APR 10 2016 | Simon the Sorcerer

Sea Change Church · "Simon the Sorcerer" · Adam Stadtmiller · April 10, 2016
Acts 8:9-25
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

But the reason I'm doing that is for the online portion of this, so they'll have a mark for that. So if you have your Bibles, open them to, or your iPhones, open your iPhone to Acts chapter 8, 9 through 25. Fascinating story, fascinating story. The story of a magician, and who doesn't like a good magic show? You know, you watch it on TV, be fascinated.

You got this Simon, Simon the Sorcerer. And his tricks obviously weren't that great, because people were easily impressed until Philip got there and started actually performing some signs and wonders that mattered and changed people's lives. And Simon the Sorcerer lost his audience. They were doing things like healing people, and pulling rabbits out of hats, and, you know, sawing, you know, the other Samaritan woman in half, or whatever he did, was not, that was a little funny.

That was based on John chapter, forget it. Samaritan woman, Jesus met her, Simon the Sorcerer, no one, Bueller, anyone just looking at me? All right. Whatever tricks he was doing, they didn't match the power of God. You see, they called this the guy the power of God, but they were fooled. And I think the world today is too easily impressed by things that they think are powerful, by things that they think are, that matter, until they encounter the true presence and power of God.

And Philip had it. Philip came, and he brought something, it says, that they became and brought joy to them. He brought what Jesus had brought earlier in John chapter 5, when he met the woman at the well. He came, and he followed up on that, and he brought something that would bring joy. He set the captives free. He brought something that mattered to their lives.

He didn't only bring promises. He brought the presence. Let me say that again. He didn't just bring promises to fascinate people. He brought the presence. I want to say living as a sent people. Going back to our messages from January and February, we are a sent people. We're constantly living as a sent people who are going out into the world to be the presence of God and providing something that the rest of the world can't.

You look at celebrity. You look at the things that our world is impressed with. They're easily impressed, but celebrity is fleeting. Power is fleeting. I was listening to an Ed Sheeran song yesterday, and he said, you know, he was talking about, are you still going to be there to love me when no one remembers my name anymore? And it's true. We are easily fixated and fascinated until we meet someone like Jesus who can change our lives forever.

That when we meet them, there is a tangible change in our lives. And we want to be people with hearts full of God's power, with hearts full of God's presence, with faces that radiate the face of God. Like Moses said, the glory of God was on him, but it does not fade because it is coming from an eternal well within our hearts. And the glory that is upon us now is unlike, as it says in the New Testament.

The glory that was upon Moses is ours as an unfading glory. So where is the place you are being sent to? When I speak in this message, we're talking about these amazing characters. I find Simon a fascinating character, and he reminds me of kind of like a Peter. He's really impetuous. He likes power, but then he sees these guys, and he gets touched by the gospel.

He becomes a follower of Christ to the point where he becomes baptized. He is legitimately, like Judas, following Christ. But the gospel, he didn't understand the gospel, and it had not seeped in complete truth down to, you'll see, into his heart. He's a fascinating character. And if you want to circle in the text where you see the word heart, circle that because the gospel's intention is always, its target is to land in the heart.

And he needed a heart transplant even though he was following Christ. He was following Christ with a wicked heart. We have other people. We have Philip, an evangelist. Philip's awesome. You read about Philip, he's just always, you know, he's always, hears somebody, sees somebody reading the scripture, and he jumps up into their carriage with the Ethiopian eunuch, and he begins to share the scriptures with him.

And then he's off to Samaria. It's like he looks at the Great Commission, and it says, you will go to Jerusalem, and to Judea, and to Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And he's just checking them off. He's just checking them off. Yeah, I'm going to get there. I'm going to get there. He was excited to take the message of Jesus, not only just the message, because you can believe in the message and not be saved.

We'll see that. Because we don't believe in our mind. You can believe in your mind, but we have to believe where? Right. Big difference. The salvific understanding has to be a salvation that is known in the heart. Believing Jesus in your mind, the scripture is very clear, is not going to give you a saving understanding of Christ, where you end up with God in eternity with your sins covered and washed in the blood of Christ.

It's not something that is cognitive. If it were so, then there were people that don't have the mental capacity to understand all the picadillos of the gospel and how it works. Perhaps, you know, I've worked with Down syndrome kids who don't care about theology, but they had something in their hearts that you could not deny. I'm not throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

The mind shepherds the heart. But the gospel's intention is to land in the heart. And we need to have hearts that are pure before God. I'm getting ahead of myself in the notes. I'll have to pick it up. It's kind of like I dropped the dinner all over the floor. Now I've got to figure out how to put it back together. Shared it with you early. But Philip is an evangelist, and he's excited to be a sent person.

Excited. Where can I go? He is going to fill that great commission on his own. Where are you sent to? Where are you going? Where is your presence? I realize I need to bring the presence of God to my driving in La Jolla. My daughter has made that clear to me. I've become an impatient driver, and I don't like going down the throat, and I have little ways to get away the way I go, and all the little secret passages that all the locals know I have figured out now, so I'm in.

But I will cut you off to do it, and I will be upset. And my daughter says, stop peeping your horn at people, Dad. You are, that is not good. You peep your horn too much. It's embarrassing. And I said, they deserve to have the people. They're on their texting. Don't you hate that now? No one ever goes at the light anymore, at the front of the light.

I mean, it's tech. Oh, well, forget it. I guess no one does that in front of you. Coth. I need to be a scent person, and I'm realizing that my heart, when it comes to driving in La Jolla, needs to be changed. My daughter's made it clear that I need to bring the presence of God behind the wheel of the Toyota, the 2004 repainted white Toyota. Does anyone remember when that car was yellow, how ugly it was?

Yeah, right, now it's white, so it's beautiful. I just repainted it. In 2004, it'll never die. 238,000 miles. As many as Philip probably put on his horse or whatever he did. Actually, he was teleported. Isn't that cool? You ever read that in the Bible? Like, after he gives the gospel to the Ethiopian eunuch, it says that he, like, gets teleported.

Jesus got teleported. I think teleportation's so cool. We underestimate teleportation in the Bible. Jesus flies after the Great Commission. You ever realize that? There's, like, teleportation and flying. It's like a sci-fi novel. No one ever sees that. I think it's cool. We got Philip. Where is he going with this? Peter and John. I love Peter and John hear that something's going.

They send the big guns. Where do they send them to? Samaria. We don't even go to Samaria as a people, but they send the big. When they heard that Samaria had received, not just heard, received the gospel, Peter and John show up there. What a tandem to show up. The word was out. Imagine if the place that you got sent to, the word was out that there's something different about that place.

There's something different. You know what's possible? The coffee houses you go to, the dry cleaners you go to, the school committees that you were on, the places that you volunteer, the under-10-year-old soccer teams that you coach. The presence of God can dwell there in a way where people look and they say something is different about that place.

It's because you brought the presence of Christ to that. I would say 95% of our entire family now on my mom's side knows Jesus and follows Jesus in the last 30 years, and it's probably 25, I'm going to estimate, 25 to 35 people, because my mom made a decision to start sharing the Christ with our family and our entire family. Almost every one of them has come to know Christ.

Buffalo is changed because someone was willing, namely my mom, to share the gospel. Where are you sharing the gospel is to send people be Philip. That's one of the messages. Am I Philip in this week? Where can I be Philip? Write that down. Where can I be Philip this week? What Philip does is he changes lives. I want to say this story, it's key context.

There's a few key contexts in this scripture. One is, this is a story about knowing and following Jesus from your heart. Not just knowing who he is, he's a good teacher. Good teacher ain't going to cut it in front of the judgment seat. I hate to say, actually I don't hate to say that because it actually is love to tell the truth. If a house is on fire, you need to tell people it's on fire so they can get out.

And we need to have an understanding where we follow Jesus solely and believe in him to save us from the much needed sins that are in our lives. And so this is a story, as I look, and the story's packed. I mean, we could literally stay here for weeks. There are so many things going on in this story. So many interesting characters. So many plot lines that are happening.

What I have thought that the Lord wants us to say to this congregation is, one, that it is a story about following Jesus from your heart. And we need to do some heart surgery. We need to do a dye test like they do to find out where the blockages are. And maybe you know somebody that's had that test done. And find out, even though the heart's working, maybe sometimes it's only working at 10%.

I knew a person that had 10% of their heart and they were still alive before they had to have, they ended up with 27 little stints that went in. And we need more than a stint. Maybe we need a new heart. And so we're going to be looking at our hearts as a congregation. We have to do that, right? We have to get away and sit with God and say, where is our heart wicked?

Where is their wickedness and where is their bitterness in our hearts? And I hate to use those words because they're strong words, but they're words that we need to be very, very honest about. We want to have pure hearts because this is a religion of the heart. Now, there is a soul, there is a mind, and there is a body and all those things. But the more I read, as you'll see, the more I see that God wants your heart.

He wants all of it, every bit. As a matter of fact, he wants everything. As C.S. Lewis says, he doesn't just want to cut a branch down here or there. It says he wants the whole tree down. And he wants to replace it with a new tree that is the very presence of himself. And so that's one thing. Another thing that we're going to look at later on, the next time I speak, is on the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

And we see that the Holy Spirit, maybe you caught this, where they had to lay hands on them to receive the Holy Spirit in fullness. And what does that mean? They had accepted Christ. They had even been baptized. They didn't have a fullness of the Holy Spirit. When I speak, and I couldn't, I didn't want to put it all into one sermon because you weren't going to, I wasn't going to be able to do it well.

But I want to talk about what it means and how this happens. And this is just, and how we receive, and what I mean by that, how we receive and walk in a fullness of the Holy Spirit. This is one instance where the Holy Spirit came because they laid on of hands. Not every time we see Scripture, the Holy Spirit comes in the way God decides. And you don't have to have your hands laid on you to receive the Holy Spirit, although in this case, they did.

And so we will talk about that when I speak again on this and talk about the different ways the Holy Spirit comes. And there's a fullness. And let me just say quickly, in case you're worried, when you believe in Jesus from your heart, where it goes from your mind and into your heart, and you become a Christ follower, and you are baptized, and it says that there is a seal of the Holy Spirit.

There is a fullness of the Holy Spirit within you. Because the Holy Spirit doesn't come in child-sized portions. It's eternal. Does that make sense? So there is a fullness of his presence. Now the question is, how do we access that fullness? It's like having a generator, but when you've got to turn the lights on. How do we do that? And it comes in different ways and at different times.

And God seems to do it in each of our lives according to the story that he is writing in each of our lives. But there are some keys. So we'll talk about that. So if that caught you up, or you tripped up on that a little bit when you saw it as we read it, know that we are going to get there and talk about it because we want to live in the fullness of the Holy Spirit, right?

You want to have the fullness. Do you want to have a, we talked before about a fullness of joy. What would your life look like if you had a fullness of joy? We live in a society that has no idea what that looks like. I mean, who do you know that walks in a fullness of joy? I mean, there's a few people I know, but there's an overflowing. Or you walk in a fullness of peace.

What does it look like to have peace? In a recent interview with Harrison Ford, they said, you know, you have this. You have this, you know, beautiful woman in your life. I think they got married. I'm not sure. You have, you know, all the accolades that come. You have all the awards. You have all this thing, all this money. What else could you want?

You know what he said? Inner peace. Right? The world can give you a lot. I haven't found any bit of it that can give you inner peace. Inner peace. Jesus came to give us a fullness of peace. So we'll talk about that fullness going on. But right now we're looking at this and we're looking at the heart. So that's where we're starting with. First, Peter, if you go to verse 20 and 21, Simon exposes a heart issue with Simon.

I think Simon was a good guy, to tell you the truth. I mean, look, Peter lays into the guy, granted. And, you know, he was used to Jesus taking him behind the woodshed. So you know what I'm saying? Like, Peter literally got taken behind the woodshed by Jesus so many times. So he was not mincing words. And I think in the context, he had to say something to him because this was a guy that, you know, maybe if you started letting this witchcraft and sorcery start entering, which it has done in many places in South America, in Haiti, you start getting this mixed.

Do we have a parent that needs Kim? We have a child back there. If it's your child, she's raising the child. If it's your child, go get him. So if there was a mix now of this sorcery into Christianity, and so he speaks to him harshly, but I got to tell you, I believe it seems like he's just a guy that really wants to follow God. He's so excited.

You know what? Tell me how to lay hands on people. I'll give you money to do it. I'm so excited. I want to do this too. And Peter was like, I'm having none of it because you can't buy the gospel. You see, Peter had watched his friend and Savior be crucified, and he finally understood what it was all about, and it was an offense to him that you think you can buy this because you can't buy the gospel.

So let's just understand that every story has a context. But I kind of liked Simon, and I like, and I think he got it sorted out there in the end. But Peter looks at him, he says, you have a heart issue. He says, Peter answered, may your money perish with you. Now, this is after he had followed Christ and been baptized, right? So it shows that we can follow Christ, we can be baptized, and still have some major blockages.

And I'm going to give you some heavy lifting this week to sit before the Lord, and I think it really needs to be done in silence, and ask the Lord, where's the blockages? Where's the prejudice in my life? Where's the hatred? Where's the upsetness? Where's the unforgiveness that begins to build a foothold in your life? Because footholds will always become?

That's right. It's impossible, I believe, to have a foothold that does not become a stronghold, because sin is ever-increasing, and it leads somewhere, the Bible says. It is progressive. It doesn't just stay. The Scripture says, all sin leads to where? Death. So it is leading you to death. I want to say, you want to sit before the Lord and ask him.

I did that this week. Like, gosh, you know, it's so hard when stuff comes up, but it's so freeing to sit and say, you know what, unforgiveness, you know who that kills? You. It's a bitter poison, and it does no good. Hatefulness. And so he says, he has this here, and he says, may your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money.

You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God. That doesn't mean that his heart couldn't be right. But at the moment, you don't have a share in this. And I love that Peter's willing to share it. So we share the gospel. Repent of this wickedness. We're afraid of that word today. The only thing that's wrong is telling someone that they're wrong.

That's the big wrong today. But I got to tell you, there's love in telling people that the house is on fire. Then he says to him, repent of your wickedness and pray to the Lord in hope that he may forgive you for having such a thought. Where? In your heart. In your mind? No. Where was the thought? In your heart. For I see that you are what? Full of bitterness and a captive to sin.

This is a man who had decided to follow Christ, who had said received the gospel, who had been baptized. And he says, for I see that you are full of bitterness and captive to sin. And I want to say, a lot of us come to Christ and not everything is fixed the moment we accept him. And I say that Jesus says, come as you are, but what? Don't stay as you is.

Come as you are, but don't stay as you is. It is a progressive faith that leads to eternity, that leads to life. It too is progressive. And God is calling us not to be a captive to sin. And so as we look at this, we see that this heart issue, I want to talk a little bit about the heart. If you look in your notes, you're going to see the gospel needs to land in the heart to accomplish its purpose.

That's true. You will not be saved unless you believe in your heart. I read an article this week that the heart, while it doesn't have brain cells, it has over 40,000 neurons. Neurons are also found in the brain. I'm afraid with a brain surgeon in the room to speak about this because it's kind of like, you know, talking about things I don't understand.

But I did Google it and read about four minutes on it, so I think I have some expertise here. Right, David? Having a brain surgeon makes me feel smarter in the congregation. Like, I tell people that all the time, you know what I mean? Like, I just feel smarter. I got smarter because of, you know, and you and all the other people that do great things and educators and all this great stuff.

That they know, they found that neurons, what do they do? They communicate information. That the heart has the ability to think. God has created us with a heart. And one of the things I've been trying to do, this is another exercise, if you guys want some, I want to give you some tools to go home with, is when you pray, try to pray from your heart.

Have you ever tried to, like, not that we turn our mind off. Pray from your heart. Wisdom is, I think, a lot of mind and our thoughts of our heart. Because if you live with your heart in full vent, you're going to do a lot of stupid stuff. Because there's a lot of stuff in our heart that the mind needs to go, no, no, no, no. Slow down, cowboy. Okay?

Just settle down. And Jim, this is for you right here, dude. Because the last time I taught that, Jim sent me an email. What, are we not going to use the mind anymore? I said, okay, so are we not going to use the mind, Pastor Adam, anymore? We're just going to live from the heart? Do whatever you want? He said, spot on, spot on. Like when I was on my Jesus kick when I first got here.

What about the rest of the Trinity? Uh, yeah. Then God introduced me to the Father, and I figured it out. So thank you, Jim. That's a pretty good Jim. That's a pretty good Jim impersonation. Gospel needs to land in the heart. It's, it's, it's a, it's, this is a faith of the heart. It's faith of the heart. Body, mind, soul, God wants it all, but it's a heart.

The heart is the target. Want to live from the heart. Imagine if your marriage, you lived your marriage, or your relationship with your mom, or your relationship with your kid, or you even did your job and lived it from your heart, and from a true heart that is seeking after God. What would it look like if, you know, I was thinking, my wife's away at a women's retreat today, and I was thinking, what would it look like if I, if my marriage dwelt in my heart, and it came, everything came from the heart.

If I love my wife from my heart, that's just a whole new pasture that I need to, to explore. You know, it's like there's this, this wall of trees, you know, but I know somewhere in that enchanted forest is the answer. It's like a little needle in there, and God says, go in there, you'll find it. I need to explore that. What does it look like to live from your heart, to let Jesus heal your heart?

That's why we need healed hearts. We have a society that breaks hearts, and so we turn our hearts off, and the heart is meant to work in tandem with the brain, and when our hearts have been wounded, we turn our hearts off. Do we get that? We build walls around our hearts, these giant walls and picket fences around our hearts, and we begin to only live from the brain, and the brain isn't meant to live on, to work on its own.

It's meant to have a partner, a tandem in thinking, the heart and the mind, and so we overtax our mind, and our minds are breaking because our hearts are broken, and so we fix them with, and I'm not saying that these, that the medical things are not right and good and used, and when I went through a season of anxiety, I used medication to take the edge off, and it helped me get through, and I'm not ashamed of that at all, and thankfully God got me to a place where I'm no longer using that, and he healed me of that.

So I'm not saying it's wrong, but I believe that when I, it was my heart that got healed that took away the need for the medication for me. That when God began to say, I love you, you don't have to win. You don't have to strive. You, I love you just the way you are, and when that got into my heart, life got a lot easier. I didn't have to be the pastor, a pastor anymore.

I wanted to be a pastor. There's a big difference between having to do something to prove yourself and dance and be a good boy and get those little accolades or a good girl to live up to everything daddy ever wanted you to do, and knowing that God loves you as a father, accepts you completely as you are, and you can be released to go do it in freedom and in love and fun, and I'll tell you, that'll release your mind.

It's true. I believe that there's mental illness, and some will not be fixed by that. I don't think everything is one for one, but I do believe we have broken hearts. Broken hearts means that we protect them. It breaks our minds. That's my theory, and I think it's true, and I think it's biblical. And so we want to be a church. If we're going to see hopelessness healed, if we're going to see despair healed, if we're going to have anxiety healed, and I've had anxiety to the point where I thought I was going to have to check myself in somewhere, couldn't sleep for multiple nights in a row, four nights in a row, three nights in a row, of not being able to sleep, of feeling like I was just getting crushed, and maybe some of you have experienced that.

I have experienced that, and I know what it's like, and I know that you can have freedom and healing from it, because I've experienced it in my own personal life. And if we are going to have that, we have to be a church that experiences the love of God the Father, and that's what I was talking about at the beginning. We have to get in a place where we're at rest, where we're at peace, where we enter into that.

And that's where we're going to be going as a church. I want to offer us a place to experience God as a congregation, where you can finally be at peace, when you can go beside the quiet waters, and Psalm 23 just isn't something above your dinner table. Psalm 23 becomes a place of rest, where we embody the fullness of that. Can you imagine what the church would look like, how much power we would have, if all of us went out and sent people and could give that to the world?

Broken hearts break minds. We want to have hearts that are free and full. So this story shows that the heart often trumps the brain. Let me give you some scriptures. scriptures in Romans 10, 9, it says, If you declare with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, that's great. And believe where? In your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Luke 10, 27, Jesus speaking, says, Love the Lord your God with what? Where does he start? With all of your heart. And then he goes on to say the rest of your entire being, your soul, your strength, and your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. And that means love your neighbor, not just do nice things, but love them from where? From your heart.

You can't love from your heart until your heart knows it is loved. You cannot, let me say that again, you cannot love from your heart until your heart knows that it is loved. And that is my quest for my life, to spend the rest of my life pursuing the endless, furious love of God, and the beating heart of God for me, that I can rest and say, no matter what, it is well with my soul.

It is well. And so we see that Simon's in a predicament, because at the moment he's not there, and Peter's bringing it to his doorstep. It shows us here that the story shows us that our Christ following, as you'll see in your notes, makes its way from our minds and into our heart, and this opens the way of fullness for the Holy Spirit's working. Let me read that again, because that's where we're going to go in part two of this message.

The story shows us that as our Christ following makes its way from our minds and into our heart, it opens the way for a fullness of the Holy Spirit's workings. We see that a Samaritan people had received the word of God, that they had been baptized, but it had not trickled down all the way until the point where they came, hands were laid on them.

I don't know what they prayed, but then a fullness came, and they were able to have access. You see, fullness is access. God is not limited. God is not a little child-sized portion in your heart, and now you're going to get a little bit more because they prayed for you. He is fully upon you. He is eternal, and everything you need, all the riches of heaven, it says in Ephesians, I think it's chapter one or two, Ephesians says all the blessings, spiritual blessings of heaven are available to us.

How do we access them? That's the deal. It's access, and one of the ways to access them is to know how much God loves you, and so I believe that we are a heart, the heart is the target, but with the advice of Scripture and the counsel of Scripture, we're going to have the rest of our being follow God as well. A couple of verses that I thought were really powerful before we move into the land this sermon on one other, I think, interesting notes.

Proverbs 4.23. This is a great Scripture. I think it's going to be on the screen behind us. Proverbs 4.23. Above all else. Above all else. That's pretty definitive, right? Above all else. It says, Guard your heart. Now that doesn't mean put a wall around it and let no one in. It means be wise and open the door to the right visitors. Guard your heart. For everything you do.

What does it say there? Flows from it. Take that. Let's take the Bible seriously. Above all else, guard your heart. For everything you do flows from it. Look at Luke 6.15. A good man brings good things out of the good stored up where? In his heart. And an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up where? In his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.

If you want to know what people believe in their heart, listen to their mouth. I'm just kidding. Is not a good enough filter for me or not enough disguise for me to think you didn't mean that. And somewhere. It doesn't mean you're a bad person. We all have stuff in our heart. If you want to know what's in a person's heart, just stay near them, close enough to them when they're hit with adversity.

You see, it's when we're hit with unsuspected adversity that we begin to say oftentimes the things that are dwelling within our heart. One of the things I learned in seminary, he said, you want to make sure as a pastor and especially as a preacher that your heart is clean. Because eventually, if it's not, you will say what is in your heart in front of your congregation and you're not going to enjoy that day.

It is true. Remember, we brought a Christian comedian in one time to the high school group. And when he was there, we had a play that was going on that week as well, separate of him. The comedian came in and the door opened and the wind blew and it blew down one of the stage pieces behind him. And it startled him. And I guess he had worked in clubs with adult clubs.

I'm not going to say what came out of his mouth. We were in the mid-90s, so there wasn't quite as much freedom then as there is now. And I won't even say what consonant it started with, but it started with a consonant and it was not good. I thought, I don't want that to happen to me. I don't want it to happen in my marriage. I don't want it to happen with my kids.

You want to have a pure heart. Why? Because it guides, as it says in Proverbs 4, 20, everything you do. You can't do anything without your heart affecting it. You know, that's a great place to start. And here's the starting point. Your heart needs the love of God to wrap its arms around and say, you know, you're worth something. You matter to me.

I created you. I love you. I'm a father. That's why the role of the father matters. We're trying to erase the role of father in society. It doesn't matter if a kid has a dad. Whatever. It doesn't matter. It does matter because God has decided to present himself and built us to need a father. It's how he built us. It's how he created us. And we need to know the love of a father and the love of a mother.

And so we see that. So these are really important verses. Now, let's just make a quick transition. I'm going to land this plane. Interesting to note as we talked, there was a delay between the Samaritans believing in Jesus, being baptized, and receiving the fullness of the Holy Spirit. In part two, we'll talk about how we receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

Now, let's look at verse nine. Go to verse nine. And we'll just talk about this story quickly. Because Samaria is one of the characters in this story. Realize that it's rare in the Bible when you read it where the city doesn't play a major role in understanding what is happening. When you think about Detroit, what do you think about? When you think about Miami, what do you think about?

When you think about San Diego, Los Angeles, London, all these cities have personality. All these cities have spirits. All these have a sense of who they are. And so Samaria is a character in this story. And it's a powerful character because they were hated by the Jews. They were people the Jews wouldn't even go through. Interesting, when Jesus went through and he meets the woman at the well, the scripture says that Jesus had to travel that way.

That is actually not true if you're looking at geography. Jesus did not have to travel through Samaria to get where he was going. And most would take the, I guess it was 30 miles or two-day journey or whatever it was. Most teachers of reputation would not go that way. And them not going through Samaria would be a statement of their piety. I will not walk through there.

We do not have to go through Samaria. Samaria, we have a dispute with them about who is the chosen people. We will not go through that way. And we are hated. But Jesus, it said, had to go that way. I love that. Why? Why do you think he had to go that way? Because his dad told him to. Straight up. He had to. And Jesus, I am the Father of one, and I only do when I see the Father of what?

If you don't slow down, you're not going to see what the Father's doing. Let me just tell you that. You're going to do a bunch of stuff in his name, but you've got to slow down to know what the Father's doing. I'll give you a quick one. This week we were approached as a church and said, hey, we're enjoying the sermons. We'd like to put the sermons on the radio.

And immediately I'm like, yeah, that sounds really good. Sounds really good. Sounds great. It's great for the church. I've got to tell you what, it feels pretty good to have them call you and tell you why I put you on the radio. Okay? Is that okay? Is everybody going to look at me with a straight face? You wouldn't feel that way? Yeah, yeah. I feel really good about it.

Yeah, okay. Just keep it real. So I'm like, yeah. So talking to the elder, we think it's a good idea for the church. And so we were looking at it. And then I felt like I just went away for 10 days and the Lord said, I just told you to rest. Who's going to edit that stuff? Who's going to do all that? And I just thought, you know what? This rest of the year is not the season for that.

And so it took me about three hours to figure that out, even though it would have been really cool. And it might still be cool. And it might be the thing for us to do. Who knows what God wants to do in this church? Cool. I think God is bringing some truth. The point was, thank God I'd spent 10 days away because I have a feeling getting six months down the road and saying we can't do this is probably what would have happened.

Because you need to hear from the Lord. I only do what I see the Father doing. You know what the Father told me to do? Let the church bloom. We're in springtime. We've added all these people. Let's just enjoy them and rest and enjoy the bloom. Let's enjoy spring. It is so good to get away. I want to encourage you. Get away. Sit with the Lord. Rest. Be at peace with God.

And so we see there in the scripture that Jesus said he went through Samaria. Now in verse 9, Now for some time a man named Simon had practiced sorcery in the city and it amazed all the people of Samaria. That's the importance of Samaria. They were hated by the Jews. But they had previously received the gospel. That is what is so interesting. The legwork of the gospel had been laid by whom?

Anyone? Yeah. Starts with a J. Ends with Jesus. Right. Jesus. And the Samaritan, as Jim said, the Samaritan woman. The Samaritan woman, what did she do? She went and told everybody. And then Jesus hung out there and it said that there was a revival that went on. He was going into fertile territory. You don't know who was gone before you when you go where God is sending you.

Go there and share the gospel. He was excited and so he goes into Samaria, this hated place. And maybe there's a hated place. There's a place in your heart that you don't want to go. There's people that you perhaps don't care if they hear the gospel or not. And God's saying, that's where I want you to go. And so he went there. And I love that Philip went there.

In John 4, 9 through 10, the Samaritan woman came to him and said, you are a Jew and I'm a Samaritan woman. She said to Jesus, how can you ask me for a drink? Because you don't speak to Samaritans and you definitely don't speak to women. For Jews do not associate with Samaritans. Jesus answered her, if you knew the gift of God. I love that. The gift.

Now we're talking about a gift of God. Now who else just said that in a passage we read talking about the free gift of God? Peter had just said it to Simon. You cannot buy this what? Gift. Now I didn't see that until I was standing up here. That's good. That part right there, the same thing. He told the woman about a free gift. It's a gift. And then a little bit later, Philip comes, a lot later, after the resurrection of Jesus.

And then when Peter and John come, they bring up this idea. Peter brings up this idea of a gift. So there you see the correlation of scripture. It says, Jesus answered, if you knew the gift of God and who it was that asked you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. Go get some spiritual Gatorade and start handing it out at the water cooler.

Go refresh the people. And I tell you what, you can't refresh people unless you've been refreshed. You've got to be refreshed. Finally, double fulfillment. And this is big for some of you. The Lord told me to say this and we're done. Two things are happening here. We have a double fulfillment and Philip going to Samaria. The first was a fulfillment of prophecy, Luke 3.16.

John answered them all, John the Baptist. He says, I'm going to baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I is going to come, the straps of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. And so we see that Jesus has come. He's brought the Holy Spirit. He's talked to the woman at the well.

He did do that. Now Philip is coming in and he's praying when he brings Peter and John and the Holy Spirit comes in fullness. So John prophesied that these things would happen and Philip and Peter and John are fulfilling the prophecy. So we have a fulfillment of prophecy. Now here's the thing that stuck out to me that I thought was so interesting.

We also have a fulfillment of the Great Commission. In Acts 1.8, Jesus says before he flies, I'm not going to say ascended, before he flies because it's way cooler. Before Jesus flies, he says, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And that happened earlier in Acts. And you will be my witnesses where? In Jerusalem, in all Judea, and Samaria, in all Judea.

And there's some interest there. And Samaria and to the ends of the earth. This is what I thought was so interesting. There's a double fulfillment. A fulfillment of prophecy and a fulfillment of commission. But the fulfillment of prophecy came because they were willing to fulfill the commission. Sometimes you have to be willing to go before you'll know.

And so God said this fulfillment of prophecy, I'm going to bring the Holy Spirit and Samaria is going to accept the word of God. And the word of God is going to go to the ends of the earth. But it wouldn't have gone unless they were willing to go. Here's the point. There's things that have been prophesied over your lives. And maybe you wouldn't call it prophecy because you haven't been raised in a church culture that calls it prophecy.

But there are things that you believe that are promises of God. Let's just call them promises for your life. And I believe sometimes we just wait on the sidelines. When's that going to happen? When's that going to happen, God? When's that going to happen? And I feel like God is saying to us and to some of you in this congregation, it's going to happen when you go towards it.

Because prophecy becomes self-fulfilling when you fulfill commissions. And so God has called some of you to certain things in your lives. And I don't know what those are. And they're probably pinging in your mind right now. And he's called you to go. Whether it be business, whether it be school, whether it be to heal a relationship, whatever the deal is, he's called you to these places.

And he says, there is a promise that I've given you. But the promise, the fulfillment, becomes self-fulfilling because you've been willing to go to that place. You see, Philip was willing to go where most Jews were not. He was willing to fulfill a calling so that the promise could happen. And I want to say some of your promises that we see here oftentimes will not come true until you go.

The fulfillment, look at it in Abraham. Go, he says, go, I'm going to give you a promised land. Go to the place that I'm going to what? Show you. Walk in that direction. And somewhere in that forest of trees is a needle. And you're going to find it, but just go. But how am I going to find it? Just go and you'll find it. We've got to go. And so this, I feel like the Lord is saying, is a commission to some of you.

We need to go. And God is calling you to go. And in the midst of that, those promises will be fulfilled. Let's ask the worship band to come forward. Have you stand if you would. And I'm going to pray and we're going to worship the Lord. Lord. Lord Jesus, I just pray, God, now that you begin to speak to us of your promises. If you have a promise that's been on your life and it feels like it's abandoned, it's sunken treasure, believe that God wants to submerge into your heart.

Wants to renew your heart. Let's just do a little heart surgery right now. Amen. Are you willing to look into your heart? Jesus. Say, Jesus, show me my heart. I want to promise you there's a lot of goodness in there as well. Some more of your heart. Say. Say. Say. Peace.