Show and Tell

Acts 8:4-13

Okay, here’s an itinerant preacher who shows up in a strange town. He’s got no family connections, no cultural connections with any of the people there. In fact, it’s a town full of people who have a historic hatred of his own religion and ethnic group. He’s got no seminary training – in fact, he’s been ordained as a deacon, not as a teaching elder.

That’s Philip’s situation. For over 1000 years, Jews and Samaritans had hated each other. And yet in spite of all that, multitudes of Samaritans come to hear a Jewish Deacon preach about a Jewish Messiah. They came to believe his message and to be baptized. It’s enough to give any preacher a major inferiority complex.

Oh, but we might save face by giving all the credit to the miracles Philip did, right? I mean, what preacher wouldn’t have success if he could cast out unclean spirits, or if he could heal people who were paralyzed? Faith healers still don’t have much trouble drawing a crowd, after all.

But wait a minute – Philip’s not the only miracle worker in this city of Samaria. And he’s not the only one who has been drawing a crowd. In this same passage we meet a man called Simon, a sorcerer, a magician. Now, Simon could have been just a conjuror, like David Copperfield or Doug Henning, the sort of magician who uses illusions to amaze and confound audiences. Or, Simon could have been the sort of magician who calls upon demonic power, the same sort of power found in the unclean spirits that Philip cast out of so many people in the area. We’re just not sure what sort of sorcerer Simon was.

But what we do know is that both Simon and Philip had the same sort of effect on the people of Samaria. At least in part because of the amazing things they did, the Samaritans gave heed to both of them.

This may, in fact, give us a clue as to why Philip had to do the sort of miraculous things he did. For if Philip was going to preach the gospel successfully, he would have to compete with Simon. That means Philip had to go head-to-head with the demonic powers that seemed to be so active in Samaria at that time. In confronting the demons, Philip was doing no more and no less than following Christ.

Is that right? After all, we aren’t usually accustomed to thinking of Christianity in competitive, confrontational terms. We usually associate Jesus with humility and of course He was humble. Of course He humbled Himself before His Father, and even before the people who crucified Him. But as humble as He was, He never compromised on what was right. From the time He confronted Satan during the temptation in the wilderness to the time He died on the cross, He never backed down. He never gave in to the temptations of sin and self.

Yes, on that cross Jesus was engaging in a cosmic competition, fighting with all He was and all He had against all the powers of Hell in order to ransom the souls of His people. And it was precisely because He was willing to humble Himself so completely to the Father that He gained such a complete victory over the power of Satan, over the power of sin and death. It was precisely because of His self-sacrifice that the Father gave Him all power in Heaven and on Earth.

And it is that power and authority that Philip drew upon in order to defeat the demonic forces arrayed against him. By casting out demons and healing the sick, Philip revealed that Simon’s magic was no match for the power of the risen Christ.

It sounds impressive. It sounds dramatic. But the fact is that all those who follow Christ are called to engage in the same struggle, the same competition. All those who follow Christ are called to interact with the sinful world in basically the same way that Christ did, and the same way that Philip did: to confront the hosts of evil in whatever form they present themselves today with the Person and Work of Jesus Christ.

Missionaries tell us that sometimes when the gospel first goes into areas marked by demon worship, such miraculous confrontations like those between Philip and Simon are still necessary and still take place. But here in America, we don’t tend to worry about sorcerers anymore. Today our magicians are entertainers, not community leaders. But that doesn’t mean Satan is idle in our modern world, and that doesn’t mean people all around us are immune to the temptations of idolatry. And so if Philip had to confront Simon’s amazing powers with the even more amazing power of Christ, so we must reveal Christ in the face of whatever counterfeit powers the people around us are inclined to trust.

That means that when people trust the government to give them safety and security, we must instead reveal Christ as the King of Kings, the Good Shepherd Who protects and guides His people. When people look to relationships for meaning and fulfillment, we must instead reveal Christ as the Bridegroom of the Church, the One Who loves us enough to die for us. When people seek happiness or fulfillment by taking pills or booze, we must instead reveal Christ as the healer of the sick, the giver of everlasting life. Because Christ is the real answer to all our deepest needs, revealing Him to the world is the essence of discipleship, the indispensable foundation for evangelism. And sometimes revealing Christ in this way requires that we confront all those other things in which people place their trust.

But how can we truly reveal Christ to the world? Philip, after all, could do miracles to display the power of Christ. How can we hope to confront the wickedness around us unless we are similarly equipped?

Well, think about it for a minute. Sure, Philip could do amazing things, but so could Simon. And remember, verse 6 and verse 10 say that their miracles had the same sort of effect on the people – because of their amazing feats, the people gave heed to each one of them. When the people saw Simon and Philip do things they couldn’t explain, the people paid attention to each one of them.

So, if both men did amazing feats, why did the people believe Philip instead of Simon? It wasn’t because of what they saw, for what they saw each man do had the same effect on them. No, they must have believed Philip because of what they heard. At the end of the day, they must have decided that it was Philip’s message that was true.

So, why was Philip’s message more compelling than Simon’s? Look in verses 9 and 10 and what Simon said: “I am someone great. I am someone important.” And until Philip showed up, that’s what the people believed. Simon had power, and they couldn’t deny that. And in light of Simon’s power, they may have let him push them around.

But let’s face it – Simon’s message isn’t exactly revolutionary. From Fidel Castro to Kim Jong Il, the world is full of people who are ready to tell us all about how important they are. And from Julius Caesar to Hugo Chavez, the world has always known powerful people who try to lord it over everyone else. Such tyrants might inspire fear, but no one really expects them to change our lives for the better or to meet our deepest needs.

But Philip, Philip was different. In spite of the miracles he did, Philip didn’t show up talking about how great he himself was. No, verse 5 tells us that Philip came proclaiming Christ to his listeners. In spite of the power he displayed, verse 12 says that Philip told them not that he was a king, but that God’s kingdom had come in the Person of Jesus the Messiah. In other words, Philip did amazing miracles like Simon did, but instead of glorifying himself like Simon did, and like so many tinpot dictators have done throughout history, Philip wanted God to get all the glory.

Now, that’s different. That kind of humility is extraordinary. But I suppose what put the icing on the cake was the fact that Philip, a Jew, had come to bring the message of Jesus to a town in Samaria. That simply wasn’t heard of. To the Jews, the Samaritans were a bunch of mixed race schismatics who refused to worship God in the Temple at Jerusalem. Worse yet, the Jews saw Samaritans as heretics, because they refused to accept the authority of any but the first five books of the Bible. Jews never had anything to do with Samaritans.

No, wait. There was at least one Jew who did. In chapter 4 of John’s gospel, we find that it was a Samaritan woman to whom Jesus made the first clear revelation of His identity as the Messiah. In doing this, Jesus made it plain that He hadn’t just come to save the Jews, but that He had come to be the Savior of Samaritans as well, along with people from all over the world, from every tribe and tongue and nation. In preaching the gospel in Samaria, Philip was thus following Jesus’ lead.

In short, it wasn’t just the miracles Philip did that made people believe him. It was his obvious display of the humble character of Christ reaching across religious and racial barriers that made his words resonate in the hearts of his hearers.

And so, at the end of the day, it was the gospel that Philip preached, not the miracles that Philip did that won the people’s hearts. Look at verse 12. It was when the people believed Philip preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ that all those men and women were baptized. And as verse 8 says, it was this good news that brought great joy in that city. For it was the good news of Jesus Christ that had finally set them free.

What does all that mean for us? Simply this: if we are called to confront evil in the world today, we are also called to proclaim the good news to the world today. And if it is the power of Christ to which we must appeal and on which we must rely, it is the character of Christ which we must proclaim and which we must model.

It is Christ’s humility that must mark our lives, for it is as we devote ourselves more and more fully to Him, as we submit ourselves more and more completely to His will that our words about His authority and power will ring true. But most of all, it is as we reach across the many lines that divide us from one another that our love for Christ and our love for others will be seen most clearly. It is as we humble ourselves before those whom the world considers the least, it is as we serve those whom we ourselves might consider to be unimportant, it is as we reach out in love and fellowship to those from whom we are most deeply separated by years of distrust – it is then that the gospel we preach will gain a hearing. For it is only then that we will truly reveal ourselves to be the disciples of the crucified Christ.

No, we don’t have to be faith-healers or exorcists in order to spread the gospel. We don’t even have to be ordained ministers – Philip was not an elder, but a deacon after all. We just have to be Christians, genuine Christ-filled Christians, showing Christ to the world even as we tell the world about Him. And who can doubt that such a consistent witness will be effective?

It certainly was for Simon. For after seeing Philip, and after hearing his words, even Simon the sorcerer couldn’t deny the reality of Christ. Even Simon was baptized and made a profession of faith. For Simon finally saw something truly amazing, something he couldn’t explain by trickery or overcome by magic. He saw the power of Christ fully displayed in a man fully devoted to Christ.

Will we devote ourselves to Christ in such a way? Will we bear witness to Him with our lips as well as with our lives? Will we live as He lived and love as He loved? Will we allow Christ to use us to bring joy and freedom to the world?

Hymn 385 Take My Life and Let it Be