Fact, Faith, Feeling
Acts 8:26-39

Introduction:

• Importance of this passage: This is the first individual in your Bible to be saved in the same fashion as you and I – By grace through faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ – no tongues, no laying on of hands, no repent and be baptized…
• A pattern for Believer’s Baptism: After conversion (v. 37), By immersion ( v. 38)
• The Bible and Divine Order (Farming, Revival, Resurrection, suffering/glory, humility/exaltation, cross/crown)
• The story of the Ethiopian Eunuch’s conversion is a great picture of another divine order. We’ll look at it primarily from the standpoint of salvation, but it will work with any Biblical truth you can think of.
• You’ll find Facts in v. 32-33, the Eunuch’s faith in v. 37, and the feeling he experienced in v. 39. Fact, Faith, and Feeling.
• Ex. Of wrong order: Faith of a suicide bomber that blows himself up in a restaurant thinking he’s going to wake up to 70 virgins in heaven, that takes faith. Or an evolutionist that thinks you developed from a monkey, that takes even more faith than the suicide bomber.
• How about someone getting touched on the head at an altar and passing out for a while, walk away and think they got saved or got the Holy Ghost that’s faith in a feeling, but you never have found anything like that in the Bible. Or what about somebody that takes a yoga class and feels so good about it they jump head long into Buddhism. To bad Buddha didn’t die in anybody’s place, and is still in the ground somewhere thousands of years after the fact.

FACT: (read Acts 8:32)

• This Ethiopian Eunuch had the facts. What he’s reading here out to the prophet Isaiah is a fact.
• We like to say stuff like: God said it, I believe it, that settles it. Brother, if God said it, it was settled long before you and I ever came on the scene.
• Some people don’t believe that Jesus died on the cross. Do you know how much affect their opinion has had on the saving power of the shed blood of Christ? None whatsoever.
• Dr. Mountcastle/ T-shirt illustration
• For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: 1 Corinthians 15:3-4
• Faith cannot make you free, Feeling never made anyone free, but Jesus said ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free (John 8:32)
• Jesus Christ came out of the grave after three days and three nights and was seen of 500 men at once. That’s a fact, that would hold up in a court of law.
• ‘Well I just don’t believe the Lord can save me…’
• Well he wills that all men be saved (1 Tim 2:4), that none should perish (2 Pet 3:14), Whosoever believeth on him should not perish (John 3:15)
• That means even a no good sinner like me can be saved. And you know what, I’m saved. How do I know. I have faith in the fact of the scripture.

FAITH (read Acts 8:37)

• That Ethiopian Eunuch said ‘I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.’ Now that statement doesn’t change the facts he just read and heard, it just makes him a partaker of the facts.
• Once you locate the facts you’ve got to exercise faith in those facts and it has to take place in that order.
• Fact, faith, and feeling are like a train. Fact is the locomotive that pulls the train, faith is the car that you ride in, and feeling is the caboose. You have to have the fact out in front if you want to go anywhere.
• Walking across ice illustration/ Chair illustration
• Faith appropriates the facts and makes them yours.
• Fact makes you safe – Salvation is complete, you’re in Christ
• Faith make you sure – I believe what God said (Rom 10:17)
• The fact is that Jesus is the Savior of the world.
• Faith makes him your Savior.
• The fact is that the cross provided for the unconditional forgiveness of your sins.
• Faith receives that forgiveness and allows you to recognize you are forgiven.
• The fact is that you’re seated in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus.
• Faith rests in the safety of that seating.
• The fact is that you’re free from sin.
• Faith lives out that freedom unto God, choosing not to serve sin.
• The fact is that you were crucified with Christ that your body of sin might be destroyed.
• Faith recons that body to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God.
• Fact is what God said.
• Faith is believing what God said.

FEELING (read Acts 8:39)

• Most people are pretty hung up on feelings. That’s why this subject is an important one. ‘Well how does that make you feel.’
• Don’t ever ask someone how they feel right after they get saved.
• Haggart illustration.
• Feeling is not the root of salvation, it is just a fruit of salvation. There’s nothing wrong with feeling good, everyone likes to feel good, the question is where is your faith at?
• Remember the train? Will that train still run without the caboose? Can the caboose pull the train?
• Fact, faith, and feeling are like three men walking along the top of a wall. As long as faith keeps his eyes on fact ahead of him all three keep walking. But when faith takes his eyes off fact and turns around to worry about how feeling is doing, both faith and feeling fall off the wall. (Fact never does.)
• The fact make you safe, the faith makes you sure, the feeling leaves you satisfied.
• You want the feeling? You get the feeling by doing what the Lord tells you to do.
• You want the feeling. Be a witness, sell out for Jesus, deny yourself, take up your cross, follow Christ. It’ll come. The best thing for you to do when you get saved is to go forward and give a public testimony of your conversion, get baptized. Get a fist full of gospel tracts on your way out that door and go to every lost person you used to cuss with and lie about and make fun of and tell them exactly what happened to you.
• You’re saved if you trust Christ. You’re sure if you believe what God said. You have the right feeling when you do what God tells you to do. No living for the Lord – no feeling. No believing what God said – no assurance. No trusting Jesus Christ – no safety.