“Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus." Acts 8:35
That is such a wonderful verse – just seventeen words, but jam packed with God’s truth. Where did Philip begin? At exactly the point that this man was at in his Bible Reading Program. Where did he lead him to? The good news about Jesus. This is the only way in which the gospel gets to people. The good news about Jesus is that God is willing to come to us at exactly the point that we are at. The background to the arrival of Jesus in your life, or my life, is our background. With all our shortcomings and failures, which the Bible calls ‘sin’, Jesus comes and deals with the lot. There was no way that we could reach God, with our past, but through Jesus his Son, he reaches us – exactly where we are.
Last time, we looked at the first part of Acts 8, which details the wider mission of this believer called Philip. We also considered another man called Simon. His background was that of con-artist – a very successful con-artist. But Simon was one of many who believed Philip’s message about Jesus. Like all those who come to faith in Jesus, he was called to a new way of life. Sadly, though, something then happened. Simon was tempted. Though his old life had been shelved, he took it back off that shelf! He needed a faithful rebuke to realise his error.
Last time, I commented on this reality of Christian living. Like Simon, our backgrounds always carry a threat to our Christian life. Our characters, and our upbringing, and our experiences, have shaped us and moulded us, often in very negative ways that need a lot of undoing. Our old way of life can be very close at hand at times. We need God’s word about Jesus to continually influence us our attitude and behaviour. Otherwise, we will stop looking like people who follow Jesus. Our ugly past will be our ugly present.
This morning I want to consider this Ethiopian eunuch. There are things about his background which are really relevant. However, before I do that, I just want to look at the background of another character in Acts 8. It’s John. He was one of two apostles sent by the Jerusalem church, to Samaria, to survey this successful missionary work, involving Philip and other believers. John only has a bit part in this scene, we could almost miss him. But we would miss out. He also had a background, but the evidence of how he was turned around by the ‘good news about Jesus’ is awesome. In 2 Corinthians 5 17 (NLT), the apostle Paul says, ‘anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!’ John’s life shows how transforming the gospel can be. Actually, it shows how transforming the gospel should be. This should inspire us – to hope, and to prayer, for our own Christian lives.
John had a brother called James and they were both called by Jesus to be part of that original core group of twelve disciples. The characters, of these two brothers, must have been similar because Jesus gave them both a nickname. He called them ‘sons of thunder’ (Mark 3 17). In modern speak, we might say that they were ‘hotheads’. This describes people who react to negative circumstances by getting angry very quickly – reacting without pausing for thought. This is really well illustrated with these two men in an incident described in Luke 9 51-56. It’s so stupid, it’s funny! I’m not really mocking these two men. I feel a kinship with them. I can be just like that – and I know that I can be stupid.
In Luke 9 51-56, Jesus and his disciples are heading for Jerusalem. Not a problem, except it is, because of where they are. They are in Samaria. We have previously considered the culture of that day – the racial tension that existed between the two people groups - the Jews and the Samaritans. The tension existed on both sides. In those days, assisting those travelling from place to place was also ingrained in the culture. It was vital to the commerce of daily life. There were no Airbnb’s to be booked online in advance, or Wetherspoon’s to offer unlimited refills of coffee to the weary traveller. It appears that the Jews and Samaritans could overcome their usual suspicion, and begrudgingly offer assistance, when the other party was journeying. However, there was a real problem for some Samaritans, if a Jew was known to be travelling to Jerusalem to worship. To those Samaritans, Jerusalem was the wrong place to worship and, consequently, they would literally, shut up shop. That is what happens when Jesus sends a few people ahead of him to a Samaritan village to get provisions. Luke 9 53 says, ‘but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem.’
Is there a solution? There is. Luke 9 gives us two. To say that one is better than the other is a massive understatement! ‘When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, ‘Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them’. It’s mad! Someone refuses to sell me a Snickers – what should I do? I know, I’ll get my blowtorch!... or I could just go to another shop. That is the much simpler, much cooler, solution from Jesus. After rebuking his hot-headed friends, ‘he and his disciples went to another village’.
I can be like that (hopefully not quite as extreme!) I will say something like, ‘This happened to me today. What I’m thinking of doing is blah de blah de blah…’ My wife will say to me, something like, ‘Couldn’t you just….’ I will often have to admit, ‘Yes, I could… Yes, I should’. Actually, I think what I am being gently instructed in those instances is, ‘You could do that – it would look like you. Or you could do this, instead, and it would look like Jesus’. I need to stop and think - to stop choosing ugly, and start choosing lovely.
But John is transformed. What a lovely picture in Acts 8 17. See his new attitude towards the Samaritans, now that the gospel has grabbed his life and completely turned him around. He isn’t wishing burning fire on these people. He is now God’s conduit to give them ‘tongues of fire’ (see Acts 2 3-4) as the Holy Spirit and his accompanying gifts are bestowed by the laying on of John’s hands of love. And what about verse 25? The old John would have left there as quickly as possible. Now, as he heads back to Jerusalem, the new John keeps stopping off to bring to this other people group that message of love and peace and restored relationship, which is ‘the good news about Jesus’. Not in one, or two, or three places, but ‘in many Samaritan villages’. Awesome!
So, back to ‘Philip the evangelist’. That isn’t a nickname that I have invented for this man. The last verse of this chapter details Philip’s further travelling, after his encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch. Philip continued from Azotus to Caesarea, ‘preaching the gospel in all the towns’ on route. Many years later in Acts 21 8, Luke records his own travelling, with the apostle Paul and others, and says, ‘we reached Caesarea and stayed at the house of Philip the evangelist, one of the Seven’. Philip appears to have settled at that place with his family. Philip is the only person in the Bible who is given this nickname, ‘the evangelist’. Consequently, if we want to know exactly what an evangelist is, we should observe Philip. Philip tells people about Jesus. In fact, he does more than that. He begins from the place where people are and leads them to Jesus. Philip, himself, is led of God.
Recently, in Tim’s current series of messages, we have considered Paul’s request to the Colossian church, for prayer for his evangelical efforts. What did he want them to pray for? ‘That God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ’ (Colossians 4 3). God opens doors. God opens hearts. God’s people are called to walk through those opened doors and react to opened hearts. In today’s verses, God’s guiding influence is gloriously visible. It starts with his leading of Philip in what seems a strange way.
Philip is instructed in verse 26 to go to ‘the desert road’. What is a desert? Wikipedia says, ‘A desert is a barren area of landscape where little precipitation occurs and, consequently, living conditions are hostile for plant and animal life’. Philip is told to leave a place that seems to be abounding in new life, to go to a place where there is no life. How well does Romans 11 33 comment on our God? – ‘How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!’ Philip is given a new mission. It is a serious mission. He is going to bring joy to heaven itself. Jesus said, ‘there will be… rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents…’ (Luke 15 7). Philip is going to meet ‘one’. Someone who is seeking, but cannot yet find, but by God’s amazing providence soon will.
This man’s background is really significant. It is significant in that it really highlights how insignificant our backgrounds are when we come to God through Jesus his Son. This man was an outsider if ever there was one, particularly if we consider him as the religious Jews would have done - such as those who had so recently opposed Stephen in Acts 7. This man was not a Jew. He came from Ethiopia. What claim could he possibly have on Israel’s God under the terms of God’s Old Covenant, recorded in the Old Testament scriptures? He had as much a claim as any person who wasn’t from Israel – pretty much no claim at all. Paul wrote to people, just like that, when he sent his letter to the church in the Ancient Greek city of Ephesus. He said, ‘you were separate… excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world’ (Ephesians 2 12). It’s serious stuff.
The Ethiopian was doubly outside, though, because of his background circumstances. He was a eunuch. This poor man had either had his testicles removed, or had them crushed. His sexual appetite would have been non-existent. He had no prospect of fathering children. Why had this happened to him? It was a most cruel way to ensure loyalty in the ancient world. He had a position in really close proximity to the ‘queen of the Ethiopians’ - we might say intimate. Could he be trusted not to take advantage and so corrupt the royal line by introducing his own seed into the mix? He literally could now. He was in charge of all the royal finances. Could he be trusted not to steal some for his own family and their future? He literally could now! Despite his evident importance – who in those days got to ride in a chariot? – he couldn’t rise above the effects of living in a world of sin and ruin. No one can. And being a eunuch had other consequences.
So important was the idea of seed, and descendants, under Old Testament Jewish Law, that Deuteronomy 23 1 contains this restriction - ‘No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the Lord.’ If a man’s testicles were crushed or cut it was an abomination to the Lord. That man was excluded from joining the Israelites’ worship assembly. When we read in Acts 8 27 that, ‘this man had gone to Jerusalem to worship’ we should ask the question – ‘how he must have felt?’ Like an outsider, I have no doubt. He was searching for hope. He was looking in the right place!
Verse 8 says, ‘this is the passage of Scripture the eunuch was reading’. He was reading Isaiah 53. Why was he drawn there? I wonder whether he had also read Isaiah 56 1-8. This contains promises that are of a New Covenant reality. In contrast to the terms of the Old Covenant rules, these promises are all about inclusion. They answer the question of whether God has excluded, or banished, people for ever, without hope due to their past life. They tell of a gathering of people unto God, the Sovereign Lord, himself. They include ‘foreigners’. They include ‘eunuchs’. ‘Let no foreigner who is bound to the Lord say, ‘The Lord will surely exclude me from his people.’ And let no eunuch complain, ‘I am only a dry tree.’’ God is going to gather. God is going to give – ‘to them I will give… a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will endure for ever.
How on earth is this divine turnaround going to take place? This eunuch was reading from Isaiah 53, and that’s where we are told how. It will be through the actions of a suffering servant of God. What will happen to him? Well that is what this eunuch is reading, recorded in Acts 8 32-33. He will suffer in silence. He will be denied justice. His life will be taken away from this earth without ‘descendants’ – how this must have struck the curiosity of the eunuch – this suffering person was going to be made like him! Did the eunuch understand? ‘‘How can I,’ he said (v.31), ‘unless someone explains it to me’’. What humility he showed and how greatly that benefited him? How many of us, perhaps out of embarrassment, or pride, would have replied differently to Philip? He asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ Would we have said, ‘Yeah, kind of, more or less… go away now, lad, and leave me alone with my book’? But this man doesn’t, and his humility brings real reward.
1 Peter 5 6 has a valuable instruction – ‘Humble yourselves… under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time’. This eunuch had been humbled under God’s mighty hand. It was God’s ‘due time’ to now lift this man up to, ‘the way and the truth and the life’ (John 14 6) that are found in Christ Jesus the Lord. Verse 34 says, ‘The eunuch asked Philip, ‘Tell me, please…’. We sense his desire, his yearning – ‘Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?’ After this chapter the Bible records no more details of this man’s life, but I know something. In his life, he never asked a more important question than that one, that day on that desert road. And he certainly never heard a better answer. Springs of ‘living water’ (see John 4) flowed in the desert that day. Verse 35 says, ‘Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.’
It was ‘good news’ indeed. It was the same thing that Paul told those Ephesian believers when he reminded them of their previous exclusion from having a relationship with Almighty God. Before they were no hopers – ‘without hope and without God’. Now, though, they were believers. How had they been brought into intimate relationship with a God that they had previously been so distant from? Paul says, ‘But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.’ Jesus has ‘destroyed the barrier’. Jesus removes all barriers. ‘You are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household’ (Ephesians 2 13, 14 & 19).
It is evident that Philip must have described the practices of the newly emerging church of Jesus Christ to this man. How different to the vast array of rituals that were demanded of Israel under the Old Covenant? What great lengths are new believers supposed to go to in order to give show that they have been saved? - Go down into some water and then come back out again. What else? That’s it, more or less! This man has believed Philip’s ‘good news about Jesus’ and so asks the question, ‘What can stand in the way of my being baptised?’ In effect, he is saying, ‘if all barriers have been removed, then what is still standing in my way?’
As new believers we can easily put up barriers. We can invent checklists. We may think that our age stands in the way. We may think that we need to read the whole bible through in less than one year first. We may think that our prayer language needs to improve. We may want our times of hot-headedness to reduce from 99° to around 67°, or less, before we can go forward. Are these reasons valid? Is there a checklist of things that should stand in the way of baptism, for someone who has put their faith in Jesus Christ to save them from their ruin? There is. If you have a modern Bible version, like our NIV, that checklist is found in Acts 8 37. Yes, there’s nothing there! That is the reality. What should stand in your way? Absolutely nothing.
The Ethiopian eunuch begins the Christian life. He is baptised. Philip quickly disappears from his life. That must have been sad, surely? No. Verse 39 says, ‘the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing’. Philip was the man for that moment – but Jesus is forever!
So are you wondering what steps you need to take to enter God’s household, to embark on the Christian life. This chapter has all the steps. Unlike verse 37, nothing is missing. You may be thinking, ‘But we haven’t got time to go through such a course now. I know you’re going to say ‘Amen’ in about thirty seconds, I’ve got my countdown timer on!’ I am indeed about to finish. But we’ve time. It’s a simple, short, five-step programme:-
1. Hear ‘the good news about Jesus’.
2. Trust it for your sin and yourself - whatever your background - whatever your past.
3. Be baptised.
4. Go on your way rejoicing.
5. Amen.
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