the book of Acts Week 14 | June 15, 2025

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Morning. Everyone. Welcome to Indie Metro Church.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
If we've not met, I'm Rachel and I'm a part
of the leadership team here. And Happy Father's Day to
all the fathers out there and all the father figures.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
We're really glad you all are here.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
So before we jump into today's text, I want to
look back at what we explored last week in Acts.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Eight month through twenty five.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
So this was right after Stephen's death, when persecution broke
out in Jerusalem and the early Believers were scattered, But
the scattering didn't stop the movement, it spread it.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Philip, one of the early church.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Leaders, ended up in Samaria. That was a region full
of deep cultural and religious tension between Jews and Samaritans,
and yet when he breached the message of Jesus, it
was received with joy. Many people believed were baptized and
experienced healing. It was a powerful moment of reconciliation, a
reminder that God's Kingdom isn't limited to one group, It's

(01:01):
open to all.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
We wrestled with.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Two big challenges in the passage. First, the Samaritans didn't
receive the Holy Spirit right away, which raised the question
why the delay. We saw that God wanted the Jewish
leaders Peter and John to be there in person to
witness and affirm that these former outsiders were fully included. Second,
we met Simon the Sorcerer. He seemingly believed and was baptized,

(01:27):
but he still tried to use faith for his own
personal gain. He wasn't interested in transformation. He wanted to
use God's control and power as a tool to increase
his own fame. So the questions we were left with
were are we letting go of pride and self interest?
Are we standing with people the world overlooks? Are we

(01:47):
letting faith shape us? Are we just trying to use
it to stay in control? So that brings us to today,
where we will continue to see God show us who
is acceptable in his kingdom. We'll see that the Spirit
moves Philip again, this time not to a crowd, but
to a quiet wilderness road, not because his work was done,
but because someone who's been long excluded is about to

(02:10):
be brought in.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
Today we'll talk about how God moves.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
How he shows up in unexpected places and among unexpected people.
We'll watch the Spirit lead Philip away from the public
spotlight to meet one person on the margins, and we'll
see inclusion not as a trend or buzzword, but as
a deep truth about about who and how God God's
Kingdom works. We'll wrestle with our own assumptions about who belongs,

(02:37):
how we read scripture, and what growth in our faith
actually looks like. Our passage today zooms in on a
one on one interaction, but it opens up a big question.
Where might God be inviting us to slow down, to
listen more closely, and to see that no one is
beyond God's reach. So let's hold that in our mind
as we read today's text. So our passage this morning

(03:00):
is Acts eight twenty six through forty. As for Philip,
an Angel of the Lord said to him, go south
down the desert road that runs from Jerusalem to Gaza.
So he started out, and he met the Treasurer of Ethiopia,
a eunuch of great authority under the Candika, the Queen
of Ethiopia. The eunuch had gone to Jerusalem to worship,

(03:24):
and he was now returning. Seated in his carriage, he
was reading aloud from the book of the Prophet Isaiah.
The Holy Spirit said to Philip, go over and walk
along beside the carriage. So Philip ran over and heard
the man reading from the prophet Isaiah. Philip asked, do
you understand what you're reading? The man replied, how can
I unless someone else, unless someone instructs me, and he

(03:48):
urged Philip to come up into the carriage and sit
with him. The passage of scripture he had been reading
was this, He was led like a sheep to the slaughter,
and as a lamb is silent before this year, he
did not open his mouth. He was humiliated and received
no justice. Who can speak of his descendants? For his
life was taken from the earth. The eunuch asked Philip,

(04:11):
tell me, was the prophet talking about himself or someone else? So,
beginning with the same scripture, Philip told him the good
news about Jesus. As they rode along, they came to
some water, and the eunuch said, look, there's some water.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
Why can't I be baptized. He ordered the carriage to.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
Stop, and they went down into the water, and Philip
baptized him.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
When they came up.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
Out of the water, the spirit of the Lord snatched
Philip away. The eunuch never saw him again, but went
on his way rejoicing Meanwhile, Philip found himself farther north
in the town of Azeitas. He preached the good news
there and in every town along the way until he
came to cesarea. So last week we saw a drastically
different setting than in today's passage. Let's compare them. For

(04:55):
a moment, Philip was in Samaria preaching to crowds, healing
people and demons. It says there was great joy in
the city. We saw a big impact, in a momentum
towards the gospel. This was a big public transformation. And
then this week the spirit tells Philip to leave that
experience behind, to walk down a desert road in the

(05:16):
middle of nowhere. We see this big contrast. It's a
clear juxtaposition from the energy and excitement of a public
revival and Samaria to a quiet, private conversation with a
single person, a eunuch and the Margins, who in every
way would have been considered an outsider. We saw lots
of momentum in the kingdom and in our fast paced

(05:36):
world that would have been seen as a very efficient
use of time. The Gospel was being accepted by large
groups and people were.

Speaker 1 (05:43):
Being changed quickly.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Yet in today's passage, Philip was sent in a very
direct way to buy the spirit to the Eunuch. Both
scenes reveal how God works through different moments for different purposes.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
One isn't better than the other. There are just two
examples of how.

Speaker 2 (05:59):
Wide and creative God's reach really is when it comes
to calling those he loves. What we see here in
chapter eight is the promise from Acts one eight coming
to life. It says, but you will receive power when
the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be
my witness, telling people about me everywhere in Jerusalem, throughout

(06:20):
Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
Jesus tells them how the gospel will spread, and here
it is unfolding, first in Samaria with an entire city
hearing and receiving, and then on a quiet desert road
where one man from the ends of the earth is
brought into the story. So this chapter isn't just a continuation,
it's a direct fulfillment of what Jesus said would happen.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
This was a pivotal.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
Point between Jesus's ministry and the Spirit and Power Church,
and Philip's journey to the desert road would have been
considered the Ends of the Earth. An nt he Write's
book acts for everyone. He writes about the phrase ends
of the Earth, saying it means not only the farthest
reaches of the known world, but also the farthest reaches

(07:04):
of social and cultural boundaries. So last week we saw
how the Samaritans were considered outsiders and how God made
sure Peter and John were there when they received the
Holy Spirit because their inclusion was hard for others to accept.
This week, we see a similar pattern with a eunuch,
another person on the margins, fully welcomed into God's kingdom.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
This is not just.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
Because of the many reasons and rules that didn't allow
a eunuch to be included, but also because many first
century Jews considered the place the encounter happened as the
ends of the earth. We can see through the eyes
of the first century Jews just how far God is
stretching who could be included in his kingdom so in away.
This moment with the eunuch brings closure to that arc

(07:49):
that began with Jesus's words in One Aight, we watched
the Gospel stretch across boundaries, religious, social, and geographic to
include those once thought too far, and when we zoom out,
it echoes what Jesus was doing in the Sermon on
the Mount, not replacing one rule book with another, but
expanding our vision of who God is and who belongs

(08:10):
in his kingdom. So in a way, the moment with
the Eunuch is bringing sorry I see.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
I can see how God's.

Speaker 2 (08:18):
Power at work in both of these moments, one through
a sweeping movement that changed an entire city and the
other through a quiet personal encounter on a desert road.
But if I'm honest, I tend to default to what
feels most efficient.

Speaker 1 (08:31):
I like to see progress.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
I grab a towards doing the most with what I have,
And it's easy to miss that work God is doing
through an in us because our personal scales don't measure it.
It's measured by faithfulness. So it's such a reminder to
me of how God doesn't have to operate within human
categories or logic.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
I could see how.

Speaker 2 (08:52):
Simon might want to bottle up the Spirit's power and
make it portable. It's a universal human impulse. We want
to control outcomes, replicate what worked before, and prove that
our efforts are worth continuing. But the Spirit doesn't follow
our efficiency models. God isn't just interested in crowds or metrics.
He's interested in people, individual people, even the ones in

(09:15):
the middle of nowhere, even the ones the world has
overlooked or written off, even the ones who don't make
sense on paper. And I could easily see myself hesitating
in philips shoes, wondering is the Spirit really telling me
to go, especially because it doesn't seem like any of
my safe people are going to come with me, and
the ends of the earth feel really far away. But

(09:37):
that hesitation, that discomfort is precisely when something shifts, because
it's often in those moments that God invites us to
expand our view of who he is, not just a theory,
but in real personal ways, to stretch beyond what we've
assumed and begin to trust that His scope.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
Is far greater than ours.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
So I really want us to use this to chat, challenge,
and expand our view of God. And that's going to
look different for each of us. As Isaiah fifty five
eight nine reminds us, my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As
the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my
ways higher than your ways and my thoughts your thoughts.

(10:19):
This is a beautiful, freeing reminder. It means that even
when we can't fully see the picture, God is already
working within it. Well, this is a beautiful reminder. It
can also feel a little bit uncomfortable because our human
nature is challenged as we realize that we're not in control.
Means that sometimes, like Philip, we're called to step away
from that momentum, from that logic of the moment, and

(10:42):
trust that God is see something or is doing something
we don't we don't see. But it's also comforting because
we serve a God who isn't bound by what binds us.

Speaker 1 (10:53):
He's not too late, he's not too early.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
He's not boxed in by culture or geography, by social
status or religious traditions.

Speaker 1 (11:01):
He doesn't favor the familiar or prioritize the powerful. God
isn't read.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
God's reach isn't limited by who we think is ready
or worthy or close enough.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
He moved towards.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
Those on the margins, those pushed aside because of their identity,
their past, or their position, and he calls them in.
So that's exactly what we're seeing in this passage. The
eunuch checks every box for exclusion. He's foreign, he's a
sexual minority, and he's cut off from full participation in
temple worship. And he's the one the Spirit sends Philip

(11:35):
to not as a detour, but as a destination.

Speaker 1 (11:44):
And you can look and see how ready he is.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
He's searching, he's reading the scripture out loud on the
way home from his journey to the temple. But because
he was a eunuch, he could not participate in that
this time traveling to the Temple and not being able
to enter would have been of very real reminder of
where he didn't belong. He invited Philip into his space,
ask the right questions, and when he hears the good

(12:08):
news of Jesus, his response is immediate, what's stopping me
from being baptized. It's like the Spirit saw how open
his heart was and made sure he wouldn't miss that moment. God,
through his spirit, sent Philip straight to him, and once
the baptism happened, the Spirit snatched Philip away. The mission
was that specific, that deliberate, and that full of grace.

(12:31):
So when we step off the path that we like
to default God into we couldn't start to see just
how vast and personal he really is. That kind of
rethinking of who belongs and how God moves isn't new.
It's exactly what Jesus was doing throughout much of his ministry.
This is a mind shift that we can see Jesus
explaining when he gives the Sermon on the Mount. So

(12:54):
before we move forward, let's take a moment and look
back at the Sermon on the Mount, Whereesus was already
reshaping people's understanding of the kingdom and inviting them to
see God in themselves differently. The Sermon on the Mount
is a collection of teachings by Jesus found in Matthew
chapters five through seven. It's one of the most well

(13:14):
known and foundational sections of Jesus's teaching, laying out what
life in God's Kingdom looks like. In it, over and
over again, he says, you've heard it said, but I
say to you so that phrase alone should stop and
make us think. It tells us that Jesus wasn't afraid
of challenging the inherited assumptions of even the most religious

(13:35):
people of his day, and not just challenge them, but
reshape and replace them with something deeper, more true, and
more costly. That moment on the hillside, Jesus was speaking
to a crowd who thought they already knew how the
world worked. Many of them had grown up with a
strong sense of right and wrong, of clean and unclean,
of who belonged and who didn't.

Speaker 1 (13:57):
Jesus didn't throw all that away.

Speaker 2 (13:59):
He didn't put wish them to see, but he did
push them to see that the Kingdom of God operates
on different standards. Not surface level righteousness, but heart deep transformation.
Not just avoiding murder but confronting anger, not just avoiding
adultery but pursuing purity, not just loving your neighbor, but
loving your enemies. The Sermon on the Mount is a

(14:20):
vision of what it looks like when the Kingdom of
God is open and anchored into what it was intended
to be. It's not always comfortable, it's not always clear cut,
but it calls us into something real, something that requires
us to be really willing to rethink.

Speaker 1 (14:35):
So now let's fast forward to Acts eight.

Speaker 2 (14:38):
The Church is growing, persecution is increasing, and the Holy
Spirit is moving people in unexpected directions. Philip, who has
just seen incredible ministry success in Samaria, as told by
an angel to head out to a desert road, no explanation,
no details, just go, and Philip does. On that road,
he meets someone who doesn't fit the mold, a man

(14:58):
from northern Sudan, which was just south of Egypt in
our modern day. This man is a eunuch, a high
ranking official in a foreign government, someone who had traveled
a long way to worship in Jerusalem, only to be
kept at a distance because of his identity. He's reading
Isaiah out loud and trying to make sense of it,
and Philip, led again by the spirit, walks up and asks,

(15:21):
do you understand what you're reading? So here's where this
ties back to the Sermon on the Mountain. Jesus said,
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
He said, Blessed are those who are hungry and thirst
for righteousness, for they will be filled. The eunuch is
living both of those things in real time. He's hungry
for truth, he's seeking God. He's reading the scripture even

(15:42):
though the religious world has told him he doesn't fully belong,
and God honors that search. Philip doesn't preach at him.
He doesn't give him a list of rules. He doesn't state.
He starts where that man is. He listens to his questions,
and then he tells him the good news about Jesus.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
That's it.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
And when they come across, the eunuch asks what is
to prevent me from being baptized? That question carries a
lot of weight because of the cost of being a
eunuch and getting access to these high levels of government
was exclusion from almost everything else. So for most of
his life, the answer to that question about what was
keeping him from being included would have been a lot

(16:20):
your status, your body, your nationality, your history.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
That Philip didn't hesitate.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
Because when Jesus said Blessed are the poor in spirit,
he met people like this man, and the spirit had
quite literally gone ahead to make this moment possible. In
many ways, what happens on the Desert Road is the
Sermon on the mount in motion, the gospel reaching beyond boundaries,
a heart hungry for truth being met with grace. A

(16:46):
man who had been excluded is finally being fully welcomed.
And just like in Jesus's teaching, there's an invitation here
for us all. Are we willing to rethink what we've assumed.
Are we open to the possibility that God is doing
something new, not connected from scripture, but deeply rooted in
its purpose, That maybe, just maybe some of the things
we have inherited culturally, theologically, socially needs to be revisited

(17:10):
in the light of Christ. This is not us compromising
our beliefs or showing signs of spiritual weakness. This is
faithfulness believing God's truth is always going to reveal itself
to us. Asking tough questions about what we believe sometimes
is a little less scary when we believe that God
will not lead us astray. It takes spiritual maturity to

(17:31):
admit that what we've always believed might not be the
whole story. Takes humility to say, maybe I misunderstood something.

Speaker 1 (17:39):
But if God's truth.

Speaker 2 (17:40):
Is real and I believe it is, then his truth
can handle our questions. It can meet us in our rethinking,
and just like the eunuch on the road, we might
find that what felt like a wilderness is actually the
place where God is showing up most. Clearly, the goal
isn't doubt, it's depth. Jesus didn't fear questions, Philip didn't
fear the Eunuch's differences. I mean, maybe he did, but

(18:03):
he didn't let that fear stop him from following the
spirit anyway. And the Eunuch, in his lifelong exclusion, didn't
let his fear stop him from asking can I be included?
So much of what Jesus said in the Sermon on
the Mount was aimed at people who thought they already
had the answers. Ax eight shows us what it looks
like when someone admits they don't accepts anyway, but wants

(18:26):
to learn, and in God's kingdom, that's enough. It isn't
just a good story. It's a true account, and it's
still happening every time we sit with someone different than us,
every time we ask hard questions with open hearts, every
time we let the spirit lead us off the well
worn path. We are living the kind of faith Jesus
preached in the early Church practiced. This kind of rethinking

(18:47):
doesn't just happen once. It's not a one time realization.
It's a posture we're invited to keep coming back to,
because as we keep following God, we're going to keep
bumping into places where our understanding of Him is too small.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
And when that happens.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
We have a choice. We can tighten our grip or
we can open our hands. But that's really where the
challenge sets in because God is really vast. He's not
working within our limits. He's not boxed by time, space, tradition,
or even our best attempts at faithfulness. We, on the
other hand, like things that fit into categories. We like rules, structure,

(19:23):
want to know what the boundaries are so we can
feel secure inside them.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
That's what made the Sermon on the Mount so radical.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
Jesus stood in front of a crowd of people who
had been taught that the law, the commands, the traditions,
the rituals were the highest expression of faith to them.
That was the finish line. The goal was to follow
the law as perfectly as possible. But Jesus didn't throw
it out. He reframed it. He said, you've heard it said,
but I say to you over and over again, not

(19:51):
because he was canceling the law, but because he was
revealing something deeper. He was showing them that God's heart
had always been bigger than the boundaries built In an
Act eight, we see that same pattern continue. You have
someone the eunuch, who, under the law would have been excluded,
shut up from temple worship, always at the edge. But

(20:13):
here comes Philip, led by the spirit, not to reinforce
the boundary, but to extend the invitation. We try to
contain God. We try to contain God and what we know.
We try to understand Him through the lens of our rules,
our upbringing, our expectations. Whether this is intentional or not,
we are all always viewing God through our own personal

(20:33):
lens of life. But God is vast, and when we
allow ourselves to admit that we don't see the whole picture,
when we stop expecting God to only move in ways
we can measure, we're actually opening ourselves up to be
surprised by grace. So as we hold all this together,
the Sermon on the Mount, the scattering of the believers,

(20:53):
the surprising call to the margins, let's take a step
back and consider what it tells us about who God
is and how we're in vie to respond. You see,
it's easy for us to look back on people in
history and wonder how they could have believed what they did.
How could scientists once insist the earth was flat? How
could doctors think blood letting was this solution? To almost

(21:14):
every illness. How could people justify slavery using scripture? And
those beliefs weren't obscure, they were popular and widespread, and
people held them with confidence.

Speaker 1 (21:25):
They believed they were right. And that's the danger.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
We assume we are the generation that finally sees clearly
that our understanding of scripture, justice, of inclusion, of how
God works, that's it basically settled now. But that's the
illusion of finality at work. This illusion is the mistaken
belief that our current perspective is the full picture, that
what we understand now is complete, accurate, and no longer

(21:51):
needs to be questioned or revisited.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
We see this in church history too.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
Centuries ago, Christians were certain that salvation required not just faith,
but adherence to elaborate rules and rituals. Later, others were
sure that only men should lead, or people of certain
races or backgrounds could be equal participants in the life
of the church. And in each generation, faithful followers of
Jesus had to be willing to rethink what they thought
was settled, always returning to scripture but reading it with

(22:19):
fresh humility. And it's not that the truth keeps changing,
it's that our understanding of it deepens. The Spirit keeps teaching,
and we're invited again and again to ask not just
what do I know, but what am I still assuming
is final? That might need to be re examined. So
that brings us back to Philip on the desert road,

(22:39):
because it's not just us who deal with the illusion
of finality. Philip had to confront it too. You grew
up Jewish, he knew the scriptures. He would have been
shaped by a religious system that had very strong boundaries
about who was in and who was out. And someone
like the Eunuchu a gentile, a foreigner from the distant
kingdom of Kush and physically altered in a way that

(23:01):
the law said made someone uncleued. This was not someone
Philip would have naturally seen as part of God's covenant people.

Speaker 1 (23:09):
Deuteronomy twenty three run.

Speaker 2 (23:10):
Is explicit no one who has been emasculated by crushing
or cutting may enter the assembly of the Lord. So
that's what Philip grew up with. This wasn't just a
cultural bias, it was scripture. But when the Spirit sent
him down a dusty road and says, go Philip went
to him, Philip had to set aside not just his assumptions,
but even how he thought God's word worked. He had

(23:33):
to trust that the spirit wasn't leading him away from scripture,
but deeper into it, deeper into the heart of God,
who was always expanding the boundaries of belonging and always
reaching farther than people expected. So here's where this gets wild.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
Though.

Speaker 2 (23:48):
The eunuch was reading Isaiah fifty three, and just a
few chapters before that passage the Promise, just a few
chapters before the passage that promised this very inclusion fifty
six three through five says, let no foreigner who is
bound to the lords say the Lord will surely exclude
me from his people, and let no unuch complain. I

(24:09):
am only a dry tree. For this is what the
Lord says to the eunuchs who keep my sabbath, who
choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant.
To them, I will give within my temple and its
walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters.
So in that moment, it wasn't just the eunuch learning
something new. It was Philip realizing that what seemed like

(24:29):
a closed door in Jude Moronomy had already been swung
wide open in Isaiah, but he had to be willing
to see it, to let go of what he assumed
was final, to trade certainty for obedience. And that's the
invitation to us too. So here's some questions for us
to sit with. When you hear the Sermon on the Mount,
do you hear it as just another list of spiritual expectations,

(24:52):
a new way to be good? Or do you hear
it as Jesus widening our vision of who God is
and what his kingdom is actually like, Because if we're
not careful, we can trade one set of rules for
another and miss the heart of it.

Speaker 1 (25:05):
Philip could have stayed where the.

Speaker 2 (25:07):
Fruit was obvious, where the crowds were gathered, where the
work felt efficient and successful, whereas safe people were but
the spirit led him away from all that towards someone
who didn't check any of the expected boxes. And when
he got there, he didn't preach a formula. He listened,
he responded to the questions. He met the eunuch right
where he was, and that's what faithfulness looks like in

(25:29):
that moment, And for the eunuch, he didn't hesitate, despite
all the barriers religious had placed in front of him.
His heart was wide open, he was ready. The Spirit
had already been at works, stirring questions, creating hunger, preparing
that exact encounter. So maybe the invitation for us today
isn't to try harder or believe louder. Maybe it's to

(25:51):
slow down and ask what assumptions am I caring without
realizing it? What boundaries have I inherited about God and
who belongs and how faith is supposed to work that
I've never really questioned, not because I'm unkind, not because
I'm resistant, but because but just because it's what I've
always believed. We can't and don't always name those things

(26:15):
that we hold, but they shape us. They show up
and who we listen to, who we trust, and who
we think is in or out. They show up in
how we respond to the spirit, whether we're willing to
follow even when the road doesn't make sense. Jesus's words
on the Sermon on the Mountain weren't just new instructions.

Speaker 1 (26:31):
They were in an invitation.

Speaker 2 (26:33):
To see with new eyes, and Axe eight shows us
what it looks like when someone actually does. When someone
opens up their heart, their understanding and their plans to
make space for.

Speaker 1 (26:42):
God to move. So what if we did the same.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
What if the questions we've been afraid to ask are
actually the place where the Spirit is trying to speak.
What if rethinking isn't a threat to our faith but
a path into deeper trust because the Spirit is still speaking,
still sending, still surprising us with grace in the places
we least expect, And the only question left is are
we willing to go