The Quest for Jesus

 April 25 2021

Acts 8:26-40

         The way that God led me into the ministry was through doing ministry with youth. Yes, what a surprise, I used to be young. I could actually stay up to three in the morning until the last rowdy child decided to go to bed. Needless to say I have a lot of great memories from loving on the young people of the church. One of the memories that this weeks scripture brought to mind had to do with helping with a youth camp when my son, Matt was in eighth grade. This was a Moravian church camp and because I was a Moravian for twenty years, I was asked to do the program for this week long camp because there weren’t any Moravian pastors able to do so that week. So, I and my long time friend, Dan, who also was a Moravian at the time, put together a program and off we went to spend a week with a group of middle schoolers in the muggy heat of June. Well, when you say yes to God, God seems to always bless your willingness and Dan and I were abundantly blessed that week. We still laugh and talk about how God showed up in so many ways. One of the strange things that happened is that one young man on Wednesday of the week came up to me and said that he wanted to be baptized.  Now, I don’t know how things work in your world but in my world at church camp kids don’t randomly ask to be baptized. I wasn’t sure what to do; nothing like this had ever happened to me so I had no frame of reference as to what to do. I spoke with the camp counselors that were from his church about this boys request and they thought that I should just let his pastor baptize him at his home church. So, I thought I will let him know what the people from his church thought was best and that would be the end of it. Well, that wasn’t the end of it because he was not satisfied with that plan and insisted that he wanted to be baptized in the lake that was the focal point of the campgrounds. Finally, the last day of the camp arrived and of course as we are loading up the vehicles to head home, sure enough this young man came and asked me once more if I would baptize him in the lake. Fortunately for me, I had been talking with one of the camp counselors at the moment when this boy made his request and as I hemmed and hawed around this counselor quoted from our scripture for today, adapting the question that this Ethiopian man had asked Philip, “See, here is water! What prevents him from being baptized?” And so with that, this camp counselor, this boy and I went wading into the water, and in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit this young man was baptized. Just like the Ethiopian in our story, I don’t know what ever became of this young man, whether or not the baptism that he desired so much made any lasting impact on his life but I do know that I, like Philip, was following the Spirit’s lead.

         The Spirit’s leading is what begins our scripture story for today. The book of Acts is actually called the Acts of the Apostles but it just as easily could be called the Acts of the Holy Spirit because over and over again it is the Holy Spirit who is causing the action. While the story begins with Philip hearing a message from an angel make no mistake the Holy Spirit is very involved. The message Philip hears is that he was to get up and go south, south from Samaria, south past Jerusalem to Gaza, close to the Egyptian border. Now, it seems like this shouldn’t haven’t been to big a deal until you study a map and find that this is an eighty mile journey to be covered by foot. But even so, there was no hesitation on the part of Philip; he just got up and went.What is amazing is that what we learn as we go along in the story is that what God is doing is bringing together two people who are separated by eighty miles that had to be walked by foot so that God might be able to reveal himself to one of them. We have to be in awe of the way God is able to put in motion plans that may just bring one more person closer to the reality of his love for them. What we see in this story is the truth of what we state the Church of the Nazarene believes, that God and his favor is at work in the lives of people before they ever come to have a right relationship with him. This is what is called prevenient grace, the grace of God working in the lives of people drawing them ever closer to a love relationship with himself. Now, what is also revealed in our scripture story is that one of the ways that God’s grace touches the people that are far from him is through the people who are already in a right relationship with him. You and I can be used in a very similar way that God used Philip. We can be bearers of God’s grace which is something all of us should think long and hard about.

         Well, the person God sent Philip to intersect with is a man from Ethiopia, the country just below Egypt. This man was a court official in the court of the Queen of Ethiopia, a trusted official who was in charge of her treasury. We are told that this man had traveled to Jerusalem to worship. Here we have to push the pause button because when we understand that this man was a eunuch, a man who had been mutilated in order to ensure the Queen’s safety, then we also know that in the twenty first chapter of Deuteronomy that he would not have been allowed to be part of the assembly who worshipped in the Temple. We have to wonder if this man had known this fact or had he traveled a very long distance only to find himself on the outside looking in? While the Law seems rather cruel it isn’t hard to figure out that the reason for not allowing those who had been mutilated to be part of the Temple worship was that the Temple and its worship was supposed to be a picture of a perfect world that God was trying to bring about, one where the people are whole and holy with God dwelling in the midst of his people. 

So, after what had to be a disappointing journey, this man from Ethiopia was headed back home. There is much speculation if this man was a Jew or a Gentile however knowing that he desired to worship in Jerusalem and the fact that he had the sacred scroll from which he was reading from, all of this points us to the real possibility that he as indeed a Jew. He may have been a descendant of the part of the people of Israel who had gone down to Egypt as recorded in the book of Jeremiah. Its important to remember this because it is implied that this man had heard the story of the suffering servant from the book of Isaiah but no matter how many times he had heard it, the story made no headway in his mind. So, he decides that on his way home he would study this story of the suffering servant once again. It is precisely at this moment that the Holy Spirit tells Philip to go over and join the chariot of this Ethiopian. It is as Philip is running alongside the chariot that he over hears the Ethiopian speaking the words from the book of Isaiah.The encounter between this Ethiopian and Philip thus begins with a question asked by Philip, “Do you understand what you are reading?” I can only imagine how fast the chariot came to a halt after hearing this voice of a total stranger who seems to understand what has been a most difficult passage of Scripture. The Ethiopian in response tells Philip, “How can I understand unless someone guides me? This question tells us that the Ethiopian was humble enough to ask for help, to seek guidance in order to understand the prophecies of God. So, he invites Philip, a total stranger, to come up into the chariot and sit beside him and teach him. The passage of Scripture that confused this Ethiopian was from the fifty third chapter of Isaiah, the seventh and eighth verses which stated, “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.” What the Ethiopian could not figure out is just who is the subject of this passage? Just who is this one who was like a sheep, who complacently accepted the injustice against him? Just who was it that had been humiliated, who was denied justice, whose very life was taken without cause? Was this Isaiah describing his own experience or was this written about someone else? What the Ethiopian was lacking was the key that unlocked the scriptures of the scroll, the key called Jesus. It was only in the light of the cross that so much of the scriptures suddenly became clear. This good news of Jesus is what Philip told to this traveler from Ethiopia. When looking at the different versions of the fifty third chapter of Isaiah, it also becomes somewhat understandable why these verses, may have been of greater interest for this Ethiopian. What Isaiah was saying in the eighth verse of this fifty third chapter is that the suffering servant experienced the dishonor of being unable to have children. This is what was meant by stating about  the suffering servant that as for his generation who considered that he was cut off from the land of the living. The word translated as “generation” refers to one’s lineage so what is implied is that what has been taken from the suffering servant was that he was left without children and no one even gave this fact any thought. The people around the suffering servant were unaware of the tragedy of the servant having been left without any legacy and not only that they were also unaware that the reason for this was the fact that he was sacrificing himself in obedience to God. I believe that it was this fact that the suffering servant was willing to sacrifice himself even to the point of giving up having children this is what touched this man who had been rendered unable to have children himself. This man from Ethiopia had experienced an injustice just as this suffering servant had. So, in some way, this verse was helping this man see how God might take his brokenness and use his brokenness to further the work of God. This was a hopeful idea for a man who had been unable to worship in the assembly at Jerusalem.

Well, as Philip would have helped to explain just how it was Jesus who was the suffering servant that Isaiah had prophesied about, it is highly likely that Philip would have continued on in the fifty third chapter. It is in the following verses in the tenth and eleventh verses that the reasoning behind the servants suffering is revealed. There we read, “Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him, it was the Lord who put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days.Out of the anguish of his soul he will see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant make many to be accounted to be righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.” Here it is explained that what God desired to come out of the servant’s suffering is that he would be an offering for the guilt felt by those who felt far from God’s people just like the man from Ethiopia. How relieved and amazed he must have been that even though he was not able to enter the Temple to offer the required guilt offerings for his sins, those things that came between him and God, now in this suffering servant God had made a way for his guilt to be dealt with. Here in verse ten the prophet Isaiah speaks directly to the one reading his prophesy and he tells him that if the Servant’s suffering is to have any meaning at all then what has to be done is that each one of us must take this broken Servant and offer him back to God to stand in our place.What has happened to the Servant, the dishonor he felt when he was cut off from having a living legacy, the dishonor of being buried with the wicked, all of this only makes sense when we learn that he was willing to suffer all of this even unto death because of us, to be the way that our consciences might be healed of its guilt, once and for all. How amazed the Ethiopian must have been to learn that the brokenness of this Servant, the Servant whose name was Jesus, could be used by God for such a healing purpose. And if this was true for this Servant of God then perhaps God could even take and use his brokenness as well.

Isaiah also prophesied that not only will the Servant’s suffering and death be for all people the necessary guilt offering but when this offering is accepted  then instead of a barren life now the life of the Servant will be fruitful.  Isaiah tells us that the Servant will see his offspring; he will make many to be righteous just as he is righteous.This is the whole point of the fifty third chapter, that, yes, the Servant described here suffers horribly, and dies without receiving justice but what gives purpose and meaning to the suffering and death of the Servant is that God is willing to allow the Servant to be an offering for us and when this offering is accepted then we are told, that the Servant is satisfied. Our acceptance of his work on our behalf is what made all of what the Servant had to endure worth everything. What satisfies Jesus, the suffering Servant, is the knowledge that what he endured, the shame, the suffering, the loss and the cross is knowing that what he accomplished through this is that many have become righteous because of him, that the iniquities of the many have most certainly been borne away.

The Ethiopian upon hearing of how the suffering Servant had allowed himself to be cut off from the land of the living, to endure the shame of having no living legacy in order to be true to what God demanded of him this must have certainly be especially understood by one from whom this had been taken from him as well. Yet to go further, to understand that this servant gave up so much, that he suffered so much, that he willingly went unto death as a sheep to the shearer, that the Servant did this all to be an offering to God for the guilt of our sin, this must have most assuredly broke this Ethiopian. Then to read further how what the suffering Servant endured only has meaning and purpose if you and I accept what he took upon himself and believe that this he has done for us, this the Ethiopian rightly understood, demanded a response. The response required, Philip explained, is baptism, the washing of the water symbolizing a death and a beginning. As Paul so powerfully explains in the beginning of the sixth chapter of Romans, “Do you not know that all who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” What we die to is a life that is ignorant of what Jesus our suffering servant has accomplished for us through his willingness to suffer and die in order that he might be for the world God’s chosen offering for the guilt of sin. Now that we know what Jesus has done, that he is the one who is offered in our place in order to satisfy God, now if his suffering and dying is to have any meaning and purpose then we must believe that this offering was for our guilt. When we place our faith in this offering, this gift given to us by God, a gift we know as grace, then as Isaiah tells us we become one of the many accounted as righteous because of the Servant. This is the newness of life proclaimed after the baptism waters wash over us. This newness of life, a life now accounted righteous because of our acknowledgement and belief in what our suffering Servant Jesus has done for us, this is what that Ethiopian man experienced that day at the hands of Philip, the God sent stranger who helped bring him into the grace of God.

The author of the book of Acts, Luke had a very important reason for telling this story of this Ethiopian eunuch at this place in this book because I believe that he wanted his readers to recognize the prophecies of Isaiah were coming true just as God had promised. But there is more because as we read further in the book of Isaiah , in the fifty sixth chapter we read this, “Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say,’ The Lord will certainly separate me from his people’; and let not the eunuch say, ‘I am a dry tree.’For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbath, 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 will not be cut off.” What God is saying here is that no longer do those who are broken have to focus on their brokenness but rather through the one who was broken for them, there is a better future than we can even ask or imagine. Jesus our suffering servant through being our offering for the guilt of our sin has given a new life to not only Ethiopian eunuchs, but also to all those who are alienated and foreign to God, so that through Jesus, everyone can at last come home to the God who loves them. To God be the glory! Amen.!