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On the Way to Gaza
Philip might well wonder why he should be taken away from successful work in a populous city, and despatched to the lonely road to Gaza. But he obeyed at once. He knew not for what he was sent there, but that ignorance did not trouble or retard him. When the Angel of the Lord said: “Go toward the south,” this is the simple record which follows: “And he arose and went.”
Time was when God spake to His people in dreams and visions of the night; who shall say that He does not speak in like manner now? God has so many voices! He speaks in nature; He speaks through conscience to the inner man; He speaks in the notes of the church bell. He speaks in the Scriptures and by the Holy Spirit. All good impulses and high aspirations are as Voices of God. The vital question is not how He speaks, but shall we straightway heed Him?
If He bids us remain in Samaria, so be it. If He bids us go down to Gaza by the way that is desert, so be it. The habit of heeding is the pathway of life; and the secret of character is to run when He bids us.
I said, “Let me walk in the field”;
He said, “Nay, walk in the town.”
I said, “There are no flowers there”;
He said, “No flowers, but a crown.”
I said, “But the skies are black,
There is nothing but noise and din.”
And He wept as He sent me back,
“There is more,” He said; “there is sin.”
I said, “But the air is thick,
And fogs are veiling the sun.”
He answered, “Yet souls are sick,
And souls in the dark undone.”
I said, “I shall miss the light,
And friends will miss me, they say.”
He answered me, “Choose to-night,
If I am to miss you, or they.”
I pleaded for time to be given;
He said, “Is it hard to decide?
It will not seem hard in heaven
To have followed the steps of your Guide.”
I cast one look at the field,
Then set my face to the town.
He said, “My child, do you yield?
Will you leave the flowers for the crown?”
Then into His hand went mine,
And into my heart came He,
And I walked in a light divine,
The path I feared to see.1 [Note: George MacDonald.]
I like the hopefulness of Philip, as he advances to his new task. Remember, he had just been imposed upon by a bad man at Samaria, when Simon the Sorcerer, a kind of false Christ, had tried to buy the Holy Spirit. That was a bitterly disappointing case, yet Philip went on evangelizing just the same. He would not throw up his mission in disgust because Simon had turned out a sham; here he is, a few days later, guiding an earnest man to the Redeemer. One meets persons occasionally who have never been able to get over some glaring instance of hypocrisy in a professing Christian. For the remainder of their life it forms the favourite arrow in their quiver. They produce the well-worn anecdote in season and out, and make it the basis of extremely dismal conclusions as to the sincerity and trustworthiness of Christians as a body. Now in this there is very little sense. The merchant who has been defrauded once does not feel called upon to suspect each new customer till he proves himself honest. Now and then we have a wet summer, but it is only foolish persons who go about saying that the fine old-fashioned seasons are gone for ever. An exception is exceptional. This or that instance of religious inconsistency counts for one, but it counts for no more than one. If it makes a great noise, that is because it is so unusual. When a railway accident happens, the papers are full of it, and nervous people vow they will never set foot in a train again; yet thousands of trains are running safely all the time. So we ought not to allow an isolated case of religious breakdown, which certainly may occur, to bulk too largely in our thoughts. Consider rather the unnumbered multitudes whose lives from day to day are being made beautiful through faith in the Son of God. Whatsoever things are true, honourable, lovely, and of good report-think on these things.1 [Note: H. R. Mackintosh, Life on God's Plan, 103.]
2. Gaza has always been the gateway of Palestine. Invader after invader when passing from Egypt to Palestine has taken Gaza in his way. It is still the trade route to Egypt, along which the telegraph line runs. In the days of Philip it was the direct road for travellers from Jerusalem to the Nile and the Red Sea. There were then, and there are still, two great roads leading from Jerusalem to Gaza, one a more northern road, through villages and cultivated land, the other a desert road, through districts inhabited then as now by the wandering Arabs of the desert alone. Strange as it might seem, Philip, a lone man, obliged to go on his feet, was directed to take this latter route.
When he arrived at the point where the road from Jerusalem fell into that by which he had come from Samaria, he saw a chariot, in which was a person of some consequence. Luke's “Behold!” suggests the sudden sight of the great man's cortège in the distance. No doubt, he travelled with a train of attendants, as became his dignity, and would be conspicuous from afar. Philip, of course, did not know who he was when he caught sight of him, but Luke tells his rank at once, in order to lay stress on it, as well as to bring out the significance of his occupation and subsequent conversion. He was an Ethiopian by birth, a eunuch, and treasurer of Candace, Queen of the Ethiopians, whose centre of government was Meroë on the Upper Nile, Candace being the name of the dynasty.
3. Now this eunuch for whose help Philip had come was seeking God. He was not by birth a member of the Jewish race; but by choice he had become, so to speak, an associate-member, or, in more technical language, a proselyte of the gate. He had travelled over a thousand miles to worship at Jerusalem. Then he had turned home again, perhaps a little disappointed, anyhow with his mind in something of a maze. Possibly he had heard stray rumours about a certain Jesus, crucified a few months earlier, whose followers were making a great stir by persistently claiming that He had risen from the dead. But the stories were far from clear. And now on his way home he held open before him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, and was reading it attentively. He was reading aloud, for Orientals rarely, if ever, read in silence, even when alone.
4. No sooner had Philip caught sight of the stranger than he seems to have realized the object of his mission; a second Divine impulse hurried him forward to go and speak to him; and, when he heard the particular passage he was reading, it quickened his keenest interest. Without waiting to go through any preliminaries, or to make any explanations, Philip broke in on him with the question: “Understandest thou what thou readest?” The prompt answer was: “How can I, except some one shall guide me? “Thereupon “he besought Philip to come up and sit with him.”
So the chariot rolled on, and through the silence of the desert the voices of these two reached the wondering attendants, as they plodded along. The Ethiopian was reading the Septuagint translation of Isaiah, which, though it missed part of the force of the original, brought clearly before him the great figure of a Sufferer, meek and dumb, swept from the earth by unjust judgment. He understood so much, but what he did not understand was whom this great tragic Figure represented. His question-“Of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other?”-goes to the root of the matter, and is a burning question to-day, as it was all these centuries ago on the road to Gaza. Philip had no doubt of the answer. Jesus was the “lamb dumb before his shearer.”
How afraid we all are of religious talk! How we pride ourselves on our reserve, and how ready we are to freeze up any warm, eager soul who is not quite so taciturn as we are! There was an Indian gentleman who once came to this country because he had been filled with an insatiable desire to learn all he could about immortality, and he supposed people in England could tell him something. He went to London, and to his neighbour at table one evening he said: “I should like to know what you think about immortality.” He received the answer, “Ah! in this country we don't talk about these subjects at dinner”; and that was the end.1 [Note: H. R. Mackintosh, Life on, God's Plan, 107.]
5. “And Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from this scripture, preached unto him Jesus.” If only we had the notes of that sermon, delivered with a chariot for pulpit, and to an audience of one, and filled, as we shall see, with such persuasive power! What were Philip's arguments and illustrations and appeals? How did he set Jesus livingly and compellingly before this man who an hour ago had heard no more than His name, and perhaps not even that? In all probability he would tell him first of the Resurrection; then, as the background of that, snatches from the story of Christ's life, and some of His most gracious parables, and perhaps a few of His best-remembered sayings. Yet whatever else he told him, he would inevitably tell him of the cross. With such a text he could not help that, and Philip was the last man that would wish to help it. No preacher can be true to the Word and leave out the cross. No preacher can leave out the cross who would be faithful to man's need, or just to his frailty, or compassionate to the wounds of conscience. And rest assured that if Philip had kept silence about Calvary-its meaning, its issues, its glory-then the gleam of interest would soon have faded from the hearer's eyes, and his eager face have lost its quiver of expectancy. But so it was that by the strong pleading of the outward voice, and the gracious power of the Spirit inwardly, the Ethiopian was brought to look to the Crucified, to desire Him, to reach out empty hands of longing after Him; until, as the chariot rolled on its unconscious way, then and there he yielded himself to the new constraining Presence, and began to love a Saviour he had never seen.
Begin from first where He encradled was
In simple cratch, wrapt in a wad of hay,
Between the toilful ox and humble ass,
And in what rags, and in how base array,
The glory of our heavenly riches lay,
When Him the silly shepherds came to see,
Whom greatest princes sought on lowest knee.
From thence read on the story of His life,
His humble carriage, His unfaulty ways,
His cancred foes, His fights, His toil, His strife,
His pains, His poverty, His sharp assays,
Through which He passed His miserable days,
Offending none, and doing good to all,
Yet being maliced both of great and small.
Then shalt thou feel thy spirit so possessed,
And ravished with devouring great desire
Of His dear self, that shall thy feeble breast
Inflame with love, and set thee all on fire
With burning zeal, through every part entire,
That in no earthly thing thou shalt delight,
But in His sweet and amiable sight.1 [Note: E. Spenser,]
6. On the swift conversion followed, as swiftly, an eager confession of new faith. Everywhere in that day, of course, as in heathenism still, the obvious and natural mode in which a man could signify his personal belief in Jesus was an open and deliberate submission to the rite of baptism. None of the elements of publicity were lacking now; one can see the officers and servants of the retinue crowding round to watch and comment and remember. In some pool or streamlet by the wayside the sacrament took place, and the new disciple took the words of Christian confession on his lips. There might have been reason, to one of less breadth of mind than Philip, for hesitating, in the circumstances, to perform the rite; but he did not hesitate a moment, and so another step was taken towards opening the door of the gospel to all classes and conditions of men.
As is well known, the answer to the eunuch's question (Act_8:37) is wanting in authoritative manuscripts. The insertion may have been due to the creeping into the text of a marginal note. A recent and most original commentator on the Acts (Blass) considers that this, like other remarkable readings found in one set of manuscripts, was written by Luke in a draft of the book, which he afterwards revised and somewhat abbreviated into the form which most of the manuscripts present. However that may be, the required conditions in the doubtful verse are those which the practice of the rest of the Acts shows to have been required. Faith in Jesus Christ the Son of God was the qualification for the baptisms there recorded.1 [Note: A. Maclaren.]
7. “And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip; and the eunuch saw him no more, for he went on his way rejoicing.” Whether by a sudden inward summons to depart, like that by which he had been commanded to come, or by a miraculous withdrawal, such as God could employ, in this or any other case, at His pleasure, further communication was precluded between the convert and his evangelist. The work was done for which Philip came; the work of faith with power, the work of an abiding conversion, the work of love and hope and great joy: the Ethiopian saw him no more; and it mattered not; he stayed not to seek or to murmur; “for he went on his way rejoicing.” He disappears for ever from the page of sacred history, but tradition says that he became the inaugurator of a great religious movement in his own country, which continued for generations.
And “Philip was found at Azotus.” When next he was seen, it was there, twenty miles northward from Gaza; and passing through, he evangelized all the cities, proclaimed his glad tidings in every place through which he journeyed, till he came to Cæsarea. Two cities lying on or near his route were Lydda and Joppa. These we find Peter visiting in the course of the next chapter; in the former he healed the paralytic Æneas, in the latter he raised Dorcas or Tabitha from the dead. It appears, therefore, that Philip prepared the way for the Apostles in the cities which lay along the coast-line of Palestine, as he had formerly done in Samaria.
How interesting the meeting and greeting and passing of those ships in the desert-Philip and the Ethiopian officer. Only a look and a voice, then light, brotherhood and joy. Philip had something to give, and there was something the officer longed for. One had the joy of giving, the other of receiving; each went on his way rejoicing, a better Man_1:1 [Note: M. D. Babcock, Thoughts for Every-Day Living, 65.]