The Changed Unchanged (Changed #2)

Open your Bible to Acts 8.

We’ve been working through Acts this year, and when we arrived at chapters 8 and 9 we found three individuals changed by the gospel — so we’re running a short series inside the larger one, called Changed.

Last week we heard the story of the Ethiopian eunuch. But to understand that story we first had to meet Philip.

Philip was one of the church’s very first deacons. Back in chapter 6 we met him alongside Stephen and several others, tasked with overseeing the distribution of food to widows. Some widows were being overlooked purely because of their ethnic background — a straightforward case of discrimination. So these men were appointed to make sure everyone was fed, because everyone matters to God.

At the start of chapter 8, tremendous persecution breaks out. The church in Jerusalem at that point is probably north of five thousand, approaching six — a megachurch by any standard. And almost overnight nearly all of them scatter. Probably only a few dozen remained, including the apostles.

Philip fled for his life and ended up in Samaria.

What you need to know about Samaria is that it lay just north of Jerusalem and Judea, and the people there were only half Jewish. Under Old Testament law, Jews were to remain distinct — not intermarrying with other nations and religions. So the fact that Samaritans weren’t “pure” made ordinary Jews look down on them. Another case of discrimination, and Jews routinely avoided the region entirely.

Jesus did not.

In John 4 He deliberately travels through Samaria. He sends His disciples into town while He stays at a well outside, because He knows a woman is going to come out for water in the middle of the day. Most women drew water early in the morning, when the well doubled as a social gathering place. She came at noon because she was the outcast — married five times, which was scandalous, and now living with a man who wasn’t her husband, which was worse.

And it is to that woman that Jesus first reveals Himself as the Messiah.

So He loved Samaritans. Which is why it shouldn’t surprise anyone that when He gives the mandate in Acts 1:8, He says: be My witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Philip, fleeing for his life, lands in a region Jesus loves. He begins explaining the gospel. Some of these people already knew about Jesus — He’d spent time among them, and they knew He claimed to be the Messiah. Now they hear He was crucified and rose from the dead, and they’re ready to give Him everything. Revival breaks out.

And then God calls Philip away from Samaria, out into the desert. We paused on that last week — you’re in the middle of a city watching lives transformed, and God says go where nobody is.

Out there Philip has a chance encounter with a government official from what they called Ethiopia, roughly modern Sudan — the royal treasurer, a powerful and wealthy man who was seeking God. God brings Philip alongside his chariot at the exact moment he happens to be reading Isaiah 53, which happens to be a passage about Jesus. He hears, believes, sees water, and says, “What prevents me from being baptized?”

The Messier Story

The reason we took that story first is that it’s the prototypical Christian testimony. Today’s story actually takes place back in Samaria — we’re going backward in time.

Because the Ethiopian’s story is the version we usually hear when people talk about being changed by the gospel. Somebody is seeking God, hears the truth, realizes it’s real, commits their life to Christ, and gets baptized. Clean. Linear.

For some of you that is your story. Maybe you were a kid coming to church, hearing these things, asking questions, and you put your faith in Jesus.

But for some of you here today, that is not your story at all. Your story is messier.

You know the gospel. You know Jesus died on the cross for your sins. You know He died to change you. And you also know there are areas of your life that still look completely unchanged. That struggle has made you doubt yourself, doubt God, and it has caused real damage in your relationships.

So when you hear a story like the Ethiopian eunuch’s, you think: that isn’t me.

Which is exactly why we go back and pick this one up. This story is for you.

Simon

But there was a man named Simon, who had previously practiced magic in the city and amazed the people of Samaria, saying that he himself was somebody great. They all paid attention to him, from the least to the greatest, saying, “This man is the power of God that is called Great.” And they paid attention to him because for a long time he had amazed them with his magic. But when they believed Philip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. Even Simon himself believed, and after being baptized he continued with Philip. And seeing signs and great miracles performed, he was amazed.

Church history nicknamed him Simon the Sorcerer. He had worked as a magician for years.

There’s a genuine question about whether his magic was illusion, like a stage performer today, or something actually supernatural. If it was supernatural, it wasn’t divine — those aren’t miracles from God’s power. That would be him reaching into spiritual darkness and leveraging it for influence.

And it was working. Notice they had a name for him: “the Great Power of God.” He had accumulated real power over these people, and it all pointed back at himself.

Then Philip shows up, and Philip does it very differently. Yes, extraordinary things are happening — but people are genuinely healed, demons are actually driven out. Something is qualitatively different, and everybody notices. And Philip’s message is essentially: I’m not great. God is great.

Simon used his power so people would pay attention to him. Philip used miracles so people would pay attention to God.

There’s a television show called Penn & Teller: Fool Us. Penn and Teller are famous magicians in their own right, and they created a show where magicians perform a trick in front of them and a live audience, with one goal: fool Penn and Teller. Usually the trick ends, the two of them put their heads together, and then they describe how it was done — in coded language so the audience doesn’t learn the secret, but clear enough that the performer knows he’s been caught. Polite applause, and off he goes.

But every so often someone performs something and Penn and Teller start asking questions. They come up on stage. They touch things. They ask more questions. And eventually they say: you beat us. A trophy comes down, the crowd erupts, and the magician walks off a winner.

In our story, Simon is Penn and Teller. He’s been doing this for years. He knows how the tricks work. And he watches Philip perform actual miracles and cannot account for them.

But he isn’t merely fooled. He’s impressed enough to listen. And verse 13 says he believed and was baptized.

If the story stopped there, it would sound just like the Ethiopian’s. Gospel comes, man believes, man is baptized, roll credits.

But this story is messier.

The Apostles Arrive

Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John, who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, for he had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit.

Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money, saying, “Give me this power also, so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.”

But Peter said to him, “May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God. Repent, therefore, of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that, if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity.”

And Simon answered, “Pray for me to the Lord, that nothing of what you have said may come upon me.”

Remember, the apostles stayed in Jerusalem when everyone else scattered. Somehow word reaches them that revival has broken out in Samaria — and you can imagine their excitement. They were standing on that mountain in Acts 1 when Jesus said Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria. Now it’s happening. So they send Peter and John to see it firsthand.

When they arrive, they find that although these people have genuinely put their faith in Jesus, something is missing. They don’t seem to grasp that God is triune — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — and they haven’t received the Spirit. So Peter and John lay hands on them and pray, and they receive Him.

Luke doesn’t explain much here, so we have to make a few careful assumptions. Right before Jesus said “you will be My witnesses,” He said: you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. Witnessing and living for God were meant to be Spirit-empowered. Jesus told His disciples that after He ascended, the Spirit would give them words to say, would bind them in unity, would supply the power to live the Christian life.

And somehow Peter and John show up in Samaria and find real excitement about Jesus and His resurrection, but not what the disciples experienced in Acts 2. Most likely this means the Samaritan believers hadn’t spoken in tongues.

I realize that raises a stack of questions. Some of you are thinking yes, preach it, and others are getting distinctly uncomfortable. I want you to be able to ask those questions — ask me afterward, write it down, send me an email. Questions are good and God can handle them.

But we’re not answering that today, because if we get pulled into it we will miss the thing in Simon’s story that some of you desperately need.

Old Patterns

Look at Simon’s response. He sees the apostles laying hands on people and the Spirit coming, and he offers them money.

Remember who he’s been. He spent years as a magician, using his abilities to build influence so people would think he was somebody. That’s how his mind has worked for a very long time.

Now he’s heard the gospel. He’s seen Philip’s miracles. He believes in the resurrection. He’s been baptized.

And he slips right back into an old pattern of thinking.

Because in his world, when one magician saw another perform something he couldn’t explain, he offered money for the method. It’s buying a book. It’s hiring a consultant. Simon is simply doing what he’s always done.

What he doesn’t understand is that you cannot buy God. The Spirit is not for sale. Which is why Peter’s rebuke is so blistering. “May your silver perish with you… your heart is not right before God… I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity.”

Those are magnificent insults, by the way. Don’t leave here trying them out on people.

Was Simon a Believer?

There’s real debate about whether Simon was genuinely a follower of Jesus at this point. Some say clearly not — just read Peter’s words. Others say yes.

I used to be firmly in the first camp. My mind changed about fifteen years ago.

Back when my wife and I first sensed God calling us toward planting a church, I made up my own Bible reading plan. I only kept it up for a couple of years, but the routine was one chapter in the Gospels, one in Acts, and one in the Epistles every day. Which meant that since Acts has twenty-eight chapters, I was reading the entire book roughly once a month.

So I encountered Simon’s story every single month. And over time I started seeing it differently. Three things changed my mind.

First, verse 13. Luke writes, “Even Simon himself believed.” I realized my argument — that he was a charlatan and a fake whom God was using Peter to expose — required me to not take verse 13 seriously. Luke plainly believes Simon believed. And if God had Luke write it, I need to accept it.

Second, verse 19. “Give me this power also, so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.” I think part of him genuinely wants to do good. Jesus came to bless us, and we follow Christ by being a blessing to others — and what greater blessing than praying for people and seeing them receive God’s power?

So I think his intentions were partly good. But like so many of us, his good intentions were tangled up with selfish ones.

Years ago, when I was a young adult pastor in Cedar Rapids, I oversaw several groups. One of the single guys became passionately convinced we needed a ministry to single mothers. And he built a genuinely strong biblical case — single moms today occupy something like the position widows held in biblical times, unprotected and vulnerable, and their children can be in a similar place to orphans. The church, he argued, should step in.

He was completely right. The church should be the place that carries the burdens of single mothers.

It’s just that our group contained exactly one single mother, and she was a very attractive woman. You could see it in the eyes of several of the guys, and you could definitely see it in his.

His intentions were good. He also rather hoped she’d notice the effort he was making on her behalf and conclude he was a kind man. And it worked — they started dating and are married today. But once they started dating, his passion for a single moms ministry quietly evaporated.

Good intentions, with selfishness threaded through them.

I think that’s Simon. He wants to be able to bless people with the Spirit. He also wants the attention, the power, the position.

Which is exactly what Peter names. “The gall of bitterness” is an idiom for envy. Think about it: he used to use his magic so people would think he was great. Now he watches God work through Peter and John, and he thinks they are great — and he’d like what they have.

He just doesn’t want to go through what they went through. Three years with Jesus. Watching Him crucified. Persecution from the religious establishment. Genuinely hard things. Simon wants the power now, so he reverts to what any magician of his day would do and reaches for his purse.

Third, his response to the rebuke. Verse 24: “Pray for me to the Lord, that nothing of what you have said may come upon me.”

To me that isn’t a man dodging consequences. That sounds like a plea. It sounds like someone saying, I want to do this right, and I’m so new at it that I don’t know how.

It echoes the father in Mark 9. His son suffers violent seizures, which they attribute to a demon, and he brings the boy to Jesus. Mid-conversation the boy convulses, and the father says, “If you can do anything, help him.”

And Jesus responds, essentially: If I can? Do you know who you’re talking to?

But think about that father. He has taken this boy to every doctor and every religious leader. He’s sat through countless prayer meetings. Nothing has worked. He is desperately trying to hope while bracing to be disappointed again.

And he cries out the truest sentence in the Bible: I believe; help my unbelief.

I think that’s Simon. I believe Jesus died on a cross. I believe He rose. I believe there is a God. I want to leave that other life behind — but it’s so deeply worn into how I think that I don’t know how to shake it. So pray for me, because I want to change.

Two Things You Need to Hear

Some of you understand Simon completely, because you don’t have the tidy story. You have the messy one. You know the gospel. You may well have been baptized. And parts of your life look untouched. You’ve been fighting for years, and somewhere in you is a voice asking whether God has given up on you — whether He even loves you, whether you were ever really a Christian at all.

1. God does not want you trapped.

He does not want you trapped in patterns of lying. He doesn’t want you trapped in addiction, or fear, or anger. He wants you free.

I don’t believe He wanted Simon trapped either. Simon believed, was baptized, and stayed with Philip — he was beginning to be discipled. And in this moment God says, in effect: there’s more to deal with, and pulls the covering back.

Sometimes God mercifully removes something outright. I heard a pastor share his story years ago — in college he joined a fraternity, and by his own account college was about two things: beer and women. He was good at both and well on his way to alcoholism, and he said he was frankly surprised there weren’t more children in the world because of how he lived.

Then the gospel reached him and he believed. And he said his desire for alcohol simply vanished. Gone. He never craved it again.

Sometimes God does that.

And sometimes He doesn’t — because that same pastor said the lust stayed. It was a battle for years to stop seeing women as conquests and start seeing them as people made in God’s image for whom Jesus died. That one dogged him for a very long time.

And God wasn’t done with him.

Some of you know what it’s like to have something mercifully lifted. For others, it feels like God covered something for a season and has now pulled the curtain back: it’s time to deal with this. Because God wants you free — and sometimes the road to that freedom runs directly through the struggle of seeking Him and trusting Him.

Galatians 5:1 says it was for freedom that Christ set us free. God longs for your freedom, and He wants you involved in the process.

2. God has not given up on you.

The very fact that God put the word repent on Peter’s lips is an open door. If He were finished with Simon, why say it? “Repent” is God saying: come here. Let Me free you. Give it to Me. Confess it. Let’s pull it back. Yes, it will hurt. This is surgery without anesthesia. And it’s necessary, because I intend to shape you into the image of Jesus.

Some people snag on Peter’s phrase “if possible” and start to panic — maybe God won’t do this for me. Don’t be frightened by those words. This is God we’re talking about. With God all things are possible. Take Him at His word in 1 John 1:9 — if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

God brought you across the line of faith. He isn’t finished. This is the ongoing work of laying yourself down and letting Him do something deep. He has not given up on you. Keep seeking Him. Keep letting Him in.

The Struggle Is Part of It

Some of you know the butterfly illustration. A caterpillar builds its chrysalis, and inside, transformation happens. But then comes the moment where the change is complete and the creature has to get out — and it has to work and strain to break the shell open.

And if you decide to help — if you slit the chrysalis to make it easier — the butterfly’s wings will never be strong enough to fly. The struggle is what makes flight possible.

God, in His infinite wisdom, knows exactly how much to let you struggle. And if you follow Christ, the Holy Spirit is in you, which means you have the power to emerge.

If God mercifully removes something, it’s so you’ll know His power and His love. If He hasn’t removed it, it’s because He wants you to come to Him and lean on Him.

In 2 Corinthians 1, Paul tells that church not to be fooled about apostolic life. Being on those missionary journeys wasn’t glamorous and they weren’t superhuman. At one point, he says, they despaired even of life itself — they genuinely thought it was over.

And then he explains why: that we might not rely on ourselves but on God.

Some of you are exhausted precisely because you’ve been relying on yourself. God is inviting you, again, to put your weight on Him.

I don’t know why God works in the timing He does. What I know is that He is good, He loves you, He is for you, and it is for freedom that He sets you free in Christ.

You are not defined by your weakest moment. You are not defined by your besetting sin. You are defined by Jesus on His cross and out of His grave.

And when you slip back into the old patterns like Simon did — His mercies are new every morning, and you begin again.