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Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, and we shall walk in his paths.

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Welcome to Come On Up, the radio ministry of the Mountain Cross in Waynesville, North Carolina.

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You see, Jesus is not just a man. Jesus is the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity. He's God Himself that became a man. He's the only man that was ever born on earth that was perfect. Well, yes, it's true, because Adam was perfect, but he wasn't born. He was created, right? And until sin entered the picture, there was perfection. And ever since then, everybody born was born into sin.

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Food coloring ruins anything that it touches. I mean, have you tried to get it out of your shirt? It's impossible. No matter how much we try to get the stain out, it just gets worse. In today's message, Pastor Carl says everyone who's born is born into a world of sin. No one can be perfect. That's why you need Jesus to step in. He's the only one who was born and lived a perfect life for Christ. Just like getting food coloring off your shirt, it's impossible to be free from your sins without the blood of Jesus. And now, here's Pastor Carl.

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I'm still being conformed into the image of Christ. I'm still being changed. Positionally, I'm perfect. But practically speaking, there's some work to be done. And that's where the sanctification happens, where he changes us day to day, grace by grace, faith by faith. And Simon could have very well been at this point where if he would have dropped dead right then, he would be in the presence of God, accepted in the beloved, because he's in Jesus. But practically speaking, he's got a lot to unlearn and now learn and apply to his life. So either way it is, the point is, either we're not saved and we're doing these things like the world, or we are saved and we're being distracted by Jesus by going off and doing these things again. Another way to put this is when Paul talks to the Galatians and he says, You foolish Galatians, you've begun in the spirit, but you want to perfect yourself in the flesh. You realize that there's nothing that you could do to save yourself. And you recognized that the cross was your answer, that Jesus already paid the price for your sin, and now you just need to accept it. It's the work of the Holy Spirit that was done in your life. And now you're sealed and you're set and you're saved. But then you go back to your old ways. You just you want to work your way into heaven. You want to please God by the things that you do instead of walking with Him and trusting in Him. If we're walking without our eyes on Jesus, without dependence on Jesus every day, if we're not walking like the first day that we came to faith in Jesus Christ, then we're not walking in the gospel, and it's not benefiting us. And it's part of what Peter is saying here. Either you're not saved, or you are saved, and you're not walking in a way that reflects that. So it's time for you to repent from your wickedness. And then he says in verse 23, for I see that you are poisoned by bitterness and bound by iniquity. The Holy Spirit gave Peter an insight there. He was poisoned by bitterness. Now it's interesting, poison and bitterness have similar definitions. The definition of poison is bile or gall. You know that stuff that comes out when you have an infection and a cold and all that. It's like poisonous. And we need to get out of our system. Another word for it is wormwood, which is bitter. And you'll do a study on wormwood in the Bible. That comes up a lot, especially in the book of Revelation. Now, bitterness means extreme wickedness. Extreme wickedness. What was he influenced by all these years? By demonic forces, by the power of Satan. Is there anything more wicked than Satan himself who comes to kill, steal, and destroy? He thinks he's doing good things for people and building himself up, but it's killing people because it's telling them a lie. It's not the truth. And Peter says, you're stuck in that. You're not seeing the big truth. You grasp the gospel, but there's so much more to it that you need to apply to your life today. And you're bound up by iniquity. Jesus has come to set you free, but you're bound up in your iniquity, which means injustice of the judge. When the judge does not judge righteously, he judges with injustice. It's also an unrighteousness of the heart and life. What do you really believe? Do you really believe and understand the gospel? Or do you really believe the things that the world has taught you through the years and your own experience and this and that and your own theories of how things work? Peter is saying you're bound by iniquity. Be freed in Jesus' name. Repent. Turn from that false teaching and turn to the truth of the gospel. Because the cross is not only our answer for eternity, it's our answer for here and now. Living in the grace of Jesus Christ is not only to get us saved, but it's to aid us in our walk as he conforms us to his image. And Peter very boldly is saying, You're off base, man. You need to return to Christ. And then in verse 24, Simon answered and said, Pray to the Lord for me, that none of these things which you have spoken may come upon me. I don't know if he was just saying, Ah, just pray for me and I'll be alright. Or he was just so convicted that he didn't want to approach the Lord himself, and he asked Peter, Would you pray for me? And that's what we're to do as the body of Christ, isn't it? To pray for one another. Or just spend time praying yourself. The most important thing, though, is to pray and to get right with the Lord and to recognize that I've taken the reins back. I've tried to work out my salvation in my own strength, in my flesh, in my fallenness, and it just doesn't work. I need to come back and grab a hold of the grace of God which He freely gives us. So in verse 25, when they had testified and preached the word of the Lord, they returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel in many villages of the Samaritans. So Peter and John, and I believe they take Philip back with them as well. They acknowledge the work that the Lord is doing in Samaria, and now they go back to Jerusalem to give a report. Now, verse 26. An angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, Arise and go toward the south along the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. This is desert. I think it's very interesting that Luke decided to add this comment on the side. This is desert. What had just happened to Philip? He has been used by God in mighty ways to bring many people to the Lord. People were coming, they want to hear from him. He's even, you know, defeating the power of the darkness and bringing that Simon guy into the light. And it's, you know, amazing things that are happening. I mean, he had a giant church, you know, thousands of people coming to hear. And now the Lord says, I want you to go to the desert where there's no big crowds. There's very little water to drink, very little satisfaction in the great works that you're doing. You see, life in Christ is not about the things that we do necessarily. It's not about the great crowds and the great numbers of influence that we have. Life in Christ is about being a willing vessel to go and to do whatever the Lord calls you to do. And wherever the Lord calls you to go, right? And Peter, with that same excitement, says, Okay, Lord, I'm gonna go down to the road that is south, which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza in the desert. Sure, I'm gonna go. So in verse 27, he arose and went. And behold, a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under Candace the Queen of the Ethiopians, who had charge of all her treasury and had come to Jerusalem to worship, was returning. Now this is interesting. Philip was called to go and meet up with this Ethiopian eunuch. Now, Ethiopia, there's a lot of history there. If you remember, the queen of Persia, was that what her I think that's what it was, that came to Solomon to see all of his great riches and so forth. And she recognized the God of Israel, and she gave great gifts to Solomon as a result. And she went back to Ethiopia, and as much as she understood about the God of Israel, it seemed like it had an effect on her and others in Ethiopia. And now this Ethiopian eunuch had heard these stories, and he had come as a representative, probably, of the queen to Jerusalem in order to worship. Now the question is, can you worship God without really knowing him? Well, the answer is sort of. We are built to worship. And if we're not worshiping God, we're worshiping something else, right? And God says, You should have no other gods before me. Don't have any graven images and idols. And we have tons of idols in our world today, don't we? And many of them are on our smartphones that cause us to seek after them for some sort of satisfaction and fulfillment in clicking through and reading messages and playing games and so forth, right? There's so many idols in our lives that distract us. And so it's possible to worship, but who are you worshiping? What are you worshiping? We're built to worship. If we're not worshiping God, we're going to worship something. This Ethiopian eunuch was seeking the truth, and he wanted to go and learn of the of the God of Israel, and he went to Jerusalem to worship. Although he didn't really know who he was. And now he was returning in his chariot. Sitting in his chariot, he was reading from the book of Isaiah the prophet. Then the Spirit said to Philip, Go near and overtake this chariot. And I always have this picture in my mind. Okay, Philip is first going from Jerusalem down this road, catching up to the chariot, and now the Holy Spirit says, Overtake it so that you can get up to it. And I always have these pictures of, you know, those movies where it might be a comedy or something where they just turn the speed up really fast. So instead of having a guy running like this, he's going like this. And I see Peter just this Philip going, this amazing speed and strength, and it could only happen with the power of the Holy Spirit, because if I'd do that for like a hundred yards, I'd be out already. But he's going and he's going and he's catching up with the chariot. And in verse 30, Philip ran to him and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. Now that's amazing too, because you know how loud chariots are on a desert road. You can just imagine horses and that this and he's running and he's running. All I if I'm running, all I hear is my breath panting, right? Right. But he's able to hear what the guy is reading, which he's probably reading, and the Lord said, Don't so and so. And he could hear what he's reading. And he heard him reading from the prophet Isaiah. And he said, Do you understand what you're reading? And he said, How can I unless someone guides me? And he asked Philip to come up and sit with him. Isn't that amazing? No, none of this. Who are you? And why are you asking me that? He's just like, the Ethiopian eunuch is seeking after God. And he's like, Yeah, I want to understand it, but I need somebody to teach me. You want to teach me? Since you come here from nowhere, come on up. Now, here's a map of what we see here. You see, number one, let me see here. Here's Jerusalem, and that's where they started, and then they scattered and they went up to Samaria. And then they came back down to Jerusalem, and then Philip was called to go down the desert road on the way to Gaza. Now, apparently there are two roads that go down on Gaza. There's the desert road, and there's another road that most people go on that's a little more traveled. This was the less traveled road, and that's where he caught up with him. Now, later in the story, we'll see that he's taken to Ashdod or Azartas, and he would continue preaching. This is Philip, all the way up to Caesarea along the coast. So that that's the uh that's the picture of where this is. And um I got this map from a new website that I found. It's called the Biblejourney.org or dot com. And they have all these different travels and maps and and and commentary of different um journeys throughout the Bible. So there's a map of all the areas that that Philip is going up and around, and and uh boy, he's got a lot of strength. But he's the strength of the Holy Spirit that helped him to do it. Now, verse 32, the place in the scripture where he read was this he was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before his shearer is silent, so he opened not his mouth. In his humiliation his justice was taken away. And who will declare his generation? For his life is taken from the earth. So the eunuch answered Philip and said, I ask you, of whom does this prophet say this? Of himself or some other man? Now that's an interesting question because there was a lot of different opinion on what this referred to. Many thought that this referred to Israel itself. This prophecy was all about Israel and their suffering and so forth. Many would say that uh it had to do with Isaiah. Well, obviously it's Isaiah because he wrote it, so it's talking about Isaiah. But there were some that said, this sounds like it could be the Messiah, but I don't want to, I don't think that's accurate because the Messiah suffering doesn't make any sense to us. And so the the Ethiopian eunuch who had heard these teachers, you know, well, who is it? What is it? And Peter, verse 35, opened his mouth and began at this scripture to preach Jesus to him. I could just see him now, just a smile came. I could tell you who this is. Let me tell you. He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, as a lamb before his shearer is silent, so he opened not his mouth. Our Lord Jesus, after being arrested at the Garden of Gethsemane, was brought and tried. And most of the time he didn't fight back. I mean, he never fought back. Sometimes he answered, but a lot of times he just kept his mouth shut. Like a sheep going to slaughter, like a lamb getting ready to be sacrificed. Because the Lord, our God, Jesus, became the Lamb of God who took away the sin of the world. You see, Jesus died willingly on that cross to take the sin of the world upon himself. And he rose again on the third day that whoever would believe in him would not perish but have everlasting life. He's saying this scripture is talking about him. In verse 33, in his humiliation, his justice was taken away. You see, Jesus is not just a man, Jesus is the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity. He's God Himself that became a man. He's the only man that was ever born on earth that was perfect. Well, yes, it's true, because Adam was perfect, but he wasn't born, he was created, right? And until sin entered the picture, there was perfection. And ever since then, everybody born was born into sin. Except Jesus, because his father was not of this world. Right? He was innocent. So dying on the cross, suffering, being accused for sin that he did not do, was unjust. Right? And he was humiliated. His justice was taken away. And you know, as the Psalms say, this is a paraphrase, but even to look upon his creation is a humiliation for God. He has to lower himself to look at his creation, let alone becoming one of us, and being born in a manger and living life as a man. Not to mention just the punishment that he got. Sped upon, whipped, crucified. He's innocent, he's humiliated, and there's no justice. And yet, that is the justice of God, isn't it? Because he willingly did that to take our sin on the cross because nobody else could do it. So he satisfied the justice of God that sin had to be paid for. And now we're free because he did it for us. He paid our sin debt. And then it talks about and who will declare his generation? Who will declare his generation? In other words, he had no posterity. He never got married, he never had any kids. Do you know why? Because his father is preparing for him a bride. The bride is the church. The bride is you and me, believers in Jesus Christ. And Jesus is saving himself for us. But as far as, you know, anybody coming after him to take over after him in his family line, there was none. For his life was taken from the earth. And the eunuch's eyes were open. He says, Wow! I see it. That's amazing. And in verse 36, as they went down the road, they came to some water, and the eunuch said, See, here's some water. What hinders me from being baptized? He realized that something had happened. He realized that, you know, Jesus was the answer to what he was searching for. Jesus is indeed God, he's the Messiah, and he's come to seek and save the lost. And then the Ethiopian was lost, and he recognized it. And he came to faith in Jesus and it was changed. And he realized that he needs to be baptized. Let me say, if you've come to faith in Jesus Christ and you haven't been baptized yet, you need to be. It's not a matter of salvation, but it's a matter of obedience. Are you really saved? Are you really declaring who you are in Christ and what he's done for you? That's what baptism is. If you haven't been baptized yet, please let me know and we'll set up a baptism because that's important and it's a glorious way to declare the gospel as well. So in verse 37, Philip said, If you believe with all your heart, you may. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And he believed that because of the gospel, because of the influence of the Holy Spirit. And he not only believed it, but it really changed him from the inside out. Now many times we can say, Oh, yeah, I believe in God, but that's not the faith that saves. He has a faith that saves. He believed that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that Jesus came in the flesh, that Jesus Christ is indeed God Himself, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. He believed that it wasn't his works that brought him to salvation, but it's his faith that accesses the grace of God, that this is all a gift from God. He believes it. He got it. His eyes were open, it clicked. When we really come to faith in Jesus Christ, it changes everything, doesn't it? Because we're saying, of course, this is the answer. He's always been there, he's always been knocking on my heart, and I finally opened the door. So in verse 38, he commanded that the chariot stand still, and both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water, and Philip baptized the eunuch. Now, when they came out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught Philip away so that the eunuch saw him no more. Wow, that's really wild, isn't it? That phrase caught away is the same phrase that's used in 1 Thessalonians chapter. Four talking about the rapture of the church. When the Lord will come and take his church home. Kind of lift them up, catch the church up and bring them home to heaven. This is like a mini rapture. The Holy Spirit took Philip and took him away. And the eunuch, you know, again, how would you react to that? The eunuch has had an encounter with the living God. He's been changed. And now he just, well, what does he say? And he went on his way rejoicing. He didn't get scared. He was just like, wow! The Lord's at work. The Lord sent this man and he took him away. Praise God. And he went down to Ethiopia, and Ethiopia, in the early years of the church, became very strong for the Lord. The church grew in Ethiopia in numerous ways. There were many, many believers in the area of Ethiopia. And it could very well be because this Ethiopian eunuch was changed. He was in a position of authority in the government. And now he could proclaim the gospel and people could hear it. And the same thing that the Holy Spirit used Philip to do, and Peter, and Stephen, now he's using this Ethiopian eunuch to spread the good news of the gospel. And people were hearing it and were being changed. Isn't that reason to rejoice? Understanding the truth of the gospel, understanding that in our hopelessness, in our fallenness, in our sin, Jesus is our hope. He is our answer. He's the one that's come to change everything. And then in verse 40, but Philip was found at Azotus, and passing through, he preached on all the cities until he came to Caesarea. Lord continued to use Philip as he went. The Lord used the Ethiopian eunuch. The Lord is using Peter and John and the other disciples in Jerusalem. The Lord is at work. And the Lord is at work today.

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You've been listening to Come On Up, featuring the teaching of Pastor Carl of the Mountain Cross. We're currently in the Book of Acts, which chronicles the miracles and ministries of believers after Jesus had died and was resurrected. It documents the growth of the early church and how the apostles shared the gospel far and wide. There was significant persecution, and ten of the twelve disciples, other than John and Judas, were martyred. Would you be willing to die for your faith? That's a tough question. But many believers through the centuries have laid down their lives for Christ. What does Jesus mean to you? Has he changed your life? That's our prayer for you, and we hope our simple teaching through the Word of God encourages you to grow strong in the Lord and His grace. If this radio ministry has blessed you, would you consider helping us reach others? Your gift of any size helps keep this radio ministry on the air. Simply visit themountaincross.com slash donate and give what you can. That's themountaincross.comslash donate and thanks in advance. Come on Up comes to you from The Mountain Cross, a group of believers in Jesus who seek to grow in faith by simply teaching the Bible verse by verse, chapter by chapter. We meet Sundays at the Smoky Mountain Cinema in Waynesville beginning at 10. If you're in the area, we'd love to have you worship with us. Hope to see you soon. Thanks for listening and join us again next time as we seek to learn more from the Lord through His Word. Come On Up is sponsored by The Mountain Cross, a Calvary Chapel fellowship.