The Gospel is for Everyone

We are in a series right now called There's More to the Story.

And what we're doing is kind of adding some context, adding some more to the story that causes these Bible stories to really come alive.

If you've ever been reading the Bible and you come up against a text, you're like, does that say what I think it says?

You know, often we do that.

I've done that many times.

And sometimes we don't exactly know what to do with it.

And so what we're doing is uh showing how to dig deeper.

We want to go a little bit further in the context.

Sometimes the context is there, you just have to look for it.

So, for example, sometimes if you'll take where what you're reading and you'll go back a chapter or two, or you'll do maybe a little bit of study on the author of the book and the audience.

Who is who is this person and who are they writing it to, and why did they write it and when did they write it?

A lot of times that will really shed light on what's being said and what point is being made.

Um, and it's really important to do.

And so sometimes it's it's right there, it's just a chapter or a few verses before.

And then other times you actually have to do a little bit of studying outside the Bible.

You got to look at some history, some culture.

And the more that you understand like the genres of the book, uh, the style of the writing, the Bible is a uh a divinely inspired piece of literature.

So there's a literary element to it.

And the more that we can understand that and do some digging about culture and uh the time that it was written, that context often helps us to take a story we might have just read right over, and then you really it really comes alive.

And when it comes alive, not only do we connect with it more, but then we know what to do with it.

It starts to help us to know what you know how it's gonna change our lives and affect us and our behavior and what we what we take away from it.

So uh that's what we're gonna do today.

Uh, if you have your Bibles open to the book of Acts, chapter 8.

Acts 8 · chapter mention

Sometimes I'll read a whole story in the Bible and then go back and kind of explain, but there's a lot going on in this one.

So what I'm gonna do as I'm reading it is I'll read a few little chunks and then I'll uh I'll give some some more to the story and some of the some more of the context.

All right.

So here we go.

Acts chapter 8.

Acts 8 · chapter mention

We're gonna start in verse 26.

It says, now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, go south to the road, the desert road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.

So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of Kandaka, which means Queen of the Ethiopians.

Some of you in your uh translation, it says Candace, okay?

It's not a formal name.

What it was was a title of the Queen or the Queen Mother in this region of Ethiopia.

So this man had gone to Jerusalem to worship.

So the Ethiopian eunuch had gone to Jerusalem with the expressed desire of worship, and on his way home, he was sitting in his chariot reading the book of Isaiah, the prophet, and the spirit told Philip, Go to that chariot and stay near it.

Okay.

Let's get a little context here.

So uh right away when we read, we we see that there's this man who is an Ethiopian eunuch.

Uh when we see Ethiopia, of course, in our modern time, we immediately go right to the country of Ethiopia.

Um, but that's not exactly what's going on here.

So um Ethiopia in the first century was what what they referred to, every part of Africa south of Egypt.

So they called that whole massive, giant uh place, they called all of that Ethiopia.

Where this man was from, if we're talking modern day, this would have been modern day Sudan.

Uh, when it comes to Nubian empires, if you go study um history, you'll see that about 3,000 BC, um, there were uh Nubian empires all over the continent of Africa.

And in fact, this one was called um it was called the the Meroe Empire.

And the Meroe Empire existed for about 1,200 years, so from about 800 BC to 400 AD.

That's a long run for an empire.

And of course, you think about it historically, that's right smack dab in the middle of the Roman Empire.

And so if you read history, you'll find that the Roman Empire tried to take over this Nubian Empire multiple times, and they flat out couldn't do it.

They just kept losing, and so they finally came to a place where they made a treaty.

They went and said, essentially, you don't hurt us, we won't hurt you, you leave us alone, we'll leave you alone.

And so they make a treaty.

And so, again, that's what's referred to as Ethiopia, but it's actually Sudan.

So you're talking about 1,500 miles or so from Jerusalem.

So who is the Ethiopian eunuch?

Well, the text describes him as a high-ranking official, okay, in the court of the queen or the queen mother, who is in control of the treasury or all of the money, essentially held the purse strings of the empire.

Um, a eunuch is what you think it is, is a castrated male.

And what's interesting is in this story you see a collision of cultures because where this man was from, as an Ethiopian eunuch and a high-ranking official, he was highly respected.

He had status where he was from.

And his culture to be a eunuch meant that you were seen as a highly committed, trustworthy individual.

So one of the things by removing your ability to have a family, you are showing your commitment and the fact that you won't be have burdened essentially with the distractions of a family.

So often people would show that they were trustworthy and loyal and committed by doing this, and often they would then attain really important, powerful high positions.

Uh, they were seen to be trustworthy, particularly around women.

Um, but if you think of it, of course, when we hear it, we're like, man, that's quite a price to pay, you know, to get a high position.

But when you think about it, you know, in our culture, we we have jobs or there are careers where it's really hard to have a family and that particular job or career.

The demands that come with a position that high or responsible, that a responsibility that's that weighty often is at the detriment of a family.

I had a friend one time who uh he's married with kids, and and um his job had so many demands in terms of travel and responsibility, and ultimately you're sleeping at work or you're gone for long periods of time.

And so that obviously makes it hard to be a dad, be a husband, and and and cultivate those relationships.

And he said one day it really hit him.

He said he was sitting at a table on one of his business trips, and he's sitting around with a bunch of his colleagues and realized every single person at the table had either been divorced or was divorced or was in a very dysfunctional family situation.

And he realized the common denominator was the intense commitment that they were all making to their careers.

And so when you think about an Ethiopian eunuch, this is somebody who said, Look, you're not gonna have to worry about my commitment to anything other than this.

It was an intense focus, loyalty, and a trustworthy person.

So where he was from, this guy is highly revered, highly respected in his culture, but in the Jewish culture and in the Greco-Roman culture, for a man to be a eunuch was seen as a half man.

So this is your status, like it works where you're from, but when you go outside of that and you go to Jerusalem, okay, this is a place where they would have seen him as unclean, they would have seen him as unacceptable, and frankly as an abomination.

It says in the text that he went to the temple, or he went to Jerusalem, which would have been the temple to worship.

And again, some more understanding of the temple helps us really understand what happened when this Ethiopian eunuch made his 1,500-mile journey to the temple.

By the way, interesting that a guy who is so successful, so committed, and so respected would still feel a void, so palpable to himself, that he would make a 1,500-mile, highly expensive journey.

Um, we see in the text that, you know, when he ends up on this desert road, he's in a chariot.

And to go 1,500 miles, we don't think much of it.

We go, you know, 1,500 miles, go over to John Glenn International Airport, hop on a plane, a few hours, you're there.

Okay, in this context, this guy has to go, you know, with a company of people to go up the Nile, to get north of the Nile, to take his chariot into Jerusalem.

I mean, this is a long, extremely expensive journey.

In fact, it kind of shows his wealth, like his ability to even do it.

But the amount of time and how difficult it would have been to do this shows his commitment and how much he values and how hungry he is to you know get the answers that he's looking for.

Okay, so what happens when he gets to the temple?

It really doesn't say much in the text, but it doesn't have to.

We we know we have a pretty good idea of what went on.

So in the first century in the temple, you had what we would call concentric courts.

So the outer court was called the Gentile court.

So if you showed up to the temple as a Gentile, um, you you you may be able to gain access, but only to the outer court.

And there were inscriptions within the temple that warned Gentiles if you go any further than the Gentile court and try to gain access in the center of the temple, it is punishable upon death.

Okay, so it was very clear you don't go any further than this.

The next court was what was called the the women's court or the court of women, and this is where both male and female Jewish people could go and worship.

And then inside of that, you had the the court of Israel, which is where only Jewish men could go.

So the women couldn't go any further, the Jewish men, and then inside of that, you had the court of priests, which was was exclusive just for the priests to do their priestly duty.

All right, so you're getting the idea, 1,500 mile journey, extremely expensive, time-consuming, arduous.

He gets all the way to the temple, and he probably, if at best, at best, he gets into the gentile court, but probably doesn't even gain access to the Gentile court.

Uh why do you say that, Greg?

Well, if you look at Deuteronomy chapter 23, verse 1, and I'm gonna read this in the NIV, which is a little less descriptive.

Deuteronomy 23:1

I see we have some kids in here, but you'll get the idea.

It says uh in Deuteronomy 23, 1, no one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the Lord.

If you have the New Living Translation, it uses some more colorful language, but I decide to spare you on Sunday, okay, because I figure if you, you know, I don't want to create awkward drive home with your children if they're not if they're in here.

Okay, but you get the idea.

If if your ability to reproduce, so to speak, has been cut off or crushed or cut away, it says you can't gain access to the to the assembly or the temple.

So what's going on?

What's the spirit of that law?

Well, they highly valued community and your contribution to community, right?

At least part of it is men and women, or your procreation and your building of the community.

So you're you're adding people to the community and helping us build out this community.

And if you on your own remove that ability, you cut that ability off, you now are not contributing to the culture, to the community, therefore, you don't have access to the benefits of the community.

So therefore, they've been expelled from the assembly, expelled from the temple.

So you can imagine, and by the way, a few weeks ago, just to further make the point, a few weeks ago, we we had a we saw there was a long conversation later in the book of Acts about access from just Gentiles who weren't circumcised.

Okay, so you can imagine how they felt about castration.

Okay, so you have this Ethiopian eunuch who shows up at the temple after a sincere seeking and searching and an expensive 1,500-mile journey only to get to the temple and experience rejection.

And so after being rejected, he now takes a wilderness road.

All right, now there were two roads that went from Jerusalem to Gaza.

One of them was a road frequently traveled, where there was, you know, people, uh, you know, merchants and people who were pilgrims that would take that frequently traveled road, and then there was a wilderness road, which was a more dangerous road, which then begs the question: why would he pick the wilderness road instead of the main road or the highly accessible road?

It was a more dangerous place.

And we don't know.

It doesn't necessarily say Luke, who wrote the book of Acts, Luke doesn't tell us exactly why they made that choice.

But it really doesn't matter.

I think the point that Luke is wanting to make here is you have this guy who in his culture, in his world, is respected and successful, but still empty.

And so he is he has sincerely taken a very expensive journey only to be rejected, and then comes into contact with this guy, Philip, on this desert road.

It's really positioned by Luke as a divine appointment.

These are two people that probably never would have met each other, and yet God connected them in this divine appointment, like in this really important crossroads moment.

These two unlikely people meet up in an unlikely place.

That's what Luke is giving us here.

All right, okay, so let's take a moment, let's set aside the Ethiopian eunuch and let's look at Philip.

Who is this guy, Philip?

Uh, in Acts 1.8, it's like a pretty famous verse.

It's it's the Great Commission.

So this is right before Jesus ascends at the beginning of the book of Acts.

Jesus is getting ready to ascend to heaven, and he's giving marching orders to his disciples.

And so he says in Acts 1.8, but you'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

And if you've read the Gospels, this really comes together because you realize Jerusalem is where they're from.

Jerusalem is their hometown, it's their spiritual epicenter, it's their cultural epicenter.

And so he says it's gonna start in your tribe, in your culture, but it's gonna push out to other tribes, other people, other cultures.

And so he says to Judea, which again was still familiar to them, and then Samaria.

And again, if you've read the Gospels, you know there was a lot of hostility and conflict between Jewish people and Samaritan people, to the point you remember the story with Jesus and the woman at the well.

He goes through Samaria.

His own disciples wanted to circumvent Samaria.

They didn't want to go through Samaria.

We don't want to go to those people in that place.

And yet Jesus is modeling for them something he would want them to do on their own, even after he was gone in the book of Acts.

So he goes into Samaria and he ministers to this woman and he even kind of rebukes his disciples.

He says, You guys don't get it.

You need to get it now.

You think it's four months more and then the harvest.

I say the harvest is here.

Open your eyes.

And they're like, where?

He's like, right here.

These this Samaritan group of people, the harvest is here.

The harvest is plentiful, the workers are few.

Time to get into it.

Okay, so Jesus is giving them this profound lesson that he wants to give them marching orders to go to Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria, which is a place they didn't like but were familiar with, and then to the ends of the earth.

Places like Ethiopia, places like Sudan, places with people and cultures that are that you don't know anything about, I'm sending you to the ends of the earth.

All right, so that's Acts 1.8.

For eight chapters, they don't leave Jerusalem.

Because even though they were facing persecution and dysfunction, they stayed because it's familiar.

That's a whole other message.

I'm not, I don't have time to preach.

But a lot of times people stay locked into dysfunction and they stay in persecution, not because it's healthy, but because it's familiar.

And they're afraid to step out of the familiarity and to actually step into purpose because this dysfunction is just, I'm just used to it.

And so look what is look at this in Acts 8.1.

So you have Acts 1.8 that gives them Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the Great Commission, the ends of the earth.

And then in Acts 8.1, Acts 8.1, it starts to come to fruition.

So it says, On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria.

So if you were to look at these two verses next to each other, you'd see Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria in Acts 1.8, which is ultimately a prophecy.

It's a forecast of where you're going to go.

But in Acts 8.1, it actually happens, but it happens because they're being persecuted.

So it says in verse 4 of Acts 8, those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went.

In other words, even though they were facing persecution and they were being forced out of their comfort zone, they had the presence of mind to maintain purpose, even though they're being scattered.

And so they're being scattered, they're preaching the word everywhere they went, and Philip, now here's our boy Philip, verse 5.

Philip shows up.

Philip went down to the city in Samaria and proclaimed the Messiah there.

So we start to see Philip and his character develop and is a person who is willing in the face of persecution to go to people and places that others aren't willing to go.

And so he goes there and he proclaimed the Messiah there.

Verse 6 said, When the crowds heard Philip and saw the signs he performed, they all paid close attention to what he said.

Alright, so that's early on in Acts 8.

So now if we go back to this story, you have this Ethiopian eunuch, 1,500 mile, expensive journey, faces rejection in the temple.

He's going down the desert road, and the spirit leads Philip to the same remote desert road.

And he says, You see that chariot?

Go stand near it.

And here's how he responds in verse 30, it says, Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet.

All right, so this is again, we're starting to get a feel for Philip.

This is a good dude.

He's willing to go places, he's willing to follow the Spirit, he's willing to do uh things that are uncomfortable for him, and he's willing to stand in front of crowds, or he's willing to go up to an individual.

And so when he the Holy Spirit tells him, go on this desert road and go to this chariot, he doesn't just like do it begrudgingly, he runs eagerly up to the chariot.

And he heard hears him reading Isaiah the prophet.

And and look at that.

Now the story's about to get good.

So if you've been daydreaming or you've started to nod off, or the person next to you is nodding off, give him an elbow because it this is where you wake up.

This is where you wake up, because this is about to get really, really good.

And all this context and more to the story is about to pay off, okay?

So here we go.

He says, Do you understand what you're reading?

Philip asked.

So the Ethiopian eunuch is reading a scroll from Isaiah, which by the way, would have been expensive.

It would have been hard to get, but somehow this guy probably gave up a bunch of gold or a bunch of money, experiences rejection, but gets him a scroll, and he's on a wilderness road and he's reading, and Philip says, Do you know, do you understand what you're reading?

Verse 31, he says, How can I?

He said, unless someone explains it to me.

So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

This one gets me every time.

Because if I put myself in the position of the biblical character, if I imagine being the Ethiopian eunuch, dude, and I've given up a lot.

I've cut some stuff off, I've cut some people off, I've come to I've gone to a high place, I've I've proven to be trustworthy, I've proven to be committed, I've gained respect, I've gotten to an important place, but I still feel a void.

And because I feel this void, I've got to get my answer, and I'm willing to go 1,500 stinking miles up the Nile to get to the temple, and I go all the way to the temple only to be degraded, only to be rejected.

Because frankly, you don't like me and don't get me.

And so you get there and you're rejected, and you're going down this wilderness road, and this guy, Philip, comes just comes up to you uninvited, and he's like, Do you know what you're reading?

There's a little part of me that'd be like, Why don't you get out of my face?

You remind me of the people who just rejected me.

But one of the things that we learn here subtly from the Ethiopian eunuch is when he comes in contact with Philip, instead of him judging Philip based on the people that just rejected him, he shows hospitality to Philip.

Come on up in my chariot.

He shows the ability that even when you've been through a lot and you've given up a lot and you've got some things you regret, and you've got some people that have mistreated you, and some people that flat out didn't understand you and rejected you and degraded you, that you can have those life experiences develop thick skin, but a soft heart.

He maintains a heart of receptivity in the midst of his frustration, in the midst of Midst of his rejection, who would have blamed him for telling Philip off?

Who would have blamed him for telling Philip to mind his own business?

But he's he he recognized I'm not going to judge Philip based on the gatekeepers at the temple that rejected me.

And that was a good decision.

So he welcomes him, and Philip goes up and he sits next to him.

Okay, so he invites Philip up, verse 32, it says, This is the passage of scripture the eunuch was reading.

And what he reads is it's it's Isaiah 53, 7 and 8.

It says, He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before his 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.

So picture these two men.

They're sitting in the chariot on a desert road.

Two guys that probably never would have met.

Two unlikely people, sincere but unlikely people, meeting up in an unlikely place.

And it says in verse 34, the eunuch asked Philip, tell me please, who is this prophet talking about?

Himself or someone else?

Verse 35 says, Then Philip began with that very passage of scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.

Now something hit me here, by the way, that I'd never really noticed until this last time that I read this.

And it says in verse 35, notice what it says.

It says, Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture.

He began with it.

It doesn't say that he just explained Isaiah 53, 7 and 8.

It doesn't say he stopped with it.

It just says he started with it.

So they start their starting point was Isaiah 53, but this man has an entire scroll of the book of Isaiah.

And so he doesn't stop at 53.

It says he began with the passage and told him the good news of Jesus.

So think about this.

These two men would have been sitting there.

They're reading Isaiah 53, and then they read Isaiah 54, and then they read Isaiah 55, and then when they get to Isaiah 56, I'm going to read you passages from Isaiah 56.

And I want you to imagine you're sitting in this chariot, and how the Ethiopian eunuch would have heard these words after what he had just been through.

Isaiah 56, 3 says, Let no foreigner who is bound to the Lord say, The Lord will surely exclude me from his people.

And let no 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, within my temple, not on the outside of my temple, not in the outer quarter.

I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters.

I will give them an everlasting name that will endure forever.

What a moment, dude.

What a moment.

What a guy, Philip, who didn't get up in the chariot and start answering a bunch of questions that weren't being asked.

What a guy, Philip, who instead of getting up in this chariot and telling this guy everything he did wrong and starting the conversation on their cultural differences and why would you do this and why would you cut that away?

And why did you make this choice and that choice and feel a need to correct everything this guy did wrong?

He just literally sat there and introduced him to Jesus.

He went verse by verse through Isaiah.

Here's what happened next in verse 36.

It says, as they traveled along the road, they came to some water.

And the eunuch said, Look, here's water.

What can stand in the way of my being baptized?

I think he asks it, at least it reads as a rhetorical question.

Like, what could stop me from being baptized?

But the answer is Philip.

Philip could stop him from being baptized.

A bunch of people just stopped him from accessing the temple.

What could stop me from being baptized?

Philip could have prohibited him from being baptized.

If we just stop here, then we just have a great story and a history lesson.

But the narratives in the scripture are designed not for us to just be entertained by a story, but to step back from the word of God and invite the Spirit of God to speak to us about us here and now.

And I just have to believe that there is someone or some ones who are here today.

Who you've given up a lot to get where you are.

And where you're from, what you've done means something.

You've proven yourself to be committed.

Maybe in order to prove yourself to be trustworthy or committed, you gave away a part of yourself or a piece of yourself, or you sacrificed a dream you had, or you sacrificed an opportunity, and it might have literally been family-related.

You sacrificed a family that you wanted to have, or maybe you sacrificed a dream or a possibility, but you gave it up to prove your loyalty and to prove your sincerity and to be trustworthy.

And it got you somewhere, but that somewhere didn't fulfill you like you thought it would.

You held the purse strings to an entire empire, and yet there was still something gnawing at you inside.

And so with a true sincerity and honesty, you took a 1,500 mile, your own, your own 1,500 mile journey up the Nile.

It cost you a lot.

And you got to the temple and you got to the place you thought you'd find the answer, only to be rejected and degraded and confused.

And yet you came away with a scroll.

You came away with something to hold on to.

And so you find yourself in this moment, like on a desert road.

And you're going, look, I I my life experiences have given me some thick skin, but I'm not going to harden my heart.

And today, God has sent a Philip to you.

A Philip who is willing to jump up into your chariot.

And I may not understand all of your decisions, but I don't even want to talk to you about that.

I just want to introduce you to Jesus.

I just want to introduce you to Jesus and help you take a next step.

And for some of you, you've come all the way to that place.

And maybe for you, this is an unlikely place and an unlikely meetup.

And yet it's a God-ordained moment.

It's a divine appointment brought together.

And what Luke wants everybody who reads this text to know, no matter how unlikely you may see yourself, the gospel is for you.

The work of Jesus is for you.

You might see yourself as a dry tree.

You might see yourself as having regrets or maybe having been rejected.

And yet today, Luke wanted you to know.

And I want you to know, and Jesus wants you to know that the gospel and the good news is for you, that God's grace is for you, that God's forgiveness is for you.

And the Ethiopian eunuch says, What could prohibit me?

What could stand in the way?

What could stop me today from having a turning point moment today?

From bathing in the grace of God today?

What could prohibit me?

It ain't gonna be me.

It's not gonna be me, it's not gonna be us.

Today we welcome you into the grace of God.

I want to invite you to stand on your feet, and in this moment, we're going to bring out these baptismal tanks.

We're gonna take a moment to celebrate with our brothers and sisters the exact thing that we see Philip and the Ethiopian eunuchs celebrating together.

It's when our lives intersect with the grace of God.

And so today, no matter how low you may feel, no matter how distant you may feel, you're not.

God's with you right now.