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Join Wayne Burger each week as he explores various topics and scriptures and challenges listeners to meditate on God's Word more deeply.
In Acts the 8th chapter, we have Philip being sent down toward Giza to meet a man. As we read this account, there are several points that I want to make about the word open.
In Acts the 8th chapter, from verses 27 through 39, the Holy Spirit doesn't tell Philip who he's going to meet or what the situation is. He just says, arise and go toward the south and goes down from Jerusalem to Giza.
And when he goes down there, he sees a man riding along in a chariot. As we read this account in verses 27 through 39, the story, of course, is that the man was from Ethiopia. He was riding along in a chariot.
He was reading from the book of Isaiah. And when Philip gets to that point, the Spirit says to Philip, go near and join yourself this chariot. So he runs beside the chariot, and he hears the man reading, and he says, do you understand what you read? And the man said, how can I, unless somebody should guide me? And he desired Philip, they would come up and sit with him, and then they were discussing the passage that was read.
There are a lot of practical points in this account that I think it would be good for all of us. We're going to concentrate on the word open. First off, as we see, there was a book opened as he's reading this.
Imagine this. Here's a man that has a scroll of Isaiah. The only way one would get a scroll of any book of the Old Testament is to pay somebody to make a copy for him.
And you imagine how much it would cost for a man to sit down day after day after day and hand copy the 66 chapters in the book of Isaiah. But this man does. He evidently has paid somebody to make him a copy of the scroll of Isaiah.
So there's an open opportunity here for him to have his own book of Isaiah. That was a rarity. There just weren't many of those copies made that way.
But he has this open scroll of Isaiah, and he's reading it. And while he's going along, he's traveling a distance of about 1,000 to 1,500 miles riding in the chariot. What better thing could he be doing with his time than reading God's Word? And so he has God's Word open so that he can read what is written there for him.
What about you? How often and for how long a time do you open God's Word? You know, we get so caught up in the life around us that, in a sense, I use the phrase, life eats us up. We get so busy making a living that we don't really have time to put the importance on what is really important. And so we sometimes neglect spiritual matters.
How long has it been since you sat down and read the Bible? I would encourage you to do that, to make a definite time when you open up God's Word and simply read it and study it and meditate and think about it. That's what this man was doing. There's no better time spent than when one opens the Bible and reads it.
It's so easy, particularly in today's world, watching TV and all the news that's going on, and also our phones. You know, we have those phones and it's easy to look at that phone and easy to keep up with Facebook and easy to scroll down and easy to Google. And so we get caught up with using our phone when we would be a lot better off, as this man was, to open up the Bible and read the Bible.
Second, there was an open mind to be willing to ask for help. You see, Philip said, do you understand what you read? And the man said, how can I, except some man should guide me? He recognized that he needed help in understanding the book of Isaiah, particularly the passage that he was reading. And so he had an open mind to being taught.
You know, there are some people, his minds are so closed, it's not open to being taught. We have a good story of a good friend who went to preacher training school. And as a young man, he was riding along with an older, one of the teachers.
And he said, Brother Tharp, what advice would you give me as I begin my schooling here? He said, be teachable. In other words, he said, have an open mind to learn. And that's what was happening with this man.
He had an open mind to learn. He didn't have an ego that said, I know it all. He didn't have an ego that said, nobody can tell me anything.
He didn't have an ego that said, I can figure it out for myself. He was willing to have an open mind to say, I need help. Sometimes when we do not understand part of the Bible, we just give up.
Sometimes we need to have an open mind to ask questions, to explore, to investigate. We ought to be able to say to someone that knows better, help me with this. It's okay to say, I don't know, I need help.
Let's have that kind of open mind. He had an open mind to ask difficult questions. He's reading along in Isaiah 53, which you probably know is about Jesus Christ.
And he said, who's he talking about? Is he talking about himself or is he talking about somebody else? And so we need to have that kind of trait also so that we're willing to have an open mind to be taught by somebody else. And they don't take the attitude, I know it all. There are parts of the scriptures that are difficult.
There are parts of things that maybe I don't understand, maybe somebody else does. What we need to say is understand what we can, get help from others to help us understand what we don't understand. And as we ask for help, we don't have to accept everything that person says.
We can evaluate it, take what's right, reject what we have questions about, or reject what we say. I know that's not right, but it doesn't hurt us to have an open mind to say, I'm willing to be taught. Let me read and study this.
Would you give me some answers on this? We need that kind of attitude that he had that said, I want to know. That ought to be our attitude with regard to God's Word. And as I said, he had that open mouth.
There was an open mouth to teach him. Philip had said, do you understand what you read? And the man said, no. Well, Philip was willing to open his mouth to teach this man.
The angel sent him down there, and he walked 90 to 100 miles, not knowing what he would find when he got there. But the angel said for him to go, and he had an open mind to be willing to do what the angel told him. Then Philip had an open mouth to say, I'm willing to help you.
I will open my mouth and give you the understanding of the text you're looking for. And so he asked, do you understand what you read? We need to be more like Philip in asking people if they need our help. Sometimes we don't mean that to be coming across as holier than thou, or I'm a know-it-all and you don't know anything.
But we ought to have the attitude that says, can I help you? You might be surprised at how many people you might find who would like to know more about the Bible, but they don't think about who to ask, or they don't know who to ask. And maybe simply us saying, could I help you with that? Would you like to have a Bible study and discuss with them maybe a plan for a Bible study? We need to be more like Philip in that regard to being willing to teach and to find those folks who need it. That same principle might apply even in our own families.
Have you sat down with your young children and opened your mouth to teach them what you know? Sometimes, growing up in a Christian home, we just kind of assume that our children and our grandchildren are going to know what God wants them to do. Maybe we just think it's going to happen. No.
It's going to happen when we open our mouth and are willing to teach those young children or grandchildren what God's word says. They need to be taught just like those folks out in the world need to be taught. The only way young people are going to learn is study for themselves.
They don't want to understand a great deal. They need help from your parents and from your grandparents to sit down and say, let me help you with this or teach them how to study. And so that's a great opportunity.
Another thing that we see that's open here, there was an open heart that was willing to change his religion. Here's a man who had traveled 1,000 to 1,500 miles from Ethiopia to come up to Jerusalem to worship God. He was either a Jew or a proselyte.
A proselyte was simply one who was a Gentile but who had accepted the Jewish religion and was now worshipping as a Jew. And this man was either a Jew and or a proselyte who had traveled all that distance to come. Think about that.
He had an open mind to want to serve God. He had an open mind to say, I want to go where God is. I want to absorb the presence of God.
I want to absorb the atmosphere of worship. He had traveled that great distance and had come to worship God under that Old Testament system. You know, that Old Testament system had been removed.
He didn't know it. Jesus Christ had come in. Jesus had removed the old law through his death on the cross.
Jesus had instituted his plan. Jesus had instituted his church. There was a change that Jesus brought about in religion.
This man did not know about that. And now then Philip is opening his mouth and beginning to teach him. Verse 35 says he opened his mouth and began the same scripture and preached unto him Jesus.
And this led this man to realize this old system has been removed. There's a new and better way. The Old Testament was for the purpose of bringing people to Jesus.
But Jesus now had come, died for the sins of the world, given his new information, the New Testament, through his apostles and prophets. And this man is now just learning about it. And he could have taken an attitude.
No, I've been in this religion all my life. I'm going to die in this religion. He could have said, my parents and my grandparents have been in this religion, and I'm not going to change.
But no, he was willing to change the religion from the religion he had to the religion Jesus Christ had brought. That's a major chore. There are lots of people who have the difficulty of leaving their family religion.
It's tough to break with mother and father. Even if the mother and father are dead, we sometimes feel like we have betrayed them. If we go become a part of a religion that they were not a part of, but he was willing to do that, to make that change, we believe that when we do that, we would condemn our parents, or we would condemn our religious friends, or we would condemn those who brought us up.
It doesn't matter whether we are or not condemning them. All we're simply trying to do is simply follow God's Word. We cannot worry about the reaction that somebody else may have, or what it may say to them about our change.
This man was willing to make that change, change from one religion to the other. That was a great change and a challenge that was open to him. We also see there was another open mouth to ask why he couldn't be baptized.
It says in verse 35 that Philip opened his mouth and began the same scripture and preached unto him Jesus. The text doesn't say that Philip taught anything about Jesus, but as they're riding along, the eunuch sees the water, and he says, here's water. Why can't I be baptized? Preaching Jesus involves preaching Jesus as baptism.
Jesus requires all of us to be baptized. That's what the Great Commission said in Matthew 28 and in Mark 16, 15 and 16, and in Luke 24, 47 and 48. This man had been taught about Jesus, but as he's taught about Jesus, he learns that he needs to be baptized to have his sins washed away.
When they come to some water, this man opens his mouth and says, here's water. Why can't I be baptized? He saw the connection between Jesus and baptism. He saw the importance of being baptized immediately.
He didn't put it off. He didn't say, when I get back down to Ethiopia, I think about this, he saw the need of doing it immediately. It is amazing how many religious people do not want to submit to baptism.
This is one of the most common, most often talked about subjects in the book of Acts, and yet many people simply do not want to submit to being baptized. Why not? Here's another thing that we'll close with, with regard to what was open. There was an open body of water for his baptism.
You know, when he came to this point and saw the water, he said, see, here's water. Why can't I be baptized? Notice the text says, and he commanded the church to stand still, and they went down into the water, both Philip and the unit, and he baptized him. Here was an open pool of water, big enough for two men to get down into and for an immersion to take place.
He didn't just reach under his seat and pull up a little bottle of water and say, here, sprinkle me. No, it says they both went down into the water. We need to understand, as this man did, that the open and obeying the Lord, that baptism had to be done a certain way, and so they went down into the water, both Philip and the unit, and he baptized him.
This shows us that baptism is by immersion. Sprinkling and pouring are not baptism according to the Bible. It is unfortunate that the religious world has accepted sprinkling and pouring as a form of baptism, but in the Bible, baptism is always in an open water where people can get in the water, be immersed in that water, and raised up to walk in the units of life.
So as we think about this great event that's recorded for our learning, we see all these things that are open. Let me encourage you to have all those open things with regard to your spiritual life that you can then enjoy Jesus opening his mouth at the end and saying, well done, thou good and faithful servant. Thanks for joining us this week and spending time in God's Word.
Special thanks to Mac Graham, John Kachelman, and LightWay Media for recording, producing, and making this podcast possible. If you're ever in the Littleton, New Hampshire area, we'd love to have you join us for worship and Bible study on Sunday afternoons at 4 at the Senior Center. You're always welcome.
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