Acts 8:26-40
In this text, we move from seeing the disciples and apostles bring crowds to faith in Jesus as Savior to seeing Philip share the Gospel one-on-one with the Ethiopian eunuch. Even though the Ethiopian had been to Jerusalem to worship as mandated by Old Testament law for those that believed in Yahweh, he wasn't accepted as a fellow believer by the Jewish people. It wasn't until 1973 that Jewish religious authorities accepted Ethiopian Jews as Jewish. Along with his ethnicity, he was a eunuch. The Jewish leaders still held to the law in Deuteronomy 23:1 that forbids those "who have been emasculated by crushing or cutting" from entering the assembly of the Lord.
But Philip, beginning with the scripture that the eunuch was reading continues and then tells him the Gospel. I have to think that Philip, after reading what the man had been reading continued in Isaiah at least through Isaiah 56:3-7 which states, "... And let no eunuch complain, “I am only a dry tree.” For this is what the Lord says: “To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant— to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will endure forever. And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold fast to my covenant— these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.”
Imagine how that must have affected the Ethiopian. While we are not told here when or how he became a eunuch, since then, he believed that he was unacceptable to God. But, even believing that he followed Jewish law and went to the Temple. A place he couldn’t enter beyond the outer corridors, but he went. And now, he is being told ““To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant— 5 to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will endure forever.”
Philip tells him that all he has to do is have faith that Jesus is the Son of God. Since he had gone to Jerusalem to worship at the temple, we know that the man was already keeping Old Testament law. Now, because Philip shared the Gospel with him, he had faith in Jesus and came to believe that God didn’t find him detestable but instead loved him.