The Call to Be a Witness

[This message--or something very like it--was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, yesterday morning.]

Acts 8:26-40

Today, in the fourth installment of our series based on the New Testament book of Acts, Church Lessons, we begin and rather than ending the message with today’s key point: Every disciple in Christ’s Church is a witness for Christ. 

When Jesus met the surviving eleven apostles just before He ascended to heaven, He told them and through them, you and me, “You will be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8). 

For us, the issue is not whether we will be His witnesses. Jesus says that we will be. By our lives and by our words, we who have been baptized and confess Jesus is our Lord will inevitably give witness to whether we truly believe, as Peter and John said of Jesus in our lesson from Acts last week: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). 

Our call as Jesus’ disciples is to tell the world about the freedom from sin and death that God makes available only to those who turn from sin and entrust their lives to Jesus Christ.

But, how do we fulfill that call faithfully? 

Our first Bible lesson for the day, Acts 8:26-40, provides us with good modeling in answer to that question.

But first, some background is needed. The disciple who witnesses for Jesus in our lesson is Philip. This is not Philip the apostle, one of the twelve called and intensively trained by Jesus to be a public leader of the Church. Philip the apostle was sort of like a modern-day pastor. The Philip in today’s lesson from Acts is a layperson. This Philip, let’s call him Philip the Layperson, is worth observing as he shows us how to be faithful witnesses for Jesus.

Verses 26 and 27: “Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’ This is a desert place. And he rose and went.”

The first thing that faithful witnesses understand is that God speaks to His people. 

Definitively of course, God speaks to us through His Word. The person steeped in God’s Word, who spends time quietly asking God to speak to them through the Word, who maintains intimacy with God through regular worship with God’s people, mutual accountability in His Church, and open, humble prayer, will find God’s Word almost unavoidable as they go through their daily lives. 

I’m no spiritual superstar, but the other day while I was consciously thinking of something else shortly after I’d been praying, God brought to my attention an item I needed to pray over and act upon. 

God will usually speak to us with such a still, small voice, I believe (1 Kings 19:12, KJV). 

Philip the Layperson had an advantage I’ve never experienced: God sent an angel to this man of God and this angel, this messenger from God, told him what he needed to do. 

What God told Philip he needed to do wasn’t convenient. He was to travel from Jerusalem to Gaza, on foot, a distance of some 43-miles. 

What’s worse, God gives Philip no idea why he’s supposed to do this! 

But Philip went anyway. 

If we want to be faithful witnesses for Jesus, we need to go where God leads us, even to inconvenient places and situations. Even when we don’t know why.

The latter part of verse 27 forward: “And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. And the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go over and join this chariot.’”

The man in the chariot was a Gentile. He was what the Jews called a “God-fearer,” a Gentile who believed that the God of the Jews was the one true God of the whole earth. He was heading home from Jerusalem, where he had worshiped God. In his soul, Philip could hear the Holy Spirit telling him to go to this man. From Philip, we learn that God calls faithful witnesses to meet people where they are so that they can help those people come to know Jesus. 

Philip literally and physically came alongside the man. We must do the same with the spiritually-disconnected people we encounter each day in our lives. 

God wants us to go to them to establish relationships through which we can give Jesus to them and, following the power of the Holy Spirit, make disciples. 

Sometimes, the people who need to hear from faithful witnesses are members of Christ’s Church. A Pew Poll released this past week shows that 20% of all who say they are Christians don’t believe in the God of the Bible. 

As inconvenient as it is, we need more Philips!

Verse 30 forward: “So Philip ran to him [Philip had to run to catch up with a chariot, when you think about it] and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading? And he said, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ And the invited Philip to come up and sit with him.”

I love these verses. After the habit of the day, the Ethiopian was reading out loud. Philip could hear that the Ethiopian was reading from the prophet Isaiah. On hearing this, Philip didn’t talk down to him. “Do you find these verses confusing?” is his basic question of the Ethiopian. 

Faithful witnesses establish non-threatening relationships with people who don’t yet know Jesus. Relationships of love and respect are the conduits God uses to woo spiritually-disconnected people to eternal life with Jesus Christ. 

Faithful witnesses who love the spiritually disconnected are the ones God uses to call those disconnected people to repentance and new life through faith in Jesus. They tell people the sometimes hard truth with love. 

In the face of Philip’s love and concern, the Ethiopian asked Philip to come on board his chariot to explain the Word of God about Jesus to him. As we see from the ensuing verses, Philip was ready to give an account for the hope he had in Jesus (1 Peter 3:15-16) because he had spent time in intimate fellowship with Christ, Christ’s Word, and Christ’s Church. Faithful witnesses are prepared to share their faith in Christ because they are on intimate terms with Christ and Christ’s Church. 

We will never be faithful witnesses for Christ if we wall ourselves off, literally or otherwise, from the tough but life-giving pursuit of being in community with our sisters and brothers in Christ.

After Philip told the eunuch the good news of Jesus, Acts says: “as they were going along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, ‘See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?’ And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him.” 

During my seminary internship, between Easter services, a young woman from the church, a freshman in college, approached me. “Mark, this is Ann [not my wife, a different Ann], my college roommate. I’ve been sharing Christ with her this year at school. She’s been going to worship with me on Sundays. She knows now that she believes in Jesus. But she’s never been baptized. Could she be now?” 

I ran to the pastor, who was already in line for Easter breakfast in the fellowship hall, and a few minutes later, in the sanctuary, between services, that young woman was baptized. Faithful witnesses, like my internship supervisor, know that the sooner a person is baptized, the better. In Holy Baptism, God claims us as His own and the power of the Holy Spirit to create faith in Christ within us is unleashed in our lives. We need to sic the Holy Spirit on people as soon as possible. That's why we baptize infants!

There wasn’t going to be a church back in Ethiopia where the Ethiopian eunuch could be baptized and at that moment in Gaza, the nearest apostle was 43 miles away; so Philip, the faithful witness, baptized the man. It might make some uncomfortable to think that they could be the ones, like Philip, called by God not just to share Christ with others, but, in some circumstances, to baptize them. But Philip shows us that faithful witnesses who are passionate to see others in the kingdom of God and not eternally damned will be sensitive to heed God’s call on the spur of the moment.

Verse 39 forward: “And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he passed through he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.”

Philip didn’t rest on his laurels. The word translated here as preached from the Greek in which Luke wrote Acts is εὐηγγελίζετο. It doesn’t really refer to preaching. It literally says that Philip “good newsed.” Everywhere Philip went, he good newsed; he shared Christ. 

Acts 21 tells us about a visit the apostle Paul paid on Philip the Layperson at his home in Caesarea Maritima. Philip must have done a lot of good newsing at home because Paul discovered that Philip had four daughters who were prophets, adept at sharing the Word of God. 

Faithful witnesses know that the time to give out the good news, the gospel, of new life for all who believe in Jesus is now, no matter how young or old we may be.

During a physical this past week, my doctor asked me when I was going to retire. I think he asked me partly because we’re the same age and because, like me, he loves his work. I told him that my current plan is to retire at 70, in about five years. But even if I do retire as a pastor in five years or ten years, I will have the same call that I had before I became a pastor, a call as a disciple of Jesus Christ, to be about the business of good newsing, of being a faithful witness. 

This is your call too. It’s the call that all who bear Christ’s name through our baptism and our faith in Jesus share, to be faithful witnesses for the One Who has saved us by grace through faith in Him. No matter what our age or our circumstance may we, like Philip the Layperson, always be faithful to this call. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Letting Christ Shine (Part 4, Reaching Up, Reaching In, Reaching Out)

[This is the fourth midweek Lenten devotional message prepared to be shared this evening with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]

Micah 6:8
Matthew 28:19-20

In Matthew, chapter 5, Jesus says: “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.”

In these words, Jesus tells us something very important about being a disciple: We cannot be stealth Christians.

We’ve been saved by God’s grace through our faith in Christ not only for our own eternal salvation, but also so that we can be His light for others, so that others can know the life with God that only Jesus Christ can give. In 1 Peter 2:9, the apostle Peter tells believers that we have become God’s people so “that [we] may declare the praises of him who called [us] out of darkness into his wonderful light…”

The greatest tragedy in the world today is that Christians, who have the light of the gospel--the good news of new life for all who repent and believe in the crucified and risen Jesus, often decide not to live out our faith so that others can see the Lord Who saves us.

In His illustration about a lamp being put under a bowl, Jesus is intimating that the tragedy that ensues from Christians failing to live out their faith publicly is twofold.

The first part of the tragedy is that others who need Christ don’t meet Jesus through us. Eternity is denied to people by Christians who fail to show Jesus to them.

The second part of the tragedy is that the light of faith within us is put out. Christian faith that isn’t shared is faith in danger of dying. Keeping our faith in the open feeds our faith in the same way that oxygen feeds a flame, allowing it to keep giving light to a room.

Above all, I think that Jesus wants us to know that faith is not a private matter. Our lives are to be turned outward to a world in need of the God we know in Christ.

This is how it has always been with God. In Micah 6:8, God’s ancient people were told: “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

Faith in Christ is something to be shared in how we treat people, how we serve people, and the way we stand for justice not for ourselves, but for others.

Jesus never spoke a word to His accusers in His own defense. But He always spoke and acted in defense of others, even the most despised sinners.

Disciples of Jesus reach out to others with acts of love and compassion. They fight for the well being and the eternal lives of their neighbors.

Reaching out has another dimension, of course. We’re to tell others about Christ. A few moments ago, we heard Matthew 28:19-20. It contains what we call the great commission, Jesus’ command that we make disciples. We are to cast the light of Jesus on others so that they can believe in Him and so, live with God too.

The book of Acts in the New Testament tells us that after a man named Stephen became the first Christian killed for his faith in Christ, a general persecution of the church began in Jerusalem. The apostles stayed in Jerusalem, but the rest of the Church scattered, reaching out to others with the Good News of Jesus as they did.

We’re told about a layperson, Philip, who went, oddly enough to Samaritans, people his fellow Jews hated, and shared Christ with them. While Philip busily made disciples among the Samaritans, God sent him to an Ethiopian, the treasurer for a queen. Philip explained the Good News of Jesus to him. The Ethiopian came to believe in Jesus. And at a pool of water, Philip baptized the man.

The moral of that true story is simple: It isn’t just the Church as an entity that’s to be about reaching out to make disciples, it’s each of us as believers in Jesus who are to be about this mission! As one author has put it, both churches and individual Christians need to be "missional."

Before we close, I want to say two things about the reaching out aspect of discipleship that I feel must be underscored.

The first is this: Reaching out is not about the institutional survival of the Church. I’ve heard of some Christians who tell their pastors, “We’d better get more people in here or this church will die.”

Now, we are blessed to be part of a spiritually-thriving and financially strong congregation.

But frankly, I don’t think Jesus cares about whether the human institutions we associate with church survive or thrive.

When Jesus thinks of the Church, He doesn’t think of buildings or altars, candles or building funds. For Jesus, the Church is the people who follow Him. Period.

We don’t reach out to others for the sake of building up the numbers or assets of our local congregations. We reach out to be obedient to our Lord and to be used as the Holy Spirit’s instruments in building up the Kingdom of God.

The second thing I feel the need to underscore is this: Reaching out doesn’t just happen through programs of the institutional Church. The church often unintentionally lays guilt, for example, on the parents of young children or of teens, by seeming to insinuate that if they aren’t involved in mission trips, or soup kitchens, or other outreach programs, they’re not being faithful to Jesus’ command that we reach out to others in His name.

But when commanding us to reach out, Jesus never said, “Come to church functions and make disciples.” Jesus said, “Go into the world and make disciples.”

Parents who are discipling their children to follow Jesus are reaching out. They’re reaching out to their kids. The church should be hailing such parents as heroes, not making them feel guilty.

As another example, people who offer to pray in the name of Jesus with and for co-workers or classmates going through tough times are engaged in very impactful reaching out, even if they don’t do these things with a church group.

Reaching up and reaching in, elements of Christian discipleship that happen often among Christ’s family, the Church, are vital for us. But reaching out is something every Christian is called to do on their own, with the Church fellowship AND on our own beyond the walls of the Church.

For some, reaching out will mean going to Haiti, Chevy Chase, India, or being involved with Upward. And we should all thank God for people involved in such ministries and support them through our prayers and our dollars. But we should also celebrate those disciples among us who are sharing their faith and their prayers with family members, friends, coworkers, and classmates.

Reaching out is not about programs of the church; it’s about passion for those who are hurting and for those who will be lost for eternity without faith in Jesus Christ.

However we reach out in Jesus’ name, we fulfill our call as disciples.

You, Christians, are Christ’s light to the world. However you feel called to let it shine, never hide it. Reach out so that the world--your world--will know the God Who so loved it and all the people in it, that He gave His only Son so that all who entrust their lives to Him by faith will have life with God for eternity. Amen

The Church: Called and Powered to Say "Yes" to Christ's Command (How to Be the Church, Part 5)

[This was shared during worship with the people and guests of Living Water Lutheran Church, Springboro, Ohio, this past Sunday.]

Acts 10:34-48
Christian martyrdom is in the news. Over the past several months, with increasing frequency, we have seen reports about the murder, or martyrdom, of believers in Jesus, executed for no other reason than that they believed in the crucified and risen Jesus as their God and Savior.

Some of the Greek words from which we get our English word martyr include the verb martureo, meaning I witness, and the Greek nouns martus, which describes a person who gives witness, and marturia, the word that means, roughly, the witness’ testimony.

None of these words carries any association with persecution or death. The Greek words, in themselves, are completely neutral. In the Greek, a martyr was simply someone who told you about something that had happened.

But a martyr, as we use the term in English, is someone who loses his or her life for their faith.

The reason for the transformation of this benign set of terms--words meaning witness, testimony, and so on--is simple: To be a witness for Jesus Christ--to be a faithful disciple who tells others about Christ, to be a faithful Christian church that proclaims Jesus Christ to be “the way and the truth and the life” and the only way to God--such faithful witnessing will often incur the opposition, even the death sentence, of a sinful, fallen, dying world.

Many witnesses for Christ lose their earthly lives because they confess Jesus as God in the flesh Who forgives the sins of the repentant and gives everlasting life with God to those who surrender their lives and wills to Jesus Christ.

Penn State historian Philip Jenkins has demonstrated, over the past several years, that Christianity is the fastest growing movement of any kind in the world.* That’s encouraging.

But at the same time that this trend of growth has been evidenced, the murder of Christians, the burning of churches, and the depth of hostility toward Christian faith has also been increasing.

This is nothing new. The Church has always experienced its greatest growth in faith and growth in numbers at precisely the moments it has had the greatest number of martyrs.

Last week, our lesson from the book of Acts told us about how disciples like Philip witnessed for Christ in countries foreign to Judea where He, Jesus, and Jesus’ first followers had grown up. Philip witnessed in foreign nations because persecution in Judea and its capital city of Jerusalem had forced Christians like him to flee to other places.

Persecution and martyrdom are always tragedies, but it should never surprise us as Christians when these things happen. In about 60 AD, the apostle Peter told Christians facing persecution in Asia Minor--what is today Turkey--in 1 Peter 4:12-13: “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.”

The Church is composed of disciples, followers of Jesus Christ.

Followers of Jesus Christ are witnesses of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And being a witness for Christ is a rock-bottom, non-negotiable aspect of the Christian life. In Acts 1:8, Jesus tells His Church: “...you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Notice that Jesus doesn’t say, “If you feel like it, you can be My witnesses.”

He doesn’t say, “If you think you have the gift of evangelism or if you’re confident in your knowledge of the Bible, you can say a good word for Me.”

He doesn’t say, “If it doesn’t entail the risk of being thought weird for standing up for My Lordship or by God’s commandments, you can be My witnesses.”

Jesus says, “You will be My witnesses.” That's a command.

The only question for Christians is whether we will be witnesses for Jesus even when the world hates us for it or will we remain silent and so be silently complicit in the eternal deaths of those who need to hear our witness for Christ?

Fortunately, we don’t have to operate in our own power as Christ’s witnesses. In that same verse, Acts 1:8, Jesus promises Christians: “...you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.”

When the Holy Spirit came to Jesus’ followers fifty days after His resurrection, ten days after He had ascended to heaven, on Pentecost, the Church was born and it was empowered by God to be Jesus’ witnesses.

Folks, the Holy Spirit hasn’t gone out of business.

And, if in His power, we dare to witness for Jesus, we will fulfill the one and only mission Jesus has given us as His people: We will make disciples.

Of course, in order to tap into the Holy Spirit’s power and to be witnesses for Christ, God allows us to cheat. In fact He commands it. He commands us to pray.

Philippians 4:6 tells us: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”

One of the most lamentable aspects of contemporary Christian life in North America is that we spend so much precious time on having anxious thoughts and engaging in anxious conversation over the state of the world and how nobody in the world is interested in Christ.

Time spent bellyaching is time that could be better spent obeying the command of God’s word by praying to God for the power to fulfill our mission as Christ’s witnesses and then, by the power of the Spirit, actually being Christ’s witnesses. (I'm trying to remember this each day myself.)

We see the power of prayer to tap into the power of the Holy Spirit in our first lesson for this morning, Acts 10:34-48.

These verses tell a portion of the story of the coming together of the apostle Peter and his fellow Christians with the Roman centurion Cornelius and his household.

If you’ve been watching the NBC miniseries, AD, you know that they’ve decided to name Pilate’s second-in-command Cornelius and I suspect that they’re going to make that fictional Cornelius and the Cornelius of our lesson one and the same. That’s a little dramatic license and, I suppose, is harmless.

But what we know of the real Cornelius, as told to us by the Bible, is that he commanded a cohort of Roman soldiers--a cohort being about 480 men--who occupied the city of Caesarea, part of the Roman army which kept the Holy Land under Rome’s conquering thumb. Caesarea, founded by Herod the Great, was a kind of bailiwick of evil and idolatry. (Think Las Vegas without any of its virtues.)

Yet in this city with so much evil, a foreigner who had been taught to worship many gods, had come to believe in the God of the Jews. Cornelius, like the Ethiopian eunuch of last week’s lesson, was a God-fearer, a Gentile who believed that the God of the universe was the one and only God of all creation.

Listen: Faith in God can grow even in the most hostile and unlikely of environments.

God can work the miracle of faith in willing hearts, wherever those hearts may be, from Paris to Springboro, from Riyadh to Centerville.

But God had decided that Cornelius should come to know Him, as can only happen through Jesus Christ. God wanted Cornelius to hear a witness for the Lordship of Jesus and so have the chance to believe in Jesus and receive eternal salvation.

So, as Cornelius prayed, God told him to send for a man who turned out to be the apostle Peter so that Cornelius and his family could repent and believe in Jesus and so have eternal life. At the same time, Peter prayed and God told him to do something no Jew would ever have thought of doing. He was to enter the home of a Gentile. Then he was to give witness for Jesus Christ.

When Peter did give witness for Jesus Cornelius and his family came to saving faith in Christ, they were converted.

But another conversion took place at that moment, the conversion of Peter from a man who thought that Jesus belonged only to the Jews. Look at our first lesson, starting at Acts 10:34: “Then Peter began to speak: ‘I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right.’”

And when the Holy Spirit fell on these Gentiles and empowered them to share their newly minted faith in Christ in languages other than their own, we’re told starting in verse 46: “Then Peter said, ‘Surely no one can stand in the way of their being baptized with water. They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.’ So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.”

• To be the Church is to be Christ’s witnesses. 
• To be Christ’s witnesses entails risk. There is no choice for us as the Church or as individual disciples of Christ: If we claim the salvation from sin and death that God freely offers to all who repent and believe in Christ, we will be His witnesses. When we confess Jesus as Lord, we sign on also to be His witnesses. 
• But God doesn’t expect us to be Christ’s witnesses in our own power. He gives us the Holy Spirit and He gives us the words we need to tell others about Jesus. 
• And God lets His Church cheat: He lets us pray and tap into the Spirit’s power again and again. 

Some people in today’s North American churches are pessimistic and defeatist. They think that our world has sunk too far into the morass of sin and death to ever listen to our witness for Christ.

At a time when Israel’s great leader Moses had fallen into such thinking, God asked Moses: “Is the Lord’s arm too short?,” meaning, “Is there any circumstance so dark or horrible that it’s beyond My reach or beyond My capacity to transform.”

If the God we know in Jesus Christ can reach a one-time atheist like me and transform him from an enemy of God to a child of God, from one damned to hell to one saved for eternity, God can use our witness for Christ to bring His salvation to anyone.

The rabid atheist.

The indifferent humanist.

The wounded teenager.

The prodigal daughter or son.

The Roman centurion.

The Isis fighter.

The Muslim.

The Buddhist.

Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead to liberate people like these from their darkness and to usher them into the light of His love and never ending life, through faith in Him alone.

He wants all to hear our witness for Him so that, like Cornelius and his family, they may turn from the sin and death of this world and come to eternal life in Him.

Jesus says to His people, to all of us who confess Him as Lord, “You will be My witnesses.”

And He seeks the Church’s simple reply, “Yes, Lord, by the power of Your Holy Spirit, no matter what dangers or opposition may face us, it is Your witnesses that we want to be and it is Your witnesses that we will be.” Amen

*The two works in which Jenkins demonstrates this are cited in Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God by Paul Copan. Here is a link to Philip Jenkins' Author's Page at Amazon.

How to Know a God-Sighting

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]

Acts 8:26-40
My wife Ann and I graduated in succeeding years from West High School in Columbus. So, I always enjoy going to her class reunions with her. They seem like reunions for me, too.

Four years ago, we were at Ann’s reunion and I had a conversation with Sandy. “How’s it going?” I asked. She told me about what was happening at the congregation of which she and her husband are members, a Lutheran church in another part of Ohio. Her husband was the president of the congregation and chair of the Call Committee at the time, looking for a pastor to replace one who had taken a call to another congregation some time before. They had already interviewed several candidates and none of them seemed to be a good fit for their church.

“But just today,” Sandy told me, “Steve spoke with a pastor. He sounds like he’d be perfect for our church, Mark.” In spite of those hopeful words, I could sense hesitation in Sandy’s voice.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “This has been such a frustrating process,” she told me. “I’m afraid to hope.” Because Sandy was a friend from high school days, I decided to go where pastors aren’t supposed to tread. “Who’s the pastor?” “I shouldn’t say,” she said. “Sandy, it’s me. I won’t say anything.” She identified the pastor as Jon (not his real name), a friend of mine, and one of my very favorites. I told Sandy, “Snap him up!”

Last Sunday evening, Ann and I were at that church, where Jon has been the pastor for four years. We were there for a surprise party with 160 other people. Sandy was working in the kitchen. Steve was one of the speakers. We celebrated the 25th. anniversary of Jon’s ordination.

Just before Ann and I left, we spoke with Sandy. She said that God had used our little conversation at Ann’s high school reunion to reassure her that their sense about Jon was right. “It was a God sighting for sure,” she told us.

Every Christian who’s ever been dialed into God knows what Sandy meant when she said that. God sightings are those moments when you indisputably know that God is reaching out to you with a message, a gesture, some instruction, or reassurance.

But how do we know a God-sighting when we see it?

Our first lesson for today can help us with this question. It comes from the New Testament book of Acts. In Acts, we’re shown the history of the early Church from the day that the risen Jesus ascended into heaven until about thirty years later. Our specific lesson from Acts tells us about how, prompted by the Holy Spirit and an angel, a messenger from God, a layperson named Philip, shared the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection with a man from Ethiopia. The Ethiopian was returning home from Jerusalem, where he had evidently gone to learn more about the God of the Jews.

When Philip finds him, the Ethiopian is reading from the book of the Old Testament prophet, Isaiah. In accord with the custom of those days, he’s reading out loud. When Philip offers to explain that Isaiah wrote at least 550 years before Jesus’ birth, about Jesus, the Ethiopian invites Philip to tell him more.

Philip shares the whole Biblical story for the man, how Jesus was the culmination of Israel’s history and how, through faith in Jesus, all people can experience forgiveness of sin, God’s presence in their lives right now, and eternal life.

The Ethiopian comes to believe in Christ and asks if he can’t be baptized right then. Philip goes into a nearby pool of water with the man and performs the baptism.

Having served the function to which God had called him, Philip then disappears, traveling a road astride the Mediterranean coast, sharing Christ along the way. The eunuch returns to his homeland. Tradition says that the oldest Christian denomination in Ethiopia today was started by him.

This passage is filled with God sightings, although not everybody would have been as alert to them as Philip and the Ethiopian official were. Their experience here can help alert us to those moments when God is reaching out to us.

Before diving into some of the specific insights our passage gives us on this question, I should say that the number one principle for deciding if you've had a God sighting is whether the experience conforms with the character and personality of God as you know God through the Bible. If in what you think was a God sighting, you sense that you're being told to blow up a bridge or start a terrorist movement, there's a good chance you haven't had a God sighting. In this, as in all other areas, the revealed Word of God, the Bible, is the authoritative source and norm of our life, faith, and practice.

But what else might tell you that you've had a God sighting?

First: Our lesson in Acts tells us that God sightings usually happen when we particularly need help or reassurance from God.

The angel who told Philip to take a wilderness road to Gaza showed up right after Philip and other Greek-speaking Jews who confessed Christ had fled Jerusalem because there was a general persecution against their kind. Philip was among those early Christians whose lives were in danger because of their faith in Jesus. But God was still reaching out to them, assuring them of His loving purpose for their lives.

God wants to do that for you when you face tough times, too. When Sarah S., of our congregation, was at Children’s Hospital, gravely ill with leukemia, her father, Bryan, was getting gas at a filling station in Columbus. He was returning home to Logan after a long day at the hospital. He'd already filled his tank. It was a February night with the first hints of spring in the air and he was just standing by his car, taking in the fresh air.

A woman before pulled up to the other side of the gas pump. She was driving an old clunker. Bryan noticed fluid leaking from the back of the vehicle. She saw Bryan and asked, "What are you doing here?" "I just filled my tank and I'm getting of a breath of air," Bryan explained.

The woman told Bryan, "I didn't want to stop. I just wanted to get home. But I was nearly out of gas and kept thinking that, for some reason, I was supposed to be here."

Without a word having passed between them about his child, the woman looked and said, "God wanted me to tell you that your little girl is going to be OK."

Now, what are the odds of that? I think that it’s safe to call that a God sighting! God sightings happen when we need them.

Second: Our lesson also shows us that when we encounter God and God seems to give us directions, God will usually tell us to do a hard thing that will force us to rely more heavily on Him. The angel told Philip to leave the ease and success he’d experienced in sharing the Good News of Jesus in Samaria and, instead, travel down a dusty road filled with foreigners and thieves. One reason Philip could be sure that he had heard from the Lord is that God had called him to do the harder thing.

Ann, our kids, and I loved our first parish in northwestern Ohio. A congregation of 450 members, our average attendance was 280. (The percentage of our baptized membership in worship each Sunday was among the highest in the Lutheran Church.) The people there loved God, taught us a lot about being Christians, and were fun, too. We could have stayed there happily for the rest of our lives.

The church had just approved a major new building addition in 1990, when I was asked to start a new congregation in the Cincinnati area. No building. No budget. No people. I would have to wear out several pairs of shoes going door-to-door in order to invite people to consider becoming part of this new venture of faith. It was a crazy thing to do. But we went, convinced that God has not called us to a life of ease, but a life of joyful reliance on Him!

Third: Our lesson shows us that when we encounter God, we can be certain that afterward, God will want us to share His Son Jesus with others.

Jesus says of Himself, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life, no one comes to [God] the Father, except through Me.”

In John, chapter 3, Jesus says, “God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him. Those who believe in Him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the Name of the only Son of God.”

Our eternal destiny rides on whether we entrust our lives to Jesus Christ. Don’t believe that because Pastor Daniels says it or because the Lutheran Confessions say it. Believe it because Jesus, the One Who died and rose for you, says it. And if you and I find Jesus credible, then we must believe it when He says that those without faith in Him are lost and that He has come to “seek and save the lost.”

People may ask why we give food to CHAP, or help to Lutheran Social Services, or prepare shoe boxes of gifts for children through Operation Christmas Child. They may wonder why we run a food drive for our county’s Jobs and Family Services.

We want to love our neighbor, of course. But our love has a particular aim. It’s the same aim we have when we put our worship on the radio each week and place signs in our front yards inviting neighbors to Easter worship.

It’s why we’re sprucing up the outside and the inside of the building, why we invited our high school prom-goers to have breakfast in our fellowship hall in the middle of the night, and the reason we have Sunday School, Catechism, adult studies, and Vacation Bible School.

It’s why we’re going to have a Friend Day to invite our non-churchgoing friends and neighbors to worship.

We do all these things because we believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to God and therefore the only way to forgiveness, hope, peace with God, others, and ourselves, and the only way to everlasting life.

Philip believed that too, which is why he ran toward the Ethiopian eunuch’s chariot. He felt a sense of urgency, the same urgency that you and I are called to have about others’ salvation. When we encounter God, we can be certain that God will want us to share His Son Jesus with others.

God doesn’t want to be a distant stranger—distant from you or from those we meet in our daily lives. We can be certain we’ve been blessed with a God-sighting that brings God up close...

• when we’re in special need of help or reassurance;
• when the instructions we sense tell us to the harder thing, the thing that will cause us to lean more heavily on God; and
• when we know that the faith within us, renewed by our encounter, must result in our sharing Jesus with others.

Whether you sense God’s presence with you this week or not, know that the One Who died and rose for you, God-come-to-earth, Jesus, has promised to be with you always. In the end, as wonderful as it is, seeing God isn’t nearly as important as the fact that God always sees us, always cares about us, and is always by our sides. Amen