Philip Witnesses Beyond Jerusalem (Acts 8:4–8)

Prepared and preached by Pastor Steve Rhodes for and at Bethel Friends Church in Poland, OH on Sunday, July 14, 2024

You may or may not know the name “John Bunyon.” He lived from 1628-1688. You may know the great work, “Pilgrim’s Progress.” Bunyon wrote that and many other works while in prison for preaching without a license. John Piper writes:

In 1672, about fifty miles northwest of London in Bedford, John Bunyan was released from twelve years of imprisonment. As with suffering saints before and since, Bunyan found prison to be a painful and fruitful gift. He would have understood the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, three hundred years later, who, like Bunyan, turned his imprisonment into a world-changing work of explosive art. After his imprisonment in the Russian gulag of Joseph Stalin’s “corrective labor camps,” Solzhenitsyn wrote,

I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me: “Bless you, prison!” I . . . have served enough time there. I nourished my soul there, and I say without hesitation: “Bless you, prison, for having been in my life!” (The Gulag Archipelago, vol. 2, 617)

How can a man pronounce a blessing on imprisonment? Bunyan’s life and labor give one answer.

Ten years after they were married, when Bunyan was thirty, his wife died, leaving him with four children under ten, one of them blind. A year later, in 1659, he married Elizabeth, who was a remarkable woman. The year after their marriage, however, Bunyan was arrested and put in prison for not conforming to the High Church standards of Charles II, the nation’s new king. Elizabeth was pregnant with their firstborn and miscarried in the crisis. Then she cared for the four children as stepmother for twelve years alone and bore Bunyan two more children, Sarah and Joseph.

For twelve years, Bunyan chose prison and a clear conscience over freedom and a conscience soiled by the agreement not to preach. He could have had his freedom when he wanted it. But he and Elizabeth were made of the same stuff. Though he was sometimes tormented that he might not be making the right decision in regard to his family, when asked to recant and not to preach he said,

If nothing will do unless I make of my conscience a continual butchery and slaughtershop . . . I have determined, the Almighty God being my help and shield, yet to suffer, if frail life might continue so long, even till the moss shall grow on mine eyebrows, rather than thus to violate my faith and principles. (John Bunyan, 224)

Prison proved for Bunyan to be a hallowed place of communion with God because his suffering unlocked the word and the deepest fellowship with Christ he had ever known. He wrote,

I never had in all my life so great an inlet into the Word of God as now [in prison]. Those scriptures that I saw nothing in before were made in this place and state to shine upon me. Jesus Christ also was never more real and apparent than now. Here I have seen him and felt him indeed. . . . I never knew what it was for God to stand by me at all times and at every offer of Satan to afflict me, as I have found Him since I came in hither. (Grace Abounding, 121)[1]

Tim Keller shares:

The greater persecution and greater violence toward Christians and greater oppression and greater trampling toward Christians does not lead ever to violence in return. It doesn’t. It leads to greater love. It leads to greater joy.

The best example of Acts 8 today in the twentieth century actually is China, because after World War II when the Communist government took over, they threw all the Western missionaries out and they killed a lot of the Chinese pastors. They said, “That’s the end of Christianity in China.” Do you know what happened?

Ironically, it’s the very same thing that happened here in Acts 8, because actually the Chinese church had become too dependent on the Western missionaries. They were the providers, and the church was the customers. They brought in the money. They had their fingers on the controls, but when they got rid of the Western missionaries and they began to persecute the church, what did it do? It turned them all into people of mission. It turned them all into providers.

It turned them into people who preached the Word, who evangelized everywhere they went. It made the church indigenous, and the church just exploded in growth. In fact, as I said, over and over again if you try to kill the church, if you try to persecute the church, if you try to stamp it out, if you use violence on the church, it only makes it grow. The response is not growth in violence. The church doesn’t grow like that. It grows in love.^[2]

My theme today is the church scatters, and Philip proclaims Christ in Samaria.

Read with me Acts 8:4-8:

Acts 8:4–8 (ESV)

⁴ Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word. ⁵ Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ. ⁶ And the crowds with one accord paid attention to what was being said by Philip, when they heard him and saw the signs that he did. ⁷ For unclean spirits, crying out with a loud voice, came out of many who had them, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed. ⁸ So there was much joy in that city.

1. Philip is one of those scattered proclaiming Christ (Acts 8:4-5).
   1. Philip is the first missionary named in Scripture and the first to be given the title “evangelist” (21:8).^[3]
   2. Pillar New Testament Commentary shares: In Acts, Samaria generally denotes the territory, not the city of that name (cf. 1:8; 8:1, 9, 14; 9:31; 15:3).^[4]
   3. Sproul: The early church spread the faith not through professional clergy but through the laity. All the people took the gospel to the outer regions of the Empire.
   4. I like what Tim Keller points out, The apostles became the stabilizing, verifying, and unifying element in a mission that moved to new areas and groups without their planning or control. That is a movement. In a bureaucracy, people at the top completely control everything, but in a movement where everybody owns the mission, everybody is participating in it, what happens is, even though you still need leaders, the apostles were stabilizing, verifying, and unifying.
   5. Yet there was a spontaneity about the church. All kinds of new initiatives bubbled up all over the place. The apostles didn’t send Philip to Samaria. He went. What happens is God uses the persecution to turn his church into a movement in which everybody is in mission, in which everybody is initiating.^[5]
   6. Most Jews didn’t like the Samaritans. They were enemies. There was a long history of violence between the people.
   7. Most people believe this goes back to when Assyria conquered the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 B.C. At this time, the Israelites left, and the area intermarried with the Gentiles (gentiles are non-Jews), so the other Jews considered these Jews as half-breeds. They were not fully Jewish. But the problem may not date back this far. [6]
   8. Philip is unlike Jonah.
   9. Jonah was called to preach in Nineveh, but he was a racist prophet and refused to go. Through all of Jonah, he is unhappy.
   10. Philip goes to Samaria. The Samaritans and the Jews hated each other. They were mortal enemies.
   11. Yet, Philip goes to Samaria with the Gospel.
   12. Where is our Samaria? Who are people that we may not like, but God is calling us to be a Gospel witness to them?
2. Signs and wonders came about (Acts 8:6-8).
   1. The crowds paid attention as they heard and saw the signs (Acts 8:6).
   2. Philip did not change the message for the Samaritans, and he appealed for them to become followers of Jesus, not to convert to Judaism.^[7]
   3. Witherington III: Philip is being portrayed as the same sort of positive evangelizing figure as Peter—one who is powerful in word and deed, as Jesus himself had been (cf. 1:22). The reaction to these words and deeds was joy in that city.^17,[8]
   4. Unclean spirits came out.
   5. They came out with “shrieks” or “loud voices.”
   6. The expression unclean spirits refers to evil supernatural spirits which were ceremonially unclean, and which caused the persons possessed by them to be ceremonially unclean.^[9]
   7. Many more who were paralyzed or lame were healed (Acts 8:7).
   8. The people rejoiced (Acts 8:8)!

• Applications
  • Keller: The life and the joy of verses 5–8 follow the death and the misery of verses 1–4. Look at all the misery up there. There’s death. There’s destruction. Verse 2 says, “Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him.” The word there means just agonizing grief. So in verses 1–4 there’s death, there’s destruction, there’s agonizing grief, and in verses 5–8, there are life and joy. Misery and death; joy and life.
  • Here’s what I want you to see. The joy in life doesn’t come in spite of the misery and death. It comes through it. The joy and the life come because of the misery and the death. The death has caused resurrection. How does this work? The pattern here is a gospel pattern. Here’s the irony. Saul sought the destruction of the church, and what did it lead to? The expansion of the church.
  • Saul sought to scatter the church, but all it did was it led to more gathering. He was trying to scatter it, but actually it just led to more gathering. He tried to kill it; it led to more life. If you try to put the church to death, it leads to resurrection. Here’s why it happened. If you go back to chapter 7 and you read about Stephen, that’s how it happened.^[10]
  • Where is our joy in Christ?
  • If we know Christ, is the joy of the Lord your strength (Neh. 8:10)?
  • Are we spending time with the Lord?
  • Can we be like these lay people and take the Gospel everywhere we go?
  • Four years ago, all the talk was about containing COVID-19. People talked about not getting too close, so people were not exposed. I believe we need to do the opposite with the gospel. We must get close and infect people with the Gospel. This means being servants, hospitable, building relationships, sharing what Jesus has done in our lives, praying for the lost, and having Christ-centered conversations.

Tim Keller shares:

Jesus Christ on the cross says, “I’ve become a leper for the lepers. I’ve become a eunuch for the eunuchs. I’ve become a thief for the thieves. I’ve become a coward for the cowards. I’ve become a bad husband for the bad husbands and a bad wife for the bad wives.” When Buddha was dying, they say he said, “Strive without ceasing.” When Jesus was dying, he said, “It is finished.” When Buddha was dying, he says, “Pay what you owe.” When Jesus was dying, he said, “I’ve paid what you owe.” Utterly different.^[11]

Praise be to Jesus!

Pray

[1] https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/his-wounded-heart-bled-bible

^[2] Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).

^[3] John F. MacArthur Jr., The MacArthur Study Bible: New American Standard Bible. (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2006), Ac 8:5.

^[4] David G. Peterson, The Acts of the Apostles, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Nottingham, England: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009), 280.

^[5] Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).

[6] Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, pages 726-727.

^[7] William H. Marty, “Acts,” in The Moody Bible Commentary, ed. Michael A. Rydelnik and Michael Vanlaningham (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2014), 1690.

¹⁷ Though joy sometimes can be a sign in Acts of a conversion having just taken place (cf. 8:39), it is unlikely this is the case here, for Luke has yet to relate the conversion of Samaritans. Here, then, we see the reaction of a city that had messianic hopes and was thankful for the healing of their relatives and friends. See Barrett, Acts, vol. 1, p. 404.

^[8] Ben Witherington III, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998), 283.

^[9] Biblical Studies Press, The NET Bible First Edition Notes (Biblical Studies Press, 2006), Ac 8:7.

^[10] Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).

^[11] Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).