For these weeks after Easter we've been looking at stories of the early church from the book of Acts. In Acts 8 there is a story about the Jewish deacon-turned-preacher who meets an Ethiopian eunuch on the road. These two are from different worlds - economic, ethnic, spiritual. It would look from the outside like there were a lot of closed doors between them. Probably worst of all would be the eunuch's spiritual exclusion based on Deuteronomy 23:1. But here he is on the desert road reading Isaiah 53 and missing the whole point.
“Then Philip began with that very
passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus” (8:35). I wish that
sermon had been written down, but I know the story. God himself promised to
step into human history to do for his people what they could never do for
themselves. God was directing the winding story of his people to a specific
climax, namely Jesus. All of the Old Testament laws and ceremonies, all the
prophecies, they all were ways in which God was gradually unfolding the story
of salvation that would all converge in Jesus.
We should
read the Old Testament like a funnel where everything comes together in Jesus.
But then the picture looks like an hourglass, because God promised that he
would not simply choose from one nation, but from all nations to be his
children. And that is just beginning to happen in history as this Jew and this
Ethiopian read Isaiah 53 in the chariot. No wonder the Ethiopian eunuch is
excited. This story is about him. God has opened the doors.
The man
spots water in the desert – there is a great image – and demands, “What can
stand in the way of my being baptized?” I think he is asking Philip if God’s
saving work through Christ is as extravagant as Philip describes it. What can
keep me from this salvation? The law that prevents eunuchs from belonging? My
status? My nationality? Is there anything that can separate me from God’s love?
Several years after this scene, the man whose relentless persecution of
Christians started this whole international missionary movement would write,
“For I am convinced that neither death nor life,
neither angels
nor demons,
neither the present nor the future,
nor any powers,
neither height nor depth,
nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us from the
love of God
that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
So they
stopped the chariot and baptized the man on the spot. Nothing could prevent it.
Nothing could stop God’s love from
reaching this Ethiopian or stop
him from responding.
Why? Because it is all God's work here. It is so clear in this story that God is the one who prepares hearts to hear the gospel and then changes them. And what is that Gospel? Philip tells it straight - the good news is Jesus.
I love the story because it is our story, too. Through Christ, God has opened the doors to us.
