STEVEN AND PHILIP

Acts 7-8

Our church will be studying a stewardship lesson this Sunday, but I decided to hit the quarterly for those who may be following in other churches or classes. It will be shorter.

After the deacons were selected, two of them took center stage. (Do you ever wonder how many stories were never told? The other five deacons, most of the Twelve? )

Steven was apparently a powerful preacher and miracle worker. He attracted attention and got hauled in before the Sanhedrin. When asked to give an account of himself, he gave them a history lesson. (If you don't like history, sorry, but the Bible is based on historical events.) He preached Christ as the fulfillment of God's work with Israel and the promises of a messiah. Then he blistered them with the accusation they killed him and God raised him. I don't know where Gamalial was this time, but the condemned him to stoning through false testimony.

When he died, he commented he saw the living Christ standing at the right hand of God. Someone has commented that elsewhere the Bible says He is seated at the right hand of God, but that when His first martyr dies, He stands in honor!

Luke makes the poignant statement: they threw their gaments at the feet of a young man named Saul. Oh yes.

Philip was another deacon who was a powerful witness. Remember I commented that the leading role of the Spirit in the Bible is to provoke witness? This time the Spirit led Philip to the desert, close enough to a chariot leaving the country. In the chariot was the treasurer of Ethiopia, whose queen was called Candace – as the king of Egypt was called Pharaoh. He was a eunuch, which may mean he had been neutered or may by that time have only referred to his rank.

Anyway, this man was a God-fearer, friendly to the Jewish faith. He was even reading Isaiah as he traveled. This showed both he could read well and he had the money to own a scroll.

Philip joined him and asked if he understood what he was reading. Apparently he understood well enough to ask an intelligent question. “Was the prophet speaking of himself or someone else?” Probably he was reading one of the “suffering servant” passages, such as Isaiah 53. Philip used this as an entrance to tell him about Jesus and how Isaiah prophesied He would come. The man responded and said “There's some water. Why can't I be baptized?” So Philip baptized him. Traditionally, the eunuch went back to Ethiopia and began the longest lived branch of Christianity, only in recent years challenged by the Muslims.

Next, Philip was seen elsewhere, preaching. He preached in Samaria, to the Ethiopian, and along the coast. Remember Jesus specified Samaria and the ends of the earth in His Great Commission. Philip was one of the leaders in the international gospel movement! Remember a deacon qualification was “full of the Holy Spirit,” and that Spirit leads primarily to missionary activity. Both Steven and Philip exhibited it. Are you acquainted with Him?