Acts 8:26-40: Here is Water! What Prevents Me?

The Rev. Steven Theiss, pastor of Immanuel Lutheran Church in New Wells, MO, joins the Rev. Dr. Phil Booe to study Acts 8:26-40. Following the events in Samaria, Philip is guided by an angel of the Lord to a lonely desert road heading south. There, he encounters an Ethiopian eunuch, a high-ranking official in charge of the Queen Candice’s treasury, who is returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Despite his devotion, the eunuch struggles to understand a passage from the book of Isaiah he is reading in his chariot. Philip, prompted by the Spirit, approaches him and explains the gospel of Jesus, interpreting the Scripture the eunuch was reading as prophecy of Christ's sacrificial death. This results in the eunuch's confession of faith and his immediate baptism in a nearby water source. The Book of Acts takes us back to the earliest days of Christianity, unveiling the incredible acts of the apostles and the growth of the early church. Acts offers a firsthand account how the Apostles and Jesus’ disciples respond to his death and resurrection. It makes us witnesses to the beginning of fulfilling Jesus’s command to spread the Gospel from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. We encounter miracles and wonders, we see the church struggling to organize itself in the absence of Jesus, and we learn of the trials and tribulations the early Christians faced in a world that rejected them.