Following Jesus, My Decision For Baptism Series

Foreword: Full disclosure, I am a Southern Baptist and present this message from that perspective. Water baptism is part of the Great Commission (Matthew 28, Mark 16, e.g.) and is mentioned in connection with belief and with becoming a disciple. It is readily admitted there are others who hold different interpretations and I seek no quarrel with anyone. Our purpose is to make disciples, not enemies, and to share God’s love with as many people as we can as our Lord gives opportunity. Also, Sermon Central has my outline of this passage as "An Outline of Acts 8:26-40, but I have not used that outline here.

This message has the second part of Acts 8 as the text. Here Luke records the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. Let’s take a look at what happened!

Text: Acts 8:26-40, KJV: 26 And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert. 27 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, 28 Was returning, and sitting in his chariot read Esaias the prophet. 29 Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near, and join thyself to this chariot. 30 And Philip ran thither to him, and heard him read the prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest? 31 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. 32 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: 33 In his humiliation his judgment was taken away: and who shall declare his generation? for his life is taken from the earth. 34 And the eunuch answered Philip, and said, I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other man? 35 Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus. 36 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? 37 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. 38 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. 39 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. 40 But Philip was found at Azotus: and passing through he preached in all the cities, till he came to Caesarea.

1 The preacher

How many of us ever came to faith in Christ without a preacher? By “preacher”, I don’t always mean a member of the clergy or a church employee. A preacher can be a parent, family member, friend, or just about anyone who shares the message of Jesus with anyone else!

Now, this isn’t to take away from how important it is to have a preacher. Paul would write, later, to the Romans asking “how shall they hear without a preacher? (Romans 10:16)” and he would know about that—just look in the Book of Acts alone to see how often he preached!

Before Paul had even become a believer, though, there was any number of preachers, not just the apostles but others too. Philip, the preacher in this story, was one of these preachers. He is most likely not the Apostle Philip (we don’t know anything about him except where he’s mentioned in the New Testament) but one of the original seven men called “deacons” by some (see Acts 6). He went “down (geographically, Jerusalem was at a higher elevation than most of the area in that part of Israel)” to “the (unnamed) city of Samaria” and preached Jesus to them (see Acts 8:5-25)

Philip stayed in this particular city for a period of time and not only preached, but performed miracles. He was there when Peter and John had come from Jerusalem (8:14-15) and I think he would have stayed there for a while, preaching the Gospel and doing things to show God’s love. In fact, we could say that at least some cultural-ethnic healing was taking place: the Samaritans had no dealings with Jews—and that was true for the other way around, too (John 4:9). Now they’re believers, Jews and Samaritans alike. Note that there was no hostile reaction when Peter and John came back: they had been with Jesus in John 4, going into the city to buy food (think of that, they were probably so hungry they’d buy food from their enemies!). John, by the way, along with his brother James, had asked Jesus to bring down fire from Heaven because a Samaritan village refused to allow Jesus to “make ready for Him (Luke 9:52-56)”.