Acts 8.26–39
A sermon preached at Ellenbrook Anglican Church’s Africa Day on 17th September 2023
Today you are celebrating Africa Day, and I commend you for it. God has done wonderful things in Africa, and he still is. David Livingstone was a Scottish medical doctor. In 1840 when he arrived in Cape Town with the London Missionary Society, Christianity was not well established in Africa. There were Coptic and Ethiopic Christians in North Africa, Nubians in Sudan, and believers in South Africa. Also, a new missionary work had begun in West Africa, but otherwise very little. There were not many Christians in that vast continent. Today they number about seven hundred million, and this century Africa is set to become the global centre of Christianity in the world.
It is interesting to ask how Christianity first came to Africa. Come back with me to just three years after Jesus’ death and resurrection. The authorities in Jerusalem have made an attempt to destroy the new movement. As a result, Christians have fled from Jerusalem, and are carrying their new faith wherever they go. Philip was a Greek-speaking Christian, who became known as one of the managers of the Christians’ social welfare activity in Jerusalem. He was the first (after Jesus) to preach salvation to the Samaritan people. Now God has given him orders to head for Gaza.
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.
He must have wondered what God wanted with him on that deserted road; surely he would be better employed in one of the dozens of towns on Palestine’s coastal plain that had not yet heard the gospel. But he obeyed.
One of the exciting things about being a Christian is accidentally finding yourself with someone, and realizing afterwards you were meant to meet. Some call it a “divine appointment.” I have had many, and you may have too. Philip was about to have a divine appointment with an unusual man.
There was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of her treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah.
An African—a black African. How do we know he was black? Luke calls him an “Aithiops”; this is a Greek word meaning “a burnt-face.” Ethiopia in those days was not where it is now; it was what today we call Sudan. There was an African kingdom there—I should call it a “queendom” as it was ruled by a queen, whose title was the Kandake. We do not know the eunuch’s name, but he was the Minister for Finance in her government. He was also a worshipper of Israel’s God, a convert to Judaism, in fact.
How do we know this? Luke tells the story of the Ethiopian Eunuch in chapter 8 of the Acts of the Apostles. Only in chapter 10 does he relate how Peter led the first God-fearing Gentile family to Jesus. The eunuch must have been something different. “God-fearers” were non-Jews who followed the Jewish religion—except that they didn’t go all the way of being circumcised. If they did, they would be regarded as fully Jewish. If you go to Israel today you will see many black people in the streets, who are Jewish because they have converted and been circumcised. They are known as proselytes—converts. The story of the Ethiopian comes before the story of the first conversion of a God-fearer, so I reckon that’s what he must have been: a Jewish convert. He was regarded as fully Jewish. But he had a problem. He was a eunuch—his testicles had been removed—and Jewish law did not allow anyone with a physical imperfection to go into the inner part of the temple. So, although he was fully Jewish, and had gone on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to worship the Jewish God, he was only able to go into the outer courts of the temple; he was a marginal Jew.
While in Jerusalem he bought a copy of the book of Isaiah in Greek. The Jewish Bible—what we call the Old Testament—was written in Hebrew, but the eunuch couldn’t understand Hebrew. Interestingly, until 1948, the oldest copy of the Hebrew Bible was about a thousand years old. This meant there was a thousand year gap between the time of the eunuch and the first known copy of the Hebrew Bible. It had been copied for a thousand years, and no one knew how well. Then, in 1948, an Arab boy discovered a library, hidden in caves in the Judaean Desert. It contained what we call the Dead Sea Scrolls, and among the many rolls was a copy of the book of Isaiah—a thousand years older that the oldest known manuscript. This was a sensation; if you visit Jerusalem make sure you go to see the Isaiah scroll. It has its own museum. You climb stairs to a circular platform and walk around; the scroll is in a glass case stretching around the platform. You can still read it.
However, as I said, the Ethiopian couldn’t read Hebrew; nor could Philip. But they could both speak Greek.
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.
Silent reading was not a thing people did in those days, so Philip heard what the eunuch was reading. It was a particularly difficult passage, from Isaiah 53, which scholars still puzzle over today—especially those who don’t believe in God—because Isaiah predicts so accurately what would happen to Jesus seven hundred years later.
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.”
Who is Isaiah talking about? That is what the Queen’s minister wanted to know, and what many scholars want to know today.
Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus.
In a way that is beyond any human being to have organized, Jesus matches Isaiah’s description of God’s Suffering Servant. Even the Greek translators misunderstood this Scripture and thought the suffering servant had to be Israel. But if you read it in Hebrew, it is clear it is the Messiah. Philip would have had some explaining to do, but when he spoke of Jesus’ life, and death, and resurrection and ascension, the eunuch saw the match and believed.
Here was the first African learning how God answered the promises and predictions of the Old Testament Scriptures by sending his Son into the world to make him known, to bear the sins of the human race in his own body, and to rise from the dead to become the world’s true king.
He believed—not everyone does—but God had prepared this man’s heart to welcome the good news of salvation. He became Africa’s first Christian, and carried the name of Jesus home to his people.
Luke tells us “He went on his way rejoicing!” A long journey lay ahead of him: through Gaza and along the coast to Egypt, catch a boat travelling up the Nile—all the way to the first cataract—and then overland into the kingdom of the “burnt-faced” people. There are churches today in Ethiopia and Sudan that trace their origins back more than sixteen hundred years; perhaps ultimately to this man.
I said at the beginning that Christians in Africa today number some seven hundred million. I am speaking of nominal Christians, of course, but this is sometimes the first step on the road to faith. Only God knows those who are his, who have a personal friendship with his Son. But how did this miracle come about, that Africa should become the centre of Christianity in the world?
There were the missionaries, of course, but they are only part of the answer. George Whitefield College had a partnership with North-West University, so I lent on it and asked them to give an honorary doctorate to my bishop, Bishop Frank Retief. He was once nicknamed “the Billy Graham of South Africa and was used by God to lead thousands to personal faith in Jesus. The night before the graduation we were guests at a dinner party in the university city of Potchefstroom. The dinner was organized by the professors in the theology faculty to honour Bishop Frank. When the conversation turned to faith, Frank gave his opinion that most Christianity in Africa had been spread by unpaid black evangelists, most of whose stories had never been told. He said he hoped some them could be recovered and written down. One of the professors said he had a story of how Christianity came to the Tswana people in the north-west part of South Africa.
An African, Tswana man, heard about Jesus and believed. He began to preach. The farmers asked whether he had permission, and since he did not, they told him to stop. But he wouldn’t stop—couldn’t—and so they whipped him. They told him he could not preach without permission. The leader of the South African Republic then was President Paul Kruger. At the time he was in the far east of the country near the border with Mozambique. So, the preacher walked across South Africa from the west to the east, found the president, and asked him for permission to preach. The president was only too glad, and gave him an official letter. He walked back across South African from east to west, and resumed his preaching. The farmers couldn’t touch him now; he had a letter signed by the president. “That is how Christianity came to the Tswana people of this area,” said the professor. Stories like that have been happening all over Africa. And it is still going on. Let no one say Christianity is a religion of foreigners.
Bekele came from Ethiopia to study at George Whitefield College. We went for coffee, and he told me his story. As a schoolboy he loved the music of an Ethiopian singer, Tesfaye Gabisso, and through it came to know the Lord Jesus. Then he discovered Tesfayo was in prison for being a Christian—this was under the former Communist regime. When he was released from prison, they met and Tesfayo told him how Hudson Taylor had taken Christianity to China. Bekele dreamed of bringing the gospel to Ethiopia. In the school holidays he and a school friend sold a shirt and a watch and bought bus tickets to Ankobar, a city in northern Ethiopia where there were hardly any Christians. They preached and people gave their life to Jesus. I interrupted the story at this point; I was puzzled to know how he could go to a place where he was not known, and preach. “We went to funerals,” he said. “Anyone can go to a funeral in Ethiopia, and anyone can preach.” It is the same in South Africa. Much gospel-preaching is done at funerals.
On another visit to that city in their school holidays, someone told them they should go to the villages, where no one had ever heard of Jesus. They walked a long way. When they came to a village they saw immediately that something was wrong. The villagers were acting strangely. They were told the “Holy Man” was ill. They went to his home. People were going in and out. There seemed to be confusion. They asked to see the Holy Man and were told that was impossible; he was in his bedroom; if anyone went in there they would die. They asked if they could go in and pray, and were told no. But they persisted and went in. Inside, said Bekele, was an empty room with a small man with a long beard sitting on the floor. They prayed for him to get well and he did. I interrupted again to ask how long after they prayed did he get well. I imagined a few months. “Just there,” Bekele replied. He got well immediately, they spoke to him about Jesus, he believed, and gave his life to God. Then they cut off his beard and brought him out to the people. The villagers were afraid and ran away, but he called them back. According to Bekele, there are now twelve thousand Christians in that district. Bekele now has a PhD and has returned to Ethiopia to teach in a theological college.
Our family spent twenty years in Africa. We heard many stories of God at work in Africa; we were a part of some. How has Africa become Christian in such a short time? It became clear to me that it was more than human. God is building the kingdom of the Lord Jesus in Africa, and it started with one man and a divine appointment on a desert road.