"Beginning With That Scripture"

Beginning With That Scripture

(Acts 8:26-35)

Introduction:

A.  Where would you go in your Bible to prove from scripture that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah foretold in the days of Moses and the Prophets?  For most of us we would begin in the gospels and follow on to Acts.  The first century Christians did not have the Bible as we do.  There was not a NT for it had not been penned.  When they came together as a church they would read the scrolls, the Holy Scriptures, or what we call the OT.

B.  For many years churches have shied away from the OT, treating it as a step-brother to the real Bible which is the NT.  That is simply bad theology.  Neglecting the OT neglects a proper understanding of God, and the purpose and mission of Jesus.  The people with whom Jesus taught in the synagogues, the people that Paul taught in the synagogues, the people Apollos taught in the synagogues all studied exclusively the Hebrew scrolls that make up the Old Testament.

C.  Jesus, Peter, Phillip, Paul, Apollos and others, started with the Bible the scrolls and from them taught about the Messiah and then in personal testimony showed how Jesus fulfilled those prophesies, proving that Jesus was the Messiah to come.

D.  We do not live among the Jews.  We do not live among people who only have as Holy Scriptures the books of Genesis through Malachi.  But we have for us, a school teacher, called the OT that brings us to Jesus and that is what makes it so important for us to understand the teachings of the OT.

E.  I don’t believe you could know that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah, without the OT.  The place so many in the early church turned to for helping people see Jesus was the Christ was the book of Isaiah.  It was a God appointed Bible class that took place on a desert road from Gaza down to Africa as a wealthy man was reading a scroll in his chariot.  He was a believer who most like had become a Jewish convert and was in Jerusalem to worship Jehovah and was now returning home.  On his way he was reading a portion of Isaiah, but he didn’t understand it.  Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news of Jesus.

I.  That Very Passage

A.  Let’s open to that very passage.  Is. 53:1-12.

B.  You see, for many, it doesn’t make sense.  Why would a God who could created the entire universe choose to sacrifice a part of himself for this own creation?  It doesn’t compute, because it is not something they would ever consider themselves.  The struggle to believe is a struggle to see oneself in the gospel story.  We are the eunuch traveling back to Ethiopia, we are Philip teaching him the Bible more clearly, we are the reason the suffering servant died.  Somewhere in the story is you and me.

C.  Let’s begin with this thought:  Suffering was a part of the plan.  (look at verse 10)  It was the Lord’s will to crush him…to make his life a guilt offering.  In Acts 2, Peter stands before the people on the day of Pentecost and tells them that Jesus was “handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge.”  As an older man, Peter would write in 1 Pet. 2:20 that the precious blood of Christ to be shed was something God chose from before the creation of the world.  The death, burial and resurrection were never plan “B” because the laws of the OT failed.  The OT simply brought us to the point in which Jesus could do what was always planned – suffer for the creation he made to restore us back into relationship with the divine and offer eternal life to all who will accept.

D.  World religions simply take from you.  Only in Christianity does God die for you, to give you something you could not have on your own.  People are willing to be suicide bombs in the name of their god, but Jesus has already given the only real sacrifice.  The best we can do is be a living sacrifice for him.

E.  Isaiah says that “he became a guilt offering.”  Jesus, who had no sin, became sin for us.  John writes that God loved us and sent his son to be a propitiation for our sins.  Sin is the object that stands in the way of our relationship with God.  Jesus came in as a substitute, an atonement, to pay the debt we could not pay.  He is the guilt offering.  And through him, we who are his offspring can prosper.  His pain was our gain.

II.  The Picture of Jesus

A.  As you walk through Isaiah 53 you get a picture of this suffering servant.  He was not special from a human perspective.  In fact, verses 3 & 4 tell us that he was despised and rejected by men.  The people of his day did not see him for who he was, and many today still don’t see Jesus for who he is.  But Jesus wanted to touch humanity and therefore in his human form he knew what it was like to be rejected by others.  He knew what it was like to have sorrows, to be alone, to be different.  Yet, it was because of those very things that people considered him stricken by God.

B.  There are so many today who hurt deep within.  They look in the mirror and don’t see the physical beauty they desire.  They feel despised and rejected by those around them.  They are filled with sorrow and suffering and ultimately, feel alone.  Jesus says to those people, “I know your pain.  I know how you feel.”

C.  But it went deeper with Jesus.  He was not just touching us psychologically, but also spiritually.  He was crushed for our iniquities.  The punishment we should have to bear, he bore for us so that by his wounds we are healed.  Step out of the emotional hurting for a moment and understand the spiritual hurting.  We sin, but he became our advocate.  We sin, but he took our place on the cross.  We sin, but he rose from the dead so that we could have life.  Jesus cried out “why?” on the cross, but the answer is “because Jeffrey needs eternal life.”

III.  The Cross

A.  When we consider verses 7-9 we see the story of the cross played out 700 years before Jesus was born.  Without a fight, without justice in his trial he was killed.  Killed for a purpose – the transgressions of my people.  With the curse of the cross he was assigned a grave with the wicked, with the burial in Joseph’s tomb he was buried with the rich, yet in all of this he did not retaliate.

B.  So I come back to Philip and the Eunuch.  Philip began with this passage of scripture and told him the good news of Jesus.  The good news is that the story that we read in Isaiah 53 is that the price for sin has been paid.  But Jesus did not stay in the tomb, he arose to give us life.  As the story was told, the Ethiopian saw water and wanted to be baptized.