This sermon was preached at the Parish Picnic at the Lions' Park in Biggenden, 10am, and Woodgate Community Hall, Woodgate, 5pm.
Grace, mercy and peace be
to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this
Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus.
Prayer: May
the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O
Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Today in our sermon, we’re
going to take a little break from our normal focus on the Gospels, and focus on
our first reading from the book of Acts, which tells about the ministry of the
evangelist Philip and the conversion of an Ethiopian eunuch. It’s a very
interesting and rich passage, and it’s very helpful for us today, as many
Christians like us would like to see many more people convert to the Christian
faith, possibly like this man in our reading.
Now we read today
about Philip. The book of Acts tells us what happened in the church after Jesus
ascended into heaven, and we read about many key events as the church began to
grow. In Acts 6, we read about seven men who were chosen to help the apostles
and share their work, so that the apostles could dedicate themselves to prayer
and the ministry of the word. Philip was one of these men, and so was
Stephen. Stephen was stoned to death, and after this time, there was a great
persecution of Christians, and many people were forced out of Jerusalem. Philip
was caught up in all of this, and ended up going to Samaria, and then we come to
our reading today.
So we read: An
angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Rise and go toward the south to the road
that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza”. And it says: This is a desert
place. Humanly speaking, it doesn’t seem like Philip is about to embark on
a very fruitful mission trip. Why would the angel send Philip out into the
middle of nowhere? Often people think about mission in a wrong way. They think
we need to plant a church in an area where there is a new booming housing development,
or something like that. They think of the church like a secular business.
Philip does not go to an area which is “financially clever”. Instead, he simply
goes where God wants him to go.
We read: And
he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of
Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had
come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he
was reading the prophet Isaiah. We read that he was an Ethiopian…a court
official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians. Candace was the title of the
queens in an area of ancient Ethiopia, on the river Nile, called Meroë. This
area today would be in the northern part of Sudan. The ruins of ancient Meroë
are still there. It also says he was a eunuch. A eunuch usually refers
to a man who has been castrated, and in many ancient cultures, this was done to
court officials and soldiers. And because of this, the man himself probably had
a high-pitched voice, like a boy, which is why it was probably obvious that he
was a eunuch.
So Philip
comes across this strange, wealthy man from a far-away country. In Acts chapter
1, Jesus says to his apostles: You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in
all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. In the book of Acts,
we see this start to happen. The gospel is first preached in Jerusalem, and
then when the persecution happens, the Gospel moves out to Judea and Samaria,
and then to the ends of the earth. At the end of Acts, Paul preaches the gospel
in Rome. Here the Gospel was probably spread through this man back to Ethiopia.
You can see the Gospel moving to the ends of the earth.
But also, in
the book of Genesis, we read that Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth,
and from these three sons the entire human race would have descended. The Jews
were descended from Shem. But the Ethiopians, or the people from the kingdom of
Cush, were descended from Ham. So as the Gospel moves from Jerusalem to the
ends of the earth, we also see the Gospel moving from the Jews, the descendants
of Shem, to the descendants of Ham and Japheth. The Gospel is moving from the
Jews to the whole human race.
So we read: The
Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and join this chariot.” So Philip ran to him
and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you
are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he
invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Today it’s common for people
when we’re reading the bible, not to ask, “What does it mean?” but “What does
it mean to you?” Now this can be dangerous, because people think that they can
twist the bible to make it say anything. But St Peter writes: No prophecy of
Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever
produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along
by the Holy Spirit.
St Paul also
says that all Scripture is inspired by God. This means that all of the
bible was written by people, by human beings, but those people were all
inspired by God, and lead along by the Holy Spirit. Here the Ethiopian man is
reading Isaiah. Isaiah wrote this book, and it has Isaiah’s personality all
over it, and it’s different from reading other prophets like Daniel or
Jeremiah. And yet, the Holy Spirit inspired Isaiah and Daniel and Jeremiah, and
all the other biblical authors, so that their word is not just a human word,
but it is the word of God. St Paul says in 1 Thessalonians: When you
received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the
word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you
believers.
So for every
book of the bible, we have two authors: we have the human author, in this case,
the prophet Isaiah, and God himself, the Holy Spirit. Now, if someone writes
something in the newspaper or a book, and we don’t understand what they mean,
technically we could write to them or ring them, and simply ask what they
meant. When a writer dies, we can’t do this anymore. So here, the prophet
Isaiah is dead, but the other author of the book is the Holy Spirit, and he is
still alive. And so we can still “ring up” the Holy Spirit if you like, and ask
him to help us understand the Scriptures. Also, many times the Holy Spirit
blesses particular people with a special gift of interpretation, and this is
what happens here. Philip is an experienced interpreter of the Scripture, and
the Ethiopian recognises this, and invites him to help him understand what he
is reading.
We read: Now the passage of the Scripture that he
was reading was this: “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb
before its shearers is silent, so he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation
justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken
away from the earth.” And the eunuch said to Philip, “About whom, I ask you,
does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” Then Philip
opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news
about Jesus. Here we see how the Holy Spirit opens the door and gives
Philip a wonderful opportunity to talk to him about Jesus, and from this text.
We see here how Philip carries out what Jesus had
said: teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. Philip
teaches the man. The passage from Isaiah speaks about Jesus like a sheep led to
the slaughter, not opening his mouth. Jesus is our sacrificial lamb, the Lamb
of God who takes away the sin of the world, who makes atonement and full
payment for all of our sins. When he was on trial, he remained silent, even
though with one little word, he could have brought the whole thing to an end.
We see how on the cross, his life is taken away from the earth. Jesus
stretched out his hands on the cross, and breathed his last breath.
One of the most amazing things about the bible is the
way in which we see such wonderful clear prophecies about the life of Jesus in
the Old Testament. Two passages especially are Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53, which
the Ethiopian man was reading. You can’t help but read these two chapters and
see how Jesus’ suffering and death is described in explicit detail. And yet,
Psalm 22 was written around 1000 years before Jesus, and Isaiah 53 was written
around 800 years before Jesus.
Psalm 22 says: My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me? Jesus prays these words himself on the cross. It says: All
who see me mock me: “He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him!” These are
the exact words that people said when they mocked Jesus on the cross. My
strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongues sticks to my jaws. Jesus’
mouth is parched when he says: I thirst. They divide my garments
among them, and for clothing they cast lots. The Roman soldiers really did
cast lots for Jesus clothes. But then if we go to Isaiah 53, it says: He had
no form or majesty that we should look at him. Jesus face and appearance
were disfigured through the torture he endured. He was a man of sorrows.
We see Jesus deeply sorrowful in the Garden of Gethsemane. It says: He has
borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, with his wounds we are healed. The
Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. I could read so much more of
this chapter, but we can see how clearly this chapter speaks of Jesus 800 years
in advance.
Philip had many opportunities to speak about Jesus
from this chapter that the eunuch was reading. But then as they were travelling
along, it says: they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “See, here is
water! What presents me from being baptised?” There is something very
special about this Ethiopian man. He doesn’t go away to think about it, he
doesn’t weigh up his world-view or philosophy. He simply believes what Philip
says to him, and he wants to be baptised immediately. It’s just like when Jesus
says to Matthew, Follow me, and he immediately rose and followed him.
When the eunuch hears Philip speak about Jesus, he is hearing Jesus himself,
just as Jesus promised: I am with you always to the end of the age. Whoever
receives you, receives me, and whoever receives me, receives the one who sent
me.
Today, there are many churches that just don’t care
about baptism very much. And sometimes we meet Christians who have gone to
church for years, and were never baptised. In the New Testament, this just doesn’t
happen. The eunuch here understands that being a Christian means being
baptised, and being baptised means being a Christian. Period.
Sometimes someone might ask you: When did you become a
Christian? Most Lutherans would say: When I was baptised. This eunuch would
have said the same thing too. Maybe he was actually converted a few minutes
before, but it doesn’t matter. The problem today is that many people put all
the emphasis on their personal conversion in their heart. Now it is important
that we are all converted, and that we are not just simply hypocritical
Christians who go through the motions. However, it is common to hear Christians
say that they became a Christian when they made a decision to follow Jesus.
Now the problem with this is that our decisions always
have our sinful motives all mixed up with them. A young person might go to a
youth camp and drinks far too much lemonade, and then later on that night, they
give their heart to Jesus. Then later, they think: was I being genuine, or was it
the lemonade talking? When people look to the heart, they start to doubt. But
baptism is a solid rock, because it’s not your work; it’s God’s work. If you
want to become a citizen of America or Indonesia, or whatever country, you
can’t just decide to become one. You have to be received by those countries as
a citizen. And so in conversion, we don’t simply choose to follow Jesus,
because even our choices are corrupt. The Holy Spirit has to convert our will
and our choices too. In baptism, Jesus receives us into his kingdom as a full
citizen, and then we know that we belong to his heavenly country. The eunuch is
our passage is a citizen of his own home country, Ethiopia, and works for a
wealthy queen, but then after listening to Philip, he asks to become a citizen
of the kingdom of heaven, with Jesus the Son of God as his king. This baptism
is the solid rock then on which he builds his faith. His faith may waver and
sway in strength from day to day, but Jesus and his baptism will never move.
Also, even
though the eunuch was reading the Scripture, his heart was still closed to it.
It was an angel who sent Philip. The Holy Spirit urged and prompted Philip to
go and meet this Ethiopian eunuch. God was the one who took the action in
converting this man, and without that action of God, nothing could be done. You
remember Lazarus was dead in the tomb for four days. He didn’t choose to rise
from the dead. It was Jesus who chose to go there, and to raise him up. The
dead man didn’t exert himself at all—he was dead! So also, Philip meets this
man, with a dead mind, who couldn’t understand the Scripture without the Holy
Spirit’s help. And he teaches him, he baptises him, and the man is raised from
the dead.
Ethiopia
today, by the way, has one of the largest populations of Christians in the
world. It has 40 million members of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and there
are even 9 million Lutherans in that country, making it the largest Lutheran
church body in the world. It is often said that this Ethiopian eunuch was the first
then to bring the Gospel back to his own country. A man who was physically made
a slave to his queen, by being castrated, and couldn’t have a family of his
own, now through the Gospel goes home and becomes the spiritual father of a
large nation. The man is given a new birth in holy baptism, and is given a new
identity and a new calling, a new vocation, and a new task. So it says: He
commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip
and the eunuch, and he baptised him.
There’s a
wonderful way that this reading ends. It says: And when they came up out of
the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him
no more, and went on his way rejoicing. It must have been quite some
powerful teaching that Philip gave that man! As soon as the man was taught by
Philip and then is baptised, Philip is immediately taken out of the situation. The
Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away. I would think that Philip and the
eunuch would like to have stayed friends and carried on the friendship long
into their old age. But that wasn’t to be. Philip was there for one minute and
then he was gone.
Sometimes
when we as Christians want to talk to people about the Christian faith, we
often make a big emphasis on building relationships with people. Now this is
good, but sometimes we start to think that people’s conversion depends upon our
relationships with people. But it doesn’t. Sometimes we meet someone for a few
minutes, and we can say something that completely changes a person’s life,
sometimes when we didn’t even realise it. The Holy Spirit might send us
somewhere for a very brief time, and then as soon as we have been of whatever
use God wanted us to be, we are removed from the situation, never to see the
person again. This is what happens here too. But the Ethiopian is not sad that
Philip has been taken away, but it says: he went on his way rejoicing. He
has something even more wonderful that his friend Philip, he has Jesus with
him. He has his Saviour, his Lord, his Redeemer, his King, with him, and if he
has Jesus, then of course, he can go on his way rejoicing.
And so let’s
give thanks to God for the wonderful way in which he has taught us through his
Holy Spirit, brought us to holy baptism, given Jesus to us as our Saviour, who
sacrificed himself for us on the cross, and made us part of his eternal
kingdom. And we also pray that the Holy Spirit would use us and send us into
whatever little corner of the world he chooses, however insignificant it may
seem. Let’s commend ourselves to him for service in his kingdom! Amen.
Dear Jesus,
we thank you for the wonderful way in which you called this Ethiopian man to
yourself, and sent out your Gospel to the ends of the earth. We are gathered
here today also at the ends of the earth, far from the city Jerusalem, and we
pray that the Gospel would still go further and further and bring light and
forgiveness to the hearts of many more people. Amen.
