Turning to the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, chapter 8. You can find Acts 8, verse 26, on page 1078. Page 1078. Acts chapter 8. I'm going to read to you from verse 26 to verse 40. Just give your attention to the words. Now an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, Arise and go towards the south, along the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. This is desert. So he arose and went. And behold, a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority, who had charge of all her treasury, had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning. And sitting in his chariot, he was reading Isaiah the prophet. Then the spirit said to Philip, go near and overtake this chariot. So Philip ran to him and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah and said, do you understand what you're reading? And he said, how can I, unless someone guides me? And he asked her to come up and sit with him. The place in the scripture which he read was this. He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opened not his mouth. In his humiliation, his justice was taken away. And he would declare his generation, for his life is taken Does the prophet say this of himself or of some other man? Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning at this scripture, preached Jesus to him. Now 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? Then Philip said, if you believe with all your heart, you may. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. So he commanded the chariot to stand still. And both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water, and he baptized him. Now when they came up out of the water, the spirit of the Lord caught Philip away, so that the eunuch saw him no more, and he went on his way rejoicing. But Philip was found in Azotus, and passing through, he preached in all the cities till he came to Caesarea. You know, here you meet a most remarkable man Let's begin with how this man was richly privileged. We're talking about a man who, in the year 35, 37 AD, got to ride in a chariot. I was reaching to try to get something comparable. I first thought of limo. And I said, no, that's not a limo. Teenagers can rent limos for prom. One of the commentaries said, no, no, this guy is in a private jet. This guy is the equivalent of a private jet. He's in a chariot. Not only that, but he can take this chariot wherever he wants to go. He can take it into the Roman Empire. Please notice, this guy is from so far out, he was outside the Roman Empire. Jerusalem on his own private business. He might have had business from the Queen as far as Egypt, but to take it to Jerusalem, that's just because he wanted to go. Not only that, but he had money left over to get at least a scroll of Isaiah. Do you have any idea how expensive the scroll of Isaiah was? And that's the least that he has. For all we know, he had the whole set. There he is, on his scroll of Isaiah. And he can sit there reading it. Why? Well, because someone else is his chauffeur, that's why. He's not piloting this plane. He gets to sit there in glorious comfort while 99.8% of the population is walking. And he doesn't even need to hold the reins. He can read. Did I mention the price that he paid to gain these privileges? I've stressed how high this man was, but in another sense, this man was low. He'd been mutilated. He'd been deliberately and intentionally mutilated. So that's what the word eunuch means. This man had been castrated. His testicles had been removed. When I talk about low T, this guy was the ultimate low testosterone man. Probably done when he's a child. And so though he'd gotten taller, his voice had never changed. No beard had ever grown. No manly muscles had ever developed. And if he had a sex drive, there was nothing he could do with it. And maybe most profoundly, this guy had no kids and never would. All this done to him so that he would be fit for the palace, so he could work in the palace and the royals could feel safe with him around. And this done so as to remove not just orneriness and aggressiveness, but also ambition from him. He had no kids to try to make a better life for. Why not simply live for the pleasures of the moment and die in his due time, since he had been cut off from having a future? Can you imagine the questions such a man would have? Is there anything for me beyond the pleasures of this life? Should I simply serve the queen, seizing what pleasures I can along the way? No doubt many eunuchs did that. This one is a remarkable man. Through his intelligence and his hard work, no doubt, he's been put in charge of all her treasure. I'm sure she had plenty of eunuchs who didn't rise to that level. He's risen to the point where he can take one of her chariots and drive as far as he wants in it. And he wants to go far because he's found something. He's found out that there's these little people called the Jews. and that the Jews worship one God, who they say made everything. And they don't even worship this God through idols or pictures. No, they have scriptures, and they study those scriptures, and they learn about a moral and upright and righteous God who makes promises and keeps them. And so he's gone up to worship, because he's found out they worship at Jerusalem. And so he's gone up to Jerusalem to worship. And when he got there, he got no farther than at most the court of the Gentiles. Not only because he's a Gentile, but because it says in Deuteronomy 23, no one who is castrated shall enter the assembly of the Lord. So the farthest that he's gotten is to the court of the Gentiles, if he got in that far. but he has not gone down offended. He has paid a princely sum for the scroll of Isaiah, and he is reading in it, and he is trying to understand, because he wants to know the truth about the world, the truth about God, and if there is any hope for someone like him. Have you been lifted up high? Well, then use your privilege to get to know the Lord. Search for God. This guy is not saying, I have a lot of money, so I will simply have a lot of chocolate, or simply have a lot of sightseeing trips to interesting places. No, he is searching for God. You see that in him reading Isaiah as he goes along, a hard part of Isaiah. A lot of beautiful but difficult language in Isaiah, but he is pouring over it. He's using his privilege for the good of his own soul, seeking to know the Lord. Have you been brought low? Well, here's a man who's been brought low. He has suffered, but he is not despairing. No, he's turned towards God. Even though, as he reads about God, he will read that But he is seeking to know the Lord. But he comes across a difficult challenge. He's reading in the scripture, and he can tell in Isaiah that when you come to this chapter, you're coming to a high point. You're coming to a key statement about a very important servant of God who's doing something crucial for God's people. But what does it mean? He was led as a sheep to the slaughter. And as a lamb before its shearers is silent, so he opens not his mouth. I actually went and saw a sheep sheared recently. Never seen it before, just saw it a couple months ago. This lady, she got that sheep, and she flipped it over, and she got all four feet off the ground, and then the sheep couldn't do nothing. It just sat there. Sheeps can't do nothing unless all four feet are off the ground. back on his feet, and then he could do things again. But the scriptures are obviously talking about a human being. As a lamb before its shearers 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. This is a very determined man, a remarkable God is merciful. He looks down from heaven, and he had prepared a man to help this man. He sent him Philip, not Philip the Apostle, but Philip, one of the seven who were appointed to make sure that the Greek-speaking widows in Jerusalem, in the church, would get enough food. That is, he's one of the first seven deacons. You can go back and look at Acts chapter 6, you see the list of the names of those seven men. The first one listed is Stephen, and the second one listed is Philip. And I want to highlight for you Philip's courage. Because that first deacon mentioned was Stephen. Stephen had not just served food, he had preached the gospel and gotten stoned to death. And the church began to be persecuted. And so the church, except for the apostles, all had to flee out of Jerusalem. And Philip was among those who fled from Jerusalem because his colleague, the man next to him, had been stoned to death for preaching the gospel. And so he runs and he goes and he escapes to Samaria. And when he got to Samaria, do you know what he did? He preached the gospel. The same thing that Stephen had done and he'd gotten killed for, Philip does it in Samaria. And he had a great response. and the city turned and was baptized. There was great joy in the city of Samaria. Philip became known as Philip the Evangelist. He had this great ministry going in Samaria, this other group of people turning to the Lord, and then the Spirit says, go down back towards Jerusalem, but not to Jerusalem. You're gonna go to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. It's a desert place. And that's all the Spirit tells Philip. Doesn't tell him the rest of the story. Doesn't tell him why. Just says, leave your fruitful ministry in a city with lots of people and go to a desert road. So Philip does it. Philip's no fool. If it's a road, then some of it will be a long road. And my goodness, what comes down the road? This alien from another world. This guy in a chariot, it's not even a Roman chariot. This guy gets to ride his chariot around in another empire. It's a chariot. It's a black guy. No beard on this guy. Do they shave any of you? He gets to see this coming. And as he watches this man from another planet, as it were, coming along the road in his private jet, as it were, the Spirit says, go up and join that chariot. Oh, I'm supposed to thumb a ride with a chariot. Like this chariot hasn't ridden by about 10,000 Jewish guys without picking any of them up. And I'm supposed to thumb a ride. Spirit says, go up and join the chariot. Hot day for a run, Lord, but all right. And so he goes up. He is running alongside the chariot. And he hears the man reading in a high voice. And now Philip knows what he's there for. Because Christians should know all about Isaiah chapter 53. Now I have to warn you, Jews do not know all about Isaiah 53. I once met a Holocaust survivor. She invited me to go to her synagogue. So I went one morning. On Saturday morning I went to the Young Israel of Elkins Park. I sat there, couldn't sit with her, she was on the other side of the wall somewhere with all the women, but I was sitting there with the men, and the guy that she had arranged to sit with me says to me, Isaiah, very hard. I'm reading Isaiah 51 in Hebrew, got the Hebrew on this side of their prayer book, Hebrew on this side, then they got the English on this side, and they're all reading silently until they all break out aloud and read the Hebrew aloud, and then they're all reading silently, which is hard to keep up with, because you don't know how fast they're reading silently. But I get lost after a while, so I start reading the English. Start noticing, oh, we're in Isaiah 51. Let me turn the page. Isaiah 52. Let me turn the page. Isaiah 54. I said, that's funny. Turn the page. Isaiah 55. It's a prayer book. Christian prayer books are not complete either. It's excerpts, okay? So the excerpting is fine. That's what it is. It's a prayer book. But no Christian ever dropped out 53 in Isaiah 51 to 55. So just bear that in mind. Jewish friends, maybe you can open it up and read it with them sometime. They may very well have never read the chapter. And you understand that, it's a pretty difficult chapter. What's it talking about? He was led as a sheep to the slaughter. Who? Well, God has made that clear. And he's underlined it for us. Read the New Testament. Isaiah 53 is quoted six times. plus the last verse of the previous chapter, it's quoted, plus the first verse of the next chapter, that's quoted. Plus, if you want to say, forget quotes, how many echoes are there? There's 32 echoes of this chapter in the New Testament. God has revealed what this chapter means. Jesus fulfilled it, and then Jesus taught them about it. When Jesus showed his apostles after the resurrection that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer, this would have been exhibit A. So Philip knows what he's gonna have to say. He just has to join the chariot. And so he says, do you understand what you're reading? Only the Greek implies that the answer is probably no. As in, you don't understand that, do you? Which is a little dicey. I mean, why are you gonna start off insulting this rich, powerful guy? You don't get that, do you? It'd be very easy for that guy to say, I read better than you, peasant. but this guy is also, now he's honest, he doesn't understand it. So he says, how am I gonna understand that unless someone guides me? And so he invites Philip to sit, now this is not a stage coach, this is just a little chariot. He invites him to come up and sit with him on the little seat. And so Philip, he gets a ride and he gets to snuggle in on this chair next to this unit. In the passage he's reading, he's led as a sheep to the slaughter. As a lamb before its shearer is a silent, so he opened not his mouth. And he asks a really good question. Who is the prophet talking about? Is it himself? And the prophets often suffered a lot. Is he talking about himself? Or is he talking about someone else? And so Philip said, well, Let me tell you about how God just made this happen. Jesus came from Nazareth. You might notice it says it like a root out of dry ground. You haven't heard of Nazareth. It's a little nowhere place in the backwoods of our country. He has no form or comeliness when we see him, no beauty that we should desire him. He was simply a carpenter and the son of a carpenter. He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. This man, Jesus, went around teaching and healing and casting out demons. He healed the sick. He gave sight to the blind. He even raised a few dead people. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. Our leaders were jealous of him. They were afraid that all the people would follow him instead of them. And so they had chomped up charges against him. And they condemned him to death. And since they couldn't do that themselves, they took him to the Roman governor, and they incited the Roman governor against him. And yet all through his trial, he was silent. He didn't defend himself. He did not open his mouth. And so he was taken, and he was beaten, and he was crucified. And remarkably, after he died, he was actually buried. normally crucified people are thrown out to be eaten. But he was buried, as you might notice there. It said, they made his grave with the wicked, with the rich in his death. Because there was one man of the high council who believed in him, a rich man who buried him in his own tomb. And then the story took a turn. Because three days later, was empty. And then they met Him. And then the disciples met Him. And then more than 500 met Him at a single time. This Jesus whom I preach to you, He has just fulfilled the things of which you read here in Isaiah 53. And you must know the reason for it. Look at it. The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. This is why it's compared to a sheep, because like a sheep, he was offered up for our sins. You have peace with God through this sacrifice, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Notice how it speaks further on of his resurrection. When you make your soul an offering for sin, that's for your sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. After he's dead, then things will prosper in his hand, because he will be then alive. He shall see the labor of his soul, there is the resurrection foretold in your soul, and happened in these last days. Therefore, You must become one of his people. You must be baptized in his name, because I will divide him, Jesus, a portion with the great. He shall divide the spoiled people with the strong." This happened because he poured out his soul to death. He was numbered with the transgressors. You don't know how far Philip went. I start the chapter 53. But beginning at that text, Philip preached Jesus to him. Didn't preach the Christ to him, because he already had the Christ there. He preached Jesus to him as the fulfillment of that chapter. And you will notice that he included baptism in what he told the man. He didn't just say, pray a prayer and you'll be good. No, plainly he said, you need to be baptized. Because when they came to some water, the eunuch said, there's some water. What keeps me from being baptized? And that's a fairly pointed question for a man who had not been admitted to the temple, because he was mutilated. There's some water. What prevents me from being baptized? And there is nothing. he has faith in Jesus Christ, if you have faith in Jesus Christ, then you may be baptized. No matter your background, no matter your sexual state, what's been done to your body, what you have suffered, what job you're in, no matter what these things are, believe in Jesus Christ, because he is the one the Lord has sent, God's agent for our salvation. It says if you believe, you may. And they stopped the chariot, not they, the eunuch commands the chariot to stop. And then the scripture stresses their togetherness, that they went down into the water together, Philip and the eunuch. Well, of course it's Philip and the eunuch, you don't have to say that, that's who we're talking about, we're not concerned with the chauffeur. But it spells it out to illustrate that in Jesus Christ, the barrier between Jew and Gentile is torn down. is stressed, and they go down into the water, and he is baptized, to which point the Spirit says, your job is done here, and Philip is taken away. Munich goes on his way rejoicing. It's not a strange thing that God used humiliation and injustice and suffering to bring joy to the earth. have been brought so low and then raised so high. That might be something this man could have related to. It's a marvelous thing that Jesus was counted a sinner so that you might be counted righteous. That Jesus took on our poverty so that we could gain his great riches. That is, that Jesus took on our mortality so that we might gain eternal life. It's a marvelous exchange. You might say, Jesus suffered so that you would rejoice. And if you have not believed, I want to challenge you with a question. You read Isaiah 53. Don't duck it like the Orthodox Jews in Elkins Park. Read the chapter, and then you tell me, who is the prophet talking about? Is it himself? Is it someone else? Who fulfills that chapter better than Jesus Christ? Yeah, He's the one that fulfills it. And He fulfilled it for your sake, beloved, so that you could go on your way rejoicing, because He suffered in your place. Now I want to speak of the next man to fulfill Isaiah. We don't know how far Philip got, explaining Isaiah. You have to scroll there. You can keep scrolling along. The first verse of chapter 54 says, let the barren rejoice. This guy, this guy was barren. But if you go down as far as chapter 56, as we did this morning, You know that we read, let not the foreigner say, God will surely separate me from his people. Let not the eunuch say, I am a dry tree. Because it says in Isaiah 56, to the eunuch who holds fast my covenant and chooses what pleases me, even to them I will give in my house and within my walls a place and a name better than that of sons and daughters. is Jesus gives greater immortality than kids can give you. Jesus gives you eternal life in God's house. And Jesus gave to this man a name. For we're talking about him 2,000 years later, not because of the chariot, but because he came to believe in Jesus Christ. He's the eunuch who gets the name. And he is a foreigner who goes out joyful. It says, to the foreigner who joins himself to the Lord and holds fast my covenant, I'll bring him to my holy mountain and make him joyful in my house of prayer, for my house will be a house of prayer for all peoples. Except for the little wrinkle. This man is not converted as he's going to Jerusalem. He's converted as he goes out from Jerusalem. He goes on his way rejoicing. He doesn't have to turn back to rejoice. He goes on his way rejoicing because the house of the Lord is now God's people throughout all nations. He didn't need to go back to the building with rocks. He needed to go on into the house of God where he is welcome, the church of Jesus Christ. He is the first Gentile that we read about being baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. The first Gentile believer that we read about is this black African. He goes on his way rejoicing. Jesus fulfills chapter 53, but this remarkable man gets to fulfill Isaiah 56. The eunuch with a name better than sons and daughters, a half chapter in the word of God, the foreigner who went home joyful, for it was written that he would. He's the first fulfilled. that he's not the last. For we can have similar fulfillments today. Believe in Jesus Christ and you may go on your way rejoicing that your sins have been removed, that the death that hangs over you is removed for you have eternal life in Jesus Christ. Embrace him and go out rejoicing. He swallows up your death in victory. Lord Jesus, we thank you that you look down from heaven, that you condescend to know the things that happen here. We thank you that you brought this man to Jerusalem. And we thank you that as he went out, that you sent him Philip to explain your way to him. Lord, open our mouths. We would explain your way to those whom we meet. Lord, help us to rejoice in you. would help us not to be offended by the things that we suffer, dismayed by the gifts that we do not have, would help us to rejoice in this greatest gift that we do have, that you have given us your Son to bear our sins, to be counted as a transgressor, so that we might be counted accepted and righteous before you. We pray this in Jesus' name.