Salvation Is Jesus

Acts 8 - Part b

The second half of Acts Chapter 8 continues to follow the missionary work of the Apostle Philip. An angel appears to Philip and tells him to go to a certain road that goes from Jerusalem to Gaza. Philip obeys and on the road meats an Ethiopian official traveling back home after worshiping in Jerusalem. The Ethiopian is reading the book of Isaiah.

Verses 29-35:

The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.”Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked.

“How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

The eunuch was reading this passage of Scripture:
“He was led like a sheep to the slaughter,
and as a lamb before the shearer is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.
Who can speak of his descendants?
For his life was taken from the earth.”

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.

In these verses we see again how God is directing the Gospel message across racial and cultural lines. The Ethiopian says, “How can I [understand] unless someone explains it to me?” Emphasizing that God has chosen to use followers of Christ to be the main method of spreading salvation through the world.

He was reading Isaiah 53:7-8, another messianic prophecy that Jesus fulfilled in his trial and execution. Philip explained that this verse was talking about Jesus and from there, “told him the good new about Jesus.” The Ethiopian believes and becomes a Christian and immediately wants to be baptized in a body of water they were passing by.

Verses 39-40:

When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing. Philip, however, appeared at Azotus and traveled about, preaching the gospel in all the towns until he reached Caesarea.

Philip is miraculously transported to Azotus to continue preaching the gospel there. In Acts chapter 8 we see how God used the persecution that was meant to halt the Gospel, and turned it around to instead spread it across the land.  We also see God directly intervening to spread the Gospel to other nations. The spread of the message of salvation through Jesus seems to be a high priority of God.