Snatched up
This week is on Acts 8:39-40:
These verses always impress me. It's a story about the early church and a guy named Philip who gets basically teleported from place to another. You hear occasional stories nowadays about missionaries in Africa or Mexico finding themselves stranded on the wrong side of a river or something and getting zapped across to the other side. In physics, we're just now learning to teleport individual particles, but nothing like a whole man. It's too amazing for us.
Philip was sharing the story of Jesus with an Ethiopian eunuch in a chariot. Nowadays it would probably be a businessman on a plane or train. As soon as he got done baptizing the eunuch, the story goes that Philip was instantly transported to Azotus. Seeing as he started on a back road leading from Jerusalem to Gaza and ended up in the coastal town of Azotus (now called Ashdod), he probably got moved about twenty miles. I could save a ton on taxi fare if God would transport me like that!
Not only is that an awesome thing to have happen and to be able to tell people about, but it's a testimony to how important Philip's work was. God sent him all the way down this back road just to reach this one soul, and not even a pureblooded Hebrew Jewish soul, but a foreign slave's soul! His conversion and subsequent baptism were so important that God sent someone to go make it happen, and when he was done, God had so much for Philip to do that he whisked him away to go do something else. We're so precious to him that he'll go through great lengths to save us.
The people in Azotus were so important to God that he sent someone immediately to reach them. And Philip went cranking all the way up the coast until he hit Caesarea, where he stayed. This is serious stuff. There were so many people who needed to hear about Jesus that there simply was no time to waste. They didn't spend three years planting a church and doing a demographic survey to figure out the best strategy for evangelism. Philip just went out and told people what he knew and did what he was told. God backed him up with miraculous power.
So, it's important for people to know about Jesus. It's important enough that God would bend the universe to make it happen. It was important enough that he sent Philip down a back road just to reach one guy, and that Philip hit every town between Azotus and Caesarea to let people know. Each one of us is important to God.
When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.
These verses always impress me. It's a story about the early church and a guy named Philip who gets basically teleported from place to another. You hear occasional stories nowadays about missionaries in Africa or Mexico finding themselves stranded on the wrong side of a river or something and getting zapped across to the other side. In physics, we're just now learning to teleport individual particles, but nothing like a whole man. It's too amazing for us.
Philip was sharing the story of Jesus with an Ethiopian eunuch in a chariot. Nowadays it would probably be a businessman on a plane or train. As soon as he got done baptizing the eunuch, the story goes that Philip was instantly transported to Azotus. Seeing as he started on a back road leading from Jerusalem to Gaza and ended up in the coastal town of Azotus (now called Ashdod), he probably got moved about twenty miles. I could save a ton on taxi fare if God would transport me like that!
Not only is that an awesome thing to have happen and to be able to tell people about, but it's a testimony to how important Philip's work was. God sent him all the way down this back road just to reach this one soul, and not even a pureblooded Hebrew Jewish soul, but a foreign slave's soul! His conversion and subsequent baptism were so important that God sent someone to go make it happen, and when he was done, God had so much for Philip to do that he whisked him away to go do something else. We're so precious to him that he'll go through great lengths to save us.
The people in Azotus were so important to God that he sent someone immediately to reach them. And Philip went cranking all the way up the coast until he hit Caesarea, where he stayed. This is serious stuff. There were so many people who needed to hear about Jesus that there simply was no time to waste. They didn't spend three years planting a church and doing a demographic survey to figure out the best strategy for evangelism. Philip just went out and told people what he knew and did what he was told. God backed him up with miraculous power.
So, it's important for people to know about Jesus. It's important enough that God would bend the universe to make it happen. It was important enough that he sent Philip down a back road just to reach one guy, and that Philip hit every town between Azotus and Caesarea to let people know. Each one of us is important to God.
Comments
Post a Comment