This Is It
Notes
Transcript
Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” This is a desert place. And he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and join this chariot.” So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Now the passage of the Scripture that he was reading was this:
“Like a sheep 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.”
And the eunuch said to Philip, “About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. And as they were going along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?” And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he passed through he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.
Scripture: Acts 8:26-40
Belgic Confession Lesson: Article 7
Sermon Title: This Is It
Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is one of those passages that can grab our attention. The way the events unfold tend to draw us in. I think usually it is because of the role of the Holy Spirit. An angel told this man, Philip, a leader in the church, to go, walk down the desert road, and when he did, he was led to visit with a foreigner. This Ethiopian man who worked for rulers was studying Scripture, but did not fully understand them yet. Upon explaining the passage and the gospel to him, Philip got to baptize the man, and then “The Spirit of the Lord suddenly took [him] away.” Like we were talking about this morning, it appeals to us when things happen quickly.
But maybe for some of us, it is not just the actions, but we feel connected to this account. We believe God has spoken to us before to go and talk to certain people. We have heard or seen someone reading a Bible, and got to have a conversation about what they were reading and about Jesus. We have seen the transforming work of the Spirit in bringing someone to true faith—the good news of Jesus Christ became real for them. It is beneficial for us to have passages that make us excited. Or that we look to and say, “I think I’ve experienced something like that.”
But as we consider our passage, what is at the heart of it is that there is something special and unique about the document, the Scriptures, that the Ethiopian eunuch was reading. In the last couple of months, I have started teaching through the articles of the Belgic Confession—one of our Reformed confessions written about 450 years. Guido de Brès, the author, wrote the document wanting to show that Protestant Christians held to and lived with true Christian doctrine. Where do we find that? How do we know what we should believe? Our tradition says we can turn nowhere else than to the Bible.
A few of the articles that we have covered so far have looked at what books are and are not to be considered Scripture. We looked at how we believe the Bible and its teachings have authority over our lives, because the words are inspired by and come from God. The Bible can be used for certain things. Now we come to Article 7, summarized with the title, “The Sufficiency of Scripture,” and I invite you to follow along on your handouts as I read through it.
I think we can boil that statement down to three words: This is it. If you have Scripture to turn to or to remember, that is enough. Back in my Sunday School days we would sing, and I get to hear it when we listen to some of the sing-a-long CDs that Addison likes, “The B-I-B-L-E.” If we have heard it once, even a long time ago, we probably remember that it continues, “Yes, that’s the book for me. I stand alone on the Word of God, the B-I-B-L-E.” The song is short, simple, and easy to remember. For kids, it stresses the importance of the Bible in their lives as Christians.
But the message of the song goes deeper than that. “I stand alone on the Word of God.” That is not a statement that should be made lightly. On this alone we stand, this is it, the Bible contains something that nothing else does or ever will. As Philip met this man and his travel companions, and was given a ride while he talked to him, they were looking at what that is. Now he had some introduction to the Christian God, we were told he worshiped in Jerusalem. But what did Isaiah’s prophecies and the Scriptures teach him that nothing else could?
Using the Confession as our template, first of all, we believe that the Bible contains the will of God completely. That’s a heavy statement. It relates to a question getting asked more and more in our culture today, what does God want me to do? As young people are finishing up high school or taking courses in college, that is a question that many of them consider. In the past, a lot of people have just taken jobs—I have this skill set and so I will work in this area. But now with more selections, people wonder if there is something more specific that they should be doing?
Sometimes, we hear it in relationships, too. Maybe influenced a bit by the idea of having a soul mate, some wonder what God’s will is for them with the person they are dating. Is it in God’s will whether a certain guy or girl is who they are supposed to marry—are they the one God has assigned for them?
Well, we don’t find those kinds of explicit answers in Scripture. I did not read in any of the sixty-six books of the Bible that I, Dan De Graff, was supposed to be ordained as a pastor in the Christian Reformed Church and was supposed to marry Christie Rozema from Holland, Michigan. And yet, with the church, I confess that the will of God completely is in the Bible.
So what does that mean then. We do find in Scripture answers to questions like: What did God desire of his creation? How does look at and handle sin? What does God do to and for sinners? How can people live in families and in the church? How do people find out about God? Certainly, what we looked at this morning—what does the future hold for all of humanity? Those are questions that truly get at the point of God wills for us, for the world, for the nations, for the future. In the word that God has revealed and has been recorded, we find his will in the big picture.
We cannot find this anywhere else. If we were to go to a bookstore and purchase every self-help book or scour websites that have tips for self-improvement and making decisions, we might find some Christian ideas mixed in. We might encounter some ideas that are helpful, and that we can carry out. We might even find part of what God wills for us! But if we want to know the heart of what God desires, of what our lives should revolve around, it’s all right here. That wealth and power would not consume us. That we ought to respect authority. That nothing else should receive worship besides God. That Jesus was humiliated and suffered for our salvation, he bore the punishment that brought us peace. God’s will is contained completely in Scripture.
The second thing that we find as special about the Bible tonight, and this is the key point—“Everything one must believe to be saved is sufficiently taught in it.” Just as we find Peter speaking of Jesus in Acts 4 verse 12 that, “There is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved,” so too we can say, “There is no other book by which we can be sufficiently taught the path to salvation.”
The Ethiopian man had the right book, he had Scripture. He was reading from Isaiah 53, trying to make sense of what this was about. When Philip came along he began with that and told him the good news of Scripture. He did not take a philosopher’s guide and read that to him. He did not take a historical non-fiction book and try to explain it that way. No, he used the Hebrew Bible, what we would call the Old Testament, together with what he witnessed and knew of Jesus.
We find God’s word used in other passages to teach people. Thinking back to Easter time, we looked in Corsica at the appearance of Jesus on the Road to Emmaus after his resurrection. Luke 24 tells us that Jesus taught disciples of his about himself by using Moses and the Prophets. Acts 16, we find the account of Paul and Silas being freed from prison, but having an opportunity to give true life to the jailer. After they told him, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved,” they spoke the word of the Lord to him. We need the Bible to tell the story of salvation.
The point of the Belgic Confession is not that in reading the Bible, we cannot read any other books. The point is not that we may not look to human writings and confessions for help in making sense of some of what we read. No, the point is that when it comes to understanding salvation truths, the Bible is it. Nothing is equal, or especially greater than the word of God. We need this truth in our lives as the foundation, as the core, as the key to being saved. There is no other way we can understand salvation, faith, grace, and the sacrifice of Jesus but by reading or hearing from this book.
When we look at the world today, the kinds of advances that have been made, even in just the last 500 years or so is incredible. Printing presses, TVs and movies that transmit sound and video, the internet, and being able to access information by these affordable devices that we carry in their pockets. All of these have given Christians means to access the Bible and get the message out. Yet at the same, the enemy has access to these means as well. The devil uses publications in books, magazines, blogs, mp3s, and the internet to work hard against Scripture.
It is our enemy who seeks to tell us that there is more we need to know or do than what we find in the Word. It is the enemy who would have us fill our minds and lives with things that cause us to neglect the Bible. It is the devil who mocks faith, and would much rather us find pleasure in sin than in salvation. He is working to confuse us.
But we have an Advocate in the Holy Spirit. When you have trouble understanding a part of God’s word, when you have trouble getting into a rhythm of reading and holding onto the treasures of God’s promises—the Holy Spirit is with us. The Bible is a lamp to show us what is truth, what is from God. It shows us the way of salvation is to and through Jesus alone. There is nothing else that can lead us to eternal life in heaven than by what we find revealed in God’s word. The Holy Spirit testifies to you and me and all who believe that this is it.
That brings us to our final point tonight—the teaching of the Bible is perfect and complete in all respects. The Bible is not a document that we should feel free as we are inclined to alter. We do not get to pick and choose what things we like from it and call those parts, true and necessary, but those that we do not like, we throw out. God might have included them for some people, but surely I don’t have to accede to them—they should not have bearing on my life today.
No, we don’t get to control or censor what is in the Bible. This is not just because the Belgic Confession says it, but if we look to the Old and New Testaments we find parts where God tells us we are not to have this power. Speaking of the Law, the entirety of the commands that God gave to Israel, he says in Deuteronomy 12:32, “See that you do all I command you; do not add to it or take away from it. We turn to the close of Revelation, chapter 22 verses 18 and 19, “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.”
To be clear those statements are made about the Law and about the book of Revelation. But if we confess that Scripture contains the will of God completely and all that must be believed for salvation, then shouldn’t we exercise such care with all that we find in it? As we looked at last time, the Word is inspired by God, breathed by him through human authors for the church. So let us see that Scripture is the truth that God gives for yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
Brothers and sisters, this is it. We do not need extra texts. We cannot exalt other writings higher than we should. We can listen to what leaders in the church say and read what they write. We can confess creeds and confessions—but let us know what the Bible says. Let us consume more and more of it like the Ethiopian eunuch that we would able to keep on living our lives rejoicing in the one who ultimately has given us his truth. Amen.