Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. [Matthew 28:19-20 (ESV)]
As Philip was walking down the road to Gaza, a chariot overtook him. Riding in it was the Ethiopian eunuch. Scripture tells us he’d been to Jerusalem to worship. Deuteronomy 23:1, however, stipulates that no emasculated male can be included within the Jewish religious community or allowed to enter the Temple area. Even though he’d been to Jerusalem to worship, possessed a costly sacred scroll, and hungered for God, this man who feared God and identified with Judaism wasn’t welcome. As a castrated man, he wasn’t a Jewish convert and never could hope to be.
The Spirit instructed Philip to walk beside the eunuch (who just happened to be reading aloud the words of Isaiah). While reading out loud seems strange to us, it was a common practice at the time. With no punctuation or space between the words, reading aloud aided in understanding the text. When Philip asked if the man understood what he was reading, the eunuch replied with a question of his own: “How can I, unless someone instructs me?” When Philip joined him in the chariot, the man wondered to whom Isaiah’s prophecy of the suffering servant applied. Was Isaiah speaking of himself or someone else? Beginning with Isaiah 53 and continuing on through the scroll, Philip told him all about Jesus.
When the eunuch saw water, rather than asking to be baptized, he asked why he couldn’t be baptized. As a Jewish sympathizer, he knew that a full immersion baptism, known the tevilah, was essential for conversion to Judaism but was prohibited to him. Perhaps he expected Philip to tell him that Jesus found him as unacceptable as did Jewish law. Philip didn’t; instead, the two men immediately stopped and Philip baptized the Ethiopian man!
What do you think are the are the odds of a Greek-speaking Nubian (Greek was the language of the royal courts), who’s a follower of Judaism, reading aloud from a Jewish scroll written in Greek (the Hebrew Scriptures had been translated into Greek in the 3rd century BC) that prophesized Jesus and, at that very moment, encountering a Jewish Greek-speaking follower of Jesus from Samaria on a 50-mile stretch of road between Jerusalem and Gaza? What are the odds of them coming upon water on a “desert road” exactly when the man wants to be baptized? What are the odds of a wealthy foreign official allowing a mere commoner (one who’d been walking for several days) into his chariot? For that matter, what are the odds of the man who ran the national treasury admitting he didn’t understand a simple scroll? This, however, was a divine appointment orchestrated by God!
God took Philip 50 to 100 miles out of his way to meet someone considered unacceptable and defective under the old law and bring him to Jesus under the new one! In that one encounter, by bringing the Good News to a foreign eunuch, Philip fulfilled a prophecy found in Isaiah 56! When circumstance align perfectly, as they do in this narrative, we often attribute them to coincidence. There are, however, no coincidences in God’s plan. Both the Ethiopian and Philip may have been surprised that day, but God certainly wasn’t! He never is!
Divine appointments await us all if we are obedient to God’s leading!
Devotions of the Heart 