Sermon by Pastor Brent Kompelien
May 26, 2024
INTRO
Good morning. Good to be with you today. Let me begin with a story.
ILLUST — There once was a young man who had grown up knowing about God, but wasn’t sure that Christianity mattered very much. He decided as a young adult that he would pursue whatever pleasures and material success that made him feel good.
It all began when he was just a boy. He and his friends stole some pears from a neighbor’s pear tree. He “relished and enjoyed” the taste of that juicy pear, and the seeds of some dark thought began to sprout in his mind: I can have whatever I want; I can just take it; and boy does it taste good!
But what he quickly realized was that a few pears weren’t enough. They tasted good, sure, but soon he started to seek out more extreme things. By the time he was a young adult, he decided he liked this life of pleasure and vice, and he spent the next 9 years of his life pursing sin with reckless abandon.
He sought every worldly pleasure, consumed every substance, and achieved every material success you can imagine. He slept with whoever he wanted, he made friends with powerful people, and he made more money than you can dream of. He made himself god of his life.
And you know what he came to realize? He said later that his life had become a “barren waste” and that these pursuits had only left him “void and empty.”
This young man wrote, “I looked for pleasure, beauty, and truth in myself and in others…and the search led me instead to pain, confusion, and error.” He said, “I realized that I was not yet thirty years old and was still floundering in the same quagmire, because I was greedy to enjoy what the world had to offer, though it only eluded me and wasted my strength.”
You may have heard of this young man. His name is Augustine (SLIDE 2) and he lived in North Africa 1700 years ago. And his story has been written a thousand times over throughout history. So many of us have taken the good things God has created and made them ultimate things, worshipping the created things rather than the Creator. Yet this will leave you empty.
Augustine came to a place of desperation and emptiness. He had every material thing and every pleasure, yet he was blind to his real need and lost in his sin.
But let me remind you of some of the most powerful words in the Bible: “But God.”
But God saved Augustine. In desperate confession and surrender to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, Augustine came to realize that no experience, pleasure, success, or circumstance could ever make him truly happy. Rather, he said this about God, “You yourself are our joy. Happiness is to rejoice in you and for you and because of you. This is true happiness and there is no other.”
Augustine went on to become the Bishop of Hippo, a major city on the north coast of Africa. It was Augustine who famously wrote that he cannot be content unless his life is given in worship to God “because you made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”
PROP — (SLIDE 3, title) This morning we are going to see this important reality as we study the further expansion of the early church in the book of Acts. This is what we are going to learn: the gospel is good news for all who are desperately searching.
Open with me to Acts 8:26-40. We are going to look at a story today of another North African man from ancient Ethiopia who had sold out to achieve wealth and power and who was making a desperate and dangerous journey to seek God. And we are going to see how Philip expounds the Scriptures in an amazing example of one-on-one personal evangelism to bring this African man to faith in Jesus Christ.
Let’s read our text. READ Acts 8:26-40.
ORG SENT — Here’s how we will tackle this passage. First, I want to explain who this Ethiopian man was and the significance of his journey to Jerusalem (vv. 26-29). Then, I want to walk you through this account so that we can see this powerful example of personal evangelism, its implications for the spread of the gospel in the early church, and why it is important for us today (vv. 30-40).
MAIN 1 — Ethiopian Eunuch (vv. 26-29). (SLIDE 4)
Go back to verse 26. Something I want to point out right at the start is that there is a lead character in this story, and it isn’t Philip or the Ethiopian man. It is God.
Remember, God is the lead character of the book of Acts. And I want you to see how God is directing the affairs of this whole story from beginning to end.
Verse 26 — An angel of the Lord tells Philip exactly which road to travel.
Verse 29 — The Spirit tells Philip to go near a particular chariot on the road.
Verse 39 — The Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away and miraculously plopped him down in completely different location.
KEY: In every way, God is in control and he is directing what is happening here. The same is true in my life, in your life, and in every situation we encounter.
Don’t miss this: If God is in complete sovereign control in directing these events, then the implication is that the Holy Spirit was already working in the heart of this Ethiopian man! (SLIDE 5) He was desperately searching, and the details of the text help us see how God had been preparing him for this moment.
Now, who was this Ethiopian man?
The text says in verse 27 that he was a eunuch and an important official in charge of the treasury of the Kandake, which is the name of a dynasty of North African royalty in the modern-day region of Sudan, or some of your Bibles say “Candace, queen of Ethiopia”, which is a different way to translate the same royal family name.
A eunuch is a male servant who has been castrated so that he can be given a high-level role within a royal government in the ancient world. (SLIDE 6) They wanted to protect against any usurpers and guard the purity of the throne by preventing any funny business with the royal family. It was common for the highest-ranking officials and for family servants who served in the royal house to be castrated in order to protect the fidelity of the royal family, especially since most cultures believed the royal families were descended from the gods.
You have to understand, eunuchs were not viewed as virtuous in the ancient world. In fact, they were viewed as sell-outs and people who were hungry for power and influence and wealth. (SLIDE 7)
You see, in the ancient world the most important definer of your identity and your worth and your virtue was your fidelity to your family. Family was paramount. Your family name was revered and honored and protected from public disgrace. Your ability to have heirs and pass along your family name was held in the highest esteem.
To be a eunuch was to literally cut off your ability to fulfill this most important and valued role in your family. It was like amputating your very identity and trampling your family name in the mud. This is why castration was sometimes a punishment for crimes. It was THAT shameful! It was THAT devastating.
To intentionally become a eunuch was to sell-out your family honor in order to gain wealth and power and prestige. It was inherently selfish because it literally meant that your family blood line ended with you; you intentionally cut off your ability to have a heritage and a legacy, only to selfishly pursue material success and notoriety and power for yourself.
ILLUST — Remember Augustine? What happens when you sell out to pursue worldly pleasures and success? Will it ever satisfy? Of course not! Augustine said this about his life as a young man who sold out to sin: “I did not know this then, I was in love with beauty of a lower order and it was dragging me down.”
Just like Augustine, the Ethiopian Finance Minister had reached the top! He had sold his soul to have it all! And yet what he found was that leisure was only the illusion of peace, extravagance only masqueraded as contentment, and the fleeting pleasures of money and power turned into bitter shadows of real and lasting satisfaction that can only be found in being known and loved by the Living God.
And so the text of Acts 8 tells us that this Ethiopian Finance Minister had traveled to Jerusalem to worship. I don’t know if you realize how shocking this is:
The region where this man is from is the ancient region of Cush from the Old Testament. It is the upper Nile region in modern-day Sudan, and the distance to Jerusalem is somewhere between 1000 and 1500 miles!
This is a journey of over 5 months each way by horse-drawn chariot along dangerous roads in the middle of the desert where there is little food and water.
What would drive this wealthy and powerful African government official to make a life-threatening journey to visit the temple of the Jewish God? The only answer: He was desperate. He had tried everything. He had no satisfaction, no contentment, and no hope. He also had an irreversible problem: He had sold out to this life of worldly success by emasculating himself, and now he has no hope of a legacy or inheritance or a family name that will last.
The text here says that he was on his way back to north Africa, traveling down the coastal road less than 50 miles into his 1000 mile journey home. You know what likely happened just days before?
Deuteronomy 23:1 says that eunuchs were not allowed to enter the temple. After traveling 1000 miles and risking his life, this foreigner and eunuch would have been turned away at the door. Can you imagine the disappointment? The utter hopelessness. The despair?
This is where we meet this man as he sits in his chariot searching the scriptures for some hope. It is here that God sends Philip to this most unlikely recipient of the gospel: a black North African non-Jewish wealthy and worldly eunuch who was prohibited from the temple. Now HE becomes an example of the radical grace of God to sinners who are desperately searching.
MAIN 2 — Philip Shares The Gospel (vv. 30-40). (SLIDE 8)
Pick up the story in verse 30. Philip runs to the chariot and hears the Ethiopian man reading from the scroll of Isaiah. It is amazing that he has his own copy of the scroll, which would been over 100 feet long and cost the equivalent of thousands of dollars to produce.
Just look again at what happens, look at the boldness of Philip (SLIDE 9): READ vv. 30-31.
This is incredible. Picture this moment: Here is a wealthy black African Gentile sitting side-by-side with a poor Jewish man, both of them intently looking into the Word of God together! This may be the first Christian Bible study, and it brings together two completely different people culturally, economically, and ethnically to gaze upon the glorious Word of God together and find that they can be brothers in the same family of God. Wow!
Now, don’t miss this: The passage in Isaiah that is quoted here is from Isaiah 53, and it speaks of the tragic, unjust death of a suffering servant. Knowing what you know now about eunuchs, listen to these words again (SLIDE 10): READ vv. 32-33.
Humiliation, no descendants, all seems lost. This is something that this Ethiopian man senses and feels in the very depths of his own heart. He is at a moment of desperation and hopelessness. He had lost everything that truly matters, he had sold out to worldly success, and he is now empty. He essentially ask this: Is there hope for me? (SLIDE 11) Look at what he says: READ v. 34-35.
You see, Isaiah 53 is a passage that pointed ahead to the reality that the Messiah, Jesus Christ, would humbly and willingly die a substitutionary death for you and for me, and then he rise from the grave to conquer sin and death so that we could be forgiven and have new life forevermore.
And as Philip explained the gospel, it’s likely that he unrolled the scroll a bit farther to Isaiah 56, a chapter all about the promise of the coming Messiah, which says this in verses 3-5: (SLIDE 12 and 13) “Let no foreigner who is bound to the LORD say, “The LORD will surely exclude me from his people.” And let no eunuch complain, “I am only a dry tree.” For this is what the LORD says: “To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant—to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will endure forever.”
An everlasting name, an identity, a heritage, a hope, and a future. (SLIDE 14, blank) Philip looks this man in the eyes and tells him the same message some of you here today need to hear: If you’ve sold out to this world, you are never too far gone. If you’ve tried other things to satisfy your soul but you’re still empty, there is hope. The gospel is good news for all who are desperately searching, for all who’ve failed or been rejected, and for anyone who has the humility to give your life to God is repentance and surrender. You can be welcomed into God’s family through Christ alone and by the new birth through the Spirit of God.
For this Ethiopian eunuch, this was truly good news. And he wanted to accept this gift of forgiveness and salvation because Christ has paid it all for him and washed him clean! So he says, “Stop the chariot! There’s some water, I want to be baptized right now!”
And as soon as Philip baptized this man, the text says that Philip was immediately taken by the Holy Spirit to Azotus, which was about 20 miles north of Gaza along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. He preached the gospel there and all along the town of the coastal road up to Caesarea, which was the Roman capital of Judea. This is where the Roman governors lived, and we know from Acts 21:8 that Philip was still living there and preaching the gospel 20 years later!
In what we’ve studied in Acts 8 over the last two weeks, Philip exemplifies two complementary approaches to evangelism: (SLIDE 15)
First we see him teach in large groups in public settings in Samaria.
Second we see him share the gospel one-on-one with the Ethiopian.
APPLY: Both are critical for the church’s effectiveness in witnessing about Jesus.
This account in Acts 8:26-40 is an example of good personal evangelism. If you want to follow this example, here’s what you need to do: (SLIDE 16)
Go where God wants you to go.
Be willing to cross cultural, economic, and ethnic barriers.
Be aware of the hearts that God is preparing.
Listen well to the seeker’s questions and point them to Jesus.
Root everything in the Bible.
Call people to trust in Jesus as Savior and Lord.
KEY: Over all of these things, be a prayerful and willing servant. Have the attitude of Isaiah, the writer of the scroll that Philip used to speak about Jesus, when he said in Isaiah 6:8, “Here am I. Send me.”
(SLIDE 17, blank) Let me conclude with this: This Ethiopian Finance Minister continued on his long journey home, rejoicing in that his name is written in the Book of Life, that he now has an everlasting name in the family of God.
And he may not have had his own biological children, but it is no accident that Philip shared the gospel with this Ethiopian man while he was leaving Jerusalem and on his way south to go home. He now is the bearer of the good news, a witness, and a missionary to his own people.
You see, in just a few short generations, the gospel spread all over North Africa. If you look at church history, there is a rich heritage of the Christian faith all across North Africa that goes back to the 1st century, and it is possible that this Ethiopian eunuch was one of the first to share the gospel and raise up a generation of spiritual children who share the same family name in the everlasting family of God.
One such spiritual descendent in North Africa is Augustine who learned to rejoice in his salvation just as much as the Ethiopian eunuch. May we take Augustine’s words about his own redemption and make them our own. He said about God: “The thought of you stirs me so deeply that I cannot be content unless I praise you.”