Waking Up!

Text: Acts 8:26-38

Focus: Church & Baptism

Function: To help people realize and make their commitment to Christ Jesus.

Form: Story, with teaching at end.

Intro: How did you wake up this morning?

Did you wake up with a jolt, freshly invigorated, grab a cup of coffee, go out on the deck, or sit gazing at the window ready to face the day because you had hit the floor running? Or, did you hit the snooze several times, drag yourself to the coffee pot and hopefully it is already going, slowly clear your mind, stretch and after several minutes or even an hour, did you feel like getting anything accomplished?

Rarely do I wake up like the first scenario, most often, the process of waking up is slow and deliberate as the night's fog clears my head.

People come to faith in both ways. Some “wake up” quickly and others slowly. I visited with a preacher in England who was talking about the experience of being born again. His story made me think a lot about this.

Because, a few times, while I was growing up, I heard sermons that stated that if I could not mark a specific day on my calendar when I became a Christian, then I wasn't really saved.

Now, as it turns out, I can mark that day, it was July 4^th, 1961. But so what? In 1979 I was literally doing a street ministry on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, NJ. We printed up gospel tracts that explained the way of salvation and then asked people as we gave them the tracts if they were saved. Most people ignored me, but a few people would sincerely engage me. I noticed something that happened a lot with the Roman Catholics who would take the time to talk to me. They would say: “What does it mean to be saved?”

And I would say, “you know. Have you asked Jesus into your heart?” I asked that as if everyone knew exactly what I was talking about.

And always the answer was “yes! Many times!” Now, my theological view was narrowed by my own limited experience, which was real, genuine, miraculous and powerful. But it was always confused at that response because I had learned that once you ask Jesus in, He stays there. So why did they have to keep on doing it?

And the question is: At what point does a person become a believer?

Last week we learned that we are not born into it, God has no Grandchildren.

But when are we there? Most people, most often, wake up slowly.

This English preacher told me the story of a woman who attended the Church's Alpha course. It is a very basic introduction to Christianity that has caused tremendous growth, a real live revival, in the Church of England.

This woman told the preacher time and time again that “although she attended the class, she remained an atheist.”

Yet she kept coming back. She attended the classes several times. He asked why and she said that it was because of the sense of community and belonging that she experienced there. The Church is a community.

Then one day, the Church did an outreach in a poor neighborhood where they were providing food and school supplies. Someone started arguing with them, they were questioning and even mocking the fantastic claims of the bible like Creation, its miracles, and the resurrection and this woman began to defend Christianity. The pastor said to her: “I thought you were an atheist?”

She replied that she just then realized that she was a believer. This was a Christian who woke up -to Christianity- slowly.

If a person falls asleep on a train in Ohio and wakes up in Illinois, they crossed the border. They may not know when they arrived in Illinois, but they know they are there.

This morning's text is the story of a man who woke up quickly.

Imagine the scene: There are several miracles. Philip is told by God to go down to the road that this official traveling back to Ethiopia was on. That must have been odd. Just standing there.

And then the Chariot comes by and the Holy Spirit tells Philip to run along beside it. That must have been really weird. It may have looked like a Chariot-jacking.

But God was at work. The man just happened to be reading Isaiah 53, the passage we read every year on Maundy Thursday while we are doing Love Feast. It is a great prophecy about the Redeemer coming, coming meek and lowly, suffering and eventually dying for the sins of His people.

The official is confused because the Redeemer, the Messiah, the Christ is supposed to be this mighty conqueror who delivers God's people from bondage. And yet, the prophecy describes Jesus in two ways that we even we are uncomfortable with. First, He is described as ugly -a face that we really want to turn our heads away from. And second, He is described as a suffering servant, not a great conqueror. Most of the Jews couldn't imagine that the suffering servant and the conqueror were one and the same person. They wanted a right and proper powerful, regal King to deliver them from their bondage.

Philip explains that is the guilt and bondage of sin the for which Jesus dies. He explains that God is not as interested in human kingdoms as He is in building the family of God that will come and help Him heal the world. First by inviting people back into God's family through faith in Jesus and second, but being God's agents to help Him turn the face of evil and oppression back to the right.

And for some reason, immediately the official believes. He wakes up.

I believe in relational evangelism. This year we are doing the Easter Egg hunt and the leadership has made clear instructions to me: 10 minutes, no more, for the program. And I am thrilled about those instructions. The program is to be short, very short. Instead of a one time shot of preaching the gospel to kids who are more interested in prizes and the candy they are going to get. We are going to invite them into a relationship with us.

Saving people without a relationship is not as wholesome as inviting people to journey along with us as we seek the family of God.

But that didn't happen here.

I doubt if Philip and this official ever saw each other again.

This man decided to believe. He choose to trust in Jesus. He choose to admit his own brokenness and turn his life to Christ.

It goes to show me that my way of doing things only limits the power and the majesty of God.

And when this man believes, there is really only one thing he does to demonstrate his belief.

By now, Philip has been invited into the chariot. Maybe he was the first Christian hitch-hiker. But the official sees a pool of water and asks to be baptized.

Now at this point, we realize that maybe God has been working on this man a long time. Maybe he “woke up” slower than we think.

There are many questions to indicate this: Why would a non-Jew be reading the scriptures? For that matter, why was he even in Jerusalem in the first place? Apparently he was on a religious pilgrimage. I believe that God creates an hunger inside the heart, the soul, the spirit of a person to seek and find Him. It seems to me that everywhere I go, people are seeking spiritual meaning. Just as this man was.

So, what is the one thing the man is compelled to do?

The official was also aware of the practice of Baptism. He requests it. It is his only request.

Why baptism. What does it mean? I am going to do a little bible study on this.

1. It is our confession of faith:

In Matthew 10: 35 Jesus said that if we confess Him before men, He will confess us before God and the angels.

If we claim Him as Brother, Savior and Lord, He will claim us as family. Remember, we believe and that is why be belong.

Baptism is that confession.

And for the people living in Israel, baptism was an odd practice. One of Claudius, the emperor of Rome, called the practice a ritual of a “Jewish cult” that was sweeping the Roman Empire. We call that “cult” Christianity.

Baptism shook up the culture at the time.

It started with John the Baptist. And John the Baptist began a year or so before Jesus. He looked strange. He wore a leather girdle and a vest of Camel's hair. He didn't cut his hair. And along with his novel appearance, there was something compelling about his preaching. People left the comfort of their homes and traveled into the desert just to hear him preach.

And he started baptizing the people. It was symbolic. The people were turning away from sin and the baptism represented that indeed, their sins were being washed away.

There is no command for it in the OT law. It was a new, and highly controversial religious practice. And this official, though not yet a believer, must have been searching for spiritual meaning and was investigating these things.

And, in a moment, a God moment, he choose Jesus and was baptized.

So, it is a confession of trust in Christ. Remember, if you confess me before men, I will confess you before the Father and the Angels. And Second:

2. It describes how we will live our our lives.

In Romans 6:3-5 we read: ³Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? ⁴Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. ⁵For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection,

I don't know if the official understood exactly what he was getting into when this happened.

I don't know if knew Jesus teaching that those who follow Jesus must take up their own crosses and follow Him (Luke 9:23).

I don't know what he knew at this point. We typically wait to do baptism because we empathize that a person should count well the cost of discipleship.

Because discipleship is a change of life. We are buried with Him. We have died to ourselves and are alive, born again, into a new life. We have a new last name, Christian, and it means that we remain here, on planet earth, to be a part of bringing about God's kingdom.

When we join God's family. Now remember, in and through the Church, not man's institution, but the Ethereal family of God, the present and the future come together. Heaven and earth come together. And we start praying for God's will to be done.

We wake up to do God's work: setting the world back to the right, being a catalyst for God's love, whether that is working to overcome racism, and other forms of ignorance, working to heal by medicine, education, or striving to excel through whatever vocation God has given us to earn our incomes from, we are placed here to be the slow and subtle agent of change for the good.

God's will is that the world be healed through him. And it becomes a new vocation for us in whatever employment we have. One great follower of Christ said it like this: I have died to myself and yet I am alive, I am alive to serve Jesus (Galatians 2:20).

So, perhaps that day that is set in stone is indeed our baptism, I know many people who experienced a change, a touch in their heart that transformed them when they were baptized. Mine happened years before. God isn't in a box. But it does fulfill the confession of who we trust for salvation. It is important. And it testifies as to how we will live our lives.