Desperately Seeking Something

Sermon for May 10, 2009 The 5th Sunday of Easter Text:  Acts 8:24-40 Title:  Desperately Seeking Something A.   During my nine-year pastorate in Virginia Beach, we started a ministry called PAWS, which stands for "Pets Are Walking Saints."  The idea, which I unashamedly stole from a church in Alabama, involved getting people and their pets to visit both adults and children in hospitals and senior care centers.   The theory is that there is nothing like a well-behaved and affectionate furry, four-legged friend to bring God's healing love to people who are ill or lonely.  After blessing 15 dogs and their owners one Sunday morning, the teams began their visitation ministry, always with prior permission, of course.  I'll never forget one patient they visited.   She was in the hospital for bypass surgery, but things had not gone well.  She had been put in ICU after the surgery, where she had barely moved, or even opened her eyes.   Days passed with little improvement, and her daughter was getting concerned.  So she called the Church, to see if one of the PAWS pets could come visit her mother.  Koyla, a 145-pound shaggy white dog, and her owner were assigned to go visit her.  Koyla crawled right up into the woman's hospital bed and snuggled in beside her. There she lay beside her patient, nuzzling her warm and furry body in next to her. The nurses gathered around to watch, tense and concerned. After a period of time, the lady began to move.   Her hand inching toward the dog and she began to stroke its fur.  Within minutes she was smiling and talking, calling the huge dog her friend.   The nurses stood close by and monitored her vital signs.  Amazingly, her blood pressure began to go down, down, down to normal levels.  Soon she was out of the hospital, and doing fine.   B.  Few creatures are more obedient to their masters than a well-trained dog.  And when any creature, whether it be a dog or a person, is obedient to their Master, great things can happen.  Another way of saying this even more clearly is that when we get out of the way and let God work through us, miracles will happen.  The Kingdom of God is best advanced (and indeed, we are most joyous) when we see our lives as being like clay in the hands of the Master Potter.   Case in point – this morning's passage of Scripture.  Philip the Evangelist (not to be confused with Philip the Apostle) is mentioned only in the book of Acts, where he is recognized for his evangelistic effectiveness among the gentiles.  Luke reports in Acts chapter 21 that Philip had four unmarried daughters who lived with their father and who possessed the gift of prophecy, and that Paul lodged with them at Caesarea on his last missionary journey to Jerusalem.   Philip was part of the early church that fled Jerusalem following Stephen's death, as recorded in Acts chapter 8.  He went from there to Samaria, where he converted many non-Jews to Christianity through his preaching and miracle working, including the magician Simon Magus. It was from Samaria that Philip was instructed by an angel to go "toward the south" to a desert road that leads from Jerusalem to Gaza.  He wasn't told why he was going – he just went.  While on that road, Philip encountered a caravan, transporting a high official of the Ethiopian court.  In those days, Ethiopia was the region south of Egypt, and was considered by many ancient writers (Luke included) to mark the southern boundary of the known world.   It was considered in that day to be a source of wealth, power and exotic peoples.  This official was the treasurer, part of the Queen's inner circle of power.  He was obviously a man of influence and authority, a perfect person for the Holy Spirit to zero in on through the evangelist Philip.  As we look at the story through the 20/20 vision of hindsight, we see that God had a plan that included all of Ethiopia. Now it is not coincidental that this official was reading from the Suffering Servant passage in the Book of Isaiah.   Luke, the author of Acts, describes this man as a eunuch, probably a castrated male.  For this fellow, his condition was definitely a double-edged sword.  It gave him access to the highest levels of power, because his condition made the queen confident that she would be quite safe around him.   But it also prohibited him from being admitted to the assembly of the Lord, according to the Law as defined in Deuteronomy 23:1.  So this seeker was relegated to the ranks of the "God-fearers", as the Apostle Paul called them.  He could sit on the back pew, so to speak, but he could never become a Jew.  His condition marked him in Jewish circles as a victim of supreme misfortune.  Viewed from this standpoint, his life was a tragedy; his condition prevented him from ever becoming a part of God's chosen people.  But God loved this man; Christ died for him.  No one is unacceptable to the Lord.  No one falls outside the grace and saving love of God.  We in the Church need to have this fact burned into our hearts and into our minds so we never shut the truly repentant believer out from hearing the Gospel message.  God's grace is made plain in the one oracle in the entire Bible devoted to eunuchs, Isaiah 56:1-8, where it says, in part, "Do not let the eunuchs say 'I am a dry tree', for thus says the Lord, 'To the eunuchs who keep My Sabbaths, and choose what pleases Me, and who hold fast My covenant, even to them will I give a place and a name in my house; better than that of sons and daughters will I give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off."   So what was unacceptable to men was acceptable to God.  How wonderful is the love the Lord has for us all!  We can all become the forgiven and transformed children of God, regardless of where we have been and what we have done.  Urged by the (Holy) Spirit to join the Ethiopian, Philip interprets a passage from Isaiah about the Suffering Servant in light of the Gospel about Jesus.  On the basis of Philip's testimony, the eunuch confesses faith in Christ and begs to be baptized, fulfilling Jesus' desire as expressed in the Great Commission to preach the Gospel to the whole world.    On a trip to the Middle East a number of years ago, I was taken to the well that tradition says is the same one Philip baptized the Ethiopian official in.  As we heard this morning's passage once again read to us, a military helicopter flew overhead, only a hundred yards or so off the ground.   The helicopter was both impressive and terrifying all at the same time.  It was a stark reminder of the reality of violence in the world.  The place that so powerfully symbolizes new life in Christ stood in stark relief that even in the face of violence, the Lord came into the world to defeat both sin and the Devil, bringing peace and everlasting life to all those who believe in Jesus. Philip's was suddenly taken away by the Holy Spirit to his next stop, the town of Azotus, located in what is today known as the Gaza Strip.   From there, Philip continued to move northward in his missionary route, eventually stopping at Caesarea, an important port on the coast of the Mediterranean and location of the Roman governor of Palestine.   C.   My friends, this passage gives us all kinds of insight about the role of the Holy Spirit in the lives of God's disciples.  I would like to propose that this passage teaches us three ways that the Spirit shapes the life of the believer.   1) First of all, the Holy Spirit gives us power.  Think about it – this royal official, probably second only to the Queen himself over a nation of wealth and power, was humbled by the words of Philip.  This is because he was empowered by the Spirit.  The power can transform us from the faint-hearted to the fearless!  Remember earlier in Acts, when the Apostle Peter and the others experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit, there "appeared to them tongues as of fire, and one sat upon each of them, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit."  Peter then preached to the masses, the same man who only forty-three days earlier had denied Jesus three times like a coward, preached boldly, and 3,000 were converted.  The Spirit sets us on fire, gives us power, and empowers us for mission and ministry.  Like the battery on a car, the Spirit gives us the juice to go into motion for God and for the Kingdom.   We receive the Holy Spirit by asking for Him to come into our lives.  Envision our lives of being like a glass filled with water.  We have to pour out the water before the glass can be re-filled with juice.  We have to confess our sins to God, yield our lives to the leading of the Spirit, and ask to be filled with that same Spirit.  The Spirit empowers us by giving us gifts, and sets us free to use them in the life and ministry of the Church.  Twenty-Seven gifts are mentioned in the NT, including Administration, Teaching, Preaching, Healing, Speaking in Tongues, Prophecy, Prayer, Helps, and the like.  God gives us these gifts specific to the time, the place, and the mission demanded of us, to use for the edification of God's people.   2) Secondly, the Holy Spirit gives us guidance.  Philip was just along for the ride, when you get right down to it.  And angel directed him where to go.  The Spirit got him and the official together on the desert road.  And then God moved him on to Azotus.  Now this might be more dramatic than we have experienced – certainly more than I've experienced – but nonetheless, the Spirit moves to direct our steps.  Sometimes we have to quiet our lives and listen in order to hear what God wants us to do – our prayers are sometimes way too wordy!.  Sometimes God's leading comes in the form of a closed door, that is, a circumstance we might want that is denied to us, like a certain promotion.  If one is walking in God's way, however, one can oftentimes feel (with prayer) that a certain direction is right and another one isn't.  But rest assured – God's guidance for our lives is always best.  God only wants what helps us grow closer to Him, and to grow a servant heart.  And God wants us to be joyous.   I once knew a certain mom who rushed over to help her 2-year old daughter put her blouse on.  Somehow her arm had got stuck through the neck hole of her blouse. She stubbornly refused to let go of the shirt as she shouted, making it impossible to correct the situation. Suddenly, she realized that sometimes we treat God the same way. When we pray for a certain outcome, we always have to remember that God might have different plans, and we only hinder His work when we continue to clutch our own plans.   3) Lastly, the Holy Spirit can transform our lives from what they are to what God wants them to be.  Actually, this has to happen, if we are filled with the Holy Spirit, and if we seek to be led by the same Spirit.  It is the former Pharisee and persecutor of the Church, the Apostle Paul, who found himself saying to the Philippian Christians, "What things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ.  Yet indeed I also count all things loss for he excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him…"  This transformation doesn't happen all at once.  And sometimes we feel like we are idling in neutral, spiritually speaking, or that we are even backsliding.  It takes a lifetime to grow into the image of Christ.  It takes dwelling close to the Lord, allowing the Spirit to enter into our lives through prayer, Bible study, serving the needs of others, receiving Communion, and gathering with other believers for support.  It's all too easy to shove God on to the sidelines of life when all is going well.  Sometimes the Lord has to use tribulation to get our attention, get us off our high horse of thinking we can do it all, and then say to us, in effect, "Ok, now let's get back on the right road."  I find that human ego believes fervently in a Messiah, a Savior, only the human ego thinks it's me!  But the truth is, there is only room for one Messiah, and His name is Jesus. London businessman Lindsay Clegg told the story of a warehouse property he was selling. The building had been empty for months and needed repairs. Vandals had damaged the doors, smashed the windows, and strewn trash around the interior. As he showed a prospective buyer the property, Clegg took pains to say that he would replace the broken windows, bring in a crew to correct any structural damage, and clean out the garbage. "Forget about the repairs," the buyer said. "When I buy this place, I'm going to build something completely different. I don't want the building; I want the site." When we become God's, the old life is over. He makes all things new. All he wants is the site and the permission to build. This is a good day to start the Divine construction process.  It may have to start with destruction.  But God will no doubt make all things new again.  Amen.   Keith Almond P.O. Box 4388 Leesburg, VA  20177 703-344-3569 almond_keith@yahoo.com