It’s really noteworthy that, among the family biographies in the Bible, you find that dysfunction is not the exception; it’s the norm.
Adam & Eve messed up in paradise and their first son murdered their second. (Gen. 3)
Noah got drunk and naked in front of one of his sons. (Gen. 9)
Abraham lied about his wife Sarah being his sister, allowing other men to walk off with her - two times! (Gen. 12 & 20); and had a child by his wife’s maid Hagar at his wife’s insistence! (Gen. 16)
Job, a contemporary of Abraham, the epitome of faith, yet married to a woman who told him to "curse God and die." (Job 2:9)
Jacob, the pathological deceiver (Gen. 25,27,30), married Rachel the kleptomaniac. (Gen. 31)
Rueben, Jacob’s eldest, slept with his father’s mistress. (Gen. 35)
Moses had a temper problem; his sister Miriam a jealousy problem; and his brother Aaron was weak-willed.
Samson, a judge in Israel, put Arnold Schwarzenegger to shame strength-wise, but was weak around women. (Judges 16)
Eli the priest raised two sons that extorted money from people in the tabernacle. God was patient with Eli for years, asking him to deal with his sons, but Eli remained complacent, forcing God to remove Eli’s family from being priests and replacing him with Samuel who goes on to raise a family similar to Eli’s. (1 Samuel 2, 4)
King David had multiple wives. A son from one marriage raped his half-sister from another marriage, another son murdered the rapist, and a third son tried to take David’s throne from him. (2 Samuel)
Another of David’s sons, King Solomon, apparently spent the middle part of his life as a sex addict. (1 Kings)
Even many of the prophets struggled with broken families.
Why do I bring up these familiar family failures from the Bible? Because it highlights God’s willingness to work with imperfect families.
We’re in the series, "No Perfect Families Allowed" where we’ve been looking at the biographies of biblical families in order to learn from them in ways that will benefit our families. I hope you’ve been encouraged but I also hope that you’ve been challenged.
I said it in the first message in this series and I reiterate, at Pathway, we have struggling families, we have stressed families and we have good families working to be better families - but we don’t have any perfect families. Neither does any other church. Perfect families, like perfect people, don’t exist. I don’t say that to motivate you to go out and be satisfied with a crummy family life, but to give you hope.
One of the reasons a lot of people give up on improving their family life is that they lose hope. They throw up their hands and say, "What’s the use? There’s nothing I can do to make things better." That’s a satanic lie. People end up going around in self-destructive circles because they believe the devil’s lie that you can’t change.
You can improve your family even if you’re single - because with God’s help - you can improve you! If you’re married you can improve your marriage. If you’re a parent or a grandparent or you have problems with your siblings or your in-laws - whatever - all of these relationships can be improved with God’s help.
With God there is always hope!
So we’re going to close out this current series on "No Perfect Families Allowed," by talking about someone in the Bible that you probably never dreamed we would talk about in this series - a single man.
The message today is "The Family for People without a Family."
Here’s his very interesting story from Acts chapter 8.
26 As for Philip, an angel of the Lord said to him, "Go south down the desert road that runs from Jerusalem to Gaza." 27 So he started out, and he met the treasurer of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under the Kandake, the queen of Ethiopia. The eunuch had gone to Jerusalem to worship, 28 and he was now returning. Seated in his carriage, he was reading aloud from the book of the prophet Isaiah.
29 The Holy Spirit said to Philip, "Go over and walk along beside the carriage." 30 Philip ran over and heard the man reading from the prophet Isaiah. Philip asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?"
31 The man replied, "How can I, unless someone instructs me?" And he urged Philip to come up into the carriage and sit with him.
32 The passage of Scripture he had been reading was this: "He was led like a sheep to the slaughter. And as a lamb is silent before the shearers, he did not open his mouth. 33 He was humiliated and received no justice. Who can speak of his descendants? For his life was taken from the earth."
34 The eunuch asked Philip, "Tell me, was the prophet talking about himself or someone else?" 35 So beginning with this same Scripture, Philip told him the Good News about Jesus.
36 As they rode along, they came to some water, and the eunuch said, "Look! There’s some water! Why can’t I be baptized?" (Some versions add, "You can, if you believe with all your heart.") 38 He ordered the carriage to stop, and they went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. 39 When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away. The eunuch never saw him again but went on his way rejoicing.
40 Meanwhile, Philip found himself farther north at the town of Azotus. He preached the Good News there and in every town along the way until he came to Caesarea. Acts 8:26-40 (NLT)
What a fascinating, wonderful story about a man finding Christ because of His inner yearning and God’s willingness and ability to send specific revelation through His Word and through a faithful, Spirit-filled witness!
But why are we considering the story of a single man to close our series on families?
You say, "Brian, you told us that we were going to be looking at family biographies in the Bible. This isn’t a family biography. Why are we here?"
Let’s begin by clearly understanding what the Bible says about this man. The Bible says that he was a eunuch. Some of you know what that word means and others of you don’t. There’s no delicate way to say this and I wouldn’t, except its essential to understanding this story. When the Bible calls this man a eunuch it means he had been castrated.
In ancient cultures they often took away a man’s testosterone-producing ability in order to reduce his aggression and sex drive so that he could be trained and trusted to perform certain duties.
Here’s the reason this man is included in our current series on "No Perfect Families Allowed." Eunuchs were men who would never be able to have a biological family. That privilege had been taken from them. They didn’t marry. They couldn’t have children.
Does God not have a place at His table for people who’ve never married, or for the divorced, or for the widowed? Of course He does! Their place at God’s table is every bit as important as the married - or as those married with children.
We probably wouldn’t label someone a "eunuch" today but the ancient world wasn’t as polite. This man’s designation, as well as his condition, reflects the brutality of a bygone era.
"Royalty could safely promote them to higher levels of responsibility because they posed no threat of having children who might later attempt to usurp the throne. But this was small consolation for being emasculated. Insult was added to injury, because eunuchs were despised and derided in the ancient world as effeminate, forever betrayed by their beardless faces and high-pitched voices." ("Flawed Families of the Bible," by David and Diana Garland, p. 217)
The ancient Greek satirist Lucian voiced the unkind common opinion that eunuchs were "freaks." The first-century Jewish historian Josephus ungraciously dubbed them "monstrosities."
I only bring this up because I want you to understand something of how isolated and humiliated eunuchs like the man in our story must have felt. Even though he had risen to the rank of treasurer for his nation’s queen, his wealth and connection to power did nothing to eradicate the shame and loneliness forced upon him by the times in which he lived.
Here is a single man who would never have a family and God specifically and intentionally mats and frames his story making it a part of the Holy Bible forever to be remembered by generations to come. It is a story worth more than a library full of books, depicting how important one soul is to God!
God’s handpicked servant Philip, is dispatched by an angel to the remoteness of the desert to intersect with this searching man at precisely the right moment to share the Good News about Jesus with him!
I hope you see today how important you are to God as an individual no matter what your situation is in life! His angels, His servants, His circumstances all merge together in providential timing to communicate His love for you and to you!
Not one person anywhere is left out of the love of God! The good news about Jesus is not just for Jews it’s also for Africans and Asians, for Greeks and Romans, for married people, single people, divorced people - for people who don’t have a family God has a family for you!
The Bible says, "God shows no favoritism." Acts 10:34b (NLT)
One time Jesus’ biological mother and brothers came to see Him but He was so busy healing people, casting out demons and teaching vital spiritual truth that He couldn’t get to them right away and He said something that applies to what we’re talking about here.
32 There was a crowd sitting around Jesus, and someone said, "Your mother and your brothers are outside asking for you." 33 Jesus replied, "Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?" 34 Then he looked at those around him and said, "Look, these are my mother and brothers. 35 Anyone who does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother." Mark 3:32-35 (NLT)
Circle that last phrase, Jesus said, "Anyone who does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother." Anyone who does God’s will is in God’s family!
This man without a family on the desert road back to Ethiopia had a desire to do God’s will if someone would just show him what it was. This moving story is one of several in the Book of Acts that shows how God makes sure the Good News about Jesus is delivered to those who have an open heart.
He had traveled a great distance to worship the God of the Jews in Jerusalem. Some Bible expositors propose the idea that he may have made the journey, only to discover at the last minute that he was banned from the temple because of his physical condition. (Deuteronomy 23:1) Eunuchs weren’t even allowed to enter the outer court. At best he could only wait outside the walls of the temple and try to peak through the knotholes.
Today, it would be like someone barred from entering a church but showing up anyway and asking the worshippers as they returned to their cars in the parking lot, "Can I see the worship folder? How was the music? What was the sermon about? Did you sense the presence of the Spirit of God?"
After being barred from the temple he’s on the long dusty road back home and he’s reading the scroll of Isaiah to himself. He must have been wealthy enough to secure his own copy, which in those days was rare. It would have been quite an investment but it was worth it to him.
I read recently where people seeking Christ and those who have found him in Muslim countries today will invest an entire month’s wages or more just to own a contraband Bible! ("For the Love of My Brothers" by Brother Andrew)
What was he thinking as he read from Isaiah? Given his present circumstances of rejection from the temple and his entire life of being viewed as an outcast?
The Book of Acts records that when Philip showed up the eunuch was reading verses 7 and 8 of Isaiah out loud. Surely he had already read the preceding verses too:
"There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him. 3 He was despised and rejected; a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care." Isaiah 53:2b-4 (NLT)
And he had read the verses Philip overheard him reading:
7He was oppressed and treated harshly, yet he never said a word. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter. And as a sheep is silent before the shearers, he did not open his mouth. 8 Unjustly condemned, he was led away. No one cared that he died without descendants. Isaiah 53:7-8a (NLT)
Whomever this Scripture was referring to, the eunuch identified with him. He knew what it was to be despised and rejected "a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief." He knew what it was for people to turn their backs on him as a eunuch and look the other way. He knew people despised him and didn’t care about him. He knew what it was to be oppressed and treated harshly, to be a sheep-like figure, to die without descendants.
His affinity with the subject of this prophecy reverberated in his aching heart.
And just as he reaches the crucible of inner aching and longing for truth - Philip pops up out of nowhere!
The story reads as if he immediately understood that Philip was God’s personal messenger. Philip asks if he understands what he’s been reading. The eunuch confesses that he doesn’t have a clue but he’s open for suggestions.
"So beginning with this same Scripture, Philip told him the Good News about Jesus." Acts 8:35 (NLT)
The Good News was that Isaiah was talking about Jesus! And Jesus not only understood what this man was suffering - He cared and He did something about it! He died for the sins of others on the cross on Skull Hill and He was buried and He rose again! And He’s in heaven right now willing to save ANYONE AND EVERYONE that will come to Him!
Jesus didn’t have any physical descendants, no matter what Dan Brown said in The DaVinci Code, but on that desert road going away from Jerusalem another spiritual descendant was reborn!
Now he was part of the family of Christ! This man who would never have a biological family was immediately enjoined and connected to the most wonderful family in the history of the universe!
Admittedly, Christ’s family is an odd family, made up of known criminals like the thief on the cross (Luke 23:39-43), formerly demon-possessed individuals like Mary of Magdala (Luke 8:2), the poor, the lame, the crippled, and the blind (Luke 14:21), and many more.
And now a eunuch is added to the family of God!
After he is baptized Philip was suddenly gone. Gone to spread the Good News about Jesus with others.
The Scriptures don’t say so, but you and I know he also kept reading in the scroll of Isaiah. And when he got to what to us would be a few chapters further on, he came to this:
3 Don’t let foreigners who commit themselves to the Lord say, "The Lord will never let me be part of his people." And don’t let the eunuchs say, "I’m a dried-up tree with no children and no future."
4 For this is what the Lord says: I will bless those eunuchs who keep my Sabbath days holy and who choose to do what pleases me and commit their lives to me. 5 I will give them, within the walls of my house, a memorial and a name far greater than sons and daughters could give. For the name I give them is an everlasting one. It will never disappear! Isaiah 56:3-5 (NLT)
The man without a family - without any human way of having a family - was no longer without a family! He learned that in Jesus he was no longer excluded. They could keep him out of the temple, people could turn their backs on him and make him the butt of their jokes but he was a family man now!
No, the Scriptures don’t say that he went on reading Isaiah but I bet he did and I’m glad for what he found.
What the Scriptures DO say is that the eunuch went on his way "rejoicing." (Acts 8:39) What does a rejoicing person do? They spread the news of their joy! You might as well tell a bird not to sing as to tell a rejoicing Christ follower not to tell someone about Jesus!
And as he spread the Good News about Jesus he begins to produce spiritual children!
Being widowed, divorced, unmarried, or unable to conceive children does NOT exclude one from having family. Marriage and children are only one way to be blessed with family.
Remember what Jesus said:
"Anyone who does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother. Mark 3:35 (NLT)
This is good news not only for the eunuch but also for all who have experienced family brokenness in life.
Other people may have done things to mar and scar you. You may be the victim of verbal or physical abuse. Your parents or a spouse may have deserted you. Addiction may have ruined your relationships.
But no one can keep you from becoming a part of God’s family and no one can keep you from having spiritual children by spreading the Good News about Jesus!
