Acts 8:26-40 | Salvation for the Blemished

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Take your Bible again with me this morning to Acts chapter eight.

As we look again for a few moments this morning at the text we read earlier about the Ethiopian eunuch.

As we get into that, I have a question for you to consider.

Who can join the church?

And I'm not speaking specifically here about any particular local church necessarily, but the larger church.

Who can be a part of Christ's church?

Most Christians, I think, would answer well, whoever believes in Jesus.

The problem is that the church has struggled to practice that historically.

Now, some guidelines, some boundary markers for belonging to the church are quite appropriate.

We have to at least start by defining what we mean by believing in and belonging to Jesus.

There's a significant difference between someone who believes that Jesus is God's promised king, a human Messiah like the Mormons do, and someone who believes that Jesus is God's king and promised Messiah who is also God in the flesh, like Mormons do not believe.

Doctrinal distinctions like that are proper places to draw some lines for belonging to the church.

But of course, throughout history, there have been lines drawn in inappropriate and more personal ways.

At various times in church history, wealthy people have been welcomed into the church.

Right up to the front row, the best seats in the house, while the poor have been marginalized or even pushed out, kept out.

We can point to multiple times in church history when racial distinctions barred people from belonging to churches.

And of course, there's always the felt conditions, the feelings part of us that sometimes limits belonging to the church.

We may be welcomed into the church by the church itself, but we may feel uncomfortable and not feel welcomed because we don't dress as nicely.

Or maybe we don't we don't smell the greatest.

Maybe we're opposed a little bit because we feel like people are cold.

There's not a lot of warmth to people.

Maybe we feel judged for how we how we sound.

We have an accent of one kind or another.

Maybe we feel judged because of our ignorance of scripture.

Some feel uncomfortable coming to church because there's all this religious kind of Christianese that goes on and we don't understand the lingo.

Or, God forbid, we feel judged because we sat in somebody's seat.

Who can join the church?

The book of Acts speaks quite strongly to the incorporation of people into the Lord's church.

And what we find here challenges and convicts us if we are willing to hear it.

You probably remember Acts chapter 1, verse 8.

Acts 1:8

Where the Lord Jesus said, You will be my witnesses.

And the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will go, and you will declare the gospel in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the rest of the world.

That command from Jesus is expressed geographically, right?

The risen and ascended Christ intended to cross geographical boundaries, even geographical barriers, to include people from all nations in his kingdom.

And last Sunday we we saw how the gospel progressed in that kind of way.

We saw it go from Jerusalem through Judea to Samaria.

Now, in the end of chapter 8, it progresses to the ends of the earth, anticipating a global, worldwide to the ends of the earth impact.

Now, Acts 1.8 is the primary kind of expansion that we see in Acts, going from one geographic area to another.

But there are other kinds of expansions.

We also see an ethnic expansion.

Christianity, the Lord's church, has Jewish roots.

The first believers were Jewish.

Then that expands to Greek-born or Greek-speaking Jews that we call Hellenistic Jews, further extending that Jewish ethnic boundary.

And then to that were added the Samaritans of all people.

A little bit later in Acts, we see that crossing over from Jewish boundaries and half Jew boundaries to Gentile, fully non-Jew boundaries.

Jesus asserts his divine authority by expanding his kingdom geographically and ethnically.

So practically speaking, no true local church that is a genuine part of Christ's universal church has any right to turn away a genuine believer in Jesus based off of geography or ethnicity.

We can look at it a little bit differently than that, too.

We can see that Luke includes different kinds or types of people.

We see men and women coming to faith in Jesus.

We see, later we'll see entire families coming to trust in Christ.

We see the prevalence of widows who belong to Jesus and rely on others.

In a way, Simon the magician that we learned about earlier in Acts chapter 8 was the first celebrity convert.

Acts 8 · chapter mention

And as with all celebrity converts, maybe it was genuine, maybe it wasn't.

We don't really know for sure sometimes.

So Philip, you remember, left the persecution in Jerusalem.

As he went, he spoke the good news of Jesus to the Samaritans.

God directed the gospel through unwelcome circumstances of persecution, forcing the spread of the gospel.

And that that direction, that forceful movement, took the gospel to those that we might call other.

The scare quotes are intentional.

The others are uncomfortable.

We're not quite sure about them.

That's how the Jewish people viewed the Samaritans.

That's how the Samaritans viewed the Jews.

They're not quite, the Samaritans aren't quite Gentile, but they're also not quite Jew.

They're other.

Now, in the latter half of chapter 8 of Acts, God directs Philip to take the gospel to another category of other kinds of people.

The Ethiopian eunuch.

Now there are three key aspects to Luke's recounting of this event.

There's the person's place, the position, and peculiarity.

And those three aspects of this Ethiopian eunuch lead us to appreciate God's plan and God's purpose.

Did you get all the peas in that pod?

Place, position, peculiarity, plan, and purpose.

Don't worry, you'll see him again.

Let's consider first the eunuch's place.

He comes, Luke tells us, from a place called Ethiopia.

For much of ancient history, this region was called, literally, the end of the earth.

For example, the ancient writer Homer referred to this region as the end of the earth in his works, The Odyssey.

The historian Herodotus did the same, and the Greek geographer Strabo did the same.

This region of Ethiopia was colloquially in the culture considered that's the end of the earth.

Now we know that it isn't the end of the earth.

There's a whole bunch of other parts to this world.

But Luke plays off of that common perception at the time to show us that the risen and ascended Jesus is fulfilling his word.

He is taking the gospel and he's including people from all nations and all kingdoms in his kingdom.

The gospel is progressing from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the rest of the world in recognition that that is a worldwide work that Jesus is going to accomplish.

But this particular region plays a quite significant role in Scripture.

We don't have time to look at it entirely this morning.

But in the Old Testament, if you've ever read through your Bible, you've probably come across the name Cush, C-U-S-H, in your Old Testament.

That's the same region as what Luke refers to as Ethiopia.

So the next time you read through your Bible in a year, actually get through the Old Testament, notice Cush.

That's this region of Ethiopia.

It was sometimes included in Upper Egypt, that's the southernmost parts of Egypt, as you go from the Mediterranean Sea south towards the tip of Africa.

But sometimes it was also an independent kingdom.

That's the case of the Queen of Sheba, the queen who came to see Solomon because she had heard of his wisdom.

The queen of Sheba comes from this same region.

So this area's connection to Judaism goes back a long way.

Even at least to David.

So speaking of foreigners coming to worship at Jerusalem, David said in Psalm 68, 31, nobles shall come from Egypt.

That is, Cush shall hasten to stretch out her hands to God.

So at least as far back as David, this region was understood to exist.

It had a name, and there was anticipation that people from this location would come to worship God.

So this Ethiopian, as the region is now called in Luke's time, could be a God-fearing Gentile, a non-Jew.

He could be could be a very dark-skinned Ethiopian person, which would be very normal for that time.

Could also be a Hellenistic Jew who had somehow grown up, been born and grown up outside of Palestine, maybe born in Egypt, but was moved to southern Egypt.

Probably unlikely that far south, but it's a possibility.

This person could be a slave, could be a freed slave, perhaps from within the region of Ethiopia, perhaps captured outside of that area and brought to live in Ethiopia.

Whatever you consider this individual to be, he is out of place.

He's an Ethiopian thirteen hundred miles from home.

Found in a desert location in Palestine.

Reading the book of Isaiah.

And his home in Ethiopia was not just a normal, everyday, run-of-life kind of living.

We see his position noted here as well.

He is a palace treasurer.

He's an exalted status person.

This is a court position within the ruling family.

All of the details here we don't have.

We don't have enough historical evidence or from Luke to know for sure what this is like.

So it could be that this individual holds a family position in which he manages the personal finances of the queen.

It also could be that he's a national official who is the cabinet member who is the treasurer of the ruling queen.

Regardless of what the details are, this individual holds a position of status, of high status, that was highly trusted.

We also notice that he's wealthy.

Most people at this time would travel by foot.

Those with some means might travel by donkey.

A little bit higher status might have some camels.

Ranking soldiers would travel by horse.

Only the most wealthy people would travel by some kind of chariot or cart of some kind that is pulled by animals.

We don't have very much information at all today about what vehicles were like in the first century.

So we don't know what they looked like or how this chariot might have been structured, but we probably aren't too far off in imagining a covered wagon.

This man is traveling over hot desert areas for weeks, if not months.

That likely meant as a person of high status, he had a seat that was protected, covered from the elements.

He also is sitting down.

Most chariots, ancient chariots, were for standing.

This one is large enough to not just have a driver in, but room for a seat that this official is sitting in and for Philip to come into and sit beside him.

If we expand our processing a little bit, this long desert travel probably included a caravan of sorts.

Imagine traveling in a covered wagon from St.

Louis, Missouri, or Independence, Missouri, to Oregon or to California in a covered wagon.

That's a similar kind of picture.

So that means that this person is traveling over desert areas in which he has to carry all of his food and most of his water.

That's not going to happen in one dingy little chariot.

So this is probably a kind of a larger movable cart pulled by oxen or horses, perhaps, that probably has an entourage of some kind to carry provisions, to carry people, to care for this Ethiopian high-status individual.

He's also very educated.

Most people at this time couldn't read.

He's reading, and he's not only reading, he's reading the prophet Isaiah.

Probably most likely in the lingua franca of the time, the standard language of Greek.

So this is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, most likely.

But that also highlights his wealth because very, very few people could afford to own a scroll, especially a scroll of the Bible as long as Isaiah.

This would have taken quite a bit of change to possess this.

Philip encounters what we might call the first celebrity conversion, then he's sent off to lead the first person of high government status to Christ.

And then Philip just kind of fades away into a personal kind of ministry in Caesarea, and we don't hear from him again.

What a unique opportunity.

Everybody in his travels would have known just by looking at him that this is somebody.

On the other hand, in the ancient Greek world, Ethiopians were often viewed with suspicion.

In some cases, whether it was reasonable or not, they were viewed with skepticism because of a perceived sexual deviancy and a weakness that accompanied that, which was described in terms opposite of manliness.

So he's a study and contrast.

Who is this guy?

Who is this Ethiopian eunuch?

That leads us then to the eunuch's peculiarity.

His sex is male, but he's gender isolated.

Have you noticed that I've referred to this individual very generally as this person or this individual?

I've done that because this passage plays a significant role in our modern gender-sensitive world.

To my knowledge, the Ethiopian is the only biblical text that directly informs how we as Christians should think about people's sex, gender, and pronouns.

Now, other passages, a lot of other passages, inform our thinking indirectly.

This is the only one that I'm aware of that speaks directly to our modern concerns.

How do we get there?

Let's start by thinking back to the Gospel of Matthew.

In Matthew chapter 19, Jesus addresses his disciples about their concerns over marriage and divorce.

Matthew 19 · chapter mention

And he instructs them on the permanence of the marriage union.

And so Jesus says in Matthew 19: if a person cannot remain committed to their spouse for all of their marriage, it would be better to stay unmarried.

Well that just throws the disciples for a loop.

And so Jesus says, well, there are eunuchs who have been eunuchs from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

Now, in that, in that statement, Jesus speaks of two different kinds of eunuchs.

One who has been born sterile or has been surgically castrated, and those whose physical organs are whole, but who choose to live a celibate life.

His point is that neither group can have a family, neither group can have progeny.

Now, when Scripture speaks of eunuchs, it often refers to those who are sterile from birth or through a surgical process.

Eunuchs were common in the ancient world and generally divided into three groups.

One group, one group that chose to become eunuchs for personal benefit and advancement.

See, eunuchs were trustworthy people, and they often advanced to trustworthy government positions.

Just look at Daniel chapter one for an example of that in the Old Testament.

So some would choose.

That life in order to become somebody.

A second group was typically slaves, forced to become eunuchs.

A third group in ancient times was forced to become eunuchs for personal use and abuse.

But all of those categories have one thing in common.

Their bodies were altered to remove any possibility of reproduction.

Their biological processes were hindered, and the natural progression of physical development was somewhat halted.

Therefore, eunuchs were not considered a threat to the throne.

That made them especially vulnerable to abuse.

But it also made them very trustworthy.

We find them in charge of royal harems in the ancient world, or as this person in Acts chapter 8, in charge of a royal treasury.

Acts 8 · chapter mention

But as a result of all that, a key characteristic of units was a kind of isolation.

They had no families.

They were often forcefully removed from their birth families through war and taken into slavery, or if they chose that route, they would be rejected by their families, and they were left alone with no hope of a family to which to belong or to create.

But eunuchs were also gender isolated.

You see, in the culture of the time, they were considered to be neither men nor women.

We would call them in a technical term liminal.

Liminal describes something that's between, something that's ambiguous.

We can think of it like this.

The Samaritans in this Ethiopian were not Jewish or Gentile, but other.

They didn't belong to the typical categories.

That's why Orlando Patterson calls them isolates.

They stand alone.

They are lonely.

And they were often treated derogatorily.

For example, in probably the worst case example that we have, Lucian of Samosoda derogatorily referred to eunuchs as hybrid, monstrous, and outside of nature.

Isolated.

High status.

But isolated.

Now cultures may attempt to bend the boundaries of gender.

So this ancient world that Luke is living in and writing in considered this eunuch to be a non-man.

Neither male nor female.

Whether the act of making him a eunuch was his own choice or was forced surgery, he stood out as neither gender.

The ancient world didn't take up the mantle of choosing one's gender or pronouns.

They merely dealt with the reality of needing to refer to those whose bodies were altered and thus changing their appearance, their sound, and their mannerisms.

But it's fascinating to see how Luke refers to this Ethiopian.

You can't see this in our English translations, unfortunately, as they leave out one of Luke's Greek words to make the English read more smoothly.

So if you look in your Bible at verse 27, your English translation will read something like, and there was an Ethiopian.

That's been a fine translation for most of the time we've had English translations.

But it may not be precise enough for today's culture.

You see, and there was an Ethiopian is an acceptable translation as long as it is clear that the eunuch is male by sex.

In our present culture, a person who removes the organs that mark them as male or female by sex may self-identify as either male or female or neither.

That's common today.

But God inspired Luke to make a very clear statement that this eunuch, in his blemished state, remains male by sex.

Having one's body altered does not change the nature of the created sex.

You see, Luke wrote another word that our English translations leave out.

He says in his Greek text, and there was a man, an Ethiopian, a eunuch.

Luke made the ambiguous sense of the individual unambiguous.

While his world thought of him as in-between, Luke leaves no doubt that this eunuch was a man.

And he doesn't use the generic word for man that could be translated as there was a person, there was an individual.

He uses a male-specific term.

But Luke doesn't focus as much on the reality of the man's sex as he does on the world's perception of him.

Luke refers to this man most often by the term eunuch.

He was a man who was an Ethiopian who was a eunuch.

Now this isn't a sermon on gender and sexuality.

Nevertheless, this account has extreme implications for gender and sexuality.

In a world where the eunuch was believed to be neither male nor female, God declares him male even though his body has been altered.

And he lived in a world in which he must have felt as though he did not fit in, where he was made to feel other, ambiguous.

So Luke mentions his sex, he's male.

He mentions his ethnicity, he's Ethiopian.

He mentions his gender, eunuch, and his class, he's an official.

But Luke latches onto the label of eunuch over and above the other elements.

His focus is on that.

While being exalted in his position, this individual is humiliated in his personhood.

So on the whole, the Bible presents eunuchs as a kind of blemished people.

Not fitting in.

So for example, in the Old Testament, a person could not, a eunuch could not serve as a priest in Israel's religious system.

Even if they were Levite, even if they were the priestly family, they could not serve as a priest.

In Deuteronomy 23, it makes it very clear that a eunuch cannot enter the temple nor participate in congregational worship.

Isolated.

At best, in Israel's worship system, a eunuch was held at arm's length.

At worst, they were rejected as unfit, blemished people who could not come near to God.

And this individual travels 1,300 miles over desert by cart to worship God.

Can you imagine going 1,300 miles over desert, being bumped around over rocks and sand, and coming to the temple and not being able to go in?

That's what this man does.

That's the world he's living in.

But it shows something, doesn't it, about his intent?

And about how strong that intent is.

The prophets spoke of that too.

Zephaniah chapter 3, verse 10.

Zephaniah 3:10

Isaiah 45, verse 14.

Isaiah 45:14

Maybe this man had already read Isaiah 45 before he gets to Isaiah 53.

He's already read that and he's beginning to anticipate what can happen.

But even more significant for this account, God promised that eunuchs would one day become welcomed, accepted, and untarnished in God's eyes.

See this most clearly in Isaiah 56.

If you'd like to turn there, if you don't, you can follow it on the screen.

In Isaiah chapter 56, we see here beginning in verse 3 of Isaiah 56, something quite fascinating that God promises.

Isaiah 56 · chapter mention

It says in verse 3, let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say, quote, The Lord will surely separate me from his people.

And let not the eunuch say, Behold, I am a dry tree that is not being able to have family.

For thus says the Lord, quote, 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, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it, and holds 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.

The Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, declares, I will gather yet others to him, to my servant, besides those already gathered.

Look back at what is noted here.

We begin back in verse three.

We see here that those with no genealogical connections, those with no families, will have a name better than sons and daughters.

And that name, he says in verse five, will not be cut off.

Hopefully you hear the play in words there on being cut off with those who have been surgically altered.

We see in verses six and seven that foreigners joining Yahweh will be brought into his house.

I will bring them to my holy mountain.

I will make them joyful in my house of prayer.

There are spatial elements here where before these blemished people were kept out, and now they are brought in, offering acceptable sacrifices.

And then in verse 8, in the last portion, Yahweh will gather them in.

He gathers in the outcast, both of Israel and outside Israel.

So the Holy Spirit directs Philip to a desert road so that God's plan might be fulfilled in this eunuch.

My friends, this eunuch on this day became a part of the Lord's church.

The one who didn't fit in, the one who was outside, who was ambiguous, an other, who couldn't have a family, was suddenly incorporated into God's house with a better status than a son or a daughter.

Incredible.

And the way that this happened, the way that Luke shows this happening, maybe even more incredible, because the eunuch was reading Isaiah 53.

Luke shows us.

As you unroll a scroll, and you see Isaiah 53, where the eunuch was reading, Isaiah 56 would have been just a few inches down below that on the same area of the scroll.

So what comes later, what we've just looked at, where the eunuchs and the outcasts and the foreigners are accepted and become a part of God's house.

Just above that is Isaiah 53.

And there in Luke's recounting, we see some of the Savior's purpose.

Jesus was cut off so that those who are blemished might be made whole in him.

Listen to the Old Testament version of Isaiah 53.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted.

Yet he opened not his mouth.

Like a lamb that is led before to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.

By oppression and judgment he was taken away.

And as for his generation, who considered that he was cut out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people.

The larger passage here is about God's servant who was rejected by his people, but who in God's purpose was rejected to save those people.

It's reminiscent of John chapter 1, where Jesus, where John recounts that the word came to his own, but his own did not receive him, and yet he was high and lifted up, rejected by people, so that he might pay the price for the sins of his people.

John 1 · chapter mention

Now this might be uncomfortable for us to take note of in our cultured world, but the parallels here are significant.

The most important parallel is one of cutting.

You see, God's people, God's servant, I'm sorry, God's servant who came to save his people in Isaiah 57, 7 and 8 was rejected in a parallel kind of way.

He was rejected by a kind of cutting.

In Isaiah 53, verse 7, the shearers in Hebrew are literally the cutting ones.

Isaiah 53:7

Not cutting the flesh, but in the parallel metaphor, shearing, cutting off the wool of a lamb.

And the one that they are shearing, the one that they are cutting in Isaiah 53, 8, is cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of his people.

Jesus fulfilled this passage, of course.

He is the faithful servant who was cut off from his generation with no hope of descendants from a human perspective, no hope of having a generation follow him, no hope of being anybody of any kind of sort in that kind of world.

Hopeless, out of place, blemished, other.

But by giving himself, Jesus creates a host of new family members for himself.

For all those who are blemished can now find their hope in him.

They can find family in him, they can be restored in him.

Their identity is now in him.

So for the eunuch, his cutting was kind of a curse in life.

But Jesus being cut off becomes a blessing, the source of true life and of ultimate hope for an isolated man.

So when Philip runs up to that chariot and hears him reading out loud, Isaiah 53, and is invited up to the chariot and explains all the good news of Jesus, all the things that have been happening in Jerusalem, his cutting off on the cross, his death, his burial, his resurrection, now his ascension to heaven and the gospel going forward to the ends of the earth.

This eunuch hears the word of God and believes and wants to be baptized because he is no longer finding his identity in his eunuchhood, but in his identity in Jesus Christ the King, who is beautiful above all others.

He's no longer in between, but a son of the living God.

He says, What should prevent me or hinder me from being baptized?

The unstated answer is, well, nothing.

The book of Acts ends with that same exact word.

Luke, Luke says that the gospel is going forth unhindered to the Gentiles.

My friends, never ever think that the good news of Jesus is hindered by anything.

Jesus is working from heaven and his powerful work restores even the blemished, even the isolated, even the unwelcomed, even the despised, even the I don't know what I am.

That has massive implications for us.

Sooner, probably rather than later, we as a body of believers, as a local church, will be tasked with integrating people, believing people, transformed people by their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ who possess blemished bodies because of the power of others or regretful past choices.

And Jesus destroys that boundary.

He says, if you believe in him, whatever blemishes you possess are overcome by the Son of God being cut off for you.

So what hinders you from coming to the King and all his beauty?

The point is that Jesus welcomes all repentant believers who are then incorporated into his family.

Those without biological associations, those without connections of any kind, those without genealogy have eternal connections because of Jesus.

God directed and commanded the evangelization of outcasts to fulfill his long-standing promise.

And in that way, Acts is our story.

It is the story of how God gathers the outcasts and makes them one in Jesus.

And if you have come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, that is your story.

And it is a magnificent story, unlike any other.

Luke shows us this wasn't a one-off kind of event.

No, this was expected.

God spoke of this from the very beginning.

That this is the kind of thing he would do.

So our hope becomes then resting in Jesus and in the word that he's given us, that he will keep his word.

Would you pray with me?

Lord Jesus, we thank you for your work.

Thank you for your astounding work that goes beyond all barriers, that overcomes all boundaries, that even we could be made sons and daughters of the living God, become pillars in the household of God with names better than son or daughter.

What a glorious God you are in all of this, Lord.

Is there in your word for us to hear and believe?

May your spirit work in such a way that we do just that, that we would trust in Jesus.

With all of our heart, with all of our soul, with all of our mind, and with all of our strength, that your spirit would transform us into sons and daughters of God.

We ask this, Lord Jesus, because we believe in your word.

And we believe in the power of your word to accomplish your purpose.

To your glory.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.