No Small Parts - The Ethiopian Eunuch
December 20, 2020 Sunday Evening Study

All of you here in Missouri have yet to learn something about me - something that my former church knew quite well. I am more than a little impressed - some might say obsessed - with the person Fred Rogers. As you likely all know, he is the beloved children’s icon Mr. Rogers, and had a PBS show “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood for many of my most formative years. There was recently a movie made about him where he was played by Tom Hanks, and I felt that the movie was a very good portrayal of what I understood about the man. However, for several years before this movie, I had been incredibly impressed by many of the stories I had read about Fred Rogers online and I studied a lot about his life and ministry. You may also have noticed the two little Pop head figurines of Mr. Rogers in my office - sometimes they act as reminders for me about what we are about to discuss.

There was one particular documentary about him that was on Amazon Prime. This documentary was created by Mr. Rogers’ actual real life neighbor - a guy that had spent his childhood growing up next door to the Rogers’ home on Martha’s Vineyard. This documentarian was very fascinated with the impact that Mr. Rogers had on the lives of everyone he met - both children and adults, so he spent a lot of time before Mr. Rogers passed away asking him questions about why he did what he did. There was a quote - something Mr. Rogers told this man that has had a profound effect on his - and my own - life.

“Deep and simple will always be better than shallow and complicated.” How much of my life is consumed with shallow and complicated instead of deep and simple? I used this quote in a sermon I gave at Trinity where we were discussing the difference between religion and relationship with God. I looked at religiosity - all the rules and rituals and legalism that can be associated with the church as the part of the shallow and complicated, remembering that sometimes what we need is to simply be on our face before the master - deep and simple.

This applies to our evangelism too. We are a society of numbers - and when the numbers don’t impress, we lose heart. Please open your Bibles to Acts chapter 8. Last week we discussed this man Simon the Magician, who totally missed the point as he saw hundreds of his fellow Samaritans coming into faith and receiving the spirit at the hands of the apostles. As we focused on Simon, we glossed over a bit the significance of what was happening - hundreds of Samaritans were saved - the result of the seeds sown there when Jesus Himself passed through as we are currently studying in John. This was a massive evangelistic success - baptisms, spirit - everything you would expect from an apostle-led spiritual rally in the 1st century.

Let's pick up in verse 26. Read Acts 8:26-40

This passage begins with something we do not want to miss - Philip leaves this explosion of conversions on direction straight from an angel of the Lord. We talk often in our Sunday sermons about divine appointments - well this story begins and ends with direct divine intervention - there is no more obvious divine appointment than what we are about to see here, as it is begun and ended by God’s command. He is sent from an area-wide evangelistic campaign down a lonely desert road toward Gaza - and he obeys. We learn soon that Gaza is not the target at all, but it is this man - the Ethiopian Eunuch whom Philip meets along the way - this is God’s divine appointment.

Who is this man? He is an official in charge of the treasury of the Kandake, or Candace in other translations - known as the name of the political office of the queen of the Ethiopians. Luke makes special mention of the fact that he was a eunuch - or “the eunuch” which serves to tell us two things - the “Eunuch of Candace” is the name of his political office, but also that he was a physical eunuch, having undergone castration likely in service to the queen.

While it was not uncommon to see people on the road having traveled to Jerusalem, it would be very uncommon to see an Ethiopian eunuch doing so and reading aloud from Isaiah - the Jewish scripture. 

First, Ethiopia was not a Jewish nation - it was a Gentile nation. At best, this man was a proselyte - a Gentile who had converted to Judaism but did not participate in the covenant community because he lived in a Gentile nation. Also, because he was a eunuch, even had he been living in Jerusalem he would not have been permitted to participate in temple worship according to Jewish law.

This man was a Gentile - and in fact, he was an important Gentile. While the evangelism in Samaria had begun to bridge the gap between jews and other people groups, remember that the Samaritans were descendants of the Jews, and not necessarily viewed as gentiles, as many were circumcised by tradition. Here is the first full-blown gentile who hears the Word of God through direct evangelism from an apostle. 

For the second time in the story Philip receives a divine command. We may assume that in normal circumstances an ordinary person would not accost a traveller of higher social rank, and therefore Philip needed the inward assurance that this was what he must do. The chariot would have been in fact an ox-drawn wagon and would not have moved at much more than walking pace, so that it would cause no difficulty for Philip to run alongside it and call out to the occupant. As he approached the chariot Philip heard the voice of somebody reading—whether of a slave reading aloud to his master or of the eunuch himself. He recognized what was being read, and proceeded to ask the eunuch whether he understood what he was reading. For an answer the eunuch confessed his need of an interpreter and invited Philip to undertake the task. He will have presumed, perhaps from his clothing or accent, that he was a Jew and therefore probably able to help him. 

It was no accident that at the precise moment when Philip heard him he was reading from a passage which was ideally suited as a starting-point for the Christian message. Isaiah 53:7 comes from a passage of prophecy which refers to a Servant of God who suffers humiliation of all kinds and bears the consequences of the sin of others; he thus makes some kind of atonement for their sins and is finally exalted by God. Clearly Philip’s first step was to show that Jesus was the person who fulfilled the prophecy. A description of the general character of Jesus, and the way in which he suffered unjustly and was condemned to death, would prove the point. No doubt Philip said more. He must have shown how the story of Jesus was good news. We do not know whether he expounded the rest of Isaiah 53 to him. The fact that Philip said much more to the eunuch than is briefly hinted at in verse 35 is apparent from the fact that when the travellers reached a stream, the eunuch’s reaction was to ask for baptism. Obviously, then, Philip must have spoken to him along the lines of the appropriate response to the Christian message. In the same way, it can be assumed that the eunuch must have given Philip some evidence of his faith in Jesus. There was, then, no reason why he should not be baptized.

You may have noticed that there is no verse 37 here - it goes directly from verse 36 to verse 38. In some versions of the King James, it states that the Eunuch says “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” This has been omitted in most modern translations because upon further inspection of early manuscripts, this statement was not there - likely added by scribes later under the direction of King James. While this addition is sound theology, it is evidence of the infallibility of God’s Word - much study has gone into textual criticism and dependence on the earlier translations like the Septuagint (original Greek) and the Masoratic (original Hebrew.)

This Ethiopian is largely recognized as the first ever Gentile convert to Christian faith. When you consider Paul’s ministry, think of the significance of this convert. This is the first domino to fall - this begins a movement unlike any the world has ever seen, and even unlike what the disciples were expecting. This is a major turning point in the Christian church. Yet, I imagine Philip may have been disappointed - he is called out of the huge evangelistic push to minister to one single Gentile, and then at the moment of baptism is mysteriously spirited away again. 

Would you have felt slighted, disappointed? There was no way Philip could have known the significance of what had happened with this Ethiopian. I imagine his mind, much like my own would have been - was focused on the shallow and complicated focus of large numbers of converts that he had left, when the deep and simple of this interaction changed the entire world forever. This should put some things into a sharp perspective for us.

Here is my challenge: we are all spinning a lot of plates - especially over these next 2 weeks. There is a lot of shallow and complicated, and that is ok. But - do not neglect the deep and simple - the relationship over the religion. Make sure in the middle of all the busy you are taking time to be still - to be fed on the gospel, and to connect with the savior. Remember that the deep and simple is always better - it is the foundation on which all of your plates are spinning. Let’s pray.