Power to Preach (Part A)

We are there to increase the chance of salvation. It doesn't always happen as quickly as we want or the way that we want. We'll be ministering to somebody for years and some other Christian comes in and closes the deal.

What is that? I've been preaching to this person and you come along and now they're saved. Let's get them unsaved so I can get it. Your suffering may be part of God's plan because that's what it takes, not because God gets a thrill out of our suffering.

That is never the case. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Acts.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the book of Acts chapter 8 as he begins a brand new study called Power to Preach. Book of Acts chapter 8 verses 9 to 25. There was a certain man called Simon who previously practiced sorcery in the city and astonished the people of Samaria, claiming that he was someone great, to whom they all gave heed from the least to the greatest, saying this man is the great power of God. And they heeded him because he had astonished them with his sorceries for a long time. But when they believed Philip as he preached the things concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, both men and women were baptized. Then Simon himself also believed, and when he was baptized, he continued with Philip and was amazed, seeing the miracles and signs which were done. Now when the apostles who were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them, who when they had come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Spirit, for as yet he had fallen upon none of them. They had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

Then they laid hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit, and when Simon saw that, through the laying on of the apostles' hands, the Holy Spirit was given, he offered them money, saying, Give me this power also, that anyone on whom I lay hands may receive the Holy Spirit. But Peter said to him, Your money perish with you, because you thought that the gift of God could be purchased with money. You have neither part nor portion in this matter of your heart. Your heart is not eaten right in the sight of God. Repent, therefore, of this your wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of your heart may be forgiven you.

For I see that you are poisoned by bitterness and bound in iniquity. Then Simon answered and said, Pray to the Lord for me, that none of these things which you have spoken may come upon me. So when they had testified and preached the word of the Lord, they returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel in many villages of the Samarians." Now last session in Acts, we read about the apostles, or the persecution that broke out in Jerusalem, and that the believers were persecuted to preach.

It spread them out. Well, now we're going to see in this chapter the power to preach. Satan thought the church was in retreat.

He was wrong again. The gospel is being spread. Now in this section of scripture, there are some debated portions, and it's always unpleasant to deal with them, so I'll try to be quick when it comes to that, because I'm not trying to convince you to see it my way.

I'm sharing with you as I believe the Spirit of God shared with me, and you make your call after that. But God allowed the believers to be persecuted and used this persecution so they could preach the gospel in areas that they otherwise would not have been so quick to visit. And so here we see the need not only for opportunity to preach, but power to preach. Philip had the opportunity, and he had the power. And at the time, the Christians that were fleeing Jerusalem because of the persecution, they didn't know they were winning.

We know that. 2,000 years later, we read their story, and we say, look at that, man, this is great. You know, Satan was really the one that was losing territory. But the Christians at the time, they felt that they were being chased. They were, and they did something with it. They were too busy trying to survive and to escape persecution to see what God was doing. Well, we're no better.

You come under pressure in your life, your life starts falling apart, things going the way you never wanted them to go. You may miss that God is doing something nonetheless. These things are here for our edification. Not only is the Old Testament here for our edification, but so is the New Testament. We know their outcome.

We know that they lost the battle but won the war. Maybe you are in a battle, spiritual battle. Hopefully, at least at some point, you're in a spiritual battle for others and not just yourself. Maybe it's a lost soul, maybe it's a loved one, maybe it's a child.

You feel like you're losing the battle. Remember, God put you and your Christianity, your personal relationship with Christ, God put you and that relationship into their lives. Whether they know it or not, respect it or not, receive it or not, you should know it, you should respect it. We should all receive this. We are there to increase the chance of salvation. It doesn't always happen as quickly as we want or the way that we want. We'll be ministering to somebody for years and some other Christian comes in and closes the deal.

What is that? I've been preaching to this person and you come along and now they're saved. Let's get them unsafe so I can get it. Your suffering may be part of God's plan because that's what it takes. Not because God gets a thrill out of our suffering.

That is never the case. But because that's what it takes to defeat the wickedness that is here. Suffering. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquity. The chastisement for our peace was upon him and by his pain, his stripes, we have been made whole.

That's our example. Christ suffering for others. The big difference is he didn't have to. He could have just said, you know what, I'll stay here in heaven. I'm not going down there.

But he does come here. So again, you may feel defeated but Satan really is losing ground if you keep your head in the game. In this chapter we see four groups receiving salvation. Well in the book of Acts, not this chapter, in the book of Acts.

And it's comprehensive. It covers mankind. We see the Jews have been saved all the way back to chapter 2. The Samaritans, they are being saved and we're seeing that. And the Samaritans were, you know, the mixed breed. They were half Jewish and half Gentile. They were this mixed breed of people. So we see the Jews and those who are Jew-Gentile getting saved. Then we'll see a proselyte.

Somebody who came to Judaism but is a Gentile. And they took up the Jewish religion, Judaism. They get saved. That person in this chapter happens to be an Ethiopian.

We'll get that some other time. And then when we get to chapter 10 we see the full-blown Gentiles getting saved. And so through the book of Acts we see the Gospel. You know, again, Satan thinking he's stomping it out.

But we see it just marching forward. People getting saved. And God's saying there's no special group that gets saved. Jew, Gentile, mixed, religious convert. You come to Christ, you get saved. There's no special class.

There's no pecking order. There's no longer Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, Scythian or barbarian. All are in Christ. These are the lessons that fly off the pages and are received by anyone who is willing to dig for them, who's willing to have them and do something with them. And when you go out and you share the Gospel with anybody God puts in front of you, you're living it out. We look now at verse 9 because we've got a lot here.

We'd better get going. But there was a certain man called Simon who previously practiced sorcery in the city and astonished the people of Samaria claiming that he was someone great. Well, as converts are being made, complications are arising.

And this is going to be a complication. Nobody sees it yet, but it's there. Simon was a master of tricks and illusions and he had postured himself as being somebody who was a go-to guy for spiritual advice. There is no mention of his healing anyone. There's no mention of his helping anyone. No spiritual activity is mentioned about this Simon, only that he wowed the crowd. It says here, who previously practiced sorcery in the city. Now that is critical to understanding what's going on in this section because it says he previously practiced, which means at some point he abandons this. And well, we come to it, of course he gets saved.

This is an indication that Simon abandoned the sinful life and embraced Christ and that it was genuine. See, now we're getting into the debate because there are many very good Bible teachers. Many of my teachers in the Word wrote through books. They don't share this opinion. Some of the others do. If any of you would like to write them a letter to let them know they're wrong and I'm right, I would appreciate it. Luke's Gospel, chapter 9. And when the disciples, James and John, saw this, they said, Lord, do you want us to command fire, come down from heaven and consume them just as Elijah did? He said, well, why are you reading this verse about bringing fire down on people who aren't cooperating with Christ?

Because I think that's a mindset that many Christians fall into, just like James and John, where we want to kind of bulldoze people into hell when we come across their character and say, he's in hell, he's in hell, he's done. The rich young ruler, he's gone to hell. Jesus told them to follow him, he's gone to hell.

Well, that's not how the story reads. Christ, he said, what do I have to do to get to heaven? He says, you know, follow the law.

He says, these things I've done for my youth, but what do I still lack? Granted, he didn't go far enough as far as serving the Lord, but it doesn't condemn him to hell. And it's the same with Simon here. There are those that just think that this man was a fraud, he never was saved because he practiced his sorcery and he makes his tremendous blunder.

Well, yeah, he made a big blunder. And Peter goes what we would call ballistic. Well, that ain't the whole story.

Peter Lee gives us the whole story. And so, again, because of the seriousness of his era, there are many Christians that factor out the seriousness of grace. Sinners in the hands of a graceful God. He assured God has the capacity for wrath. But that's not how he approaches us. When you got saved, God doesn't say, I'm going to kill you. He's offering his grace.

You know, it's the goodness of God that led me to repentance, said Paul. In some hard cases, God may have to do it that way. Consider Balaam, I mean, the donkey's talking to him. You think that would have just ended everything for Balaam?

I mean, he just would have gone home and just got in the bed after. What would you do if your pet started talking to you? Some of you would just enter into dialogue and be so happy about it. But it's like, stop doing that.

I mean, the first thing the dog would say if it were a dog is, you know you can't tell anybody this. So Simon makes a goof. Well, Paul made a goof. He's persecuting Christians, but he gets forgiven.

Simon can be forgiven too. Not because Simon says, but this word, I figured you'd like that. This word sorcery here. Well, there really are two words in the New Testament that are translated sorcery. The Greek word here is where we get our English word magic from. The other word is where we get our English word pharmacy from, pharmacia, and this one, magio. And so, what does it mean?

What's the difference between the two? Well, of course, sorcery in the Old Testament condemned, and it's condemned in the New Testament. If you mean by sorcery, contacting the spiritual realm. Not coming to God, but trying to, you know, the occult, we would call it. That certainly gets no pardon from God.

It gets condemnation. But it does seem that Simon was more into illusions, posturing himself as though he was this spiritual sage, but not necessarily concocting potions and conjuring up spells and things like that. Alimus, a false prophet that we'll meet in chapter 13, he was into sorcery, and he did not tolerate Paul, the apostle, coming into his territory, and there was that confrontation, and Paul smote him blind for a period of time. We get to chapter 19, we come across the sons of Sceva who also decided that they were going to dip and dab into the spiritual realm.

They were ill-prepared, and they ended up physically with a beating. But there's no indication of Simon doing anything more but then bedazzling the people, making himself to be somebody. And the people said, boy, this guy's impressive. You should see what he could do with a rabbit. And, you know, so just keeping that in mind, now you can say, well, could he have been into the occult?

Sure. But I think he was a fraud. He was a phony baloney, and he was getting away with it, and we'll come back to these verses. I'll repeat that, that he is pretending through sleight of hand.

Well, I should add, Philip would have really had his hands full if this guy was deep into the dark arts. So we come to the bottom of verse 9 that, speaking of Simon, he astonished the people of Samaria, claiming that he was someone great, and there it is. He's an imposter. Look at me. He's promoting himself.

These people are loving it and making money, I'm sure, from this. Philip preached Christ, and Simon preached himself, one of the big differences between the believer and the make-believer. Verse 10, to whom they all gave heed from the least to the greatest, saying, this man is the great power of God. Well, that's what Simon wanted. He wanted these people to accept him, and they were mesmerized by what he was doing. And it doesn't detail again for us what he was doing, but let's just say he's levitating people. Well, it's going to impress people who don't know that there's sleight of hand.

I don't think he was levitating anybody. I stick with the rabbit-in-the-hat one, because he doesn't seem to be this great character. Here he is, a self-made, village, spiritual advisor. You might disagree with that, and that's okay.

I would agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong. Verse 11, just checking on you. And they heeded him because he astonished them with his sorceries for a long time. So again, he's not producing it. He's not healing anybody.

He's just, you know, doing these things. They're looking at it. They can see it. What should have been, they would better have been served had he been preaching truth to them.

But there's nothing like that going on. And when Philip comes, it will be the preaching of the Word that turns everything around with signs and wonders. The miracle of spiritual truth will defeat these mesmerizing wonders of Simon.

The miracle of spiritual truth, and it is a miracle when a soul converts from the world, from the self, from sin to Jesus Christ. When Paul says faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God, it is a miracle. Paul will write to the Ephesians warning them, we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting. Well, Ephesus was a huge city to whom he was writing at the time, and he knew that there were men like Simon and far worse than Simon. And he's telling the Christians, don't be wowed by things that aren't true. Stick to the unbroken witness of your scripture that goes back to Adam. Verse 12, but when they believed Philip as he preached the things concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, both men and women were baptized. And so whatever it was that Simon was into, it was all shoved aside by truth. Truth shows up and just overcomes. Now we will get to those acts that are into sorcery, into the occult. We will have those that are demonically influenced and possessed, but I don't think that's, again, so much the case here.

Philip's arrival and work notified the people that they were incomplete. Maybe you go to church, you're a churchgoer if that's all you do. You're not family yet. You have to have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

You have to recognize that you lack something without them. More than life, you lack salvation, security that comes from Jesus Christ himself. And Philip's arrival notifies the people that, look, you might have Simon and all that stuff, you're still going to hell.

And they're responding to that. Satan says, who wants to be a millionaire? Christ says, who wants to go to heaven? Who wants to be born again? Both men and women were baptized.

There was nothing vague about that. Faith alone and Jesus alone, that's who gets baptized. To be able to say Christ died in my place as me, took my sin, my punishment.

My punishment for my sin, he took it on himself so that I would not have to suffer it. He is the savior, but before he is my savior, he is Lord. He has always been Lord.

He is Lord from eternity past and he will be Lord into eternity future. Those are the ones that get baptized in water. And if you believe Jesus Christ is that to you, your Lord and your savior, and you have not been baptized, what are you waiting for? Now we do not encourage the youth to get baptized, nor do we discourage them. We only want to be part of the process of a genuine baptism. That they're not saying, well I'm going to get baptized because my friend is getting baptized. So they don't want to create that kind of environment for them.

A lot of people do. You know, you see little four year olds getting baptized, do they really understand what's going on? Because it's part of baptism is you have to understand that Christ is your savior, you are a sinner.

What it means to be baptized, what it is preaching, it's a sermon. All you have to do is go to Chop Chop Square in Saudi Arabia and get baptized in that square and find out what happens to you. They'll kill you.

You won't even dry off before they kill you. Because it means something. It means something to hell.

Hell hates to see. People say, I'm lining up with the believers. This is my uniform. This is the army I march with. This is the kingdom that I belong to.

This is where my primary citizenship is. And so if you are a Christian and you love the Lord Jesus Christ, you believe in salvation through Christ alone, faith alone in Christ alone, by the word of God, then you need to get baptized. You need to get with one of the pastors. If I was you, I'd be shoving people aside to get there after service.

No, I would not. But if you do, I'm going to preach about you. Anyway, the early church was very serious about this. Where there was conversion, there was baptism. Verse 13, then Simon himself also believed. And when he was baptized, he continued with Philip and was amazed, seeing the miracles and signs which were done. Yeah, because he couldn't duplicate that.

He said, my man, I could do a whole rabbit thing, but I can't do this. It says, then Simon himself also believed. That is what the Bible says. The Bible does not say, but his belief was not genuine. The Calvinist will come back and add that later. We have no right to reject that initial statement from Luke under the Holy Spirit's authority, just because he makes his tremendous blunder in a few minutes. Well, a few verses. And why should we be surprised that a new convert has a theological error and makes a theological or spiritual faux pas?

Why should we be surprised? Was he supposed to be converted and all of a sudden now he's a theologian? Luke explicitly says Simon believed and that he was baptized. And having introduced Simon as one who was previously into sorcery in verse 9, it connects perfectly. Now, I'm going through this because you have these study Bibles and other commentaries and you read them and they just slam Simon. And I disagree with them. Just because they write a book or get to be part of a book doesn't mean they're automatically right.

That'd be kooky. By that logic, every book ever written is the authority of what is right and wrong. It's looking at it objectively, which I think many well-meaning commentators on certain parts of theology are not objective anymore because they've gotten into a doctrinal camp and they've written books about it and they're not going to leave. Anyway, if the Samaritan's belief was genuine unto salvation, just like it says, then why isn't Simon's also? We have no reason to doubt it. That his faith led to his baptism was genuine unto his salvation and it says, and was amazed seeing the miracles and the signs which were done.

So the amazer is now amazed himself. We're not to crave miracles, signs, and wonders as a gateway to faith. We accept that Jesus preached on this. Christ concisely said to Thomas, well blessed are you, Thomas. You see it and you got it. But there's going to be others that haven't seen what you have seen.

And they're going to believe by faith. And that's what I'm after. You've been listening to Cross-Reference Radio, the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, Virginia. As we mentioned at the beginning of today's broadcast, today's teaching is available free of charge at our website. Simply visit cross-reference radio.com. That's cross-reference radio.com. We'd also like to encourage you to subscribe to the Cross-Reference Radio podcast. Subscribing ensures that you stay current with all the latest teachings from Pastor Rick. You can subscribe at crossreferenceradio.com or simply search for Cross-Reference Radio in your favorite podcast app. Tune in next time as Pastor Rick continues teaching through the book of Acts right here on Cross-Reference Radio.