December 3, 2025 –  Philip follows the Holy Spirit – Shema— Acts #23
Acts 8:26-40

Are you ready to be a disciple?

Shema – it means “listen” in Hebrew, but it means much more than “listen”.  Because in the Jewish culture of the Old Testament, listening implies obedience.  There is no concept of listening to God without being obedient.  It is just wrong; it is a sin.

This word is so important. It is the title and the first word of the prayer every Jewish person has prayed several times a day for thousands of years.  The prayer is a collection of passages from Deuteronomy.  And this is the first prayer Mary and Joseph taught Jesus as a small boy.  And he prayed this prayer every day.  And this concept of shema is critical to a follower of Jesus. 

We continue our story of Philip in Acts 8, and in this story, Philip shows us what it looks like to listen for God’s voice and obey without delay.  Through him, God brings salvation to a man who was seeking truth but didn’t yet know where to find it.

Acts 8:26-40   Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” This is a desert place. And he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah.
And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and join this chariot.” So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.
Now the passage of the Scripture that he was reading was this: “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth.
In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.”
And the eunuch said to Philip, “About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. And as they were going along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?” 
And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he passed through he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.”

Philip was in Samaria experiencing revival.  Things were going great!  People were coming to know Jesus as their Messiah.  Lives were being changed.  Miracles were happening.  People were being healed.  Crowds were eager to hear the Gospel.  It was the perfect situation for a church leader.  Then God says, “Go south to the desert road.”  Everything is going great, so go to the desert.  How does that make sense?  Leave the crowds?  Leave success?  Leave the work God is blessing? For a desert road?   No preacher today with any sense would leave a place of great success and go to a deserted land.  (You notice preachers rarely get called to leave a big, successful church and go to a tiny, struggling church in the middle of nowhere.) That desert road led to Gaza.  Now that is a place that you probably wouldn’t want to go today.  It wasn’t much better in Philip’s day.  But God had an assignment for Philip, and Philip didn’t argue… he listened and obeyed.

Many of God’s most significant assignments begin with an interruption in routine and a disruption in comfort. Abraham is minding his own business at home, and God calls him to leave everything he knows.  Moses is tending sheep, just as he has done every day for the past 40 years.  He has a good life in Midian. He has no thoughts of ever returning to the country he was kicked out of.  But God interrupts his life and gives him a difficult task. Mary is engaged to be married.  It was an exciting time in her life. She was planning a wedding, getting everything ready to set up a household with Joseph.  And then God interrupts her in a significant way.

God’s task assignments often come with few details.  Now this can be frustrating at times.  We like to know the whole plan, including all the details, before we set out on a project.  We want to know how long it will last, how much it will cost, and what equipment we will need. But God only gave Philip step 1:   Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.    No mention of why.  No mention of what he would do there. But this is the way God usually works.  He rarely gives anyone the big picture up front.

We often miss this when we read the scripture in the psalms:

Psalm 119:105   Your word is a lamp to my feet… 

What is a lamp to my feet?  They didn’t have flashlights in those days.  They used oil lamps held by a string near their feet.  It provided just enough light for the next step.  They couldn’t see any further ahead.  And this is typically how God reveals his plans or tasks for us.  Just one step at a time.  That requires trust.  That requires faith.  

God sends a messenger to Philip.  (That is literally what the word translated ‘angel’ in our English Bibles means.  Both ‘angelos’ in Greek and ‘malach’ in Hebrew mean messenger.)  A few verses later in this passage, it says, “And the Spirit said to Philip…”  I am not sure that there is a big difference in these two statements of the delivery of God’s message to Philip.  In Jewish thought, there is little distinction, as seen in Acts 23:9.

Acts 23:9   Then a great clamor arose, and some of the scribes of the Pharisees’ party stood up and contended sharply, “We find nothing wrong in this man. What if a spirit or an angel spoke to him?”

God very rarely speaks through messengers who take human form.  And contrary to every painting you have ever seen, angels do not have wings.   Angels in human form are the least frequent way God sends messages.  He occasionally speaks through dreams or visions, but the most common way God speaks is through scripture. When you read the Bible, it is God’s word to you.  It is God speaking to you.  And we pray to converse with God.  Mark Batterson says that God most frequently speaks in whispers.  In his book, “Whisper”, Batterson notes that to hear someone whisper, you have to draw close to them.  God speaks to those who draw close.  And God speaks to those who listen.

But the question is: Do we give God a chance to speak to us?  

Do we allow God to speak in our prayer time?  Are we listening, not just talking?  Prayer is meant to be a conversation, not a monologue.  

When we read Scripture, do we allow time for God to speak? Tim Makie of the Bible Project frequently refers to the Bible as meditation literature.  It is not meant to be read like a cookie recipe.  It is not meant to be read like a newspaper or a history book.  It is intended to be read slowly and meditated upon.  Often God has something to whisper to you when you read scripture.  (That is when I most often hear God speak to me.)

Do we make space for God to speak to us?  If every moment of our life is filled with noise, we will miss the whisper of God.  Have you ever wondered why printed books have margins?  They could save a lot of paper if they just used all the space on the page instead of leaving an inch on all sides.  But pages printed to the edge are harder to read.  Your eyes can’t track the lines as well.  The margins are necessary.   And we need margin in our lives.  We fill every moment with constant input, from others or from a television or radio.  There is no blank time, no margin.  It is in quietness that the Spirit often whispers.

God speaks — but do we pause long enough to hear Him?

God speaks to the obedient.   You may not hear God speak because you weren’t obedient to the last request.  If Philip had not been obedient to God’s order to go to the desert, He would not have been in a position for the next instruction.  Only after he has followed God to the desert can he see the chariot, the Ethiopian, and the scroll.  You have to be obedient in the small things that you may not understand to be in a position to do the task God has for you.

But Philip follows God’s instruction to travel to the desert road.  Then he sees a man from south of Egypt, the land called Cush in the Old Testament.  (Currently known as northern Sudan.  This man is an official in the court of the Kandake (the queen mother).  (“The king of Ethiopia was venerated as the child of the sun and regarded as too sacred a personage to discharge the secular functions of royalty; these were performed on his behalf by the queen-mother, who bore the dynastic title Kandakē.”  NICNT  FF Bruce 

He has apparently been to the recent Jewish festival of Pentecost.  He is what they called a God-fearer.  He believes there is a god named Yehovah, and he is convinced of His power, but he has not fully committed. Today, we would call him a seeker.   He may have witnessed, or at least heard about, the commotion in the temple courtyard at Pentecost, and may have heard some talk about Jesus.  But he is going home confused.

God’s plan is good.  His timing is flawless.  Look at this: This person, who has been seeking God but not understanding everything, is alone on the road (he has time on his hands) and trying to read scripture about the Messiah.  He wants to understand it, but he needs help.  So God arranged Philip to be there at that moment.   It is a perfect plan.  But it all hinges on one thing—the obedience of Philip.

God’s great plan will fail if Philip does not follow it.  What happens is Philip says no?  If Philip says, “No way God is calling me to go down that desert road.  That road to Gaza is dangerous.  I am needed here in Samaria.  I am leading a massive movement here.  I am too important to the work being done here to waste that time on the road.  Notice that from Samaria, Philip will travel 50-70 miles on foot.  It will be a 3-4 day journey each way.  This will take Philip away from his work in Samaria for more than a week. And why?  He does not know any details.  The only answer he has to the question of why is obedience.

So what happens to that Ethiopian if Philip is not obedient?  Even if Philip quits on God, God is not going to quit on that Ethiopian.  God is not going to abandon a seeker.  What does God do when people fail to follow and mess up his plan?  Well, fortunately, there is a book that tells us precisely what  God does and how he deals with people.  So let’s look in the Old Testament to see two ways God accomplishes his plan when we are disobedient. 

1.  He gives the disobedient person another chance to follow.  Our example is Jonah.  God had a great plan for turning Nineveh, the capital of the nation of Assyria, to him.  It was up to Jonah to go and preach.  But Jonah was disobedient and got on a boat headed in the opposite direction.  Did God give up on Ninevah?  Did God give up on Jonah?  No.  God created a storm, and God ordained the sailors’ lots to tell them Jonah was the problem.  And then God rescued Jonah from drowning with a great fish.  And then God asks Jonah again, “So how about now, Jonah?  What do you think about going to Nineveh today?

God went to a lot of trouble to encourage Jonah to be obedient, to give him another chance.  God is forgiving of Jonah’s disobedience.  He shows Jonah great mercy.  Do you remember why Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh in the first place?  Because he knew God was merciful and forgiving.  Jonah knew that God would give the Ninevites a chance to repent.   And Jonah didn’t really want the Ninevites to have an opportunity for repentance.  They were his enemy.  But Jonah finally obeys and goes, and God shows mercy on the people of Nineveh.  And the end of the 4-chapter book teaches much about mercy to all people. But what would God have done if Jonah had not finally decided to be obedient? 

2.  If God’s chosen person for a task refuses to be obedient, then God chooses another person to do the task.  For an example of this, we look at King Saul in the Old Testament in 1 Samuel 13-16.  God chose Saul to be king over Israel and lead his people faithfully.  But Saul repeatedly disobeyed God’s commands.  I’ll briefly mention two specific examples: He was impatient and did not wait for the priest Samuel to perform the sacrifices before battle, so he offered them himself.  He was not a priest and was not authorized to make any sacrifices.  Secondly, he refused to carry out God’s instructions concerning the Amalekites.   The Amalekites were the nation that refused the children of Israel passage through their land, forcing them to take a considerable detour.  So Saul was to conquer the Amalekites, and everything in the city belonged to God.  No man of Saul’s army was to take any plunder from the attack.  And Saul conquered the Amalekites but allowed his people to take cattle and sheep from the land, even though God had forbidden it.  So after a long history of Saul’s disobedience, God tells the prophet, Samuel, this:

1 Samuel 15:10-11   The word of Yehovah came to Samuel: “I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments.

God has watched Saul, his chosen person, be disobedient so many times that God regrets giving him the job of king.  God has given him chance after chance, but Saul refuses to be obedient. So Samuel goes to Saul, who tells him, “Look, I destroyed the Amalekites just as God said to do.”  And Samuel asks Saul, “Then what are all these sheep and cattle doing here?”  “Oh,” Saul says, “we took the best of the sheep and cattle from the Amalakites to sacrifice them to God.”   So Samuel says:

1 Samuel 15:22-23   And Samuel said, “Has Yehovah as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of Yehovah? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.  For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of Yehovah, he has also rejected you from being king.

In other words, “You’re fired.”  God will appoint someone else to do the job of king, because you can not be obedient.  God then sent Samuel to Bethlehem to anoint a new king, David, a young shepherd boy, whose best qualification for kingship is his obedience.

Look at what Samuel said.  Listen and obey — shema.  What Saul did would be like someone today doing something in disobedience to God to make a lot of money and then excusing their behavior by saying, “Well, I’m going to give some of that money to the church.”  God doesn’t need your money.  He wants you to obey his voice.  He wants you to listen and obey.  You can not obey if you don’t listen.

Thankfully, Philip in Acts 8 listened and was obedient.  He went without hesitation to the desert road. Had he hesitated, he would have missed that divine appointment.  But he was able to explain the scriptures of Isaiah to the Ethiopian who accepted Jesus and asked to be baptized. There are people around us who are spiritually hungry — often quietly.  Like the Ethiopian, they may have status, authority, wealth, education, or influence.  But what they really need is understanding.  There are many people you encounter who look like they have it all together, but they are quietly asking:  How do I make sense of life?  Is this Jesus stuff real?  What am I missing?  God wants to position obedient disciples alongside searching souls, but the disciples must listen and be obedient to the call.  Sometimes all you have to do is walk across the room.  

Do you hear God’s message to you?

Some people say they have never heard God speak.  Maybe you haven’t heard God’s voice, but you have seen its evidence.  God’s initial word, spoken to the cosmos in Genesis 1, is still echoing through the universe.  He said, “Let there be light”, and “let there be stars”, and in our universe, we now have evidence that stars are still being formed.  God’s word is not finished.

Does God still speak?   I can testify that God is still speaking.  You may never experience an angel, a divine messenger.  Most people in the Bible never did either.  But He speaks through his word and through others, and through whispers.   The real question is:  Are you listening? Or is God’s voice crowded out by other voices?   We also see in this passage that God honors those who seek him.  I challenge you to seek God this next week earnestly.  Spend some time in the quiet.  Spend time meditating on His word.  Listen for his whispers.  And be obedient.  As Samuel said, 

1 Samuel 3:10.  Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.