This passage is a reminder, to those who think that the church is supposed to be full in numbers for God to be in it or use people. My brother, my sister, Jesus’ church had 12 disciples ONLY. Today, when you invite someone to church, they ask you ‘how many people are in your church?’ Eyes limitation! Today, let’s look at the way God used one of the disciples to teach us something about Him: God does not look at His people as a mass, like our government systems always do, putting people into categories (limited boxes) and dealing with them in those limited boxes.
Jesus’ last words to His disciples were a command to take the Gospel everywhere. In the beginning, they seemed reluctant to leave Jerusalem, their comfort zone, and it took intense persecution to scatter them from Jerusalem into Judea and Samaria, where Jesus had instructed them to go. Now, Philip, who was among those in charge of food distribution, was one of those who boldly left Jerusalem and started spreading the Gospel wherever he went. He went directly to Samaria… Because it’s not by our deeds that people come to the Lord, many Samaritans responded in large numbers to his appeal to follow Christ, so much that when the news went back to Jerusalem, other disciples followed him there, Peter and John who also quickly became involved in spreading the Gospel to the Samaritans. My friend, God is ready to work with those who are bold for Him and want to serve Him!
Now, in the midst of this success and excitement of seeing people who used to reject God accepting Him, God directed Philip out to the desert for an appointment with an Ethiopian eunuch, another foreigner (verse 26). The Bible tells us that Philip left immediately (verse 27), and this is where things are interesting. My friend, have you become so complacent or attached to the success of what you do for the Lord that it ended up burying your feet where you are? Have you built a comfort zone around you to the point that you cannot even hear when the Lord is sending you to go and bring an isolated soul that is in the desert to Him? Ask your eyes what they see, what they want because they can pin you in the middle of the crowd, where you make yourself invisible, so that the Lord does not notice you to send you to the desert! Imagine what happened with Philip: this man was preaching to a large number of people who were accepting the Lord… then God stopped him to send him to the desert where you barely see a human being, and not only that for one soul! Yes, Philip went to the desert immediately, wholeheartedly. Why? He was serving God, not himself.
My friend, the story of Philip is here to remind us that God finds great and various uses for those willing to obey Him wholeheartedly and that He values both mass responses to the Gospel (the Samaritans) and individual responses (the Ethiopian eunuch). In other words, do not neglect taking time for one soul, preach to one soul, minister to one soul… You do not know God’s plan when He leads you to that individual soul. Man has this against himself: his eyes: sometimes, our eyes lead our belief more than our faith! We should therefore always remember that a church of God, a church that has the presence of God, a church where God is at work is not necessarily a church where we see thousands of people. It can be that church in the desert where where there is a precious soul, that is why the Lord said where two or three are gathered, He is there… Because, as Philip reach out to that individual soul in the desert, they became two and te Lord was with Philip in the desert, to minister to that one soul. Stay blessed in Jesus’ name.