Acts 8:26-40
What’s Your Next Step?

I. Where Are You Going Next?
1. Providing guidance is a favorite topic for Christian speakers: find the will of God in the Bible, etc.
2. Dysfunctional family won’t mention their sins; we won’t even admit that they’re sins.
3. Some people need guidance to take on a pornography problem or start reading the Bible every day.
4. Here, the church has crossed one boundary. What’s the next step for the gospel? We need guidance.
II. The Guiding (8:26-31)
A. An Angel (8:26)
1. He's just told one step at a time. He’s not given the whole scenario, just the next step.
2. “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase”. (Martin L. King)
B. The Spirit (8:29)
1. The Ethiopian was an eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, the treasurer.
2. Why not arrange for Peter and John to speak to the Ethiopian eunuch when they’re in Jerusalem?
3. Philip though, doesn’t yet know why he’s been told to go to the highway. He needs guidance again.
4. Can we expect to get guidance from the Holy Spirit? Why not, since Philip isn’t an apostle either.
5. Our feelings might be the leading of the Holy Spirit but the Word of God always, definitely is.
6. It can be abused but, the Holy Spirit can speak to us to lead us still.
7. We see through a glass darkly. We might be wrong about what we perceive as His guidance.
8. Don’t expect the supernatural voice of the Holy Spirit for natural things. Use natural means.
9. This is about the gospel finally first beginning to make a breakthrough to the “ends of the earth.”
10. Perhaps we don’t experience the leading of the Holy Spirit because we’re not on His mission.
C. A Teacher (8:31)
1. Philip hears the voice of the Spirit. ‘Go up to that chariot.’ Philip can jog over to it.
2. The Ethiopian eunuch is reading out loud from Isaiah 52-53, which begins, “Behold My servant”.
3. Scripture offers guidance but do you need guidance to understand scripture? Often, yes.
4. That’s why the Lord gave the church pastor-teachers, to guide you into what His Word says.
5. The Puritans were in America only 6 years when they started a college to train their pastors.
6. The Ethiopian was humble enough to understand that he needed a teacher. We need that attitude.
7. The Ethiopian invited Philip up into the chariot to sit with him and teach him. He was teachable.
III. The Servant Song (8:32-35)
2. The book of Isaiah contains at least four “Servant Songs”, spread out from chapters 42 to 53.
3. Who is it the Servant of the Lord?
4. The exact passage is from Isaiah 53:7-8, “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter.”
5. Isaiah is speaking in the third person, about someone else. Is it about Israel corporately?
6. The servant songs of Isaiah give us a portrait of who Jesus is, what He felt, what His experiences mean.
7. The Holy Spirit had guided Philip perfectly so that He was beside the chariot at just the right time.
8. Philip begins with Isaiah 53 and from it told the Ethiopian the good news about Jesus.
IV. Baptism (8:36-38)
1. The Ethiopian wants to be a disciple of Jesus and Jesus commanded that baptism is for disciples.
2. The Ethiopian is not a child, manipulated to say a repeat-after-me prayer and then rushed to be baptized.
3. He’s a grown, intelligent, responsible man who can count the costs and decides to be a disciple.
4. Once you finally see that Jesus is the Servant of the Lord, become His disciple, the next step is baptism.
V. The Spirit (8:39-40)
1. They come up out of the water and then the Holy Spirit takes Philip away. Is it a miracle like Elijah?
2. It could mean only that the Holy Spirit guided him. Either way, the Spirit was guiding him again.
3. The Spirit was also with the Ethiopian, giving him joy. He’ll take it to the uttermost parts of the earth.
4. He’s not just the one you worship when you’re in America. He’s for all people, all nations, like China.
5. Philip goes one step at a time from Azotus to Caesarea, the big city, about 30 miles north.
VI. Invitation: What’s your next step? If you are a disciple, you need to be baptized. He wants to guide you to sacrifice for His mission, for doing your part to get the gospel out. If you’re not a believer in the Lord yet, you need to know that He is the God of Ethiopia, America, China, the uttermost parts of the earth. He is your God and if you would but take the next step to believe that, to follow Jesus, you can go your way, like the Ethiopian, with great joy.