“A Model Evangelist” (Acts 8:26-40) | 4/20/22
Acts 8:26-40 | 4/20/22 | Will DuVal
In the spring of 2012, a friend shared the gospel with me, and I finally surrendered my life to Jesus. I had made a profession of faith as an 8-year old, but for almost two decades, there was little to no fruit in my life to suggest that I possessed a genuine faith, despite the fact that I had graduated with honors from divinity school and been employed as a YOUTH pastor for almost 5 years by that point! But my life changed that Thursday afternoon by the shore of Lake Maxinkuckee, all because of one friend’s FAITHFULNESS to obey God’s calling, and witness to me.
Stuart was a MODEL evangelist. And this morning, we will see another model evangelist, Philip - “THE Evangelist” - back at it again. Last week, Philip became the church’s first missionary outside of Jerusalem in the first half of ch8, when he brought the gospel to SAMARIA. In case you missed it, quick recap: Philip exemplified for us 6 principles - 6 “A”s - of Evangelism:
1) The gospel ARRIVED in Samaria, because Philip was obedient to GO.
2) His gospel was ATTESTED, not just in word, but in power and action; Philip didn’t JUST “go”; he SHOWED them the gospel as well.
3) The gospel was ACCEPTED BY the Samaritans; Philip called them to repent and BELIEVE.
4) Then the gospel was AUTHENTICATED by the apostles; just as the church still today CONFIRMS a person’s testimony of faith.
5) The gospel was ASSURED when Peter rebuked Simon Magus for trying to BUY spiritual gifts.
6) And finally, the gospel was ADVANCED in Samaria, as Simon’s conversion sparked evangelism all THROUGHOUT Samaria.
And this morning, we’ll add an additional EIGHT “A”s of evangelism to the list!
Would you stand… Acts 8:26-40
“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. 27 And he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship 28 and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. 29 And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and join this chariot.” 30 So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” 31 And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. 32 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.
33 In his humiliation justice was denied him.
Who can describe his generation?
For his life is taken away from the earth.”
34 And the eunuch said to Philip, “About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” 35 Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. 36 And as they were going along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?” 38 And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. 39 And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. 40 But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he passed through he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.” This is the word of the Lord… Thanks be to God…
We see 8 marks of model evangelism here in Philip’s example:
#1 - We need to Be ATTUNED to God’s prompting. (vv26-27)
To be ATTUNED is to be “aware of and in harmony with… someone’s desires, values, needs, etc.” Philip is ATTUNED here to God’s desire for him, namely, to send him south to GAZA.
Now, THREE questions we need to ask here right off the bat, just from v26 alone:
1) Why an “angel of the Lord”?
2) Why GAZA?
3) And why PHILIP? Consider each:
First, Why’d God send an “angel” to Philip? Just a few verses later, in v29, God prompts Philip through the Holy Spirit, to join the chariot. So why an angel in v26? This is just a guess, okay, but MY theory is that it took nothing LESS than an angel appearing to Philip, to convince him to go. Perhaps God had even TRIED prompting Philip through the Holy Spirit, but Philip convinced himself it was just the burrito he’d eaten for lunch. Because…
2) Why in the WORLD, would God send him to GAZA? V26 tells us just about everything we need to know about the road between Jerusalem and Gaza: “This is a desert place”. RC Sproul explains (148): “The city of Gaza… had been destroyed by Alexander the Great. As a result, the road that originally went from Jerusalem to Gaza was by this time in almost complete disuse.” ALMOST complete disuse - but it’s not in TOTAL complete disuse, is it? There was ONE chariot traveling along that road that day. Just ONE chariot. With just ONE eunuch. But praise GOD, we have a Savior who cares about the ONE, amen? A shepherd who would LEAVE the 99, to seek out the ONE. Even a Gentile eunuch!
But that still leaves the THIRD question here: 3) Why PHILIP? It doesn’t make sense geographically; Philip was busy preaching way up in Samaria, some 50 miles north. Moreover, his ministry there was BOOMING! Philip was putting BILLY GRAHAM to shame - packing out stadiums all over Samaria, people getting saved left and right. But at the HEIGHT of it, God says, “Philip, I want you to LEAVE, and head down to Gaza, to a deserted road.” No wonder it took an angel to get him on board; when the SPIRIT tried to prompt Philip, he probably thought it was a spirit from SATAN! Why would God take the most successful evangelist of his day, and send him out to the middle of NOWHERE? Imagine if God came to Rick Warren here, the week before Easter, and said, “Rick, I know things are going really well for y’all out there at Saddleback - 35,000 people a week attending; the church has DOUBLED in the last 2 years, you saw 33,000 people make a profession of faith in 2021 alone - but NOW I need you to go out to the desert, DEATH VALLEY; there’s a GUY out there I want you to meet with.”
We can try and make God’s plan here make HUMAN sense. Perhaps this eunuch returned home to Ethiopia as the first missionary there and God used him to start a revival too. He was certainly a man of wealth, status, and influence; according to v27, he was “a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure”. Kings didn’t govern in ancient Ethiopia; they were revered as deities, incarnations of the gods, so human affairs were beneath them. QUEENS governed instead (Sproul, 149). So this man - we never even learn his NAME, btw - he had apparently been promoted all the way up from overseeing the king’s HAREM of concubines, that was a eunuch’s job, for obvious reasons, all the way up to Secretary of the Treasury - he was essentially the CFO of Ethiopia! - he had to be a powerful, influential guy. He was wealthy enough to own his own copy of the Isaiah scroll; NO ONE owned their own Bibles back then. This guy must have been LOADED; is that why God chose him, singled him out? Because he was so important?
Or was it because he was so LOST?! Sure, he’s got money and status, influence and power… and yet, here he is 1,000 miles from home - it would have taken him a full MONTH to make this religious pilgrimage to Jerusalem - but he’s desperately searching for MORE out of life, for MEANING that transcends this life. But he arrived in Jerusalem, only to discover that he couldn’t even step foot in the TEMPLE, not even the Court of the Gentiles, because he’s a eunuch, and Deuteronomy 23:1 says, “No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the Lord.”
So here he is, in the words of Bono: he “still hasn’t found what [he’s] looking for”. So he’s desperately searching the Isaiah scroll for answers, but he doesn’t even understand a WORD of it.
When up jogs Philip. Friends: THAT’s why God sent Philip. For this man. One man. Because God has a heart for the one. For the lost.
I asked Stuart a few years ago: “Why’d you visit me in Culver that spring?
We weren’t all that close.
He was a busy guy, pastoring his own church.
He flew halfway across the country, was away from his wife and kids for half a week.
He said, “I felt God’s Spirit calling me to go, so I obeyed.”
And friends, I’M walking with the Lord today, in no small part, because he obeyed. Because he listened to the Holy Spirit’s prompting, and he obeyed. Even when what God was calling him to DO, seemed illogical. Impractical. Trifling. As it must have for Philip as well.
How about YOU? Do you fancy yourself an imminently REASONABLE person? Who simply makes the best, most rational decision given all the information available to you? Have you effectively eliminated any NEED for listening to that still small voice of the Holy Spirit, who sometimes has a way of calling us to do UN-reasonable things, in the name of FAITH? Or are you acutely ATTUNED to the prompting of the Holy Spirit in your OWN life, and gospel witness?
#2 - [We need to] Boldly APPROACH others. (vv27-30a)
Philip obeys the ANGEL in v26, but then he obeys the SPIRIT in v29 as well, who compels him to “Go over and join this chariot.” Did Philip hear an audible voice? Or just that internal, still small voice? We don’t know. But in ANY case, he OBEYED. V30: “So Philip ran to him.” Ancient chariots traveled on average about 25 mph. Usain Bolt, the fastest man that’s ever lived, clocked 27 mph, for just 100 meters. So there may be more supernatural help going on here again, for Philip to be able to chase this chariot down. But not only does he run them down, he has the AUDACITY to butt in on this man’s private reading time. Now remember: the eunuch is an important person. And you didn’t just impose like this on important people in the ancient world; remember the story of Queen Esther, when she was afraid of being killed just for approaching King Ahasuerus’s throne without being invited? Not only is Philip imposing; he’s sprinting at near superhuman speeds just to do it!
I wonder: when God calls US to witness to someone, do we look more like PHILIP, running as fast as we can to track them down, with a passion and an urgency to share the good news of Jesus; or do we look more like JONAH, who ran as fast as HE could in the OPPOSITE direction. Do we run TO people, or FROM them?
I thank God that Stuart ran to me. That he boldly approached me with the gospel; it was BOLD of him. I told you: I had been a youth pastor for nearly 5 YEARS! I had heard the gospel hundreds, maybe thousands of times in my life. I might have taken OFFENSE that he thought I needed to hear it again from him that day. But for whatever reason, by God’s providence, that day was the day that I finally heard the gospel with SPIRITUAL ears. But as the apostle Paul asks, “How will they HEAR it, unless someone TELLS them?” (Rom 10:14-17) Stuart boldly told me.
How about you? Whose chariot is God calling YOU to run down? Who in YOUR life needs to hear about Jesus? Maybe they’ve heard it a hundred, a THOUSAND times. But maybe the one thousand-and-ONEth time will be THE time, that they finally hear with SPIRITUAL ears. Will you keep boldly approaching them?
And can I just add: we ought to ESPECIALLY approach those who are often otherwise EXCLUDED. That’s how the eunuch had to feel, riding home in his chariot that day, having been DENIED entrance at the Temple. All his money and influence couldn’t buy him a ticket in. I bet he felt like an OUTCAST.
Good thing for him: that’s exactly who JESUS said he came for: the outcasts. The “Sinners”. The prostitutes and tax collectors.
If your “A list” guests, of invitees to our Easter services next week all say “No thanks”, who are the folks WAY down your depth chart, those “acquaintances” who when they invite YOU over for dinner, if you’re honest, your stomach kinda sinks, cuz you don’t enjoy hanging out with them, but you also feel bad declining, cuz you’re pretty sure they don’t have many other friends. The social outcasts. You know, the kinds of folks JESUS hung out with! Will you invite THEM to Easter instead? I had sort of this vision this week, of all the nice, West County folks we invited to Easter declining, so as a CHURCH, we all drove into North St. Louis, and EAST St. Louis, and to the homeless shelters downtown, and we offered rides to anyone who would come for the free coffee and pastries between services. And we packed out all 3 services with hookers and pimps and drug addicts… and it was AWESOME! Best Easter EVER - I had never been so excited to preach the gospel in my LIFE! I think Jesus told a parable to that effect, by the way; something about a party full of “B list” guests… see Matt 22:1-14.
#3 - We look to ACCOMPANY the Spirit’s work. (v30b) Accompany what God’s Spirit is ALREADY doing in a person’s heart.
V30: “Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?””
Philip didn’t say, “Hey there, sorry, but could you put the scroll down for a minute, I’d really like to talk to you about JESUS…”; no, Philip met the man right where he was AT. Philip listened not ONLY to the Spirit; he listened to the EUNUCH as well. Church: are we LISTENING to the people we’re trying to witness to? Are we meeting them right where they’re at, like Philip did? Like Jesus did - remember how Jesus started his conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, in John ch4? He simply said, “Give me a drink”. Makes sense; they were at a well. He ended UP offering HER a taste of his LIVING water, that wells up to ETERNAL life. But he started with, “Can I have a drink?”
Stuart didn’t open with: “Will, it sounds to me like you’ve claimed to be a Christian all your life, but you’ve never truly surrendered to Christ’s Lordship. Let me tell you about Jesus…”; no, he listened to me, to what God was already doing in my heart. For a year and a half, God had been breaking my heart for the souls of the students at this school; a place, in many ways, of great spiritual darkness. But what BEGAN as a conversation about how to reach these STUDENTS with the gospel, culminated with ME realizing that I had never truly been changed by the power of the gospel; that I was still trapped in spiritual darkness.
How can you accompany the work that the Holy Spirit is already doing in the lives of your lost loved ones?
Are they reading through Oprah’s book club list right now? Ask if you can read East of Eden with them and discuss it together.
Are they really into MUSIC? Try listening to their favorite artist and asking how the lyrics speak to them.
I’ve been told that The Journey Church here in town started with a handful of guys watching UFC together in Darrin Patrick’s basement every week. I don’t know if that was the SPIRIT leading them to watch other men beat the snot out of each other, but God clearly USED it, as an open door, for evangelism. We’ve got to look for those open doors.
#4 - ASK good questions. (v30c)
Philip asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” Now that’s a GOOD question. That’s what we call in the world of pedagogy a “DYNAMIC question”. It’s engaging; it invites the responder to personally ENGAGE with the subject matter. There’s nothing worse than BAD questions, especially when it comes to Bible study. They say, “There’s no such thing as a bad question” - maybe if you’re the STUDENT; but if you’re the TEACHER, there’s nothing worse. We’ve all sat through Bible studies, haven’t we, where a dozen or so adult, mature, lifelong Christians sit around and answer BAD questions from a “teacher”:
“Who’s talking here?” “PHILIP”.
“Gooood. And who’s he talking to?” “The eunuch”.
“Riiiiiight. And what does he ask him?” “Do you understand what you’re reading”.
And if we weren’t all such nice Christians, we’d interrupt and say, “Excuse me, teacher, but UNLIKE the eunuch, we actually DO understand what we’re reading, at LEAST enough to answer these superfluous, surface-level questions. We’re not 5 year olds; how about some REAL questions, please?” Questions that require a little THOUGHT, that invite discussion… self-examination.
I think the question Stuart asked me that day was: “What do you want your students to know more than anything else?” That’s a great question. The kind of question that perfectly tees up a gospel conversation.
Here are a few others you might want to try:
“What do you BELIEVE?”
“What do you want MOST out of life?”
“Who would you say you ARE; not just “what you DO”, but who you ARE, deep down?”
Or how about this simple one: “How ARE you? But no REALLY, how are you?” And then stop and actually LISTEN to their answer.
Those are GOOD questions. And there’s thousands more LIKE them, just waiting to be asked, if we’ll just take the time and the interest in the lives of those around us to ASK, and listen. I don’t know about you, but I’ve found that MOST people love talking about themselves. Give them an opportunity, ask them a good question, and see how God might use that to open a door to the gospel.
#5 - Be APPROACHABLE. (v31)
I’m guessing Philip’s TONE in v31 here WASN’T:
[*snarky] “Do you even UNDERSTAND what you’re reading (... GENTILE…)?”
No! Philip’s tone MUST have been inviting, because in v31 says: the eunuch “invited Philip to come up and sit with him.”
Christian: it’s not enough just to approach OTHERS; WE need to be approach-ABLE as well; someone who unbelievers WANT to approach with THEIR questions. I know plenty of Christians who are bold - maybe TOO bold; they come on a little TOO strong - in approaching others, but they’re not very approach-ABLE. I know even MORE Christians who like to think they are “approachable”, mainly because they’ve made sure never to offend anyone by bringing up the gospel; but in reality, you’re NOT approachable, because why would an unbeliever approach you when they’ve got a question about faith, if they don’t even think of you as a person of faith!
The sweet spot, Church, is to be someone who is faithful to approach others, yet DOES so in such a way that you remain approach-ABLE, when those folks in their OWN time, in GOD’S timing, are ready to follow up with you, about faith conversations.
See, Stuart wasn’t the FIRST person to share the gospel with me, since my time of straying from the faith, rebelling against God. But he was the most APPROACHABLE: he was knowledgeable enough ABOUT the faith that he could actually answer my questions - we gotta be ready to do that; 1 Peter 3:15 - “always be ready to make a defense for the hope that is within you”; if you can’t answer people’s questions, or at least track DOWN an answer for them, why would they approach you - and YET, rather than JUDGE me, he seemed to genuinely CARE about me, take an INTEREST in me, invite me into conversation.
“Be ready to make a defense… yet DO it with gentleness and respect.”
#6 - We look to Find gospel APPLICATION. (vv32-35) OR Gospel ASSOCIATIONS. Application here means “usable for a particular purpose; relevant”; we need to ask, “How is the gospel RELEVANT to whatever the current topic of conversation may be?” Because brothers and sisters: people have GOT to hear the gospel! “The gospel… is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom 1:16); they can’t be SAVED unless they’ve BELIEVED the gospel, the “good news” about Jesus. But Romans 10 says: they can’t BELIEVE, if they haven’t even HEARD! Most people are so ingrained with RELIGION - “Do THIS, and then God will reward you with THAT” - that it’s gonna TAKE hundreds of times of sharing the GOSPEL for it to sink in - “God’s rewarded you, not because of anything YOU did, but because of everything that JESUS did FOR you.” That’s just so BACKWARDS for the “religious” person; and we’re ALL religious, btw. So we need to find every way possible - we need to get CREATIVE - in finding ways to bring EVERY conversation possible back to the GOSPEL.
Now for Philip, it was EASY; the eunuch was in the middle of reading ISAIAH 53, the most gospel-rich passage in the entire OT!
“he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.”
Listen: If you’re a CHRISTIAN, you can be the worst evangelist on the PLANET - I don’t care - but you can still share the gospel from Isaiah 53:
All of HUMANKIND, we’re all the “sheep”, who have gone “astray” (I mean, you literally just have to RE-READ the passage; it preaches itself!); we’re the sheep, straying, sinning…
The “HE” who was “pierced”, “crushed”... the One upon whom all our iniquities were LAID, was JESUS…
And by HIS sacrificial “wounds”, on the cross, in our place, we have now been “HEALED”; Jesus took the “chastisement”, the punishment, that was owed US, because of our sin, so that He might instead bring us PEACE - reconciliation; restored relationship with God the Father.
Friends: that’s the GOSPEL! Repent and BELIEVE!
But what if the eunuch had been reading the NEXT chapter? Isaiah 54:
““Sing, O barren one, who did not bear;
break forth into singing and cry aloud,
you who have not been in labor!
For the children of the desolate one will be more
than the children of her who is married,” says the Lord.”
Could you preach the gospel from Isaiah 54? Philip would have! “Beginning with THAT Scripture, he [would have STILL] told him the good news about Jesus.” How about US? Can we preach Christ from ALL of Scripture? “All Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching…” (2 Tim 3:16); Jesus said that all the Scriptures point us to HIM! Some of y’all compliment my preaching: “I just LOVE how you always tie every sermon back to the gospel… back to JESUS”; I’m thinking, “What in the world did your LAST pastor do?!” MIS-interpret every passage of Scripture?! Jesus already TOLD us it all points to HIM; He’s already GIVEN us the answer key: it’s the world’s easiest standardized test; if you’re not sure, just mark “C… C… C… C…” - “Jesus… Jesus… Jesus… Jesus…” - all the Scriptures bear witness to ME! (Jn 5:39).
My D-group just got done reading the book of Joshua - could you share the gospel from the conquest narratives? 24 chapters of God saying, “Hey Israel, I want you to go murder every living soul in Canaan and take back the land”, and Israel DOING it; could you preach Jesus from THAT? You better know your Bible, Christian!
What if the eunuch hadn’t been reading Scripture AT ALL?! What if he’d been on his Fox News app, checking on the latest reports coming out of Ukraine; could you find a gospel application in THAT?
What if he was flipping through Us Weekly magazine - “Can you BELIEVE what Will Smith did to Chris Rock?!”; could you tie THAT news back to the GOOD news?
Friends: the gospel is too important for us NOT to; they’ve GOT to HEAR it!
You know that game “6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon”, where someone names an actor, and you have to be able to connect them, through their mutual filmography, back to Kevin Bacon (“George Clooney was in Ocean's Eleven with Matt Damon, Matt Damon was in The Departed with Jack Nicholson, and Jack Nicholson was in A Few Good Men with Kevin Bacon.” -Wikipedia)
Church: we’ve gotta be able to do that with the GOSPEL; evangelism really boils down to a game of “ONE degree to the GOSPEL”!
I was chatting with my dental hygienist lately, and I was praying for an opportunity to bring up Jesus, but she beat me to it; she asked, “So what do YOU do for a living?” I said, “I’m a pastor.” She said, “Ahhh! I’m so jealous - you’ve got such an easy IN with people, to share the gospel!” So I asked her if she gets to witness to her patients often. She said, “I always try to bring it back to God SOMEHOW -
‘it’s a beautiful day out there… God sure is good!’
‘You have excellent teeth… God is good!’
‘Do you FLOSS regularly? You know JESUS is kinda like floss for your SOUL…’”
How about YOU? Stuart used a nearby staircase as a visual, in sharing the gospel with me. You may want to memorize the “Romans Road”, or the “4 Spiritual Laws”, or “The Bridge”, “The 3 Circles” - there are DOZENS of great practical tools out there for aiding in evangelism; at a minimum, EVERY Christian ought to be comfortable and confident in sharing our personal testimony.
Here’s another one we should all be ready for, because it really is such a common question: it may be easy for ME, but how do YOU bring what YOU do for a living back to the gospel? If you can’t, then you need to find a different career. But unless you’re one of those aforementioned hookers or drug dealers, you OUGHT to be able to relate it. Almost ANY work can be Kingdom work! If nothing else, when you get asked, you can always reply, “I serve God as an engineer.” “I serve God as a nurse.”
But ONE way or another, we find gospel applications.
#7 - Call them to ACTION. (vv36-38)
Once again, God makes it EASY on Philip here; the eunuch basically calls HIMSELF to action: ““See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?”[e] 38 And he commanded the chariot to stop…” Some later manuscripts add v37: “And Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may [be baptized].” And he replied, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God””; apparently Philip seemed SO passive that later editors just ADDED a verse in. But in EVERY manuscript, they BOTH “go down into the water” - IMMERSION, for you paedobaptists… - so Philip can call him to RESPOND, tangibly, to the message of the gospel, in BAPTISM.
Stuart called ME to respond, and I’m gonna call YOU to respond, this morning - if you have not yet repented and trusted in Jesus for YOUR salvation, GOD is calling you to do so this morning; don’t wait a moment longer! New life in Christ can start for you TODAY!
And brothers and sisters: when YOU’RE sharing the gospel with folks, your work is not done until you have ASKED them: “Do you want to give your life to Jesus today?”
Lastly, #8 - Remember your ASSIGNMENT. (vv39-40)
Specifically, we need to remember TWO things about our assignment: both what it IS, and what it ISN’T:
Our assignment is NOT to be that person - whoever we’re witnessing to - their personal Messiah. I wonder if that’s why the Spirit just [*SHHHOOP!*] transported Philip right away to Azotus! Same verb used 1 Thessalonians 4 about the RAPTURE - just [*SHHHOOP!*] “caught up” into the air! But I wonder if it wasn’t for BOTH Philip’s sake, AS WELL AS the eunuch - there’s a lot of CODEPENDENCY in the church these days. People say, “I’m DONE with church; my pastor had an affair and it just really shook my faith.” Sounds to me like your faith was in the wrong guy. God SAVES the eunuch from that - “Nuh uh: PHILIP’S not your Savior; he GONE; I’M your savior!” I had such a hard time leaving Culver. I felt like I was leaving my students high and dry; there were only like EIGHT adult, publicly professing evangelical believers on a campus of 800 students. I thought, “They NEED me!” Until one of my best friends, one of the OTHER 8 had to remind me, “They don’t need YOU, they need JESUS!”
Church: it’s not our job to SAVE people; that’s GOD’S job. OUR job…
What our assignment IS: is to simply be faithful to share the gospel. Just keep sowing. Like Philip, v40: “But Philip found himself at Azotus, [WHAT? Where AM I? AZOTUS?! Where in the world is THAT? Oh well, guess I’ll just keep preaching the gospel!...] and as he passed through he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.”
Just keep planting those seeds. And trust God with the growth, with the results.