when we preach through the life of Paul. And Lord, if my mind don't change, we're gonna start in the 23rd Psalm. We're going to go through the 23rd Psalm verse by verse on Wednesday night, for a few Wednesday nights while we find some bearing and try to find the mind of the Lord for a character study. But we'll look at the 23rd Psalm. So you don't want to miss that. I know the Lord will help us. But we want to conclude the book of Acts tonight, and begin our reading in Acts chapter number 8, verse number 26. The Bible said, And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south, unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert. And he arose and went, and behold, a man of Ethiopia, and eunuch, Great authority under Candace, queen of Ethiopians, who had the charge of all her treasure and had come to Jerusalem for the worship, was returning and sitting in his chariot and read Isaiah, the prophet. Then the spirit said unto Philip, go near, join thyself under the chariot, under this chariot. Philip ran thither to him, and heard him read the prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest? And he said, How can I, except some man should guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him. The place of the scripture which he read was this, He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as like a lamb before shearer, so he openeth not his mouth. In his humiliation, his judgment was taken away. Who shall declare his generation? For his life is taken from the earth. And the eunuch answered Philip and said, I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this, of himself or some other man? Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus. And as they went on their way, they came into a certain water. And the eunuch said, See, here's water. What doth hinder me to be baptized? Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And he commanded the chariot to stand still. They went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch. And he baptized him. And when they were come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord called away Philip, and that the eunuch saw him no more. And he went on his way rejoicing. But Philip was found at Asdus, and passing through, he preached in all the cities, till he came to Caesarea. Let's pray together. Father, I ask the Lord tonight in Jesus' name, God, that you'd touch us in your spirit this evening. Lord, there's some of your chosen few here tonight, but God, they need to hear from heaven. So I pray, Lord, as we've gathered around the word of God tonight, I pray that you'd speak to our hearts this evening. Bless and touch as only you can. God will thank you and praise you for all that you do. Get our minds where they ought to be tonight, Lord, off the things of the world. It's been so long, seems like, since we've been able to gather here together. I pray that you'd put our minds in the Word of God tonight. We'll bless your holy name for it. In Jesus' name we make our prayer. Through his blood we pray. Amen and amen. I'm going to preach to you a little bit tonight here out of Acts chapter number 8. This is a familiar story here concerning the Ethiopian eunuch. But I'm going to preach a little while tonight if the Lord will help us on saved on the way home from worship. saved on the way home from worship. That's unusual, you know, most people get saved while they're gone to worship or before they worship, but here's a man, this Ethiopian eunuch, he's made the way down to Jerusalem and now he's headed back up toward Gaza, and he gets saved on his way home from worship. So I'll preach on that just a little bit. tonight, and I trust that the Lord will help us. First, I want you to notice tonight, there's a strange direction. Now, do you remember what I preached on last week? Phillips done made it down to Samaria. He's down there preaching the Word of God. Practically the whole city gets saved by the grace of God. Revival breaks out. Peter and John comes down. They receive the Holy Ghost. I'm telling you, things are going fantastic. You would have thought that Philip would have been ready to put up a gospel tent, put out some folding chairs, put the sawdust on the floor, and preach a month right there in Samaria. But you know what? God had different ideals. I'm going to tell you something I've noticed over the years. When the Holy Ghost of God really gets involved in something, it'll upend your plans. It'll cause you to do things you didn't think you'd Hey, it turns everything on its head, amen. We've got plans, what we want done, things we've figured out, but I believe that God, when he gets stirring around in the midst, you can take your plans, chuck them out the window, and forget about what you thought you knew, because God gets in it. He'll do things you never expected before. And so the spirit of God comes, and he begins to speak to Philip, moving him out of this area of revival. And he said, so it's a strange timing, strange timing. But then he sends him to a strange area. I was studying on it today, that trip from Jerusalem down to Gaza. They say it's some of the most desolate uninhabitable area of desert in all of the Middle East. And when Philip got that instruction how to go down to that stretch of desert toward Gaza, he could have looked at God and said, God, that's crazy. There's probably not even anybody down there. Who in the world would I preach to? I mean, I've got a big revival going, and folks are getting saved. But you know what Philip did? Philip just throwed his hand up, said, yes, sir, I'll go where you want me to go and preach where you want me to preach. And he started his way down. He mentored the desert country. Can I say to you tonight that that was a staggering obedience. Somebody said I want to make a success for God. Let me tell you how to do that. You don't have to go and read a bunch of books and learn how to be successful in the service of the Lord. I can tell you how to do it. Just like Mary told that bunch, film them water pots over there, my friend in the book of Matthew. And she said, whatsoever he saith unto you, Do it, amen. I'm telling you, obedience is the key to pleasing God. Somebody said, well, I'm gonna live good enough and I'm gonna act good enough. I believe all of that's fine and dandy, but you'll never please God with looking good and acting good, amen. God sees through our facade. He sees past what we make like we are and sees what we really are. But I'm glad, thank God, if you'll just throw up your hand in a salute and say, yes, sir, you send me and I'll go. Whatever you want me to do, I'll do. Wherever you say, I'll do it. And that is how you can be successful in the service of the Lord. Now, man don't count success the same way God does. In man's eyes, Phillip was being a success in Samaria. That's man's eyes. There's a revival happening. There's folks getting saved. I mean, hardened sinners coming to the Lord. In man's eyes, that's successful. But to go down toward Gaza, where there maybe isn't gonna be anybody, in man's eyes, that doesn't look like success. But God doesn't count success by how many you run in Sunday school. He doesn't count success by how many folks are sitting on the pew. He counts success on whether or not you're doing what He said for you to do. Amen. And if you're in God's service and you're saying, yes, sir, and you're doing what God said for you to do, it don't matter if it's a total flop in man's eyes. Thank God you're somebody going somewhere. And in the eyes of the Almighty, you're being a success. Let me just say this. I'd rather be a success in God's eyes as to be a success in man's eyes. Amen. And so we see his obedience. So there's a strange direction. But now notice this, we see in this story there's a sinner desiring. Now really what this story is all about is God's interest in one man. Now how many did he leave the ninety and nine for? One. Boy, I'm glad God's interested in the one. And so we see in this story how interested God is in reaching one lost soul. And He's gonna dispatch one of His choice preachers down there to reach one man that He's been working on. Now I want you to think about this old sinner and his desire this evening. First, let's consider a momentous person. The Bible said that he was a man of Ethiopia. Well, that tells us something right there. Ethiopia, that word itself means a scorched face. And so, of course, this man being from Africa, and having that Ethiopian background. He was a black man. He was a minority. We'll use that word just because it goes with my alliteration. He was a minority. We might have said he's not worth going down there after. Somebody could have said that. Why would God want to reach him? But I'm glad tonight that God don't care if you're red, yellow, black, white. Purple or polka-dotted, hey man, he sees your soul and he's interested in the souls of all of mankind. And so God dispatches Philip down there to win a little black-faced sinner. to the Lord Jesus Christ. We see he was a minority. Then we see his marring, how the Bible said he was a eunuch. Now without getting into too much detail there, how the eunuch would have imposed upon himself a self-castration. He was not a man, he was less than a man because of that. If you'll talk to me about that after the service, I'd be glad to tell you the history behind all that. I don't want to get into it in this company, but I'd be glad to tell you about all that. It's biblical. I guess we can deal with it. But anyhow, he was subject to self-castration. He was looked down upon. Those men would do that. how to try and rise up politically in the kingdom, because there were certain jobs that they could do after they'd done that, in other words. And so they tried to do that for a political gain, but they were looked down on in many ways. They couldn't father children. They couldn't have a family. In other words, what I'm trying to impress upon you tonight is this. This man was nothing that any of us would have looked at and said, wow, right there's one God needs to go get. Right there's somebody worthy of being saved. Hey, but God had an interest in him. Let me break this news to you tonight, friend. There's not a single one of us in this building tonight that God should have been interested in coming after or coming to get. But I'm glad one Sunday morning, He came where I was, amen. I just know nobody and nothing. I'm glad that he dispatched the high sheriff of heaven and came down where I was and I saw myself a sinner and got saved by the glorious grace of God. So we consider. Then we consider his passion. The Bible said he was reading out of the book of Isaiah, and that's interesting. While he was at Jerusalem, apparently he picked up a scroll of Isaiah. He probably paid a lot of money for it. He's down there, something has set something on fire inside of his heart. And he's looking. And so while he's there, he said, I need to know more about this God everybody's talking about. And so he picks up a scroll, the scroll of Isaiah, and he starts to read. Now let me tell you what I know, Oliver. I don't know everything about how God does things. But I do know this, no man searcheth after God at any time except the Spirit draw him. And so God had been working on this old boy on the other side. He'd done put him in the Word of God. He'd done put him in Isaiah chapter number 53 right smack dab in the middle of that great prophecy about the Lord Jesus Christ. I mean, he had primed this feller. He had primed him. And so when Philip sees him, he runs to him, and he's looking there in that scroll, and he said, do you understand what you read? Here's what he said. He said, how can I except some man should show me? And he desired, the Bible said he desired Philip. Now that word desire is a very strong word. That means he beseeched, he begged Philip. He wanted Philip to come up in that chariot. Now, I want you to think about this a minute. This man has already been down to Jerusalem. He's done his best to worship. Can you imagine him standing out there in the outer court of the temple, a little black-faced sinner not allowed in the inner court? I mean, a eunuch. He's standing out there doing his best to try and worship God. I'll tell you something interesting about that word worship. And this is another message that I give it to, maybe some of you preachers run with it. That word worship, you look it up in the Greek, and you can look at it in your Strong's Concordance. You look it up in the Strong's Concordance, and that word worship means to kiss. It means to kiss. Well, there's a message in that right there. And the Strong says it's a picture of a dog licking the master's hand. That's the picture of worship. You ever wondered what worship looks like? It looks like a dog licking the master's hand. Boy, that done something for me today and I got to stand on that. We got that little puppy of Trey and Monica's at the house, and you turn that dog loose there, and my bigger dogs are outside, and she'll run up that big black dog, and she just licks him in the face continually, just jumping, licking him in the face. And I just watched her do that today, and I thought, she's worshipping him. That's what she's doing. She's worshipping. She thinks that dog's a... everything for her. She turned that dog's God to look at that dog. Big old dog. She's worshiping. She's looking at it. Boy, that's the way we ought to be in our worship. Just like a bunch of old Gentile dogs just crawling up to the master, licking his hand. Amen. That's the word worship there. That's another message. Anyhow, we see there that he desired, he said, would you please Come up and talk to me. Would you please come up and tell me about what I'm reading? I don't understand it. I can't understand it. Would you please, would you please come up and tell me something about it? He knew he had a need. But now look at this savior described. Philip said, I'd be glad to. He got up in that chariot and he began that same scripture and he preached the only message Philip knew apparently. He just preached Jesus. He opened his mouth, the Bible said, and he preached unto him Jesus. Now, there's an interesting thought here about Philip. He asked this question, Sir, understandest thou what thou readest? Boy, the Bible has got good spiritual application, but it's also got good practical application. You know how Philip went soul winning? He went soul winning by asking a question. I'm telling you, that's the best way soul win. You might say, sir, if you died tonight, would you go to heaven or hell? Or sir, if you died tonight and you went to heaven, what was it that got you there? A question like that. Philip asked a question. He gets up there and he opens up the scripture and he just starts preaching to him Jesus. He started, no doubt, I'd love to have heard that message, wouldn't you? He started, no doubt, with that slaughtered lamb. He said, well, you're reading there about a lamb. Let me tell you about God's lamb. No doubt he went back to the Passover and brought it up through the scriptures and talked about how Jesus was spotless and without sin. He said, Luke Yonder says that he didn't open his mouth. And no doubt Philip got into the fact that Jesus stood before Pilate, never opened his mouth to defend himself a single time. And he started preaching through those scriptures and talking about Calvary and the death and the burial and the resurrection. Amen, he preached about the resurrection. I'll show you how I know that here in just a minute. But he started preaching, and something started happening in this old boy's heart. I don't know, the Bible doesn't say exactly where he got saved, but I imagine at some point, a little old black-faced sinner bowed his head to God, the chariot bumping and hopping down the road, and begged God of heaven to be saved. And at that very instant, God saved that old sinner. Well, do you remember where you were when God got a hold of you? Amen. Do you remember bowing your head that day and asking God to save you? Boy, they ain't nothing like it, are they? Amen. And so he bowed his head, he got saved over that message preached on Jesus. So there's a savior described. Then I want you to know something, I'm about done, y'all preach me death night, I'm about done. I ain't got to preach in a while. Saved man, then we see in the end, there's a saved man that's dedicated. Here's what he said. He looked over at Philip and he said, I want to be baptized. Now how in the world did he know about that? How in the world did he know about that? Well, I read after one author today that said, you know, there was all kinds of ceremonial baptisms in Judaism. and said he'd just been down to Jerusalem, and all around Jerusalem, there was pools where they ceremoniously baptized. And they had all kinds of reasons they baptized at this point in Judaism. And so maybe he saw some of them folks getting baptized, what one author said, got it on his mind, and he thought, well, I ought to be baptized. I don't buy that. I don't know why he would even connect them two things together. That don't make any sense to me. I tell you what I believe. I believe that Philip must have preached about it somehow. Somehow Philip preached on it. Somehow he talked, maybe he got over there and was preaching how that when Jesus came up over the banks of the Jordan and John said, behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world. Talked about the baptism of the Lord and how that the Spirit descended on him like a dove, amen. Maybe he preached about that. Maybe he preached about the resurrection and said, you know, that's the reason after we get saved, we get baptized, because it shows forth his death. But we don't leave him in the grave. Bring him back up out of the grave. The old sinner comes out of the grave. Hey, resurrected sinner. Maybe he preached on that. I don't know. But at some point in his message, I believe Philip preached on it. And you know what? When this old boy got saved, he didn't have to be coerced, begged, asked to. He said, you know what? I like what you're talking about right there now. That sounds all right. Believe I'll do that. And that's the beginning of, I believe, many things this old boy's going to be obedient about. Now he's a dedicated Satan man. He's riding down through there and here's what happens. Comes up on a pool of water and he said, look your honor, there's a pool of water. He said, what's hindering me from getting baptized? Well, it caught Phillip off guard. He said, well, well, well, he said, here's what he said. He said, if you believe on Jesus with all your heart, you can be baptized. The old boy said, I do. Phillip said, stop the chat. Probably had a big old a big old caravan with them, you know, carrying camels and all kinds of things. Ho, ho, and everything stops up. I see Phillip climb down out of that chair, got that Ethiopian eunuch. What are they doing? What in the world, what is happening? Got down there in that water, and this little old black face nobody sinner just got saved. Phillip said, I baptize you, my brother, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Buried with Christ, raised again to life eternal. And just like that, Philip's gone. Oh, I forgot an important part of this story. He run that chariot down. I said, raise your Bible. Raise your Bible. Said that he ran. Now, I don't know how fast the chariot goes, but it probably goes faster than me and you run. I believe that's got to be some supernatural running. That's running in the spirit. And he run that church down. He baptized the old boy, and the old boy, oh, thank you, Lord, hallelujah, I'm saved. He turned around, thank you. Where'd that feller go? He got another mission. Gone down to another city to preach. The Lord's done laid it on his heart someplace else to go. He's on fire and fired up and ready to go, and he said, I'm out of here. Mission accomplished. God sent me down there after that one sinner. I found him, he got saved, we baptized him, got him on the right road. Now I'm headed down somewhere else to do some preaching. How God loves sinners. How God loves sinners. I don't know what kind of church this old boy joined. I know he joined a church, sure he did. Maybe started one down there in Ethiopia, I don't know. But don't you know that when he come testifying time, that old boy stand up and say, I gotta say one word. One night I was driving through the desert all by myself and this wild man preacher come running up beside me in my chariot. Two or three people say, did they say he's running next to the chariot? That's what I said, running next to my chariot. And I was reading from this scroll. I can see him holding it up. And he told me about Jesus. And boy, I got saved. And then we got baptized. Right out there, some water in the desert. And God allowed me to get baptized out there in an oasis. And my life has never been the same. Couldn't everybody here testify of that same thing if you're saved by the grace of God? Saved by the grace of God. You say, boy, the Lord sure did love me. I think about how useless I have been, how sorry I am, but he came and saved me anyway. What a blessing. Let's stand our feet. Father, thank you, Lord, for this time to preach tonight.