The Holy Spirit: A Gift That Cannot Be Bought

As believers scatter, they carry the gospel into new places. In Samaria, the message of Christ brings joy, healing, and transformation—but also exposes counterfeit faith. This passage shows us the power of the true gospel and the necessity of discernment, reminding us that the Spirit cannot be manipulated and that genuine faith always leads to repentance and submission to Christ.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Alright, if you have your Bibles, would you open up to Acts chapter 8? We're continuing our message series through the book of Acts, and we come to Acts chapter 8. Our text is verses 9 through 25. And it's a narrative passage, which means it's a story, and it's a pretty fascinating story. I read a statistic the other day that here in Southwest Ohio, 70% of people claim some form of Christianity. 70%. I was kind of shocked by that. 70% are some one type of Christian or another by profession. But I think we all know instinctively that there's lots of reasons and motivations for people being religious, right? Probably as many as there are people. There are deep cravings at work in our heart, sometimes that we haven't even considered. Sometimes we don't understand. We may have a desire to feel significant or just loved or approved of. We may want our pain noticed. We may want a sense of power. If we're in league with God, we have this sense of power and it kind of insulates us from a dark and dangerous and unstable world. The reasons and motivation the motivations that sort of lurk beneath what we may say with our mouths are, I think, often alive and dynamic within us. And sometimes they're good motives, sometimes they're not. The prophet Jeremiah said this of the heart. He said, The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it? And so I'll ask you today, what brings you in today? I know we get in the habits of going to church, but really beneath all of that, what is it that you're really seeking after? Our passage today addresses a universal spiritual danger that's sort of always lurking in the shadows of our hearts, namely that we are prone to seek blessings from God while our hearts remain mixed with selfish ambition and pride and the desire to control things around us, including God. I don't often do this, but I'm actually going to begin my sermon with the punchline for the passage. Usually I like the sense of discovery, kind of go along, and then the aha. But I think it does help add a little more clarity to the way we're going to approach this story today by just giving you what the story's about in a nutshell. We'll just call it the main idea. Here's what it is: the main idea of our text is that because the power of God's Holy Spirit is a gracious gift that cannot be bought or manipulated. We must repent of selfish ambition and seek a heart that is truly humble, submitted, and right before God. I'm titling this message, The Holy Spirit, a gift that cannot be bartered or bought. Before we sort of dive into the text, let's zoom out a little bit and realize that Acts chapter 8 is a turning point in the story in the book of Acts. Because Jesus in chapter 1, in verse 8, had said this. He'd given the programmatic outline for the mission of the church. Acts 1.8 says, You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and in Samaria and to the end of the earth. Here's these sort of concentric circles as the gospel started in Jerusalem, which was the city of David. It was the sort of epicenter of Jewish life. Jesus, where the Passover lambs were slain, then that's where Jesus was crucified, etc., etc. The church started there and it moves out from there. In Acts chapter 8, we get to where that ring includes Samaria. So this is a major progression of Jesus' words in that command in Acts 1.8. We find Philip the evangelist traveling north into Samaria, a region long marked by hostility between Jews and Samaritans. For centuries, these two groups had been hostile to one another. Jews kind of looked at the Samaritans as sort of half-breeds, sort of spiritual mutts, because they were sort of Jewish, but they were mixed with Syrian influence. There was sort of a commingling of religious ideas. And so the Jews looked down at them as sellouts, as sort of social and racial mixes, and there was a lot of pride there. But the feelings were mutual. It was a deeply entrenched mutual hostility. But then we see Philip arriving in Samaria and preaching the good news of not the kingdom of the Jews, not the kingdom of the Samaritans, but the kingdom of God. And about the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then we see in Acts chapter 8 the kingdom of God breaking into these kingdoms and these fiefdoms of humans and uniting people that otherwise would have hated each other, uniting them around a new king, King Jesus. Graham Cole describes God's saving project as reclaiming his fallen creation as our Savior King. And that's what he was preaching here in Samaria. He describes the plan of salvation this way: He says, the grand project of God is realized when God's people are in God's place, under God's rule, living God's way in God's holy and loving presence as family. That was sort of how he sort of summarized all the scripture. The idea of place, of holy living, God's lordship, community, all these different aspects are sort of summed up right there, and it's all underneath the banner of the kingdom of God. That's what our story is about. It's about the dramatic collision between the false kingdoms of man and the true kingdom of God, about false spiritual power and the true power of God. But in the process of us seeing these kingdoms collide, we're going to see the heart of a man named Simon exposed. And in seeing Simon's heart exposed, we may see some of our hearts exposed. The first movement in the story is this in verses nine through eleven. It's false power impresses the crowds. False power impresses the crowds. Verse 9 says this. And they all paid attention to him, from the least to the greatest, saying, Hey, 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. Philip came to Samaria to preach about Jesus, the king, but Samaria already had a spiritual celebrity, a man named Simon. Before Philip had arrived, for a long time a man named Simon had captivated the region of Samaria, practicing magic in the city and amazing the people. In the first century Greco-Roman world, from what we read, magic was widespread. And it was pretty common for people to be sort of traveling magicians who would go around and they would claim to manipulate spiritual forces through rituals and spells and incantations and secret knowledge. And Simon had done really well with this. He'd achieved influence, admiration. He had a following of people. And he wasn't some fly-by-night guy. This wasn't some fakery. It wasn't a pen and teller magic show where it looks like they made the woman disappear, but really in the end, there was some trapdoor or something. He was for a long time impressing them with his magic. And we understand if we just look at the term magic here, it's the word often used for sorcery. In our vernacular, we would say he was channeling demonic spirits. He knew things through demons that otherwise he wouldn't have known. He was able to do things through demonic power that others couldn't know. And of course, this is not something that's foreign to the book of Acts. On several occasions, demons are cast out. And I think it's Acts chapter 16. A young girl was a soothsayer. She actually was possessed and she could tell you things about yourself that she shouldn't know. And there were men that had that were had her in captivity that were making money off her. You can imagine her going to the, say, come up and we'll tell you your fortune. And she looks at you and she puts her hand on your head and she starts telling you things from your childhood or something, right? People would pay money for this. That was demonic power. It wasn't fake, it just wasn't holy. The occult arts is something Simon was steeped in. His magic was demonic power wielded for self-exaltation. The people were claiming he was great, and he was claiming he was great. It's interesting because uh humans have always been sort of amazed by magic. I love, I love seeing, I love watching Penn and Teller. They're so good at what they do, and the magicians they have on their show. It's so fascinating to see something suspended in space, and you think, well, there must be some really small, small string, and then they pass a ring around it, and it's obvious it's really floating. Now there may be some magnet or something going on, we don't know, but it's amazing to see things that defy our natural reasoning, and that's why we like magic. According to a 2025 report from the Pew Research, some 30% of Americans admit to at least once a year dabbling in the occult. 30%. New age practices such as consulting astrology or tarot cards or fortune tellers, palm readings, and the rest. But when we look in scripture, scripture is not dismissive about demonic power. Scripture is not like, hey, don't believe that. Don't believe that paranormal stuff. Scripture says, no, it's very real. The Apostle Paul says there are Lord's many and God's many in 1 Corinthians. There's one true and living God, but there are strata of angelic beings that Paul lists in Ephesians chapter 5, principalities and powers and rulers of this present darkness and this present evil world. We should take this very seriously. And the scriptures do. Deuteronomy chapter 13, God warned Israel that even if a prophet comes among you and performs signs and miracles, don't believe them, unless you first test what they claim by the Word of God. Jesus said in Matthew 24, that the time will come when false Christs and false prophets will arise doing signs and wonders. Paul II said that the very Antichrist will come being accompanied by all power and false signs and wonders. This should teach us that just because something is powerful, just because something is amazing, just because something seems to work, does not mean it's proof of divine activity at all. In our present sort of cultural climate, we tend to think in terms of uh chemicals bumping into each other and the laws of physics, and many people sort of just ride off any idea of an enchanted world where there's spirits and that sort of thing. We sort of relegate that to the dark ages of fairies hiding behind rocks. When you look in scripture, you find that spiritual powers are real. Paul says we wrestle against them. The Samaritans were vulnerable to Simon's sorcery. I think this should be a cautionary note to us. We should prayerfully test all claims by scripture and actually be sober about it. How often do we add a podcast? Someone's like, hey, you gotta listen to this podcast. It's really cool. They're talking about health and talking about relational, blah, blah, blah, and this and that, and parenting. Sounds great. Let's listen to it. Okay, I see what they're saying. And we don't actually think about what ideologies are undergirding these ideas. We're only seeing sort of the tip of the iceberg. Like, here's the advice, here's what you should do, here's how you should arrange your schedule, here's how you should raise your kids. But the iceberg is did God create your kids for his glory? Or is the assumption beneath this is that the greatest use of human life is to train your kids to make a lot of money and be successful and be happy? What's the undergirding assumptions and ideology? What is their anthropology? What is their theology? We often don't think in those terms. We take stuff in, we gulp it down. We listen to Jordan Peterson when he and we enjoy how he pokes holes in radical feminism that sort of denies the distinction between men and women and diminishes the glory of who God created women to be. And you see Jordan Peterson, yeah, yeah. But then he goes into all this other archetypal jungian stuff, and we drink it in like, ah, it makes sense. We can do this with Joe Rogan, Joyce Myers, or any other podcast of your choosing. The point isn't that they're all the same, but that we must test every voice by scripture, not by eloquence or by influence or by plausible sounding counsel. And secondly, as a corollary to this, we parents, we really need to train our children in this. I can't wait till, I mean, I sort of can at this point. We could probably analyze Bluey or something with my six-year-old. Um, Eden, why do you think the daddy said that? What do you think he believes when he's saying that? Maybe she could do that. I haven't really done that yet. I can't wait till she's a little older and we're able to sort of break down and think through claims and cinema and like what's the story behind the story here? Um, why is the beast a beast? And what is the role of numerology in Beauty and the Beast? Just kidding. Okay. We're not gonna do that. She won't listen to that. Brandy would save her from that. We need to teach our children to be discerning about spiritual and practical ideologies. We're in the life hack era. Hey, this works, this works. Some research came out, and it gives you a 19% more likely chance to keep this habit if you just do this or that. We all we just skate on the surface without thinking through what is God's wisdom about how I should live my life? Not just an accumulation of life hacks, but an entire life surrendered to Jesus. False religion may impress the crowds, but it cannot transform the heart. False religion may impress the crowds, but it cannot transform the heart. And that brings us to step two in the story. Number two, gospel power transforms the heart. We see this in verse 12. And when they believed Philip, this is the Samaritans, as he preached the good news about the kingdom of God in the name of the Lord Jesus, 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. 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 the Spirit had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit. In contrast to Simon, we see Philip's message is not about himself. He's not there trying to garner a following for himself, he's preaching the name of Jesus Christ in his kingdom. His central message was that Jesus is the crucified and risen king who saves and transforms and brings people into the reign of God, the present and the future reign of God. And Luke says the people believed it. The Holy Spirit worked, they believed it, they began to follow him, they were even baptized, and a new community of faith emerged in Samaria. One thing that's interesting in this passage in verses 14 to 16, 16, is that Luke specifically mentions that the spirit, that they did not receive the spirit at the point of conversion, which, if you read all the stories, generally the rule is when someone, Acts chapter 10, Acts chapter 2, you receive the Holy Spirit and you're converted and you receive the Holy Spirit. Here there was a delay. It's interesting that he would point this out. Why the delay, and why does Luke think we need to know this? Theologians have offered at least three reasons for them being converted and believing and being baptized, but they're not yet being a public demonstration of the Holy Spirit until after the apostles from Jerusalem arrive. Here are the couple reasons. Number one, God seems to have withheld a public manifestation of his Spirit so that the apostles from Jerusalem, Peter and John, could witness and confirm the Samaritans' inclusion among the people of God. For us, it seems like Acts chapter 1, Acts 2, Acts 8, all the same. For the Jews, this was a massive frontier that had never been crossed. The gospel going to non-Jews and them as a whole people group following and probably forming a church and that sort of thing. And so what you'd naturally have in that culture is Jewish communities who looking down their nose at Samaritan communities and Samaritan communities looking down their noses at Jewish communities, it was at risk of there being a giant schism in the early church unless there was a formal recognition and confirmation by the early church started at Jerusalem. So you have them not receiving the Spirit until the apostles come down, they lay hands on them, they receive the Holy Spirit, which means, number two, this would preserve church unity and prevent potential splits, separate Christian movements developing. Thirdly, I think this proves something really powerful. The falling of the Spirit on the Samaritans was a huge event in Jewish history and in biblical history. It signified that those unwanted and even hated outsiders who trust in Jesus Christ have now become my brother and sister. People that socially and culturally were like off limits. Remember the Samaritan woman in John chapter 4, Jesus strikes up a conversation with her and she says, Why are you, being a Jew and being a man, having a conversation with me, a Samaritan woman? Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans, John wrote parenthetically. And so for this, the Holy Spirit to fall in the presence of the Jerusalem apostles, would have validated this work as a true work of God and brought a unity as they go back to the Church of Jerusalem and say, hey, we're no better than them in the gospel. As Paul would say later in Galatians chapter 3, in Christ there's neither Jew nor Gentile, male or female, bond or free. In Christ, we're of all equal value, dignity, and part of the family of God. So that little strange delay there that seems like, why do you mention that? It's huge. God was doing things very carefully. But I wonder if you and I today are really convinced that the Holy Spirit changes hearts. Is this just a relic of history? Is this just a nice story about something God used to do? Does it really break down walls of hostility? Does he really change the ways we think and feel the way we choose? Or really is it just it's a bunch of ideas? If they make sense to you, do them, if not, they don't. Stripped of all power of the Holy Spirit and God's work. Some of us may be in relationships right now that are quite hostile, that seem hopeless, like it's beyond us. I don't understand. This is not something I can change. The wonderful news of the gospel is that that's literally what God's in the business of doing of restoring, of saving, of redeeming, of rescuing, of pulling out of the fire, as it were, those who are being consumed. Where we can't, God can. He's in the heart transforming business through the gospel of a bloody cross, an empty tomb, and an occupied throne. And he can do that in your life and the lives of those you know and love. I can't imagine how many, I said this in the first service, but I can't imagine if you were to go to all the pastors in Cincinnati who you would want to listen to, and you just were to ask them, where were you in the past, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago? How many of them would say, I wasn't walking with the Lord at all? I was, I was caught up in this or that. I made my mom cry so many times. There's no telling how many times she was beside her bed pleading with God to save my soul. I was near death, I was doing all these things. How many times would you hear that story? I would say over and over. But now we are 10 years, 20 years, 30 years out, and we just think, oh, that's Pastor So-and-so. We forget that that was a changed life. Many stories in this very room. I know you as brother so-and-so or sister so-and-so, but but really you're a changed life. And 10 years ago you wouldn't have been recognizable. Or 20 years ago, whatever. We all have our own story. Praise God. Gospel power transforms the heart. Sometimes it happens so slowly and softly you don't notice until you look back. The third movement in our story is that number three, rebel hearts. Try to control God. Rebel hearts try to control God. Verse 18. 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. Luke brings us here to the turning point or the crisis of the story. Simon had watched all these events unfold. He'd seen Philip perform miracles, he'd seen the apostles come down from Jerusalem, lay hands on, and then visible, transformative manifestation of the Spirit happening when they received the Spirit, and he wanted in. Because the power that he had been wielding was impressive, but it was nothing compared to this. And so he comes to the apostles and he offers them money to buy the power of God. This means that despite his earlier confession about following Jesus and Philip, even his baptism, this request revealed the true condition of his heart. He was betrayed by the very words of his mouth. He didn't want the Holy Spirit for personal growth in God. He didn't seek Jesus to be his sovereign Lord and King. He didn't seek God's glory. He wanted the Spirit for personal influence. He wanted the Spirit's power to be channeled through him like the demons have been. Now, of course, we look down our noses at Simon and we say, How naive can you be? I mean, if I were to tell you, hey, are you ever tempted to maybe like buy the power of the Holy Spirit by some money? Maybe $100? How much? $500? What's it worth to you? You'd be like, what are you talking about? I know that's not the way God works. But the fact is, I think we do this way more often than we realize. How often do we scurry around doing things for God? And in the back of our minds, we're hoping God returns the favor. How often do we pray for God's power and blessing on our labors, not from pure hearts, passionate for Him to increase and for me to decrease, but passionate for our own comfort, pleasure, and significance. In our lesser moments, we quickly turn our faith into a quid pro quo transactional relationship with God. I scratch your back, God, if you scratch mine. But the thing about that is it doesn't work. Scripture says God is not mocked. It never works. And what happens is after a while of us working hard, spending maybe it's money, maybe it's time, maybe it's effort and attention, and our hopes are high because God's going to come through for me and do what I want Him to do. And then He doesn't do it. We get discouraged and disillusioned. We get angry, sometimes even bitter, jaded. Because we've played the music, but Jesus hasn't danced. That was exactly what the Pharisees said of Jesus. Well, Jesus said it of them. They didn't like Jesus, didn't like John the Baptist, and Jesus says, You're like a bunch of children in the marketplace saying, Hey, we're playing music, dance for us, but Jesus won't dance. That's literally what we do with Jesus so often. I've played the music. Like the prophets of Baal, we leap and whine and injure ourselves, doing everything we can to manipulate God into doing our will on in earth and on in heaven and on earth. And in response to our pride, God shuts up the heavens like he did in the days of Elijah and withholds the reins of his blessing and the fellowship of his power. Have you ever experienced the silence of heaven? You ever experienced the silence where you pray and it seems like the ceiling is just brass. No prayers are getting through that. That's not because God's changed. That's not because God's character, it means he's revoked his promise to receive all those who come to him of faith in his son. No, it's because my heart is harboring something that I know he doesn't like. There's areas of my life that I have not yet surrendered to him, and I want to ask him for stuff over here, but God just don't ask about what's over here. When we do that, the heavens are silent. In God's mercy, I do believe he lets us wallow long enough in our self-pity to realize when the dust settles, we are the ones sitting on the throne of our lives calling the shots. We're not really asking him to rule our lives, we're asking him to bless and rubber stamp our lives. We've crowned ourselves kings and made him our subject. Or so we think. James chapter 4, a couple verses here are just a poignant accusation against rather highly religious people such as myself and maybe you as well. He says in James chapter 4 and verse 1, What causes quarrels and fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. Or we could soften and say, lash out, hurt, harm, throw a fit. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. And he gets to the heart of it, you adulterous people. But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. He's getting at the heart of this. This is spiritual adultery for us to go through the motions of even prayer. And to do so because we just want to spend it on our own passions and pursuits, not what God would have for us. He calls it spiritual adultery and he opposes us in this. It's as if James is saying, God is not going to pay that astronomical hotel bill you accrued when you were on your heart's liaison with your idols. That weekend fling you had with your idol, God's not going to pay the bill for that. And we get frustrated when he doesn't. He resists all prayers that are thinly veiled attempts to get from him what we sometimes most deeply care about, namely his stuff, his power, his blessing, but not him. The context of Acts chapter 8 is obviously the Spirit. I believe we can actually do this whole quid pro quo thing with the Spirit Himself. For example, we want the thrill of the Spirit's presence. We want ecstatic experiences. We want power over demons. But are we even more joyful knowing that our names are written in heaven? The disciples came back to Jesus in Luke chapter 10 and they were on cloud nine. He's like, why are you so happy? They're like, even the demons were subject to us. He says, that's good. But rejoice rather that your names are written in heaven. We so often want to rejoice in our current circumstances, and when we feel powerful and successful, and Jesus is like, man, think about it from the perspective of eternity. You're gonna be your name's written in heaven. So often we want the thrill of his presence, and the gospel itself has grown old news. We want the Spirit's instant cures for our sicknesses, our sorrows, and our troubles. We pray it and we believe it. But will we trust God when he looks at us and says, No? Like he did to the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12, when Paul besieged God over and over and over again, please remove this gaping thorn in my side, and Jesus says, No, my grace is sufficient for you. We want the Spirit's blessings on our families, our work, our education. But is our chief boast not in being made healthy, wealthy, and wise, but in knowing the Lord? Jeremiah chapter 9, verses 23 and 24, the prophet, God through the prophet says, Let him that is mighty not boast in his might, let him that is wealthy not boast in his riches, let him that is wise not boast in his wisdom, but let him that boasts boast in this, that he knows me, the true Lord who exercises judgment through all the earth. If we boast, are we boasting that we actually know God, that we are in a relationship with him, or are we always boasting in health and wealth and wisdom? Healthy, wealthy, and wise. That was Benjamin Franklin's deistic summation of the successful life. I'd rather just know God. Here's the bottom line. Is Jesus our king? Or is he more like our vending machine? We will see the power of God at work in us and through us to the same degree that Jesus is king over us. Let me say that one more time. We will see the power of God at work in us and through us to the same degree that he is king over us. Is it little wonder why so often we don't see his power in our lives? We're serving ourselves and not him. He's not going to be mocked. Is he king over us? Then he be king through us. Praise God, the story doesn't end here with this dark note of Simon's covetous spirit. We find that number four, repentant hearts receive grace. Repentant hearts receive grace. Verse 22, Peter says, Simon, 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 were in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity. And Simon answered, he said, Pray for me to the Lord, that nothing of what you have said may come upon me. Now when they had testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel to as many villages of many villages of the Samaritans. Externally, we we found earlier that Simon had believed. But if you do a deep dive into the idea of crowds believing in Jesus, and in the book of Acts, you'll find that not every time it says they believed, does it mean every individual in the crowd believed? And here I think we have this blanket statement about the Samaritans believing being baptized, but there in the midst was this man named Simon who appeared to have believed, who was even baptized, but Peter says here is perishing. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4 that unbelievers are perishing. This word is never used of the children of God. So whether you want to say he was a true believer that fell into this sin or whether he was an unbeliever, it really doesn't change what I'm going to say about it. But I think Peter's words about him perishing, and he says, Your money perish with you is pretty good indication. Not to mention his heart motivations and all this. But notice that even with this stern rebuke, there's hope for Simon. He says, Repent, therefore, this wickedness that the intent of your heart may be forgiven you. There's forgiveness even for Simon if he will repent. But notice that Peter didn't just rebuke Simon, he exposes his heart. He says, Simon, the issue is not just that you want to buy the power of the Holy Spirit for your selfish ends. That you're committing adultery of heart. You're claiming lordship of Jesus, but you really just want his power for your own personal pats on the back. No, he goes down beneath the sin to the sin beneath the sin. There was a dynamic at work in Simon's heart that was viciously feeding his hunger for power. Peter puts his finger on it. Bitterness. It may be different things in different people's lives. For Simon, it was bitterness. This was the sin beneath the sin. Paul said in Philippians chapter 1, verse 16, he kind of lists several different other heart motivations. He said, Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. That's astounding. You're telling me we can preach Christ motivated not by love but by envy? The surface is preaching Christ. Looks pretty good. Beneath it is the sin of envy. How about parents discipling their kids diligently? They can do that out of a sense of rivalry? We can seek the power of the Holy Spirit out of selfish ambition? Peter exposes the heart, does he not? He's not content to skate on the surface. He goes deep into the heart of Simon and he says, Bitterness is at root here in your life, and you're in the bond that is the bonds, the bondage of iniquity. You are a slave to your bitterness. It's no wonder that John Calvin called the human heart a factory of idols. Just think about that. You ever seen Lord of the Rings? They top the hill, they look down this huge valley, and there's these fires going, these trees being cut down, this machinery, and you hear this real mechanistic kind of music going, this very industrial music playing, and you see all the orcs. That's our hearts so much of the time. Just creating idols, just churning them out one moment from the next. It's why Martin Luther envisioned the entirety of believers' lives to be that of repentance. He wasn't exaggerating when he said the whole Christian life is about turning to Christ. Because 24-7, 365, there's not a moment that goes by when sin is not crouching at the door of our hearts. To replace Christ with some false king. It may be for 20 minutes. It may be for 20 years. We're constantly being tempted to place our hope in, our chief joy in, our significance in something other than Jesus Christ. Now, this shouldn't drive us to be paranoid or morbidly introspective and constantly be self-doubting and not really willing to do anything because I may have bad motives. No, but what it should do is cause us to daily, even hourly drive us to Christ with confession and say, God, I've done it again. I tried to make an idol out of my friendship with this person, or I tried to make an idol out of how good of a husband I was being, or I've had a really good day as a father or a mother, and it got in my heart. And in that moment, I feel like that's what made me who I really am, not your priceless love for me that never changes. God, I did it again. I trusted in money, and I thought for just a moment that if I could only have more, then I would have the life I really want. When you offer me everything I need, Father. Over and over again, we come back to Christ and to the gospel so that we can be set free to serve God from pure hearts. They say the people who are successful are not the ones that never fall, but the ones who get right back up. Well, for a Christian, falling means sinning, and getting back up means repenting, confessing, and saying, All right, let's go. Because we know we have Jesus as our advocate. We must not wallow in the muck of our idolatry and expect anything good to come of it. I'm gonna spend just a couple minutes thinking about this. Peter doesn't tell Simon, man, you don't realize this, but you've got some significant daddy issues. Do you see yourself here? Do I need to hold up a mirror, Simon? You're coming to us. You've been a magician, you've been watching us with wide eyes, and now you want to buy the power of the Holy Spirit for your own personal gain? Dude, you've got problems. You need to go to therapy and talk this through, maybe even group therapy. And you can you can talk, and other people can talk, and you can just work through this and process it. If he had said that, he'd have been skating on the surface. Looking at the symptoms of the disease. You've got this boil breaking out on your arm, but you know what, we're just gonna cover that up with a band-aid, maybe put a little cream on it. Come back in a month and we'll look at it, oh, it's even worse. Let's put a bigger band-aid on it. You need more therapy. No, Peter gets to the heart. He knows what's going on in the heart. Below the outward passion, the weird obsession with power that Simon was doing here, that we would be like, this guy's got issues. Peter's like, they're issues because there's sin beneath that in a fallen heart. No, Peter describes the enslaving hunger for admiration and influence as owing to the heart not right with God. How often do we think about our psychological problems as being a heart not right with God? We often want to, that's the last resort. It's anything besides that. If you push me far enough, maybe I'll say that maybe there's some sin in there. Okay, let me ask the Lord to show me my sin. Sin is way more insidious than we give it credit for. He says here that a vertical relationship with God not being right is at the root of his bitterness, which is at the root of his obsession for power. His heart was soaking in the gall of bitterness. We don't use the word gall very often. Gall or bile is what your gallbladder holds. It's some of the nastiest, murkiest stuff I work in medicine, and we see it sometimes, and it's nasty. What a vivid image. These are people that sacrificed animals all the time. They knew what gall looked like as it spilled and oozed out of the gallbladder of an animal that had been slain. The gall of bitterness is just spreading and oozing throughout his entire life like an infection. I can't help but wonder when Peter says you're bitter, you think you need more power. No, you need freed from your bitterness. I can't help but wondering if his if his father or mother had acted as if or had even treated him as if he would never amount to anything. Was he bitter against them? His parents? Had a trusted friend betrayed and undermined him, and he was he was hurt and he was bitter against that friend. It drove him to be significant and powerful. Had his peers mocked him? Did they doubt him? Had a woman rejected his offers of love at some point in the past? We don't know what the triggering events may have been in Simon's life as we like to talk about them. And ultimately, it didn't even matter what the triggering event may have been for Simon or for you or me. The cancer was not the hurt. The cancer was not the event. That's the surface, that's the boil, that's the oozing thing on your body. The cancer was a fallen heart that had sinfully responded to what had happened to him, buying into the lie that he could set up idols to protect him from his fears, his insecurities, his hurts. I'm not a big fan of Freud for obvious reasons. Talk about a kook. Very smart kook. But he would call this defenses. People set up defenses in response to hurts, right? The gospel calls them idols. Things that we set up in our lives, maybe it's even our own self. We prop ourselves up because we have this hurt, this insecurity, this fear, this person we're trying to prove wrong. And so we get obsessed about power and money and possessions and influence and appearance to prove these people wrong, or even to prove ourselves wrong in our self-doubt. And idols have taken over our hearts. Jesus is not ruining our heart. Those idols are. Peter says, Simon, you were eaten alive by bitterness. You've bought into the lie, you can prove yourself by becoming someone powerful, successful, or significant. From your life? Maybe not, that's fine. But if so, who is that person that came to your mind? Who's the person you're trying to prove wrong? So gratifying. People though. Smear that in the face. Smear my success in their face so that I can feel great. Is that where you're at today? Who are those people you're trying to prove wrong? What are those events for you that you look back on and say, I'm jacked up. I'll never be good. I'll never get past that. The cancer isn't those people or those events. The cancer is the idols you and I have erected against them in the place of God Himself. The gloriously freeing news of Philip's gospel is there's a new king in town. And his kingdom changes hearts and brings us under the rule of God and out from under the tyranny of our own fears and insecurities and pride and selfish ambition. The gospel is that the gift of God's powerful healing and bondbreaking Holy Spirit, it can't be bought with any money or any blood, sweat, or tears. And there are two reasons for this. Number one, we can't afford the Holy Spirit. You can't afford the healing. You can't afford the Holy Spirit's transforming work in your life, and neither can I. Second reason it can't be bought is because he's already bought and paid for by Jesus Christ's blood. The same Peter who saw through Simon's bitter pursuit of the Spirit's power, he would later write in 1 Peter chapter 1, read with me, 1 Peter chapter 1, verse 18. He says, You were ransomed not with perishable things such as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ. It was Jesus' work on the cross, our Savior King, who came and died on the cross to buy the rights to our lives and our destinies and even to the Spirit's power when he suffered the wrath of God against the evil intents of hearts that were not right with God. We can't barter or buy the work of God. We can't manipulate it with religious performance or spiritual technique. We can't purchase the significance, the security, or the success that we often think we need to prove ourselves. The good news is this Jesus offers his spirit in this life and the next. Surrender to the true king that Philip proclaimed to the Samaritans so long ago.