...chiefly because it's not mine at all, but comes from an astute Bible study group member.
We've been working through Acts, and this week was ch. 8. It's a chapter I love for the last pericope - the way the Ethiopian eunuch finds a welcome at last in the good news of Jesus, having been shut out of everything that matters previously. He looks powerful, but knows his emptiness.
I made an observation that this is somewhat parallel to Simon Magus, earlier in the chapter - a reputed Great Power who is really an outsider, as a Samaritan, to true religion. And Isaiah 53 is a hugely appropriate starting point for a gospel presentation to someone in such a position as these two are, with its promise that the outsider can be valued by God and exalted.
I also suggested that it was no coincidence to find these two stories in a chapter that opens with a new persecution of the church: the very stories are encouraging to the church that has been recently ostracised.
But the nice idea was this: that ch. 8 leads up to Saul's conversion in the next chapter, as the chief of outsiders comes in from the cold, 'as one unnaturally born'.
1 comment:
Yeah. That is nice.
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