“The Book of Acts - Making a Good Start”

June 15, 2025

“Good News for the Outsiders”
On many occasions Jesus warned his followers that his way would bring persecution. 
When Stephen is martyred he looks like Jesus; not simply because it says he had a face like an angel, but because he prayed for the forgiveness of his persecutors while they were killing him, (just as Jesus had prayed on the cross for those responsible for his death).
The persecution scatters Jesus’ followers out from Jerusalem, yet everywhere they go they keep living the way He taught them, and doing the same things that get them into trouble. 
In Samaria the people respond very positively to this holy mischief, and God’s Spirit is active and unhindered.
Then Philip encounters someone unexpected.
Imagine if you had been taught that because of something wrong with you; something you could not change, that you just didn’t belong in the Assembly of God’s People (that you could never belong). 
Would you still try to be as close as you were allowed? As close as you could “get away with”? 
Would you continue to study scripture intently, trying to understand the nature of this God who seemed to hold you at arms length? 
Would you refuse to let go of wrestling for a relationship with Him? 
Would you still be hungry for God? 
Or would you give up and retreat from the rejection?
What is it in this Ethiopian eunuch that makes him seek God so tenaciously? 
What is it in the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah that speaks to him, forever changing his living relationship with God?
For this week… Read Acts 8 and meditate on it.
Going deeper… Read Isaiah 53. (The passage the eunuch is reading with Philip.) Ask yourself, who is Isaiah talking to? Who is he talking about? Who did the first readers understand Isaiah to be referring to in the passage?
 And going deeper still… read Leviticus 21:16-24 & Deuteronomy 23:1. If you were a eunuch, how would you hear those words? 
Then read Isaiah 56:1-8 a few times, imagining yourself as the eunuch. How would you hear these words?

— Pastor Joe —