August 4, 1999
LIFE & WORK: Two who found
their names in the same story
___Acts 8:26-40
___By Brett Younger
___Lake Shore Baptist Church, Waco
___The secretary of the treasury of Ethiopia is returning from Jerusalem--disappointed because he has not been allowed in the temple. Leviticus 21:20 and Deuteronomy 23:1 deny entry to eunuchs (and go into more detail concerning emasculation than some of us are comfortable reading). He travels all that way, and they won't let him in. Imagine someone standing outside the door of the church: "Could you bring me a bulletin or take notes?"
___Now the Ethiopian is on a desert road in the middle of nowhere looking through the Bible for his name, for the home he sought at the temple, for a story that will make sense of his life and for the God who is calling him.
___ The chariot passes a bewildered-looking man shielding his eyes from the dust. The man starts chasing the slow-moving limousine down the street. Philip gets close enough to recognize what the eunuch is reading and shouts something like: "I've read that. It's good." The secretary is starting to feel he could read every word ever written in Hebrew without understanding any of it, so he's glad to have someone with whom to talk about it.
___The Ethiopian tells Philip he could use help on one particular passage: "Like a sheep to the slaughter, or a lamb before the shearer is silent, so he did not open his mouth. In his humiliation he was deprived of justice. Who can speak of his descendants? For his life was taken from the earth" (vv. 32-33).
___The eunuch recognizes the person in Isaiah is a lot like him. The eunuch won't have descendants either. By accident or choice or royal decree, he is never going to have a family. This story has his name in it: "Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or somebody else?" (v. 34).
___"This is about Jesus. Like you, he had no family, but he created the largest family in the world."
___Their conversation lasts longer than the Reader's Digest condensed version Luke gives us. Maybe Philip and the Ethiopian found their way to a passage a couple of pages farther along: "Let no foreigner who has bound himself to the Lord say, 'The Lord will surely exclude me. ... 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" (Isaiah 56:3,5).
___The eunuch is so delighted with what he hears that he asks, "Why shouldn't I give this a try right here and now and have you baptize me?" Philip wonders what the folks at the associational office will say. The church hasn't officially decided grace is for everyone, but if the Ethiopian has found his name on the guest list, who is Philip to say he isn't invited?
___The Ethiopian is baptized because he found his name in the story--the same story in which we find our names.
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