GOD’S INTEREST IN ONE SOUL
J.Strachan
I would like to speak about God’s interest in one soul. God is interested in all men. God desires that “all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth”, 1 Tim. 2:4. There are no exceptions to that: God means “all men”. God is presenting the gospel for reception by all men at the present time. But God can become very particular at times and He can express His interest in one soul. Now, there is a company of persons here today, but maybe God is interested in one soul present. I wonder, is it you? Is God looking down on you? You may say, Well, I am just one in the company. But God is interested in you personally if you are here this afternoon with a need that has never been met.
God was very interested in this man, this Ethiopian. God is interested in persons irrespective of their colour or their religion or their particular place in society. This was a coloured man in whom He was interested in this chapter; and in chapter 9 He was interested in a Jew, and in chapter 10, He was interested in a Gentile. God is interested in everybody, but He would come right down to where each one of us is in our relations with Him. God wants every one of us, each individual, to have personal relations with Himself. That is why He showed such interest in this man, and this man responded. That would be our hope this afternoon, that as we present the gospel, you will respond to the presentation of God’s interest in you.
So this man was crossing the desert. This particular part of the world often comes into the news these days. Men operate in this area, but God operates too. God was operating here, and His angel sent Philip to go to this desert, to this particular way. You might say, Why would He send Philip there? Philip had been doing a great work. He had been preaching in a certain city, there had been many converts, and there had been great joy in that city. You might say, Why did God take Philip away from that? It was because He was interested in this one man. Oh how intense God’s interest can become at times! He took Philip away from this great work that had been proceeding in the city of Samaria, where there was great joy, great results, so that he might speak to this one man.
This man was crossing this desert. He was quite a personality, “a man in power under Candace queen of the Ethiopians, who was over all her treasure, who had come to worship at Jerusalem”. He was a man in a good position, with a good sense of responsibility, I have no doubt, but there was something lacking in his soul at this point. God would take account of you and say, Maybe there is something still lacking in your soul yet. This man had come to worship at Jerusalem and there must have been a certain desire after God on his part. Now God takes account if there is some desire in your heart after Himself. He had come all this long distance from Ethiopia to worship in Jerusalem, having some feeling after God. God takes account if you have some feeling after Him. Indeed He arranges our circumstances in view of there being some feeling after Him. Maybe you have never thought about that; God having to do with the particular circumstances you are in, the family you have been born into, the city you live in, the kind of employment you have. He orders things so that you might have some feeling after Him.
Well, this man is journeying back to Ethiopia and he is reading his Bible, reading from the prophet Esaias. Maybe you have never thought of this before, but heaven is interested in persons who read their Bibles. I would encourage the young people here to read their Bibles. God is interested in persons who read their Bibles. You might say, Why is that? Why would it be different from any other book? Because it is a book that is divinely inspired. I know that the idea of inspiration is largely set aside in the world today, but nevertheless it is the truth. God has given a record for men to read that is divinely inspired, and that makes the Bible different from any other book you might find in the world. Heaven is very interested in persons who are prepared to read a book that has come from God Himself. It tells us about God in His relations with men. God wants to have relations with men, and He wants men in relationship with Himself, and He has given us this book, the Bible, to help us to understand how that can be brought about.
Now, he was reading his Bible and Philip was told to “approach and join this chariot”. Here was this man crossing the desert in his chariot and Philip running up heard him reading. The Lord’s servants are ready to approach you just where you are, ready to be available to you, so that if you have any problems, like this man had, you might be able to get your questions answered. Philip goes and joins this chariot and says, “Dost thou then know what thou art reading of?” He raises this question. You, may, read your Bible but do not understand. Now God would put someone alongside you to help you to understand what it is all about. Oh, how good God is! How He would provide for us if we have some little spark of interest in Himself! If we read Bibles and turn to Himself, He is ready to say, “Dost thou then know what you art reading of?” So as he is reading this passage, he says to Philip, “How should I then be able unless some one guide me?” He was feeling the need for some help in this, “And he begged Philip to come up and sit with him”. Philip did not need much invitation. He was just ready to sit alongside this man and help him with his problems. When there are problems in our lives it is a fine thing if there is someone available to help us to resolve them.
Well, he was reading this passage, “He was led as a sheep to slaughter, and as a lamb is dumb in presence of him that shears him, thus he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation his judgment has been taken away, and who shall declare his generation? for his life is taken from the earth. “And the eunuch answering Philip said, I pray thee, concerning whom does the prophet say this? of himself or of some other?” Isaiah was not speaking of himself, he was speaking of One who was to come. Isaiah “saw his glory and spoke of him” (John 12: 41); it was a glory that eclipsed the glory of any other man who had ever been on the face of the earth. That is the Man that Isaiah had written about. That is the Man the eunuch was reading about. So Philip, it says, “opening his mouth and beginning from that scripture, announced the glad tidings of Jesus to him”. That is just what we want to do as we are here this afternoon, to announce the glad tidings of Jesus in this company, in the presence of those who are here this afternoon.
These are wonderful glad tidings. These are the glad tidings that God has concerning His Son, because Jesus is the Son of God. Although He was here in lowliness, available to men, approachable by men, nonetheless He was a divine Person. He is the Son of God and He was bringing God near to men. How wonderful that is! How God approached men in the Person of Jesus! God took account of what was needed in the race. The whole race had fallen under sin and under the effects of it, and God took account of all that, so that is why Jesus is presented in this passage as being a Sufferer, One who was going to suffer, One who was going to die. He was here in holy, spotless perfection and He went to the cross to be a sin-offering. Paul announced as glad tidings “that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures; and that he was buried; and that he was raised the third day, according to the scriptures”, 1 Cor 15: 3,4. How God has provided for men in the gospel! How wonderful that is, how He has provided for our needs, we who were sinners, guilty before God! That is what we are. But God has taken account of all that, and He has made the provision that is needed on the part of guilty sinners to have to do with Himself.
So Philip presented the glad tidings concerning Jesus, One who has come here, One who has come near to men, One who has suffered on the cross. Think of these sufferings of Jesus, not only at the hands of men, but sufferings at the hand of God when He took our sins upon Himself. He suffered vicariously in those three hours of darkness on the cross and finally He said, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”, Matt 27: 46. He was suffering at the hand of God, forsaken by God, so that our sins should be atoned for, so that we could have the forgiveness of sins. What a great thing that is, the forgiveness of sins as presented in the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ for those who believe. So Peter could say that He suffered for our sins in view of bringing us to God (1 Peter 3: 18). That is what God had in mind, to establish relations with men, to bring us to Himself. It required that the whole matter of our guilt should be met and that we should have forgiveness of our sins. The Lord Jesus “has been delivered for our offences and has been raised for our justification”, Rom 4: 25. God is wanting to have men in relation with Himself; He wants us to be consciously in His presence without any trace of guilt. He is saying, This is how I have Christ in my presence and I want you in just the very same place. Then we have “access by faith into this favour in which we stand”, Rom 5: 2. It is a wonderful thing that persons who believe the gospel come into all the favour of God in which Christ stands, so that we can have “peace towards God through our Lord Jesus Christ”, Rom 5: 1. These blessings are available to you on the principle of faith in Christ.
Where the eunuch finished reading it says, “his life is taken from the earth”, meaning that Jesus had left this scene by way of death, and now He is living in relation to another world. Then as they came upon a certain water the eunuch said, “Behold water; what hinders my being baptised?” He said, in effect, He has left the world by way of death and I can have part in this world no longer. I am going to leave it too. It is a great thing for a believer to come to that in the conviction of his soul that he has no more place in this world where Christ has died. He is going to live his life, the rest of his time, in relation to the Man who lives in another world. What a thing it is to find that life opens up to you in a different way altogether! You do not find your life in the world where Christ was crucified. You find your life in relation to Him in another world where He lives to God. And you can live to God. You can live on this principle, another principle altogether. Men in the world live on the principle of living to themselves, but a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is secured on another principle, to live to God. You too can live in relation to this Man in another world. That is what baptism means that you are prepared to be identified with Christ in His death, and live in relation to Him in another world.
“And he commanded the chariot to stop. And they went down both to the water, both Philip and the eunuch, and he baptised him”. How fine that was: “they went down both to the water”. He found company. You find company in persons who are prepared to be identified with the death of Christ. That is how you find yourself in fellowship with others, that you are prepared to be identified with others who are like-minded. You are prepared to leave the world and be identified with persons who find their life in relation to our Lord Jesus Christ. “But when they came up out of the water the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip,” – He had no doubt other things for Philip to do – “and the eunuch saw him no longer, for he went on his way rejoicing”. It is a wonderful thing to be able to go on your way rejoicing, in the consciousness that you have received the gospel and you have a living link, by faith, with our Lord Jesus Christ. That is what God wants to bring us to, a real, living link with our Lord Jesus Christ by faith, so that you are not simply a professing Christian, but you are a real believer with a living link with Christ in glory, and the consciousness of that by the Spirit.
Philip was caught away by the Spirit of the Lord; he knew what it was to have relations with the Holy Spirit. Now God wants you to have not only a link with Christ, which enables you to go on your way rejoicing, but to receive the gift of the Spirit so that you can live in the enjoyment of a link with Christ, and live in the enjoyment of the things that God has made so freely available to give to those who believe. God’s great end in the gospel is that believers should receive the gift of the Holy Spirit; a result that causes your affections to move towards God, so that you become responsive to God. You become a subject of the kingdom of God, which is “righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit”, Rom 14: 17. I wonder if everybody here is conscious of having a link with Christ in this way? It makes you a subject person under the hand of the Lord Jesus. You are prepared to submit yourself to Him and to enjoy “righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit”. It is not the kind of joy that the world seeks to impart; that is effervescent. It is a real joy that springs from your living relations with God. Philip moved on and preached the gospel elsewhere. God shows great interest in one soul and then He moves on; but He is ready to wait if someone needs to have a real link with Christ. That is what God is aiming at in the gospel, that you might have a real link with Christ in faith and the conscious sense of having received the Holy Spirit.
This man was reading from Isaiah 53. Do you know what the opening verse of Isaiah 53 says? I will tell you: “Who hath believed our report?” Now, I have sought to tell you something of the gospel. I just leave that question with you, “Who hath believed our report?” Have you believed? Are you a believer in the Lord Jesus? Will you go out of that door unbelieving, or will you say, I will put my faith in the Lord Jesus? May you believe, for His Name’s sake!
GLASGOW
24 February 2002