In this sermon titled "A Spirit Led Evangelistic Life," the speaker focuses on the story of Philip the Evangelist in the book of Acts. The sermon begins by discussing the events in Samaria, including the sham conversion of Simon the Sorcerer. The Apostles in Jerusalem hear about the conversion of Samaria and send Peter and John to pray for the believers to receive the Holy Spirit. The speaker then explains the transitional nature of the book of Acts, as it marks the shift from the Old Testament to the New Testament and the birth of the church. The sermon emphasizes the importance of understanding this transition to avoid misinterpreting scripture and using it to validate certain activities in one's life.

This message I have titled, A Spirit-Led Evangelistic Life. It is really a close look at Philip, who became Philip the Evangelist as we know him. Last time when we were going through Chapter 8 here in the Book of Acts, we went by and we studied about all that was going on in Samaria and we saw the sham conversion of Simon the sorcerer. And along the way we saw that the Apostles in verse 14, who were at Jerusalem, heard that Samaria had received the Word of God, and so they sent Peter and John to them. And if you look there, verse 15, who, Peter and John, when they had come down, prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit. Now, these people have already believed on Christ and been baptized in water, so to even read that is odd. Then, verse 16, for as yet he had fallen upon none of them, as they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, then they laid hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit. Now, as we came to the end of the message last time, I raised those issues and said, well, what about that? So we need to address them now. I have to resist the temptation to take all of our time together to talk about this, but in some other message we will deal in full detail with the baptism of the Holy Spirit versus do you get it all when you come to salvation and so on. But why this? Why did this happen here? Well, let me begin by saying this. And really, if you get nothing else out of our study of the Book of Acts, please get this and keep it. The Book of Acts is a transitional book. It's transitional. You have the Old Testament, which takes up, by the way, most of your Bible. You have then the New Testament, which begins with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. That is the Gospels, which are full treatment on the life of Jesus Christ. Then you have the death of Christ, his resurrection and the Book of Acts as recorded by Luke. And from there you go on into Romans, which is the loftiest treatment on the grace of God and any extant literature. And from there you have the epistles, which are largely polemic in nature. They are corrective. There's a problem in the church. So a letter is written to correct the church problem and so on. And the doctrine to build you up. The doctrines in the epistles are mostly elaborations of teachings that Jesus gave. There are effectively commentaries on the Gospels and the words of Jesus. Now, Acts sits right there between the Gospels and the epistles as a transitional book from Old Testament to New Testament. So that what you see going on in the Book of Acts is unique to that transitional time. From the Old Testament to the New Testament time, so that even if you look at the apostles, the followers of Jesus Christ, they are to begin with Old Testament saints. Then Christ calls them, he disciples them, he teaches them, he goes to the cross, he raises again, he tells them to go to Jerusalem to wait for the power to come from on high of the Holy Spirit. And that comes on the day of Pentecost and the day of Pentecost, the church is born. So then the church at that point becomes the light of the world. Israel was called of God to be his chosen people for what chosen to be a unique people on the earth whom God would work with in a wonderful, marvelous, divine and unique way to what end to be the light of the world. Israel mishandled their stewardship of being the light of the world. Ultimately, Jesus came unto his own and his own received him what not. So they were unfaithful in being the light of the world overall. Overall, not all the time, but when it was all said and done overall so that you have then the church born on the day of Pentecost, which the city of Jerusalem was still teeming with millions of people, a couple of million pilgrims who had come up, Jewish pilgrims who had come up there to celebrate Passover, stayed for Pentecost. And so when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the believers as they were gathered together, 120 of them in an upper room, the spirit of God was poured out on them. They began to speak with other languages as the spirit gave them utterance and all those gathered around from different places, heard them speak in their own languages, the glorious things of the kingdom of God. Peter then jumped up and began to preach the resurrected Christ. Three thousand came to know Jesus Christ. Three thousand, basically Jews. So all these people then are in transition from living under the mosaic law, which was given as a schoolmaster or a tutor to bring us to Jesus Christ. That's what Paul said in Galatians. So you're in transition. Do you understand it? So you're moving from Old Testament to New Testament when the church is born and the spirit fills them. And Christ has died, risen from the dead, gone back to heaven. Now you're in the New Testament age, New Testament time. And that transition takes a little while to happen. It starts in Jerusalem, goes to Judea, spreads to Samaria, by the way, with Philip and then goes on to the uttermost parts of the earth, by the way, through Philip, by preaching to the Ethiopian eunuch who went back to Africa and became a missionary. And the gospel goes to the uttermost parts of the earth. Acts is a book in transition. Therefore, there are things that happen in the book of Acts that you don't see happening anywhere else. And unless you understand the transitional nature of the book of Acts, you're going to grab things that you see happening in the book of Acts, take scriptures right out of context, run with them and use them to validate certain activities in your life. Which is wrong. OK, so you're with me so far. So when we come to Acts chapter eight and we see the apostles come from Jerusalem to Samaria, it's part of that transitional time now to give you a little backdrop on this. It's been about five years that had gone by since the resurrection of Christ and the giving of the Great Commission and the birthday of the church on the day of Pentecost. About five years. Jesus said when he gave the Great Commission, I want you to take the gospel first to Jerusalem, then to Judea, then to Samaria, then the uttermost parts of the earth. After about five years, they're still lurking around Jerusalem because of the persecution that broke out with the death of Stephen and the ensuing persecution from Saul. The church was scattered. As a result, Philip, who was a co-laborer and a friend of Stephen's, he went on up to Samaria. Easy for him to go to Samaria because he was a Hellenistic Jew. He didn't have the prejudicial baggage that the apostles had against the Samaritans. The Samaritans were half breed, both in their physical makeup. They were a blend of Jewish people and Assyrians and all kinds of other people from around the area from the time of the captivity, but also in their worship. So they feared the Lord and they worshiped other gods, it says in one place. OK, if you understand that, that there was tremendous animosity between the Samaritans and the Jews of Jerusalem, then you understand that something had to be done in this transition to make sure that when Philip led all of these people to the Lord in Samaria, they didn't just form their own sect of Christianity or let's just say make the first denomination and say we are of Philip and everybody down in Jerusalem says are up in Jerusalem because it's all up to Jerusalem. You remember that everybody in Jerusalem says we're of the apostles up here. Thus, you would have had a schism right from the very beginning that would have only perpetuated what had gone on for so many hundreds of years already. A horrible rift in the church. So when you read in verse 16, for as yet he had not fallen upon them, the Holy Spirit, they'd only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. But then when they laid hands on them, the apostles, they received the Holy Spirit. That happened for this very reason. God did something unique so that the apostles would come to Samaria, follow this, and John and Peter would be eyewitnesses that God really had saved all these Samaritans and that he really was working there. So they had to drop their prejudice. They had to accept them as Christians in Christ. They had to start doing something new, which was loving Samaritans. And then they were to go back to Jerusalem and tell them what they saw. And everybody at Jerusalem had to do the same thing. So for the sake of the apostles, he did not put the Holy Spirit upon them. Then for the sake of the Samaritans, these men were, in fact, apostles. Peter and John, so they had the apostolic authority and they were the head of the church as Jesus had made them that before he went back to heaven. So they come bringing apostolic authority. Don't forget, they are going to write Bible, New Testament. So the Samaritans have to get over their prejudice. They have to receive the apostles. They have to respect the apostles. They have to know they're from God. What better way than to receive the infilling of God himself through them so that when John pens his gospel, they will read it as from God when Peter writes his epistle and so on. You understand it's for the benefit of both sides. And it's for the benefit, then, of the church being the light of the world, because now all the people around that always saw the Samaritans and the Jews at odds are going to suddenly see them loving one another. And Jesus said, by this, shall all men know that you are my disciples, that I'm risen from the dead, that I'm alive and I live in you. How? By your love one toward another. The Lord loves to follow through with the things that he says, and that's the big picture of what's going on here. So from that time, after you see the Old Testament saints filled with the spirit on the day of Pentecost, Jews converted to Christ, filled with the spirit, Gentiles, as you see the Samaritans here, once you get through all that Old Testament saints, Jews, Gentiles, Samaritans. From there, it's a whole different thing. So you don't read of these things in the epistles moving on from here. And as for. The whole issue of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, let me just make a quick statement so I can answer a lot of the questions that would be immediately asked afterwards anyway. Now that I'm into this, I'm committed, right? What do I believe about the baptism of the Holy Spirit? Well, in Corinthians, when Paul was writing to the Corinthians, he said, if you want to use the terms properly, he said, for you all are baptized by the spirit into the body of Christ on the day of Pentecost, when they were filled as Luke is writing, he says they were filled. And you might as well learn it now that the word translated baptize or baptism in the New Testament in English comes from the Greek word baptizo, and it means to immerse. So to what I believe about the baptism of the Holy Spirit, you mean, what do I believe about being immersed in the Holy Spirit? Do I believe that you become born again and you. Receive part of the spirit and then later you get a second touch and you receive another part of the Holy Spirit. I have a really hard time dividing up the omnipresent, omnipotent, all powerful, all knowing. God, the Holy Spirit in all of his infinitude. I have a really hard time dividing him up. He's God. Now, for those of you that came up in Christianity, believing that you're born again, the spirit comes to live inside of you and then you get the power of the Holy Spirit upon you later with a second touch, the Holy Spirit. OK. All right. For those of you that came up in Christ, believing you come to Christ, God comes life of God in the soul of a man. There's nothing beyond that so that you receive everything when you're born again. All right. As for me in my house, we shall serve the Lord. So what I mean by that is this. In my mind, regeneration to be born again is the ultimate charismatic experience to go from being dead spiritually to being detonated in your soul by the life of God. To have him come and live within you is the ultimate charismatic experience when it really occurs from there. Know this. Whatever camp you're from, God wants to fill you with the power of his Holy Spirit until your cup overflows. In fact, it's more like a rushing mighty river. Jesus said he that believes on me out of his belly will flow a trickle of living water. No, he said rivers of living water. It's Niagara all over the place. So that what whatever you want to believe when you some for some people, it's semantics. For other people, it's not. So if you subscribe to the end with an upon idea, the Holy Spirit was with the apostles as they were with Jesus. Then Jesus breathed on them and they received the spirit. He came into them. He said, receive the spirit. So now he's in them. And then he came upon them at Pentecost. If that's what you've been taught and that's what you believe, then just make sure you press on to being filled again and again and again and again and again with rivers of living water. If you believe now, I don't mean to classify you folks as that, but if you believe that you receive all of the Holy Spirit at salvation, then you make sure that you don't miss out on what the other folks have, because they have open hearts and they want all they can get. Does that make sense to you? Let me just sum up by saying this. You cannot go wrong either way. And everybody's going to find out in heaven who is right. So you cannot go wrong either way. If you, as Jesus said, come to the father and he said, shall not the father give the Holy Spirit to them who ask him. And if you ask him, fill me, Lord, fill me, Lord, fill me. He will fill you. So that is, in a nutshell, what I believe about those things. I believe that God wants to fill you again and again and again and again. And to stop short of that is to stop short of all that he has for you. And salvation begins by the Holy Spirit. And anything that happens from there that is God through you happens by the Holy Spirit. Now, at some point in time, we'll do one whole message on this and you can ask me more questions. But thanks for those questions. They were good. So you understand what's going on here in this transitional time in the book of Acts. Now, let's move on into Acts versus 25 and on down to the end. What we have here is, in contrast, is Simon. Simon was not saved, but he had the faith that did not say we looked at that last time. In contrast to him is this great man, this Ethiopian eunuch who has a faith that does save. And the way it happens, it's all sovereign. Salvation is all of God, all of grace, and ultimately it is all sovereign. So you have here what I would call sovereign preparation before this Ethiopian eunuch is saved. You have then a certainly a spiritual presentation from Philip, and then you have the saving response of the eunuch who believes. So sovereign preparation always before salvation occurs. Holy Spirit of work, spiritual presentation, the Bible, Christ. And then comes that response, which only you can give a saving response, trusting Christ. Let's look at the sovereign preparation here first. In verse 25 and 26. So when they had testified, that's Peter and John, and preached the word of the Lord, they returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel. Look at this in many villages of the Samaritans. That's kind of a key issue, because the next verse, God's going to ask Philip to leave. And that will help you understand how he could leave in the middle of the greatest events of his life. So they preached the gospel on the way back to Jerusalem. They took their time and they preached all around and they preached all around in many villages of the Samaritans. Verse 26. Now, an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip saying, Arise and go toward the south along the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. And then you read, this is desert, this is desert. So here is the sovereignty of God at work. This man, as we read in a minute here, has traveled all the way from Ethiopia, all the way up to Jerusalem. He has been led by God to do that, something even beyond himself. At the same time, Philip was a servant just loving the Lord, loving the brethren in the church, and they needed help overseeing the ministry to feed the widows and care for them. He was chosen out of among the flock and he was faithful in what God gave him to do and serving tables. And then God began to continue to work in his life. Persecution broke out. He's thrust into Samaria. He opens his mouth. He starts to preach. Revival breaks out. And all of this is the Lord getting Philip ready. For the Ethiopian eunuch, the Ethiopian eunuch account is not less than the Samaritan revival, it's leading to something bigger, something bigger. So God is sovereignly at work in this man's life, the eunuch and sovereignly at work in Philip's life. God is always sovereignly at work in the lives of those that he saves long before they become born again. And he uses human instruments in the process, which is so glorious. That's why we're the light of the world. That's why we have the gospel and we share it. Now, there is a prerequisite to being used in the sovereign work of God to lead someone else to the Lord. And that involves the submissive will of the individual God wants to use. Here's the submissive will of Philip in Acts 8, 27, it says, so he arose and he went. That is so good to me, that is so rich. If I die suddenly and forget to tell you what to put on my gravestone, I wouldn't mind if you simply put so he arose and went. That is as good as it gets to follow God, to follow God, he arose and went, he arose and went. You know why? Because he was yielded to the Lord, but also because he was ready. Charles Spurgeon used to say, be fit for your work in the kingdom and you will never be out of it. God will keep you busy here. He is so submitted to the Lord that when God asks him to get up and go to Gaza and he does it to the angel, he doesn't struggle with the fact that the request is irrational. Lord, you want me to go to the desert, I'm here in Samaria, I have never had a better time in my life as a Christian, I'm preaching, people are being saved, this is incredible. You want me to go to the desert and you're so serious about it, you send an angel. And by the way, if he didn't send an angel, I'm not so sure he would have been able to tear himself away from what God was doing. But having had a visitation from an angel, well, that makes things a little easier. So he's not arguing with the irrationality of it, as it seems, but rather he obeys. He arose and he went. You know something, by his willing obedience, he became the means by which God saved this man forever, for eternity. What a glorious thing. Do not underestimate the work of the Holy Spirit when he's strongly churning in your heart, strongly working and putting impressions on your heart that won't go away, but rather get stronger and stronger and stronger. God is wanting to do something, something wonderful, something new. We're going to see a lot of that in the book of Acts. So you have the sovereign work of the spirit. You have the submissive will of Philip. Then you have the searching heart of this eunuch in verse twenty seven. Behold, the man of Ethiopia. Now, read this carefully, a eunuch of great authority under Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians, who had charge of all her treasury, had come to Jerusalem to worship. This man is truly seeking after God. He has taken a long journey to Jerusalem, how he came to come in contact with Judaism. We don't know, but we do know that he took a long journey to go to Jerusalem to find his way to the Lord. Now, when you read that he was the treasurer or the keeper of the treasure of Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians, know this Candace was not her name. Candace was not her name. Candace is a name you see, the Ethiopians at that time believed that their kings were offsprings and incarnations of the sun god. Therefore, they were above everyday affairs of governments. They didn't do anything. So they just sat around as kings. So the affairs of the government actually went to the one that had the real power in their society, which was the queen mother. The queen mother then was known by the hereditary title of Candace, like Pharaoh, like Herod. Herod in the Bible isn't the guy's name. It's the name of his position, like Caesar. So Candace is the title. It's an official title. In modern terms, then he would have been the secretary of the treasury or the minister of finance in Ethiopia. This guy is a very important man. What Joseph was to Pharaoh, what Daniel was to Nebuchadnezzar, the Ethiopian eunuch is to Candace, the queen of the nation of Ethiopia, which is just south of Egypt. So here he is now. Obviously, then he's got power, he's got prestige, but he's got a vast emptiness in his soul, enough to cause him to make this pilgrimage all the way up to Jerusalem. Now, one thing that might just give you a little more insight into the man, we read that he was a eunuch. You find that word in the Bible a lot, and unless somebody explains to you what it means, you may never know what it means. And it's one of those things you read over it, eunuch. Yeah, that's a Bible word. And you move on. So here is a man, he is a eunuch, he is an official in the court of the queen of Ethiopia. So he's both a eunuch and he's a court official. It is very likely that he was made a eunuch surgically. See, eunuchs in the Bible are usually those that work with kings and officials like that, and they all in those days had harems. So the only way to have a man you could trust with all your money and trust around your harem was to surgically make them a eunuch. I don't want to get any more graphic than that. So here is this man. Now, Potiphar in the Old Testament is called the eunuch. So not everybody and he's married. Not everybody in the Bible with that title is in the category of being surgically a eunuch. But in this man's case, he most likely was very possible that Daniel was. Most people never thought about that. What it does is it it sheds a whole different kind of light on your intimacy with God, your love for God and having market, having things happen to you that you'd rather not have happen to you that are big, they're significant. And yet you can still love the Lord and not go through your life mad at God or hating God or whatever else. You understand what I'm saying? So here is this man, very important man, has a vast emptiness in his soul and he's hungering and thirsting for God. There's something further to go with what I've just told you, though, being in that category, going up to Jerusalem. He was in for a lot of heartache and a lot of affective rejection, because in Deuteronomy 23, 1, it said that says there that someone in the situation of life is this man would would not be able to go into the temple and worship God with everybody else. He would be denied access to participate fully in the Jewish worship services. So he makes this long journey. He gets there and they tell him, sorry, you can't come in and join in the full worship service. You're going to have to stay outside. Hey, you can go down the street to the synagogue. Further, you cannot become a full proselyte to Judaism as far as you can go with your condition is to become a God fearer, which is what Cornelius was. We'll run into him later, a God fearer. And you can go to the synagogue and hear the scriptures read, but you cannot go into the temple and worship and become a full proselyte Jew converted into Judaism. You have to stay on the outer edge. So that is to say that what happened to him as he went to Jerusalem is disappointment. Further, Jerusalem was filled with Christ killers. So this man goes all the way to Jerusalem to find the Lord. God has revealed himself in Jesus Christ. He gets there, he finds Christ killers in the temple, those still living out their Judaism, having rejected Christ who fulfilled all of that and put it all away. Those in the temple then would be those continuing to follow after the scribes and the Pharisees and the Sadducees who didn't believe in life after death or anything supernatural. What he found was a lot of death and a lot of disappointment. And yet he manages to get a copy of the book of Isaiah, which would have been a big scroll. And he would have had to obtain that a great price. So he would have had to have been very, very hungry. OK, then get the answer from all of you. But I believe the answer somehow is in in the word of God. So he understands to some extent that to find God and know him personally, it's going to involve the word of God. And it does. The Holy Spirit did that within him. So here he is, this eunuch from Ethiopia, what he has done and this is what happens in salvation. He has lived up to the light that he had. In creation, the Bible tells us God has put light in the creation, it testifies of the glory and the power of God in creation. In Romans chapter one, if you will look at that light, perceive that light and respond to that light, then God will look at your heart and he will give you more light. He will bring you all the way up to the light of God, the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. He would bring you all the way up to the light of Jesus Christ, saving knowledge of Christ. This man lived in Africa. He goes all the way to Jerusalem, doesn't find what he's looking for. He's in the middle of the desert on the road. God sends a man out of a revival to go stand and wait on the on the desert road. He responded to the light that was given to him, and God was able to bring the light of God in Jesus Christ to him and save his soul. That says a lot, doesn't it? About what about poor so and so out there, da da da da da da, who's never heard the gospel? Well, our God is a great and awesome God, able to save and that is his great work. So this searching heart now in verse twenty eight, as he's going along, he's sitting in his chariot, which could have been one of those kinds of things where, you know, the person sits in a box, it's a glorified box with nice curtains and everything and pillows and they peek out occasionally and, you know, they're carrying on the shoulders of some servants. I doubt if he was hauling down the road, this dirt road in the desert, because it was the old road. They didn't use it anymore. Gaza had been destroyed in ninety six B.C. So this is the old road through the desert. I doubt if he's hauling and a chariot, you know, reading Isaiah. So he's probably being carried along on the shoulders of some servants or either that or it's more like a rolling cart, something like that. At any rate, he's got this long journey going very slow and he's able to read. Now, the Lord, as he's sitting in his chariot, he's reading Isaiah the prophet and he's hungering to know God. So along comes Philip, the Lord leads Philip to go there. He tells him to go down to Gaza, to the desert and stand there on the road. And so that's all the sovereign preparation of God. And he's even reading in Isaiah the account that speaks of Jesus Christ. So that's all sovereign preparation. We come then to the spiritual presentation of verse twenty nine. To preach the gospel in a saving way, there must be two non negotiable ingredients. Do you know what they are? They must be Bible centered and Christ centered, Bible centered and Christ centered. And that's what we see here. He's reading the Bible, Isaiah at least, and Philip opens it up to him and then Philip preaches Christ to him. So, first of all, it must center on the Bible for someone to really come to a saving relationship with Christ. Look, verse twenty nine. Now, God sends an angel to Philip, tells him to leave Samaria and go down here. He gets there. He's standing out on this dirt road in the desert. OK, Lord. Not a lot of action here. All right. Anytime you want to send somebody along, that'd be great with me. So he's standing there, we don't know how long. And in verse twenty nine, this man begins to come along and he's reading and the spirit said to Philip. Go near and overtake this chariot. I love the way this man obeys God. What does verse thirty say? He ran. May God help us all to run, to obey when he speaks to our hearts. He ran to him and hearing him reading the prophet Isaiah, he was reading aloud. He ran to him, he said, do you understand what you're reading? I get the picture. This isn't one man moving down this dirt road. He is the treasurer. He's the assistant of the queen of Ethiopia. He has a long entourage. Right. So he bypasses the whole entourage. The spirit says go and he runs right up to the chariot of the main person who's in charge. And obviously the spirit is got control of that and he runs right up to him. And rather than being stopped by all of his servants, he says, hey, do you understand what you're reading? This is the strangest thing ever. Here's a guy standing and here comes somebody, you know, and then he's coming by and he's waiting. The Lord's going, hold, hold. And he's. And then the Lord says, go and do you understand what you're reading? Tell me God doesn't have a sense of humor. And he says he doesn't say guards. He says, how can I unless somebody guides me? He says, well, hey, Philip, come on up and sit with you. Probably said, hi, I'm Philip. Nice to meet you. But he says, yes, Philip, to come up and sit with him. Verse thirty one in the place in the scripture which he read was this. He was led as a sheep to the slaughter and as a lamb before the shearer is silent. So he opened not his mouth in his humiliation. His justice was taken away. And who will declare his generation for his life is taken from the earth. You understand why God held him until the exact moment and told him to run, told him to go and why he did run, not because he would miss the chariot going by, but because he would miss the passage. He would miss the passage. So right as he's reading the passage about Christ, he runs up, he says, do you understand that? He says, no, not unless someone explains it to me. He begins to unfold it. Verse thirty five says Philip opened his mouth. And beginning at this scripture beginning. Beginning at this scripture, preach Jesus Christ to him. So the scripture is what God uses to convert us all. It must center on the scripture when you're witnessing to people and it must center on Jesus Christ. So the scripture and he preached Jesus. May I say that Philip was able to do that because he was ready to do that, if anything else, we see he met this man right where he was, right in Isaiah, right there. And may God grant the same to us to be able, able to meet people right where they are in life. And to share Christ with them right where they are, to take whatever their situation and turn it right toward Christ, because he knew the word of God so well, he was able to start there and then take him all the way through the scriptures to Jesus Christ. I'm certain even to baptism, which is why he asked to be baptized because he was ready as we study the word of God. It isn't just so we can do the right thing as Christians. We study the word of God to be ready to give an answer to every man, as Peter said, of the hope that's in us because we live in a world that is no hope. The only hope is Christ. And so we study the word of God because faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And that's what he did. He opened it up to him. Proper preparation by the Lord, sovereign preparation, spiritual presentation. Then you get this wonderful response. The last thing here is a response of faith and confession and issues and rejoicing. Verse 36, as they went down the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, see, here is water. What hinders me from being baptized? That's what leads me to believe that he'd taken him through the whole gospel and all the way up to baptism. And so that's his profession of faith right there. And they came to this pool of water stream in the desert, whatever it was, and he wanted to publicly testify of his saving faith. And so his confession comes in verse 37, 38, Philip said, if you believe with all your heart, you may. He answered and said, I believe Jesus Christ is the son of God. He commanded the chariot to stand still and both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and he baptized him. After notice, after he was saved, after he was saved, he got baptized and notice they went down into the water. That's baptism by full immersion. We're going to have a study one of these days fairly soon on water baptism. We'll cover all those details, but you see it here. Luke tucks in down into the water and they come back out and so they go into the water and he gets baptized, immersed. The Greek word is baptizo, it means to immerse. So his confession, followed by public confession, what he was really doing is not just saying to Philip, I want to know I'm a true believer. He wants to show, don't miss this, the entire entourage. Hundreds of people that will go back to Ethiopia and share what they have seen and they're going to it's a long journey. They're all going to get the gospel. He's the one in charge. They're all going to get the gospel all the way back. And so he goes on his way rejoicing. And that is what happens to you. Verse 39, when they came up out of the water, up out of the water, then at the end he went on his way rejoicing. Joy is the mark of the true believer. When you're truly born again, it's not just religion. And when you're immersed in the word of God, as he was, there's joy, there's life. It is the most winsome thing about the born again Christian, I believe, is the joy of the Lord, the most winsome thing. So the eunuch went on his life's journey, rejoicing and saved. And the final thing here is, get this, just back up. God says to Philip, I want you to leave Samaria, I want you to go down to Gaza, to the desert. All right, Lord. Got any ideas about catching a ride when I'm done? As a matter of fact, God has some a really good idea. Philip got a ride from the Holy Spirit to the next city. Read verse 39. When they came up out of the water, the spirit of the Lord caught Philip away. So the eunuch saw him no more. Can you imagine? He's just barely getting over the fact this guy's waiting in the desert, comes up as he's reading right there, opens it all up to him. And then he comes. He's born again and he's he's just getting settled in with that. And they come up out of the water and Philip goes, see ya. No wonder he went on his way, rejoiced, he's going, you know, I love this Jesus thing, this relationship with the Lord is awesome. Well worth the journey. So and it is well worth the journey when you come to know Christ. So Philip got a ride from the Holy Spirit to the next city. We read in verse 40, but Philip was found at a Zotus. You know how far away that is? Twenty miles, twenty miles and passing through. He preached in all the cities till he came to Caesarea. Now, there is one question that will be on the test. Listen closely. Was his shirt wet or dry when he arrived at a Zotus? I'm just kidding. That is not important. What is important is that he kept preaching in all the cities till he came to Caesarea. And you know what I like and I want to end with this. We find out later in the book of Acts that he moved his family to that area. The daughters of Philip prophesied. Isn't it amazing that as he followed the leading of the Holy Spirit up to Samaria, then what seemed to be a rational down to Gaza, to the desert, then the Holy Spirit picks him up, translates him 20 miles away, drops him off and he goes on preaching because that was always in his heart. He ends up in the area where he's going to live with his family there near Caesarea, which is a wonderful place right on the Mediterranean. You see, if you will follow the Holy Spirit in your life, all these big questions you have about where am I going to live, what am I going to do? He will take care of those things. And in the end, you will find that if you offer your life as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto him, which is your reasonable service, then you will be able as you are not conformed to the world, but transformed by the renewing of your mind. Romans 12, 1 and 2, you will be able to put God to the test and find out what is that good and perfect and acceptable will of God for your life. And I can just see Philip reclining on the shore of the Mediterranean in his beach house going, oh, Lord, your way is better than my way. I would have never thought of this, but I sure do like it. God's good, isn't he? Let's pray. Thank you, Lord, that you are so good to us. You're so very good. Lord, now lead us by your Holy Spirit, fill us with that wonderful, rich love of God and that wonderful power. And Lord, give us that desire to share Jesus with others, not out of compulsion or duty because we have to, but because we want to, Lord, because we want others to know your love. And Lord, we will give you all the glory as you lead us and guide us and bless us. And how we thank you, Lord, it is your nature to bless. So we look forward to being blessed and we ask these things in Jesus name. Amen.