Hey, Dwell and These Things listeners. My name is David. I'm the podcast administrator here at Dwell. A couple of weeks ago, we had Scott Risley come into the podcast booth after his 5 p.m. Sunday night CT teaching. This is a new idea. We're trying to record CT teachers weekly after their teachings to give a little more content and context to their teachings and potentially put in some additional points that they couldn't share in the restraints of a CT teaching. If you want more podcasts formatted like this, please let us know by leaving a comment on our Spotify, Apple, or YouTube page. And if you want to give us feedback in general about Dwell and These Things, if you have ideas for different podcasts, you can always email us as well at podcastatdwellcc.org. All right, here is Scott Risley, Tim Nunn, and Alex Richards. Welcome to Dwell and These Things, a podcast by Dwell Community Church in Columbus, Ohio, where we hear stories and examples of how God is moving in the church at Dwell and around the world. Welcome to Dwell and These Things, a podcast by Dwell Community Church. Hi, everyone. This is Tim Nunn, and I am joined here with Socks, as we call him, Alex Richards, and Scott Risley. So we're trying something new here where we want to dig into the book of Acts here with Scott. Since he's been teaching this at our central teaching, if you're not in Dwell, what we call our Sunday evening or Sunday morning services are central teachings. And so there were about 300 people here this evening studying the book of Acts, and we studied Acts chapter eight. And so we want to ask Scott some questions and just kind of dig into this book together and see if there's some gems here that weren't uncovered in our study tonight that we can learn. And so let's start off with this. Socks and I were talking about your teachings, and one thing that is really unique about Scott in particular, if you've never heard him teach, is how animated and how you bring the life of the passage, particularly your sound effects and your ability to mimic and impersonate people. So we need to hear a little bit about this. How do you do that? How do you bring the life of the passage? Do you practice in the bathroom in front of the mirror? I'm trying to think of what you're talking about here. I don't think I did any voices tonight. No, you didn't tonight. I've actually sort of... I've gotten mixed reviews on some of the things I've done to bring the passage to life. There was a time where I... I think people thought I was trying to be funny, but I was teaching on Moses laying down before the tabernacle, and I was trying to help people see, this is how awkward it would have felt. And I just laid down on the stage basically. And I think people thought I was trying to be funny and gimmicky or something like that. So I think it turned some people off. I heard one person got up and walked out. Oh, wow. So what I should have done is prefaced it with, I'm gonna do this, and I just want you to think how this would have felt for them. Yeah, yeah, that's good. And I've also learned... I don't usually try to do accents unless I'm really trying to be ridiculous and funny. But even girl voices, you don't do a... Just do my normal voice with a little bit of a... If this was a girl talking, what would it sound like? Right, right. So I... But I... Yeah, I do like teaching narratives. I do like teaching stories of scripture. And part of it is I tend to see it unfolding and then just say what I'm seeing sometimes. And so I think that that helps take that image and project it. I remember reading this book by this guy. His name was John Welsh, not the one who is in our church. But actually, John Walsh. I can't remember what it was called, but it's his only book on teaching narratives. He says, just sit in a dark room and close your eyes and just try to imagine everything about the past. It's like, what was the weather? What do you smell? What's the background noises? And it forces you to realize, oh, this is a thing that happened. I don't usually do go to that level, but it's an interesting... You gotta find some way to make it so you can see it like you're there. Absolutely. Well, and the Book of Acts is so vivid in its imagery and descriptions of real life things that were happening, like Stephen getting killed in our previous chapter. And that would have been a really savage thing to witness. And so bringing those things to life for us today are important, which let's talk about that. One of the themes in the Book of Acts is persecution, the Christian church being persecuted for spreading the gospel. And what was really interesting tonight is you drawing out how that led to the spread of the gospel. And so what do you think we can learn from that today? What were some of the thoughts that led to you sharing the stuff you shared about tonight? Yeah. I think it's very easy to read about people suffering in scripture as we sit in our air-conditioned room with our cup of Starbucks or whatever, and just be like, oh, interesting. And just flip the page to the next story, but it's like, okay, this was several years of their life, or maybe their entire life. And so I think it's good to stop and just think about what this might've felt like, what this might've meant. I think it helps to come to life and helps us to connect it to our suffering. And yeah, I think what I was talking about tonight was just how bad this would have looked and how tragic this would have seemed. And how today we're like, we see how God used it for good, but they wouldn't have known. They haven't read Acts 8 yet. They're just in... Stunned by what happened in Acts 7. And I think we just tend to forget. They hadn't read this chapter yet, and they would have been... Had all the normal human emotions. So I think it's... I settled down in early on in verses one and two of chapter eight just to really pause and help people see just how widespread this persecution was and how painful this would have been for them. Because I just think people... I think it gives people hope in their suffering when they can kind of take a step outside of their suffering and try to see some of the bigger picture. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like one of the people who came to life tonight was Philip, obviously. I feel like he did a good job of painting a caricature of what he seemed like from the scripture. And he seemed eager, he seemed willing. And you mentioned at the beginning how originally his first mention of just serving tables, that he was part of the deacons that were just serving tables for the widows and whatnot, and which may be a less than glorious position, right? Especially compared to the apostles who are teaching the word or whatnot. I was curious if you had any thoughts on how might serving in maybe a less glorious position might have equipped Philip to step into maybe this new role that God has, or if you've seen different things in your own life of ways that that can help train us for maybe more public roles. Man, I don't know if you guys have ever read Chuck Smith's autobiography called A Memoir of Grace. Amazing. But most of the book is just about all the failure he experienced and the setbacks and the time he almost completely quit ministry altogether. He was working at the grocery store and he tried to quit and it just felt like God kept calling him into ministry. And one of the verses that really struck me from that book is Zechariah 4, and I just happened to be in my reading plan. I was in there, it's either today or yesterday. It was today. Yeah, it was today. Where he says, it's like a really, really bad time for Israel and they are back from exile and they're trying to rebuild the temple and it does not look like it used to look under Solomon. And God's like, look, do not despise the day of small things because it's not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord. And there's so much of what God teaches us. There's certain things he can't teach us when we're succeeding and in the spotlight. There's all of the hidden things and the secret lessons that God teaches his people. And I'm sure, even before Philip was chosen for that job, he was already just a well-known servant among the people. He said, choose from among yourself seven men who meet these characteristics. And they were like, Philip, that's who we got to get into this role. So the things we think are gonna make us great, that's not the things that make us great. And the things that seem like nobody sees this, this seems like it's just Jesus grabbing a towel and washing the disciples' feet. And that's his main lesson there on the night of the cross is grab a towel. You wanna be great? Grab a towel and get down here with me, because we got some stuff to clean down here on the floor. So we need to learn to serve and we need to remember God sees all of it and he will reward us maybe in this life, maybe not, might be better off not getting into the next life, but he's looking for those whose heart is willing and the servant heart, and he will... He opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourself so that he may exalt you. And so I think we see that in Philip and it's your faithful in the little things you'll be given bigger things to do. That's sweet. Yeah, and Philip had a huge impact. We see the spread of the message of Jesus by him into a pretty unlikely scenario, which he spent a lot of time talking about, this Ethiopian eunuch, this treasurer who was traveling from Jerusalem back home after visiting Jerusalem to go worship in the temple. And he's reading the book of Isaiah and miraculously, Philip is directed directly across his path. And so, yeah, let's talk a little bit about that. One of the things that you pointed out was that God called Philip to go to the chariot where he was sitting, and he didn't just go, he ran. And so I just thought that was such a funny picture to have in your head where Philip is just literally sprinting to the sky. What were you thinking when you were teaching on that part? It's funny, because there's very few times people... There's not that many times people run in the Bible, right? Yeah, I guess Peter did. Elijah. Peter did after. Peter and John, they have a race to the tomb. Elijah. The people who know me are like, of course you're talking about running. Of course Tim's on the podcast. Tim's like, I noticed the running point. The dad and the prodigal son runs out. Oh yeah, that's right. He does. He's looking for him, runs out. Okay, it's funny because I walk into CT tonight and I'm getting ready to teach on the Ethiopian. And then I look over and I see Lou standing there. I did not know Lou was gonna be here tonight. He's one of our missionary partners. He's our missionary movement going on in Ethiopia. I just went over to him and I was like, man, you know we're teaching them, right? So I just got to talk to him about the church in Ethiopia. And I asked him, I said, do they date their origin back to this guy? And he said, well, the Orthodox Church, they date themselves back to the 300s, but there were people there coming from Egypt and Syria as well to bring the gospel before 300 when Christianity was legalized throughout the Roman Empire. But although Ethiopia was right on the edge of the world for them, that was like on the, I don't even know how much Rome spread all the way down through modern Ethiopia. So you had the message of this Jewish message being spread. God fears who were not Jews, which is really interesting. So I got a chance to talk to Lou who's just like the most joyful, humble guy. And then I asked him and his wife to pray for me. That's cool. And he prayed for me in English, and then she prayed for me in Amharic. And... Wow. It was awesome talking to them. And I was like, once I got him to pray for me, I was like, I am invincible for this. I got the prayers of the sound booth guys, and then I got Lou praying the blessing of God over me and then prayers in another language. I was trying to see if I could understand the other language. It's like an X too, but I couldn't. But I felt the power of God coming on me with those guys. But no, it was cool. One thing I didn't... I've taught this passage before. In fact, the last time I taught this at CT was the week after my son was born, who's 16 now. So it was crazy pulling up my PowerPoint and seeing pictures of my son. Yeah, wow. In there. But one thing, reading the eunuchs that they got the whole thing off, not just what we think of as castration. I actually didn't know that until tonight. I didn't know that until last week. Yeah. Where did you read that? Where was the source of that? It was Craig Keener talked about it, and then one of the other commentary. Craig Keener's Bible background commentary is a great one volume background commentary. I think that's actually one of the keys to bringing narratives to life is study of the background and then just the things that are really interesting to you will probably be interesting to everybody because they bring it to life in ways that... Learning that... Just a little bit more about the eunuchs in their day, the chariot he would have been riding in, that the chariots were reserved only for the very wealthiest. And sometimes... So sometimes they would use the word eunuch to describe a government official. The same word for that is used for Joseph in Genesis 39, where he's a government and official. It's similar in Joseph narrative. But the fact that it calls him a eunuch and a high-ranking official probably means he was a eunuch. He wasn't just using the eunuch description as a government official. The fact that he said both, I think probably means he probably was. Well, they emphasize it. They mentioned it multiple times through the passage. And I love the fact that just a few chapters later, the don't let the eunuchs say. In Isaiah 56, I had never made that connection either. I had a question about... I've read Isaiah before, but I feel like I've never pulled... That verse is down in my memory. I've been reading through a Kaiser book on Old Testament prophecy and how the New Testament uses it. And one of the things he talks about is that prophecy is maybe a word that might connote the wrong things instead of viewing them as promises, where when God makes a foretelling prophecy, that it's a promise that has fulfillment or ways in which the promise is played out. And then there is an ultimate fulfillment of that thing. And do you think that there's any chance that this passage was, in some ways, this eunuch was fitting into this prophecy? I really don't know too much of the context of 56. He was a eunuch that came to the temple looking for answers. And the fact that it promises a blessing for eunuchs and the everlasting name, which will not be cut off... I mean, cut off is in the text, a name which will not be cut off. Yes, you gotta wonder. I think there's a little eunuch pun there or something. Sure. But I think that this is... Honestly, it was as I was teaching it tonight where it hit me... It made me feel a bit emotional as I was like, Isaiah 53 is a prophecy fulfilled six months ago or whatever. Isaiah 56 can be fulfilled today for you. And not like he's the only eunuch that ever would get this promise, but he would get this promise as a eunuch that his new access... Whereas they were just way on the outside before and now it's like, you're not just in the inner courts, you're in the Holy of Holies. And you are the temple. And that would have been so different than under the old covenant. And also the fact that he's a Gentile. And that the Holy Spirit very purposely brought about this meeting. I feel like that was the most striking thing is like, yeah, probably any eunuch could participate in that prophecy in some sense. But the fact that there's a recorded story of the Holy Spirit very directly leading Philip to a eunuch, I thought that was astounding to see that Isaiah 56 even comments on that. Yeah. That's really cool. I guess the other thing that hit me this time around on this passage that had not hit me before... I taught this at home church a couple of years ago and read something that made me realize part of the way this speaks to our culture is because our culture is very confused about gender and people that don't fit into gender stereotypes. And they feel like there's something wrong with me and really there's something wrong with the stereotypes. And that this guy would have had... He probably had something along those lines. Just he is different. And part of what God is saying is, I love you and you are in my image and I welcome you in to heaven someday. I think that is a really powerful point. And you even made the point that there are people here tonight who may be listening to this who made irreversible decisions, maybe not related to gender, but maybe related to other areas of their life. All kinds of things. That they may be carrying and thinking that that is a barrier between them and God. But we know very clearly from this passage in Isaiah 56, hundreds of years before Christ. And we know from what the message of Christ that these disciples carried in the book of Acts, that that speaks to people from disenfranchised backgrounds who made some really bad decisions. And I think that's a really important part of the message of Acts for sure. I think too. I think the church often assumes certain people just aren't interested and we make that decision for them and we need to bring the love of Christ. And there might be some barriers to overcome because of their perceptions of Christianity and past interactions with Christians or just their view of themselves. But we need to be reaching out to people and patiently in there with people to share the love of Christ and the hope. And the hope, yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. I feel like with that, you talked to some about the racism that was going on between Judaism or Jews and Samaritans. Yeah. And talked about how we have, no matter what cultural background you're coming from in America, you probably have some racial, racist thoughts or thinking patterns or whatnot that we need to kind of unlearn as we follow Christ. And then at the same time, our culture is kind of steeped in viewing everything as racist and like reading racism into everything. And I didn't know if you had any thoughts on how we can call what is racism, racism, and not just be like, well, any sort of microaggression or anything like that is, and I need to stop doing that. But how do we identify maybe some of our backgrounds that might be racist or have training or upbringing or whatnot without reading everything into that? I mean, I think the best thing people can do is to learn to get to know people that are different from them. And it might mean going into different places you don't normally go. And like Chip was sharing that story about going down into a rough part of town with some blankets for an immigrant family. And they made some of the best friends of their lives and were able to share the love of Christ. And God has put people of all kinds of different races and socioeconomic backgrounds in my life. And that's been what's... Because it's not enough to not hate, we need to love. And love starts with loving a person. And then that love is easier to extend to all people. And part of it is repenting of racist attitudes we were taught. Like some of us were raised with some pretty racist, maybe parents, grandparents, great-grandparents. The further back you go, probably the more blatant it is. And then we rub shoulders with people that are like us. And I think also getting involved in missions and praying for our missionaries, like our Global Partners puts out a prayer letter at the quarterly meeting that you can go and pick up and pray through the different ministry fields. And that's one way we can reach out geographically without physically moving to a place. And we can express love for people on that. We'll carry over into other relationships back home here. Yeah. That's a great point to close on. The church is a great picture of everything we're talking about today. This isn't theoretical. We're not talking about theorizing about how to solve racism, but we're talking about actually having real love relationships with people that are different than us. And we all three have been able to experience that. Thank God for that, that God's changed our lives, that God wants to provide a real avenue for fighting against something that our culture really cares about. So it's a great point. Well, let's go ahead and close it out there. Thank you guys for doing this. This was really fun. And if you guys want to come check out one of our Dwell meetings, if you haven't, you can go to dwellcc.org to find information about visiting one of our central teachings like we were at tonight or Home Church.