Sermon Central
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Why Would God Love Me Series
Contributed by Rick Stacy on May 22, 2007 (message contributor)
Summary: Series on Tough Questions. This message is based on the Ethopian Eunich
Tough Questions – Real Answers
Why Would God Love Me?
April 22, 2007
26 Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” 27 So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians. This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, 28 and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the book of Isaiah the prophet. 29 The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.”
30 Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked.
31 “How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.
32 The eunuch was reading this passage of Scripture:
“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.
33 In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.
Who can speak of his descendants?
For his life was taken from the earth.”
34 The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?” 35 Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.
36 As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water. Why shouldn’t I be baptized?” 38 And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him. 39 When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing. 40 Philip, however, appeared at Azotus and traveled about, preaching the gospel in all the towns until he reached Caesarea.
Invisible People
“Everyone has an invisible sign hanging from his neck saying, ‘Make Me Feel Important.’ Never forget this message when working with people.”
- Unknown author
Have a Nice Day!
This world does a good job of making us all feel like we’re invisible.
I went into a fast food restaurant recently and bought a combo meal. I paid for my order and the said, “Have a nice day!” but it sounded more like “Here’s your food, now get lost, because you are just one of billions and billions served, and we have to move on to the next invisible person.”
Let me just ask, “Do you ever feel Worthless? Of no account? A failure? A screwup; or worse, do you feel like you are invisible?”
It happens all the time – to all kinds of people – and it has likely happened or maybe it’s happening to you.
There might be a lot of people in your school or in your field of work and so you wonder, how important are you really? You wonder if anyone lose any sleep if you went to a different school next year? Would they miss you if you were suddenly gone? Would they even notice?
There are times, even in church, that we don’t feel all that important. You might think that nobody even notices if you are there or not.
Well, the truth is that no one is so important that they cannot be replaced. My mom told me one time that the hole you leave when you pull your finger out of a bucket of water is the hole you leave, when you leave…
Pretty depressing isn’t it. Well let me tell you another truth. This one isn’t from my mother. This one is from the inventor of gravitational forces, the designer of every strand of DNA, and the architect of sunset on the horizon.
This same God is the one who wants you to know today that you are precious to him.
He doesn’t pester or flatter you because he wants to get something out of you. God has an interest in you, not because he wants to take your goods but because wants to give you eternal treasures.
How can I say this with so much certainty?
Let me tell you a story about a lonely foreigner. A man who felt like he was invisible and yet God showed him how precious he really was.
God’s Kingdom Reaches Out Like Ripples on a Lake…
“Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” So he started out,…”
When you take a stone and throw it into a lake, what happens to the water? There’s kind of a gulp as the stone plops in, but then the waves begin to go out in a perfect circle Then those circles get bigger and bigger, spreading farther and farther away from the center. That’s what was going on in Philip’s day. At Pentecost, all of Jesus’ believers were in Jerusalem. In not too long a time, persecution happened, and the believers were scattered. But that wasn’t a bad thing, because they went out like ever expanding circles.
