And Philip, running up, heard him reading the prophet Esaias, and said, Dost thou then know what thou art reading of?
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And he said, How should I then be able unless some one guide me? And he begged Philip to come up and sit with him.
A court official of the Ethiopian queen rides home through desert, reading Isaiah aloud and understanding nothing. Philip asks whether he follows it, and the answer is both a confession and an invitation.
His reply admits something about himself — and about every reader.
It was an admission that he could not understand without a teacher. It was almost a confession of the great fact: whatever human learning may boast, the unaided mind of man cannot grasp the truth of God at all.
He was going home from Jerusalem no better off. The law shut him out of the assembly, and the passage on his lap described a sufferer he could not name.
As a eunuch — if we take that literally, as I do not doubt we should — he could not enter the assembly of the Lord (Deuteronomy 23:1), whatever precious promises of future blessing there were for him (Isaiah 56:3-5). Sitting in his chariot, returning from the city of empty forms and barren ceremonies, he turns naturally to the prophets, and to Isaiah most of all, to find comfort. But here too he met sorrow, of a kind he could not penetrate: the sorrows of One from whom Israel seemed to have turned, One led as a sheep to the slaughter... He is reading this aloud as he overtakes Philip on the road. It is as if he wanted to press on himself something that ought to have meaning for him, but has none. The cloud hangs over it, and to him it looks hopeless without some guide. He has none.
The excuse "I am not learned" sounds humble. But learning is not the missing piece.
Sadly, it was then as it is now in Christendom. The vision of Him who came to make God known, who otherwise cannot be known, passes from the learned to the unlearned. It is as if the divine answer to every riddle were itself the one riddle nobody can solve. Ask the learned man to read, and he says, I cannot, for it is sealed. Ask the unlearned man, and he excuses himself, I am not learned. Faith alone can understand: so it is, and so it ought to be.
The guide he asked for came on foot. But the teaching was not Philip's own.
But no one can understand these divine things unless the great and only teacher guides him — the Holy Spirit. This was the eunuch's difficulty; Philip was the Spirit's chosen instrument for teaching him.
He is not only the teacher behind Philip. He lives in the believer as well.
How well it will be to ask ourselves how far we realise in practice that a Divine Person lives in us. He is the perfect Judge of all doctrine, the Teacher of all teachers. It can never be humility to forget that He is with us. If we listen to Him, we shall never be deceived or led astray... This brings the conscience into exercise before God. It frees us from all indifference about teachers — for the Spirit uses His instruments with us as He pleases — and at the same time from all exaggerated deference to them.
A high official could easily have waved off a stranger on foot. Instead he made room on the seat.
Why should that plain man, with no escort, not even one attendant to mark his rank, presume to intrude on such a high official?... But when the Spirit prepares hearts, they are ready to welcome help; and the outward appearance of the person, or the strangeness of such a meeting, raises no objection in the mind of a true inquirer... He needed help. He confessed it. And believing Philip could give it, he begged him to come up and sit with him. The servant of Candace and the servant of the Lord were now together. The eunuch was probably used to people listening to him with respect. Now he sat as a pupil at the feet of the evangelist.
He said he had no one to guide him. God had already moved a preacher off a thriving work to walk that desert road.
One great charm of the passage before us is this — I see that God has His eye on an anxious man. He will, in a sense, interrupt the blessed work of His grace elsewhere, at least through one particular channel, to meet that anxious man... See what He does. He calls Philip away from his remarkable evangelistic work in Samaria and sends him down into the desert to meet one man. That is God.
- Admission. "How can I?" is the honest starting point: the unaided mind cannot grasp the truth of God, however learned it is.
- Obstacle. The educated and the uneducated both have a ready excuse: a sealed book, or no schooling. Neither is the real barrier. Faith alone understands.
- Guide. The Holy Spirit is the only teacher; Philip was the instrument He chose. So we neither scorn teachers nor lean on them too heavily.
- Posture. A man others obeyed sat down as a learner and invited the stranger up beside him. Prepared hearts don't weigh a helper's appearance.
- Provision. He thought he had no guide; God had already redirected Philip into the desert for him alone.