Acts chapter 8 and verse 26. And the angel of the Lord speak
unto Philip, saying, Arise and go toward the south unto the
way that goeth down from Jerusalem to Gaza, which is desert. And he arose and went, and behold,
a man of Ethiopia, an eunuch of great authority under Candace,
queen of the Ethiopians, who had the charge of all her treasure,
and had come to Jerusalem for to worship, was returning and
sitting in his chariot. I've got my tenses wrong here.
Was returning and sitting in his chariot, read Isaiah the
prophet. Then the Spirit said unto Philip,
Go near, and join thyself to his chariot. And Philip ran thither
to him, and heard him read the prophet Isaiah, and saith, Understandest
thou what thou readest? And he said, How can I, except
some man should guide me? And he desired Philip that he
would come up and sit with him. The place of the scripture which
he read was this. He was led as a sheep to the
slaughter, and like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened
he not his mouth. In his humiliation, his judgment
was taken away, and who shall declare his generation? For his
life is taken from the earth. And the eunuch answered Philip
and said, I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this, of
himself or of some other man? Then Philip opened his mouth
and began at the same scripture and preached unto him Jesus.
And as they went on their way, they came unto a certain water. And the eunuch said, see, here
is water. What doth hinder me to be baptized? And Philip said, If thou believest
with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe
that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And he commanded the
chariot to stand still, and they went down both into the water,
both Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. And when they
were come up out of the water, the spirit of the Lord caught
away Philip, that the eunuch saw him no more. And he went
on his way rejoicing, but Philip was found at Azotus, and passing
through, he preached in all the cities till he came to Caesarea. Amen. May God bless to us this
passage from the scriptures. This account that we have in
Acts chapter 8 about Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch is very
interesting and it has so much in it that we could really spend
quite a long time on this passage alone, and I did wonder about
trying to split it up a little bit, but I think for the sake
of progress through the Act, we'll just deal with it as one
passage and as one day's message. But I wanted to draw your attention
to the fact that here was a man, a yunuch, a very important man,
a very senior man in the government of Ethiopia, and he was in Jerusalem
to worship. He had come up for one of the
feasts. He had come up to be at the temple. He had been here worshiping in
Jerusalem. And I think it's very interesting
to note that he had undoubtedly had opportunity to hear the gospel
in Jerusalem. There were now thousands and
thousands of believers in Jerusalem. There was a real foment, there
was a real trouble and a disruption in the city because there were
so many Christians. There were people who were persecuting
the Christians. Stephen had been slain. And there
was a lot of activity and there was a lot of interest in this
new faith, Christianity. But this man, the eunuch, He hadn't had anything to do
with what was going on in Jerusalem amongst the Christians. He wasn't
converted, nor in Jerusalem, and his introduction to the gospel
and his conversion took place out on a dusty road in the middle
of the desert. I think that's very interesting.
I think it's interesting that while an individual had the opportunity
to hear the gospel preached, even to go to some of the services
where the apostles themselves were taking the meetings, taking
the services and preaching the gospel, it all went past him. And it was only when the Lord
God sent a preacher, sent an evangelist out into the desert,
that there the individual met the Lord. I think we can see
something of the providence of God surely in this episode. Here, Philip was instructed by
an angel to go out into the desert. He wasn't told why he was going
there. You know, sometimes we would take the line, we would
think to ourselves, there's something really important happening here
in this city. There's something very important
going on when the gospel is preached. And Philip was in Samaria and
there were many, many people getting converted. And the angel
of the Lord came to him and said, I want you to go out into the
desert. And Philip says, no way, there's too much work to do here.
There's people being converted here. This is the place for me
to be. But the angel of the Lord said,
no, I want you to go out into the desert. There's nobody in
the desert. So Philip was obedient to the
instruction that the Lord gave him. The eunuch was traveling. He was travelling, he wouldn't
be in one particular place for any more than a few moments.
Anywhere on that road as he was heading home from Jerusalem he
could have been. But he met with Philip and Philip
met with him exactly in the right place at the right time. The
passage that he was reading was a passage which puzzled him. His curiosity was stirred with
this passage out of Isaiah, a passage we are familiar with. It's from
chapter 53. And he wondered, who is this
man that is being spoken about in Isaiah chapter 53? Is it the
prophet? Is it Isaiah himself or is it
someone else? And suddenly here is somebody
running alongside his chariot. and he's looking up and he sees
this man reading the Bible and the man looks down and he sees
this man running alongside. What would you do if you were
driving that chariot? I think you would say to your
driver, go faster, go faster, get me out of here. But you see
the way that God brought everything together in that moment because
God was in control of this man's life and this man's conversion. You can never outrun God. People
would say, you know, he had his opportunity. He was there in
Jerusalem. He could have gone to hear the
apostles. He could have gone to any of
the Christians meetings. He had his chance and he blew
it. And the Lord sent an evangelist out into the desert and he met
him there and he converted him. We see the hand of God in this,
don't we? He'd missed the gospel in Jerusalem,
but he found it in the desert. There's a message there too.
Sometimes we feel as if those that we love, perhaps it's our
family. Perhaps when they're children,
we bring them along to church and we hope that the gospel will
enter their hearts, enter their souls, enter their minds and
they will be saved under the sound of the gospel and they
grow up and they grow older and they go to college, they go to
work, they move away and they become less and less interested. And we think to ourselves, they
had their Jerusalem moment. They had their opportunity. There
was a preacher there that day and they passed it by. Listen, our God is bigger than
that. our God can reach them in the
desert, supposing he has to send an evangelist to speak to them
personally. That is the God that we have,
and let us always be ready to see the glory of God manifested
and be ready to take our prayers for those that we love to his
throne, that he might send that gospel by whatever way he deems
fit to the ones that we love and care for. And once again
we see that Philip, when he encountered this Ethiopian eunuch, he did
exactly what he had been doing in Samaria when he was preaching
there. We were told that he preached
Christ in Samaria. And here we are told that he
preached Jesus unto him. And that was just exactly the
same message. He preached the message of the
Lord Jesus Christ. Philip opened his mouth, Acts
8.35, and began at the same scripture, at the book of Isaiah, and preached
unto him Jesus. He preached about who Jesus was. He preached about why Jesus came. He preached about the words that
Jesus spoke and the works which Jesus had accomplished. He spoke
about the sacrifice that Jesus had made, the just one for the
unjust. He spoke about Jesus as the Lamb
of God that had been sent to the slaughter, that our iniquity
had been laid upon him. He spoke from Isaiah 53, the
gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's lovely to see the way
in which God, the Holy Spirit, opened the understanding of this
Ethiopian, you know, to receive these truths. as one who had identified with
the Jewish faith. Now, I don't know whether he
was a Jew who was now working in Ethiopia, or he was an Ethiopian
who had converted to Judaism. But for whatever reason, he was
a man who was in Jerusalem worshipping God. What he believed was that
there was a Messiah to come. He believed the Old Testament
scriptures that spoke of the Promised One and what was revealed
to him in his chariot on that day as he travelled along that
dusty desert road was that this Messiah had come and it was Jesus
of Nazareth. And it's lovely to see how this
eunuch, having heard something of the Lord Jesus Christ, having
heard something about baptism as well, it appears, whether
that was in Jerusalem or from his religious understanding or
whether it was something simply that Philip mentioned to him
in the process. He at once desires to be an obedient
follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. He says, here's water, is there
anything that hinders me from being baptized? Am I eligible
for this baptism? Do I qualify to be baptized into
the believers in Jesus, the people that follow after Jesus? And
Philip says to him, if you believe the gospel, you may. Do you believe
the gospel? Because baptism is for believers. It's believers' baptism. It was
a simple, but it was a comprehensive testimony that the Ethiopian
eunuch made. He said, I believe that Jesus
Christ is the Son of God. That tells us that he knew something
of the promised Messiah. He knew that Jesus undoubtedly
means deliverer. He knew that Christ is the one
who is anointed of God, the promised Messiah that was to come. He
knew that this one would come from God and he would establish
a kingdom. And now he had discovered that
it wasn't a physical kingdom like the Jews were expecting,
but it was a spiritual kingdom, a kingdom of the heart, a kingdom
of the soul, a kingdom in which the Lord Jesus Christ enters
our life as king of our life and takes rule and control of
each man and each woman, each boy and each girl as he sees
fit. The baptism that Philip performed
here with the yunuch was the baptism of immersion. It's foolish to try and think
there's any other way in which this could be explained. They
both went down into the water and they both came up out of
the water. None of that was necessary for
any other kind of baptism. Then right at the end we're told
that these two men who'd had such a short introduction and
meeting, and yet such a significant meeting, parted ways. Philip was miraculously removed. That in itself was a powerful
act of God to simply take him away. We don't hear too much
of that kind of miracle in the scriptures. He was simply removed.
It's as if the angel of the Lord said, okay, Philip, your work's
done here. Now I've got more work for you
to do, more preaching to be done, more lifting up the Lord Jesus
Christ in other towns and cities in this land. And the Ethiopian
eunuch went on his way home having discovered the Lord Jesus Christ
as his own saviour, having been baptised. into the Lord Jesus
Christ and having borne testimony and witness to that change of
life which had resulted by faith in Christ. Saving knowledge of
Christ and true faith in the Son of God was now this man's
portion and this man's life. And I think it's just lovely
that while he perhaps never met Philip again in the rest of his
life, There he was, heading down into Ethiopia, carrying the gospel
with him, carrying faith in Christ in his heart, one of the Lord's
little ones who would never any longer be without the presence
of the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Holy Spirit with him. May the Lord bless these thoughts
to us and encourage us in this fine message about Philip and
the Ethiopian eunuch. Amen.