Acts Chapter 8: Scattered Like Seeds

Saul approved of Stephen’s execution. That is how chapter 7 ends. Chapter 8 opens with Saul moving through Jerusalem like a man on a mission — house by house, dragging men and women out and committing them to prison. He was not a bystander swept up in mob violence. He was the architect of a systematic campaign to destroy the community of believers in Jerusalem.

And it worked. The community scattered — out through Judea and Samaria, into territories and towns that had never heard what these people believed. Every refugee became a preacher. Every city of exile became a mission field. Saul’s campaign to silence the gospel became the mechanism by which it spread further than it had any human reason to spread that fast. Yehovah was keeping His word from Acts 1:8 whether anyone was cooperating with it or not.

Philip Goes to Samaria

Philip — one of the seven chosen to serve tables in chapter 6 — went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed the Messiah to them. That sentence requires a moment to land properly. Samaria. The territory that faithful Jews crossed the Jordan to avoid. The people who had intermarried with foreign colonists after the Assyrian exile, who worshipped on Mount Gerizim instead of Jerusalem, who had their own version of the Torah and their own understanding of how to approach Yehovah. Four hundred years of hostility between two peoples who both claimed Abraham as their father.

Philip went there. He did not go with a modified message or a culturally adjusted gospel. He proclaimed the Messiah. The crowds listened with one accord and heeded what Philip said as they heard him and saw the signs he did. Unclean spirits came out of people crying with loud voices. Paralyzed and lame people were healed. And there was great joy in that city.

Joy is worth pausing on here. Not relief. Not curiosity. Not cautious optimism. Great joy — the kind that changes the atmosphere of a place. The gospel arriving in a city where it was not expected and not earned produced the same fruit it had produced in Jerusalem. The Spirit does not adjust His output based on the worthiness of the recipients. He moves where faith opens the door.

Simon the Sorcerer

There was a man in that city who had been the dominant spiritual authority for years. Simon. He practiced sorcery — drawing on supernatural power from sources other than Yehovah — and the people of Samaria had given him enormous influence. They called him the Great Power of God. He had astonished them for a long time. He was the closest thing to a prophet or holy man that Samaria had, and he had built his identity around it.

When Philip came, Simon’s followers left him. The miracles Philip did were of a different order entirely — not tricks or illusions or manipulation but the genuine power of Yehovah healing bodies and freeing people from demonic bondage. Simon himself believed and was baptized and followed Philip everywhere, astonished at the signs and wonders he saw.

But something was wrong. When Peter and John came from Jerusalem and laid hands on the new believers and they received the Holy Spirit, Simon saw it and immediately thought about how much that would be worth. He offered them money: give me this authority too, so that anyone I lay hands on receives the Holy Spirit.

Peter’s response is one of the most direct rebukes in Acts: your silver go with you to destruction, because you thought you could obtain the gift of Yehovah with money. You have no part in this matter because your heart is not right before Yehovah. Repent of this wickedness and pray to Yehovah — if perhaps the intent of your heart may be forgiven. I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and the bondage of unrighteousness.

What Peter is diagnosing is not greed exactly, though greed is part of it. Simon had spent his entire life in a transactional relationship with spiritual power. Power was currency. Whoever had the most impressive ability had the most influence. When he saw the Holy Spirit move through the laying on of hands he did not see a gift of Yehovah poured out in love — he saw a technique he did not yet possess. The Spirit cannot be purchased, cannot be learned, cannot be added to your toolkit. He is not a skill. He is the Presence of the living God, and He comes to those He chooses, on His terms, not theirs.

Simon asked Peter to pray for him that none of these things would come upon him. He was still more concerned with consequences than with repentance. The text does not tell us what happened to Simon after this. History has a few things to say about him, none of them encouraging. Luke leaves the door open. The offer to repent was real. Whether Simon walked through it we are not told.

The Desert Road and the Ethiopian

Then an angel told Philip to leave Samaria and go south toward Gaza on the desert road. No explanation. No context. Just go. Philip went.

On that road he encountered a man who had traveled hundreds of miles to worship in Jerusalem and was now heading home to Ethiopia reading from a scroll of Isaiah. He was a eunuch — a court official of the Kandake, the queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. A man of significant wealth and influence. And according to Deuteronomy 23, his condition excluded him from the assembly of Israel. He had gone to Jerusalem to worship and been as close to the courts of Yehovah as the law allowed — which was not very close. He was on the outside looking in, spiritually hungry, reading a prophet he could not fully understand, going home to a country where there was no one to ask.

The Spirit told Philip to go up and join the chariot. Philip ran up and heard him reading Isaiah 53 aloud — he was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opened not his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who will describe his generation? For his life is taken from the earth.

Do you understand what you are reading? Philip asked. How can I unless someone guides me? the man said. And he invited Philip to sit with him.

Beginning from that passage Philip preached Yeshua to him. Isaiah 53 — the suffering servant, silent before his accusers, humiliated and killed, his life taken from the earth — Philip opened it and showed him the one it was pointing at. The man had been reading the answer to his longing for miles without knowing it.

Then the man said: look, here is water. What prevents me from being baptized? Nothing prevented him. They went down into the water together and Philip immersed him. When they came up out of the water the Spirit of Yehovah carried Philip away — supernaturally, suddenly — and the Ethiopian saw him no more. He went on his way rejoicing.

A man who was excluded from the assembly of Israel by the law of Moses was baptized into the community of Yeshua on a desert road in the middle of nowhere by a man who had been chosen to serve food to widows. Isaiah 56 had promised that Yehovah would bring the eunuchs who kept His covenant into His house and give them a name better than sons and daughters. That promise was being kept on a road between Jerusalem and Gaza while Saul of Tarsus was still hunting believers in the cities.

Yehovah is never behind. He is always exactly on time.

Next: Acts Chapter 9 — The Worst Possible Choice