at him. All kings will eventually worship and proclaim Jesus Christ as Savior.

All men shall confess Jesus Christ as Lord upon this earth one day as the gospel is preached forth.

Reading on in Isaiah 53:3: “He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, and we hid as if he were as if it were our faces from him. He was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows. Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.”

What an incredible thing, huh? But that’s what we do, isn’t it? Our sins are the ones that are so hidden from us. The heart is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things. Who can know it? And here the imputation is that God is Jesus Christ as we look at him and his suffering. That is well who could possibly be a savior or a king who suffers in that way? He must be smitten by God. He must be cursed and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him. And with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before the shearers is dumb.

So he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment. Who shall declare his generation? For he was cut off from the land of the living. For the transgression of my people was he stricken. And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He hath put him to grief.

When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed. He shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied. By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many for he shall bear their iniquities. God sees the travail of Jesus’s soul. The person of Jesus Christ, Jesus—that he might save his people from his sins—travails in his soul. God sees him and is satisfied.

By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many. We are part of that many. We’re part of that group whom the Lord Jesus in his suffering for sin satisfied, made atonement for our sins and gave us justification. He shall bear their iniquity. Therefore, as a result of that, see, it moves right on to the other side of it. It goes from the personal salvation of God’s people, to the propagation of that world throughout all the world.

Therefore, will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he hath poured out his soul unto death, and he was numbered with the transgressors, and he bear the sins of many, and made intercession for the transgressions. And listen what it goes on to say then.

And think how this must have been to the eunuch. Now, this is speaking of a woman unable to bear children, but you know that’s what the eunuch is. He’s the male version of that, right? No offspring.