Philipp’s Witness to the Ethiopian (Acts 8:26-40)

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Witness to an Ethiopian Eunuch (Acts 8:26–40)

Prepared and preached by Pastor Steve Rhodes for and at Bethel Friends Church in Poland, OH on Sunday, July 28, 2024

I want to start with something funny:

A man goes to his rabbi:

.. “rabbi, I am very troubled. My son, he went off traveling the world, and came back a Christian!” The rabbi replies, “you know, it’s so strange you say that. My son also left home, and came back a Christian!” The two decide to pray to God about this, and God replies, “you know, it’s so strange you say that… my Son went to the world…

 Well, we know that is only a joke. Jesus was and is a Jewish man who died for our sins and rose again…

Jesus’s sacrifice transcends cultural boundaries… He is for the whole world.  

In the last several weeks, we have walked through Acts chapter 8. Today, I want to look at Philip’s witness with the Ethiopian Eunuch.

I shared this a few weeks ago:

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.

Do you see how radical that message is for the city? First of all, that is the message that brings down the superior.[1]

So, today, we will look at Philip’s witness to the Ethiopian Eunuch. Let’s look at this passage again together. As we do, we will gain some strong insights into sharing the Gospel, and we see the gospel transcend ethnic boundaries.

Acts 8:26–40 (ESV)

26 Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” This is a desert place. 27 And he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship 28 and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. 29And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and join this chariot.” 30 So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” 31 And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. 32 Now the passage of the Scripture that he was reading was this:

                  “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter

and like a lamb before its shearer is silent,

so he opens not his mouth.

         33       In his humiliation justice was denied him.

Who can describe his generation?

                  For his life is taken away from the earth.”

34 And the eunuch said to Philip, “About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” 35 Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. 36 And as they were going along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?” 38 And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. 39 And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. 40 But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he passed through he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.

I have a basic breakdown of this passage.

Message breakdown

A model for personal sharing from Acts 8:26-40

Verse 26 and 29 Be sensitive to the Holy Spirit
Verse 27 Be obedient to the Lord’s command
Verse 30 Be sensitive to the other person’s (Ethiopian’s) needs
Verse 35 Be skilled in understanding God’s Word
Verse 36-38 Seek a response to the Gospel
  1. First part, verses 26 and 29, we must be sensitive to the Holy Spirit.
    1. First of all, I like what Timothy Keller shares:
    2. First of all, we’re told he’s the finance minister of the nation of Ethiopia. He’s the CFO. He’s the cabinet minister. He has hit the top. He’s powerful. The second thing we know about him is he can read. Do you realize how unusual that is? Do you realize how rare it is that he can read? Hardly anybody could read back then, and there he is reading. So he was a man of incredible education and intellectual sophistication, and he was a man of great power.
    3. Last of all, he owned an Isaiah scroll. Do you realize how rare that was? People didn’t own Isaiah scrolls. They didn’t have scrolls and books and libraries. It was incredibly expensive to do something like that. The scrolls were always kept in some public place, the synagogue, the schools, and so on. So here’s a man who’s unbelievably able. He has made it to the top. He’s brilliant. He’s educated. He’s wealthy.[2]
    4. Further, from Keller:
    5. Jerusalem was not around the corner from Ethiopia. It would be an enormous, amazing journey. I mean, a person who set out from Ethiopia to go to Jerusalem would not have high hopes of surviving. What would have driven a man of that kind of accomplishment to read the Bible, to be so interested in the God of Israel that he would take such an enormous journey to go and try to worship in Jerusalem?
    6. The answer is he must have experienced some unbelievably deep spiritual disappointment. In some ways, the Ethiopian eunuch shows how both our modern culture and ancient culture fail. Because in terms of the ancient culture, he could have no children. He was a dry tree. He would have no sons and daughters. As far as the ancient culture was concerned, he had sold his soul for money, and he had given it all up. He was a nobody. He was a nobody! He had no name, no name that would last.
    7. But as far as modern culture is concerned, it’s pretty clear the money hadn’t satisfied.[3]
    8. Do you know what? He must have been devastated because as both an African and and eunuch, he would have been turned away at the doors. Can you imagine risking your life to go see if maybe this God of Israel that he had read about was his hope and be turned away? He was coming back. When Philip meets him, he is reading the Isaiah scroll. He is reading the last chapters of Isaiah. He would have certainly found Isaiah 56 where it says, “Let no foreigner be turned away, and let no eunuch says, ‘I am a dry tree.’ ”
    9. He would have read this and realized there was a salvation coming. There was a Person coming who was going to change the exclusionary boundaries around the believing community. He saw God was saying, “Through the work of my Servant, foreigners are coming in. Through the work of my Servant, the eunuchs are coming in. It doesn’t matter what your past is. It doesn’t matter what you’ve been. Everyone who believes and binds themselves to me is brought in.”[4]
    10. The Person who was going to do this was this mysterious Servant. You know, when Philip meets this guy, this is the verse he is reading. You see this in Acts 8. This is what he is reading (Isaiah 53:8) where it says, “By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants?” Who can speak of his descendants? It’s talking about Jesus. “And who can speak of his descendants? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken.”
    11. When Philip meets him, he is reading this text. Philip says, “Do you understand what you’re reading?” The man says, “No! Could you please tell me? Who is this? Is the prophet talking about himself or somebody else? Who is this?” In one little verse, Acts 8, it says, “Then Philip … told him the good news about Jesus.” He believed, and he turned and said, “Baptize me.” Philip and this Ethiopian eunuch get down in the water, and Philip puts the water on him.
    12. There is what this whole text is talking about. Because of Jesus Christ, here is a middle-class Jewish man embracing a sexually altered African man in the water. What would bring people like that together? They had the same name. His name was not, “I’m a successful treasurer. I’m the director of the treasury of the queen.” See? Philip’s name was no longer, “I am a very upright Jewish man.” They had the same name, and the name was, “I’ve been saved by the blood of Jesus Christ.”[5]
    13. Do you know, interestingly enough (I found this out when I was studying this), the Greek word for eunuch and the Greek word for prime minister or high court official in the Mediterranean world (in all of the courts) is the same word?
    14. Why would that be? Why would the word for prime minister and the word for eunuch be the same word? The answer is if you were a commoner and you were going to make it up to the very, very top of the royal courts, the male royal personages did not trust any commoner to come and work in close quarters with the female royal personages unless they were castrated. That’s the reason why nobody who wasn’t already royal got to the very top and pinnacle of power in any of these royal courts unless they became eunuchs, unless they were castrated.[6]
    15. Look at verse 26 with me. We can see that the Angel of the Lord speaks to Philip, and Philip obeys.
    16. Let’s reread verses 26-28: 26 Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” This is a desert place. 27 And he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship 28 and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah.
    17. Then we see in verse 29 that the Spirit of God again speaks to Philip.
    18. Philip obeys as well.
    19. Keller shares:
    20. Jesus, in every way, says to his disciples, “My message isn’t just for people like you. It’s for all races, for all peoples.” Yet when you get into the book of Acts, God has to do excessive prodding (we’ll see this when we get to Acts 10) to get Peter to go to a Gentile, Cornelius, to get Philip, a Jew, to go to a black African. Over and over, God has to give very specific directions. “Go down that road. Do you see that chariot? Yes, stay with the chariot.”[7]
  2. Verse 27, we must be obedient to the Lord’s command.
    1. Back up now to verse 27, notice that Philip obeys. He obeys right away.
    2. Now, I know that I can intellectualize something many times.
    3. Many times, I can easily think that someone else will share Jesus with so and so. Right?
    4. What about your children? You would tell them, “Mercedes, I want you to wash the dishes” Now, Mercedes could easily say, “Abigail will do them.” But I could say, “I did not ask Abigail, I asked you.” Right? Right? God is calling me to be a witness to certain people, and He is calling you to be a witness to certain people. We must obey. We should not say, “Oh, the other pastor will do it,” or anything like that.
    5. You may ask, “How do I know the Lord is telling me to be a witness or to witness to someone?” I am glad you asked. The simple answer is that you know them; they are in your influence, right? That means the Lord wants you to witness. In other words, you must now pray for how to be the most effective witness. That is a daily prayer need.
    6. In reality, I hope that helps me want to be a witness more and more as I go through my spiritual journey. I must want to see the lost come to know Jesus. I must want someone to be delivered from things because he accepts Christ.
  • Verse 30: Be sensitive to the other person’s needs.
    1. Look with me at verse 30.
    2. 30 So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?”
    3. We see that Philip asked him if he understood. This leads to the next point.
  • Verse 35: be skilled in Understanding God’s Word.
    1. Verse 35: Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus.
    2. We must always be ready to give an answer of the hope that is within us.
  • Seek a response to the Gospel.

Close:

Keller:

What does the Spirit show is the sign of conversion? A middle-aged Jewish man putting his arms around a sexually altered black man and calling him “brother.” If your psychology has been changed, your sociology will be changed. What could do that? Only the gospel.[8]

Example: At the end of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens … It talks about two men, kind of friends, Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay. Sydney is in love with Lucie, but Lucie marries Charles. Charles, however, is arrested during the French Revolution, and he’s condemned to die. He’s in the prison with the other prisoners who are going to be executed the next day. They’re going to go to the guillotine.

That night, Sydney sneaks in and says to Charles, “Look, we resemble each other. We always have resembled each other. Let me take your place. You go to Lucie. You go and live with her. You go and have children. You have a family.” Charles won’t do it, and if I remember correctly, Sydney has him knocked out and pushed out, and he takes his place. There’s a young girl, a seamstress, who’s in there, and she is going to be executed the next day. She has been condemned to die as well.

She walks up to him, because she knows Charles Darnay. She begins talking with Sydney as if he’s Charles, thinking, of course, they know each other. Sydney tries to keep up the ruse a little bit and says, “Well yes, of course. It’s nice to see you,” and so on. Suddenly the girl realizes, “This isn’t Charles.” She looks and she sees it’s somebody else who has taken his place. Her eyes get big. It dawns on her. Suddenly she says, “Are you dying for him?” Sydney says, “Yes, and for his wife and child.”

Basically after that, she says, “You know, I’m having a lot of trouble facing my death, but if you, O brave stranger, would just hold my hand, I think I could do it.” The wonder of his sacrificial love changed her, and it wasn’t even for her. Imagine what change comes into the human soul when you look at Jesus, and your eyes get big, and you realize what he has done. You say, “Are you dying for me?” and he says, “Yes.” He says, “I’ll hold your hand through the rest of your life, and you’ll be able to face anything.”[9]

…the moment you realize he has done that for you, and he takes you by the hand, and you know you’re loved and accepted in him, and the pressure is off, and you never have to prove yourself again, it changes everything. The gospel is not, “Live a good life and try to be like Jesus.” The gospel is not “What would Jesus do?” The gospel is “What has Jesus done?” That’s what changes you.[10]

Pray

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

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

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