Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Acts 8:26-40, highlighting the importance of living on mission as demonstrated by Philip's encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch. He emphasizes being available to God, listening to the Spirit's leading, and boldly communicating the gospel. The practical application encourages the congregation to cultivate compassion, pray for opportunities to share their faith, and actively engage with those around them, ultimately trusting that God will work through their efforts to transform lives.
Housekeeping and Dismissals
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If you have a child who wants to be dismissed to Children's Church, that's available at this time. If you have your Bibles, we're going to go to Acts chapter 8. We're going to finish out the rest of Acts chapter 8 this morning, verses 26 through 40. 26 through 40 this morning.
If you're not a part of Sunday school, I encourage you to be a part of Sunday school. This morning's Sunday school lesson laid the most perfect introduction to my sermon that I've ever seen possible.
And our Sunday school class, of course, we talk a lot. We have a lot of engagement. I know the older adults do as well.
But, man, this morning, if you would have been here for Sunday school, I would have probably saved about 20 minutes of my message, which means you would have been out here earlier, or I would have just preached longer.
I don't know. But it was a great time, and so I encourage you to be here for Sunday school hour as well. But Acts chapter 8, verse 26 through 40. Today we're talking about how to live on mission.
And we're going to take this from Philip and his encouragement that he gives us. If you found your place, we'll stand. Acts chapter 8, verse 26 through 40. The Bible says, This is the desert road.
And so he got up and he went, and the Ethiopian man, a eunuch and a high official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, was in charge of the entire treasury.
He had come to worship in Jerusalem and was sitting in his chariot on his way home, reading the prophet Isaiah aloud. The spirit told Philip, go and join that chariot.
And when Philip ran up to it, he heard him reading the prophet Isaiah and said, Do you understand what you're reading?
Verse 31, How can I? He said, unless someone guides me.
So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Now the scripture passage that he was reading was this. He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, as a lamb silent before his shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation, justice was denied him.
Who will describe his generation from his life as taken from the earth?
Verse 34, The eunuch said to Philip, I ask you, who is this prophet saying this is about himself or about someone else?
And Philip proceeded to tell him the good news about Jesus, beginning with that scripture. And as they were traveling down the road, he came to some water. And the eunuch said, look, there is water. What keeps me from being baptized?
So he ordered the chariot to stop, and both Philip and the eunuch went down to the water, and he baptized him.
And when he came out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch ferried him away. And the eunuch did not see him any longer, but went on his way rejoicing.
Philip appeared at Azotus, and while he was traveling and preaching the gospel in all the towns, until he came to Caesarea. Lord, we love you.
We thank you for your reading of scripture this morning. And I pray that you'd have your will and way this morning, as we look at how we can live on mission, how we can live our life in accordance to your will. We love you. In your name we pray. Amen.
You can be seated. Over these last couple of weeks, we've been introduced to Philip a couple of weeks ago, when we looked at the deacons. And he was one of those men that were mentioned in the deacons.
And now we come across him in the first part of chapter 8, where he's preaching, and it's after Philip, after Stephen had been crucified, and yet he is preaching to the Samaritans.
But yet now we see Philip in this amazing moment where this story, I mean, it's one of those Sunday school stories, right? He's going down the way.
He's running beside the chariot. He's running beside what's going on with this Ethiopian man. After he baptizes him, he just disappears.
Like, I can imagine as you're looking at the story and as you're sort of looking at the scripture with your mind's eye, you begin to see what's going on here. The confusion, but yet what has happened?
And as we begin to think about our own life and how we live on mission and how we are put in people's presence for a reason, we've got to begin to ask ourselves, how do we respond when we're
Mark's Commuter Train Encounter
on mission? I came across the story of a guy named Mark. He was a Christian who had been on a commuter train. He was headed into the city. He was exhausted after a long day of work. He had his headphones in.
He had his Bible tucked in his bag, and he had every intention of keeping to himself. Maybe this is you've been there before, right? You've had a long day. You don't want to deal with people. You don't want to deal with situations.
And you just want to sort of veg and be by yourself. And as the next stop came, an older man came onto the train and sat down across from him. And he looked a little rough. His coat was torn. His hands were worn.
His face was tired. And he glanced up at Mark, and he nodded politely. And he pulled out a piece of a piece from his bag that was crumpled, and it was torn up a little bit.
And Mark tried not to make contact. You know, some of these social times is awkward. It's like, what's going on here? And as he was sitting there, he was wanting to just ride in peace. The man began to talk to Mark.
Mark took his earbud out and leaned in and said, well, did you say, sir? The man held up the piece of paper, and he said, this is from my daughter. She goes to church, and she says that I need God. Do you know anything about that?
Mark, in that moment, he froze, and he said he had prayed that morning that God, give me an opportunity to share Christ today. Now the door was wide open, and he hesitated. He looked around. The train was full. He felt unsure, unprepared.
He was afraid. What if I mess up? What if I say the wrong words?
He stammered out a few statements about church and about how God changes lives.
But then his stop came, and he got off, and as he got off, he looked back at the train, and he watched the train pull away. The man's still sitting there, paper still in his hand, perhaps still searching for the answers.
Mark later said, as he was talking about this experience, he said, I had the chance to live on mission, and I missed it. I was too tired, too distracted, and too scared.
And if we were to be honest with ourselves, I believe we would all say we were in that situation at some point in our time. We've all been too scared. We've all been too tired. We've all been too distracted. We sometimes freeze.
We even doubt, am I going to say the right things? But what if we didn't?
What if we didn't freeze in those moments? What if we didn't have the opportunity of distractions that came in?
And what if we were like Philip in chapter 8 here, who was ready, who was responsive, and was rejoicing that the Lord called him to do something?
What if we loved people enough to run to them and run toward them and listen closely enough to their story to have a response ready to change someone's life? In Acts chapter 8, we see what living on mission truly looks like. It's not flashing.
Right? He's on a desert road. He's running down the road. Hey, I'm not a runner. I don't like running. But all of a sudden, he's got to run up to this chariot and this dusty road. He's got to get on this situation that's here.
But all it was was him simply listening to a spirit-led heart that is on mission for what he's done.
Being Available to God
As we look at some ordinary people, and specifically the ordinary person of Philip here, we begin to see some crazy things happen. I want to start by saying if we live on mission, it's simply this, being available to God.
It's saying, God, I want to be available for what you have for me. I want to step into the story that you've given me, and I want to listen to what the Spirit's saying.
When we get to the point where we're available for God and we are attentive to the Spirit, then we can begin to actively share the gospel with other people. It's a daunting thing. It's a crazy thing.
It's an awesome thing to be a part of the story where you get to share the gospel with someone, and their life is changed for the eternity of the gospel.
For a moment, as I was meditating last night and yesterday and this weekend at the house and outside, my mind came to this sort of challenge that I want to challenge us for just a couple of moments.
I want you to, in the next space of just a small time, think of five people that you're close to that don't know Christ. Maybe on the back of your handout, write down their five names. I want to be very specific this morning.
I want you to think of people maybe that you work with, maybe that you go to school with, maybe that you interact with at a business. Maybe it's a, you're a telemarketer, or you go to the bank a lot, and it's the person behind the counter that shared someone that doesn't know Christ.
Maybe it's someone you're on a team with. Maybe it's someone that you like to do recreation things with, golf or hunt or fish or whatever it may be that doesn't know Christ, but they're in your life. They're in your neighborhood. Maybe they're a neighbor. Write their names down.
And as you're thinking of these five people, I want you to do two specific things. I want you to pray for their salvation.
Pray that the Lord works a mighty way in them and through them for them to hear the gospel and their lives to be changed.
But I want you to do a second thing. Not only pray for their salvation, but pray that the Lord gives you an opportunity to share the gospel with them or an opportunity to invite them to a church service or to invite them to a time where they're going to hear the gospel.
You see, I believe if we're specific in some things and we begin to write down some things where we can say, God, I want to be specific. Like Mark, this open illustration, he said, God, give me the opportunity to share Christ with someone today. And as he's sitting on that train,
someone, some random stranger comes up and begins to ask him about this Jesus, about the God that he serves and says, what is this about?
I believe when we pray for the opportunity for our lives to intersect with other people's lives, God will grant that because this is the greatest news that's ever been given. This is the gospel of Jesus Christ who came to live in this world, to die for our sins.
And when we say, God, give me the opportunity to share Christ with someone, that's an easy request that God's going to honor.
God's going to say, yeah, I've got millions and millions of people all throughout the country, all throughout the world that are searching, that are wanting to have answers to their prayer requests, that are wanting to know something different. And if you're willing and able to just step out and share your story,
Cultivating Compassion
God will make a huge difference in them. So how do we do this? What are some practical ways from this passage that we can be on mission? The first one I believe is this, cultivate a heart of compassion. This is the entire chapter.
I mean, I could spend the next 20 minutes just talking about this point because it's every single verse of this entire chapter, the entire rest of this passage is all about someone who loved people like Christ loved them. He saw people around them and he said, Christ gave his life for you.
And I'm going to do everything I can to serve you. And so it is a person or a people who love and care for other people.
Philip had a habit for caring for people. The first time we're hearing of Philip's name is in Acts chapter six. And what does it say that Philip is doing?
Philip is caring for the neglected widows. He cared about the people around them.
He cared about the women and the children that just happened to be neglected by the church this time because the church was growing. And he said, I want to be one of those men.
I want to be one of the people that step up and go out and serve other people. I want to be the person that loves other people. And then last week we came across Philip. And what is Philip doing? Philip is preaching to the Samaritans.
Now that may sound like, okay, it's just another group of people. I don't know who the Samaritans are, Pastor James. The Samaritans were the half-breed Jews.
They were the outcasts because they were the Jews that were not full-blooded Jews but had been intermingled with other nations. And they were the half-breeds. And Philip says, I want to go preach to them.
Lord, Lord, give me the opportunity to go and share the gospel with the Gentiles. With the ones that have been cast out. The ones that don't care about you. The ones that have never heard. The ones that are not part of this Jewish system.
I want to be the one to go and preach to them.
I want to be the one that reaches out to someone that is socially different than myself. I want to reach out to someone that is radically different than who I am and what I believe. And that's what Philip says I want to go and do.
Imagine a firefighter who were to go into a burning house and say, where do you actually live at?
You're not on the right side of Ronda. I'm sorry, I can't come and take care of your house fire. You're on the wrong side of the river, right?
And I know if you were on the right side of the river, I would come and I would take care of your house fire. That would be absurd for us to think of if a firefighter were to do that or a police officer would respond to some violence.
But yet how often is it that we hesitate to reach out to people that look or smell or act different than we do?
And God is telling us when we live on mission, we've got to cultivate this heart of caring for people that are around us.
This attitude of compassion that is so much bigger than what we can even think or say or do. Think about the people that you naturally overlook or avoid.
As you go through Walmart, if you're like me, when you go to any Walmart in North Carolina, someone's going to know that you're there.
Someone knows you there. My wife, when we first got back to North Carolina, we lived in Rowan County where I was from. And we went to the Walmart and she was like, okay, we're going to run in.
It's going to be like a 10-minute visit and we're going to get out. And like two hours later, I ran into this high school teacher and this high school friend and this middle school teacher and my elementary school teacher. It's like I ran into person after person.
And she's like, can I just get out of the store?
But sometimes you just want to get in and get out and you want to ignore the people that are around you. And God says when we're on mission, when we've got something to tell the world,
maybe not avoid the people that are around us. Maybe take time to care for those people and really ask yourself, how can you demonstrate the love of Christ this week?
How can you demonstrate to people that are around you that don't know Christ what Christ's love and action is? You see, Christ didn't wait for people to come to him. Christ went to the lepers, as Terry talked about this morning.
Christ went to the ones that were hurting and said, how can I help you?
Christ went to the woman at the well that was there in the middle of the day that was where no one was around, that was neglected by the community, that was neglected by everyone else. And he went to her and he said, wouldn't you like to have eternal life?
Wouldn't you like to have a well that never runs dry?
He came to her and he loved her and he moved toward them so that they could hear the gospel, so they could hear the good news. As Maxwell says years ago in one of his books, people don't care how much they know until they know how much you care.
And oftentimes in this world, if we're going to live on mission and we're going to share the gospel with the people around us and we're going to do what God has told us to do at the very beginning
of Acts, where it says go and make disciples and tell the world and evangelize the world from Judea to Samaria to the uttermost parts of the world, if we're going to do that, we've got to show them that we care and that we love and that our love is not superficial.
You've met the person that just says they love you, but they don't really care a hill of beans about anything that you have to say. But when you go and you spend time and you care about that person and you love that person and you show them that you care about them,
for some reason in the life and the ministry and the season I'm in right now,
men and other pastors have began to even reach out and just say, hey, I need some help. I've got a guy coming over tonight who's a pastor who's struggling with his marriage. He's just struggling and needs some help and some comfort.
And I could have said, I'm too busy. I don't want you to be around me.
But a heart of care, a heart of love says, come spend some time with me.
Come spend some time how I can help you, how I can mentor, how I can be around you, how I can show you the love of Christ in the mess that you're in. And that's what this whole thing is about is how are we showing people how much we love.
I think the second thing that we begin to see in verses 26 to 31 is are we cooperating with the Spirit's leading?
Listening to the Spirit
Are we cooperating with the Spirit's leading? Another way to put this, are we listening to what the Spirit is saying when he's telling us what to do? Are we cooperating and understanding what the Spirit is saying? Philip obeyed immediately. There was no questions.
There was no delay. He said, this is what is required of me. The Spirit is telling me to do this. I'm going to go.
I want us to almost compare for a moment in your mind's eye of Jonah. We went through the book of Jonah last year and what a great study. It helped me out so much. But what did Jonah do?
When Jonah, when the Spirit of the Lord, when the angel of the Lord came to Jonah and said, go down to Nineveh, go and preach the gospel, what did Jonah do? Class, what did Jonah do? He ran the other way.
He said, I don't want to do what you're telling me to do, God. I'm going to go do my own thing.
I'm going to run down and all of a sudden I'm going to get on this boat. There's going to be a storm and I'm going to eventually get inside of a belly as well. And eventually I'm going to listen, but I'm going to be reluctant.
I'm not going to do what you want me to do out of love and compassion. I'm going to do it because you're making me do it. But what does Philip do?
Verse 26, the angel of the Lord spoke and the Spirit, verse 29, told Philip what to do.
And verse 30, Philip ran up. He didn't stroll. He didn't walk generously. He didn't like, oh God, I can't believe you're making me run beside this chariot. I can't believe you're making me run beside these horses.
There's dust everywhere. I'm getting dirty out here, God. There was no complaining. It says he ran up and he joined himself with this chariot.
I mean, you can imagine they're going down this road. They wouldn't have stopped for him.
He would have had to continue run along. I would be out of breath. I wouldn't know how to sigh. There would be no words coming out. It would be me gasping for air.
And yet Philip is running alongside of this chariot, immediately responding to a willingness to act upon the gospel because the Spirit told him to go and do it.
It's like if you're going on a trip and you miss the GPS turn, it's going to reroute you. And if you continue to miss the turn, you're going to continue to get further and further away from your destination. And the Holy Spirit comes into us and he says,
listen to my spirit. Listen to my scripture. Listen to the prompting of the Holy Spirit.
When the Spirit talks and begin to ask yourself is when God speaks to us, not in an audible voice, but when he pricks your heart and you know you need to talk to that person, are you responding the right way? When's the last time you really sensed the prompting of the Holy Spirit?
When's the last time the Spirit told you to do something and you gave an excuse?
You delayed in your response and you said, maybe next time, maybe another time, maybe something else is going to happen and these things are going to come up and we begin to give excuses. What I wrote down was just simply pray daily.
daily, God, lead me to someone who needs you today and then begin to stay sensitive, stay alert, stay in this mindset of God, who is going to come across my path that I need to simply give a simple
nudge to. It's just a simple moment of a care, of a response of saying, I'm here, I care about you, I want to listen to what's going on in your life. So there's got to be love, there's got to be compassion,
you've got to be listening to the Spirit, but then the third thing this morning that concludes the rest of this chapter 20, 32 through 40, are we communicating the gospel boldly?
This is where I want to spend the majority of our time this morning because what happens is, is when we speak truth, the Lord begins to save. When we speak the truth of the gospel, the Lord begins to work in someone else's life.
This has happened to you, right? Someone spoke the truth of the gospel in your life and if you're a believer here this morning, the gospel was a transformational thing that, that overwhelmed your heart, overwhelmed your soul and the only thing you could do was repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Communicating the Gospel Boldly
And this is what happens when we communicate the gospel boldly. What does the gospel do? The gospel does what we can't do. I can't save someone.
I can't, I can't manipulate someone into heaven. I can't guilt someone into making a decision.
Only the Spirit of the living God, the Holy Spirit works in a way that can change someone's life. And if this morning we communicate the gospel boldly, the Spirit will do the rest. That's the beautiful thing about the gospel. The results are not on me.
My job is to simply tell others about the good news and allow the Lord to do the rest. Allow the Lord to take care of the rest. But how are we communicating the gospel?
I believe that Philip gives us a pretty good layout of how we can do that. The first thing he does is he is engaging with questions.
And are we being engaging with questions? Use questions like Jesus did.
Jesus, the great teacher, the master teacher, as the Bible tells us, used questions in a way to open the door for him to come in. He gave parables. He gave stories. I use this often. Imagine a shepherd that had 100 sheep. He loved his sheep.
He cared for his sheep. He did everything for his sheep.
And he looked up and he counted that there was only 99 sheep there. Oh, he loved his sheep so much. He looked out and he noticed that one wasn't there.
And as Jesus is telling the story, he talks about how the shepherd leaves the 99 just to go get that one because he cared so much for that one. And Jesus told stories. He brought people into there so that he could tell them about the good news.
And he began to ask questions. And he began to say, have you ever thought of this? Have you ever thought of how there's whitewashed tombs and how there's, they look good on the outside, but on the inside there's dead men's bones. And he looked at the Pharisees and he says, is that you this morning? Are you white?
Are you looking good on the outside, but on the inside you're dead and you need something to be changed? And he used these questions to bring us in and we have the opportunity to ask the same questions. I wrote down a couple.
Maybe you want to jot these down. I left some room there. What do you believe about Jesus? A simple question.
They may look at you and say, uh, I don't like that person. He's my neighbor. Oh no, I'm not talking about Jesus, your neighbor.
I'm not going to go. Hey, Zeus over there. I'm talking about the Jesus of the Bible. The one that came to die for us. What do you think about him? Maybe a question will be, do you believe there's life after death?
Do you believe that when we die, are we just going to go into the ground and, and be done? Or is there life after death? Maybe you could ask the question, what do you think this verse means?
I was reading the other day and the Lord brought me to this verse. And have you ever thought about this verse of scripture for God so loved the world that he gave? Have you ever given like that? And all of a sudden you have brought scripture.
You've brought Jesus into your conversation to someone that you care about, to someone that you want to know the gospel that changed your life.
Genuine Interest in Others
It all starts though with a genuine interest in someone else. It all starts with, are you interested in this person? Are you just here because you've just been put there? Or do you care about them? Are you listening more than you talk? James says it well.
He says that you've been given two ears to listen and one mouth to speak. And oftentimes we need to listen more than we speak. And this is a difficult one for me. I like to speak.
This is the profession I have is speaking. And so, so speaking is part of it. But oftentimes my wife will tell me, James, you were speaking before you fully heard everything they were saying. And she'll tell me, you need to listen and show this intent that you're actually listening. You care.
I know you care about them. I'm not saying you don't, but your mind is working 10 steps ahead.
And sometimes you just need to listen. And these are things that me, that I struggle with is am I listening more than I'm talking about, allowing people to share so that I can give them the hope of the gospel, not only for salvation, but for sanctification and how well they're growing in the gospel.
Second thing is, are we grounded in the word? Be grounded in the word of God.
I wrote it like this, a little sub point. Know it so you can share it. You only share what you know.
And if you don't know scripture, then you're not going to be able to share scripture. So I love what the women are doing right now on Wednesday night with their scripture memorization and Bible study because they're memorizing scripture.
They're, they're putting in their heart so that when the Lord brings it back up to them later, they'll have that in their heart.
This was a Psalm out of, I'm sorry. This was out of Isaiah 53 where Philip began with scripture because this man was reading scripture. He was already trying to figure out what was going on and he took Isaiah 53 and he explained Jesus.
If you don't know Jesus, you're not going to be able to share him with anyone. Someone comes to me and says, Hey, how's Bertie doing?
I can tell him everything, all the good, all the bad, all the stories, everything that's going on in his life. Why can I tell him that? Because I know him. I live with him.
He's part of, he's my son. He's, he's everything that we're going on, right? He's, he's, I know what's going on because I've been around him. And if we don't know the Lord, don't expect to share the Lord. We must know it to share with others.
Imagine going to a doctor and the doctor doesn't know how to treat the disease or the wound that you're going with. They can't help.
They can't, they can't do anything more than what I could probably do. And yet you're going to find someone else that can give you that healing. The gospel is the healing truth. We must know it so that we can share it.
A great exercise for you to do is to ask yourself, can you clearly explain the gospel to someone that is needing help today? Are you so in tune with the word that you're able to take the word and expound it in a way to really transform, transform someone's life?
I'm not going to go through full here, but there's a really cool thing here with the eunuch and why it's specific. The eunuchs were not allowed to even go to the temple.
So if you take care of that, if you get rid of the Old Testament this morning, the eunuchs would have to stand outside of the temple when they went to worship. So when the eunuch is saying to Philip,
how can I even come here? How can I go here? He is literally saying, I can't even go to the temple. I was just there with, with, with the queen. I was just there with her. How can I even come to this person that you're talking about?
Philip knew so much about scripture. He was able to bring this in and say, Jesus has went away with that. So now that you have free access and he accepted and he began to see God work in his life. The last couple of verses here, are we expectant that God will work?
Be expectant that God's going to work.
Trusting God's Promises
Trust God. Believe that if his word says it's going to happen, then it's words going to happen. And believe that God is going to work greater things through us. Expect God to move.
The eunuch responded with faith and the Bible says he got baptized. Philip was faithful to share, but God did the saving work. God did the rest. He took care of it. And in that moment, Philip disappeared and the gospel took root.
The gospel changed this man's life in a way that we can see today the effects of what happened. The eunuch begins to go his way, begins to rejoice.
And there was transformation that happened. So much transformation happened that if you look in the land of Ethiopia and in the land of South Africa right now, Ethiopia remains the largest Christian nation in Africa. As of 2024, Ethiopia had the largest Christian population on the continent.
And some people believe it's the largest Christian population in the entire world. With approximately 77 million people identifying as Christian. 50% of the population is Christians.
Because of one man, 2,000 years ago, Philip, who listened to the spirits leading, who joined himself with the chariot and said, I know I'm going through a struggle. I know things are tough. I'm having to run here, which is, I mean, this is not fun. I'm having to do this.
And yet, 2,000 years later, we see the gospel in Ethiopia stronger than any other nation, probably to date that we've ever seen.
Some date that if you look back a couple years ago, that 90% of Ethiopia were Christians at one point. It was incredible to look at what this one person did for the sake of the gospel. It's like a farmer who goes out and begins to plant seeds.
And months and months later, the seeds began to produce fruit that took time and time and process.
It didn't happen overnight. It wasn't something that happened the next day, but it was a process. And that's what the gospel does. The gospel takes root. The gospel goes in and the spirit begins to do what you cannot do. Are you this morning discouraged because you haven't seen immediate results?
This can be a discouragement for people where you share and you love and you care and you say, God, why are you not doing these things? If I can be an encouragement for you this morning, keep on keeping on. Keep on telling people. Keep on sharing the gospel. Continue to plant the seeds.
As Paul says later in scripture, he says, I planted the seeds.
Apollos, he watered the seed and yet God gives the increase. Our responsibility is just to share the good news and to share the gospel and allow God to water the seed, maybe through someone else so that the good news can continue to go through each other.
Invitation and Reflection
As Terry comes and plays our hymn of invitation, I just have a couple of questions to ask us. I know I've asked a lot of questions today.
I want us to really get thinking on what we can do as we're on mission. But I want to tell you that living on mission isn't reserved for pastors and missionaries. This is a call for every single person, right?
Philip was a everyday Christian who was a deacon who was just serving. And yet he was prompted for a purpose.
He was told to go here and to do that. And each and every one of us are in situations and are in locations where we are on mission for God. When the spirit prompts you, how are we responding?
How are we responding to the spirit leading and guiding us in our life? Are we prepared with the truth of the gospel?
Has the gospel penetrated our hearts so much? As I gave that illustration, I give it often from camp. We fill our water bottle up with our life up with something. And when we're hit, what comes out? Is the gospel coming out when we're nudged? When we're pushed?
When we're prodded? Is the gospel overflowing from our life?
Are we sharing the good news that Christ has changed our life because it's inside of us? And ask yourself these three simple questions. Do you have the compassion of Christ? Christ looked at those that were beating him as we looked at it last week.
As Christ looked at the ones that were crucifying him and he looked at them and said, Father, forgive them for they don't know what they're doing. Oh, the love that Christ had for humanity was greater than we'll ever see in this lifetime. And are we exhibiting that same compassion that Christ had?
Are we listening and responding to the spirit? And ultimately, are we willing to open our mouth and share? Even in the response that Stephen did when he opened his mouth and shared and persecution came. Is that what's holding us back? Church, this morning, we have to be on mission.
Jesus said it, as I said in Acts chapter 1-8, go into the world. It was not a question mark. It was not an option. It was a command to go and to be the hands and feet of Jesus in this world. And are we doing that this morning? It's tough. I know.
But I know someone that's overcome the world. His name is Jesus. And he said, do not fear. I have come into this world to overcome the world. Are we responding in that same way? Father, I pray that you would be with the message this morning, Lord.
Closing Thanks and Encouragement
Thank you for what you've given me. Thank you for the encouragement that you've worked in my soul. As I've been looking through this book. As I've been studying verse by verse.
As you've been continuing to mold my life into this book. Help us as we go from this place. Help us today as we respond. Help us to go into other people and to tell them about the good news of Christ. In your name we pray. Amen.
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