Would you pray with me? Lord Jesus, I pray that you would open up a stream in the desert of our hearts tonight. May your grace refresh us. May your spirit lead us. May we really receive your blessings. given through your word, applied by the Holy Spirit. Lord, would you bless this body, give them strength, Lord, for the journey to come, that they'll walk together as a church. We thank you that we can gather in peace while others are surrounded by conflict and war. May our hearts continue to be burdened, Lord, for the grieving of others. And in your name we pray, amen. It is wonderful to be here this evening. I'm Peter Dorfler. I'm a pastor from out in Pittsburgh. With me is Roddy Kaufman. He'll be interpreting. He's the director of our deaf ministry. A little bit about me, from New Jersey. Haven't lived there in a long time. Grew up in North Jersey. Dad was a fireman. We were at one of the first PCA churches actually planted in New Jersey when I was just a wee baby. Then my wife and I, we moved around and married to a wonderful woman almost 24 years, Jamie. We have three boys, 16, 12, and 11. And I can't wait to hear about everything they did over the weekend when I get home tomorrow. And we have been here sharing about deaf ministry. We do a deaf ministry in terms of we're a, I would put it this way, we're a church for the hearing and the deaf. And that has nothing to do with me. I knew nothing about deaf ministry, and I've told anyone here multiple times, if God can use me, he can use you. Because, again, zero information when we planted this church about deaf. In fact, when I took the cultural survey they give church planters in the PCA, they were pretty much like, you shouldn't do cross-cultural ministry. You don't know what you're doing." And the Lord's like, yes, I need the weak one who doesn't know anything. And so, we got connected with Roddy. He's up from South Carolina. He now loves the North. He's in Pittsburgh. And his wife Becky's amazing. And so, we're here to encourage you, not just in deaf ministry, but just in the Lord. I know you're not all going to get involved, but I bet some of you have learned ASL or studied it a little bit in college. I was surprised. In our little church of like 70 people, we had three people who'd taken it in college. So, as we go, we're going to just look at God's Word. I'm going to apply it in some ways to deaf ministry. But the real blessing tonight is this. It's that Jesus Christ opens up a stream in the desert. And He opens it up through His death on the cross and He opens it up in your heart and in my heart and He waters us and He renews us. So let's take a look at the text. Keep your Bibles open, we'll be in and out of it. But let's, I want to clarify a few things in the early verses here, 26. Right the angel says to Philip go rise and go go towards south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza This is a desert place He goes he travels and then there's a couple words here that reminded me of that theologian from the princess bride and Nego Montoya Who said I do not think it means what you think it means. I? Ancient Ethiopia does not mean modern Ethiopia. It means Egypt. It was also called Nubia. And in Philip's mind, there's some interesting Roman writings from this period. There had recently been an expedition around AD 60 and they went down the Nile and they kind of went as far as this guy's kingdom and that was like the edge of the world. And so Philip, to meet this man, remember Acts 1.8, Jesus says, I'm going to say, you know, here, here, here, to the ends of the earth. This guy is from, in their cultural viewpoint, he's from the ends of the earth. Candace, that is not her name. That was shocking to me this week. Candace does not mean the queen's name, right? It says the court official of Candace. It's a title. maybe more pronounced Kandake. Her actual name, depending on who gets it right, good luck with this one, Roddy. Amanitikarikidi. Sometimes they just go like this. Yeah, yeah, I was going to say. She ruled from around 22 to 41 AD. And eunuch does not always mean a castrated man. I have a feeling this guy was physically a eunuch, but by this point, it had come to be a title of sorts for men who worked in royal courts. So just a little bit about, all right, so who's traveling on this road? It's not actually an Ethiopian. He's really an Egyptian. The woman's name isn't Candace. He's going down, and he's coming from the ends of the world. And so the first point here is this, that the spirit leads us where Jesus needs us. It rhymes, so it must be true, right? Lego movie? The Spirit leads us where Jesus needs us. Now, I want you to think about that corporately for a minute, because as Americans, we tend to read these things and we think, me, me, I, I. The us here is you at 10th Presbyterian Church. And what I believe the Lord is leading some of your leaders is to go minister to the Hispanics, to start a Hispanic ministry, to go and open up the doors of the gospel more widely to the deaf. And if the Spirit leads you there, that means Jesus needs you there. And I'll tell you guys this. The deaf are very unreached in the church and they're often very unwelcome in the church. Not on purpose, but it doesn't matter. And so if Jesus needs you there, you're going to need to rise up and say, all right, now I need some gifts. Now I need some compassion. Now I need to learn. I need to love people. I need to be OK being awkward. I've shared this multiple times now. I'm bad at ASL. My ASL is bad. It's not good. But I try. I try, and as a pastor, when we have someone come through our doors and they're deaf, I do the best I can. And some folks, they're way worse than I am, but they give a hug, and they say hi, and they might write their name on a piece of paper. And you know what that tells someone who's deaf? It tells them, whoa, I could be loved here. I could be welcome here. I could do ministry here. I could disciple other deaf people here, and they could come in and not feel like an outcast. So where does Jesus need Philip? You know, before this, he was in Samaria. If you flip back a chapter in Acts, it says, the crowds with one accord paid attention to what he taught. He was a really gifted evangelist, right? You're not all gifted. I'm not a gifted evangelist. You're not all. The point of this sermon isn't go be Philip. The point of this sermon is you go where the Spirit sends you, use the gifts the Spirit has, and crack open that river of life called the gospel and get it in your own hearts too. Right? Let Jesus water your soul, too. Get into your dry places, too. So the angel tells Philip, go south. This is a desert place. Right? So he says, Philip, I don't need you in Samaria. I don't need you with crowds of people anymore. I got one guy on one chariot going south, and I need you there. And I need you in the desert place. Now, what makes a desert a desert? A desert, by definition, at least generally speaking, it's hostile to life. It's hot. Things don't grow in the desert, right? Some of you might be thinking about the deaf that way. You might be thinking, why would we start a deaf ministry? That seems like a desert place. It's not. Conversely, For the deaf, the church has sometimes been a desert place, not because Jesus isn't there but because they're unwelcomed and it feels dry and it feels hostile to life. And what I love is that the Lord is raising you up to be a stream in that desert. to be a welcome community, to minister Jesus Christ, to be ready. He needs Philip to go to that desert because that eunuch is on a chariot and he's headed south and God has plans for that man. He was in Jerusalem. What was he doing in Jerusalem? He was worshiping. Did you notice that? So what we have is a God-fearing Gentile, verse 27, he had come to Jerusalem to worship, he's retarded, seating in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. This guy, he's ripe for the pickin', right? I don't know if that's the evangelism terms, but he's halfway there. He's gone to Jerusalem, but what was that experience like for him? You know, it's hard to know, but we could, I think we could, most commentators would land on this point. It was probably both wonderful and frustrating at the same time, right? This is a man who clearly is a God-fearing Gentile. He's going there to worship, and yet when he arrives in Jerusalem, someone who normally they roll out the red carpets for, a royal official, you know, with the queen, right? Welcome wherever he goes, respected, may be feared. When he gets to the gate of the temple, If they knew he was a eunuch, he would not have been allowed even in, not even into the court of Gentiles. This is a quote from, let me find my spot. Derek Thomas writes this in his commentary on Acts. As a Gentile, he would only have access to the court of the Gentiles on the temple mount and then only if his static status as a eunuch was unknown, the law was explicit in forbidding eunuchs the right to enter any part of the temple. That's from Deuteronomy 23 verse 1. Imagine taking a long trip, going somewhere you long to be. And when you get there, you discover, oh, people from Philadelphia. We have a special section for you called the parking lot. You know, maybe you get tickets to the Super Bowl. You show up, you're ready. They're like, yeah, we have a screen set up for you in a restaurant nearby. Right? He's come a long way to Jerusalem, and it's very likely that there was this edge of disappointment that was there, and possibly a feeling of hopelessness. Like, can I fully become a member of God's family? Can I enter into full communion with the living God if I can't even go all the way into the temple, into the house of God? What hope do I have? And guys, I got to say, what hope do any of us have? What hope do you have to enter communion with the Holy God except through Jesus Christ? What hope do any of us have? We are selfish people. We don't like it when people cross us. We're easily offended. We hold grudges. We're mean on Facebook to other people. We are insensitive. We're apathetic to Jesus Christ. We don't pray when we need to. We worry a lot, right? but we have God's grace poured out on us in Jesus. So this guy is coming along and God has got him ready to go. The spirit of God, the word of God, and now a willing servant of God is coming up alongside this chariot and he hears him reading out loud, right? So suddenly Philip knows, this is why I'm here. This is why I'm in the desert. Interesting cultural note. Reading in antiquity, this is by F.F. Bruce, was almost always done out loud. You might have been wondering, why is he reading out loud? Why this should be so will be apparent to anyone who tries to read a copy of an ancient manuscript. The words need to be spelled out, and this is done more easily aloud than in silence. There are no spaces between the words in ancient Hebrew. There's no paragraph break. So if I gave you a page filled with just English words scrunched together, you would find it easier to read it out loud. And all of this is just the providence of God. He's reading Philip Peers, and suddenly he's welcomed right up into that chariot. I like that move. God gets him all the way right next to that man. The Spirit's going to lead you where Jesus needs you to be. You're going to be side by side with people in this week, this week. Would you be so bold? as to take them to Jesus Christ. You might be next to someone who's just angry. I learned sadly recently that some of my friends got divorced. You might be next to someone who just spouses betrayed them. You know, we're confronted with all kinds of things that break us up. I really do believe that God leads us to places. He led me here. Guys, we worship in a fire hall. It's almost as glamorous. And we're happy we're there. It's what we need at the moment. If you told me you'd be preaching at 10th, I'd have been like, no, I don't think so. But I guess God needs me here for you. That's pretty cool, huh? One day maybe he'll send you to Pittsburgh and help us. But God needs churches that love the deaf. When you're done, go home and go to this website called Deaf Church Now. Don't go now. I saw some of you look down. I know what you're doing. You'll see there's just not that many churches that minister to the deaf. Man, what a blessing it would be if they could walk in here and get Jesus and get a family. How many good churches could you pick from besides 10th? Quite a few, probably, huh? We got other good churches in Pittsburgh. You've got them here. It's not the same. I'm thrilled that God's telling you to rise and go. Let's look at the Isaiah passage here. Like a sheep, this is verse 32, 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 the earth. He is reading it and he does not understand what he's reading. He needs a guide. So now it's clear to us, the Spirit leads him where Jesus needs him and Jesus needs him here because this man needs him here. As this man is reading, Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 are the bedrock prophecies of the crucifixion of the Messiah. He is right at the center of the work of Jesus Christ, and he does not know who the prophet is writing about. He asks a very simple question. It's very obvious, right? Is the prophet writing about himself, or is he writing about someone else? And he cannot tell, and he did not know. And from that verse on, verse 35 is a great verse. Philip opened his mouth. He's like, this is it. This is why I'm here. He opens his mouth. Beginning with this scripture, he told him the good news about Jesus. He tells him Jesus was led like a sheep. He is the Passover Lamb of God. He went without protest. He died without justice. He left behind no descendants. And he, as I love Isaiah 53 10, why, why, why, why, why, right? It was the will of the Lord to crush him. That's why. It was the will of Yahweh to crush him. He has put him to grief. And when his soul makes an offering for guilt, And Philip gets to look at that Ethiopian and say, Jesus died for you. Wow. And now you can enter full communion with God. even in your village. You don't need to walk through the temple gates. The veil has been torn. The doors have been opened. The Messiah of Israel, the Son of God, in his soul made an offering. Friends, he made an offering for your guilt and for my guilt. And it was God's will to crush him because God loves you. and he wants you with him eternally. Does that blow your mind? Because it should blow your mind that the creator of heaven and earth wants to spend eternity with you and with me and all the elect and he crushes his beloved son. For us, that is the stream in the desert. I don't know where your desert place is tonight. I don't know. I don't know where you are hostile to life tonight, but I know every one of us have places in our heart that are deserty. Sometimes it's long-held sins and we like them too much. Sometimes it's early abuse when we're young and the anger that comes along with it. Sometimes it's being hurt by people in the church. Jesus has the rivers of healing for every single desert in this room. You got to go to him. He's all you got. He's all you need. He's the son of the living God, risen on high, and he gives his gift to the church. Don't stay in that desert place. I love, in the imagery of this passage, they're driving along, and what suddenly appears in the desert? There's that water, right? And Philip has received it. And he says, let's flip it back. And I have it printed in my notes here. Hey, here's some water. I love it. See, here's water. What prevents me from being baptized? Now, check it out. If you're a math major, you might have been confused by your pew Bible. Because you've got verse 35, and you've got verse 36, and then you have verse 38. Where did verse 37 go? It's in the footnotes. I'm going to read it. And I'll explain why it's in the footnotes and then I'll explain why I read it. Here's verse 37. And Philip said, if you believe with all your heart, you may be baptized. And he replied, I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God. Now the reason it's in the footnotes is, as I trust many of you know, there are many ancient Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. The earliest ones did not have this verse, but then some rather early ones did add it. So I take it like this, not necessarily inspired, but highly informing, because what they wanted us to know was what the early church and every church ever since has said, this has to be true before you can be baptized into Jesus. So, they essentially give us their creed, their theology of what makes someone ready to be baptized, and it's rather simple. It sounds a lot like Romans 10, right? What does he say? Do you believe? If you believe with all your heart, that is all that you have, every sort of ounce of confidence and assent within you, he says, yes, I believe that Jesus Christ, which means anointed one, the chosen one, is the son of God. Paul writes, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved, right? On the day of Lord, when God returns in judgment, you will be saved from the wrath of God. You will not be cast out into the darkness, but you will be those brought into a heavenly inheritance forever. Hallelujah, right you will be saved as the promise of the gospel and that's great news because guess what this life isn't so hot and You know what? I think when I was younger, I didn't have as much gospel confidence as I do now and When I grew up in New Jersey, public school, I had a lot of nerdy friends. None of them believed in Jesus. And I had a lot of doubts. I'm like, is this really true? Is this just my weird family? And so again, I'm 20 years old. I'm 30 years old. I'll tell you what. I've seen enough people shipwrecked now, I'm 46, that I have more gospel confidence than ever before. And I can tell you what. You want peace. And you want security. And you want comfort. And you want freedom. And you want hope. And Jesus has it. He says, my peace I give to you. He says, I have set you free. For freedom, I have set you free. God says, I am your rock, and I am your refuge, and I am your ever-present help in times of trouble. And the Lord says, you will dwell with me forever. And I'll tell you what, guys, you have what people are dying for. You have it, don't be afraid to share it. They need it. Minister with grace, minister with cope, minister with trust, minister with confidence that Jesus Christ is willing to use you just like he uses his saints all over the world. It's a beautiful place to be when you can sit with someone and breathe hope into their heart. And you know you're not just blowing smoke. You're giving them Jesus. Would you be so bold this week to minister to someone, to get alongside, to go where the Spirit leads you? Would you be so bold this week to ask God, Lord, would you send me to someone? Send me to someone in a desert place, Lord. Maybe my coworker. Maybe my child. Would you even be so bold, and I'll say this on behalf of the ministries coming, Lord, should I be part of that deaf thing? Jesus, I don't know anything, but should I do it? I can't do it, but do you want me to do it? Have you ever read the Bible and just had a verse that you knew that one was for you? Have you ever had that moment? I haven't had that too many times, but there's been a few times when I've come, often with a weighty heart, and I've opened up the Bible, and I read it, and I was just like, thank you, Lord. That word was for me. Well, if the eunuch kept reading in Isaiah, he would have read the rest of chapter 53, 54, 5, and 6. And then he would have come to this passage in Isaiah 56, verses three to five. Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say, the Lord will surely separate me from his people. That's pretty good, huh? And let not the eunuch say, behold, I am a dry tree. For thus says the Lord to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me, and nothing pleases the Father more than you loving the Son, right? I will give in my house and within my walls a monument, and a name better than sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off." A eunuch can't have sons and daughters. It's probably a desert place, huh? A foreigner who was kept out of the temple. And look at how Jesus just comes right in. I'm going to give you a name better than any amount of sons and daughters you could ever have. Guys, this is God's word to all of us. I will give you an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. Hallelujah. Amen to that. It is glorious, isn't it? So I want you to hope in Jesus this week. And I want you to go out of here with the willing feet of Philip. And I want you to go out of here with the joyful heart of the eunuch who left rejoicing. And I want you to go out of here with this sweet message of Jesus on your lips, because your neighbors need it, and you need it, and this whole church needs it. And he is a river of life that keeps on flowing. And one day, the river becomes a stream that flows out of the temple of God. And the leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nation. And we stand before that river. in a glorious heaven. And we know it was because Jesus Christ was crushed by his father, died for our sins, is risen from the dead, and has saved us and chosen us and sanctified us and cleansed us and sent us out to do his will. So don't be satisfied with things of the world this week, but get on board with what the Lord is doing. And as he told him, rise and go. And I think that's what the Lord's telling 10th for deaf and Hispanic, and I know many other things. And he needs you, because you, you are 10th. And he's telling you, rise. And he's telling you, go. Thanks be to God. Let's pray. Lord, would you equip these saints for the hard work of ministry, for the joyful work of ministry. And Lord, would you minister into their dry places, their desert places, their sinful addictions, their pride, their weariness. Oh Lord, so many are weary, they're fatigued, they're sickness. The disease they carry, the cancer they bear, the leukemia, the diabetes, whatever it might be, Lord, whatever it might be, the weights that wear them down, their jobs, their work, their finances, come in and let them know, oh, Jesus Christ has what you need. Come water our hearts, we pray. And in your name, we pray. Amen.