ACTS 8:26-40
“He Told Him The Good News”
By: Rev. Kenneth Emerson Sauer,
Pastor of Parkview United Methodist Church, Newport
News, VA
One of the most perplexing questions for many of us Christians is this: “How can we spread the Gospel? How can we extend and promote Christianity?”
Let’s face it.
Americans are expert promoters!
And yet when we look at the church we can see that we, as Christians, seem to fail miserably at promoting the saving message of Jesus Christ.
Young people grow up to maturity and make their own decisions, often, apparently with little if any interest in the Christian movement.
A great number of well-off, intelligent men and women have very little concern for the church…
…do nothing about it…
…contribute nothing to it…
…and gain nothing from it.
Outside of our immediate circle of relatives and friends is the world…
…the masses of men, women and children who remain completely untouched by the message of Christ.
The question is: How can we be used by God to fulfill our calling to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”?
There is a clue in this story in the Book of Acts.
Philip was one of the enthusiastic Christians—on fire with the life and message of Jesus!
He was directed by God to leave Jerusalem and to go southward by the desert road.
As he traveled southward, he came upon a man who was traveling by chariot.
He listened to the Holy Spirit inside of him…Who told him to “Go to that chariot and stay near it.”
He heard the man inside the chariot reading.
It was a page from the prophet Isaiah.
Philip looked at him and said, “Do you understand what you are reading?’
‘How can I ,’”the man replied, “unless someone explains it to me?’
So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.”
And isn’t this what the world is saying to us?
How can I understand this Gospel of Jesus Christ unless someone explains it to me?
Oh, has the salt lost its saltiness?
Have we hidden the light?
Are we unable to bear fruit…because we do not abide in Christ?
Are we “like a branch that is thrown away and withers”…and is “picked up and thrown into the fire and burned”?
Let’s look at what Philip found.
The man he came upon was what we might call a secretary of the treasury of a North African state which the Bible calls “Ethiopia,” but probably is not the state that we know today as Ethiopia.
He was a man of property and prominence.
He had come from North Africa to Jerusalem to worship.
For Jerusalem was known far and wide as a place where people found God.
Is our church a place known far and wide as a place where people find God?
Whether the Ethiopian was a Jew or not, we don’t know…
…nevertheless, while he was in Jerusalem this man found, perhaps for the first time, the Jewish Scriptures.
He was reading the magnificent 53rd chapter of Isaiah, in which the prophet describes the suffering of the innocent Servant led like a lamb to the slaughter.
“The Eunuch asked Philip, ‘Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?’
Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.”
What Philip found was this:
He found a person who was seeking something, diligently, sincerely, earnestly…
…He found a man who was not self-satisfied…
…a man reaching out for something more than he had ever known before, and yet a man not understanding what it all meant.
That was Philip’s great opportunity!
God had called him to go down this very road for this very purpose.
There are no coincidences…
…the two men met precisely as God had planned it…so that the Ethiopian might come to the saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ through one of God’s messengers!
In this case, Philip was the messenger, and he did not shrink from sharing the Gospel with the person that God put in his path.
In other cases, we are called to be the messengers…
…do we shrink or rise to the occasion?
There are individuals—right in our backyards—who are discouraged; there are a great many people asking questions…
…who is going to answer them?
This generation is on a quest for something.
They want to know what this life is all about.
They want to know the meaning of suffering and of the tragedy and failure of humankind…
…so they look to the promoters…
…but there are many false prophets who are doing a very great job!
Many people have a listening ear…but the only ones talking are telling them lies.
There are only two ways to spread anything in which we are greatly interested.
The first is to live it ourselves, and the other is to talk about it.
There is no substitute for the first.
The way to make anyone realize the value of something we care very much about is to show it forth in our own lives.
The way to attract someone to a cause that we think is worth everything in life is to demonstrate it ourselves.
One way to spread Christianity is for Christians to live it.
But that isn’t the only way.
We spread things not only by living them, but also by talking about them, by passing the word on and passing the fire from one person to another.
The early Christians drew other people to them because they had something that other people saw as supremely worthwhile.
In the second century Tertullian wrote: “See how these Christians love one another.”
That is the real reason why Christianity spread.
But they also talked about it, and the interesting thing is that when Philip climbed up into the chariot with his friend from Ethiopia, he opened his mouth.
When people saw the early Christians they cried, “Look at them!”
And then that exclamation was followed by “Listen to them!”
Many times, our children are not attracted by Christianity.
Our friends are not interested and the world passes it by.
…because many of us have never opened our mouths about it!!!
Have you ever talked to one of your peers about Christianity?
Have you ever sat down with a colleague and opened your mouth and talked to him or her about the things that concern him or her more than anything else in the world?
We say that we respect the liberty and rights of people to think for themselves…and so we do.
But there is something strange about not sharing the Gospel…because this is something that we presumably care so much about.
We have already seen what Philip found and what he did—he opened his mouth…
…and what did Philip say?
He “told him the good news about Jesus.”
He went straight to the things that concerned him most.
A young Presbyterian minister was in charge of a large church in a big city.
The most active and generous person in the church was a woman.
She was married to one of the most prominent and wealthy men in the community.
He never came to church, he did nothing for it, he gave nothing to it.
And as the years went on, that man was on the conscience of that minister.
And he said to himself, “I have got to do something about that man.”
So, after a lot of thought, he finally made an appointment with him.
He was an older man, stern, sitting behind a great desk in his office.
The young man sat in front of him and proceeded with his story.
In very simple terms he set before him the Christian message and he said, “I think you ought to do something about this one way or the other.”
And when he finished, there was dead silence.
The man never spoke, never moved.
So the young man gathered himself together and went over his story again, amplifying it a little.
When he finished, still there was silence.
At that point he wished he had never undertaken this particular mission, but he drew himself up once again and rehearsed his story.
And when he finished, there was not a sound.
And finally, while he wished for a way out of the room, the man reached for a pad and wrote something on it.
He passed it to the young man and this is what he had written: “I am so deeply moved that I cannot speak.”
It was the first time that an adult, in a frank, straight-forward way, had ever set before him the Christian Gospel, and he became a member of the church and one of the great Christian leaders in that city.
The story of Philip ends with both men getting out of the chariot and Philip baptizing his new friend and brother in Christ in the name of Jesus.
There has never been a time when this world has been more spiritually lost.
We see it in the declining attendance in our churches…
…we see it in the faces of our neighbors, our friends, our co-workers, our classmates, our children…
The human race is great at promoting things…
…and we are very successful at this because so many people are searching for something to make this life meaningful.
The beer companies are doing a fantastic job…
…the car companies keep us thinking that life will be full if we buy that bigger car…
…those who sell sex are doing a fantastic business…
…they are working real hard…
…they are getting results.
Jesus has commanded us to be fishers of men and of women…
…there are a lot of fishers out there, and they are making a great catch!…
…but their efforts only leave those they have caught in a more desperate state than they were before they were hauled in.
People are looking for answers…
“Do you understand what you are reading?’ Philip asked.
‘How can I,’ he said, ‘unless someone explains it to me?’”
How can the world understand the saving grace of Jesus Christ unless someone explains it to them?
The apostle Paul wrote: “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!”
The same can be said of us.
Let us pray: Make us bold in our witness as people who have been saved by the resurrected Christ, O God, and show us how to speak the Gospel in the most effective and powerful way. Make this our sole aim in this life. In Jesus’ risen name we pray. Amen.
