Verses 39 -40: And when they were come
up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord took away Philip, that the eunuch
saw him no more: and he went on his way rejoicing. 40 But Philip was found at
Azotus: and passing through he preached in all the cities, till he came to
Cæsarea.
The Spirit just picked Phillip up and
transported him all of that distance. That would be a great way to travel. It
certainly is a lot quicker than the time that I have spent on the road and in
ferry line-ups recently.
I just arrived home at about 12:30am
yesterday morning after beginning my travels at before 8am Friday morning. That was 16.5 hours. This week I was helping
with The Salvation Army’s fire relief efforts up north; so on Friday, we woke
up in Smithers, drove 4 hours or so to the airport in Prince George (where our
flight was out of) and then waited for my plane that was a number of hours late
and then by the time I got to Vancouver my connecting flight had gone so I had
to wait through many more delays until I finally got off the plane to Nanaimo
where Susan had been waiting for me for 5 or 6 hours after I was scheduled to arrive. We then began
the drive here to Port Alberni.
Going up to help with the fire relief
program was something too. The day before my flight up north I was in Vancouver
to see Susan and the girls final performance and bring them home from SPAC. We
then stayed and watched a football game at BC Place (The Roughriders were
playing and since we moved from Saskatchewan to Toronto, Sarah-Grace and I
haven’t missed a Riders game and since they happened to be playing in Vancouver
when we were on the mainland, we stayed for the game). Of course, by the time
it ended, It was too late to catch a ferry so we got a hotel room, slept for a couple of hours and then drove to catch the first ferry to drive
to Port Alberni to drop off the car and my kids and then get a ride
from Susan all the way back to Nanaimo to travel to Prince George. There was a
lot of travel.
Too bad we didn’t have a travel plan
like Phillip in our text today. Verse 39: “And when they were come up out of
the water, the Spirit of the Lord took away Philip, that the eunuch saw him
no more: ... [40] Philip was found at Azotus.” The Holy Spirit just picked him
up and flew him 21 miles in an instant. It would be nice.
Here we have a really neat story in Acts
8: it may even be the first time that the Gospel is brought to the Gentiles.
The Ethiopian here is not necessarily an ethic Judean. He may have been part of
the diaspora but it says he is an Ethiopian.[i] He
may however have been a proselyte.[ii]
Do we know what is a proselyte? A proselyte is like a recent convert. They are someone
who is new to a faith. And in ancient Israel in order for you to even become an
Israelite you would have to first be a proselyte, convert to the worship of the
LORD. And by the time of Jesus some people, especially some Pharisees were
quite evangelistic and quite good at making proselytes. The problem with this is that he was a eunuch and the Jews didn't usually make eunuchs proselytes. He was definitely an outsider who was interested in God though, after all he is coming from
Jerusalem and he is reading from the book of Isaiah.
The part of Isaiah that he is reading
from is neat too. He is reading from Isaiah 53. Isaiah 53 always reminds me of Bill,
a friend of mine. I admit that I didn’t really listen to a lot of Christian
music growing up but there was one very popular Christian band from the 1980s that
my friend Bill listened to and had a number of their tapes. I think we may have
even done an air band to one of their songs in the 1980s. The band’s name was
Stryper and they got their name from Isaiah 53. Isaiah 53: 5: "By His
stripes we are healed." And this band Stryper actually was able to bring
the Gospel message now only to Christian fans but they actually got radio play
on real (not just Christian) radio stations and they opened for big name bands
in that time period like Ratt and Bon Jovi. God used them to bring the gospel
of Isaiah 53 to people who weren’t already Christians. And today in our text
God and an angel are using Isaiah 53 and Phillip as a messenger to bring the
gospel to this person from Ethiopia and all of us who happen to read this
account afterwards.
Isaiah 53 is neat because it is all
about Jesus. Isaiah 53:5 talks about Jesus on the cross, "By His stripes
we are healed". Isaiah 53:7-8, that God laid on the Ethiopian’s heart
reads, is also speaking about Jesus. It says, as we read earlier:
He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
Yet who of his generation protested?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was punished
Now in the last few weeks we had just
finished going through this little tract in our Sunday sermon series and last
week when Susan was preaching on Acts 26, she encouraged us to share the Gospel
and our testimony. She encouraged us to be prepared to tell people about Jesus
and I think she even gave us some papers or maybe even some homework to help us
with that. And that is great for a couple of reasons:
- It is good to tell people about Jesus: He can help us through any situation both now and forever; our salvation comes through Christ alone and we would hate for anyone to miss the benefits of that as they face the troubles of this world and the prospect of the next.
- We never know when God is going to give us a situation, maybe just like this one, when we can share our faith.
Let me tell you a true story that
happened just the other day. As you know, I have been helping with The
Salvation Army’s forest fire relief program this last week. Myself and another
person, Chris, were posted to Smithers BC, to give The Salvation Army ministry
lead there a bit of a break. Our job was to support the staff, volunteers,
evacuees, and the people who were at the reception centre. People who were
evacuated needed to come there to register and we would offer them food and
emotional and spiritual support as it was required.
We were staying at the Salvation Army
Mountainview Camp between Houston and Smithers and we would drive in every
day. On this one particular day as we
were driving back from a day’s work in Smithers we were so engaged in our
conversation or something that we drove right past the camp and right into
Houston before we realized what we had done. We thought it was an accident but
the truth is that we had a divine appointment. Just like the Ethiopian picked
up Phillip from the side of the road, Chris pulled over and we picked up a
firefighter looking for a ride back to Smithers. And just like the Ethiopian
was reading the Scriptures; so was Lukas, the fellow we picked up from the side
of the road. He was reading from the book of Mark. And just like the Ethiopian
asked Phillip to explain to him what Isaiah meant; Lucas, when he heard we were providing spiritual care for people,
hauled out a little New Testament Bible that he had just been reading by the
side of the road and flipped through Mark, asking us to explain whatever we
could from his gospel: what does it mean to hide your light under a bushel? How
about the parable of the mustard seed? And what is the yeast of the Pharisees?
Phillip explained Isaiah to the Ethiopian, building on whatever had happened
before and then he stopped by the side of the road, baptized him and was on his
way. We were blessed to explain excerpts from Mark, after he had had an initial
conversation with some medics and picked up his Bible. As we reached Smithers
we prayed with him as we let him out of the car and we continued on our way. I
have had this passage in Acts 8 going through my head ever since. I don’t
generally pick up hitchhikers and if I were to, I wouldn’t expect them to have
a Bible in hand asking me to explain it to them. But this is the grace of God.
God loves us so much that He has saved
us. He promises that He will be with us through tough times – like losing our
homes in a fire or any other such trouble – or good times – like meeting new
friends and praying with and for them. And we never know when God will give us
a chance to do just that. So like Susan encouraged us last week to share our
testimony, I encourage us to pray and read our Bible because who knows when God
may send someone into your path like the Ethiopian or Lucas who just wants you to
explain the love of God to them
Let us pray.
More articles, sermons, and papers at
[1] Cf.
Robert W. Wall, ‘Acts’ The New Interpreter’s Bible 10, (Nashville, Tenn.:
Abingdon Press, 2002),143
[2] Cf.
Michael Ramsay, “Acts 10:1-16 Interpretation: The Intentional bringing of the
Gospel to the Gentiles.” Presented to William and Catherine Booth College (Fall
2006). Available on-line: http://sheepspeak.com/NT_Michael_Ramsay.htm#Acts%2010:1-16
[3] Cf.
N.T. Wright, Acts for Everyone Part 1 (Louisville,
Kentucky, USA: WJK, 2004),133.
[4] Edouard Kito Nsiku in Africa Bible Commentary, (Nairobi, Kenya: Word Alive Publishers,
2010), ‘Isaiah 52:13-55:12: The Suffering Servant’, 871.
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