An Act of Love Along the Way: May 13, 2018

Sermon Notes:

I. The Spirit Leads Us to Men and Women Seeking God

II. People May Recognize their Need of God and Need Help, (Your help!)

III. Answer Them! Tell the Good News! Baptize Them!

QUOTES:

“The course of true love never did run smooth

Shakespeare A Midsummer Night’s Dream

When I die I want your hands on my eyes:
I want the light and the wheat of your beloved hands
to pass their freshness over me one more time
to feel the smoothness that changed my destiny.

Pablo Neruda (poet-diplomat and politician)

If the inclusion of the despised Samaritans in the coming kingdom was a stretch for many Jews of the first century, so also was the inclusion of the Ethiopian eunuch, although for other reasons. This man…had three strikes against him: (1) he was from the outskirts of the empire…the southern edge of human civilization; (2) he was probably of darker skin, as those from Cush, Nubia, and Ethiopia (south of Egypt), and thus viewed by some as racially suspect or marginal; and (3) he was a eunuch, therefore probably castrated , and as such considered effeminate and not a fully able-bodied male.                       

Amos Yong (professor at Fuller Seminar)

There is a massive revival occurring on the African continent, and in many respects, the growing numbers of African Christians today can count themselves among the posterity of this Ethiopian official! But in a very real sense, we are still awaiting the day when the hospitality of the Spirit will be fully manifest in the church so that people with disabilities- those with physical, sensory, and intellectual differences-will be able to count themselves as descendants of this impaired eunuch.

Amos Yong