Likely it was more peaceful times, although persecution was strong. A chariot was heading down the road from Jerusalem to Gaza and the LORD told Philip to walk beside it. An important government official was inside and was reading the Scripture.
What was he reading?
Isaiah 53.
It is the Scriptures that talk about Jesus life, purpose and death 8 centuries prior to Christ. We actually have an Isaiah scroll from 350 BC which is amazing as Isaiah 53 is so clearly about Christ.
The Ethiopian official asked Philip about the meaning of the verses and Philip explained they were about Jesus, the Messiah. The Ethiopian official believed and immediately wanted to respond.
How did someone respond to faith in Jesus?
By baptism.
Baptism is how a person united themselves with Christ. It wasn’t saying the sinners prayer, receiving Jesus into a person’s heart, or other really good things.
It was baptism.
So the Ethiopian Eunuch was baptized.
Both of them went down into the water (not a puddle as some say as that wouldn’t fit the language here), but they went down into the water and he was baptized.
After this, Philip didn’t stop. He kept preaching the gospel. And God did what he needed to get him there.
And here we are today. A couple of thousand years later. The road from Jerusalem to Gaza is not so easy anymore.
I still think, as the Scriptures do, that the hope for these situations is the gospel of Jesus Christ. The same gospel the Ethiopian Eunuch heard.
Why? Because it is the message of repentance, forgiveness and new life in Christ. The kind that makes you love even your enemies.
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Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of the Kandake (which means “queen of the Ethiopians”). This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the Book of Isaiah the prophet. 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.
This is the passage of Scripture the eunuch was reading:
“He was led like a sheep to the slaughter,
and as a lamb before its 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.
As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water. What can stand in the way of my being baptized?” And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him. 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.