Acts 8:1-8 CSB
Saul agreed with putting him to death. On that day a severe persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout the land of Judea and Samaria. [2] Devout men buried Stephen and mourned deeply over him. [3] Saul, however, was ravaging the church. He would enter house after house, drag off men and women, and put them in prison. [4] So those who were scattered went on their way preaching the word. [5] Philip went down to a city in Samaria and proclaimed the Messiah to them. [6] The crowds were all paying attention to what Philip said, as they listened and saw the signs he was performing. [7] For unclean spirits, crying out with a loud voice, came out of many who were possessed, and many who were paralyzed and lame were healed. [8] So there was great joy in that city.
Romans 8:11 CSB
And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, then he who raised Christ from the dead will also bring your mortal bodies to life through his Spirit who lives in you.
Preaching the Gospel
In Acts chapter 1, Jesus tells his followers that once they receive the power of the Holy Spirit, they are responsible to be His witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth—an ever-widening circle, rippling outward from the familiar to the foreign. But the followers of Christ stayed where they were comfortable, rooted in the known streets of Jerusalem, until the stoning of Stephen shook them loose. Rather than quenching the thirst for blood, Stephen’s death only deepened it, and the persecution that followed scattered the early church like seeds in a hard wind. At the center of that storm stood Saul—a Roman citizen, a trained Pharisee, a man who held the cloaks of Stephen’s killers and called it righteous. He would later be renamed Paul, and the same ferocity that drove him to hunt down believers would carry the message of Jesus across continents and into the book of Romans, where we encounter his writings today.
Devout men carried Stephen out and buried him with deep mourning, their grief loud and public. Meanwhile, Saul moved through the city like something feral and unstoppable, kicking open doors and dragging men and women from their homes to deliver them to prison. The rest of the Christians fled Jerusalem in every direction—north and south, into the hills. Yet the Apostles remained. It may be that the religious leaders, wary of the people’s respect for the Twelve, hesitated to strike the leaders of the movement so soon after Stephen’s death. Whatever the reason, the Apostles stayed, ensuring Jerusalem would remain the home base of the faith for years to come.
In this atmosphere, we find Philip travelling to Samaria. Samaria was the central region wedged between Judea to the south and Galilee to the north, its cities rebuilt and fortified under Herod the Great into monuments of Roman-era ambition. The Samaritans themselves were a people born of collision—descendants of the northern Israelite tribes who remained after the Assyrian conquest of Israel around 700 BC, intermarried over generations with the foreign settlers the Assyrians had transplanted into the land. They kept faith in the law of God, but drew the boundaries of scripture tightly around the Torah, the five books of Moses, rejecting the prophets and writings that the rest of Israel held sacred. To their Jewish neighbors, this made them something worse than pagans: a people close enough to be a provocation, worshiping at Mt. Gerizim rather than Jerusalem, and regarded as little more than despised half-breeds. A people also loved by our Father in Heaven. This is where Philip would continue the ministry that Christ started when He offered “living water” to a Samaritan woman at a well in Sychar, a town in Samaria.
Philip did not require the Samaritans to become Jews; he simply brought them the news of Jesus. And as he spoke of eternal life, his words carried the weight of God’s authority—unclean spirits fled the bodies they had long tormented, crying out as they went, and those who could not walk rose to their feet.
This work in Samaria marked a turning point, the moment the church began its reach toward the Gentiles. Scattered by God’s providence, believers carried with them the great commission: to bring knowledge of the Lord to every corner of the earth.
Reflection Questions
- The believers were scattered by persecution, yet they went about “preaching the word.” When life forces you out of your comfort zone, is your first instinct to protect yourself or to share the hope you have in Christ?
- The Samaritans were seen as “half-breeds” and outcasts by the religious elite, yet God chose them for the first major expansion of the Gospel. Who are the people in your community that society (or even the church) might overlook, but whom God is pursuing?
- Romans 8:11 speaks of the Spirit bringing our “mortal bodies to life.” How did you see this physical and spiritual “coming to life” manifested in the city of Samaria through Philip’s ministry?
Prayer
Father,
We thank You for the reminder that even when we are scattered by the storms of life, You are using the wind to plant seeds of Your Kingdom in new soil. Thank You for Your heart for the outcast and the “Samaritans” of our world. Help us to be like Philip, carrying the light of the Gospel into places of darkness and division. We ask that Your Holy Spirit, the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead, would breathe life into our mortal bodies and empower us to be witnesses wherever You lead. May there be “great joy” in our cities because of the message we carry. In Jesus’ Name.
Amen.
