Philip, who started in Jerusalem with the rest of the apostles and moved to Judea, had gone down to Samaria where he had started a church. Then he was sent to the Gaza road by the angel of the Lord.
And it was there he would reach the ends of the earth through the Ethiopian eunuch.
“God has to get (followers of Christ) out of Jerusalem so that they can take the gospel to the nations,” said Smith, who recently retired as professor of preaching at Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama. “They’re supposed to be a light to the Gentiles.”
Preaching to the Southern Baptist Convention Pastors Conference on Monday, Smith said God scatters them not with prosperity theology but with adversity theology. Persecution begins, and that drives them to move away from Jerusalem.
“God is saying to us (through this text), it’s time to minister from the neighborhood to the nations, to move beyond Jerusalem to the nations,” he said. “When God scatters us, we are to scatter the Word of God wherever we are because we are undercover agents for Christ himself.”
That’s what Philip did, Smith said. He went to Samaria as Jesus had modeled, even though it was a place that Jews avoided.
“Philip has done well; the Church has grown,” Smith said, sharing the story from Acts 8:26–40. “Then God sends an angel to say to Philip, ‘Go to the Gaza road.’”
What happens there is the same as what has happened so far on roads throughout Acts — people experience learning, burning and yearning. The men who walked with Jesus on the road to Emmaus felt it, then Saul did on the road to Damascus.
“Here on this Gaza road, there is learning,” Smith said, referring to when Philip explains the passage to the eunuch and shares how it points to Christ.
From there, the Ethiopian eunuch feels a burning to be baptized, and afterward he has a yearning to celebrate and take the gospel back home with him.
“When he came out of that water, he rejoiced and went on his way home,” Smith said.
He asked pastors present at the conference if they too would be obedient when God calls them to preach to the one rather than to the masses.
“Can you be faithful with the one?” he asked.
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This story first appeared in The Baptist Paper.
