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Every Person Matters
(Acts 8:26-40)
February 6, 2022
Read Acts 8:26-40 – Comedian Steven Wright says, “Just for fun, when I have a kid, I want to put him in a stroller for twins, then run around the mall looking frantic like I lost the other one.”
Pix that!
It’s like Lu 15 about the shepherd who seeks one lost sheep, showing every person matters.
Acts 8 contrasts the false faith of Simon the magician with the genuine article found in the Ethiopian eunuch.
It’s a wonderful pix of the relentless love of God for His own.
You wouldn’t be here today if He didn’t care.
I. Spirit-led Servant
This account is interesting bc Philip is led first by an angel (26), then by the HS (29).
It shows God is pulling all the stops to make sure this happens – but as always, it starts with Him.
He’s lost a sheep, and He is going to find him.
But note, he uses a faithful servant.
He doesn’t send the angel; he sends a man.
Philip is pulled from a great revival in Samaria, and sent to the road that leads south out of Jerusalem toward Gaza.
Ancient Gaza was destroyed in 93 BC and a new city built near the Mediterranean in 57 BC.
Two roads led from Jerusalem to Gaza – one directly west, the other first south, then west but little used anymore.
But that’s where Philip was sent -- from the center of the action to absolutely nowhere -- with no indication of why – just go.
Philip’s reaction?
27 “And he rose and went.”
No questions, no complaints, He just went – a humble, faithful servant who became part of God’s sovereign plan to find a lost sheep.
Paul says in Rom 10:14b: And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?
And how are they to hear without someone preaching?”
God says in Rom 10:15b: “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”
Feet emphasizes that sharing Christ usually involves going – reaching out.
Those feet are beautiful to God.
This can be as simple as an invitation to church or a Bible study, or outreach.
It can be helping someone in Christ’s name.
Sharing a meal, sharing a book, a tract, a CD.
It can be anything the Spirit leads us to do.
It may look like a dessert road to us.
But the question is will we follow the Spirit to what looks like nowhere.
Philip does, and finds the Treasury Sec for Ethiopia.
This is not modern Ethiopia, but what today would be southern Egypt into the Sudan.
“Candace” was not a name, but a royal title for the queen of the Ethiopians – like Pharaoh in Egypt.
So Philip goes from leading a great revival in Samaria – preaching to thousands with astounding results, to the middle of nowhere chasing down a single man in a royal chariot.
That’s a humble servant.
This man is as different from Philip as he could possibly be.
He’s Gentile, black, foreign and – a eunuch, which would exempt him from most aspects of temple worship.
To a Jew, he’s about as defiled as he could be.
Jewish men were taught to pray every morning, “O Lord, I thank you that you didn’t make me a woman, a slave, or a Gentile.”
But Philip didn’t hesitate.
30 “Philip ran to him.”
He knew the gospel is blind to class, color, or ethnic distinction.
But what I love most about this account is the big picture.
Philip was the Billy Graham of this revival, and God pull him away to find one man on a deserted road in the middle of nowhere.
And Philip gladly went.
He was willing and eager to be the Lord’s instrument to find that one lost sheep.
God loves the multitudes, Beloved.
But God loves the individual just as well.
He is, in the words of Francis Thompson, the hound of heaven, who will track down every one of His own.
Every person matters.
You do, or you’d not be here!
II.
Sincere Seeker
We don’t know how this guy got on this road, but we can guess.
He had a scroll of the OT – very rare in those days.
As Minister of Finance to Candance – the queen mother of Ethiopia (Nubia) at that time, he had some resources – probably traveling with a retinue and in a royal chariot.
Perhaps he was on the desert road to avoid the traffic on the usual crossroads from Syria to Egypt.
27d) “He had come to Jerusalem to worship” and was now returning home.
Historical records show numerous Jews had gone to N. Africa during various dispersions.
Synagogues sprang up; sometimes Gentiles got interested, and some became proselytes – Gentile converts to Judaism.
This man must have been one, and he was serious enough to make a 1,000 mile trip to Jerusalem to worship at the temple, no doubt during a feast.
He was a serious seeker after God – using all the considerable means at his disposal to do that.
But in Jerusalem, he found a bankrupt religion.
It was ritual upon ritual, but without relationship.
He’s leaving as he came, with a vast emptiness in his soul.
The journey profited him nothing, as the journey into religion alone will always profit nothing.
But he hadn’t give up.
His search continued.
He didn’t know it, but he had this promise from God. Jer 29:13: “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.”
Many seek God half-heartedly – interested only in what God can do for them.
They have no promise from Him.
But for those who really want Him – who will not give up the quest, the light will dawn.
Saving faith involves a sincere seeker.
Martin Luther was one.
Prior to his conversion he practically wore out his confessors.
But in 1511 he was sent to Rome, excited at the prospect of seeing the center of his religious world, yelling “Hail, holy Rome” as he approached.
But he was appalled by what he found there – clergy living luxurious, immoral lives, no interest in spiritual things.
But his disappointment drove him to the same place it drove the eunuch – to the Word.
Both eventually found a relationship with God – thru the authority of the Word.
The great French philosopher, Blaise Pascal, claimed it was“an indispensable obligation” for people to seek truth about God in their darkest doubts.
He wrote: “There are only two kinds of people who can be called reasonable: Those who serve God with all their heart bc they know him and those who seek him with all their hearts bc they do not know him.”
I pray you are one of those this morning.
Serving bc you know Him; or seeking bc you don’t.
III.
Sovereign Scripture
The eunuch was a sincere seeker.
There are a lot of insincere seekers – who end up defining a false god by their preferences – people who say, “Well, my God would never do judge anyone.
My God is a God of love.”
Great, but where did you find this God – in your own mind!
The true God has revealed Himself – in the Word He’s given.
That’s where this man was seeking.
He went to the right place – the only place to find answers not bound by our physical limitations.
Ultimate answers to ultimate questions about where we came from and where we are going demand an ultimate source.
Scripture is sovereign in in revealing that which we could not otherwise know.
It is the only place to find out with certainty what comes next.
The Word reveals the gospel that is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom 1:16).
And so for every sincere seeker we must get the Word to them – by sharing it, living it, preaching and teaching it.
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