11th May 2025

New Testament Heroes 14 – 11/05/25 – Martin Mowat

Readings : John 10:22 – 33 & 39 & Acts 8:1b - 8 

Last week we heard about the grizzly demise of the first martyr for the Christian faith, Stephen, who was murdered by the members of the Jewish Sanhedrin.

He was stoned to death, without trial, but it wasn’t considered murder, technically speaking, because no-one could know for certain who had thrown the fatal stone. Strange logic, but there we go!

Capital punishment is always barbaric, however it is administered, but stoning was particularly so.  It appears to have been fairly standard in ancient Israel, and still used in the early Christian era.  On one occasion, as we’ve just heard, the Jews had even tried to stone Jesus. 

So when Stephen called the Jewish leaders a “stiff-necked people with uncircumcised hearts, who always resisted the Holy Spirit, and who disobeyed their own religious law by murdering the Righteous One”, he must have known that he was sailing close to the wind, that he was living dangerously.

Was that foolish, or was it heroic? That’s the question we left ourselves with last week. 

Did it achieve anything? Did it change anything? Most specifically, did it change the hearts of any of the Jewish hierarchy?  Not that we know of.  

So, what can we glean, then, from Stephen’s behaviour? 

The first thing comes from the last words of Luke’s description of the event. 

While they were stoning him, he said, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”  Then he fell on his knees and cried out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he fell asleep.

“He fell asleep”. Was that just a polite way of saying that he died in agony or does it literally mean that God delivered him from the worst of the traumatic suffering? Again, I can’t tell you. 

Most probably, though, Luke chose those words to underline the fact that for believers, physical death is not spiritual death. It’s not the end, rather it’s more like going through a door, from one room into another, one in which we are welcomed into the loving arms of our saviour.

The very next verse, the first of the next chapter, chapter 8, Luke says “And Saul approved of their killing him.” It doesn’t say that he enjoyed it, just that he ‘approved’ of it, and that it fuelled his enthusiasm for his persecution of the church, that we’ve just been told about by Jess in our second reading.

Saul was arbitrarily dragging Christians from their homes and putting them in prison. So the believers scattered and only the apostles, it seems, had the courage to stay in Jerusalem. 

But “those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went”. The growth of the church went into over-drive, even a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.

Indirectly then, Stephen’s actions did have a significant and positive effect.  They also affected Saul, who’s about to became Paul, but we’ll leave him until next week, because we now see a new hero come to the surface, a man called Philip. 

There are at least two Philip’s in the New Testament, maybe three, so which one was this? There was the Philip who was one of the twelve. Like Andrew and Peter, he came from the town of Bethsaida, which is near where the Jordan river enters the Sea of Galilee, and near where Jesus fed the 5000. 

For three years that Philip had followed Jesus, listened to all his teaching, and witnessed, first hand, all his miracles. He’d been there at the last supper and then lived through the shocking events surrounding Jesus’ crucifiction.  

And then, significantly, he had been in that upper room when suddenly, a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting, and when they saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them, and when all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

Then there was the Philip who was one of the seven deacons that we talked about last week? That one had been, quite possibly, one of the seventy-two whom Jesus sent out, two by two, without a purse or bag or sandals, to heal the sick and tell people ‘The kingdom of God is near’.

And later there was a Philip referred to as ‘Philip the Evangelist’ in Acts 21 when Paul and Luke went to stay with him in Caesarea.  

It’s pretty certain that Philip the Evangelist and Philip the deacon were one and the same, and the one that we’ve just heard about. He clearly did have a heart for evangelism, because now, with the church seemingly under threat, he decided to do something positive, and took himself north to Samaria, which is today in the northern West Bank.

The fact that he goes there is significant. For both historic and religious reasons, the Jews didn’t like Samaritans, they looked down their noses at them.  But Jesus hadn’t done that.  Do you remember the story of him talking to a woman at a well, the one who’d had 5 husbands and was living with a sixth man who wasn’t her husband?  Well, that happened in Samaria, and she was a Samaritan.

And do you remember Jesus’ parable about the man who got attacked by robbers on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho? A priest had chosen not to help him, and then a Levite had done the same thing, but the man who did take pity on him, put him on his donkey, took him to an inn and paid for his lodgings while he recovered, that man was a Samaritan. 

Philip knew, perhaps because the Holy Spirit told him, that those people, no matter how despised and disparaged by the Jews, needed to hear the gospel message as much as anyone else. It doesn’t matter how worthy or deserving you feel about yourself, the good news of the gospel is for you. 

So off Stephen went, and that’s why he’s my hero today.  

While he was there, there was an amusing incident with a sorcerer called Simon, who was jealous of Philip because of the miracles he was doing. You can read about that for yourselves. 

But then, once the new church in Samaria was up and running, Philip was sent by the Holy Spirit, about 100 miles south, that’s a long walk, and was used to bring the gospel to an Ethiopian government official. I love this story.  

This guy was the treasury minister at the court of Candace, the queen of Ethiopia. He was probably a Jew by religion because Philip found him sitting in his chariot, reading aloud from Isaiah and trying to make sense of the prophet’s words. Philip offered to explain it to him, so the official invited him to come up into the chariot with him. In the end, the man was saved and baptised (Acts 8:26–39). We hope and presume that he then shared the gospel message with others when he got home.

Immediately following that baptism, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, another 60 miles, to Azotus, on the coast. That’s the only record of such a thing happening. Just amazing! From there he worked his way northward, preaching the gospel in the seaside towns all the way up to Caesarea.

And it was there, twenty years later, when Paul and Luke and others were traveling to Jerusalem, that they stopped at Philip’s home and stayed with him for several days. By then, apparently, he had four unmarried daughters, all of whom had the gift of prophecy. 

That’s pretty well all we know about Philip, but what a hero he was!