Philip and the Ethiopian
26 Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” 27 So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians. This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, 28 and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the book of Isaiah the prophet. 29 The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.”
30 Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked.
31 “How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.
32 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.
33 In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.
Who can speak of his descendants?
For his life was taken from the earth.”
34 The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?” 35 Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.
36 As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water. Why shouldn’t I be baptized?” 38 And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him. 39 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. 40 Philip, however, appeared at Azotus and traveled about, preaching the gospel in all the towns until he reached Caesarea.
My Understanding: As I read the words to this old hymn and also the words in this passage of scripture, I immediately saw the parallels between the song and the scripture passage. The song by Eugene M. Bartlett begins like this:
I heard an old, old story,
How a Savior came from glory,
How He gave His life on Calvary
To save a wretch like me;
I heard about His groaning,
Of His precious blood's atoning,
Then I repented of my sins
And won the victory.
In the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, the Lord sent an angel to tell Philip to go to a certain place. God did not tell Philip what he would find there or what God wanted him to do when he got there. He just told him to go and where to go, and Philip went and obeyed. That reminds me of how, the other day, all of a sudden the thought came into my mind to go to a particular ice cream restaurant. I told my husband, and immediately we got up and went, thinking we were going to get ice cream. The store was closed, but right in front of the store a group of young adults had gathered together and they were praying. I felt in my spirit that this was a divine appointment, so my husband and I stayed and prayed with the young adults. The Lord did not tell me what I was going to find there nor did he tell me what I was to do when I arrived. I just knew I was supposed to go, though at the time I did not realize that was the Holy Spirit within me prompting me to do so. Sometimes God just says “go” and then when we go (while Philip was on the way) the Lord opens the opportunities, i.e. his divine appointments in our lives. And, we just follow His lead.
The Ethiopian was sitting in his chariot reading the book of Isaiah when Philip arrived. The Spirit told Philip to “Go to that chariot and stay near it.” I felt the same prompting that day we went to the ice cream store and I saw the group of young adults gathered in prayer outside the store. I sensed that I was to stay near them, so I did, and I invited my husband to get out of the truck and join us, too, as he had sent me ahead to see if the store was open. Anyway, then the scripture says that Philip ran up to the chariot and when he did, he heard the man reading from Isaiah, so Philip asked him if he understood what he was reading. Philip didn’t have to worry ahead of time about what he would encounter when he got there or what he would do or say. The Spirit led him the whole way. All he had to do was to obey the inner promptings of the Spirit’s voice within him, and God did the work. In our case, I just stayed near, my husband joined us, and then the young adults stopped and asked us if we wanted to join them and if they could pray for us, so God led us to them.
The Ethiopian was reading the book of Isaiah, which the Lord paralleled over to the “Old, old story” of this song, which is the story of what Jesus did for us in dying for our sins on the cross so that we could be free, not only of the ultimate penalty of sin, but free of the bondage to, the control of and the power of sin over our lives on a day to day basis. What the man was reading in Isaiah was a prophecy about Jesus Christ coming to be our Savior and dying for us on the cross. So, the part of the song that talks about our Savior giving his life on Calvary to save a wretch like me and hearing about his groaning and of his precious blood’s atoning, parallels over to what the eunuch was reading in Isaiah about Jesus being led like a sheep to the slaughter. Philip seized the opportunity afforded to him by God to then share the gospel message with the Ethiopian.
The first stanza of this song ends with “Then I repented of my sins and won the victory.” In response to Philip telling the man the good news of the gospel, the man responded by desiring to be baptized. Baptism was closely associated with the act of belief in Jesus Christ in the time of the New Testament writers. The scripture does not tell us that the man believed, but that is presumed by his response. Baptism symbolized identification with Jesus Christ in his death, burial and resurrection, but it also was and is a symbol and an outward testimony of what has already taken place in the heart of true believers in Jesus Christ, and that is death to sin (consider ourselves dead to sin), our sins buried and gone forever, and our resurrection to new life in Jesus Christ (consider ourselves alive unto Christ). The people of that time understood not only that this meant the death of their old lives, but they knew that identification with Jesus Christ could also mean their physical death through being killed as a martyr, so they did not take salvation lightly. They understood the cost. So, I believe the man repented of his sins and he went away rejoicing (he won the victory).
When I woke up this morning, I woke with a very bad headache, nonetheless I got up and I prayed in the name of Jesus for God’s healing of my headache, and he did heal it, praise Jesus! The song continues with this stanza:
I heard about His healing,
Of His cleansing pow'r revealing.
How He made the lame to walk again
And caused the blind to see;
And then I cried, "Dear Jesus,
Come and heal my broken spirit,"
And somehow Jesus came and bro't
To me the victory.
Since the Ethiopian was reading from Isaiah 53:7-8, I went to Isaiah 53. Right before the verses quoted above about Jesus being led away like a sheep to the slaughter, it says this in vv. 4-6:
Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
Jesus is not only our Savior, but he is our healer. He heals us spiritually, emotionally and physically, because he cares about our whole being – body, soul and spirit (emotion). When he heals us of sin, it is gone! When he heals us of a headache, it is gone! When he heals our emotions, he brings peace to our hearts. Jesus gives us the victory not only over sin and the power of sin over our lives, but he gives us victory over defeat, over discouragement, and over feelings of abandonment, rejection, loneliness, failure, etc., as well as he gives us victory over physical ailments. He gave Paul a “thorn in the flesh,” and when Paul pleaded with the Lord to remove it, Jesus’ response to him was “My strength is made perfect in your weakness,” to which Paul responded, “So when I am weak, then I am strong.” God doesn’t always remove the thorn. Sometimes the thorn is there as a reminder to us that God can perfect his strength and power in us in our weakness (not our sin). Many times I have sat down to write what God has given to me with a throbbing headache and the headache was not removed until I obeyed the Lord. So, sometimes he heals through removing the thorn and other times he gives us victory through the “thorns” in our lives as we trust in him and are not controlled or driven by our circumstances. Yet, he is a great healer, too!!
O victory in Jesus,
My Savior, forever.
He sought me and bought me
With His redeeming blood;
He loved me ere I knew Him
And all my love is due Him,
He plunged me to victory,
Beneath the cleansing flood.
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