“About Whom Does the Prophet Speak?”

Acts 8:26-40

Deuteronomy 23:1 (The Message): “No eunuch is to enter the congregation of God.”

Isaiah 56:3b-4 (NRSV): “… do not let the eunuch say, ‘I am just a dry tree.’ For thus says the Lord: ‘To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, and 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’.”

[Prayer]

I was surprised when I looked through my files and discovered that I had never preached on this text from Acts in the past. Why had I not? I don’t know. I was well aware of it and had studied it. It’s a relatively brief text, yet a text that packs quite wallop: ecclesiastically, historically, theologically, and biblically. It deals with two major firsts in the history of the Church. It provides a great model for teaching about evangelism. There is no rational explanation for my never having preached it.

So maybe the reason was irrational; not irrational in a nutsy-whacko, woo-woo-woo kind of way, but irrational in terms of the providential hand of God. Maybe until now I wasn’t ready to preach it. I do know that until last November I’d never been confronted with the juxtaposition of Deuteronomy 23:1 and Isaiah 56:3 & 4, and the importance of that juxtaposition in understanding this morning’s preaching text. Having said all that, let’s look at the text.

There are six main characters in today’s text, either explicitly or implicitly. Character number one is Philip, an apostle of Jesus. Character number two is an Ethiopian eunuch, a godly man. Character number three is the Holy Spirit. They are the explicit characters.

The other three are implicit but no less important. Jesus is there by the power of the Spirit and in Philip’s heart. The prophet mentioned in the sermon title, Isaiah, is there as his words – God’s Words – are read and discussed by Philip and the eunuch. He is also there in those other words from Isaiah that I read earlier. They’re not in text but they most definitely influence it. The final character, or set of characters, whose presence is implicit is that group of Pharisees and others who were the arbiters of the Judaic orthodoxy of the day. And when I use the term orthodoxy in reference to that particular group of characters I am referring to a cold, rigid form of orthodoxy that was – and sometimes still is - expressed as mean-spirited and nasty fundamentalism.

As I’ve already mentioned two major first-time events are recorded in today’s text. The eunuch was the first Gentile to become a Christian mentioned in the New Testament. His conversion was a major turning point in the church’s move away from being an exclusively Jewish body of believers.

The other first-time event was that it is in this text that Jesus Christ is for the first time equated with the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53. Those were the specific words of Isaiah that the eunuch was trying so hard to understand. It was those words that Philip and the eunuch discussed together as they rolled along in a chariot. Philip made it clear that the One about whom the prophet spoke was none other than Jesus Christ.

Philip was an obedient apostle, already preaching to the Samaritans, that in itself a major break from orthodox Jewish belief and practice. He went where the Spirit led him. He understood that he was meant to meet with the eunuch. He was wise enough to let the eunuch open the conversation and well enough versed in Scripture to be able to answer his questions. And he was disciplined enough as an evangelist to wait for the appropriate moment at which to witness to him about Jesus. That’s what makes this such a great text for teaching evangelism.

The eunuch was what we’d call today a seeker. He believed in God. He went as far into the Jerusalem Temple as his status allowed him. He was hungry for God. He was primed and ready to meet Jesus, profess him as Savior, and be baptized.

Why had this God-fearing man never been allowed total access to the temple? He was a Gentile. That could have been overcome by converting to Judaism, but even then his physical condition would have barred him from full access to the Temple because of that prohibition found in Deuteronomy 23:1.

He was a eunuch, a man who had been castrated. And the Law of Moses was explicit about prohibiting his admission into the assembly of the Lord. The reference is pretty graphic in most translations; that’s why I read it from The Message. He could have been the godliest of men, but strict adherence to that one verse of Scripture prohibited him from being accepted by the orthodox powers-that-be of his day and age. That verse was part of God’s Word. It had to be believed and obeyed. As the bumper sticker says, “God said it. I believe it. That’s it.” There was no wriggle room.

But in the words of Lee Corso, “Not so fast, my friend.” Remember those words I read from Isaiah 56, those words that are juxtaposed with the words of Deuteronomy 23:1? The words from Deuteronomy are explicitly exclusive. The words from Isaiah are explicitly inclusive. Both are God’s Word. But for reasons known only to them, the religious powers-that-be of Jerusalem had chosen to enforce the words of Deuteronomy rather than listen to the words of Isaiah.

The good news for that long-ago eunuch – the good news for each and every one of us – is that Jesus came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. He fulfilled it by preaching, teaching, living, and modeling the perfect will of God. Before he ascended into heaven he instructed his disciples to go and make disciples of ALL nations; to be his witnesses TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH. From that point on Gentiles and others excluded from Judaism were welcome to participate in the Kingdom of God.

The Apostle Paul had a lot say about that in his letters. Let me share again his words from Galatians: “There is no longer Jew or Greek… slave or free… male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” Even Ethiopian eunuchs.

In his commentary on today’s text, Robert L. Maddox, Jr., wrote, “Everything Philip told the eunuch was good news. Whereas he had been excluded from the Temple because of his race and physical condition, in Christ the Ethiopian was cordially invited to come into the inner recesses of the presence of God. There were no barriers in this new faith; all shared equally in the grace of God and in the salvation offered by the Suffering Servant.”

The irony of all this was that the will of God ended up being fulfilled in and through Jesus rather than the nation of Israel. Israel had failed to be a light to the nations. They had not heeded the Word of God as voiced by Isaiah after their exile in Babylon. Reading again from Isaiah 56, “Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, ‘I will gather others to them besides those already gathered’.” The God who redeemed Israel was the God who willed the redemption of all people. In obeying God’s Word as they rigidly and legalistically interpreted it, the Pharisees and their ilk had ignored the underlying truth of that Word. While they were right in the strictest sense of the word, within the overall purposes of God they were wrong.

And at least one modern Orthodox Jewish rabbi understands that. Wrote Yakov Lasvado, “In these verses [from Isaiah 56] Isaiah is speaking to his ancient Israelite community and trying to convince them that God’s covenantal plan for Israel is larger than they think… He speaks to two obvious outsider groups, the foreigner of non-Israelite birth, and the eunuchs… In the chain of the covenantal family, the foreigner had no past and the eunuch no future. It is their ‘exclusion’ that the prophet addresses. The prophet comforts the pain of the eunuchs with the claim that there are other ways in which to observe, fulfill, and sustain the covenant.”

Jesus was the Suffering Servant described by Isaiah, the One about whom the Ethiopian eunuch wanted know more. Jesus was the living fulfillment of Israel’s role of being God’s light to the nations. Jesus was the One who broke down all the artificial barriers placed between God and the non-Jewish world by those dedicated protectors of orthodoxy, the ones who killed Jesus for speaking God’s truth, for keeping God’s Law by breaking their rules. In Jesus an Ethiopian eunuch gained unhindered entrance into the family of God.

Orthodoxy is a good thing – until it turns into something cold, rigid, and self-righteous. Adhering to the fundamentals of the faith is important, but we must always beware of those who preach, teach, practice, and enforce that mean and nasty fundamentalism so much in vogue these days. Yes, we must uphold God’s Word but the Word in its entirety, not just isolated, and sometimes out of context, verses of it.

Above all we must be open to the Spirit’s leading, even when we find ourselves led to invite the designated eunuchs of this age into the Body of Christ and Kingdom of God. Amen.