Former UCLA Football coach Pepper Rodgers was in the middle of a terrible season. It even got so bad that it upset his home life. He recalls, “My dog was my only friend. I told my wife that a man needs at least two friends and she bought be another dog.”
There are many people who feel as if they don’t fit. They feel “cut off” from life. A young man sat with his pastor and with tears rolling down his cheeks told his pastor that the other kids thought he was weird. They often times isolated him. Or how about that girl in her mid twenties who said that she wanted to be the kind of flower that people sometimes saw and noticed and appreciated but felt that she wasn’t. Then there are people who are isolated because of their size. There are people who are homely. There are people who have never been taught the social graces. They feel awkward, as if they have three legs or four eyes. It is not a nice way to feel. It is like dying over a long, long time.
What does the Bible have to say to these people? Acts 8:26-40 tells the story of the Ethiopian eunuch on his way home from Jerusalem. Perhaps the man is a bit disillusioned. He had discovered that he could not enter the Jewish temple for Deuteronomy 23:1 said, “No one who has been emasculated may enter the assembly of the Lord.” So he was left out and he was going home empty handed but not completely empty handed. He apparently purchased a copy of the scroll of Isaiah. Perhaps he was drawn to this particular book because Isaiah 56 speaks to his situation saying: “Let no foreigner who has bound himself to the Lord say, ‘The Lord will surely exclude me from His people. And let not any eunuch complain, ‘I am only a dry tree.’ For this is what the Lord says, ‘To the eunuch who keep my Sabbaths, who chose what pleases Me and hold fast to My covenant, to them I will give within My temple and its wall, a memorial and a name. I will give them an everlasting name that will not be cut off.” (Isaiah 56:3-5).
In any case as he traveled along he was reading out loud from this scroll. Acts 8 tells us that he was reading Isaiah 53:7-8, “As a sheep led to the slaughter, or a lamb before its shearer is dumb, so he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation, justice was denied him.” Do you think it is an accident that the Ethiopian eunuch who has gone under the knife himself is reading these words about a sheep being led to the slaughter? Could this be a divine “set up?”
Philip begins with this Scripture and tells the eunuch that the lamb who went to the shearer is Jesus and the good news is that though Jesus was cut off, God raised him from the dead. And now, God freely accepts each and all. God pours out the Holy Spirit to give life to all, and God has created a community in which all are valued and accepted and loved.
Can you imagine what this meant to the Ethiopian eunuch? He could never have back what he had lost at his emasculation. But Philip tells him that he can grow again, that he can bloom again, and that he can be regenerative again and bring forth.
There are many lessons we could draw from this story but hear this one: there are many people who feel like the Ethiopian eunuch. They feel as if they don’t fit. They feel “cut off” from life. The promise is that wherever the gospel is spoken, the eunuchs of the world can come to say, “I am no longer a dry tree.’ And that is why we share the good news about Jesus. We do that because we know that God can bring life and productivity out of deadness. If you are cut off, dead, dried up…there is hope for you in Christ Jesus. He can give you life.
Tradition says that this Ethiopian then went home and shared the Gospel with his nation. And prophecy foretold the results. Psalm 68:1 says, “Ethiopia will quickly stretch out her hands to God.” Philip had an impact on an entire continent because of the sharing of his faith. You can never know what your witness to Jesus can do.
Jesse Liles |
