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Grace Community Church, Arlington, TX

12.8.24 Your Life can Touch Greatness

12.8.24 Your Life can Touch Greatness

Locations & Times

Grace Community Church, Arlington, TX

801 W Bardin Rd, Arlington, TX 76017, USA

Sunday 9:30 AM

Sunday 11:00 AM


We have spent a few messages recently focusing on how the church began. Today I want us to take a look at how the church grew.

As we enter into this Christmas season, I want us to remember what the angel told the shepherds,

This good news of a Savior is for all the people. All the people of the earth. So, how is that message going to get from Bethlehem to all the nations?
Well, God has a plan. God is the one who is passionately pursuing all the people groups.

The very first Gentile convert recorded for us in the book of Acts is a black man from Ethiopia. “Ethiopian” means- “black in complexion” “black faced”.

He is identified as an Ethiopian only at the beginning of the story.
But then he refers to him repeatedly as an Eunuch. All the way through the rest of the story.
That is what the Word of God wants us to know about this man. He is a Eunuch.

And somehow, perhaps through some Jews that had been scattered to the nations of the earth, this man had come to know that the Lord God of Israel, the one that he had come to worship, accepts worship in Jerusalem. And almost certainly, his reasons for coming to Jerusalem were spiritual. This man was on a quest. He is looking for the true God.
And so he makes this hard journey to Jerusalem, hoping to offer sacrifices for his sins at the Temple. Almost equally certain, however, is the fact that when he arrived in Jerusalem, he would have been disappointed.
Why? Well, first of all, he was an Ethiopian, so he couldn’t enter the court beyond the Court of the Gentiles. So, he was forced to look at things from a great distance.
(But he had even a greater hurdle in his physical disability.)
This man could not approach the place where he had come to find God. It was off limits for him. He was excluded from the Temple and from the sacrifices. And now, disappointed, he is on his way home.
But here he is, sitting in his chariot, reading the scroll of Isaiah. Struggling to understand the prophet Isaiah. He had not given up. He is still seeking to know God.
And as he reads, he arrives at Isaiah 53:7-8.
And as he reads these verses, he has a question. And he addresses his question to Phillip, who has come along side of him. “Who is the prophet talking about? Himself or some other man?”
The Eunuch is intrigued that part of the pain and suffering of this man is that he would die childless. He knew the same pain.
In verse 8, the Eunuch read, that Jesus died without descendants. So, how is it in verse 10 that He sees His offspring and prolongs his days? He was dead. This is precisely the place that Phillip would preach to him the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
His life was cut short without descendants in verse 8, but He was awakened from death in the resurrection to behold His offspring in verse 10. Jesus prolonged His days when He rose from
the dead. And as the Ethiopian Eunuch comes to faith, Jesus beholds His seed, His offspring.
And when you and I came to faith, He sees His offspring. He beholds His seed as He sitting at the right hand of the Father. Because He is there in resurrection glory, watching the accumulation of His seed.
Now, as Philip preaches Jesus to the Eunuch, they begin to pass out of the dessert into a place with water. And in verse 36, as the excitement builds in this Eunuch and faith rises up in his heart, he says, “Look, here is water; what is there to hinder me from being baptized?’ Acts 8:36
So, he is saying something like this: “Look, I don’t want to be disappointed again. I’ve already been judged as a foreigner and a Eunuch. And on those grounds, I was an outcast in Jerusalem. Is there some hidden, fine print, that can keep me from faith in this Jesus and being baptized in his name?”
That is his question. And Phillip’s response in V. 37 is “Just believe!”
And the Eunuch emphatically declares, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God!”
And he and Phillip get out, they both go down into the water. The Eunuch is baptized. And then as they come out of the water, Phillip is dramatically and instantly snatched away by the Holy Spirit and the Eunuch sees him no more.
And the Ethiopian Eunuch heads back to Africa with the gospel. Because this is good news of great joy for all peoples.
The Word of God says that…8:39 “He went on his way rejoicing.” Why did he go on his way rejoicing? What happened next?
Phillip had directed this man through an understanding of Isaiah 53. Now, don’t you think it is fair to assume that this man, who has just received this new understanding of the prophet Isaiah, and has just met his Lord in a saving way. He is so excited by what he has just read in Isaiah 53. Don’t you think that he is going to continue to read?
Now, how would those words land on the ears of this Eunuch? Now, even though it is talking about a woman here, he had felt the same emotional wounds of a barren woman. He was unable to father children just as a barren woman was unable to mother children. Yet, here the barren one is promised so many children that they will have to expand the size of their tent.
Now, who is this barren one, who is now all the sudden going to have all these children? Who is it? Well, Isaiah doesn’t tell us who it is, but the Apostle Paul does.
(Paul quotes this very verse in Galatians 4.)
That is the earthly Jerusalem, and the bondage that existed because of the Pharisaical Judaism.
But then he goes on to say in the next verse. Gal 4:26 But the Jerusalem above is free; she is our mother. This is the heavenly Jerusalem. Paul is saying that we are born of the heavenly Jerusalem. And then he quotes Isa 54:1
What Paul is saying is that this once childless woman that now rejoices is the heavenly Jerusalem that gives life to all the children of promise. The Eunuch could now rejoice because he was a citizen of a better Jerusalem then the one that had rejected him.
What is being told here is that that money is unnecessary for your acceptance in the heavenly Jerusalem.
The two reasons that he was excluded in the earthly Jerusalem are gone in the heavenly Jerusalem. He was a foreigner who was excluded. He was a Eunuch who was held back from the assembly of the Lord.
And now those reasons for exclusion are gone. Can you imagine the joy that he must have felt at this time.
God promises this Eunuch an everlasting name. Why? Because he has everlasting life.
God promises this foreigner, this Eunuch, who has joined himself to the Lord, that he can be a priest in his new house. The priesthood of the believer. Becoming part of a new Temple. A Temple built up with living stones.
How much did that encounter change this man?
Do you know what the tradition is concerning this man?
The tradition of the early church and the early church fathers was that this Eunuch went on to become the father of the church in Ethiopia. The church that become the Coptic Church.
It exists to this day. This man became the father of the church in that part of the world, and it is still around today. It has been one of the most persecuted churches in all of history.
But the rise of Islam couldn’t stop them in the 700 and 800s. The church survived persecution after persecution..
Millions, over the centuries, looked to this man, this Ethiopian Eunuch, as their spiritual father.
This man who had been stripped of his ability to father in the natural, has fathered millions in the spirit. This man who had been rejected and disappointed, but kept seeking the Lord, has become the father of the church in Africa. That is the legacy of this man.
Who is this message for? I’ll tell you who it is for.
It is for anyone who has looked at your life and said, “My life doesn’t count for anything.” “I’ve been robbed, I’ve been ripped off, I’ve been stripped by the enemy of anything good, and I can’t do anything for God.”
Because the Word of God for you this morning, for everyone in this room, is that God has appointed for your life to touch greatness. In a way that you may have never imagined or thought before.
This man had nothing. He had been stripped of his sexuality. But it didn’t affect his ability to produce. He has produced millions of offspring in the spirit.
God has a Word for you. It doesn’t matter what the enemy has done. He has still appointed that your life is intended to touch greatness.