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In this message, Pastor Luke walks through Acts 8, following Philip into Samaria and out to the wilderness road as two very different hearts encounter the same Gospel. The story of Simon the Magician and the Ethiopian eunuch invites us to ask what we love most — and what really draws us to God.
Acts 8:2-40 | additional: Matthew 7:21-23, Philippians 3:7-8
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Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Luke. I'm one of the pastors here. And, today, we're gonna be picking up in our sermon series in the book of Acts. But before we get to Acts, I wanna read what I think is maybe one of the scariest Bible verses in the Bible.
Luke:I'm sure there's quite a few of those. We could make some debate. But this is the one that I think a lot of people who particularly come to church often, that when we hear it, it sometimes gives us a little bit of pause. I'm gonna be turning to Matthew, Matthew chapter seven. This is Jesus teaching, and he has some pretty surprising words that he has here in Matthew chapter seven.
Luke:Matthew chapter seven in verse 21 through 23, he says this. He says, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you.
Luke:Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. Right? It's a pretty, like, shocking Bible verse. Right? It's a little bit of like because he's describing two different types of people, and they're both coming up and saying, Jesus, you know me.
Luke:I know you. Right? And he's just like, no, some of you, I don't. Some of you, I don't know. And that gives us pause.
Luke:We're like, well, am I? I I think I know Jesus. Do I not know Jesus? Right? And I was thinking about, like, this kind of description here.
Luke:And I I think it's often a passage that people kind of come to. I've I I know that I have heard many people come to me and say, pastor Luke, like, this this makes me anxious. I'm worried. And I wanna kind of speak to that a little bit today. But I think Jesus here is describing fundamentally two different type of people.
Luke:This week, I saw a video of this, like, new virtual experience thing that you could go do. Has anyone here ever, like, skydived? Okay. There's some people more people raised their hand than I thought they were going to. Good for you.
Luke:I have a thing about jumping out of perfectly functioning aircraft. So but there is this new virtual experience where you can put on like, they they bring you into this room, and they've got this, like, curtain so you can't see what's on the other side of this curtain. They put on, like, this virtual headset. You're in, like, this, like, wingsuit because, you know, humans are supposed to be like flying squirrels or something. And, you know, you've got this wingsuit on, and they got, like, harnesses on you and all this stuff, and they put this virtual reality on it.
Luke:So it looks like you're in this realistic of airplane, and you're up in the sky. And then they pull away this curtain, and then they bring you right up to, like, this edge, and you you can't see anything except for the virtual reality that you're wearing. And then they've got, like, fans and stuff, I'm presuming, and then they tell you to jump. You know? And it looks like you're jumping out of an airplane, and they've suspend you, and you're supposed to, like, fly through some hoops or something.
Luke:And it looks it looks pretty fun. Right? You know, it looks it's kind of a a way for the someone like me who's never actually going to jump out of an airplane to jump out of an airplane. But, like, if I went and did that and then we sat in a room and we said that we asked that same question, Oh, who here's all gone skydiving? And I raised my hand.
Luke:Who everybody else who actually has gone skydiving, they're gonna look at me and they're like, yeah. No, you haven't. Right? No, you didn't. Right?
Luke:Like, you you did a little virtual reality. Like, that's not skydiving. Jesus is describing here his two different people. And I think the question that we need to ask is what is the difference between someone who is only a Christian in appearance and someone who truly is? This is a a question that I think our text today is going to answer.
Luke:We're gonna be in the book of Acts, and we're gonna see two different people who are going to compare and contrast with one another. And I think if we pay attention to their stories, we're going to learn something. We're going to see something about this dynamic that Jesus mentions here, and we'll come back to it. So let's go to Acts chapter eight, and we're picking up right after where we left off last week. Last week, we talked about the martyrdom of Stephen, the first Christian killed for his faith.
Luke:And he after he was stoned to death, there was this great persecution that came in the city of Jerusalem, and it drove out all the Christians. They left. And and so we're picking up right as they're leaving, we pick up the story with someone else. So we're gonna look at verse verse four. It says this of chapter eight.
Luke:Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word. Isn't it I mentioned this last week, but I think it just can't be stated enough that the persecution the church was experiencing was the catalyst for the spread of the gospel. God used that suffering and that sacrifice in order to advance the kingdom. And so it's not like the Christians are fleeing from Jerusalem and pretending they're not Christians. They're like, No, we're going to flee and we're going to tell people about Jesus as we go.
Luke:And then verse five mentions Philip. Philip. Like we know who Philip is. If we were paying attention, remember when the apostles appointed those workers to help with the distribution of food and other things, Philip was the second name. They mentioned they mentioned Stephen, and then they mentioned Philip.
Luke:So Philip was a person of good repute, of good faith. And Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and he was proclaiming to them Christ. And the crowds with one accord paid attention to what was being said by Philip when they heard him and they saw the signs that he did. For unclean spirits crying out with a loud voice came out of many who had them and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed. And so there was much joy in that city.
Luke:Philip goes and he continues the ministry of Jesus. He's going and continuing to do the things that Jesus did. He's going and continuing to preach the good news. And he's having this massive response. The whole city is filled with joy.
Luke:Isn't that awesome? And so he's in Samaria and he's doing that. But Samaria, he Philip didn't walk into kind of a blank canvas. The very next verse says, But there was a man named Simon who lived in Samaria. Simon, sometimes called Simon the magician, Simon the sorcerer, was a man who practiced witchcraft, was involved with the occult, and he performed signs.
Luke:He performed these kind of miracles or false miracles, however you want to describe it. But he was doing something and he had had many people who saw him and said, Wow, he's great. Look how powerful he is. Look how the passage describes him. It says they verse 10, it says, they were all paid attention to him from the least to the greatest, saying, this man is the power of God that is called great.
Luke:Right? Simon was this person, and he's like, I'm making much of myself. I'm doing many magic signs, and it is showing that I'm great. And people were like, they agreed. They're like, He's got some power of a God, and He is great.
Luke:But imagine how Simon felt when Philip shows up. All of a sudden, there's this new man in town doing signs and miracles and healing people. And Simon's like, woah, what's going on here? What? Woah, I like game recognizes game.
Luke:Like that is that's real. Right? He's seeing what's going on, and he he has this moment. It says that he believes. Simon sees that there is power in the gospel.
Luke:He sees that this name of Jesus means something and that Philip is absolutely conducting himself in this. Verse 13 says, even Simon himself, he believed, and after being baptized, con continued with Philip. And seeing the signs and great miracles performed, he was amazed. So Simon, the magician, this person who was far from God sees God's power and says, you know, I'm gonna hang out here for a little bit. Let's follow this God.
Luke:He seems powerful. And so he believes that Jesus is absolutely powerful. He believes that he's true, and then he gets baptized. And then we have a little lull in the story. Next, we see the apostles.
Luke:So the apostles didn't immediately leave Jerusalem. They remained in Jerusalem. They hear about what Philip is doing in Samaria, and they say, We got to come down. We got to come see this work. This is important to do.
Luke:A little bit of short background here. If you're familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan, you've heard that parable. It's one of the most popular parables that Jesus ever gave. The reason that that parable was shocking when Jesus gave it is because he was speaking to a bunch of Jews and the Jews couldn't conceptualize, or at least they couldn't bear to hear of a Samaritan being good. Oh, yeah.
Luke:Like, Samaritans and Jews, even though they had a shared ancestral history, they hated each other. It was a deep divide. The Samaritans were a different group of Jews who had, married other foreigners. And then they when they came back to the promised land, they had some different ways of worshiping God than the Jews who felt they were being faithful to the Old Testament, to the Torah. And so they had great animosity with one another.
Luke:You can go online and you can search and find some of the slurs they would say of each other. They're pretty awful. And so they did not like one another. And so Jesus, a Jewish man, and the apostles who were all Jewish are spreading this gospel about Jesus, and they come down into Samaria. And the question that the book of Acts kind of asks over and over again, suddenly underneath the text is, is the Gospel for these people too?
Luke:And so the fact that the Gospel is in Samaria, the question is, is the gospel is the good news for the Samaritans? And so the apostles come down and they see what's happening. They affirm, in the heart of Jesus, say, yes, like it is for you, and they bring the gift of the Holy Spirit. And so they're laying on of hands and they're when the Samaritans who are receiving Jesus are receiving the Holy Spirit, it's this moment where we kind of see this sign saying, no, this is true. Like, they're not just believing in Jesus.
Luke:They're receiving the Holy Spirit, being sealed by the Holy Spirit. And so it's like an affirmation that Samaritans are a full part of the church too. That's what's going on here. And as this is happening, Simon's like, oh, oh, those apostles, they're like laying on hands in there. They're giving a gift.
Luke:They're giving the Holy Spirit to people. You know? I've yeah. It would be nice to be able to do that. Maybe maybe if I was able to do that, I could be I could be a top leader in this new religion.
Luke:I could be somebody that people still followed around and called me great because I was able to impart a gift. And so Simon, he says the next thing in verse 19, or I think we'll pick up in verse 18. He says this, When Simon saw that the spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles' hands, he offered them money. And he said, saying, 'Give me this power also, that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.' But Peter said to him, and listen to the harshness of Peter's words, he says, may your silver perish with you because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money. You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God.
Luke:Repent, therefore, of this wickedness of yours and pray to the Lord that if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven. For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity. And then Simon. Simon hears this pronouncement of Peter, and this is his response. He says, Pray for me for the to the Lord that none of thing that you of what you had said would come upon me.
Luke:Now when he had tested testified anyways, so Simon responds, and he says, what? He doesn't say, oh my gosh, you're right. Oh my gosh, yeah, I need to repent. He says, oh yeah, my heart is wrong. He doesn't say anything about like, I'm going to seek the Lord.
Luke:He doesn't say anything about I'm going to repent. He says, Peter, could you make it so that those things you just said don't happen to me? He wants to avoid the consequences, but he's not demonstrating any actual heart of repentance or any desire to actually seek God. He's just like, take that back, Peter. Take it back, please.
Luke:Thank you. That's what he's saying. And we don't know for certain because, Simon is not mentioned in the rest of scripture, but he has mentioned outside of scripture a handful of times with different accounts of what happened in his life. But we can, with a pretty high degree of confidence, say that Simon went on to be a false teacher. He went on to preach a false gospel.
Luke:He went on to be in confrontation with the early church. And I think it's one of the reasons that he's mentioned here is that the early church, Luke in particular, is like, Oh, yeah, we know who Simon the magician is. Let me tell you a little bit about him. He's giving a little bit of context for a false teacher that was in the early church. And so Simon is rebuked and he walks away, and he never really seems to have repented.
Luke:And that's the first part of the story. That's the first person. And now Philip, he continues to go on. He continues to do his ministry. He continues to preach.
Luke:And the Holy Spirit tells him, says, you need to go south. You need to go south to Samaria. And Philip immediately says, okay. He immediately says, yes. And he goes and he goes down.
Luke:And as he's traveling, he comes upon what he sees to be a eunuch. A eunuch who is traveling and who is on their way traveling back down. And this person was a believer of God. We kind of see this, that he's walking over, and he says, if we look at verse 27, it says, he rose and he went. There was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, a queen of the Ethiopians who was in charge of all of her treasure.
Luke:He had come to Jerusalem to what? To worship. And he was returning seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. So we see a eunuch. A eunuch is someone who, whether by choice or by force, was castrated, and he was a servant of the queen.
Luke:He's essentially he's the treasurer of the entire kingdom. He has in he's in charge of the entire GDP of a nation. Right? He's the treasurer. So this is someone of importance, someone of power, someone of means.
Luke:He's being carried along in his chariot, and he's leaving Jerusalem going back down. And that means that he was up in Jerusalem doing what? Worshiping. This eunuch was a God fearer. He was a Gentile.
Luke:He was someone who believed in the God of the Jews, believed in the one true God, and was a worshiper of him. Now he never got true and full access to the temple courts. He was maybe at best allowed to come into the courts of the Gentiles, but he was always going to be an outcast because he was ethnically Jewish and he was castrated. He would have been permanently unclean in the Jewish law. And so he's reading the Bible and the trip from Ethiopia up to Jerusalem is no small trek, especially with horses and such.
Luke:And so this would have been a long, months long journey in order for him to have gone up and then to come back. And so he's reading the book of Isaiah, perhaps because the book of Isaiah in chapter 56, I believe, has a couple verses about the faithfulness of eunuchs and how God will honor those eunuchs that are faithful to him. And so perhaps it's a place of encouragement. And Philip comes across and he sees this faithful believer of God traveling along and the spirit tells him to approach the chariot. He walks up and he runs up and he hears the eunuch reading the prophet Isaiah.
Luke:In verse 30, he says, do you understand what you're reading? He says, I hear you're reading the prophet. Do you understand? And the eunuch says, how can I unless someone guides me? And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.
Luke:And now the passage of scripture that he was reading was this, like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation, justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation for his life is taken away from earth? Talk about a divine appointment. Right?
Luke:Because eunuch the eunuch turns to Philip and says, who's that passage talking about? Is it the prophet or is it someone else? And Philip's like, oh, I'll tell you who that's about. That's about Jesus. And he began to explain the beginning with this scripture, he told them the good news about Jesus.
Luke:And as they were going along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, see, here's some water. What prevents me from being baptized? And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he was baptized. And when they came out of the water, the spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more. And he went on rejoicing.
Luke:The eunuch, this man of high status, is receiving and hearing the good news of Jesus for the first time. And then he's like, there's some water. It doesn't even tell us what kind of water it is. It might have been a stream, might have been a pond, might have been a puddle, might have been an ocean. We don't know.
Luke:But the eunuch's like, I'm getting baptized right now. Well, who cares? I'm going to keep my robes on. We're just going to get in there and do it. It doesn't matter that I'm royal.
Luke:It doesn't matter that I'm of high status. I'm going to be faithful and receive Jesus right now. And then he walks away at the end of that passage rejoicing. That's the other person in this passage. We see two very different people, two very different people encounter the gospel, and they have two very different responses to the gospel.
Luke:It's a story of two people hearing and responding to the gospel, but they have two different outcomes. One is rebuked and never repents. One walks away rejoicing. And from truth history, we presume is one of the first people to bring the gospel to that area of the world. And so what is it about these two people?
Luke:What's different about them? Why did the eunuch have that response? And why did Simon have that response? They noticed that they were both baptized. Notice that they both had belief.
Luke:What was the difference? Why did Simon, the magician, not stick around? Why was his faith not true? We see what I think is the keys in verse 21 of chapter eight. Notice what Peter says about Simon.
Luke:He says, you neither have part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God. And then when we go down to verse 24, Simon doesn't say, Oh, I'm going to repent my heart. He says, No, pray for me that nothing of what you said may come upon me. He doesn't repent, isn't concerned about writing his relationship with God, is concerned about avoiding consequences. And then what does it describe about the eunuch?
Luke:At the very end in verse 39, he went away rejoicing. His heart was so glad to receive Jesus. They had two different motivations. And the motivations of our hearts drive our lives. This is key.
Luke:The thing that you love is what's going to drive you. The motivations of your heart, The thing that motivates you is going to change and impact how you act, how you behave, the things and the choices that you make. I personally, I love a good murder mystery story. I love a good murder mystery book or movie. I love all the cliches.
Luke:Right? It's a dark and stormy night, and someone's at the manor, and the old man has died, and he had a will, and it's going to be bequeathed to everyone who's in this room. And, like, they're all the suspects. Right? And how does the detective always determine who was the one who committed the murder?
Luke:They're looking for opportunity and what? Motive. Right? And eventually, in the course of the story, they will find that one of these persons, it was the butler, had an opportunity. Right?
Luke:And he had a motive, and his motive caused him to do something, caused him to behave in a way or make a choice or do something that stood out that indicated that he had ill intent towards the victim. Your motivation, the inward part of your heart, impacts and makes your behavior. It's the outflow of it. Simon and the eunuch had different motivations towards God and the Gospel. I came across this quote from Saint Augustine, and he was talking about this idea.
Luke:He described it as weight, just like a weight carries or forces something in a direction. He said this. He says, My weight is my love. Thereby I am born whither so I am born. He says, My love, whatever it is I love, is the thing that is going to carry me.
Luke:It's going to draw me. It's going to anchor me. It's going to lift me up. Whatever that is that I love. To put this in modern language, maybe I would say it this way.
Luke:Love is the compass of the heart. Whatever you love, you will be drawn to. This is this is just how it is. Whatever it is you love is the thing that's going to come out of your mouth. Whatever it is you love is the thing that's going to be on your mind.
Luke:Whatever it is that you love is the thing that you're going to make opportunity to have or to enjoy or to experience. You want to see what we love, see the things that we dream about, the things that we think about, talk about, and pursue. The things that we love are the things that are going to orient us and then draw us to them. If we learn to love God, we will be filled with joy and drawn towards him. This is the goal of the Christian life.
Luke:This is the point. As over time, we don't magically just pop out all of the time or all of a sudden and just say, Oh, my heart all loves Jesus all of the time. Rather, it's an ongoing process of learning to treasure and to love Jesus. And the eunuch, the eunuch knew what that meant. He received Jesus with joy.
Luke:He knew what it meant to be a full participant in the Gospel. He was rejoicing. But we saw Simon. Simon wanted something else. He wanted to be great.
Luke:He wanted a platform. He wanted notoriety. That's what he loved. He loved himself, not God. So if that's kind of the key difference, I have I have one kind of, like, I have one kind of point that I want to make here that I think is timely for us to talk about just because of not because of anything particular with us, but because of the time and the season that the church here in America seems to be going through, and that is this, is that the Gospel is about receiving God and right relationship with Him.
Luke:It's not about receiving platforms. It's not about receiving gifts, and it's not about receiving blessings. I think it's really important that as we read this story, we're right into the very, very beginning days of the church. And right away, there were people who wanted to use and leverage the Gospel or God for their own purposes. We saw that a couple of weeks ago when we covered Ananias and Sapphira, who made a generous gift in order to promote themselves.
Luke:We see this here. Simon, who wanted to pay money so that he could have spiritual gifts and power. The story Has anybody ever actually heard the term simony? No? Okay.
Luke:Simony is an old English word, and it's the term, and it specifically means to pay money in order to obtain religious office or religious power or favor. So Simon was so infamous that they turned his name into a sin. Right? He was so like, they were like, that was so awful what he did. We're going to actually name a sin after it.
Luke:And after him. And so Simony is this idea of paying money in order to receive spiritual benefit. And this happens and has happened throughout the church and continues to happen today. Here's a couple of things that I want us or here's just three quick ways I can point this out. One is to say if you're familiar with the history of the Protestant Reformation, you know, Martin Luther came up, nailed the 99 Theses on the on the wall, and he one of his big complaints was indulgences.
Luke:Indulgences were in the Catholic church, particularly in the medieval church, was a way of receiving not forgiveness of sin, but pardon or the removal of temporal punishment. And if you're Catholic, that means something to you. And if you're not, that doesn't make any sense. And I agree. But the the point was is that they were they were remitting or they were covering over sort of the penance or the the thing that you had to do in order to repent for the sin.
Luke:So rather than having to go away and say so many Hail Marys or something like that, you could be forgiven of that. Or as what was the person who became very well known for selling indulgences, he went around and he told people, he said, if you put a coin in the coffer, as soon as a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs. And he was saying that your your dead grandmother, your dead friend, you could pay money and you could shorten their time in purgatory and they could go to heaven faster. And this was controversial because people went around and it was a way to raise money for the church, to raise for building of cathedrals and things like that. And it was of serious concern because we're going around and we're selling spiritual benefits.
Luke:This is what the Catholic church was doing. And it is why one of the main reasons that reformers reformed the Catholic church I don't want to leave this I don't want to unduly cast negative negativity on the Catholic church. They have since changed this practice and and altered it. But it is and was a significant thing, a significant unfaithfulness in stewarding the grace on the Gospel. We could talk about the prosperity Gospel.
Luke:Right? That's the American version of this. If you donate or if you tithe or you give so much to this church or this mystery or to me, God will bless you tenfold. Right? We see this often in televangelists and other things, people who say, Oh, if you believe enough and if you give enough, you will receive so much blessings.
Luke:Look at how blessed I am. You can be just as blessed as me. Right? This is the American gospel. This is the land of opportunity, and this is the gospel of opportunity.
Luke:You need only to give money and so that you could receive blessing. And what that does is that turns God into a vending machine. It turns God into a place where I put in my idol and expecting more of my idol back. And so the prosperity gospel is a version of this. I would even go on to say that there is a kind of a spiritual prosperity gospel that sometimes goes around in churches.
Luke:This idea, not that you necessarily receive financial or physical blessings back, but that your life kind of just is smoothed out. That if you have enough faith and if you're faithful enough and you're enough lined with God, your life will magically be kind of straightened out. God will give you spiritual blessings as a sense. And I think all of this is a sense of just kind of saying, like, we're trying to get something from God that is not God. And it's a way and a place that people often use and leverage God and the religion and Christianity for their own selfish gain.
Luke:I think we need to make sure that we do not confuse the actions of individuals with the character of God or the Gospel. We see here, right here in the Bible, that it's condemned. We see here an example of someone trying to use the Gospel, trying to use the name of Jesus for their own benefit, and they're rightly condemned immediately. And so we need to have an understanding that when bad actors come and they take advantage of people inside of the church, that's not a representative of God's desire. That's a brokenness of the world that we need to guard against.
Luke:I have two practices that I want to recommend to us as the church when we want to guard against this. Two practices to guard against the harm from those who would use God as a leverage for themselves. The first one is discernment. Does this person point me to God or point me to themselves? This is this is a big one.
Luke:Does the person point to God or does the person point to themselves? There was somebody I'm not going to get into names because I don't from the point here. But there was someone who had a significant ministry, was very popular, who I used to listen to quite a lot. And I remember one time I was listening to this pastor's podcast, and I remember listening to this sermon and I was like, Man, he's saying some things. And what gave me pause was I for a moment, I asked myself, How would I feel if my pastor, the pastor who I've grown up under, the faithful example I had lifted up to me every Sunday morning who faithfully and still to this day faithfully pastors a church in Ohio, what would I say if he said those things?
Luke:Could I ever imagine that godly example of a man and a pastor saying things like this man is saying? And I was like, no. There's something wrong here. Now, I wish I could say that I had oh, from then I knew it. I didn't.
Luke:But there was a moment. And if you should go back and you were to look, you will find that people have a way of pointing to themselves rather than God. The second practice is this, and this is key for everybody, is that you need to understand that there's one mediator. One mediator. Jesus is our high priest.
Luke:Do not make any pastor or leader or church into Jesus. You are reconciled and made right with God through the blood of Jesus. Jesus is your high priest. He is the one who advocates between you and the Father. He is the one in whose blood you are covered.
Luke:He's the one in whose name you are saved. Not Conduit's, not mine, not Cameron's, no other pastor. You are not saved in the name of this church. You are saved in the name of Jesus. Do not ever conflate.
Luke:We want to do our absolute best to just do one thing, and that's to point you to Jesus. That's the job. That's why I'm a preacher. I'm not I'm supposed to preach. I'm supposed to point you to look at God.
Luke:That's the goal. And we will strive to do that as best as we can. But we are not Jesus. Do not conflate us. So that's kind of a little bit of a diatribe on what I think is an issue that is plaguing the church, has plagued the church, and unfortunately will plague the church until Jesus comes and he will separate out the false shepherds from the true ones.
Luke:Now, how did I answer or how do I answer that starting question? Remember, we started with Jesus saying, two people will come to me, and say, one I did all these things in your name, and I will say, well, depart from me, for I did not know you. What's the key to answering that question? The key is how Jesus says. What does he says?
Luke:He says, I did not know you. I did not know you. Because the person comes and I did all this ministry. I did all these awesome things. I had power.
Luke:I saw miracles. And Jesus is like, it doesn't matter what you did if you didn't know me. It's the relationship. It's with who you are being saved by and who you're in relationship with. It's Jesus.
Luke:Jesus is at the center of the Gospel. It starts and ends there. Jesus is the center of the Gospel. Absolutely, a 100%, all of the time. We don't receive the Gospel in order to receive blessings.
Luke:We gospel to receive necessarily even eternal life. We receive the gospel to receive Christ. The gift of salvation is Jesus. That is what we receive, being covered by his blood, being called sons and daughters and brothers because we are now in Christ. That's how the Bible describes salvation.
Luke:More than anything else, it's described as being in Christ. You and I, we are to receive Jesus because that is what it means to receive the gospel, to know Jesus, to be known by him, to be in relationship with him. That is the practice. And that is the difference between Simon and the eunuch. Simon wasn't all that interested in Jesus.
Luke:He wanted what Jesus could do for him. The eunuch the eunuch wanted Jesus. And once he had hold of him, he wasn't letting go because he was rejoicing. I want to finish with one last Bible passage. I want to turn to Philippians chapter three.
Luke:Philippians chapter three, verse seven. This is Paul. Philippians chapter three, verse seven. He says, Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord.
Luke:For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, as trash, in order that I may gain Christ. That's the point. It's learning to treasure Jesus above all other things. It's learning to recognize that it doesn't matter what else I have in this life. If I do not have Christ, I have nothing.
Luke:To have Christ is to have everything. Jesus is it all. Jesus is the Gospel. Jesus is our salvation. He is what we receive.
Luke:And to be known by him and to know him is the treasure of our eternal life. It is the treasure of our existence. To recognize that God gave himself to us, that he came close to us, that he saw our brokenness and our sin, and he made a way for us to be in relationship with him, that he loved us despite of who we are and despite of our brokenness. That is love. And that is a love that is worth cherishing and reveling in and learning to grow in.
Luke:And my prayer for myself, and I would encourage you to pray with me this week, is Lord, help me to count everything as loss. Lord, help me to treasure Christ more and more. And so if you find that passage that I started with Matthew chapter seven as one of concern, what I normally say is the people who that makes anxious, usually it makes you really anxious because you love Jesus. You're usually concerned because you're like, well, I want to make sure that I know Jesus. Someone who doesn't know Jesus isn't all that concerned.
Luke:They don't realize that. And so that your own little anxiety, I think oftentimes is a desire to say, Oh, I want to make sure I know Jesus, then I think you're in good company or you're headed in the right direction. So let's take a moment. Let's pray as the worship team comes back up. Heavenly Father, Lord, I pray that you would help us this morning to grasp the infathomable worth and beauty and goodness of your son, Jesus.
Luke:Help us to just see a glimpse, just a small, smaller, bigger glimpse of how wide and deep your love is for us, how you love us as a good father, how you have invited us to know you and to be with you. Lord, help us to lay aside anything that hinders. Help us to lay aside anything that would direct our heart not towards you. Lord, I pray that you would help us to walk away rejoicing today, knowing that we have received you regardless of our circumstances today, Lord. May we be filled with joy because we know that we have you and you hold us.
Luke:In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.