Sermons 2024

Text: Acts 8:26-40

Outline:
1.    Physical Hunger
2.    Spiritual Hunger

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
He is Risen indeed! Alleluia!

My dear beloved flock, the text for our meditation today is the First Reading of Acts chapter eight verses twenty-six through forty.

Boys and girls, I pray that you are doing well this morning. Have you ever been really super hungry? So hungry that even breakfast is not enough food? You want a snack right after that gets done. We see someone in our text for today who is super hungry. He is hungry not for physical food but for spiritual food and drink that God gives. How can we be just as hungy for the Bible as we are for physical food and drink? Ponder that question as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.

1.    Physical Hunger

“I am so hungry I could eat a horse.” “You say you are not hungry but your growling stomach is giving you away, come on and eat!” Have you ever been super hungry? I am sure you have. Some people even get what is called Hangry, angry due to hunger if they do not eat. 

Humanity will go to great lengths to survive if needed due to hunger. There are reports of the famed Donner party when they were trapped in the Rockies, eating things like oxhides: “"Diets soon consisted of oxhide, strips of which were boiled to make a "disagreeable" glue-like jelly. Ox and horse bones were boiled repeatedly to make soup, and became so brittle they would crumble upon chewing. Sometimes they were softened by being charred and eaten. Bit by bit, the Murphy children picked apart the oxhide rug that lay in front of their fireplace, roasted it in the fire and ate it.” There is even reports, and actually recipes, for people using wood in place of flour to make bread in the late 1840s. I doubt that any of us have ever been that hungry.

2.    Spiritual Hunger

Yet, in a way, that desperate hunger that some have experienced should remind us of our own hunger. We may not have a deep physical hunger but we should have a much deeper spiritual hunger. We should have a gnawing hunger because of our sins. We cannot save ourselves. We cannot satisfy the hunger because of sin. As my mother always says after hearing a good sermon, she got the meat and potatoes of God’s Word. Many in our world attempt to satisfy this hunger with worldly things. They feast on tempting sweet candy of the world rather than the rich feast of the Word. If they just good enough possessions, enough money, enough power, fame, or authority. If they just keep their good health, then that will satisfy their spiritual hunger if only for a short time. If they get a brief bit of joy, then they think that they are fine. Naturally, they want to do things that take the least amount of time or effort on their part possible. They are content to feast on ice chips rather than on the meat, fruit, and, veggies of God’s word.

Yet, what is the food that can fully satisfy our spiritual hunger? The only thing that can fully satisfy our hunger is the Word of God. Just look at Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch. At the Lord’s command Phillip leaves prosperous Samaria, where thousands are coming to faith and believing in the Word of God, to go down a desert road. On this road he meets a single soul, an Ethiopian returning home from worship. 
See this man’s great hunger for the word. He travels 1600 miles one way through rough desert and mountainous terrain. He arrives in Jerusalem for one of the feasts. His hunger for the Word is so great that even though all he can do is be in the very outer courts of the temple, still he goes staying weeks for the feast. Surely, being around Jerusalem at this time, he would have heard rumors of what happened to Jesus. This man is so hungry that he is spending his trip reading, not quietly to himself but loudly from the scroll of Isaiah, to the point that Phillip overhears. Phillip asks him if he knows what he is reading about. The Ethiopian tells him that he does not.
 

Phillip begins using that text to explain everything that Jesus did. That Jesus is the lamb led to slaughter. He was crucified, not for any sin that He had done, but as payment for every single one of our sins. Jesus rose from the dead to give to every single person new life in Him. To fully satisfy our spiritual hunger forever.

As Phillip talks, he must have expounded baptism to the eunuch. It is thus that he exclaims, “Lo, water!” with a happy ring in his voice. When asks about a hindrance to his being baptized he intends to indicate that he knows of none but leaves it to the fuller knowledge of his teacher as to whether his supposition is correct.  He hunger and thirsts for the Word of God as well as the Sacraments. He is baptized, the first Gentile to convert to Christianity, and Phillip is taken away by the Spirit. The Ethiopian returns home rejoicing.

The same hunger that the Ethiopian had is the same hunger that we should have for the Word and Sacraments. We should let noting be an impediment to us. We have the wonders of modern technology that we can have the Word close at hand on our phones in a wide variety of languages. We can read it whenever we want wherever we are. We should desire and hold to God’s Word more than our very lives. We should do, and endure, anything to obtain them. As you promised in your confirmation vows, “To suffer all, even death, rather than fall away from the faith.”  We should, as we pray in the Collect of the Word, “Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” the Word of God. We can by the power of the Holy Spirit living in us feast, not upon the candy and ice of the world, but on that which fully satisfies every one of our needs, feast on the rich feast of food that God gives to us in His Holy Word.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, as we hunger for physical food and drink, may we also be just as hungry for the rich feast God Himself provides us. Until that glorious day when we are at that great marriage feast of the Lamb which has no end because Alleluia! Christ has Risen! He has Risen indeed! Alleluia!

The peace of God which surpasses all understanding, guard and keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. 

Amen.