As most of you know, we have been going through a 30-35-week series called The Story. We are getting close to the end of the story. We have been most recently going through the New Testament portion of the story called the book of Acts. As I mentioned a couple times, the book of Acts is a long book, about 28 chapters, so we have to cruise through the book pretty rapidly. This week we are going to be looking at the eighth chapter of Acts, mostly focusing on verses 26-40 and looking at the story of a conversion of an Ethiopian person on the way to the city of Gaza. Before we look at that story, we would like to look at a story of someone here in the congregation. Some of you know the man. His name is Eric, and he is going to share his testimony. A few months ago he came to Debbie and me and shared his story. After hearing the story, we said this is a pretty good story. So we decided that it would be very helpful to have him tell his story to the congregation, especially when I mentioned all along that our story in many ways connects up to God’s story. So in the next few minutes, we are going to have Eric come forward and share his story. As he comes up, he is a little nervous, give him a good round of applause and show him how much you appreciate him.
(Eric speaking) Good Morning everyone. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Eric and I will be sharing my testimony with you today. I was born in Jacksonville, NC and when I was 1 we moved to Cape Cod, MA. That is actually my house where I grew up. That is my driveway there. That is my mother and father. I grew up with a wonderful mother and father and I love them very much. When I was younger, we went to Catholic church until I was about 9 and then we stopped going. It was a relief to me, however, because every time I had asked questions like why is this done this way, it was always the usual response that this is just the way we do it. Being left with frustrating and confused feelings, I decided to believe in nothing. Little did I know at the time, my adoption of an atheist belief would last me over a decade. I decided to also pursue living in isolation from a lot of people because in my mind people were not worthy of trust because of harassments I experienced in school growing up. Along with concerns and the fears of the events of the world, such as 9/11, I let the hatred and distrust of all kinds of different people build. As I got older, I was able to deal with a lot of these unresolved, angry feelings with one thing and that was alcohol. I could do anything I wanted to. Everything from late-night parties, drunken dialing, and skinny dipping like you wouldn’t believe it. No pictures of that. But it was the life. As they say, work hard and play hard, right?
Eventually the hurts from the past and present lingered back into my life and suddenly drinking was no longer fun but became an addiction. What was once fun at parties became blacking out by myself, verbal abuse, and fighting. With the lowest point in my life staring me in the face, I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know how to go about fixing it or where to begin. I had a Bible I received in college, but I refused to look at it. However, with no money to lose, I decided why not read it. At the beginning, I hated it so much I threw it in the garbage. After a while, I took it out of the garbage and read it. To me, it was a bunch of nonsense stories. I wanted answers in return, and if God was real, I wanted him to do things for me. As I read the Bible, I came across the book of Romans. Reading this was a pivotal turning point in my growth. Romans clearly talks about unconditional love. I was so touched by that because I didn’t think God could love someone such as myself who had done all these things and believed in certain things. My mission became clear to me. It wasn’t about God doing things for me; it became about me serving God because he had already done so much for me. I began to challenge myself in very troubled areas of life. Drinking was a big problem for sure but what exactly was causing it. I figured why not go right to the source because behind every addiction lies problems. One area was money. I was serving money to the point of compromising my well-being. I actually used to be a truck driver. I was the guy that picked up the recycling in people’s neighborhoods. The truck driving job I had paid lots of money, but it came with headaches through dealing with management. 1 Timothy 6:10 says “For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil. Some, by longing for it, have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with so many griefs.” I realized I had to pursue another career path. I think the most likely reason that fueled my drinking was the hatred and anger of others I picked up during my high school years. The issues were not dealt with head on. During those years, I developed a hatred towards all kinds of people; I decided to make it a philosophy of everyday life. I saw Jesus as worthless and weak and “full of Jewishness”. Where I saw past leaders with strength and power. So why would I grab onto something like this? A slide of Hitler and Mussolini would be offensive to most everybody including myself. Believe me, it is shameful that this used to be who I was and the people I used to believe in.
But the answer is salvation. By placing my faith in the Lord and doing his will, I was shown that the beliefs I held were leading me straight to failure. God rescued me from something as dark as racism, anti-Semitism, and totalitarianism. According to Webster’s dictionary, totalitarianism is defined as the political concept that a citizen should be totally subject to an absolute state authority. Notice God is not mentioned in there anywhere. If he could rescue me from something like that and reshape my life, I truly believe that he can save us from anything. I had to continue to challenge myself though. I saw the beliefs I had actually were not consistent. My favorite rock and roll guitarist of all time is Jimi Hendrix. He could play guitar with his teeth. One of my favorite movies starring Dustin Hoffman who was Jewish. At first I rationalized all this by saying well some people might be black or Jewish but that is all different. Is it really different? No it is not. God’s will wasn’t in my life and atheism allowed me to make my own rules and change them just whenever it was convenient for me. However, Satan still wanted to work against me. Instead of picking and choosing who I didn’t like, why not just dislike everyone, he said to me. A quote from one of my other past worthless idols, Joseph Stalin, says “Death is the solution to all problems. No man, no problem.” Joseph Stalin was responsible for killing 20-40 million people. Estimates are so wide spread because Stalin didn’t systematically execute people like Hitler did. Matthew 5:22 says, as Jesus spoke, “But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court.” That takes it to a whole new level because Stalin outright permits killing people. Jesus says you shouldn’t even be angry with someone, let alone killing 40 million people.
When I took a step back, I not only saw this thinking was filthy in God’s eyes. It wasted the blood of his son, Jesus Christ. It also wasted the blood of the many veterans who have served to protect this country to help preserve “We the people” as something I strongly believe in to this day. Honestly, it really does come down to the content of one’s character. The time was to act. Jesus’ teachings presented to me at so many levels I could no longer fault him. I decided to accept Jesus as Savior and Lord on October 13, 2008, the same day I gave up drinking alcohol. Now the time was to start a new refreshing life. Eventually, I moved to Pittsburgh for trade school. As part of Isaiah 40:31 says “They will soar on wings like giant eagles.” I decided to go to my first Christian church. I’ll tell you, you guys are exceptional. Not only is the truth preached on Sundays, but I see it being lived out in so many different ways and Bible study was a great place to learn how to live out faith because I never had that experience before. Everybody here is a testimony in his or her own way. Thank you all for loving and supporting me and helping me grow.
The time came when I graduated school and I found a job in Tulsa, OK. Life down there was not what I thought it would be and the southern hospitality was not visible. I was met with hostility sometimes. I was referred to as Yankee, carpet bagger, and on one occasion, the N-word. At one point in my life, the N-word was a word I used to describe people but now it was used to describe me. What was the lesson I learned? Matthew 7:2 says “For in the way you judge, you will be judged. And by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you.” I used to do the judging and very critically and now I was being judged critically. As the tables turned against me, I actually saw how damaging prejudice could be. I realized Pennsylvania was my home since things didn’t work out in Oklahoma. For all the things you guys have done for me here, I decided I wanted to move back. My transition wasn’t easy the second time around though. I bought this car and had it for six weeks and someone hit my driver door. I was taken to the hospital and I probably received the worst treatment of my life. The car accident was actually nothing. It happened so quickly I didn’t even know it happened, but the hospital visit bothered me. I had complications there and the nurse didn’t seem to want to help me out at all. I don’t really know what her problem was but to this day I won’t understand. I am not going to lie resentful towards all the things that happened last year. Along with having an injured neck and the car being in the shop seemingly forever, among other things, I felt like God left me. Once I started reading even more of the Bible, I came across the book of Job. He suffered so much worse than I have and he still maintained his faith in God. Once again, I thank everybody here for getting me through all that. There was someone else who stood by me as well. Ladies and gentleman, the queen of the universe, Barbara. We met on the internet in 2012 and we have so much fun together. She gives me the freedom to be the person that I am. She doesn’t even mind that I don’t have hair on my head. In all seriousness, she loves me for who I am. She accepts my checkered past. She supports me in everything. Even when we don’t agree on every topic, she still stands by my side. She loves and respects me but most of all she serves God and accepts Jesus. I will love and cherish you forever Barbara. I will be the best man that I can be for you. We get married in June of 2015 and will live happily ever after. The end.
Great job, Eric. As you listened to Eric’s testimony, you could probably see how someone like Eric, who had kind of a checkered past, could have felt unworthy for the kingdom of God. But after reading the scripture and talking to people, he realized that because Christ shed blood on the cross, he was just as worthy as the next person. That is a picture of God’s abundance of grace that pours out to anybody willing to make Jesus Christ Lord. In many ways, it is a picture of today’s passage out of the book of Acts, chapter 8. It is a picture of how God used a person named Philip to pour out God’s grace onto an unsuspecting Ethiopian in the middle of the desert towards Gaza. That is what we are going to look at today.
A little bit of background just to bring you up to speed. We are still in the book of Acts. We looked at the early chapters where we saw initially the day of Pentecost where the spirit came down and filled the believers and followers of Christ with the spirit of God. They went out with boldness and confidence and began to preach the word of God and thousands of people came to faith and were baptized, many the same particular day. It was an exciting time. The church began to really expand and people began to move throughout Jerusalem and meet in different houses and get together for fellowship, teaching, and sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. As I said last week, along with that growth came a lot of persecution in many ways. So much so that by the end of chapter 7 we get exposed to the first Christian martyr, a martyr by the name of Stephen. The interesting thing about that story is the very first line of chapter 8 introduces us to a man who goes by the name of Saul and eventually by the name of Paul. So our first introduction to Paul, who is, next to Jesus, one of the most popular guys in the Bible, is this. It says that Saul, also known as Paul, was at the stoning of Stephen giving approval to his death. That is our first introduction to St. Paul. We will talk about Paul next week. In the meantime, we know that following the stoning death of Stephen the story goes on to say that “On that (the day of Stephen’s stoning) a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria.” This passage is giving you a hint that the original words by Jesus in chapter 1, verse 8 are beginning to play out. In chapter 1, verse 8, before he ascended up into heaven, he told the gathered disciples that they would receive power from on high and then they would go out and be witnesses, which is actually where we get the name martyr. They would be witness in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria and all the way to the ends of the earth. We see this beginning to play out following Stephen’s death. First it goes out into the Judean countryside and eventually makes it way up into Samaria. That is the first place that we are introduced to a disciple by the name of Philip. Philip is not the same Philip that was one of the apostles. Philip was believed possibly to be one of the deacons or just another disciple. We don’t know exactly his background there, but we do know that he ended up in Samaria. When he was in Samaria, he began to do the same type of things that James and John were doing in Jerusalem, performing miracles, casting out demons, and healing the sick. Amazing things were happening and people began to be saved. A lot of people began to be saved including a very popular magician by the name of Simon. Philip spent some time in Samaria and then he ended up back in Jerusalem. What happened next was he was sitting in Jerusalem and it says an angel of the Lord showed up and began telling him that he needs to go southwest down toward the city of Gaza. He didn’t tell him why, he just said to go. That is where we pick up the story. We pick it up in Acts 8:26. I am going to read from 8:26 down to verse 40 and then we will come back and talk a bit about it. (Scripture read here.)
This is a story that probably a lot of you are familiar with if you have been around the church for a while. Kind of like last week’s story about Ananias and Sapphira. The problem with these stories that we are familiar with is that we read them and then we just pass over them and say been there, done that. I understand that story and we move on. If you take the time to slow down and do a bit of research on a particular passage, you may find some interesting insights and possible some applications. That is what we are going to look at today. The first thing we learn is that this guy named Philip was a model evangelist. He showed us how to do this thing called evangelism. Some of you aren’t familiar with the term evangelism. It just means sharing good news and in the case of a Christian sharing good news about Jesus Christ. Technically speaking, everybody in this room that would call themselves a Christian should be somewhat comfortable with or at least willing to share the good news about their faith about Jesus Christ as best they can. There are some people that really have the gift of evangelism. They love doing it and look for every opportunity. A contemporary example would be someone like Billy Graham. He is known as a phenomenal evangelist and he is very well known. The first evangelist was Philip. If we had time, we would look in chapter 21 of Acts where it actually refers to Philip the evangelist. Philip was a good evangelist because he did the things that an evangelist should do. First of all, when God told him to go somewhere, he went no questions asked. Even if on the surface it didn’t seem to make a lot of sense where he was being sent. We see this in the first verse where it says “An angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Go south to the road – the desert road – that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’” Now if you are an evangelist and a very good one like Philip was and you had a lot of success in the region of Samaria that is very populated and God says I want you to go down to the southwest desert road to Gaza, you would say I am not sure. What is up with that? Here is a slide that shows what it looks like. The city of Gaza is down here. Here is Jerusalem and this is pretty much desert all the way through here. The thing about Gaza at that time was it was a city that was pretty much demolished about 97 B.C. Philip is being asked to go down the desert road to this pretty much abandoned town. He doesn’t know why but he just goes. He is obedient and he goes. He travels down and when he is traveling down he meets somebody. He meets an Ethiopian. The passage goes on to say, “So he started out on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of the treasury of Kandake, (which means “queen of the Ethiopians”).” He didn’t just meet an Ethiopian. He met a very wealthy, very well-known Ethiopian that worked for the queen. He was probably her treasurer or CPA. Whatever you want to call it. He worked for this person known as Kandake. As a side note, sometimes we read this passage and think that is the ladies name. It was not. It was like a title. It meant queen mother. He worked for the queen. We will unpack that a little bit more and talk about the significance of that in a few minutes.
But again, he was obedient. He went up to this chariot. As a good evangelist, he didn’t allow his prejudices, his preconceived ideas, to get in the way. He didn’t care who this person was, rich, poor, or whatever. This Ethiopian had several strikes against him. First of all, he was not a Jew. In fact, he was considered a gentile and probably a pagan to begin with. He was also someone whose skin was probably a little bit darker and that would have been not popular during that time. The third thing was he was a eunuch. That carried with it all sorts of spiritual baggage. He didn’t let that bother him. He just went running up to this chariot and basically started talking to this Ethiopian. If you need a visual of what that might have looked like, this is an artist’s rendering of what it might have looked like when he approached the chariot and the Ethiopian. Again, the Ethiopian was very wealthy. We know that because he was reading from a scroll, the scroll of Isaiah. Today, most of us have a Bible or two or three or four. Back then they had scrolls. The scrolls were limited to people who could read and were wealthy enough to have one. The fact that he had a scroll meant that he could read and was wealthy enough to purchase a scroll in Jerusalem, which doesn’t mean he was a Jew but was able to get his hand on this scroll.
The story goes that Philip sees him reading from a passage which we consider from the Old Testament from the book of Isaiah. He says to the Ethiopian “Do you understand what you are reading?” The Ethiopian says “‘How can I unless someone explains it to me?’ So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.” An evangelist is not going to close this open door. This would be like you are sitting on the bus to go to work some morning and somebody looks like they have a new Bible and are flipping through and look confused. You are sitting next to them and you say do you know what you are reading? And they say no, I need someone to explain it to me. Would you explain it to me? If you are a Christian, no matter what your biblical knowledge is that is an open door and you should go for it. That was what was happening there. It was kind of neat how he took that particular passage and was able to extrapolate out from that the gospel. He really had a pretty good passage to begin with. The passage that is in this book of Acts is actually referring to an actual passage in Isaiah that most scholars believe points towards the death of Jesus Christ. If we look at that passage again, we can see that. It goes on and says “He (being Jesus) was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before the shearer is silent, so he did not open his mouth. In his humiliation, he was deprived of justice. Who can speak of his descendants? For his life was taken from the earth.” Does that sound like Jesus? I think it does. This was written several hundred years before Jesus was even born. This is a pretty significant passage. Philip as a skilled evangelist was able to say I can explain it to you. He looks at this passage and probably goes through some other passages in Isaiah 53 and begins to link it to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and eventually gets to the reality of the resurrected Jesus Christ and the fact that anybody who believes in that resurrection and confesses Christ as Lord is now being welcomed into eternal life. Philip just jumped on it. So much so that the passage goes on to say “As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water. Why shouldn’t I be baptized?’ And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him.” What is amazing is that they are in the desert. They are not near a lot of water, but they came across water. It was the eunuch who made the comment. There is water. Why shouldn’t I be baptized? So Philip being the good evangelist continued it all the way through the point of baptism. The story ends that Philip is taken off into the air and transported off to another city. The eunuch just goes away thrilled to death, rejoicing, jumping around, and we never hear from him again.
This is a very good model of evangelism. We see Philip obeying the call of God to go pretty much anywhere. Not only obeying the call of God but getting past his prejudices to speak to somebody. When he sees an opportunity, as a good evangelist he doesn’t shy away. He just jumps right into it and engages conversation. When the person decides he wants to carry it forward and continue it on to a full-scale acceptance of Jesus Christ, he just goes for it. That is a picture of evangelism. As good as that is, I think there is more to the story. You can read this and say this is a good story about evangelism. And it really is. But there are some significant facts that you begin to see that this isn’t just a picture of evangelism. This is a model of abundant grace. This Ethiopian had three strikes against him. He wasn’t a Jew, he was a dark-skinned man, and he was a eunuch. How many people know what a eunuch is? Because some people didn’t raise their hand, I have to go on to explain it. A eunuch is basically a castrated person. It is a castrated man. He is missing some of his parts required to make children. As unappealing as that sounds especially to the men in the audience, it wasn’t a bad deal back then because it actually opened up all sorts of opportunities, even though it closed some opportunities. It opened up some very new opportunities, particularly trying to get a good job in the royal palace. It was basically a requirement. In the royal palace, you would be working for the queen, not the king. In that day in Ethiopia, the Ethiopian kings were considered divine. Which means that they felt that the kings were the offspring of the sun god Ra, which basically means they were divine so the kings wouldn’t stoop to do manual labor even if the manual labor meant running a kingdom. So they gave the job to the queen. The queen would be in charge of running the kingdom and also to the point of actually leading the men into battle. The queen had a lot of power back then. The queen would need all these different people. To run the palace she would need servants, male and female. So the men wouldn’t be a threat to the queen, the king, the harem, they would be castrated. Many times that happened on a purely volunteer basis. It was an advantage to have that position but as much of an advantage that it was, it was a disadvantage if you wanted to be a convert to the Jewish faith.
In fact, if you were a castrated male, you could not be a convert to the Jewish faith because there is a little section of law back in what they call the Books of Law back in Deuteronomy 23:1 that is very clear about this. It says “No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the Lord.” You think this is a strange passage. You read this stuff and say what is up with this. Where does this come from? It doesn’t make any sense so I am going to skip by it. But really everything in the Bible, if you are willing to do the research, you say this makes perfect sense. Does anybody know the first commandment of God? The first commandment of God is that God blessed Adam and Eve and said to them be fruitful and increase in number. Fill the earth and subdue it. So for a person to voluntarily allow himself to be castrated to get into a pagan cult or to get a job in the royal palace would be an affront to God’s command to go forth and be fruitful and multiply. In other words, you cannot be a co-creator with God, which God wanted man to be. Does that make sense now why it would be in there? So the Jews would say sorry, you cannot participate in anything related to the assembly, which are basically the temple gatherings. Other than you can be what they would call a proselyte at the gate, which means you are limited. You can come close, but you can’t really participate. They had a somewhat sarcastic name for these eunuchs. They would refer to them as a dead or a dry tree. Here is the interesting thing. When Philip and the Ethiopian approached the water and the Ethiopian said there is water. Why shouldn’t I be baptized? What Philip could have done was pull the Deuteronomy 23:1 card and say because you are a eunuch and eunuchs aren’t supposed to be converted. Eunuchs can’t be baptized. But he didn’t say that. You suspect that as they went through the entire book of Isaiah, they came to another very interesting passage that would have gotten the eunuch very excited. The passage reads “And let not any eunuch complain ‘I am only a dry tree’. For this is what the Lord says: ‘To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant – to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than the sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will not be cut off.” Could you imagine a eunuch reading this and saying, whoa, when does this happen? Philip is saying it is right now. This is effective right now. You remember that Isaiah as a prophet, the prophets would speak to the current situation. When he originally wrote the book of Isaiah it was during the time of the Babylonian captivity and all that stuff was going on. But the second part of Isaiah 40 and on talks about a coming of a new kingdom where things would change up and the lion would lay down with the lamb and all these great things. It speaks of an ever-expanding and widening availability to not just the Jewish people but to all people on earth. The eunuch would be excited. It should make us excited because once we were far off and distant. We were not able to come into the community of faith. If you read the Old Testament, you see that the first few chapters of the Bible are all about the blessing to the Jewish people. You read that and it looks like the kingdom is just for the Jewish people who keep the law. As we move on into the Bible and particularly when we get into the gospel, Jesus is kind of throwing all this stuff out the window. That is what is making the Pharisees so upset because they kept the law. He is saying now sinners and people with checkered pasts, you are all welcome. Come on in. When the eunuch read this, he got excited about this. When Philip read this, he explained it to him. That is why when he said there is water, why shouldn’t I be baptized, and Philip said you are right. There is no reason. You are just welcome. In spite of your past, in spite of anything you might have done, you are just as welcome as the next guy.
That speaks to all of us. What it says is it is not about your personal merit. It is not about your personal worth. It is not about keeping the law or not keeping the law. Your salvation is strictly a gift of grace from God. Grace is favor. Grace is God giving you something you don’t deserve. There is not a person in this room including me that aside from the blood of Jesus Christ deserves to be with God for all eternity. You are not worthy on your own. On any given day, everyone in this room is sinning by thought, deed, action, and you know that. We do not have the ability to get into heaven. Most of you are familiar with the passage in Ephesians. Paul says very clearly “For it is by grace you have been saved through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.” It is that unmerited favor through faith in Jesus Christ. This is not from yourselves. You can’t do anything. It is purely a gift from God. Not by works so that no one can boast. This is a great passage and a passage we should all memorize because, other than the grace of God, nobody deserves to spend eternity with God because God is all holy and we are not. Holiness and sin and evil cannot come together.
There is actually a quote by one of my professors who I borrowed a lot of this stuff from, especially the background information. He says it very clearly. He says “This story is a story that teaches us that God extends his love to all who are thirsty and not just those who are worthy.” We have to hear that. Some people don’t like that. That means the people you don’t like at work or on the streets, maybe their skin color is different or their behavior is different, you don’t want to include them because you say they are not worthy. This passage makes it clear that it is not up to us to decide who is worthy. It is up to the man upstairs who decides who is worthy. Not only does it convict the people who think other people aren’t worthy. It should be an encouragement to us who have family members and friends and coworkers who we really grieve for because of their lifestyle and think that because of their past or their present somehow they may be excluded from the kingdom of God. This says no. Everybody is welcome. Everybody who calls on the name of Jesus Christ will be saved. And it should give hope to us because I know there are people in this room that, for whatever reason, you just don’t feel worthy. You feel maybe like Eric who went through a lot of these bad choices early in life and think God doesn’t love me and God won’t welcome me in. I can never get to heaven. This story and the passage in Ephesians and this quote pretty much throws that out the window. Again, you are not worthy. Only by the grace of God through the shed blood of Jesus Christ are you worthy. We should know that. Philip knew it. The Ethiopian knew it. He knew it so well that I suspect that he went back to the palace rejoicing and screaming and meeting up with his other eunuch buddies and sharing the gospel and talking in the palace. The fact today I just read, I don’t know how accurate it is, but even if it is only partially accurate, is that 65% of the population of Ethiopia is Christians. They trace that Christianity all the way back to the Ethiopian eunuch. 65%. This is a story that is a model of evangelism but more than that it is a model of God’s abundant grace. It doesn’t judge you by the color of your skin, by your behavior, by your past but simply again is willing to pour out his grace upon you. All you have to do is receive that grace that comes through Jesus Christ and accept it. You know that God is, with opening arms, welcoming you into his kingdom now and forever. Let us pray.
