Dr. Rodney Plunket

       Our God brings so many bright wonders out of dark experiences.  The Bible is filled with such stories.  God’s people are enslaved in Egypt and suffering dehumanizing oppression; God brings them out with a power that divides a sea and provides food in the desert.  Jesus is crucified; God brings to the world salvation and abundant life.  And in the Book of Acts, the church of God is ravaged by a man named Saul (Acts [Ax] 8:3); but God uses that to cause His glorious gospel to spread all the more.

It must have seemed like such a dark moment when Saul was decimating the church in Jerusalem.  But God took those forced departures and turned them into opportunities for the message of Jesus to be spread to many other places.  Acts 8:4 tell us, “those who were scattered went from place to place, proclaiming the word.”

One of the voices God used in this spreading of the gospel was a preacher named Philip.  Philip was first used to convert many Samaritans to the gospel. That story is told in Ax 8:5-8.

Soon after preaching to the Samaritans, Philip was used to reach a single individual.  Our Scripture reading this morning (Ax 8:26-39) told us that story, and from that reading we heard that Philip was directed by an angel to go to the road that runs southwest from Jerusalem to Gaza.  There he was instructed to join himself to a chariot in which a eunuch who was the chief treasurer of Queen Candace of Ethiopia was sitting.  This chief treasurer was a worshipper of the God of Israel.

What led such a man to a religion based in Palestine?  What led the treas­urer of an Ethiopian queen to become a worshipper of the God of Israel?  The text does not tell us.  But the very fact that this story of just one person being converted is told with such detail is striking.  And look at the nature of the story; God clearly engineers the entire event.  All of this makes clear that the conversion of this Ethiopian eunuch was extremely important to God’s purposes.  As we study it further, I think we will realize why.

The country referred to in the text as Ethiopia is not modern Ethiopia, it is a country known today as Sudan.  As we have already noted, the eunuch was a high ranking official of that nation, but he was still a eunuch, and eunuch’s were barred from full fellowship in the Jewish religion; such is made clear in Deuteronomy 23:1.  So this man’s connection to the Jewish faith would not have been characterized by full fellowship.   But the prophet Isaiah foresaw a time when the status of eunuchs and foreigners would change.  He foresaw a time when they would be granted full fellowship among God’s people.  Please take your Bibles and turn to Isaiah (Isa) 56:3-8 and follow along as I read.

Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say, “The Lord will surely separate me from his people”; and do not let the eunuch say, “I am just a dry tree.”  For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.

And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it, and hold fast my covenant––these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.  Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to them besides those already gathered.

This prophetic passage is a very Jewish way of revealing that there would be a time when both eunuchs and foreigners would be accepted as full-fledged citizens in the Kingdom of God.  Acts 8 is reporting the first exact fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy.  In the conversion of this eunuch, whom it is most natural to assume was a black African, Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled; and is it not powerfully ironic that the passage which he was reading when Philip joined his chariot was also from the Book of Isaiah and was just a few chapters earlier in that book?

The eunuch was reading from Isa 53:7-8.  We looked at those two verses just two Sundays ago in a worship assembly during which we focused upon the larger context surrounding and including those verses.  That larger context is Isa 52:13-53:12, and what we saw there was a presentation of a figure sent by God who would suffer and die for the sins of God’s people.  We also noticed several of the New Testament passages that refer back to that portion of Scripture and connect it to the death of Jesus on the cross.  It has been suggested that the eunuch of Ax 8 had purchased this portion of Scripture from the temple as kind of a souvenir and was reading it aloud as he traveled back to Ethiopia.

It is wonderful to see God working here.  God sent Philip to meet with this man on the road leading back to north Africa, and as Philip drew near this was the passage he heard being read––a passage that Philip knew to have been fulfilled by Jesus.  And from that passage Philip preached Jesus.  And from that passage a man who loved the God of Israel but was forced to love him from a distance was told how he could be brought into intimate relationship with God as a foreigner and as a eunuch.

As I have thought about the eunuch’s needs and desires, I have started reading one verse in Ax 8 from a different perspective.  Please listen again to Ax 8:36, “the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?’”  I have begun to read the eunuch’s question with a suspicion that he asked “What is to prevent me . . . ?” out of fear that there might still be something that disallowed a foreign eunuch from being baptized.  The significance for him of that walk to the water can hardly be overstated.

The eunuch went on his way rejoicing because he now had the oneness with God for which he had dreamed but which had always seemed unattainable, out of reach.  The gospel gave him a free ticket to that formerly unattainable destination, and he made the trip from Jerusalem to Joy.

Many of us here have also made that trip?  Many of us have gone from a time when we felt drawn to God but thought we could never be good enough to be really close to Him to a time when we saw God’s grace and His love.  We were converted to our God by the greatness of His love.  We have gone from Jerusalem to Joy.

Others here may be in the condition of the eunuch before Philip joined his chariot.  You may feel that there is something in you that disallows you from ever knowing true oneness with the living God.  This story of the eunuch is one of many stories in the Bible which tells of God reaching out to persons who feel just like you feel––unworthy.

The apostle Peter preached the very first gospel sermon on the Day of Pentecost.  The New Testament makes clear that he was a leader of central importance in the early church.  But listen to one of his very first statements to Jesus.  It is recorded in Luke 5:8.  There we read, “Simon Peter . . .  fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!’”  Peter felt so unworthy that he exhorted Jesus to leave him, to stay away from him.  Peter seems to have felt that his own unworthiness might defile Jesus.  Instead, Jesus’ purity cleansed Peter and made him one of the greatest champions for the message of Christ who has ever live.  Please, make the journey to joy.  Make the journey to salvation.  Make the journey to unimpeded fellowship with the living God.  Come to the Christ who died that you might have eternal life.  Please come now as we sing.

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