church

INI
20th Sunday after Pentecost
October 14, 2012
Ascension Lutheran Church, Tacoma WA
Paul Naumann, Pastor

A MOST UNLIKELY EVANGELISM
Acts 8:26-39

Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. Amen.
Today we consider the Word of in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter eight,
beginning with the 26th verse, as follows:

Now an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, "Arise and go toward the
south along the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza." This is desert.
27 So he arose and went. And behold, a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great
authority under Candace the queen of the Ethiopians, who had charge of all her
treasury, and had come to Jerusalem to worship, 28 was returning. And sitting
in his chariot, he was reading Isaiah the prophet. 29 Then the Spirit said to
Philip, "Go near and overtake this chariot." 30 So Philip ran to him, and heard
him reading the prophet Isaiah, and said, "Do you understand what you are
reading?" 31 And he said, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" And he
asked Philip to come up and sit with him.32 The place in the Scripture which
he read was this: "He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; And as a lamb before
its shearer is silent, So He opened not His mouth. 33 In His humiliation His
justice was taken away, And who will declare His generation? For His life is
taken from the earth." 34 So the eunuch answered Philip and said, "I ask you,
of whom does the prophet say this, of himself or of some other man?" 35 Then
Philip opened his mouth, and beginning at this Scripture, preached Jesus to him.
36 Now as they went down the road, they came to some water. And the eunuch
said, "See, here is water. What hinders me from being baptized?" 37 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." 38 So he commanded the
chariot to stand still. And both Philip and the eunuch went down into the
water, and he baptized him. 39 Now when they came up out of the water, the
Spirit of the Lord caught Philip away, so that the eunuch saw him no more; and
he went on his way rejoicing. This is the Word of God.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, the Savior in Whom we believe, and Whom we
preach to others, Dear Fellow Redeemed,

Some events that take place in life are so astonishingly unlikely as to be nearly
unbelievable. And yet they happen. Several years ago, two women arrived in the
maternity ward of a large Tulsa hospital, and each gave birth to a baby boy. The
births were about four hours apart. "Not so unlikely," you say. But it turns out
these two women were already acquainted. For they had met on the same day
exactly two years previously, when they had both given birth to baby girls, in
the same hospital, one hour apart. Another example - some of you are bridge
players - what do you think the likelihood is of being dealt a hand that contains
all thirteen spades in the deck? Mathematically, the odds are one in 630 billion.
And yet bridge expert Oswald Jacoby reports that it happens relatively
frequently, about a dozen times a year in the U.S. alone.

Incredibly unlikely things seem to happen with regularity in our world. Some of
them are utterly astonishing. But, as Christians, we don't expect our evangelism
to be one of them. You know - the way we reach out to others and share the
Gospel. We all know we're supposed to do it, and we all want to do it. But I
think we sometimes get the wrong picture of evangelism in our head, as if my
personal outreach is always going to follow some conventional, predictable
pattern. Well, our text for today challenges that kind of thinking. It
demonstrates to us that the only thing predictable about witnessing Christ, is
that there's nothing predictable about it! That's why our theme for this morning
is:

A MOST UNLIKELY EVANGELISM
The Holy Spirit sends you:
I. To the most unlikely places,
II. And the most unlikely people,
III. With a totally unlikely message,
IV. Producing astonishing results!

Personal evangelism is part skill, part art. It is taught by the Holy Spirit. Some
of you have been doing it for a long time, and are pretty good at it. Some may
be just starting out. The first thing you find out about sharing the Gospel is tha
t the Holy Spirit often sends you to the most unlikely places. Philip was one of
the early evangelists who were scattered throughout the ancient near east when
the Christians were first persecuted in Jerusalem. He had been working and
preaching in Samaria, the region north of Jerusalem, which was unlikely enough
all by itself. For as you know, Jews like Philip normally had nothing to do with
Samaritans. But now the Holy Spirit gave him what must have seemed like a
supremely unlikely assignment: An angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying,
"Arise and go toward the south along the road which goes down from Jerusalem
to Gaza." And then the interesting comment This is desert.

We're simply told that Philip arose and went. An d it may be that he got up
without a question in his mind and proceeded where the Spirit led him. But I
wonder. I wonder if Philip might not have said in his mind, "NOW WHAT?!
Samaria's not an unlikely enough spot to do evangelism, now you're taking me
to the middle of the desert? This is DESERT!" And you may find yourself
feeling the same thing sometimes about your personal outreach with the
Gospel. "Lord, this is desert! How can I possibly share the Gospel here, where I
work, where I go to school, where I spend my time? It's just really unlikely that
I'm ever going to find an opportunity to witness about Jesus here. This is
desert!"

But ours is A MOST UNLIKELY EVANGELISM. No matter where you are,
there's one thing you can be sure of: you wouldn't be there unless the Lord had
work for you to do. Like Philip, Scripture says the Holy Spirit has your work all
lined up for you. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good
works, which G od prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. -- Eph
2:10.

And here's something else. The Holy Spirit not only sends us to the most
unlikely places to evangelize, He often sends us to (what may seem to us to be)
the most unlikely people. Who did He send Philip to? A man of Ethiopia, a
eunuch of great authority under Candace the queen of the Ethiopians, who had
charge of all her treasury, and had come to Jerusalem to worship, was returning.
And sitting in his chariot, he was reading Isaiah the prophet. "A eunuch of great
authority" indicates a very high official in the court of the Ethiopian queen.
This was a VIP. But he was a black man, an African, and how strange do you
think that was for Phillip? Philip had probably just gotten used to the idea of
sharing=2 0the Gospel with people who weren't strictly Jewish, and now God
wants him to speak the Gospel to this foreigner? It must have seemed a most
unlikely person to evangelize.

But he shouldn't have been surprised, and neither should we. For ours is A
MOST UNLIKELY EVANGELISM. The Holy Spirit often sends us to the
most unlikely people, people we never would have guessed would be likely
recipients of the Gospel. It could be the person you're sitting next to on a plane,
the person who bags your food at the grocery store, or the person who sits
across the aisle from you at work. You just don't know, and it really doesn't
matter, does it? One Christian writer said, "Of those of whom we know nothing
else, we do know this, that they have souls." They have souls. All the people
you meet in the course of your day, unlikely as they may seem, are candidates
for the Gospel, for they all have souls. Christ died for them.

Philip was sent by the Holy Spirit to an unlikely place and an unlikely person.
But strangest of all was the content of the message he was sent to bring.
Phillip's and ours is A MOST UNLIKELY EVANGELISM, thirdly, because we
are sent with a totally unlikely message.

Philip …heard him reading the prophet Isaiah, and said, "Do you understand
what you are reading?" 31 And he said, "How can I, unless someone guides
me?" And he asked Philip to come up and sit with him. 32 The place in the S
cripture which he read was this: "He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; And as
a lamb before its shearer is silent, So He opened not His mouth. 33 In His
humiliation His justice was taken away, And who will declare His generation?
For His life is taken from the earth."

The Ethiopian had gotten hold of a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He had been to
Jerusalem to worship, so he was probably what was known as a "proselyte of
the gate." That is, a foreigner who has converted to Judaism. He had evidently
purchased the scroll of Isaiah, and was poring over it as he traveled, trying to
figure out what it meant. The passage he was reading came from Isaiah 53:7-8.
How strange it must have seemed to him! How unlikely! The gods of the
world's other religions were ruthless and proud, so what could the prophet be
speaking out when he described a sheep going meekly and silently to the
slaughter? What sort of religion was this?!
=0 A

I wonder if you've ever visited a slaughterhouse. Necessary as they are, there's
something chilling and dreadful about the process of turning livestock into
food. For on one side of the slaughterhouse you have pens full of living, healthy
livestock. And on the other side trucks, hauling away the processed meat. The
process is inevitable and relentless. Once the animals meekly start down that
last chute, there's no going back, and there's no question about what's going to
happen to them. I would submit to you that this is the exact condition that we
sinful human beings find ourselves in, by nature. the Bible says that "all have
sinned and fallen short of the glory of God," and "The wages of sin is death."
Left to ourselves, we like all humans would be headed down the dreadful and
inevitable path to hell, the just punishment for those who sin against God.
But then something totally unlikely happened. And this was the message that
Philip brought to the Ethiopian that day. Beginning with the very passage he
was reading at that moment, Philip told him about the Lamb of God who takes
away the sins of the world. He shared with him the incredible good news, the
wonderful, totally unlikely Gospel of Jesus Christ. He shared with him the same
message I'm sharing with you this morning: that "God made him who knew no
sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."
That instead of sending us down the chute to the slaughterhouse, God in his
grace and mercy sent his son Jesus instead! He was the Lamb sent to the
slaughter in our place, who meekly bowed his head and walked on under the
weight of His cross, all the way to Calvary. There He died to redeem us. What
parent would sacrifice his own innocent child to save someone else? Yet that's
exactly what God did for you! Paul says For when we were still without
strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For scarcely for a righteous
man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to di e.
8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still
sinners, Christ died for us. -- Romans 5:6-8.

It was, and remains A MOST UNLIKELY EVANGELISM. The same
wonderful message that the Holy Spirit sent Philip with, he sends you with, too.
You are to proclaim to others the same blessed message that has saved you!
The message that salvation is available through faith in Jesus Christ. That He is
the substitute for sinners, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the
world. Was Philip's task hard? Well, when you think about it, it was the Holy
Spirit did all the work! He gave Philip the opportunity, He sent Philip out there,
He gave him the message, and He worked faith in the heart of the Ethiopian.
Like the text says, all Philip had to do was open his mouth and speak! And
that's your job too. It's not complicated. It's as simple as Jesus' instructions:
"Go and tell what great things God has done for you." -- Luke 8:39. You may
think, "What can I accomplish?" By yourself, nothing. But with the power of
the Holy Spirit working through the Word, there's nothing that can't be
accomplished! Unlikely as it may seem, you will very often find this message
producing astonishing results!

Someone pointed out that that chariot was getting pretty crowded. Because by
this point it contained not only Philip and the Ethiopian, but Isaiah the prophet,
the Holy Spirit, and Jesus as well! The Ethiopian heard the message about
Jesus, and he believed it. The Holy Spirit worked faith in his heart through the
Word spoken by Philip. When they came to some water, the Ethiopian said,
"See, here is water. What hinders me from being baptized?" 37 Then Philip
said, "If you believe with all your heart, you may." And he answered and said,
"I believe20that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." 38 So he commanded the
chariot to stand still. And both Philip and the eunuch went down into the
water, and he baptized him. 39 Now when they came up out of the water, the
Spirit of the Lord caught Philip away, so that the eunuch saw him no more; and
he went on his way rejoicing.

This was about the most unlikely convert to Christianity a person could ever
imagine. Then again, ours is A MOST UNLIKELY EVANGELISM. So we
shouldn't be surprised when it brings astonishing results. When you speak the
Gospel to people, stand back, because miracles are likely to happen! To this
day, I still find myself astonished at the unlikely people that the Holy Spirit
brings to faith through the Gospel. You can probably think of some pretty
surprising examples in your own experience. And by the way, we see once again
that the Holy Spirit always works this astonishing miracle of faith through the
means of grace, the Gospel in Word and Sacrament. He kindles faith in the
Ethiopian's he art through the Word of God, and seals and confirms him as a
member of the Kingdom of Christ by the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. Unlikely
message. Astonishing results!

And did you notice? When Philip left him, what's the last we hear about the
Ethiopian? He went on his way rejoicing. He went on his way rejoicing! We can
understand that, can't we? When you leave the church parking lot this morning,
I fully expect you to "go on your way rejoicing." If you're not, it means you
weren't paying attention. For this Good News is for you, too! You, too, have
been delivered from death and hell, just like the Ethiopian. In another passage a
little later in Isaiah, he describes the blessed state of redeemed believers just
like you: "For you shall go out with joy, And be led out with peace; The
mountains and the hills Shall break forth into singing before you, And all the
trees of the field shall clap their hands. -- Isaiah 55:12

Speaking of things that are unlikely: horseracing is a business that lives or dies
by likelihoods, better known as "odds." In the history of horseracing, it would
be hard to find a more unlikely hero than Donerail. Donerail was a bay colt who
went to the gate of the 1913 Kentucky Derby at the ridiculously long odds of
91-to-1. Most racing insiders thought he shouldn't have been there in the first
place. But unlikely as it was, Donerail won by half a length, and a person who
bet a thousand on him that day would have taken home the astonishing amount
of nearly one hundred thousand dollars. Wouldn't it be great to have known
that ahead of time! Well, I'd submit to you that you're involved in a venture
even less likely than that, but whose payoff is guaranteed. It's your personal
Gospel outreach. It's a most unlikely evangelism - for you'll find the Holy Spirit
sending you to the most unlikely places and the most unlikely people, with a
totally unlikely message - the Gospel of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.
But where the unlikelihood stops. For where that Gospel is preached - by
pastors in the pulpit, by neighbors over the back fence, or by employees sitting
across the break table at work - there God will accomplish His results. And
those results will often be absolutely astonishing! God grant that it may be so in
our lives, AMEN.