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I couldn't help but think of it this morning when we went from Dubois to Ghana to the old rugged cross and then to have your young associate with that tremendous organ at the end and now tonight you're shedding light on a hymn I've been singing for 35 years and never understood until now.

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And it's just a beautiful thing and I know I speak for all of us when I say how grateful to have testimony in word and then to have testimony in song like that. Well why don't I just pronounce the benediction and we'll go home. We're talking about ancient roads for modern feet.

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We talked about first the Damascus Road, the conversion experience, and then we talked about the Wilderness Road, when you become a Christian you know temptation. And tonight we talk about the Gaza Road which has to do with Christian witness. Once one becomes a disciple of Christ, one wishes to share it with others.

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It is the story of course of Philip and the Ethiopian and it is recorded for us in scripture in Acts chapter 8. I begin the reading at the verse number 26. But an angel of the Lord said to Philip, "Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes

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down from Jerusalem to Gaza. This is a desert road." And he rose and went. And behold an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a minister of Candacy, the queen of the Ethiopians, in

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charge of all her treasure, had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning. Seated in his chariot he was reading the prophet Isaiah. And the spirit said to Philip, "Go up and join this chariot." So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, "Do you understand

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what you are reading?" And he said, "How can I unless someone guides me?" And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Now the passage of scripture which he was reading was this, "As a sheep led to the slaughter

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or a lamb before its shearer is dumb, so he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken up from the earth."

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And the eunuch said to Philip, "About whom, pray, does the prophet say this? About himself or about someone else?" And Philip opened his mouth and beginning with this scripture he told him the good news of Jesus.

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And as they went along the road they came to some water. And the eunuch said, "See, here is water. What is to prevent my being baptized?" And he commanded the chariot to stop and they both went down into the water, Philip and

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the eunuch, and he baptized him. And when they came up out of the water the spirit of the Lord caught up Philip and the eunuch saw him no more and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip was found at Azotus and passing on he preached the gospel to all the towns

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till he came to Caesarea. And may God bless to us this reading from his word. There are certain elemental principles of Christian witness which are made known to us in the passage.

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And the first of course is that we must be open to God's leadings. We must be ready to walk through the doors which God opens. Now the road to Gaza was in those days a very busy road. And here is a man, the treasurer of the Queen of Ethiopia, a man of some status.

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He undoubtedly would not have been traveling alone but would have had a retinue, a company with him. He is traveling on that road. He has been to Jerusalem and he is heading home again.

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The journey from his home in Ethiopia to Jerusalem, about 1,200 miles. And it's interesting to notice that in this journey he has crossed Egypt. Now in that day Egypt had the most spectacular, if you will, religion that was known. Much ritual, much pageantry, much splendor involved in its worship.

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But this man was quite evidently not seeking just ritual or pageantry or splendor. He was looking for something deeper than that. He had come all the way to Jerusalem. Now we do not know if he was a convert to Judaism or not.

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He could have been a proselyte. There were also many in those days who, while they had not become Jews by faith, had at the same time a very high regard for Judaism and studied Judaism because they saw in its monotheism and in its ethical demands something to be admired.

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These people were called in that day God-fearers. So this man may have been a proselyte or he may have been a God-fearer. In any case, the Holy Spirit tells Philip to go to meet him. And the Scriptures say Philip arose and went.

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He was immediately responsive to the invitation of God. And it is quite obvious when you read the story that God has prepared the way. The man is already reading the Scriptures. He is obviously sensitive to what he is reading so that when Philip comes to him, the way

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is immediately open for Philip to begin his witness. Many times, I think, we find ourselves led to places where we can say a good word for Jesus, but we hold back, doubtful about whether we should express what is on our hearts or not.

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We need to be more like Philip, alert to the fact that God prepares the opportunities. He opens the door. He sets the scene. And having opened the door or set the scene, we can trust him to cause the things to work

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together for good. There was a young man who felt led to witness to his boss, a man of great power and prominence. This happened not in this city but in Chicago. Now he was very timid about this, to speak of his faith to this man who was the leader

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of his organization, yet everything seemed to point to that possibility. The doors were open, the signs were evident, and he felt led of God to do it. And so finally he made an appointment one day with the man, and when he was seated across from the man at his desk, he proceeded to share his faith in a very simple way with

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this man who was his superior. And when he was done, the man said absolutely nothing. So thinking he had perhaps been misunderstood and that what he was proposing was not clear, he proceeded to state what he believed again and to issue a gentle and loving word of witness

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to this great man. And once again the man said not a single solitary word. The young man by this time felt that he had offended this man in some way, that some word of his had been ill chosen, that he had not been faithful to what the Holy Spirit had

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wanted him to do, and he began to make apology. And at the moment he began to make apology, the man on the other side of the desk took a pencil and wrote something on a piece of paper and pushed it across the desk to him. And turning the paper about so that he could read it, he read these words, "I am so moved

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that if I were to speak, I would most certainly weep." You see, the road had been prepared, the young man had responded, and the witness had been heard. The first thing we must remember in witnessing is to watch where God leads and to be responsive

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to it. Now the second principle of witness which comes to us here is that winning witness is always both biblical and personal. This Ethiopian eunuch is studying Isaiah chapter 53.

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Now this is the chapter in which Jesus is presented to us as the man of sorrows. He's not presented as a great teacher, though of course he was a consummate preacher. He is not presented to us as a great reformer, though the greatest social reforms of history had their beginning in Jesus.

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He's not even presented to us in this passage as a great saint, as one who has in his life all the disciplines of devotion which we in fact know were truly in him. No, Jesus is presented in Isaiah 53 as the great sufferer, as the lame who before the slaughters is dumb.

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Now we do not know all that Philip said on this occasion. He might have talked about the resurrection of Jesus, he might have talked about the parables of Jesus, but in the light of this passage which is all about the sufferings of Jesus, he must have spoken of the cross.

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You could not read about a man taking upon himself the stripes of all the world's sinners and make no mention of the cross. Now it's been my experience in my ministry that there are really two things that can break a heart.

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A heart can be broken by an act of great cruelty, but a heart can also be broken by an act of great tenderness and love. And the way that the Holy Spirit uses to enter into our hearts is the way of love. And the love of God is best shown to us in the cross.

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So when Philip took these words of Isaiah and spoke of Jesus in terms of his death upon the cross, he was using the Holy Spirit's choicest weapon to enter into a person's experience. You know one of the great preachers of our century was E. Stanley Jones. And E. Stanley Jones was preparing to give his first sermon, and in preparing for it,

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he memorized it. And he got up before the congregation, made up largely of his friends and associates, and he began. And about four or five sentences into the message, he came to the word "indifferentism,"

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which is a rather awkward and not commonly used word, and he stumbled over it. And when he stumbled over it, a young lady in the audience laughed. And it upset him so that he went back and tried to start again, but he lost his place and soon found himself in hopeless confusion.

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And in great embarrassment, he went to sit down. And he said later that as he went to sit down, he heard the voice of God saying to him, "Have I never done anything for you?" And E. Stanley Jones responded, "You died for me."

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And the voice said, "Then tell them about that." And Stanley Jones returned to the pulpit and spoke about what the saving death of Christ on the cross had meant in his own personal experience. And he became, with that message, one of the great troubadours of the truth in our time.

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You know, one of the students on the campus where I served for a while said to me once after a lecture in the philosophy of religion, "I don't know anything about the God of the galaxies, but I do know my Aunt Mary's God. He loved her and gave himself for her."

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That is the heart of the gospel. And the great picture of the love of God seen on the cross or prophesied in Isaiah 53 and how it impacts upon our lives in our personal experience, not arguments, not apologetics, but rather our response to the cross, that's always the center of what witness is to be.

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And that, it seems to me, is the second thing we learn from this story, that winning witness is personal and biblical, the cross and what it means in our lives. The third thing we learn from the story is that salvation is always confirmed by action. Notice how the eunuch responds once he gets the message.

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"Here's some water. Why not let me be baptized?" And he was immersed, says that they went down into the water together. Now this was a very public act.

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Remember I said he was traveling with a retinue, and you cannot be baptized in a stream by the side of a road in any private fashion. In other words, all those who were traveling with him obviously saw what he was doing. If there were any in the company, for example, who were his enemies, they might have been

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able to use this against them. He was taking a risk with this act. But you see, it is essential for those who have made decision to make some kind of public stand, to let it be known that Jesus Christ has become there.

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So in witness, we need not only to present the cross and to present it in terms of our own experience of it, but we need also to call that person to taking a stand for Jesus Christ, in some way making clear that his discipleship has begun. There's a young man who's a pastor of a church in Kansas City.

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His name's Tim Johns. I know Tim and I knew his family very well. His father was the vice president of one of our Presbyterian colleges, an ordained minister, and a hopeless alcoholic, a mean, cruel drunk.

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And Tim grew up in a home where he was frequently beaten and saw his mother and brother and sister beaten as well. And so he came to have nothing but contempt. He despised the Christian faith.

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One day in his own town, a small town in the Midwest, Tarkio, Missouri, he, in the late afternoon, was already, this teenager, drunk himself. He met a Christian man who cared for him. This man had a Bible under his arm.

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And Tim began to deride the man. And the man began to speak to Tim out of the Scriptures, and even in his numbed state, the Holy Spirit pierced through. And Tim was one.

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Now, the man who witnessed to Tim insisted that he, that very day, begin his witness to another, "Confirm what you have done. Seal the deal," is the way he put it. "Seal the deal."

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Tim at that time was rooming with an exchange student from Africa, a young black man named Lawrence, who was not a Christian. And Tim went back that day and began to witness to Lawrence. He and Lawrence lived together across the course of almost a year from that time.

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And he made it a point to witness to Lawrence in one way or another every single day. And when the time came for Lawrence to return to Africa, Tim said to him, "Are you Christ's man?" And Lawrence said, "No, I have not become a Christian," even though he had been going

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to some Christian groups and had even entered into some personal devotional experiences with Tim. And Tim said, "Well, I'm sorry I have not won you, but I would like you to tell me this. I would like you to tell me the things in my witness to you that have meant the most,

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the things that have almost reached you. What are they?" And Lawrence replied, "They are two. First, how you began witnessing to me on the first day that you yourself had become his

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disciple. And secondly," he said, "I was touched by the way you prayed for me while you were asleep." Tim talks in his sleep, and this young man heard Tim praying to the Lord for him while he was asleep.

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He was not one. And how that story ends, whether he was one later, I do not know. But what reached this young man was the urgency of Tim, how beginning on the very day in which he heard, he never held back, but began to sing that same song to seal the deal, and

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he did it not only when he was awake, but also when he was asleep. Witness that is heard and responded to is witness that inevitably ends in action. And the passage closes with the Ethiopian going on his way rejoicing. Rejoicing, it says.

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Mind you, he was going back to a dark land. He was going back to a place where he was probably the only Christian. There was no church there to receive him, no fellowship. Philip who had shared this word for him was not going along for the ride.

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There would be isolation and there would be temptation and possibly because of what others had seen, there might have been persecution ahead. And all he had was one scroll of the prophet. There's no reference to his having other literature from the Scriptures.

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But he goes rejoicing because he is now in the service of Jesus Christ. There's a new light in his life because of what has been shared. And my sisters and brothers in Christ, that's the thing I would leave you with tonight. That we have the possibility through our witness of bringing light and joy to other people's

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lives. I've always been much touched by the true story of a fellow and girl who fell in love. He felt a call to the mission field and they agreed that he would go to the mission field and begin his work there.

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And then after he was settled, he would write back and ask her if she would marry him. And then she was to respond, knowing that if she responded, she was to go to the field with him. And so he went, and about a year later he wrote her a letter talking of his love of

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the service of the Lord and his love for her and asking her to be his bride. And she wrote him back a letter in which she said she would be his bride and would join him in service. He had only to send for her to come.

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And she never heard from him in response. About a year and a half later, she read of his engagement. Sometime after that, he was married to another. She, some years later, married another.

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Never did go to the mission field, though it had been in her heart to do this. And they never saw each other again. Some years later, her brother died. And when she was going through his effects, there was an old coat.

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And in checking the pockets of the coat, she found the letter she had written to that young man. He had forgotten to mail it. Now the Scriptures say that we are living epistles of the Lord to be read of all men.

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It's a tragic thing when the mail doesn't go through. When we forget. When the love story of God to man remains untold because it stays in our pockets. Either out of indifference or carelessness or lack of courage or whatever it might be.

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It's like the two women whose sons played football and one said to the other, "What position does your son play?" She said, "I really don't know. I think it's drawback."

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Well, people who do not carry the mail are drawbacks. And they limit the spirit. And they bottle the good news. We are called instead to be agents of it.

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Here then on the Gaza Road, we learn to be responsive to the Spirit, to witness from our personal experience of the cross of Jesus Christ as it's testified to in Scripture, to call those who hear the word to live in accordance with it and to begin their service immediately, and most importantly, to be urgent in season and out of season so that the message

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which is ours to be delivered is delivered. Let us pray. Our Father, we thank you that you do give us the great privilege of bearing witness, that you afford to us the inestimable joy of telling others about Jesus.

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You have deigned to make us the ambassadors of the cross. Grant that we might be faithful to the awesome, eternal, joyous ministry which is ours. For we pray it in Jesus' name. And the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the communion

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of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, be with you both now and forevermore. Amen. Good night. [Music]

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[Music] [Music]