The Gospel to the Most Unlikely

In Acts 8, Philip is sent away from a fruitful ministry into what looks like a desert—only to discover that God has already been at work in the heart of an unlikely seeker: an Ethiopian eunuch. This message explores how the gospel breaks through every barrier—cultural, religious, personal—to reach the most unlikely people… including us. 

We’ll see how the Spirit leads Philip, how Scripture points to Jesus, and how one man who had always been kept at a distance is brought all the way in. Along the way, we’ll wrestle with the uncomfortable truth that we often get in the way of the gospel’s reach—either by offering inclusion without Jesus, or by adding barriers Jesus never asked for. 

Ultimately, this passage invites us to follow the Spirit into “desert places,” trust the power of the gospel, and go to the unlikely, seeing no one as too far for Christ to save.

Transcript

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We are in our series Acts. So we're jumping back into the book of Acts. As most of you know, at Sacred Mission, we primarily preach verse by verse through whole books of the Bible expositionally. And so we are jumping back into Acts, and we're excited to be continuing our journey through this book. So if you have a Bible or an app, open it up. Acts chapter 8. That's where we're going to be at this morning, verses 26 through 40, as we read earlier. Now, if you ask most Christians who the gospel is for, they'll give you the right answer. Right? They'll say, the gospel is for everyone. Every tribe, every nation, every background, every story. But ask them then to look at their actual lives. Does their life reflect a gospel who is for everyone? Have them ponder and think about the people that they pursue relationship with, the conversations that they initiate, or the places that they're themselves are willing to go with inside culture. And we start to see a different answer, a different story to emerge about their actual life. You see, we know the right theology, right? We know the Sunday school answer to this question. We just don't always live it out. This passage is going to expose that gap, that gap between what we believe and how we live, and show us a gospel that actually breaks through every barrier that we have sought to build around it, even incidentally in our everyday life. We've been making our way through Acts together. We talked about this just a moment ago, watching the Spirit move, the gospel advance, the church take its shape in the earliest days after Jesus' resurrection and ascension. It's been 13 weeks since we've been in this book. Isn't that amazing? Feels like yesterday to me, but here we are, back in it. So let me remind you where we are. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, has just been stoned to death for confronting the religious leaders about Jesus. And what that persecution did to the early church is it didn't silence the gospel. It actually emboldened it. It scattered the believers that were in the early church throughout various regions surrounding Jerusalem, and with them the gospel advanced. Everywhere the scattered believers went, the gospel went with them. And this morning in chapter 8, that's where we find Philip, a man who's been scattered by persecution, but with the gospel in hand, seeing fruitful ministry happening in Samaria, but now being called, being sent on mission to this desert place to meet somebody that nobody would have expected to be impacted and reached by the gospel. So again, Acts chapter 8, 26 through 40. Now, before we dive into the text fully, you may have noticed when we were reading, or maybe you didn't, that the passage goes from verse 36 to verse 38. It jumps straight over verse 37. Acts 8, 37, it's actually omitted or moved to the footnotes in many modern Bible translations because it is absent from the earliest manuscripts that we have in our possession. The most reliable Greek manuscripts of the book of Acts does not have this verse 37. So if it was included in our modern day translation, it would be speaking to the Ethiopians' request to be baptized, and it would read this way. Acts 8.37 would read like this. Then Philip said, If you believe with all your heart, you may. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Now, this verse doesn't change anything about the passage. More than likely, it was added by a scribe later in history who was seeking to incorporate the need for a right understanding of who Jesus is and a proper response to his person. Is Jesus the Christ, the Son of God? And so with that desire, right? With that purpose, more than likely, this verse was added later in history. So it's omitted from our modern translation. So wanted to cover that as you were reading and seeing that, but let's just move on, right? Alright, here's what we want to see. Verses 26 through 27, first, we want to see this. The mission of the church takes us to desert places. The mission of the church takes us to desert places. Philip, he'd been ministering in Samaria, and it had been fruitful. As he was preaching, people were responding. They were believing in the gospel of Jesus. They were being baptized into his church. The gospel was advancing in Samaria. And so you could imagine Philip would want to be there where fruitful ministry was exploding. But then this angel of the Lord comes and he appears to Philip with this strange instruction. He says to him, Rise and go toward the south, to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. Now, Luke, who wrote the book of Acts, he incorporates this interesting detail. It was a desert place. It was a desert place. Now we know Luke the physician was very thorough in his description of what was happening and the way that he was actually organizing all of the stories about Jesus in the early church for Theophilus of who he was writing this book for. But at the same time, we have to look at this peculiar, brief description. It was a desert place. You see, here's what I think it helps us understand. The mission of the church, it doesn't always take us to places that we might expect. Think about where Philip was. Life was sprouting up all around him. People were responding to the gospel, they were being baptized. It looked like a land of plenty right before him. And the angel of the Lord comes to him and says, Philip, I want you to go to a desert place. I want you to go to a place where it doesn't look like there's any life, where it doesn't look like there's even the capacity or possibility for life to exist, because I've got a reason for you to go there, Philip. You see, we have to draw attention to Philip's first his attunement to the Spirit. This is what's wild about the early church. But it's not different for us in the church today. They actually lived a life believing that the Holy Spirit not only filled them, but directed their every day for the glory of God and the good of those who have not heard the gospel yet. They actually woke up believing that the Spirit was going to speak to them that day, was going to guide their footsteps that day, was going to lead them to a place where the gospel could break through and transform hearts that day. And so Philip, he was attuned to the presence and the voice of the Spirit in his life. But he wasn't just attuned to it, he was ready to obey it. He was ready to obey it. Look at the eagerness of Philip's obedience. You see, when we are reconciled to Jesus, when we desire to be healthy disciples of Jesus, there's something that we have to understand. We're reconciled to Jesus, or we're reconciled to God through Jesus, through his finished work. That's the beginning part of what it means to be a disciple. But we're also reconciled to his people, the church. So we're not saved in isolation, we're saved into community, but also we are reconciled to his mission. You see, we serve a God who is on mission for the redemption of all things, and he joyfully invites us to participate in it with him. This is the nature of the church, the nature of the mission of God. And so the Christian life is about partnering with and joining God on mission, and that demands something. That demands a communion with his spirit. A communion with his spirit that will send us to places where he has gone before us and is calling people to himself. And sometimes he's going to call us to seemingly desert places. And here's what I want us to see in that. Sometimes he's going to call us to people who seem like no life could be produced within them. But here's the beauty of it. The Spirit goes before us, and he's already cultivating the soil of their hearts to produce the life that we don't believe could ever actually become. Verses 27 through 28, we see that the mission of the church is to the unlikely. The mission of the church is to the unlikely. Luke, he introduces the man who Philip is supposed to meet on this desert road, and he begins to just stack detail upon detail about this peculiar man. Each one helping to build a picture of just how unlikely this encounter actually is. Let's read it together. Verse 27 through 28, starting just a little bit in, it says, And there was an Ethiopian, so fact number one, a eunuch, fact number two, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians. Fact number three, who was in charge of all the treasure. Fact number four, who had just came to Jerusalem to worship. Fact number five. And was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. So five different details. Luke starts to stack up about this wanderer, this traveler. And for each detail about this man, it matters. First, let's talk about him being an Ethiopian. Why does that matter for us? Well, for Philip, for the Jews in that time in Area, Ethiopia was actually recognized as the farthest place of the known world. And so when Jesus promised his disciples that you would be sent here, starting in Jerusalem, then to Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth, this is a fulfillment of that. This is actually what's fascinating about this, this is the end of the world coming to them. There's some correlation to our modern-day context, right? We're living in a culture and a society where the ends of the world are filling our backyards. And we've got to try to figure out how do we live missionally amongst a diverse community that's changing every moment of our life. The ends of the world had come there, and Philip had engaged with them. Isaiah had spoken of a day when God's salvation would reach even there, and that day felt for them distant, right? It felt distant and a little bit theoretical, like, oh wow, that sounds great, all in all. But here it was coming to life. Next, he's a eunuch. Now, this detail I think carries the most significant theological implications in the entire passage. You see, in Deuteronomy 23, verse 1, the law of Moses was explicit. In fact, it's too explicit for me to read with some children in the room. So I'll just say, here's what it says A eunuch was excluded from the assembly of the Lord. A eunuch was excluded from the assembly of the Lord. There's something interesting about this. They were permitted to draw near, but not intimately close. They were able to come inside, but only at a distance to worship, to adore the true and living God. You see, there was an actual barrier written into the very law of Moses that kept such a man just on the outside. And yet Isaiah 56, the same prophet of the same scroll that this very man is reading from points to a better day when that barrier would be torn down, dismantled, and all would be included into the family of God. Let's read it together. The prophet Isaiah 56 through through 5. Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say, The Lord will surely separate me from his people, and let not the eunuch say, Behold, I am a dry tree. For thus says the Lord, to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who 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. So Isaiah 56 promises that the day is coming when the eunuch will no longer be excluded from the family of God, when the barrier will be broken down, and full belonging among God's people will be offered. And it's happening here, on this road, in this moment, for this man. Lastly, it says he's uh we'll kind of join these two together. He's a court official with great authority in charge of the entire treasury of the Ethiopian queen. Now, this name, Candace, it's a more generic name that queens in succession would carry in themselves. So it's not a specific name to her, it's just the Queen of Ethiopia, basically. And so he's the he's he's in charge of her entire treasury. All of that power that he had. It could not purchase what this man was actually looking for. You see, he had journeyed to Jerusalem to worship, and he journeyed there knowing full well he was excluded by the law from full participation in Israel's worship. He had traveled hundreds of miles simply to be near the God of Israel. I believe that he was a God fearer, a category of people that the Bible talks about. Someone who had likely encountered Israel's God through the diaspora Jews. So those Jews who had previously been exiled out of Israel, who had gone to the surrounding regions to live and make a home, they had influence in those places. And so I would believe that this man was a God fear who was influenced by the presence of Jewish people even in his own homeland. He had been drawn to God's truth and beauty, given his life to pursue him, even still knowing that that barrier kept him from full inclusion. And so he had come as close as the law would allow. And now he was simply just going home. He was reading Isaiah, the prophet who had promised that this exclusion would end one day. This is simply just a man from the furthest known place in the world on a desert road, excluded from full relationship with God and his people, now heading home, still searching. And so the most unlikely person imaginable. And the gospel is about to break through every barrier to reach him. To reach him. Verses 29 through 31, we see the mission of the church requires obedience to the spirit. There's no explanation. There's no promise of outcome, just a prompting. Right? And the spirit, knowing that Philip would obey him. And he runs to him, the scriptures say. And he hears the man reading Isaiah aloud, right? That was a common practice to be able to comprehend and understand what you were reading. They would just read out loud, right? It wasn't silent nook reading like we do in schools today. They just opened the scroll, read out loud as they were traveling. And he hears them reading Isaiah. Isaiah 53. And he asked him, Do you understand what you were reading? Philip asked us to the Ethiopian, Do you understand what you're reading? The eunuch's response is humble and honest. How can I? How can I unless someone guides me? Man, I love that line. I love that line. Because what does that do? It shows us that we have a responsibility to guide people to the truth of Jesus in all of Scripture. We have a responsibility to guide people to the truth of Jesus in all of Scripture. And the eunuch, he he invites Philip, come up here and sit with me. You see, the Spirit had prepared this man before Philip ever even arrived on the scene. The hunger to know was there. The scroll was open. Philip just had to obey and follow the Spirit. But it was the Spirit doing the heavy lifting in this mission, in this moment. Verse 32 through 35, we see the mission of the church is accomplished through showing Jesus in the scriptures. The eunuch was reading out loud Isaiah 53, and look, he says here, verse 32 through 33, he says, this like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its sheer silence, so he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation, justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth. And the eunuch asked Philip, Is this about the man, Isaiah, who's writing this? Or is this about someone else? You know, it's it's it's like this tee up question that the eunuch asked Philip. And he was ready. He was ready with the right answer. And the scriptures say Philip opened his mouth and began with this scripture. He told him the good news about Jesus. In Jesus' resurrection, he actually shows himself to his disciples. And in Luke 24, it says that he opened their mind and taught them something very specific. He taught them how all of Scripture pointed to him. How all of the Old Testament was about the suffering servant who would die and be raised again. And he said, all of this, all of this, all historical narrative, all poetry, all prophecy, all of this points to me. And so Philip, I can imagine him sitting here and just showing this eunuch how all of Scripture has been revealed for one purpose, to show us the glory of Christ the Messiah, who died for us, who was buried, and who rose again to eternal life. And through him, through him, eunuch, you can be included into the family of God. There's no longer a barrier for you. There's no longer something keeping you apart from him. You can be brought near because of Jesus' finished work. You see, this is the core of gospel mission. For us to take the revelation of God, of which he has given to us through his scripture, and to show the World, the beauty of Christ. We don't have to go through philosophical argument or try to meet them on their cultural turf and try to persuade them that Jesus is something that they really want them to be so that maybe they'll come close enough and then we can just snatch them up and say, Gotcha. No, we have one obligation to simply illuminate the beauty of the finished work of Christ from the truth of God's word, and the Spirit does the work. Philip doesn't show him some moral framework that he has to try to rationalize in his head or some self-improvement program. If you just try harder, eunuch, if you just do better in this life. No. He shows him Jesus, crucified, buried, risen, reigning over all creation. He shows them the one who Isaiah was pointing to all along. Lastly, we see in verses 36 through 40, the mission of the church is to lead people to respond. To lead people to respond. As they traveled, they came to some water. And the eunuch said, See, here is water. What prevents me from being baptized? Man, that question, what prevents me? We have to understand, this came out of the mouth of a man who has been prevented his entire life. He's been prevented from coming near to the Lord and to his people. And here he asks such a simple question. Well, what prevents me? You see, the law prevented him. His physical condition prevented him. The temple had a barrier with his name on it, saying, You cannot come any further than this. But Philip had just shown him that the one who had broken through every barrier was Jesus the Christ. And now there was nothing left to prevent this man. So they went down into the water. Philip baptized him. Then the Spirit carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more. The scriptures say that he went on his way, rejoicing, because the gospel had reached him. Here's what I want us to see in this text. The gospel breaks through every barrier to reach the most unlikely people. The gospel breaks through every barrier to reach the most unlikely people. That's what we're seeing take place in this desert land. Not just some random coincidence, right? Or some chance encounter. No, this is the sovereign spirit of God orchestrating every single detail about this moment. The angel's directive, the desert road of which they were traveling, the open scroll, the right passage on the right day, so that the gospel would reach one man, one man who had spent his entire life being told that he could not come all the way in. What makes this moment so amazing is that Isaiah 56 promised this day. Jesus himself, and the one who had been kept at a distance would be brought near, given a name better than sons and daughters, an everlasting name that would never be taken from him. He would be family. You see, the law had a barrier. And the gospel broke right through it. His place of origin couldn't stop it. His religious exclusion couldn't stop it, his physical condition couldn't stop it, nor could his misunderstanding of the text, his cultural background of which he carried with him, his ethnic differences, nothing could stop it. Because the gospel isn't bound by barriers, the gospel breaks through them. And it always moves toward the most unlikely people. The one on the margins, the one that seems as their life, is a desert without any hope or genuine life. That should tell us something profound about the nature of the gospel itself. But even more so, it should deeply confront us about the ways that we get in the way of the gospel. You see, many of us, we we get in the way of the gospel's reach. We get in the way of the gospel's reach. You see, the gospel reaching this man didn't happen because Philip had some evangelism strategy, because he had some plan for community engagement. No, it happened because the Spirit moved, Philip obeyed, and the gospel did what the gospel does. But if we're honest, we rarely operate that way in our everyday life. You see, we are much more comfortable managing the gospel's reach than actually surrendering to it. We are much more comfortable managing the gospel's reach than surrendering to it. We decide who is worth pursuing. We determine who is likely to respond if we actually put forth the effort. We decide who fits the profile of someone that the gospel might actually impact and transform. We determine whose life looks more like a flourishing garden or a desert or a desert. You see, we do this, and in so doing, we get in the way of the gospel. Think about the people in your world who are furthest away from God. Maybe you have someone's name in your mind right at this moment, and you look at them and you just say, Man, what a desert. What a desert. I'm not gonna even try. The ones you've already written off, not maliciously, right? You're not mean. You're just practical about what could be expected. They don't seem likely to hear and respond positively, but but the gospel has never been about likely people. It's never looked out at us and said, oh, Justin's got something in him that I think he would actually respond positively to. Or he would actually come into the kingdom of God and add benefit to it. No, my presence detracts from anything that I'm a part of. And the Lord loves me. You see, many of us, we get in the way of the gospel's reach. And I think there's two ways of which we do this. Some of us you you you reach across barriers to bring unlikely people in. You reach across barriers to bring unlikely people in. Now that sounds good on the front end. And in fact, that desire, that intention is good because we live in a cultural moment that has elevated inclusion to the level of the highest virtue we could hold. Right? And the church, we've done some assessment and we've seen the ways that we have not been welcoming, how we have been exclusive to a degree that we ought not to be. How we've absorbed that instinct to keep people out in some regard. And so, in response to that, what do we do? We reach. We reach cross-cultural divides, we build diverse communities, we make room for unlikely people at the table, and all of that. All of that is deeply good, genuinely right, because the gospel is, hear this church, the gospel is the most radically inclusive reality in human history. It is for every tribe, person, nation, and tongue, nothing else in existence, actually claims and accomplishes the inclusive reality of the gospel. No political movement, no social philosophy, no religious system has ever genuinely offered what the gospel offers: full belonging, acceptance, and inclusion to every person from every background without exclusion. We have to embrace this and submit to this truth. But here's where we're getting it wrong. We've separated the inclusivity from its only source able to make it happen. We offer belonging without the gospel. We offer belonging without the gospel, and it's the gospel that makes belonging actually possible. You see, we build diverse communities, welcoming all types of people in, and we call it mission. But here's the problem: we do that without ever calling people to the king, whose death and resurrection is the only thing that actually breaks down the dividing wall. We're trying to bring them across. You see, Philip didn't run to the chariot just to make the eunuch feel included. No, he ran to show him Jesus. Because relational inclusion without Jesus isn't the gospel. Let me hear that. Let me say that again. Relational inclusion without Jesus is not the gospel. It's just a more cleaned up version of what the world already offers. And so the most inclusive thing that we can do for any unlikely person is bring them the gospel of Jesus. It's the only thing that can actually include them in what matters most, the kingdom of God. But others of us, we we actually build barriers that keep unlikely people out. We build barriers that keep unlikely people out. The gospel's radical inclusivity has a counterpart to it. Not only is the gospel the most inclusive thing in human history, but it's equal, non-negotiable, is that the gospel is also the most exclusive thing in human history. Jesus said it plainly. No one comes to the Father except through me. The gospel doesn't offer multiple paths, it offers one: a narrow path, a costly path, an offensive path to every human instinct that is built towards self-sufficiency and rugged individualism and this desire for autonomy in our life. The gospel says there's one road, and anybody can walk it. Only through Jesus, only through repentance and faith in Jesus. You see, church, there's only one way into the kingdom of God, and it is through the cross of his son. And that exclusivity is not a problem to be apologized for. It is the most loving thing that we can offer the outsider to say, come in, come into the kingdom. There's one road, but the gate is open. It's what makes the gospel the gospel. And so the barrier of the gospel is real and present before us. It stands as an offense before all of those who do not love God. But here's where we get it wrong. We add barriers that the gospel never created. We add barriers that the gospel never created. We build walls around our communities that have nothing to do with Jesus and everything to do with our own comfort, our own culture, and our own preferences, and then we dress it up in this theological language as if we're protecting something sacred here. The eunuch had one real barrier between himself and full belonging in God's family. And the gospel demolished that barrier completely. You see, church, we're not called to add to it. We're not called to add to it. We are called to bring people to the only barrier that matters. The gospel. And then show them the one who has broken through it on their behalf. You see, the gospel is exclusive enough on its own. It doesn't need our help making it harder to get to. And here's the good news for us, church. Jesus broke through every barrier to reach the most unlikely. Us. Us. When Philip opened the scroll and began with Isaiah 53, he was showing the eunuch something that was hidden in plain sight for centuries. This is Jesus. The suffering servant that Isaiah saw, silent before his accusers, humiliated, stripped of justice, led to his death without any resistance. That was Jesus. Not because he had no power to stop it, because this was always the plan to destroy the barrier that kept us from God. It was the Father's plan. Conceived before the foundation of the world, brought about for the redemption of a people that no human system would have ever chosen to belong to. Jesus wasn't restrained by barriers. No, he broke through every single one at the cost of his own life. So the barrier of our sin was broken. The barrier of God's righteous judgment and his just wrath was absorbed in his body. The barrier of death itself was demolished three days later when he rose again from the tomb and walked out reigning and victorious. You see, every wall that stood between a holy God and an unholy people was torn down. Not partially, not with still some of our own work and labor to pull bricks down. No, it was completely destroyed, finally and forever. And who did Jesus do this for? Not the likely. Not the likely among us who we looked at and saw all this potential for life and flourishing and fruitfulness. No, he did it for the unlikely, who everyone else looked at and said, that's just a desert heart. The ones carrying barriers that they didn't choose and they couldn't remove, even if they tried to. You and me. And so here's my prayer for us. That we would follow the spirit to the unlikely, seeing no barrier to the gospel's reach. That we would follow the spirit to the unlikely, seeing no barrier to the gospel's reach. I love what the end of this passage says, that the eunuch went on rejoicing. He went on rejoicing. That's what the gospel does to those who receive it and respond to it. It doesn't just include people. No, it transforms their every way of life. It fills the space that those barriers occupied with something infinitely better. Joy, belonging, family, a name that will never be taken from them. And now you and I, and we get to be like Philip, filled with the Spirit, attuned to his voice, eager and ready to obey, looking out at the world around us, wondering, Lord, what desert place will you lead me to today? What unlikely person will you have me go to, to run to, to show them the beauty of Jesus? You see, we get to be the people who join God on his mission to redeem and to reconcile all of creation to himself. And so when we go, we go with the gospel. The gospel, the only thing that actually breaks through, that actually includes the unlikely, the only thing that actually transforms. And so, church, follow the Spirit, go to the unlikely, and just trust Him, trust the gospel to do what only it can do sprout life in a desert land. Let's pray.