Philip the Evangelist

6 PHILIP THE EVANGELIST (Acts 8:1-40)
In his continued warfare against the church the devil finally overreached himself. His attack had the opposite effect to what he intended. Instead of smothering the gospel, persecution succeeded only in spreading it.
Beginning the day of Stephen’s death, persecution broke out with the ferocity of a sudden storm. Saul, who approved of Stephen’s stoning, now began to destroy the church. This great persecution led to great dispersion: all except the apostles were scattered. The scattering of the Christians was followed by the scattering of the good seed of the gospel. For those who scattered preached the word wherever they went.
So we see in the midst of persecution wonderful things have happened. The Holy Spirit has revealed himself in mighty and miraculous ways. He has caused men and women to come to Jesus and the church to grow. We have seen him severely discipline a couple who lied to God and pretended to be something that they were not. We have witnessed men full of the Spirit both preaching Christ and dying for him. Now we are going to look at his work in Philip, who was filled with the Spirit and called by the Spirit away from “where the action was” to share the good news about Jesus with one individual ? an Ethiopian.
The hostility between Jews and Samaritans had lasted a thousand years. It began with the monarchy in the tenth century B.C. when ten tribes defected, making Samaria their capital, and only two tribes remained loyal to Jerusalem. It became steadily worse when Samaria was captured by Assyria in 722 B.C. Thousands of its inhabitants were deported, and the country was repopulated by foreigners. In the sixth century B.C., when the Jews returned to their land, they refused the help of the Samaritans in the rebuilding of the temple. Not till the fourth century B.C., however, did the Samaritan schism harden, with the building of their rival temple on Mount Gerizim and their rejection of all Old Testament Scripture except the Pentateuch. The Samaritans were despised by the Jews.
Summary: The gospel had been welcomed by the Samaritans, but would the Samaritans be welcomed by the Jews? Or would there be separate factions of Jewish Christians and Samaritan Christians in the church of Jesus Christ? The idea may seem unthinkable in theory; in practice it might well have happened. Is it not reasonable to suggest (in view of this historical background) that, in order to avoid just such a disaster, God deliberately withheld the Spirit from these Samaritan converts? The delay was only temporary, however, until the apostles had come down to investigate, had endorsed Philip’s bold policy of Samaritan evangelism, had prayed for the converts, had laid hands on them as a sign to the whole church as well as to the Samaritan converts themselves, that they were bona fide Christians, to be incorporated into the redeemed community on precisely the same terms as Jewish converts.
The people Philip shared the good news with were different in race, rank and religion. The Samaritans were of mixed race, half-Jewish and half-Gentile, and Asiatic, while the Ethiopian was a black African, though probably a Jew by birth. As for rank, the Samaritans were presumably ordinary citizens, whereas the Ethiopian was a distinguished public servant in the employment of the Crown. Religious differences included the fact that the Samaritans reversed Moses but rejected the prophets, while the Ethiopian was returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and was reading one of the very prophets the Samaritans rejected. Yet despite their differences in racial origin, social class and religion, Philip presented them both with the same good news of Jesus.
Open
Do you see yourself as an evangelist? Explain.
Study
1. Read Acts 8:1-25. In this chapter the command to be witnesses is Judea and Samaria (see Acts 1:8) is fulfilled. What are the causes and extent of the spread of the gospel?
2. How is it significant that Philip, a Jew, went to Samaria (v. 5)?
3. How was Simon the Sorcerer’s life affected by the gospel (vv. 9-13)?
4. What did Peter teach Simon about following Jesus (vv. 18-24)?
5. Why do you think it was important for the church in Jerusalem to send Peter and John to minister to the new believers in Samaria?
6. Read Acts 8:26-40. What were the factors involved in the Ethiopian eunuch’s becoming a Christian?
7. What would it have been like for Philip to leave a place where so many exciting things were happening to go down a desert road?
8. What role did Scripture play in the eunuch’s conversion?
9. Ethiopia was the extreme boundary of the habitable world in the hot south. How was Philip’s ministry to the eunuch the beginning of the witness “to the ends of the earth”?
10. People refer to different kinds of evangelism, such as door-to-door, friendship, mass and tract evangelism. What different kinds of evangelism do you observe throughout this whole passage?
11. What principles of evangelism do you see in this passage?
Apply
How are you encouraged by what you are learning about the Holy Spirit? What have you learned from this passage that might help you become a more effective witness? How has your view of God’s work in the world grown as a result of studying this passage?
Pray
Ask God to give you a joyful confidence in the truth, power and relevance of the gospel of Jesus Christ.