All are included because of Christ’s death on the cross
by Julian Mann, TCW:
The man in our New Testament reading from the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 8v26-40) was excluded from something he desperately wanted to be part of. But then he found himself wonderfully included and our passage from the book of Isaiah (52v13-53v12) this morning was right at the heart of his life-changing experience.
In Acts chapter 8, we heard how Philip the evangelist, a bringer of God’s good news, drew alongside the chariot of an important Ethiopian official who was returning home from Jerusalem. This man in the stretch limousine was in effect the Queen of Ethiopia’s George Osborne – her Chancellor of the Exchequer; he was in charge of her treasury.
He had gone to Jerusalem to worship. Though himself a Gentile, a non-Jew, he was a God-fearer. He believed in the God of Israel, the God of the Jews and wanted to worship the Lord God at his Temple in Jerusalem. But because of his personal situation he had had to do that on his own away from the Temple. He was completely excluded from the Temple precincts.
Why? Because he was a eunuch, a very common requirement in those days for male officials working for a female ruler. But for him that meant exclusion from where he wanted to be, in the Temple worshipping the Lord with the Lord’s people. He was excluded because the Old Testament Law – Deuteronomy chapter 23v1 – was crystal clear that an emasculated man, a eunuch, should not enter the assembly of the Lord.
So this man was excluded from the worshipping community of the Lord, in which he was desperate to be included. When Philip the evangelist drew alongside him, this excluded man was reading the Bible from a scroll, reading aloud Isaiah chapter 53v7&8, words quoted in Acts chpt 8 – ‘he was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as 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 for his descendants? For his life was taken from the earth’ (NIV).
The excluded eunuch then asked Philip about whom the prophet was saying this, – about himself or someone else? (Acts 8v34).
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