"the Spirit Of Freedom"

“The Spirit of Freedom”

Acts 8:26-40

Last Sunday was Pentecost and we are told that 3,000 people joined the brand-new Church that day, and the numbers kept growing and growing and growing.

And the Book of Acts is the story of the early Church and how it evolved from there.

It’s an exciting adventure.

And in it we get an intriguing picture of a group of people—folks just like you and me—who are continually being changed and formed and transformed in their understanding of God and one another.

And one of the things that stands out most is that even though the Church is born on Pentecost, the Church is not finished on Pentecost.

It is a work of God, always under construction—all the way to today.

It’s always changing.

It’s growing, it’s moving, it’s fluid.

And it’s not that God changes, it just that our understanding of God and God’s ways change and develop the more and longer we live in God, learn from God and follow the leading of the Holy Spirit.

The gift of salvation—the Gift of God’s Holy Spirit is an ongoing gift, it’s not just a one-time event, and the Church is constantly learning more and more about what it means to follow God.

And Philip found this out up close and personal in our Scripture Passage for this morning as he is the first one, besides Jesus, to spread the Gospel beyond the bounds of traditional Judaism.

You see, the first Christians were Jews.

And when they accepted Christ as Lord, Savior and Messiah—they still considered themselves Jews.

And they didn’t yet know that God’s salvation is for all people: Jew, Gentile—you name it!

They didn’t understand that God doesn’t play favorites.

So, an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.”

Philip does what he is told.

And then, the Holy Spirit speaks to Philip again: “Go to that chariot and stay near it.”

Inside the chariot is an “Ethiopian eunuch” reading the book of Isaiah the prophet.

A eunuch was a castrated male servant considered to be safe to serve the women of a royal household.

Despite this, eunuchs were considered to be sexually immoral.

***Put Up Slide 1***

According to Deuteronomy 23:1 “No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the Lord.”

***Slide 2***

And according to Leviticus Chapter 21, eunuchs, along with “the blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; no [person] with a crippled foot or hand, or who is hunchbacked or dwarfed, or who has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores” or any other “defect” including “crushed testicles” is allowed to come near God’s sanctuary.

These people were considered to be sinners and outsiders.

Remember how, over and over again, in the Gospels Jesus is chastised by the religious leaders for eating, hanging out with and making friends with prostitutes, tax collectors and sinners?

Who do you suppose the “sinners” are?

Many of them can be found in the list from Leviticus 21.

They are the eunuchs, the homosexuals, the blind, the disabled, the disfigured, the deformed, hunchbacks and the like.

People thought they had done something bad to deserve their condition or situation—therefore, God was punishing them and they were considered “sinners” and “less than.”

Jesus knew better.

And in the Book of Acts, Jesus’ brand-new Church was beginning to learn this too.

And we all, Lord willing, continue to learn, but we ALL still have a long way to go.

None of us know everything there is to know about God and how we are to live as Christ’s Church.

***Put up Slide 3***

As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13: “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.

Now [we] know in part: then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”

I find that exciting, do you?

As the Church of Jesus Christ, we are on a journey--a journey of learning more and more about the living, loving eternal God and how we are to treat and love those around us.

The Ethiopian Eunuch had been an outcast his entire life.

He’d been looked down on, sneered at, made fun of and shut out of God’s sanctuary.

And here he is riding in a chariot, down a deserted road and he’s reading Scripture.

***Put up Slide 4***

And the Scripture he is reading is Isaiah 53 which refers to someone who has been shorn or cut.

And it sounds like him.

Could Isaiah be referring to people like this Eunuch who has always been told that he is outside the grace of God’s love?

Could Isaiah be speaking to someone like him…