Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and proclaimed to them the Christ. The multitudes listened with one accord to the things that were spoken by Philip when they heard and saw the signs which he did. For unclean spirits came out of many of those who had them. They came out, crying with a loud voice. Many who had been paralyzed and lame were healed. There was great joy in that city.
But there was a certain man, Simon by name, who used to practice sorcery in the city and amazed the people of Samaria, making himself out to be some great one, to whom they all listened, from the least to the greatest, saying, “This man is that great power of God.” They listened to him, because for a long time he had amazed them with his sorceries. But when they believed Philip preaching good news concerning God’s Kingdom and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. Simon himself also believed. Being baptized, he continued with Philip. Seeing signs and great miracles occurring, he was amazed.
Now when the apostles who were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them, who, when they had come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Spirit; for as yet he had fallen on none of them. They had only been baptized in the name of Christ Jesus. Then they laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. Now when Simon saw that the Holy Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money, saying, “Give me also this power, that whomever I lay my hands on may receive the Holy Spirit.” But Peter said to him, “May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart isn’t right before God. Repent therefore of this, your wickedness, and ask God if perhaps the thought of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are in the poison of bitterness and in the bondage of iniquity.”
Simon answered, “Pray for me to the Lord, that none of the things which you have spoken happen to me.”
They therefore, when they had testified and spoken the word of the Lord, returned to Jerusalem, and preached the Good News to many villages of the Samaritans.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 5. Luke said that they all preached the Word…
5. Luke said that they all preached the Word of God, now he maketh mention of Philip alone, both because his preaching was more fruitful and effectual than the preaching of the rest, and also because there followed notable histories, which he will add afterward. He put the city of Samaria for the city Samaria which was laid waste by Hyrcanus, and built again by Herod, and called Sebaste. Read Josephus, in his Thirteenth and Fifteenth Books of Antiquities. When he saith that Philip preached Christ, he signifieth that the whole sum of the gospel is contained in Christ. The other speech which he useth shortly after is more perfect; yet it all one in effect. He joineth the kingdom of God and the name of Christ together; but because we obtain this goodness through Christ, to have God to reign in us, and to lead an heavenly life, being renewed into spiritual righteousness, and dead to the world, therefore the preaching of Christ containeth this point also under it. But the sum is this, that Christ doth repair with his grace the world, being destroyed; which cometh to pass when he reconcileth us to the Father. Secondly, when he regenerateth us by his Spirit, that the kingdom of God may be erected in us when Satan is put to flight. Moreover, whereas he declared before, that the apostles did not stir one foot from Jerusalem, it is to be thought that he speaketh of one of the seven deacons in this place, whose daughters did also prophesy.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv5, 9, 13, 14, 15, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23 Philip, who was before a Deacon in Jerusalem, is…
Philip, who was before a Deacon in Jerusalem, is made of God extraordinarily an Evangelist.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv5–25 5 Then Philip went down to the city of…
5 Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and preached Christ unto them.
Ver. 5. Then Philip] Not Philip the apostle (for they all abode at Jerusalem, Act 8:1), but Philip the deacon. He that is faithful in a little shall be made master of more.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv5–25 Philip; not the apostle, but the deacon of that…
Philip; not the apostle, but the deacon of that name; for the apostles remained at Jerusalem, as Act 8:1.
Samaria is a name both of a city and a country, so called from the chief city, 1Ki 16:24; here it is taken for that city, or at least a city in that country.
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Preached Christ; the doctrine of Christ, his miraculous birth, holy life and death, and glorious resurrection and ascension, together with remission of sins only by faith in his name, &c.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv5, 9, 11, 14, 18, 22 Observe here, 1. Amongst the dispersed, who went to…
Observe here, 1. Amongst the dispersed, who went to Samaria, Philip was one: not Philip the apostle, (for all of them remained at Jerusalem,) but Philip the deacon, who was the second in order after Stephen, among the seven deacons: He comes to Samaria, and preaches there.
Observe, 2. The doctrines which he preached: he preached Christ utno them; that is, Christianity, or the Christian religion; namely, The doctrine of Christ’s incarnation, holy life and death, resurrection and ascension, together with remission of sins through faith in his name.
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Observe, 3. The success of Philip’s doctrine at Samaria; the people with one accord embrace the gospel, Giving heed to the things which he spake: The presence of the Holy Spirit accompanying his ministry, united his hearers’ hearts, as well as their ears, to attend diligently to the doctrine of Christ delivered to them. This diligent attention was a blessed preparative to the Samaritans conversion, seeing faith comes by hearing: Yea, they did not only attend to, but acquiesce in all he spake.
Note thence, That were there a more reverent attention to the word, there would be more conversions by it than at this day there are.
Observe, 4. The external ground and reason of Philip’s success in his ministry at Samaria; the miracles which he wrought. These were undeniable evidences of the truth of what he spake, and by which he shewed God’s authority for what he did and said; he healed disease, and cast out devils, (called unclean spirits, because they delight in sin, that spiritual uncleanness of the soul,) who cried out with a loud voice, as very loath to leave their lodgings, had they not been constrained to it. The miracles which Christ and his apostle wrought were heaven’s broad-seal, to confirm the truth of what they taught: The people gave heed to what Philip spake, seeing the miracles which he did.
Observe, lastly, What joy and rejoicing there was among the Samaritans at their receiving and entertaining of the gospel: There was great joy in that city; not only for the cures wrought upon their bodies, but for the doctrine of reconciliation and salvation preached to their souls. As the gospel is in itself a message of joy and glad tidings, so it fills that soul with joy unspeakable, that cordially receives and entertains it. Joy in the Holy Ghost is one of the sweetest effects of the kingdom of God; that is, the gospel, The kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost Rom 14:17.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v14 God had wonderfully owned Philip in his work as…
God had wonderfully owned Philip in his work as an evangelist at Samaria, but he could do no more than an evangelist; there were some peculiar powers reserved to the apostles, for the keeping up of the dignity of their office, and here we have an account of what was done by two of them there - Peter and John. The twelve kept together at Jerusalem (Act 8:1), and thither these good tidings were brought them that Samaria had received the word of God (Act 8:14), that a great harvest of souls was gathered, and was likely to be gathered in to Christ there. The word of God was not only preached to them, but received by them; they bade it welcome, admitted the light of it, and submitted to the power of it: When they heard it, they sent unto them Peter and John. If Peter had been, as some say he was, the prince of the apostles, he would have sent some of them, or, if he had seen cause, would have gone himself of his own accord; but he was so far from this that he submitted to an order of the house, and, as a servant to the body, went whither they sent him. Two apostles were sent, the two most eminent, to Samaria, 1. To encourage Philip, to assist him, and strengthen his hands. Ministers in a higher station, and that excel in gifts and graces, should contrive how they may be helpful to those in a lower sphere, and contribute to their comfort and usefulness. 2. To carry on the good work that was begun among the people, and, with those heavenly graces that had enriched them, to confer upon them spiritual gifts. Now observe,
I. How they advanced and improved those of them that were sincere. It is said (Act 8:16), The Holy Ghost was as yet fallen upon none of them, in those extraordinary powers which were conveyed by the descent of the Spirit upon the day of pentecost. They were none of them endued with the gift of tongues, which seems then to have been the most usual immediate effect of the pouring out of the Spirit. See Act 10:45, Act 10:46. This was both an eminent sign to those that believed not, and of excellent service to those that did. This, and other such gifts, they had not, only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, and so engaged in him and interested in him, which was necessary to salvation, and in this they had joy and satisfaction (Act 10:8), though they could not speak with tongues. Those that are indeed given up to Christ, and have experienced the sanctifying influences and operations of the Spirit of grace, have great reason to be thankful, and no reason to complain, though they have not those gifts that are for ornament, and would make them bright. But it is intended that they should go on to the perfection of the present dispensation, for the greater honour of the gospel. We have reason to think that Philip had received these gifts of the Holy Ghost himself, but had not a power to confer them; the apostles must come to do this; and they did it not upon all that were baptized, but upon some of them, and, it should seem, such as were designed for some office in the church, or at least to be eminent active members of it; and upon some of them one gift of the Holy Ghost, and upon others another. See Co1 12:4, Co1 12:8; Co1 14:26. Now in order to this, 1. The apostles prayed for them, Act 8:15. The Spirit is given, not to ourselves only (Luk 11:13), but to others also, in answer to prayer: I will put my Spirit within you (Eze 36:27), but I will for this be enquired of, Act 8:37. We may take encouragement from this example in praying to God to give the renewing graces of the Holy Ghost to those whose spiritual welfare we are concerned for - for our children, for our friends, for our ministers. We should pray, and pray earnestly, that they may receive the Holy Ghost; for this includes all blessings. 2. They laid their hands on them, to signify that their prayers were answered, and that the gift of the Holy Ghost was conferred upon them; for, upon the use of this sign, they received the Holy Ghost, and spoke with tongues. The laying on of hands was anciently used in blessing, by those who blessed with authority. Thus the apostles blessed these new converts, ordained some to be ministers, and confirmed others in their Christianity. We cannot now, nor can any, thus give the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands; but this may intimate to us that those whom we pray for we should use our endeavours with.
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II. How they discovered and discarded him that was a hypocrite among them, and this was Simon Magus; for they knew how to separate between the precious and the vile. Now observe here,
1. The wicked proposal that Simon made, by which his hypocrisy was discovered (Act 8:18, Act 8:19): When he saw that through laying on of the apostles' hands the Holy Ghost was given (which should have confirmed his faith in the doctrine of Christ, and increased his veneration for the apostles). it gave him a notion of Christianity as no other than an exalted piece of sorcery, in which he thought himself capable of being equal to the apostles, and therefore offered them money, saying, Give me also this power. He does not desire them to lay their hands on him, that he might receive the Holy Ghost himself (for he did not foresee that any thing was to be got by that), but that they would convey to him a power to bestow the gift upon others. He was ambitious to have the honour of an apostle, but not at all solicitous to have the spirit and disposition of a Christian. He was more desirous to gain honour to himself than to do good to others. Now, in making this motion, (1.) He put a great affront upon the apostles, as if they were mercenary men, would do any thing for money, and loved it as well as he did; whereas they had left what they had, for Christ, so far were they from aiming to make it more - (2.) He put a great affront upon Christianity, as if the miracles that were wrought for the proof of it were done by magic arts, only of a different nature from what he himself had practised formerly. (3.) He showed that, like Balaam, he aimed at the rewards of divination; for he would not have offered money for this power if he had not hoped to get money by it. (4.) He showed that he had a very high conceit of himself, and that he had never his heart truly humbled. Such a wretch as he had been before his baptism should have asked, like the prodigal, to be made as one of the hired servants. But, as soon as he is admitted into the family, no less a place will serve him than to be one of the stewards of the household, and to be entrusted with a power which Philip himself had not, but the apostles only.
2. The just rejection of his proposal, and the cutting reproof Peter gave him for it, Act 8:20-23.
(1.) Peter shows him his crime (Act 8:20): Thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money; and thus, [1.] He had overvalued the wealth of this world, as if it were an equivalent for any thing, and as if, because, as Solomon saith, it answers all things, relating to the life that now is, it would answer all things relating to the other life, and would purchase the pardon of sin, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and eternal life. [2.] He had undervalued the gift of the Holy Ghost and put it upon a level with the common gifts of nature and providence. He thought the power of an apostle might as well be had for a good fee as the advice of a physician or a lawyer, which was the greatest despite that could be done to the Spirit of grace. All the buying and selling of pardons and indulgences in the church of Rome is the product of this same wicked thought, that the gift of God may be purchased with money, when the offer of divine grace so expressly runs, without money and without price.
(2.) He shows him his character, which is inferred from his crime. From every thing that a man says or does amiss we cannot infer that he is a hypocrite in the profession he makes of religion; but this of Simon's was such a fundamental error as could by no means consist with a state of grace; his offering money (and that got by sorcery too) was an incontestable evidence that he was yet under the power of a worldly and carnal mind, and was yet that natural man which receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them. And therefore Peter tells him plainly, [1.] That his heart was not right in the sight of God, Act 8:21. "Though thou professest to believe, and art baptized, yet thou art not sincere." We are as our hearts are; if they be not right, we are wrong; and they are open in the sight of God, who knows them, judges them, and judges of us by them. Our hearts are that which they are in the sight of God, who cannot be deceived; and if they be not right in his sight, whatever our pretensions be, our religion is vain, and will stand us in no stead: our great concern is to approve ourselves to him in our integrity, for otherwise we cheat ourselves into our own ruin. Some refer this particularly to the proposal he made; what he asked is denied him, because his heart is not right in the sight of God in asking it. He does not aim at the glory of God nor the honour of Christ in it, but to make a hand of it for himself; he asks, and has not, because he asks amiss, that he may consume it upon his lusts, and be still thought some great one. [2.] That he is in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity: I perceive that thou art so, Act 8:23. This is plain dealing, and plain dealing is best when we are dealing about souls and eternity. Simon had got a great name among the people, and of late a good name too among God's people, and yet Peter here gives him a black character. Note, It is possible for a man to continue under the power of sin, and yet to put on a form of godliness. I perceive it, saith Peter. It was not so much by the spirit of discerning, with which Peter was endued, that he perceived this, as by Simon's discovery of it in the proposal he made. Note, The disguises of hypocrites many times are soon seen through; the nature of the wolf shows itself notwithstanding the cover of the sheep's clothing. Now the character here given of Simon is really the character of all wicked people. First, They are in the gall of bitterness - odious to God, as that which is bitter as gall is to us. Sin is an abominable thing, which the Lord hates, and sinners are by it made abominable to him; they are vicious in their own nature. Indwelling sin is a root of bitterness, that bears gall and wormwood, Deu 29:18. The faculties are corrupted, and the mind embittered against all good, Heb 12:15. It intimates likewise the pernicious consequences of sin; the end is bitter as wormwood. Secondly, They are in the bond of iniquity - bound over to the judgment of God by the guilt of sin, and bound under the dominion of Satan by the power of sin; led captive by him at his will, and it is a sore bondage, like that in Egypt, making the life bitter.
(3.) He reads him his doom in two things -
[1.] He shall sink with his worldly wealth, which he overvalued: Thy money perish with thee. First, Hereby Peter rejects his offer with the utmost disdain and indignation: "Dost thou think thou canst bribe us to betray our trust, and to put the power we are entrusted with into such unworthy hands? Away with thee and thy money too; we will have nothing to do with either. Get thee behind me, Satan." When we are tempted with money to do an evil thing, we should see what a perishing thing money is, and scorn to be biassed by it - It is the character of the upright man that he shakes his hands from holding, from touching bribes, Isa 33:15. Secondly, He warns him of his danger of utter destruction if he continued in this mind: "Thy money will perish and thou wilt lose it, and all that thou canst purchase with it. As meats for the belly and the belly for meats (Co1 6:13), so goods for money and money for goods, but God shall destroy both it and them - they perish in the using; but this is not the worst of it: thou wilt perish with it, and it with thee; and it will be an aggravation of thy ruin, and a heavy load upon thy perishing soul, that thou hadst money, which might have been made to turn to a good account (Luk 16:9), which might have been laid at the apostles' feet, as a charity, and would have been accepted, but was thrust into their hands as a bribe, and was rejected. Son, remember this."
[2.] He shall come short of the spiritual blessings which he undervalued (Act 8:21): "Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter; thou hast nothing to do with the gifts of the Holy Ghost, thou dost not understand them, thou art excluded from them, hast put a bar in thine own door; thou canst not receive the Holy Ghost thyself, nor power to confer the Holy Ghost upon others, for thy heart is not right in the sight of God, if thou thinkest that Christianity is a trade to live by in this world, and therefore thou hast no part nor lot in the eternal life in the other world which the gospel offers." Note, First, There are many who profess the Christian religion, and yet have no part nor lot in the matter, no part in Christ (Joh 13:8), no lot in the heavenly Canaan. Secondly, They are those whose hearts are not right in the sight of God, are not animated by a right spirit, nor guided by a right rule, nor directed to the right end.
(4.) He gives him good counsel, notwithstanding, Act 8:22. Though he was angry with him, yet he did not abandon him; and, though he would have him see his case to be very bad, yet he would not have him think it desperate; yet now there is hope in Israel. Observe,
[1.] What it is that he advises him to: He must do his first works. First, He must repent, - must see his error and retract it - must change his mind and way - must be humbled and ashamed for what he has done. His repentance must be particular: "Repent of this, own thyself guilty in this, and be sorry for it." He must lay a load upon himself for it, must not extenuate it, by calling it a mistake, or misguided zeal, but must aggravate it by calling it wickedness, his wickedness, the fruit of his own corruption. Those that have said and done amiss must, as far as they can, unsay it and undo it again by repentance. Secondly, He must pray to God, must pray that God would give him repentance, and pardon upon repentance. Penitents must pray, which implies a desire towards God, and a confidence in Christ. Simon Magus, as great a man as he thinks himself, shall not be courted into the apostles' communion (how much soever some would think it a reputation to them) upon any other terms than those upon which other sinners are admitted - repentance and prayer.
[2.] What encouragement he gives him to do this: If perhaps the thought of thy heart, this wicked thought of thine, may be forgiven thee. Note, First, There may be a great deal of wickedness in the thought of the heart, its false notions, and corrupt affections, and wicked projects, which must be repented of, or we are undone. Secondly, The thought of the heart, though ever so wicked, shall be forgiven, upon our repentance, and not laid to our charge. When Peter here puts a perhaps upon it, the doubt is of the sincerity of his repentance, not of his pardon if his repentance be sincere. If indeed the thought of thy heart may be forgiven, so it may be read. Or it intimates that the greatness of his sin might justly make the pardon doubtful, though the promise of the gospel had put the matter out of doubt, in case he did truly repent: like that (Lam 3:29), If so be there may be hope.
[3.] Simon's request to them to pray for him, Act 8:24. He was startled and put into confusion by that which Peter said, finding that resented thus which he thought would have been embraced with both arms; and he cries out, Pray you to the Lord for me, that none of the things which you have spoken come upon me. Here was, First, Something well - that he was affected with the reproof given him, and terrified by the character given of him, enough to make the stoutest heart to tremble; and, this being so, he begged the prayers of the apostles for him, wishing to have an interest in them, who, he believed, had a good interest in heaven. Secondly, Something wanting. He begged of them to pray for him, but did not pray for himself, as he ought to have done; and, in desiring them to pray for him, his concern is more that the judgments he had made himself liable to might be prevented than that his corruptions might be mortified, and his heart, by divine grace, be made right in the sight of God; like Pharaoh, who would have Moses entreat the Lord for him, that he would take away this death only, not that he would take away this sin, this hardness of heart, Exo 8:8; Exo 10:17. Some think that Peter had denounced some particular judgments against him, as against Ananias and Sapphira, which, upon this submission of his, at the apostle's intercession, were prevented; or, from what is related, he might infer that some token of God's wrath would fall upon him, which he thus dreaded and deprecated.
Lastly, Here is the return of the apostles to Jerusalem, when they had finished the business they came about; for as yet they were not to disperse; but, though they came hither to do that work which was peculiar to them as apostles, yet, opportunity offering itself, they applied themselves to that which was common to all gospel ministers. 1. There, in the city of Samaria, they were preachers: They testified the word of the Lord, solemnly attested the truth of the gospel, and confirmed what the other ministers preached. They did not pretend to bring them any thing new, though they were apostles, but bore their testimony to the word of the Lord as they had received it. 2. In their road home they were itinerant preachers; as they passed through many villages of the Samaritans they preached the gospel. Though the congregations there were not so considerable as those in the cities, either for number or figure, yet their souls were as precious, and the apostles did not think it below them to preach the gospel to them. God has a regard to the inhabitants of his villages in Israel (Jdg 5:11), and so should we.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv5–25 Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria,....…
Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria,.... The city which was formerly called Samaria, but now Sebaste; it had been destroyed by Hyrcanus, and was rebuilt by Herod; and called by him, in honour of Augustus, by the name of Sebaste (d); and so R. Benjamin says (e), that
"from Luz he came in a day to Sebaste, , "this is Samaria"; where yet may be discerned the palace of Ahab king of Israel-----and from thence are two "parsas" to Neapolis, this is Sichem.''
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Which last place, Sichem, is by Josephus said to be the "metropolis" of Samaria; and is thought by Dr. Lightfoot to be the city Philip went to, and where our Lord had before been, and preached to the conversion of many persons: this place lay lower than Jerusalem, and therefore Philip is said to go down to it; and who was not Philip the apostle, but Philip the deacon, for the apostles abode at Jerusalem; and beside, though this Philip preached the Gospel, and baptized, and wrought miracles, yet did not lay on hands, in order that persons might receive the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost; this was peculiar to the apostles, and therefore Peter and John came down for this purpose, when they heard of the success of Philip's ministry: the subject matter of which follows:
and preached Christ unto them; that Christ was come in the flesh, that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, and that he was the Son of God, and the alone Saviour of men; who by his obedience, sufferings, and death, had wrought righteousness, procured peace and pardon, and obtained eternal redemption for his people; and was risen again, and ascended into heaven, and was set down at the right hand of God, where he ever lived to make intercession, and would come again a second time to judge both quick and dead.
(d) Joseph de Bello Jud. l. 1. c. 2. sect. 7. & c. 21. sect. 2. Plin. l. 5. c. 13. (e) Itinerar. p. 38.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv5, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 21, 22 Stephen - Being taken away, Philip, his next colleague,…
Stephen - Being taken away, Philip, his next colleague, (not the apostle,) rises in his place.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 Verse 5. Then Philip] One of the seven deacons,…
Verse 5. Then Philip] One of the seven deacons, Ac 6:5, called afterwards, Philip the Evangelist, Ac 21:8.
The city of Samaria] At this time there was no city of Samaria existing: according to Josephus, Ant. lib. xiii. cap. 10, sect. 3, Hyrcanus had so utterly demolished it as to leave no vestige of it remaining. Herod the Great did afterwards build a city on the same spot of ground; but he called it σεβαστη i.e. Augusta, in compliment to the Emperor Augustus, as Josephus tells us, Ant. lib. xv. cap. 8, sect. 5; War, lib. i. cap. 2. sect. 7; and by this name of Sebasté, or Augusta, that city, if meant here, would in all probability have been called, in the same manner as the town called Strato's Tower, (which Herod built on the sea coasts, and to which he gave the name of Caesarea, in compliment to Augustus Caesar,) is always called Caesarea, wherever it is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles. Bp. Pearce.
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As Sychem was the very heart and seat of the Samaritan religion, and Mount Gerizim the cathedral church of that sect, it is more likely that it should be intended than any other. See Lightfoot. As the Samaritans received the same law with the Jews, as they also expected the Messiah, as Christ had preached to and converted many of that people, Joh 4:39-42, it was very reasonable that the earliest offers of salvation should be made to them, before any attempt was made to evangelize the Gentiles. The Samaritans, indeed, formed the connecting link between the Jews and the Gentiles; for they were a mongrel people, made up of both sorts, and holding both Jewish and Pagan rites. See the account of them on Mt 10:5.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv5, 9, 12, 14, 18, 20, 22, 24, 25 Act 8:5-7. Then Philip, &c. — The sacred historian…
Act 8:5-7. Then Philip, &c. — The sacred historian here proceeds to record one particular instance of the success of the preaching of the persons dispersed by the above-mentioned persecution. The Philip here spoken of was not the apostle of that name, for all the apostles continued at Jerusalem, (Act 8:1,) and this Philip, as appears from Act 8:14-17, had not the power of communicating the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit, by laying on of hands. He was, therefore, Philip the deacon, mentioned Act 6:5; no other of that name, besides the apostle, having been mentioned in this history. Went down to the city of Samaria — Or, as some read it, to a city of Samaria; as it is not specified what city of that country it was. The mode of expression, however, seems to point out the capital of Samaria, which was Sychar, or Sichem, where Christ had preached in the beginning of his ministry: and preached Christ unto them — It is certain that the Samaritans were better prepared to receive the gospel than most of the Gentile nations, as they worshipped the true God, and acknowledged the authority of the pentateuch. Nay, indeed, in some respects they were better prepared than the body of the Jewish nation, as we do not find that they had either such notions of the Messiah’s temporal reign as the Jews had, or had received the Sadducean principles, which were both very strong prejudices against the Christian doctrine. And the people — Who inhabited that city, notwithstanding their natural prejudices against the Jews; with one accord — Ομοθυμαδον, unanimously; gave heed unto those things which Philip spake — Of the truth and importance of which, upon their attending to them, they were soon persuaded; hearing — The rational and convincing arguments which he used; and seeing the miracles — Which he performed, in confirmation of his doctrine. For unclean spirits — At Philip’s command, came out of many persons that had been possessed by them, crying with a loud voice — Which showed that they came out with great reluctance, and much against their wills, but were forced to acknowledge themselves overcome by a superior power. And there was great joy in that city — Both on account of those benevolent miracles which were performed by Philip in it, and of that excellent doctrine which he preached among them, containing such welcome tidings of pardon and eternal salvation.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 Then Philip - One of the seven deacons, Act…
Then Philip - One of the seven deacons, Act 6:5. He is afterward called the “evangelist,” Act 21:8.
The city of Samaria - This does not mean a city whose “name” was Samaria, for no such city at that time existed. Samaria was a “region,” Mat 2:22. The ancient city Samaria, the capital of that region, had been destroyed by Hyrcanus, so completely as to leave no vestige of it remaining; and he “took away,” says Josephus, “the very marks that there had ever been such a city there” (Antiq., book 13, chapter 10, section 3). Herod the Great afterward built a city on this site, and called it “Sebaste”; that is, “Augusta,” in honor of the Emperor Augustus (Josephus, Antiq., book 15, chapter 8, section 5). Perhaps this city is intended, as being the principal city of Samaria; or possibly “Sychar,” another city where the gospel had been before preached by the Saviour himself, John 4.
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And preached Christ - Preached that the Messiah had come, and made known his doctrines. The same truths had been before stated in Samaria by the Saviour himself John 4; and this was doubtless one of the reasons why they so gladly now received the Word of God. The field had been prepared by the Lord Jesus. He had said that it was white for the harvest Joh 4:35, and into that field Philip now entered, and was signally blessed. His coming was attended with a remarkable “revival of religion.” The word translated “preach” here is not what is used in the previous verse. This denotes to “proclaim as a crier,” and is commonly employed to denote the preaching of the gospel, so called, Mar 5:20; Mar 7:36; Luk 8:39; Mat 24:14; Act 10:42; Rom 10:15; 1Co 9:27; 1Co 15:12; 2Ti 4:2. It has been argued that because “Philip” is said thus to have preached to the Samaritans, that “therefore” all “deacons” have a right to preach, or that they are, under the New Testament economy, an “order” of ministers. But this is by no means clear. For:
It is not evident, nor can it be shown, that the “other” deacons Act 6:1-15 ever preached. There is no record of their doing so; and the narrative would lead us to suppose that they did not.
(2)They were “appointed” for a very different purpose Act 6:1-5; and it is fair to suppose that, as “deacons,” they confined themselves to the design of their appointment.
(3)It is not said that “Philip” preached in virtue of his being a “deacon.” From anything in “this” place, it would seem that he preached as the other Christians did - wherever he was.
(4)But “elsewhere” an express distinction is made between Philip and the others. A new appellation is given him, and he is expressly called the “evangelist,” Act 21:8. From this, it seems that he preached, not “because” he was a “deacon,” but because he had received a special “appointment” to this business as an evangelist.
(5)This same office, or rank of Christian teachers, is expressly recognized elsewhere, Eph 4:11. All these considerations show that there is “not” in the sacred Scriptures an order of ministers appointed to preach “as deacons.”
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv10, 11, 13, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 This man is the power of God, which is…
This man is the power of God, which is called (that is, which is truly) great. Simon pretended to be God, and the great God. See St. Irenæus, lib. i. chap. 20.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On vv5, 14 § II Philip Preaches the Gospel in Samaria with…
§ II Philip Preaches the Gospel in Samaria with Success, and Simon, the Sorcerer, himself is Baptized
Act_8:5-13
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5 Then Philip went down to the3 [a] city of Samaria, and preached Christ unto them. 6And the people [the multitudes, οἱ ὄχλοι] with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spake, hearing and seeing [when they heard and saw] the miracles [signs] which he did. 7For unclean spirits, crying with loud voice, came out of many4 that were possessed with them [For from many who had unclean spirits, these came out with a loud cry]: and many taken with palsies [many that were paralytic], and that were lame, were healed.8And there was great joy in that city. 9But there was [previously] a certain man, called Simon, which beforetime [om. which beforetime] in the same city [who] used sorcery, and bewitched [astonished] the people of Samaria, giving out that himself [professing (λέγων) that he] was some great one: 10To whom they all5 [om. all] gave heed, from the least to the greatest [small and great], saying, This man is the great power of God [the power of God which is called great].6 11And [But] to him they had regard [gave heed, (as in Act_8:10)], because that of long time he had bewitched them with [time they had been astonished at his] sorceries. 12But when they believed Philip preaching [who preached] the things7 [the gospel (om. the things, εὐαγγελ.)] concerning the kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus. Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. 13Then [But] Simon himself believed also: and when he was baptized, he continued with [adhered to] Philip, and wondered [was astonished (as in Act_8:9; Act_8:11)], beholding the miracles and signs8 which were done.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Act_8:5. a. Then Philip went down.—Luke had briefly stated above, that the members of the church, after being dispersed by the persecution, had carried the Gospel to other regions. He now describes a single case as an illustration. This Philip, who, as the connection shows, had been driven from Jerusalem by the same violent persecution, cannot possibly have been the apostle who bore the same name, as, according to Act_8:1, the company of the apostles remained in the holy city. The interpretation that the narrative here refers to a later period, and that it was really the apostle Philip who visited Samaria, cannot, for several reasons, be admitted. For the connection, in the first place, between Act_8:4 and Act_8:5, is so intimate, that the journey of Philip, must be regarded, both chronologically, and in accordance with the natural sequence of events, as a direct result of that persecution. And, in the second place, the journey of John and Peter, who were sent to Samaria, as the commissioners of the apostles, Act_8:14, would be perfectly inexplicable, if Philip himself were one of the apostles. It is, therefore, not the apostle Philip who is here meant, but another person of the same name; he is, beyond all doubt, the one who is mentioned in Act_6:5, as the second of the chosen Seven. It is, indeed, precisely this position of the name in that list, which renders it probable that the Philip here mentioned, was not only one of the Seven, but also the same who is described in Act_21:8 as ὁ εὐαγγελιστής, ὁ ὢν ἐκ τῶν ἑπτά. For the name of Stephen is, without doubt, placed first in that list for the reason that his labors and sufferings had given unusual prominence to him, and invested his name with a special interest. Philip seems to have been mentioned in the second place for similar reasons, since he was identified with events of the highest moment in the history of the Church. It may be easily imagined that the colleagues of Stephen were the first persons on whom the hostility of the Jews prepared to inflict its blows. The opinion, that this Philip was one of the twelve, was entertained already by Polycrates in the second century (as quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. iii. 31; v. 24), by the authors of the Apostolical Constitutions (vi. 7. 1), in the third century, and by others; it was suggested not only by the sameness of the name, but probably also by the special character of the labors of Philip, since these appear to have been such as the apostles exclusively performed. This latter view seems, indeed, to be sustained by the expression: ἐκήρυσσε τὸν Χρ., inasmuch as it was originally applied to the proclamation of a herald, and denotes, therefore, here, that a public declaration was made in a more than ordinarily solemn manner, and by special authority, while in the case of others, merely the terms εὐαγγελίζσθαι (Act_8:4; Act_11:20) and λαλεῖν τὸν λόγον were employed. The evangelizing labors of Philip, therefore, undoubtedly seem to be of a different kind from those of the latter. But they do not on this account assume a decidedly apostolical character, in which case διδάσκειν or διδαχὴ would have been the term employed, as in Act_4:2; Act_4:18; Act_5:25; Act_5:28; Act_5:42; comp. Act_2:42. The word κηρύσσειν, in the present verse, constitutes, as it were, an intermediate grade, or occupies a position between the specifically apostolical διδάσκειν, and the general Christian εὐαγγελίζεσθαι; or, λαλεῖν τὸν λόγον. This view is in the strictest accordance with the opinion that Philip was one of the Seven, as these men really did occupy an intermediate position in their respective relations to the apostles, and to the disciples in general.
b. The name of the city in Samaria, in which Philip labored so successfully, cannot by any means be determined with certainty; from the text we merely learn that it was one of the numerous cities of the district of Samaria. The language in Act_8:8-9, conveys the impression that Luke himself was not acquainted with the precise name, and that he purposely expressed himself in indefinite terms. It is not probable that the capital city is meant (Kuinoel); it also bore the name of Samaria, and received that of Sebaste from Herod the Great, but it cannot be here intended, as the same name in Act_8:9; Act_8:14 plainly designates the whole region [as in Act_1:8].
Act_8:6-8. And the people with one accord.—Philip proclaimed the Messiah to them, and, at the same time, performed many miracles of healing, as well in the case of persons that were possessed, from whom the unclean spirits (demons) came out with loud cries, as also in the case of those who were lame and paralytic. The inhabitants, who had a personal knowledge of these wonderful works, were thus induced to listen with devout attention to the words of Philip (προςεῖχον—ἐν τῷ ἀκούειν αὐτοιὺς καὶ βλέπειν τὰ σημεῖα). Not merely a few individuals, or the adherents of any particular party, but the whole mass of the population (οἱ ὄχλοι) listened in a confiding and respectful manner, and with entire unanimity (ὁμοθυμαδόν) to the addresses of Philip (although προςεῖχον is not yet equivalent to ἐπίστευον in the higher sense of the latter word). The joy which pervaded the city, and which was already occasioned by the healing of many sick persons, and by Philip’s joyful tidings concerning the Saviour and redemption, became so great, (χαρὰ μεγάλη), when the people perceived that they were all acting with one accord.
Act_8:9-11. But there was a certain man called Simon.—The logical connection is the following:—A man, named Simon, had been in the place before Philip’s arrival, whose magic arts had created a great sensation, and secured a number of adherents for him. [The word here and in Act_8:11 translated bewitched (ἐξίστημι, see Wahl and Robinson), but never so rendered where it occurs in the New Test. elsewhere, signifies amazed, astonished, as in Act_2:7; Act_2:12; Act_9:21 (J. A. Alex.); thus, below, in Act_8:13, it is translated wondered.—Tr.]. Luke furnishes us with no information respecting the origin of this man, e.g., whether he was a native of this city, or, indeed, whether he was a Samaritan at all. So far, therefore, no facts are presented that are adverse to the conjecture of Neander, Gieseler and others (which Meyer combats on insufficient grounds). Those writers identify Simon with an individual of the same name, whom Josephus thus describes: Σίμων ’Ιουδαῖος, Κύπριος δὲ γένος, μάγος εἶναι σκηπτόμενος. Antiq. xx. 7, 2); the Roman procurator Felix had employed him, about A. D. 60, as a pander. The statement of Justin Martyr that Simon was a native of Gitta in Samaria [see K. v. Raumer: Palæstina, p. 156] is the less worthy of confidence, not only as more than a century intervenes between him and Simon, but also because he connects other and later legends, as it can be demonstrated, with the name of this sorcerer; and the penitential petition of Simon in Act_8:24, affords no evidence per se, that he did not subsequently resume the practice of his deceptive arts.—Simon was, unquestionably, according to the text before us, one of the men who, in “that solstitial period of religion”, travelled through the country (as Greek and Roman writers also testify), in the capacity of fortune-tellers, astrologers, and interpreters of dreams, or who attracted attention, and acquired influence as jugglers, or as men professedly endowed with miraculous powers to heal. He had practised his magical arts during a considerable period (Act_8:11), and his frauds had been so successful that the entire population of Samaria (and not merely the inhabitants of the city to which Philip came), were filled with wonder and amazement. They placed the utmost confidence in him, and entertained the most exalted opinion of his personal character and abilities (Act_8:10). He alleged that he possessed peculiar attributes, and was a personage of an extraordinary character (εἶναί τινα ἑαυτὸν μέγαν). He found credence among people of every age and every station in life—[from the least to the greatest]—and these gradually adopted the opinion that he was himselfἡ δύναμις τοῦ θεοῦ ἡ μεγάλη. This expression doubtless means that they discerned, as they thought, a species of theophany in the person of Simon, and that they supposed that the great power of God, the most exalted divine power, was revealed in him. It is here an important circumstance, which should be carefully noticed, that Luke himself distinguishes between the personal statements of the magus, on the one hand, and the delusion, on the other, of the people who were prepossessed in his favor. The latter deified him, according to a popular opinion which seems to have assumed a distinct shape; but this was only the opinion of his adherents, and was not founded on any direct statements of Simon himself. Perhaps he deemed it to be the most prudent and advantageous course, to employ a species of chiaroscuro, or to resort to mysterious terms, when he spoke of himself personally.—In view of the legends to which later writers have given currency, in connection with Simon the Magus, Baur and Zeller arrive at the conclusion that the actual historical existence of the Simon who is mentioned in the text before us, is very doubtful. We live, however, in a perverse world, and, when we judge dispassionately, we must perceive that it is a violation of the principles of sound criticism to cast a shade of doubt on the present narrative, simply because certain fables connected with this Magus originated at a later period; these obtained currency from the days of Justin Martyr, particularly through the Clementine Homilies, and the Apostolical Constitutions. Luke furnishes a plain statement, the truth of which is fully sustained by accounts derived from other sources respecting the magians of that age, and that statement by no means belongs to the category of certain legends which originated more than a century afterwards.
Act_8:12. But when they believed Philip.—The faith with which the Samaritans listened to the preaching of Philip, who bore witness, not like Simon, of himself, but of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God, was the more honorable and blessed, as it took the place of a superstition which had already begun to prevail; it demonstrated, moreover, that it possessed the character of a willing obedience, since it induced the Samaritans to receive baptism.
Act_8:13. Then Simon himself believed also.—The circumstance that even this magus received the Gospel, was baptized, and attached himself to Philip as a disciple (προςκαρτερῶν), was in itself a very striking proof of the superior power, and, indeed, the divinity of the Gospel concerning Christ. The influence which, psychologically speaking, first of all affected Simon, proceeded from the deeds, i.e., the miracles of healing which Philip performed, and of which he was an eye-witness, and, it may be added, an attentive observer (θεωρῶν). These facts amazed him, as much as his own magic arts had hitherto amazed the people, and this thought Luke evidently intends to suggest by employing the same word (ἐξίστατο, Mid.), which he had previously employed in connection with Simon, transitively, in Act_8:9, and intransitively in Act_8:11. Simon had hitherto astonished others, but he now, in his turn, passes from one degree of astonishment to another. Yet it does not thence follow that this magus (as Grotius conjectured, and more recent interpreters have assumed) did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah, but merely regarded him as a magus and worker of miracles, who possessed a power superior to his own.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. Philip combined miracles with the preaching of the word, like the apostles, and like Stephen, who also wrought miracles, (Act_6:8). But while these contributed to the efficacy of his preaching (comp. Mar_16:20), the word of the Gospel was the great object to which his labors were dedicated. His miracles of healing doubtless attracted attention to him, and opened an avenue to the hearts of men; still, the conversion of the latter was the fruit of the preaching of the word. And whenever the word, the pure truth of the Gospel, is proclaimed with freedom and fidelity, and received with attention and diligence, it always will continue to bring forth fruit.
2. The joy of the converted Samaritans resembled the heart-felt joy of the Israelitic Christians of Jerusalem, Act_2:46-47. “Righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost” [Rom_14:17], prevail in the kingdom of God. It is a source of joy, to know that we are reconciled unto God—that we have found a Saviour—that, in Jesus, we are “of one heart, and of one soul” [ch. Act_4:32] with those who love him. We might, perhaps, say that the joy and rapture of a believing soul proceed from the conviction that it has at length found its true home, that it is at home, and that it feels at home in God.
3. Even demoniacs [Act_8:7] were delivered from the unclean spirits by Philip, through the power of Christ. These works, which no apostle had hitherto performed, as far as the narrative before us is concerned, were wrought by this man, who was not invested with the apostolical office. Bengel observes here, with much acuteness, that Luke never introduces the word δαιμόνια in the Acts, when he speaks of demoniacs [it occurs in a different sense in Act_17:18], while, in his Gospel, he employs it more frequently than any one of the other evangelists. Hence he concludes that the power of [the unclean spirits to take] possession [of men, “obsessionis vim”] had been impaired after the death of Christ. We are, however, the less inclined to adopt this latter opinion, as it is said precisely in the passage before us, that many were at this time possessed with unclean spirits. Still, it is worthy of notice, that no case of bodily possession, of which an Israelite was the subject, is described in the book of the Acts; those that are mentioned, occurred either in a heathen territory (Act_19:12 ff., in Ephesus), or near the boundaries which divided Judaism from heathenism; and the territory of the Samaritans was of this character.
4. Any doctrines which Simon, the sorcerer, may have taught, referred to his own person, and were intended to exalt him in the eyes of the people. How different was the course which Philip pursued! He never alludes to himself personally, but speaks of Jesus Christ alone, whose name (Act_8:12) he commends to his hearers as very holy and precious, and whose kingdom he proclaims as the kingdom of life and salvation. “We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord” (2Co_4:5); this language describes the preaching of every apostle and evangelist mentioned in the Acts, and, indeed, constitutes a law which all their successors are solemnly bound to obey. As soon as a pastor or any one who is employed in the service of the church, begins to speak of himself, and to establish faith in his person as a part of the creed of others, and, as soon as a congregation or church complies, they are all guilty of a grievous departure from the path of duty, and commit a sin which ultimately conducts to a paganizing deification of the creature.
5. The narrative which now follows, demonstrates that although Simon believed (Act_8:13), he did not adopt the true faith. There is, however, no foundation for the opinion, that, the error of this sorcerer consisted in believing that Jesus himself was merely a sorcerer, but possessed of great powers; at least, such a delusion could have derived no support whatever from the doctrine of Philip concerning Jesus as the Messiah, or concerning his kingdom. The narrative does not intimate that the error of Simon was connected with the substance of his faith, but rather implies that the kind or manner of his faith was unsound. It is quite possible that he professedly received the pure doctrine without gainsaying, but he certainly was not “sound in the faith” [Tit_1:9; Tit_1:13]. His faith, like that which is often found in Christendom, was merely a faith of his understanding, a transient conviction, but not one that touched, much less resided in his heart; it was not a fides plena, justificans, cor purificans, salvans. Nothing that fails to move the heart and call forth a prompt and full response, can be more than a superficial impression; it effects no favorable change in the individual, or, at the most, converts him into a hypocrite.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Act_8:1. And Saul was consenting unto his death.—Comp. 1Ti_1:13 : “I did it ignorantly.” Thus men may remain blind, with all their human wisdom and the light of reason, and be irrational persecutors, with all their supposed zeal for God. Not even the edifying end of Stephen, could make an impression on Saul’s imbittered heart.—And yet, we prefer an avowed enemy like Saul, to a false friend like Simon. The former made havoc of the church, the latter continued with Philip, and received baptism; the former was sincere, even in his madness, for he acted in ignorance; the heart of the latter was full of bitterness and deceit; the former was converted, the latter, cast off; Act_8:20-21. (From Ap. Past.).—Except the apostles.—In seasons of violent persecution, all should not flee, neither should all alike remain. (Starke).—The apostles demonstrated, by remaining in the city, I. Their manly courage, which made no concession to the enemy; II. Their childlike obedience to the command of Jesus, who had directed them to proclaim his name in Jerusalem, before they went out into the world. (Ap. Past.).—The apostles remained behind as monuments, testifying that the Lord Jesus could not be expelled from that soil. So the two witnesses (Rev_11:8-11) will, at last, stand up in the city in which their Lord was crucified. (K. H. Rieger).—The solitary witnesses of God in the midst of a perverse nation: (comp. Noah, before the deluge; Lot in Sodom; Abraham among the idolaters; Moses in Egypt; Elijah among the priests of Baal; Daniel in Babylon; the apostles in Jerusalem; Paul among the Gentiles; the harbingers of the Reformation in the darkness of popery). They are, I. Majestic remains of a ruined temple of God; II. Bright beacons amid the darkness of an evil age; III. Massive foundation-stones of a future building of God.
Act_8:2. And made great lamentation over him.—It is natural that we should mourn when those are taken away who have rendered great services to the church and congregation; for while their death is a gain to themselves, the bereavement is painfully felt by the church. (Starke).—The different sentiments with which the death of the servants of Jesus is surveyed: I. The world rejoices, Act_8:1; II. The devout mourn, Act_8:2. The witnesses of Christ are able to move the hearts of men even after their death. When one servant is called to his home, another, whom the Lord has trained, is ready to take his place. No sooner has Stephen passed away, than Philip appears. (Ap. Past.).
Act_8:3. Saul made havoc of the church.—Observe his increasing violence and fury: I. He takes’ charge of the clothes of Stephen’s murderers; II. He consents to the death of this witness; III. He persecutes the fugitives; IV. He searches for those who are concealed: V. He drags them forth, sparing neither sex; VI. He commits them to prison. (Starke).—The passion-week of the primitive church: I. The members are dispersed, Act_8:1; II. They bury their first martyr, Act_8:2; III. They are persecuted by Saul, Act_8:3. (Lisco.).
Act_8:4. They that were scattered abroad, went everywhere preaching the word.—Sanguis martyrum semen Christianorum (Tertullian).—The storms of persecution are only winds that, I. Fan the fire of faith in the church; II. Carry the spark of truth to a distance. Compare [the following stanzas of] Luther’s Hymn on the two martyrs of Christ, who were burnt in Brussels [July 1, 1523, named Henry Voes and John Esch. The original consists of 12 stanzas, each containing nine lines, and begins: Ein neues Lied wir heben an].
“Flung to the heedless winds,
Or on the waters cast,
Their ashes shall be watch’d,
And gather’d at the last:
And from that scatter’d dust,
Around us and abroad,
Shall spring a plenteous seed
Of witnesses for God.
“Jesus has now receiv’d
Their latest living breath:
Yet vain is Satan’s boast
Of vict’ry in their death;
Still, still, though dead, they speak,
And, trumpet-tongued, proclaim
To many a wak’ning land
The one availing Name.”
—Scattered … preaching.—How often Christ sends his ambassadors in the guise of persecuted fugitives! (K. H. Rieger).—God usually bestows a spiritual blessing on those who shelter devout exiles. (Quesn.).—The wonderful ways of the Lord in extending his kingdom: I. Stephen, the martyr, moistens the field of the church with his blood; II. The raging Saul, even as a persecutor, already serves, unconsciously, as an instrument in extending the kingdom of Christ; III. The fugitive Christians labor in distant regions as the first missionaries of the Gospel.
Act_8:5. Then Philip went down … and preached.—The true servants of Christ may be compelled to change their place of abode, but they do not change their minds. (Apost. Past.).—Faithful laborers always find work, and are always engaged in fulfilling the duties of their vocation, whether it be in Jerusalem or Samaria. Rom_15:19. (Starke).
Act_8:6. The people … gave heed … seeing the miracles.—By hearing and seeing we are conducted to faith. Joh_1:47-50. (Starke).—“One soweth, and another reapeth.” The seed had been sown by Jesus a few years previously, (John, Acts 4), and now the harvest is gathered in. (Starke).
Act_8:7-8. Unclean spirits … came out … many … were healed … and there was great joy.—Behold here an image of the spiritual miracles of the Gospel: I. The unclean are cleansed; II. The feeble are made strong; III. The sorrowing begin to rejoice.—Even if the pathway to the kingdom of God leads through much tribulation, it terminates in joy—joy, pro-seeding from the remission of sins, the grace of God, and the hope of eternal salvation.
Act_8:9 Simon … bewitched [astonished] the people.—Mundus vult decipi. When people desire to see a great display, they are easily bewitched by pretenders who are ready to gratify them. Comp. Rev_13:3-4, “saying, Who is like unto the beast?” Simon was neither the first nor the last of that class of persons who are now called original characters, and whom others weakly take a pride in imitating. They are sometimes able to propagate infidelity with great success, and communicate ungodly tastes to a whole people or race. Such men, who erect barriers in the way that leads to heaven, often fascinate others by their wealth, or their intellect, or their vain words. (K. H. Rieger).
Act_8:12. But when they believed Philip preaching, etc.—So, too, the apostolical-simplicity of the dove will always triumph in the end over the fascinating influence and the cunning of the serpent.—Where God’s truth arises, the kingdom of lies must wane.
Act_8:13. Then Simon himself believed also.—To be touched by the truth, to assent to it, to commend it—all this is insufficient, unless the heart and mind be renewed, and abide in the ways of truth.—Even upright pastors may be deceived by hypocrites, and holy things may be taken from them by fraud. (Starke).
Act_8:9-13. Simon the sorcerer, viewed as the image of a false teacher: I. He gave out that himself was some great one, Act_8:9; false teachers do not seek after the honor of God, but after their own; II. He bewitched the people, Act_8:9; false teachers endeavor to fascinate and dazzle by vain arts, but not to enlighten and convert men; III. He believed, was baptized, and continued with Philip, Act_8:13. Thus, too, unbelievers often speak the language of Canaan [Isa_19:18, i.e., utter devout phrases.—Tr.], when they hope to derive advantage from it; they hypocritically connect themselves with the servants of God, in order to conceal their plague-spots under the mantle of borrowed sanctity.—Saul, (Act_8:1-3), Simon, (Act_8:9-11; Act_8:13), Philip (Act_8:5-8; Act_8:12),—the open enemy, the false friend, and the upright servant of the Lord—each considered with reference to the state of his heart, his course of action, and his lot on earth.—The first persecution of the Christians, and its blessings: illustrated in the case, I. Of Saul; II. Of Philip; III. Of Simon—each, in a peculiar mode, contributing to the glory of the Gospel.—[Lessons taught by the first persecution of the Church: respecting, I. The moral state of man by nature: (a) his spiritual blindness; (b) alienation of his heart from God; (c) the state of degradation to which sin reduces him; II: The ways of divine providence: (a) sometimes mysterious (the power of Stephen’s enemies); (b) often apparently discouraging (the dispersion); (c) always wise and good; III. The vitality of the Church: in resisting, as then, (a) enmity in every form; (b) perpetually; (c) victoriously—by the power of the divine Founder.—Tr.]
Footnotes:
[3]Act_8:5.—The article before πόλιν, which Lachm., in accordance with A. B. and two later [minuscule] mss., has adopted, la certainly a later addition; it is wanting in the great majority of the minuscule mss., and also in Chrysostom, and was probably inserted in order to designate the capital city. [Meyer and de Wette concur with Lechler, and Alf. omits it.—It is found in Cod. Sin., τήν.—Tr.]
[4]Act_8:7.—Πολλῶν [of text. rec.] is supported only by H. among the uncial MSS., but also by various minuscule mss., and several oriental versions and fathers. However, it would not have been substituted for πολλοί of A. B. C. E. [and Cod. Sin.] if the latter had been the original reading, while, on the other hand, in view of the latter half of the verse, πολλοί could easily have been substituted as a correction of πολλῶν. But ἐξήρχοντο is much more fully attested [by A. B. C. E. and Cod. Sin.] than the singular number ἐξήρχετο [of text. rec. and H.—Lach. and Alf. read πολλοί… ἐξήρχοντο. “πολλοίis a nominativus pendens; comp. Act_7:40; Rev_3:12. Winer, § 28. 3 (and § 63. 2. 6.)” (Alford); but de Wette calls this “correction” an “unmeaning” reading, prefers that of the text. rec., and remarks that the “genitive πολλῶν is governed by ἐξηρχ., as in Act_16:39; Mat_10:14.”—Vulg. multi. – – exibant.—Tr.]
[5]Act_8:10. a.—πάντες [of text. rec.] before ἀπὸ, is omitted by Tisch. [and Alf.], in accordance with H., some versions and fathers, as a later addition, although it is found in the great majority of MSS. [A. B. C. D. E. Cod. Sin., and retained by Lach.]. But the different positions which it occupies in several MSS., respectively, render it suspicious; it could easily have been inserted by a later hand. [Tisch. refers to Heb_8:11 as its source.—Tr.]
[6]Act_8:10. b.—καλουμένη [inserted before μεγάλη] is wanting in only a few MSS. [G. H.]; it may have been dropped by copyists as, apparently, an incongruity. But it is so well supported [by A. B. C. D.E. Cod. Sin., Syr. Vulg., etc.], that the most recent editors have all adopted it, although it is wanting in the textus receptus. [But it is, perhaps, like another reading, λεγομένη, found in some minuscules, only a marginal gloss. (de Wette).—Tr.]
[7]Act_8:12—τά [of text. rec.] before περί, is found only in G. H. and is wanting in all the other uncial MSS. [including Cod. Sin.]; hence it is omitted by Lach. and Tisch. [but retained by Alf.]. Meyer considers its presence to be indispensable, as εὐαγγελίζεσθαι is not found elsewhere in combination with περί; but that circumstance does not prove that here, too, it must be combined with the accusative.
[8]Act_8:13.—The reading δυνάμεις καὶ σημεῖα, without μεγάλα or μεγάλας (the latter, in either form, being certainly a later addition suggested by ἐξίστατο), is adopted by Tischendorf and Meyer, and should be preferred to the usual σημ. κ. δυν. [Great variations occur in the ancient MSS., and in the printed text of editors. The text. rec. and Lach. read: σημ. κ. δυν. μεγάλας γινομένας with A. B. C. D. Cod. Sin., except that C. omits γιν. Alford reads: δυν. κ. σημ. γινομένα with E. G. H. Syr. and fathers; G. H. omit μεγ. The text of the Engl. version (which follows Tynd. and Cranmer) changes the order of the text. rec., and omits μεγ., which it recognizes in the margin, where we read: signs and great miracles.—Tr.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 SUCCESS OF PHILIP'S PREACHING IN SAMARIA--CASE OF SIMON MAGUS.…
SUCCESS OF PHILIP'S PREACHING IN SAMARIA--CASE OF SIMON MAGUS. (Acts 8:5-25)
Then Philip--not the apostle of that name, as was by some of the Fathers supposed; for besides that the apostles remained at Jerusalem, they would in that case have had no occasion to send a deputation of their own number to lay their hands on the baptized disciples [GROTIUS]. It was the deacon of that name, who comes next after Stephen in the catalogue of the seven, probably as being the next most prominent. The persecution may have been directed especially against Stephen's colleagues [MEYER].
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the city of Samaria--or "a city of Samaria"; but the former seems more likely. "It furnished the bridge between Jerusalem and the world" [BAUMGARTEN].
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On v5 THE CHURCH IN TRANSITION FROM JEWS TO GENTILES, Act_8:5…
PART SECOND.
THE CHURCH IN TRANSITION FROM JEWS TO GENTILES, Act_8:5 to Act_12:25.
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Through this Second Part of his history Luke traces in perfectly regular progress the successive steps by which Christianity emerges from her Jewish trammels into a free and universal Church. The Samaritans are first evangelized, and the eunuch is the first apostle to Africa. The Gentile apostle is next converted and put in preparation for his work. Peter, emerging from Jerusalem, is taught by the case of Cornelius the lesson of the direct convertibility of Gentiles to Christianity. The refugee Christians, driven from Jerusalem by the Stephanic dispersion, gather a Gentile Church in ANTIOCH, the capital and sallying point of Gentile Christianity. A second check is given to the Jerusalem Church by the Herodian persecution. Thenceforth old Jerusalem, abandoned by the twelve, wanes to her final destruction, and we are prepared to behold in chapter thirteen the Third Part of Luke’s history, opening with Gentile missions issuing forth from Gentile Antioch.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 5–13. Philip’s Preaching in Samaria and its effects
5–13. Philip’s Preaching in Samaria and its effects
5. Then [And] Philip] The second named in the list of the seven deacons (Act_6:5). He is only mentioned in this chapter and Act_21:8 where he is called Philip the Evangelist.
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went down to the city of Samaria] i.e. the capital city of the district of Samaria. It was at this time called Sebaste = Augusta, in honour of Augustus Cæsar (Joseph. Antiq. xv. 8. 5).
and preached [proclaimed] Christ unto them] Better, the Christ. His preaching was that Jesus was the promised Messiah. The verb is not the same as that rendered “preaching” in the previous verse, but is used (Mat_3:1; Mat_4:17) of the commencement of John the Baptist’s preaching, and of Christ’s. In like manner, Philip goes forth uttering his voice in the new fields of labour.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 (5) Then Philip went down to the city of…
(5) Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria.—More accurately, “a city.” The sequence of events implies that it was not the Apostle, but his namesake who had been chosen as one of the Seven. As having been conspicuous in the work of “preaching the glad tidings of Christ,” he was afterwards known as Philip the Evangelist (Act_21:8). It was natural enough that the identity of name should lead writers who were imperfectly informed to confuse the two, as Polycrates, Bishop of Ephesus, seems to have done in the passage quoted by Eusebius (Hist. iii. 31). The “city of Samaria” is described in precisely the same terms as in Joh_4:5, where it is identified with Sychar, the Sichem of the Old Testament. (See Note on Joh_4:5.) “Samaria,” throughout the New Testament (as, e.g., in Act_9:31; Luk_17:11; Joh_4:4-5), is used for the province, and not for the city to which it had been attached in earlier times. This had been new-named Sebaste (the Greek equivalent of Augusta) by Herod the Great in honour of the Emperor, and this had more or less superseded the old name (Jos. Ant. xv. 8, § 5). Assuming the identity with Sychar, the narrative of John 4 suggests at once the reason that probably determined Philip’s choice. The seed had already been sown, and the fields were white for harvest (Joh_4:35). Possibly, as suggested above (Note on Act_7:16), there may have been some previous connection with the district. Some of that city had already accepted Jesus as the Christ.
Preached Christ.—The verb is not the same as in Act_8:4, and is the word used for “preaching” or “proclaiming.” The tense implies continued action, extending, it may be, over weeks or months. We find in Joh_4:25 that the expectation of the Messiah was as strong among the Samaritans as among the Jews, and Philip’s work therefore was to proclaim that the long-expected One had come, and that the Resurrection was the crowning proof that He was the Christ the Son of God. The readiness with which the proclamation was accepted shows that in spite of the adverse influence which had come into play since our Lord had taught there, the work then done had not been in vain.
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Hearing and seeing the miracles which he did.—Better, the signs, as being closer, here as elsewhere, to the force of the Greek. It is remarkable that they had believed in the first instance without any other sign than the person and the teaching of the Lord Jesus. Miracles came not as the foundation, but for the strengthening of their faith; perhaps also as a corrective to the adverse influence of which we are so soon to hear.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 And for then, A.V.; proclaimed unto them the Christ…
And for then, A.V.; proclaimed unto them the Christ for preached Christ unto them, A.V. Philip; the deacon and evangelist, (Act_6:7 Act_21:8) not the apostle. As regards Samaria, it is always used in the New Testament of the country, not of the city, which at this time was called Sebaste, from Sebastov, i.e. Augustus Caesar. (see Act_25:21, Act_25:26, etc.; Joh_4:5; and Josephus, "Ant. Jud:," 15:7:9) Whether, therefore, we read with the T.R. polin, or with the R.T. thlin, we must understand Samaria to mean the country, and probably the city to be the capital, Sebaste. Alford, however, with many others, thinks that Sychem is meant, as in Joh_4:5.
Vers. 5-25. Success and disappointment in Christian work.
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I A LARGE MEASURE OF SUCCESS. We must consider:
1. The special obstacles in the way, viz.
(1)the people of Samaria were to some extent alien; they were likely to be less friendly than those who were wholly foreign, for their connection with the Jews as their near neighbors had led to the bitterest jealousies and animosities.
(2) They were under the spell of a skilful and powerful impostor (vers. 911).
2. The means by which success was gained.
(1) Philip presented to the people the one great truth which they needed to know: he preached Christ unto them" (ver. 5). Obstacles must be mighty indeed if there are not found hearts to respond when a once crucified, now exalted Savior is preached, whose death is the sacrifice for sin, and who offers himself to our souls as our living Lord and unchanging Friend.
(2) The preached truth was confirmed by striking and gladdening proofs of Divine power: they gave heed," seeing the miracles which he did" (ver. 6); and great wonders were wrought in their midst, so numerous and beneficent that "there was great joy in that. city.
3. The magnitude of the success.
(1) They gave unanimous attention: "with one accord they gave heed" (ver. 6).
(2) They believed and avowed their faith: "they were baptized, both men and women" (ver. 12).
(3) The impostor himself made profession of faith (ver. 13).
4. Confirmation of it, both human and Divine.
(1) Human: the apostles sent down Peter and John, who witnessed and owned the work as genuine (vers. 14, 15).
(2) Divine: the Holy Ghost descended upon them, in (doubtless) miraculous bestowments (ver. 17).
II A SERIOUS DISCOURAGEMENT. There is no more disheartening blow which can fall on the heart of an earnest Christian worker than to find that his converts have not really changed their mind, but only their creed. Very bitter must have been the cup to the Christian community in Samaria when Simon made the miserable exhibition of himself recorded in the text (vers. 18, 19). Either he had been utterly insincere throughout, or, as is more likely, he was convinced that Philip and the apostles were masters of some great powers he had not been able to gain; but completely mistook the character of their mission, thinking they were out on an errand of self-aggrandizement. Whether Simon"s was a guilty simulation or a blasphemous error, it was rebuked with an almost terrible severity (vers. 20-23), which evidently affected and even affrighted the sorcerer (ver. 24). In tones of unwonted sternness, such as the occasion required, Peter rejected the infamous proposal to receive money for the impartation of Divine power, and assured Simon that he was still in the very depth of folly and of sin, from which nothing but repentance could deliver him.
1. We also may have a large measure of success in our work. We have all the materials of success, if we will use them: the needed saving truth; the beneficent agencies which spring from Christian sources, and which commend the Christian cause; the presence in the Church of the Holy Spirit of God.
2. We shall always be liable to disappointment. Some whom we believe to be possessed of the truth and to be brought beneath its vital power will prove to be only just touched by it, or to be mere pretenders and deceivers.
3. Spite of painful drawbacks, we may thank God for good work done. It was with joyous and grateful hearts, we may be sure, that the apostles "returned to Jerusalem" (ver. 25). They had not forgotten Simon"s defection; they would never forget that disappointing moment when he made his humiliating offer. But, after all, he was in the dark and far background; in front of him and in full view of their gladdened souls was the testimony they had borne for their Master, the Church they had gathered, the good work they had wrought in Samaria. C.
Vers. 5-8. Samaria evangelized.
I The STEPPING-STONE to work among the Gentiles. Half heathen.
II THE PREPARATION FOR CHRIST. The Pentateuch. The false teaching of Simon and others. Mental and moral degradation.
III A specimen of SPIRITUAL WANT AND PRIVATION. Unclean spirits. Palsied. Lame. The multitudes under the dominion of physical and spiritual disease. Adaptation of the new message to universal humanity.
IV THE MEANS EMPLOYED. Preaching the Christ. Signs and wonders. The two great facts a personal Redeemer the object of faith; a Divine power at hand able to lift up the fallen, to subdue the evil, to heal the sick, to change the world. R.
Preaching Christ.
The expression here used is a frequent one in the Acts of the Apostles; e.g. preaching the gospel;" "preached the Word;" "preaching peace by Jesus Christ;" "ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ;" "preaching the Lord Jesus;" "Jesus whom Paul preached;" "according to the preaching of Jesus." The proper idea of preaching is "heralding," "proclaiming," declaring a message; and the old prophets of Judaism were true preachers; so were the angels at Bethlehem, and so was John the Baptist. Philip the evangelist went to Samaria, where there was quite as intense an expectation of the Messiah as could be found among the Jews, and to the Samaritans Philip proclaimed that Messiah, or Christ, had come, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and that his resurrection which was abundantly proved was the crowning attestation and proof that he was the Christ, the Son of the Most High God. What is involved and included in "preaching Christ may best be found by the consideration of a few illustrative cases.
1. Christ preached himself to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus; and his points were the necessity for the sufferings of Christ and his subsequent resurrection, and the absolute truth of the Messiahship and Lordship of Christ.
2. Christ"s command," Go into all the world," etc., sends us back to the announcement of the angels at Bethlehem; they preached a Savior, not a salvation.
3. The apostles preached Christ at Pentecost, and at the healing of the lame man, and declared Jesus as both having died and risen again, and being exalted with present saving power.
4. Stephen preached, in his defense, the Messiahship and death of the Lord Jesus, closing with a firm declaration that he was risen.
5. Philip preached unto the eunuch, and his subject was Jesus the Key to the prophecies, suffering and triumphant.
6. St. Paul preached to the Philippian jailor, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ." The peculiarity of the early preaching evidently was the presentation to men of a personal, living Savior, with whom men may have personal dealings for their full salvation. Then true preaching must present a living Christ to men as having tone all for them, able to be all to them, and to do all in them, and so the true preaching of Christ covers his whole redemptive work. Preaching Christ sets him forth before men in his cradle, on his cross, and with his crown.
I IS HIS CRADLE. Or, Christ in incarnation, the Divine Man. This is the mystery of Bethlehem. It may be shown
(1) that the Man Christ Jesus reveals God to man, and man to himself;
(2) gives example of the human life that can alone be acceptable to God; and
(3) is the assurance of the Divine sympathy with sinning, suffering man. He "took not on him the nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham," and "being found in fashion as a man" he is able to save us men.
II ON HIS cross. Or, Christ in sacrifice, the Divine Sufferer. This is the mystery of Calvary. A suffering Savior shows:
1. The intensity of sin: its utmost effort crucified him.
2. The helplessness of sin. It did its worst, and was defeated. It was not possible that he should be holden of it." A suffering Savior:
3. Attracts men. "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me." No persuasions can so urge and win men as those that come from the cross where our Sin-bearer died.
4. Removes out of the way the hindrances to our fellowship with God. "The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
III WITH HIS CROWN. Or, Christ in triumph, the Divine King. This is the mystery of Olivet. The kingly Jesus is:
1. The archgon, Leader of his people, "the Captain of their salvation," their Bringer-on.
2. The Head and Lord of the new kingdom, exalted to give repentance and remission." "Head over all things to his Church.
3. The Bestower of the Holy Spirit, which is his present inward agency, himself abiding with us and in us.
So we preach Christ, the Man; the Divine Man; ours, our Brother; and with this preaching we arouse interest in him. We preach Christ, the Sufferer, who draws us to himself in sympathy and love. "Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow." We preach Christ the King, and bid you bow down now and submit to his gracious and holy reign. R.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv5, 9, 14, 17, 20 Then Philip wont down to the city of Samaria…
Act_8:5-8
Then Philip wont down to the city of Samaria and preached Christ unto them.
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Philip at Samaria
I. The preacher--Philip.
1. His native place--Caesarea, most likely.
2. His official status--Evangelist, and one of the first deacons.
3. His new charge--Samaria.
4. His specific work Preached.
5. His theme--Christ.
6. His directness--Unto them.
He took aim at his audience. He did not take long range at antediluvian iniquity, but poured hot shot and shell into the living iniquities of Samaria.
II. The preachers success.
1. He made a fine impression--The people with one accord gave heed, were impressed with his
(1) Teachings,
(2) Character, and
(3) Spirit.
2. He impressed them with his power--Seeing the miracles.
3. He surprised them by his authority--Unclean spirits crying came out.
4. He blessed them by his presence--Many with palsies.
5. He gladdened them by his ministry--There was great joy in that city. (T. Kelly.)
Philip preaching at Samaria
The early Christians were not disposed to leave Jerusalem. They had been counselled to abide in Jerusalem until they were endued with power from on high; but Pentecost had come and gone, and still they tarried. Perhaps they were in a measure constrained by their lingering prejudice against the gathering in of the Gentiles. The martyrdom of Stephen was the stirring up of the nest. The infatuated Jews who wrought that murderous deed may have fondly hoped that it would prove the death-blow of the little Christian Church. But God maketh the wrath of men to praise Him. Thus it is written, The disciples that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the Word. The Church perforce begins her aggressive march. Providence made them all missionaries. The apostles alone remained in Jerusalem, which became henceforth a centre not of concentration, but of radiation.
I. Philip, the evangelist, comes to Samaria. Among those who fled from Jerusalem at this juncture was Philip, one of the seven deacons. He was a man full of the Holy Ghost and power, and with a special fitness for evangelistic work. On reaching the city of Samaria he began at once to preach Christ unto them. In all the world there was probably, at that moment, no city whose conditions were more unfavourable to Christian effort. The people were half heathen at the best. Rejecting all of the Scriptures except the five books of Moses, they were addicted to all manner of superstitious observances. Just now they were under the spell of a certain necromancer, known to us as Simon Magus, who called himself The Great Power of God. Under these circumstances a prudent evangelist might have thought best to pass on to more congenial soil. But Philip was not prudent in that wise. He followed the lead of Providence, the only safe plan. For he that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap (Ecc_11:4).
II. His coming is followed by a revival. Some men are a curse to the cities they live in; others are a blessing. At once he set about two things:--
1. He preached Christ. It is noteworthy how often we come upon this and similar expressions in the Scriptures--preaching the Word, preaching the gospel, preaching the Lord Jesus, preaching peace by Jesus Christ. Nothing is said about fine essay work in the pulpit or about profound scientific and philosophical disquisitions. No truth was presented which did not emanate from Christ as a sunbeam from the sun. The mission of a minister is to preach the gospel; and the gospel is the good tidings that Jesus saves. A hundred philosophers, bending all their efforts for a hundred years upon a single sinner would fail to save him, but one faithful herald of the old-fashioned gospel of the Cross can stir a whole city to its depth. Philip was only a deacon, an evangelist; there were many wiser men in Samaria; but, alas! the truth as it is in Jesus had not set their hearts on fire. So he had the advantage of them all. And the people with one accord gave heed unto those things which he spake.
2. And they were all the readier to listen to him by reason of the miracles which he wrought in the name of Jesus. For unclean spirits came out of many that were possessed; and many taken with palsies and that were lame were healed; and there was great joy in that city. The very best evidence of the truth of Christs gospel is in its influence upon the community. Take a map of the world and mark off the countries where happiness and prosperity prevail in largest measure, and in every instance they are the countries that acknowledge Jesus as the Christ. The gospel, wherever it goes, proves its Divineness by working miracles of beneficence. And the Christian proves the truth of his message by showing what it has done for his own heart and conscience, and by dispensing of its virtues to all around him. So one man turned Samaria upside down. Before the people knew, probably before he himself realised it, they were in the midst of a great revival.
III. Peter and John come to his relief. No better could have been selected than these two whom we so often find in each others company--Peter the Man of Rock, and John the Son of Thunder. We may imagine the delight with which the faithful, overworked evangelist welcomed them. These apostles came, moreover, not only to preach Christ to the Samaritans, but to confer upon the Christian workers the charismata, or gifts of the Holy Ghost. On the arrival of these apostles the work went forward with renewed energy, but Philip was less conspicuous. No doubt he recognised their superior fitness, and was content to take a subordinate place. Where the mind of Jesus prevails there is neither clash nor jealousy. There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. (D. J. Burrell, D. D.)
Philips ministry in Samaria
Consider the suggestions arising from--
I. The scene of his ministry. In selecting the city of Samaria we discover--
1. His practical sagacity. Christ had been there and had prepared the way.
2. His obedience to Christ. Christ had commanded it (Act_1:8).
3. His largeness of soul. They were a people hostile to his own, by political and religious prejudices.
4. His intrepidity of conduct. He was doing that which would put him directly against the Jews.
II. The subject. Christ, not Moses; Christ, not creed--the living Christ, the anointed of God, the Saviour of the world--probably:--
1. As the burden of past promises, as Him of whom Moses and the prophets did write. This is what we have to do.
2. As the foundation of all future hopes. His the only name given, etc. No one else to look forward to.
III. The reception (verse 6). They gave proper attention to what he said. What would be proper attention to a theme like this?
1. Profoundly reverential. It is a Divine communication.
2. Devoutly grateful. Infinite love is displayed in the message.
3. Earnestly practical. Demanding most strenuous personal application.
IV. The attestation. His miracles which were--
1. Illustrations of the benign glories of his ministry.
2. Powers to impress the Divinity of his ministry.
V. The influence (verse 8). They had been partly prepared for this by Christs conversation with the woman. The gospel brings joy to a people because it is good tidings, etc. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
Philip preaching in a Samaritan city
Philip--
I. Went down to a city of Samaria.
1. Went down, i.e., from Jerusalem. The place physically was high; it was also the centre of government and worship--hence the expressions going up and going down. If there is one super-eminent mountain in a country the clouds of heaven congregate round it, and from it the water flows in every direction to refresh the land. Such, spiritually, was Jerusalem. The clouds gathered round it at Pentecost, and under the influence of the mighty rushing wind they were precipitated, and bore the gospel of grace to all nations. Christs name and work is that central mountain now. The Spirit without measure is poured out upon Him. The Jerusalem that now is is His Church, around which all heavenly influences congregate, and from which they flow forth. Hence missions. Christians engage in mission work as mountains discharge rivers; they cannot help it, it is a law of their being. Love in redeemed hearts swells, and would rend them unless they opened.
2. To a city. The efforts of the first Christians were directed chiefly to the great cities. When the strongholds are won, the surrounding country is more easily occupied. Cities seem destined to play a greater part in modern than they did in ancient times. As yet no symptom appears of any natural law that shall check their increase. The thought of London makes the heart falter. But this is the victory that overcometh the world, etc. Lord increase our faith.
3. A city of Samaria. It was near; it was needy. Its inhabitants were a mixed people with a patchwork religion. Samaria is near us to-day, and if we are willing to go, we need not lack a mission-field.
II. He preached Christ unto them.
1. He preached--the first and chief work of a missionary, as a herald of peace from the king to a rebel country. Teaching and printing are useful auxiliaries, but they must not usurp the first place.
2. He preached Christ. To this the teaching of the Bible constantly comes round. Not law, morality, philosophy, or even the Scriptures or true doctrine, but Christ.
3. Unto them--to each heart. Not a general scheme of redemption, but a personal Saviour to a personal soul. Let the sunbeams passing through ordinary glass be spread over your naked band and the effect is imperceptible; but let the rays pass through a convex glass and be concentrated on one point, and they will shine brilliantly and go to the quick. The gospel may be preached or heard in both these ways; hence its diverse effects. (W. Arnot, D. D.)
The advent of the gospel to Samaria
With the history of Philip commences a new stage in the development of the Church. In the first commission to the twelve the glad tidings were restricted to the Jews, to the express exclusion of the Samaritans. This, however, was cancelled in the final commission, and Samaria first and then the whole world were thrown open to the gospel. But the honour of executing this commission, in both its narrowest and widest extent, fell not to an apostle, but to a deacon. Samaria directly, and Africa indirectly, were evangelised by Philip, the forerunner of Paul in his work as Stephen was in his preaching. Coming events cast their shadows before. The forms of Stephen and Philip, projected on the canvas of sacred history, give us some idea of the gigantic figure in reserve. What moved Philip is not recorded. Perhaps the persecution was specially directed against him, as his name occurs next to Stephens, and because he was as a Graecized Jew more liberal than his brethren in Palestine. He went down to a (not the) city of Samaria, probably Sebaste or Sychar. The orderliness of the spread of the gospel should be noted. It was to begin from Jerusalem as its centre, and first to permeate Judaea, the province of which Jerusalem was the metropolis, and thence to Samaria, the contiguous province, and thence to the uttermost parts of the earth. Now this collocation of Samaria (between Judaea and the uttermost parts of the earth) is not so much to be understood geographically as morally. The Samaritans were Judaised Gentiles, just as the Hellenists were Gentilised Jews. And it is obvious that Judaised Gentiles might play the same part which Hellenists played--act as a bridge between Judaism and heathenism. The Samaritans were probably purely heathen by extraction, descendants of those with whom Shalmanezer repeopled the desolated country (2Ki_17:1-41.), whose corrupt religion soon found for itself a local habitation and a name. Manasseh, the son of a Jewish high priest, being threatened with expulsion from the priesthood for contracting marriage with a Samaritan lady, permanently sided with them, built a rival temple on Gerizim, and founded a rival priesthood. The Samaritan Bible was a copy of the law of Moses, and that only, showing, however, many alterations of the text. Thus where Moses commands the people to build an altar on Mount Ebal, Gerizim is substituted for Ebal. Thus the Samaritan religion was a spurious and mutilated Judaism. And hence the antipathy of the Jews to them exceeded their antipathy to mere Gentiles. Nothing do men hate more than a caricature of themselves. Accordingly Samaritans were cursed in every synagogue, excluded as witnesses from Jewish courts of justice, and could never become proselytes. These rancorous prejudices were foreign to the Spirit of Christ, and He took every opportunity of counteracting them. But while He forbids all animosity against them, He gave no sanction to their religious claims. It will be seen, therefore, that a strict Jew of the high orthodox school would have had a vast deal of prejudice to surmount in carrying the gospel to Samaria. But Philip did not belong to this school. His circumstances and office would give him wider sympathies than were to be found among Hebrews of the Hebrews. The original diaconate was now broken up, and Philip, the distributor of alms, appears in the new character of evangelist--a striking proof that the wisest plans for Church government must be subject to modifications by the Providence of God. Yet while the form of the early diaconate passed away, its principles remained, and we hear of deacons at Philippi, and of a gift of helps at Corinth. A concluding word on the slow development of the ideas which were to form Christendom. The Church had much to learn after Pentecost, which experience and struggle only could teach. The outpouring was not a magical enlightenment on all points of truth, but rather the implantation of a principle of light and love, which was to work out its results according to the laws of the human mind. Placed under the guidance of the Spirit the views of the apostles became gradually clearer and wider. Pentecost did for society what conversion does for the individual. Conversion is a period of warm and lively emotions, but the work of sanctification, so far from being finished, has only begun. Our young strength has to be approved by trial, and our little knowledge to be enlarged by experience. So it was with the early Church. (Dean Goulburn.)
Samaria made joyful
I. The preaching of Christ. Christ is to be preached as--
1. All almighty;
2. All sufficient;
3. Only;
4. Gracious and compassionate, Saviour.
II. Its happy effects.
1. The blessings it brings.
2. The prospects it unfolds.
Conclusion:
1. What reasons we have to be thankful for the gospel!
2. What use are we making of it? (W. Dransfield.)
Preaching Christ
I. Christ is the proper subject of preaching. This means--
1. That the subject of preaching was not the wisdom of the world.
2. That it was the revelation concerning Christ.
(1) The nature of His person.
(2) The character of His work in all His offices.
(3) The method of salvation through Him: what we must do to obtain an interest in His salvation.
(4) The duties we owe Him.
II. Christ as the object of preaching. The objects which men have are various, and some selfish and degrading. Some preach Christ of strife and envy. Others have objects which are legitimate, but subordinate, as the temporal or eternal well-being of men. The true specific and appropriate object is the exaltation and glory of Christ; that He may be known, worshipped, and obeyed.
III. Reasons why we should preach Christ. Because--
1. He is our God and Saviour.
2. This is requisite to men becoming Christians.
3. To make men Christians is the best means of glorifying God, and the only means of promoting the happiness, holiness, and salvation of men.
IV. To preach Christ is a grace. The reasons why it is so great a favour are because--
1. It is the highest service of God and Christ.
2. To serve Him is the highest honour, and the greatest source of happiness. (C. Hodge, D. D.)
How Christ should be preached
I. As the messiah of ancient prophecy.
II. As incarnate.
1. Very man.
2. Very God.
III. As crucified and risen.
1. Atoning for sin.
2. Triumphing over death.
IV. As glorified.
1. For Himself.
2. For His people.
V. As judge. Living to make Christ known:--I wonder how many Christian people here could have their biographies condensed into this line, He lived to make Christ known. Might it not be said of one, he lived to open a shop, and then to open a second? or of another, be lived to save a good deal of money, and take shares in limited liability companies? or of a third, he lived to paint a great picture? or of a fourth, he was best known for his genial hospitality? Of many a minister it might be said--he lived to preach splendid sermons, and to gain credit for fine oratory. What of all these? If it can be said of a man, He lived to glorify Christ, then his life is a life. Every Christian man ought so to live. Oh that my memorial might be: He preached Christ crucified! (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Christ not in the sermon
The late Bishop F--, of Salisbury, having procured a young clergyman of promising abilities to preach before the king; and the young man having, in his lordships opinion, acquitted himself well, the bishop, in conversation with the king afterwards, wishing to get his sovereigns opinion, took the liberty to say, Does not your majesty think that the young man, who had the honour to preach before your majesty, is likely to make a good clergyman, and has this morning delivered a very good sermon? To which the king in his blunt manner, hastily replied, It might have been a good sermon, my lord; but I consider no sermon good that has nothing of Christ in it.
Christ in every sermon
A lady named Ruth Montgomery, writing in an American journal, tells us of hearing a young man just entering the ministry, who visited her grandfather when she was a little girl, deliver an address on some public secular occasion. Years afterwards, when grown to womanhood, she heard the same speaker deliver a lecture of deep interest, in a town in the interior of New York. Standing at the entrance of the pew, as he passed down the aisle to the door, she shook hands with him, and said: I am little Ruth. A smile lighted up his countenance, and he replied, Do you know that you said something to me when I was at your grandfathers that I have never forgotten? Oh, no, I said; it cannot be possible! Yes, you did, he replied; when I returned from the lecture, you said, Dr. D., you didnt forget to bring in the Saviour into your lecture. And I determined then I never would forget it. I have remembered it from that day to this, and tried to keep my resolution.
The duty of Christians to speak about Christ
Many years ago, when S. D. Rickards was walking home with a young lady, talking to her of the good Lord and His willingness to help us (in accordance with a resolution made still farther back that he would never be alone with any young person without speaking concerning the better things), he found that she had been longing to be a Christian for a considerable time; she wanted to love and trust the Lord Jesus, but she did not know how. In the simplest way he told her how--that trusting Christ was no more difficult than trusting him. Did she believe that he would save her if he could, if she asked him? And when the reply came, Yes, the question was put whether He, the Infinitely Good, was not much more to be trusted than a poor weak being like himself. Would He not be sure to save her if she asked Him, and could she not trust Him to say yes? A few days after, a little note came, thanking him for the conversation, relating how now she could say she trusted the Lord Jesus and was glad in Him, and adding these few words: If any one during the last three years had spoken to me as you did the other night, I should have been a Christian. It was just what I was wanting. I often wonder Christians talk so little about Christ. (J. L. Nye.)
And the people with one accord gave heed unto these things which Philip spake, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did.--
Fruit--joy
I. The people listened to the messenger. There was great earnestness and unanimity. They did not oppose him or remain unmoved. It is a great advantage when an awaking becomes general. Solitary Christians are like solitary trees near the sea coast; the cold winds keep down their growth or kill them. But in a thick wood all contribute to shelter each. So quickly and generally did this harvest grow up to Philips hand that we are compelled to believe that a sower had been previously at work. This was so. The Master had sown, the servant now reaped.
II. The people both heard his doctrines, and saw his mighty works. We have the same doctrines and the same results in conversion, but not the miracles? Why? They were the credentials of the first preachers; why, then, cannot we have them to authenticate ours? For the same reason, perhaps, that the miracle of Creation has not been repeated. To set the world going powers were necessary that are not necessary now. The present organic laws are sufficient for the continuance of the species, but not to account for the commencement. Why, then, should it be thought impossible that God should exert a power to establish the gospel which was not needed afterwards? Existing spiritual forces are sufficient for all gospel purposes, and are mightier even than the miracles employed to establish it.
III. There was great joy in the city. Hear this, ye butterfly flutterers, that flit from flower to flower, satiate with each sweet as soon as you alight upon it, and hastening unhappy to another, trying every flower all day, and at night bringing no honey home! Hear this, all ye who study hard to keep religion at arms length, lest it should cast a gloom over your heart or home! When an earnest missionary who had risked his life for Christs name preached in a city, the people, instead of growing gloomy, became glad. This is a phenomenon worthy of study. But do not mistake its meaning. The instinct which prompts the vain and worldly to keep religion away, lest it should destroy their pleasure, is a true instinct. Every creatures instinct is for its own preservation. To embrace Christ is to crucify the old man, who does not die without struggle and pain. But when he is put off a new nature is put on, and the new nature has new joys. What the Samaritans felt is the ultimate result, not the first effect, of preaching Christ offered to a city or a soul, and kept out seems a terror, but received becomes a joy which life cannot give or death destroy. (W. Arnot, D. D.)
Genuine and spurious miracles
Undesigned coincidences are a most satisfactory evidence of the truth of Scripture. We have one here. From the account of our Lords sojourn in Sychar, given by John--a very different writer from Luke--we gather that the Samaritans were a simple-minded people, with childlike taste for the marvellous, and an equally childlike credulity, keenly anticipating the coming of a great Prophet and Deliverer, but having the moral faculties undeveloped. Now it is exactly among such a people that magic is likely to make way, as the narrative tells us it did. Thus the Samaritans of the Acts are true to the character incidentally ascribed to them in St. John. But among nations of a much higher civilisation there was at the time a susceptibility to magical arts. Religious ideas were in a state of fermentation, and religious minds in a state of high excitement. There was a general expectation of the advent of a great Ruler, due partly to the dissemination of Jewish ideas and associations through Israels dispersion, and to the growing disbelief in mythology. Men must have some religion, and so intelligent heathens held on to the old forms, with an occasional sneer, for the want of a better, but they yearned for something truer and more satisfying. Now this state is connected with credulity and an appetite for signs and wonders; and wherever there is a demand there is sure to be a supply. And, to go beyond the phenomena to the causes, by the manifestation of God in the flesh, the powers of evil were stirred up to a desperate effort for the maintenance of their supremacy. Demoniacal possession was one result of this effort; a great swarm of impostors was another. Apollonius of Tyana is said to have performed miracles which are parodies of those in the Gospels. By the side of the genuine coin which God minted was issued from the devils mint a whole school of counterfeit coins. The gospel was to fare as the law had done; when the sorcerers were able to do the same wonders as Moses up to a certain point, after which they are constrained to see the finger of God. So here the magician is forced to acknowledge that God is in the gospel, and is baptized, though without change of heart. His policy was, without relinquishing the purpose of his life, to ascertain the secret of this new power: and he seems to have regarded baptism as a magical rite on a level with his own spells. And Luke, in describing his state of mind while beholding the miracles of the gospel, used the same Greek word which he employed to describe the effect of Simons own powers. He bewitched the people of Samaria,… and beholding the miracles and signs which were done, he was bewitched. Note some of the characteristics of Philips miracles which distinguished them from those of the sorcerer. The former had upon them--
I. The seal of Gods glory. The sorcerer preached himself--Gave out that he was some great one; whereas Philip preached Christ and the things concerning the kingdom of God. He announced that the devils empire was broken, and that whosoever would come to God might have priceless blessings. Miracles of a corresponding character attested the message. Unclean spirits were expelled in token of Satans shattered kingdom, and in evidence that a new power had come into humanity many were healed. At the sight of these miracles the people rejoiced. But mere wonders have no aptitude to produce joy. Simons sorceries produced only amazement and dread. What produced the joy was the glad tidings which Philip preached. Where miracles redound, by many thanksgivings unto the praise of God, we may believe that they had their origin from God; but when they redound to the glorification of men, we may suspect them.
II. The seal of love to man. They brought relief to suffering humanity. But not a word is said of the beneficence of Simons miracles--they were simply wonders that bewitched folk. Conclusion:
1. True miracles are never shown for their own sake, but for some doctrine which has to be attested by them. They are never advanced to make people wonder, but as signs to make them believe. Hence, as soon as the doctrine has gained a firm footing, the miracles cease. When marvels are professed to be wrought by some occult power, do not credit them unless they are in confirmation of some Divine message.
2. There is a correspondence between the character of a true miracle and the doctrine which it is wrought to establish. Thus, e.g., the plagues of Egypt were all directed to establish the superiority of Jehovah to the idols of Egypt, and those of Philip to prove that the gospel was good tidings of great joy. And the people saw the correspondence between the two (verse 8). (Dean Goulburn.)
The spiritual miracles of the gospel
I. Impurity is expelled.
II. Weakness is strengthened.
III. Sorrow is converted into joy. Joy--
1. At the forgiveness of sins.
2. In the enjoyment of God.
3. In the hope of eternal salvation. (K. Gerok.)
The only cure for soul disorders
Some years ago I was at Birmingham when the onion fair was being held, and thousands of people came from the Black Country to attend it, and to witness the sights that seem to be a part of all such gatherings. The London Bible Society sent an agent to sell copies of the Bible. There was also a woman selling a patent medicine, and some young fellows from the Black Country went up to her, and one of them said, Missis, can you cure us? Whats the matter? inquired the woman. Oh, weve got the devil in us, was the reply. No, young man, said the woman, with a reverence for the truth that deserved something better than to be selling patent medicine, I cannot cure you. Your disorder is of the soul; my physic is only for the body. If you want to be cured, you must go to the man thats selling Bibles yonder. (J. S. Pawlyn.)
And there was great joy in that city.--
The grounds of Christian joy
There was joy on account of--
I. Temporal mercies. The circumstances attending the benefits, as well as the benefits themselves, would render this joy peculiarly great. For many hopeless maladies were cured instantaneously and completely, neither subjecting the patient to any painful operation, nor leaving any portion of the distemper unremoved. And their joy would be still more enhanced by perceiving the hand of God in all this, and that it was illustrative of the mercy and power on which they might rest their confidence in Him for future and higher blessings. For they welcomed the redeeming message thus recommended and attested, and embraced the faith and hope of the gospel. Now, when any blessing is put into your lot, your hearts will doubtless be affected with joy. And the joy will be in proportion to the native sensibility of your minds and to the blessing received. But the great subject of anxiety should be that your joy shall be worthy of the faculties with which God has endowed you, and of those sentiments and anticipations which He has taught you to entertain. What is the nature of your joy after temporal benefit? Is it a mere animal excitement, like the gratification of the brutes when they are getting their hunger and thirst appeased, or when they are liberated from pain or confinement? Or is it the feeling of those worldlings who are happy only when their lower appetites are ministered to? In order for the joy to be Christian, those blessings by which the emotion has been excited must be considered as to their origin and as to the higher purposes which they are designed to subserve, both in your present and your future condition.
1. You are joyful for temporal benefits, but remember that these are not the fruits of your own exertion, or of the benevolence of your fellow-men, or of fate or accident. They are the gifts of God. The kind interpositions here recorded were miraculous; but if you have taken your principles and impressions from the Holy Scriptures, you will not need a miracle to lift your contemplation to Him by whom a mercy has been manifested. Every comfort you will regard as descending from heaven. And how sweet and satisfying is that joy which you draw from this reference of every blessing to God! Were you to be informed that any happy event which had befallen you originated in the contrivance of an individual, who combined with general worth a strong and disinterested attachment to you, would not this discovery add much to your pleasure by giving birth to sympathies which could not otherwise have existed? And if this individual should turn out to be the father whom you had done much to displease, would not this increase the enjoyment to a still higher degree? And must not this be realised in a style which no reciprocity of kindness between man and man can ever exemplify, and in a degree which no display of mere human generosity can ever create, when you are able to receive all the good things of life as proceeding from the hand of your Father in heaven? And in proportion as you see the finger of God in whatever contributes to your preservation and your comfort will your joy be regulated, not by the greatness of the prosperity which gives occasion for it, but by the Divine bounty which it indicates whether it be great or small.
2. But besides this, you should be joyful in the experience of temporal good, because it restores or increases your means of personal improvement and of social usefulness. There can be little doubt that many of the rejoicing Samaritans felt in this way. From their having been subject to various infirmities, they must have been not only debarred from useful exertion, but have even been a burden both to themselves and to their friends. But when freed from such bodily calamities, the faith they embraced in consequence of this Divine interposition would lead them to employ their recovered powers in advancing their own good and the good of their neighbours, and to rejoice that the ability was restored, while the inclination was also given, to glorify God in practical acknowledgments of His healing mercy. And, as under the impulse of this holy ambition every, thing which retards your progress will be a subject of regret, so whatever tends to promote it will make you glad in proportion to its power of adding to the warmth of your piety and the extent of your virtue. Nor can you fail to be conscious of the same emotions in reference to the welfare of others.
(1) You were long confined, perhaps, to a bed of sickness, which has interrupted your course of active duty. Now that, through Divine mercy, you are permitted to exchange the chamber of disease for the scene of wonted industry, you indulge in the gladness of soul which such a transition is fitted to inspire. But are you glad merely that you are again permitted to partake of the amusements, or mingle in the business, of the world? No; your gladness, if it be Christian, will rather arise from this--that you can now follow out the important purposes for which your Lord has qualified you.
(2) Perhaps you had a dear friend in whom you trusted for advice and encouragement; and as it had pleased God to afflict him, so it has pleased God to give him back to your prayers and your affections. But you must have poorly appreciated his value if you did not hail his return, not merely on the ground of friendship, but because you were to be again blessed with his counsels and admonitions and example.
(3) Or perhaps you have been rescued from worldly embarrassments which had checked you in the cultivation of your talents, and almost destroyed your power of promoting the good of your fellow-men. And in the relief from these embarrassments this will hold an influential and distinguished place, that you have recovered that by which you can make greater progress in the things that are excellent, and be instrumental in furthering the grand interests of humanity and religion in the world.
II. Spiritual mercies. Philip preached Christ to the Samaritans, and they embraced Him as an all-sufficient Redeemer, and by baptism vowed to undertake all the duties of their Christian profession. Now, if we have welcomed the gospel as they did, we must be similarly affected with joy. The gospel is of such an interesting description, and is so calculated to work upon the principles and susceptibilities of our nature, that whenever it meets with belief and obedience it cannot fail to produce joy. So much is this the case that Christianity is distinctively good tidings of great joy.
1. Let us only think of the information which Christianity conveys, that we may see how necessarily it excites gladness.
(1) Do we rejoice to learn that some temporary evil that we greatly feared has been averted? Well, then, we learn from the gospel that the greatest of all calamities is provided against so effectually that there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.
(2) Do we rejoice to be assured that some earthly friend to whom we had given just offence is willing to reinstate us in his favour? Well, then, the gospel assures us that God Himself, whose favour is life, whose displeasure is death, but against whom we had sinned, has made such arrangements that our iniquities may be blotted out, and our peace with Him regained and secured.
(3) Do we rejoice to be told that a distemper which threatened to be mortal may be arrested? Well, then, the gospel tells us that death, which we so much dreaded, is deprived of its sting--stripped of its terrors--and that it need not be feared any more.
(4) Do we rejoice when, through the unmerited kindness of some relative, we have the reversion of a fortune or an estate which we must soon leave to others? Well, then, the gospel informs us that God has reserved for us an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away.
2. But it behoves us to have this feeling of interest in the blessings of the gospel created and established according to the Scriptural method. Some people are comforted and gladdened by the discoveries of the gospel without any good warrant. They imagine that merely because a Saviour is provided, and a wink of redemption accomplished, they may banish all their fears and be joyful in the Lord. Whereas, according to the gospel scheme, this fact is of no avail to any sinner till it is received by him, and submitted to by him, as a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation. Now, this attainment is made by faith in Christ, and the moment that Christ becomes our Saviour joy exists there, and ought to be cherished there, as sanctioned by Him from whom the pardon and salvation which produce it have been derived--as itself a privilege which He confers, equally valuable and divine. We are not to rejoice because we believe, as if our joy were to arise from anything within ourselves, but because the Saviour, in whom we trust, is all-sufficient for us. Thus it was with the Samaritan converts. They had great joy. But it was an immediate sequence of their believing the things that Philip preached concerning the kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ. There may be a strong faith, and there may be a weak faith. The clearer and more multiplied our evidence is of the truths of the gospel, and of the sufficiency of Jesus Christ in whatsoever that evidence may consist, the more vivid and vigorous will be our faith; and the more vivid and vigorous our faith, the more lively, substantial, unmingled will be that joy which faith, in its every degree, is fitted to produce. And, therefore, that we may abound in joy, let it be our care and our study to abound in faith.
3. But remember that the same authority which commands you to believe and to rejoice, also presents to you delineations and enforcements of a character which you must possess, otherwise all your religion is vain. The faith which you repose in Christ, and which gives joy to your heart, is a faith which receives Him, that He may redeem you from the power and pollution of sin, and consecrate you to the service of God; and were it possible for you to believe in Him to the exclusion of that part of His saving character, your joy would be presumptuous and delusive. So that spiritual joy and spiritual renovation are inseparably united. And as you believe and rejoice, so you must give all diligence to abound in godliness. The Samaritans acted in this manner. We do not read of their after conduct; but so far as the narrative goes they did all of which their time and opportunities admitted. They were baptized--and this implied incalculably more than it does among us. By undergoing the rite, they braved all the terrors of persecution, and pledged themselves to maintain that purity of demeanour which the washing with water signified. A holy life, in reference to our spiritual joy, is of vast importance in two ways.
(1) It is the test by which we are to ascertain that our joy is not false and delusive. There is a joy which proceeds from frames, and feelings, and fancies. To guard against a deception so fatal, it is necessary that we examine ourselves whether we be in the faith, wanting which the gospel speaks nothing that is good to us, and whether we are entitled to be glad in the Lord as our Lord, our Saviour, and our portion.
(2) While practical godliness thus satisfies us that we are not rejoicing without warrant, the more we possess of that character, the stronger evidence do we obtain of our interest in the blessings of redemption, and the stronger reason have we for encouraging ourselves in that joy with which the blessings of redemption are so well fitted to fill the spirit. (A. Thomson, D. D.)
Joyful import of the gospel
I. It is deserving of remark, that the seat of this holy triumph was the city of Samaria. Well may it be said, The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom like the rose; for such indeed was the city of Samaria. Thus the Lord builds up Jerusalem, and gathers together the outcasts of Israel (Psa_147:2; Isa_56:6-8).
II. The joy which now prevailed in the city of Samaria is fully accounted for by the cause which produced it. Joy is never incited but on some great occasion, and the seasons of religious joy are distinguished by some interesting or extraordinary occurrence. Such was the joy and gladness at the preparation for building the temple of Jerusalem (1Ch_24:9), at Hezekiahs passover (2Ch_30:25-26), at the rebuilding and dedication of the city wall (Neh_12:43), at the birth of Christ (Luk_2:10-14), at the appearance of the star to the eastern magi (Mat_2:13), and at the ascension of our blessed Saviour (Luk_24:52). All these were great events, and furnished an abundant source of joy and rejoicing. We may therefore expect something great and interesting in the present instance, to fill a whole city with joy--and what was it?
1. Is it not ground for joy that the Lord is come into the world to save sinners?
2. Is it not ground for joy that Christ has laid down His life for us, and redeemed us unto God by His blood?
3. Is it not a matter of great joy that Christ is risen from the dead? This proves that He was the true Messiah, that His sacrifice is accepted, and that justice is fully satisfied.
4. Is it not matter of joy, too, that Christ has ascended into glory, and that He ever liveth to make intercession for us?
5. That through faith in His name there is forgiveness of sin, and acceptance with God?
6. Is it not a source of joy that this gospel is now sent to all nations?
7. Was it not a special matter of joy to the Samaritans, that they themselves had believed the gospel?
Reflections:
1. If, then, the gospel bring tidings of great joy, why is it reproached as tending to gloom and melancholy? Can anything be more unreasonable and unjust?
2. Why do individuals despond while there is such an exhibition of mercy? Because they do not hearken to the gospel, nor receive the record which God hath given of His Son.
3. Why do not Christians possess more joy and peace in believing? Because we have not more religion, do not live more under the influence of the gospel. Lord, increase our faith. (J. Benson.)
The joy of salvation
John Bowen, afterwards Bishop of Sierra Leone, being, while a young farmer in Canada, converted by a sermon, wrote in his diary, I experienced such an ecstasy last evening in prayer that I doubted if I were in my right senses. Christ was slain for me. I could give myself up to Him unreservedly. I cannot describe my sensations of joy. I could not praise God sufficiently for the great scheme of salvation. I remained a long time giving thanks and praying that such a heavenly joy might not be taken away from me.
Joyousness of Christianity
Religion is good both for a mans body and soul, both for time and eternity. It has the promise of the life that now is, and also of that which is to come. It not only teaches men to govern their spirits, but also to take care of their bodies; not only to watch over their tempers and dispositions, but also to manage, in a prudent manner, their worldly business. If men were truly religious, they would not only have brighter prospects for heaven, but they would also have far more cheerful and happy homes on earth. Religion brightens everything it touches. It strengthens the weak, comforts the disconsolate, encourages the despondent, lifts up those that are bowed down, and fills the mind, even amid worldly anxieties and cares, with peace and joy and hope.
The unique effects of the gospel
There was never found in any age of the world, either philosophy or sect, or law or discipline, which could so rightly exalt the public good as the Christian faith. (Lord Bacon.)
The Christian city
1. All around Philip was the misery and sin of a great city. He told them of Him who had come to relieve misery and forgive sin. As a symbol of the new life which he told them of, he touched some of their sick and their health came back to them. Not merely a few scattered souls caught the new inspiration; it seemed to fill the air and flow through all the life of the whole town.
2. There is something clear and peculiar in this joy of a whole city over a new faith. We can all feel it when a thought or an emotion which has lingered in a few minds starts up and takes possession of a whole community. It is as when a quiver of flame which has lurked about one bit of wood at last gets real possession of the heap of fuel, and the whole fireplace is in a blaze. There came a time when Christianity, which had lived in scattered congregations, at last seized on the prepared mind of the Roman Empire, and all Europe was full of Christianity. So it is a phenomenon possessing its own interest and demanding its own study, when beyond Christian souls you have a whole community inspired with the feelings and acting under the motives of Christianity. A city as well as an individual is capable of a Christian experience and character. It is more than an aggregate of the experience of the souls within it, as a chemical compound has qualities which did not appear in either of its constituents; it is a real new being with qualities and powers of its own.
3. Christianity is primarily a personal force, and only secondarily does it deal with communities. The souls of men must be converted; and out of those the Christian Church or the Christian State must grow. To begin by making the structure of a Church or a State, and expect so to create personal character, is as if you began to build a forest from the top. This is the error of all merely ecclesiastical and political Christianity. But none the less is it true that when a great multitude of personal believers, who have been fused together by the fire of their common faith, present before the world the unity of a Christian Church or nation, that new unity is a real unit, a genuine being with its own character and power.
4. We see the Church possessed as a whole of qualities which she must gather, of course, from her parts, but which we can find in no one of her parts. She is more permanent, more wise, more trustworthy than the wisest and most trustworthy of the men who compose her membership. Tile city is a being dearer to us than any of the citizens who compose it. Many a man goes out to war and gives his life gladly for his country who would not have dreamed of giving it for any countryman. The Bible is full of this thought. Israel is more than any Israelite; Jerusalem is realer and dearer than any Jew. The New Testament reverts to the individual, but it too advances towards its larger personality, and leaves the strong figure of the Christian Church and the brilliant architecture of the New Jerusalem burning upon its latest pages.
5. But let us come to our subject. Is anything more to be expected than that here and there throughout a city men and women should be Christians? Can we conceive of Christianity so pervading the life of a community that the city shall be distinctly different in its corporate life and action from a heathen city? Christianity, or the change of mans life by Christ, has three ways in which it makes its power known. It appears either as truth, as righteousness, or as love. Every soul which is really redeemed by Christ will enter into new beliefs, higher ways of action, and deeper affections towards fellow-men. Now take these one by one, and ask if a city is not capable of them as well as aa individual.
I. Look first at faith.
1. Perhaps this seems the hardest to establish. There was a time, we say, when cities had their beliefs, when no man could live comfortably in Rome without believing like the Pope, or in Geneva without believing like Calvin. Then every proclamation was based upon a creed. But see how that is altered now. A thousand different beliefs fight freely in our streets, and it is almost true that no man is the less a citizen for anything that he believes or disbelieves. But this implies that the only exhibition of a faith must be in formal statement. It ignores for the city what we accept for the individual, that the best sign that a man believes anything is not his repetition of its formulas, but his impregnation with its spirit. It may have grown impossible, at least for the present, that cities should write confessions of faith in their charters; but if it is possible--nay, if it is necessary--that the prevalence through all a citys life of a belief in God and Christ and the Holy Spirit should testify of itself by the creation of certain spiritual qualities in that city, then have we not the possibility of a believing city even without a written creed or a formal proclamation. Just look at London. This is a believing city. And why? Not because an occasional document is solemnised with the name of God, nor because a few verses of the Bible are read each morning in your public schools, but because that spirit which has never been in the world save as the fruit of Christian faith prevails in and pervades your government and social life, the spirit of responsibility, of trust in man, and of hopefulness. This is the Christian faith of your community, showing in all your public actions. It has not come by accident. It has entered into you through the long belief of your fathers which you yourselves still keep in spite of all your scepticisms and disputes.
2. If we doubt this, we have only to forecast the consequence if a heathen belief were prevalent. We have some men who disbelieve intensely and bitterly in every Christian doctrine. The spirit of these men we know: it is hopeless, cynical, despairing. If they are naturally sensual, they plunge into debauchery; if they are naturally refined they stand aside and sneer at or superciliously pity the eager work and exuberant feeling of other men. Now fancy such mens faith made common. What would be the result? Would any generous work be done? Could either popular government or an extended system of business credit still survive, since both are based on that trust of man in man which is at the bottom a Christian sentiment? Would you not have killed enterprise when you had taken hopefulness away, and given the deathblow to public purity when you had destroyed responsibility?
3. No, the city has its Christian faith. Its belief is far from perfect: it is all stained and broken with scepticism, but it is vastly more strong than many of you believe. Every now and then comes a revival. What does it mean? we say; when men seem settling placidly down into unbelief and indifference, all of a sudden this great outbreak? People crowding by tens of thousands to hear some homely preacher, the city shaken with the storm of hymns, thousands confessing their sins and crying out for pardon? Is it not clear enough what it means? Here many of the men to whom the people most looked up have been sending down to the uplooking people the barren gospel of their scepticism. But by and by they have pressed too terribly upon the spiritual consciousness; the sense of God, the certainty of immortality, has risen in rebellion; the great reaction comes; the wronged affections reassert themselves. One must rejoice in such a healthy outburst. To complain of its extravagances or faults of taste is as if you complained of the tempest which cleared your city of the cholera because it shook your windows and stripped the leaves off your trees.
4. The methods by which this faith may be perpetuated and kept pure are open to endless discussion. No doubt the city in which it is liveliest stands the most in danger of ecclesiasticim on the one hand, and of dogmatic quarrelsomeness on the other; but about this one fact we are most clear, that a city may believe, and as a city may be blessed by its belief. It seems to open an appeal to any generous and public-spirited young man, to which he surely ought to listen. Not only for your own soul and its interests you ought to seek the truth, but for the community, because these streams of public and social life which run so shallow need to be deepened with eternal interests, because your faith in God will help to make God a true inspiration to the citys life. Remember the simple old parable in Ecc_9:14-16. Wisdom in the Old Testament means what faith means in the New.
II. Righteousness.
1. A man who is a Christian holds certain truth, and then he does certain goodness. And every city has a moral character distinguishable from, however it may be made up of, the individual character of its inhabitants. This is seen in two ways.
(1) In the official acts which it must do, the acts of justice or injustices by which it appears as a person acting in its official unity among its sister cities.
(2) In the moral atmosphere which pervades it, and which exercises power on all who come within it. You send a child to live in some heathen brutal community where vice is in the very atmosphere, and he is certainly contaminated. What is it that contaminates him? Not this mans or that mans example, but the whole character of the city where he lives. The brutality is everywhere, in all its laws, its customs, its standards, its traditions. You send him back to live in old Pompeii, where the abominations which modern times have uncovered and made the subject of cool archaeological study were live things, the true expression of the heathen citys spirit. As he enters in you see his soul wither and grow spotted with corruption. Then bring your boy and put him here in Christian London. It is not only this or that Christian whom he meets. It is a Christian goodness everywhere: in the just dealing of the streets, in the serene peace of the homes, in the accepted responsibilities and obligations of friends and neighbours, in the universal liberty, in the absence of cruelty, in the purity and decency, in the solemn laws and courteous ceremonies--everywhere there is the testimony of a city wherein dwelleth righteousness. And when we think how imperfectly Christ has been welcomed and adopted here--how only to the outside of our life He has penetrated, then there opens before us a glorious vision of what the city might be where He should be wholly King.
2. We dwell on the iniquity of city life in modern times. But it is not the riotous and boastful wickedness of heathen times. Men have at least seen clearly enough the Christian standard to be ashamed of what they are not willing to renounce, and hide in secret chambers the villainies which use to flaunt upon the public walls. It is one stage in every conversion of the converted city as of the converted man. The next stage is to cast away the wickedness of which one has become ashamed. Of cities in the first stage there are instances everywhere through Christendom. Of the second stage--of the city totally possessed by Christ and so casting all wickedness away, there is as yet no specimen upon the earth, only the glowing picture of the apocalyptic city, the New Jerusalem. That sounds very visionary and far away; but consider that to bring about that city so different from your London you need only vastly more of the same power that has made your London so different from Pompeii.
3. Again we come to a lofty ground of appeal. If you are pure and true remember that your righteousness is not for yourself alone, nor for the few whom you immediately touch; it is for your city. I am speaking to business men who may help to put a more Christian character into business life; to women of society who may make the social character of the town more Christ-like; to young men on whom it rests to develop or to destroy for their city the character that their fathers gave her. If you fail, you Christian men and women, what chance is there for the city?
III. Charity. When a man becomes a Christian, he believes right, and then he does right; and then he tries to help his fellow-men. And now again the question comes, can a city too do good as the issue and utterance of its Christian character? The Christian character of charity is very apt to elude us, and the connection of a charitable act with Christian faith is lost. You say it is all impulse when you give your money to the poor; but what is the impulse? Is it the same as the savages? Has Christianity done nothing to keep down the other impulse to harm, and to strengthen this? And so you say the citys charity is all economy; her hospitals are merely expedients for saving so much available human life. But who taught her this economy, and that a human life was worth the saving, and how is it that the most highly organised among un-Christian nations have had but the merest rudiments of hospitals? No! The charity of a city is a distinct testimony to one thing which has been wrought into the convictions of that city--the value of a man; and that conviction has come out of Christian faith. A poor neglected creature drops in the crowded street; a horse strikes him, and the heavy waggon crushes him as he lies; or in the blazing summer sun he is smitten to the ground insensible. Instantly the city--not this pitying man or that, but the pitying city--stoops and gathers him up tenderly, and carries him to the hospital, which it has built. Is there no Christ there? Once there was a city which, when Christ came to it, hated and scorned Him, and would not be satisfied till it had seen Him die in agony. To-day here is a city which, if Christ came to it in person, would go out and welcome Him, would call Him Lord and Master, and hang upon His words and glory in the privilege of giving Him its best. In that first city there was no hospital; in this new city the hospitals stand thick for every kind of misery. Has not the Christian city a right to hear the Saviours words as if He spoke to her: Inasmuch as thou hast done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, thou hast done it unto Me? Who doubts that if the city were tenfold more Christian than she is the hospitals would be multiplied and enriched till it should be an impossibility for any sick man to be left unhelped. Deepen the citys Christianity and the citys charity must deepen and widen too. (Bp. Phillips Brooks.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On vv5, 14, 18 Chapter 17
Chapter 17
SIMON MAGUS AND THE CONVERSION OF SAMARIA.
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Act_8:5; Act_8:9-10
THE object of the earlier part of this book of the Acts is to trace the steady, gradual development of the Church among the Jews, the evolution, never ceasing for a moment, of that principle of true catholic and universal life which the Master implanted within her, and which never ceased working till the narrow, prejudiced, illiberal little company of Galileans, who originally composed the Church, became the emancipated Church of all nations. This process of development was carried on, as we have already pointed out, through the agency of the Hellenistic Jews, and specially of the deacons who were so intimately connected with that class. We have in the last few chapters surveyed the history of one deacon, St. Stephen; we are now led to the story of another, St. Philip. His activity, as described in the eighth chapter, runs upon exactly the same lines. St. Stephen proclaims the universal principles of the gospel; St. Philip acts upon these principles, going down to the city of Samaria, and preaching Christ there. The prominent position which the deacons had for the time taken is revealed to us by two notices. Philip leaves Jerusalem and goes to Samaria, where the power of the high priest and of the Sanhedrin does not extend, but would rather be violently resisted. Here he is safe for the time, till the violence of the persecution should blow over. And yet, though Philip has to leave Jerusalem, the Apostles remain hidden by the obscurity into which they had for a little fallen, owing to the supreme brilliancy of St. Stephen: "They were all scattered abroad except the Apostles." The deacons were obliged to fly, the Apostles could remain: facts which sufficiently show the relative positions the two classes occupied in the public estimation, and illustrate that law of the Divine working which we so often see manifesting it self in the course of the Churchs chequered career, the last shall be first and the first last. God, on this occasion, as evermore, chooses His own instruments, and works by them as and how He pleases.
I. This reticence and obscurity of the Apostles may seem to us now somewhat strange, as it certainly does seem most strange how the Apostles could have remained safe at Jerusalem when all others had to fly. The Apostles naturally now appear to us the most prominent members of the Jerusalem, nay, farther, of the Christian Church throughout the world. But then, as we have already observed, one of the great difficulties in historical study is to get at the right point of view, and to keep ourselves at that point under very varying combinations of circumstances. We are apt to fling ourselves back, or, if the expression be allowed, to project ourselves backwards into the past, and to think that men must always have attributed the same importance to particular persons or particular circumstances as we do. We now see the whole course of events, and can estimate them, not according to any mere temporary importance or publicity they may have attained, but according to their real and abiding influence. Viewing the matter in this light, we now can see that the Apostles were much more important persons than the deacons. But the question is, not how we regard the Apostles and the deacons, but how did the Sanhedrin and the Jews of Jerusalem in Stephens and Philips time view these two classes. They knew nothing of the Apostles as such. They knew of them simply as unlearned and ignorant men, who had been once or twice brought before the Council. They knew of Stephen, and perhaps, too, of Philip, as cultured Grecian Jews, whose wisdom and eloquence and persuasive power they were not able to resist; and it is no wonder that in the eyes of the Sadducean majority, who then ruled the Jewish senate, the deacons should be specially sought out and driven away.
The action of the Apostles themselves may have conduced to this. Here let us recur to a thought we have already touched upon. We are inclined to view the Apostles as if the Spirit which guided them totally destroyed their human personality and their human feelings. We are apt to cherish towards the Apostles the same reverential but misleading feeling which the believers of the early church cherished towards the prophets, and against which St. James clearly protested when he said, "Elijah was a man of like passions with ourselves." We are inclined to think of them as if there was nothing weak or human or mistaken about them, and yet there was plenty of all these qualities in their character and conduct. The Apostles were older than the deacons, and they were men of much narrower ideas, of a more restricted education. They had less of that facility of temper, that power of adaptation, which learning and travel combined always confer. They may have been somewhat suspicious too of the headlong course pursued by Stephen and his fellows. Their Galilean minds did not work out logical results so rapidly as their Hellenistic friends and allies. They had been slow of heart to believe with the Master. They were slow of heart and mind to work out principles and to grasp conclusions when taught by His servants and followers. The Apostles were, after all, only men, and they had their treasure in earthen vessels. Their inspiration, and the presence of the Spirit within their hearts, were quite consistent with intellectual slowness, and with mental inability to recognise at once the leadings of Divine Providence. It was just then the same as it has ever been in Church history. The older generation is always somewhat suspicious of the younger. It is slow to appreciate its ideas, hopes, aspirations, and it is well perhaps that the older generation is suspicious, because it thus puts on a drag which gives time for prudence, forethought, and patience to come into play. These may appear very human motives to attribute to the Apostles, but then we lose a great deal of Divine instruction if we invest the Apostles with an infallibility higher even than that which Roman Catholics attribute to the Pope. For them the Pope is infallible only when speaking as universal doctor and teacher, a position which some among them go so far as to assert he has never taken since the Church was founded, so that in their opinion the Pope has never yet spoken infallibly. But with many sincere Christians the Apostles were infallible, not only when teaching, but when thinking, acting, writing on the most trivial topics, or discoursing on the most ordinary subjects.
II. Let us now turn our attention to Philip and his work, and its bearing on the future history and development of the Church. Here, before we go any farther, it may be well to note how St. Luke gained his knowledge of the events which happened at Samaria. We do not pretend indeed, like some critics, to point out all the sources whence the sacred writers gathered their information. Any one who has ever attempted to write history of any kind must be aware how impossible it often is for the writer himself to trace the sources of his information after the lapse of some time. How much more impossible then must it be for others to trace the original sources whence the sacred or any other ancient writers derived their knowledge, when hundreds and even thousands of years have elapsed. Our own ignorance of the past is a very unsafe ground indeed on which to base our rejection of any ancient document whatsoever.
It is well, however, to note, where and when we can, the sources whence information may have been gained, and fortunately this book of the Acts supplies us with instruction on this very point. A quarter of a century later the same Saul who, doubtless, helped to make St. Philip fly on this occasion from Jerusalem, was dwelling for several days beneath his roof at Caesarea. He was then Paul the Apostle of the Gentiles, who bore in his own person many marks and proofs of his devotion to the cause which Philip had proclaimed and supported while Paul was still a persecutor. The story of the meeting is told us in the twenty-first chapter of this book. St. Paul was on his way to Jerusalem to pay that famous visit which led to his arrest, and, in the long run, to his visit to Rome and trial before Caesar. He was travelling up to Jerusalem by the coast road which led from Tyre, where he landed, through Caesarea, and thence to the Holy City. St. Luke was with him, and when they came to Caesarea they entered into the house of Philip the Evangelist, with whom they abode several days. What hallowed conversations St. Luke must there have listened to! How these two saints, Paul and Philip, would go over the days and scenes long since past and gone! How they would compare experiences and interchange ideas; and there it was that St. Luke must have had abundant opportunities for learning the history of the rise of Christianity in Samaria which here he exhibits to us.
Let us now look a little closer at the circumstances of the case. The place where Philip preached has raised a question. Some have maintained that it was Samaria itself, the capital city, which Philip visited and evangelised. Others have thought that it was a city, - some indefinite city of the district Samaria, probably Sychar, the town where our Lord had taught the Samaritan woman. Some have held one view, some the other, but the Revised Version would seem to incline to the view that it was the capital city which St. Philip visited on this occasion, and not that city which our Lord Himself evangelised. It may to some appear an additional difficulty in the way of accepting Sychar as the scene of St. Philips ministry, that our Lords work and teaching some five years previously would, in that case, seem to have utterly vanished. Philip goes down and preaches Christ to a city which knew nothing of Him. How, some may think, could this have possibly been true, and how could such an impostor as Simon have carried all the people captive, had Christ Himself preached there but a few short years before, and converted the mass of the people to belief in Himself? Now I maintain that it was Samaria, the capital, and not Sychar, some miles distant, that Philip evangelised, but I am not compelled to accept this view by any considerations about Christs own ministry and its results. Our Lord might have taught in the same city where Philip taught, and in the course of five years the effect of His personal ministry might have entirely vanished.
There is no lesson more plainly enforced by the gospel story than this: Christs own personal ministry was a comparatively fruitless one. He taught the Samaritan woman, indeed, and the people of the city were converted, as they said, not so much by her witness as by the power of Christs own words and influence. But then the Holy Ghost was not yet given, the Church was not yet founded, the Divine society which Christ, as the risen Saviour, was to establish, had not yet come into existence; and therefore work like that done at Samaria was a transient thing, passing away like the morning cloud or the early dew, and leaving not a trace behind. Christ came not to teach men a Divine doctrine, so much as to establish a Divine society, and, till this society was established, the work done even by Christ Himself was a fleeting and evanescent thing. The foundation of the Church as a society was absolutely necessary if the doctrine and teaching of Christ were to be preserved. The article of the creed, "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church," has been neglected, slighted, and undervalued by Protestants. I have heard even of avowed expositors of the Apostles Creed who, when they came to this article, have passed it over with a hasty notice because it did not fit into their narrow systems. And yet here again the Supreme wisdom of the Divine plan has been amply vindicated, and the experience of the New Testament has shown that if there had not been a Church instituted by Christ, and established with Himself as its foundation, rock, and chief corner-stone, the wholesome doctrine and the supernatural teaching of Christ would soon have vanished. I am here indeed reminded of the words and experience of one of the greatest evangelists who have lived since apostolic times. John Wesley, when dealing with a cognate subject, wrote to one of his earliest preachers about the importance of establishing Methodist societies wherever Methodist preachers found access, and he proceeds to urge the necessity for doing so on precisely the same grounds as those on which we explain the failure of our Lords personal ministry, so far at least as present results were concerned. Wesley tells his correspondent that wherever Methodist teaching alone has been imparted, and Methodist societies have not been founded as well, the work has been an utter failure, and has vanished away.
So it was with the Master, Christ Jesus. He bestowed His Divine instruction and imparted His Divine doctrine, but as the time for the outpouring of the Spirit and the foundation of the Church had not yet come, the total result of the personal work and labours of the Incarnate God was simply one hundred and twenty, or at most five hundred souls. It constitutes, then, to our mind no difficulty in the way of regarding Sychar as the scene of Philips teaching, that Christ Himself may have laboured there a few years before, and yet that there should not have been a trace of His labours when St. Philip arrived. The Master might Himself have taught in a town, and yet His disciple s preaching a few years later might have been most necessary, because the Spirit was not yet given. The plain meaning, however, of the words of the Acts is that it was to the city of Samaria, the capital city, that Philip went: and it is most likely that to the capital city a character like Simon would have resorted, and not to any smaller town, as affording him the largest field for the exercise of his peculiar talents, just as afterwards we shall find, in the course of his history, that he resorted to the capital of the world, Rome itself, as the scene most effectual for his purposes.
III. St. Philip went down, then, to Samaria and preached Christ there, and in Samaria he came across the first of those subtle opponents with whom the gospel has ever had to struggle, -men who did not directly oppose the truth, but who corrupted its pure morality and its simple faith by a human admixture, which turned its salutary doctrines into a deadly poison. Philip came to Samaria, and there he found the Samaritans carried away with the teaching and actions of Simon. The preaching of the pure gospel of Jesus Christ, and the exercise of true miraculous power, converted the Samaritans, and were sufficient to work intellectual conviction even in the case of the Magician. All the Samaritans, Simon included, believed and were baptised. This is the introduction upon the stage of history of Simon Magus, whom the earliest Church writers, such as Hegesippus, the father of Church history, who was born close upon the time of St. John, and flourished about the middle of the second century, and his contemporary Justin Martyr, describe as the first of those Gnostic heretics who did so much in the second and third centuries to corrupt the gospel both in faith and practice. The writings of the second and third centuries are full of the achievements and evil deeds of this man Simon, which indeed are related by some writers with so much detail as to form a very considerable romance. Here, then, we find a corroborative piece of evidence as to the early date of the composition of the Acts of the Apostles. Had the Acts been written in the second century, it would have given us some traces of the second-century tradition about Simon Magus; but having been written at a very early period, upon the termination of St. Pauls first imprisonment, it gives us simply the statement about Simon Magus as St. Luke and St. Paul had heard it from the mouth of Philip the Evangelist. St. Luke tells us nothing more, simply because he had no more to tell about this first to the celebrated heretics. When we come to the second century Simons story is told with much more embellishment. The main outlines are, however, doubtless correct. All Christian writers agree in setting forth that after the reproof which, as we shall see, Simon Peter the Apostle bestowed upon the magician, he became a determined opponent of the Apostles, especially of St. Peter, whose work he endeavoured everywhere to oppose and defeat. With this end in view he went to Rome, as Justin Martyr says, in the reign of Claudius Caesar, and as other writers say, in the time of Nero.
There he successfully deceived the people for some time. We have early notices of his success in the Imperial city. Justin Martyr is a writer who came close upon the apostolic age. He wrote an Apology for the Christians, which we may safely assign to some year about 150 A.D. At that time he was a man in middle life, whose elder contemporaries must have been well acquainted with the history and traditions of the previous century. In that first Apology Justin gives us many particulars about Christianity and the early Church, and he tells us, concerning Simon Magus, that his teaching at Rome was so successful in leading the Roman people astray that they erected a statue in his honour, between the two bridges. It is a curious fact, and one, too, which confirms the accuracy of Justin, that in the year 1574 there was dug up on the very spot indicated by Justin, the island in the Tiber, a statue bearing the inscription described by Justin, "Semoni Sanco Deo Fidio." Critics, indeed, are now pretty generally agreed that this statue was the one seen by Justin, but that it was originally erected in honour of a Sabine deity, and not of the arch-heretic as the Apologist supposed; though there are some who think that the appeal of Justin to a statue placed before mens eyes, and about which many at Rome must have known all the facts, could not have been made on such mistaken grounds. It is not altogether safe to build theories or offer explanations based on our ignorance, and opposed to the plain, distinct statements of a writer like Justin, who was a contemporary with the events of which he speaks. It seems indeed a plausible explanation to say that Justin Martyr mistook the name of a Sabine deity for that of an Eastern heretic. But there may have been two statues and two inscriptions on the island, one to the heretic, another to the ancient Sabine god. Later writers of the second and third centuries improved upon Justins story, and entered into great details of the struggles between Simon and the two Apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, terminating in the death of the magician when attempting to fly up to heaven in the presence of the Emperor Nero. His death did not, however, put an end to his influence. The evil which he did and taught lived long afterwards. His followers continued his teaching and proved themselves active opponents of the truth, seducing many proselytes by the apparent depth and subtlety of their views. Such is the history of Simon Magus as it is told in Church history, but we are now concerned simply with the statements put forward in the passage before us. There Simon appears as a teacher who led the Samaritans captive by his sorcery, which he used as the basis of his claim to be recognised as "that power of God which is called Great." Magic and sorcery have always more or less prevailed, and do still prevail, in the Eastern world, and have ever been used in opposition to the gospel of Christ, just as the same practices, under the name of Spiritualism, have shown themselves hostile to Christianity in Western Europe and in America. The tales of modern travellers in India and the East, respecting the wondrous performances of Indian jugglers, remind us strongly of the deeds of Jannes and Jambres who withstood Moses, and illustrate the sorcery which Simon Magus used for the deception of the Samaritans. The Jews, indeed, were everywhere celebrated at this period for their skill in magical incantations-a. well-known fact, of which we find corroborative evidence in the Acts. Bar-Jesus, the sorcerer who strove to turn the proconsul of Cyprus from the faith, was a Jew. {Act_13:6-12} In the nineteenth chapter we find the seven sons of Sceva, the Jewish priest, exercising the same trade of sorcery; while, as is well known from references in the classical writers, the Jews at Rome were famous for the same practices.
These statements of writers sacred and secular alike have been confirmed in the present age. There has been a marvellous discovery of ancient documents in Egypt within the last twelve or fifteen years, which were purchased by the Austrian government and duly transferred to Vienna, where they have been investigated. They are usually called the Fayum Manuscripts. They contain some of the oldest documents now existing, and embrace among them large quantities of magical writings, with the Hebrew formulae used by the Jewish sorcerers when working their pretended miracles. So wondrously does modern discovery confirm the statements and details of the New Testament!
It is not necessary now to discuss the question whether the achievements of sorcery and magic, either ancient or modern, have any reality about them, or are a mere clever development of sleight of hand, though we incline to the view which admits a certain amount of reality about the wonders performed, else how shall we account for the doings of the Egyptian magicians, the denunciations of sorcery and witchcraft contained in the Bible, as well as in many statements in the New Testament? A dry and cold age of materialism, without life and fire and enthusiasm, like the last century, was inclined to explain away such statements of the Scriptures. But man has now learned to be more distrustful of himself and the extent of his discoveries. We know so little of the spirit world, and have seen of late such strange psychological manifestations in connection with hypnotism, that the wise man will hold his judgment in suspense, and not hastily conclude, with the men of the eighteenth century, that possession with devils was only another name for insanity, and that the deeds of sorcerers were displays of mere unassisted human skill and subtlety. As it was with the Jews, so was it with the Samaritans. They were indeed bitterly separated the one from the other, but their hopes, ideas, and faith were fundamentally alike. The relations between the Samaritans and the Jews were at the period of which we treat very like those which exist between Protestants and Roman Catholics in Ulster, -professing different forms of the same faith, yet regarding, one another with bitterer feelings than if far more widely separated. So it was with the Jews and Samaritans; but the existing hostility did not change nature and its essential tendencies, and therefore as the Jews practised sorcery, so did Simon, who was a native of Samaria; and with his sorcery he ministered to the Messianic expectation which flourished among the Samaritans equally as among the Jews. The Samaritan woman testified to this in her conversation with our Lord, and as she was a woman of a low position and of a sinful character, her language proves that her ideas must have had a wide currency among the Samaritan people. "The woman saith unto Him, I know that Messiah cometh, which is called Christ: when He is come, He will declare unto us all things." Simon took advantage of this expectation, and gave himself out to be "that power of God which is called Great"; testifying by his assertion to the craving which existed all through the Jewish world for the appearance of the long-expected deliverer, a craving which we again find manifesting itself in the many political pretenders who sprang up in the regions of more orthodox Judaism, as Josephus amply shows. The world, in fact, and specially the world which had been affected with Jewish ideas and Jewish thought, was longing for a deeper teaching and for a profounder spiritual life than it had as yet known. It was athirst for God, yea, even for the living God; and when it could find nothing better, it turned aside and strove to quench the souls desires at the impure fountains which magic and sorcery supplied.
IV. Philip the Evangelist came with his teaching into a society which acknowledged Simon as its guide, and his miracles at once struck the minds of the beholders. They were miracles worked, like the Masters, without any secret preparations, without the incense, the incantations, the muttered formulae which accompanied the lying wonders of the magician.
They formed a contrast in another direction too, -no money was demanded, no personal aims or low objects were served; the thorough unselfishness of the evangelist was manifest. Then, too, the teaching which accompanied the miracles was their best evidence. It was a teaching-of righteousness, of holy living, of charity, of humility; it was transparently unworldly. It was. not like Simons, which gave out that he himself was some great one, and treated of himself alone; but it dealt with "the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ"; and the teaching and the miracles, testifying the one to the other, came home to the hearts of the people, leading them captive to the foot of the Cross. It has often been a debated question whether miracles alone are a sufficient evidence of the truth of a doctrine, or whether the doctrine needs to be compared with the miracles to see if its character be worthy of the Deity. The teaching of the New Testament seems to, be plainly this, that miracles, in themselves, are not a sufficient evidence. Our Lord warns His disciples that deceivers shall one day come working mighty signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if it be possible, even the very elect; and He exhorts His disciples to be on their guard against them. But while miracles alone are no sufficient evidence of the truth of a doctrine, they were a very needful assistance to the doctrines of the gospel in the age and country when and where Christianity took its rise. Whether the sorcery and magic and wonders of Simon, and the other false teachers against whom the Apostles had to contend, were true or false, genuine or mere tricks, still they would have given the false teachers a great advantage over the preachers of the gospel, had the latter not been armed with real divine supernatural power which enabled them, as occasion required, to fling the magical performances completely into the shade. The miraculous operations of the Apostles seem to have been restricted in the same way as Christ restricted the working of His own supernatural power. The Apostles never worked miracles for the relief of themselves or of their friends and associates. St. Paul was detained through infirmity of the flesh in Galatia, and that infirmity led him to preach the gospel to the Galatian Celts. He did not, perhaps he could not, employ his. miraculous power to cure himself, just as our Lord refused to use His miraculous power to turn stones into bread. St. Paul depended upon human skill and love for his cure, using probably for that purpose the medical knowledge and. assistance of St. Luke, whom we find shortly afterwards in his company. Miraculous power was bestowed upon the first Christian teachers, not for the purposes of display or of selfish gratification, but simply for the sake of Gods kingdom and mans salvation.
And as it was with St. Paul so was it with his companions. Timothy was exhorted to betake himself to human remedies to cure his physical weakness, while when another apostolic man, Trophimus, was sick, he was left behind. by the Apostle at Miletus till he should get well. {2Ti_4:20} Miracles were for the sake of unbelievers, not of believers, and for this purpose we cannot see how they could have been done without, under the circumstances in which the gospel was launched into the world. Mans nature had been so thoroughly corrupted, the whole moral atmosphere had been so permeated with wickedness, the whole moral tone of society had been so terribly lowered, that the Apostles might have come preaching the purest morality, the most Divine wisdom, and it would have fallen on ears so deaf, and eyes so blind, and hearts so seared and hardened, that it would have had no effect unless they had possessed miraculous power which, as occasion demanded, served to call attention to their teaching. But when the preliminary barriers had been broken down, and the miracles had fulfilled their purpose, then the preaching of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ did their work. Here again a thought comes forward on which we have already said a little. The subject matter of Philips preaching is described in the fifth verse as Christ, "Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and proclaimed unto them the Christ," and then in the twelfth verse it is expanded for us into "the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ." These two subjects are united. The kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ. The Apostles taught no diluted form of Christianity. They preached the name of Jesus Christ, and they also taught a Divine society which He had established and which was to be the means of completing the work of Christ in the world. Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Apostles recognised the great truth, that a mere preaching of a philosophical or religious doctrine would have been of very little use in reforming the world. They therefore preached a Church which should be the pillar and ground of the truth, which should gather up, safeguard, and teach the truth whose principles the Apostles set forth. To put it in plain language, the Evangelist St. Philip must have taught the doctrine of a Church of Jesus Christ as well as of a doctrine of Jesus Christ. Had the doctrine of Jesus Christ been taught without and separate from the doctrine of a Church, the doctrine of Christs person and character might have vanished, just as the doctrine of Plato or Aristotle or that of any of the great ancient teachers vanished. But Jesus Christ had come into the world to establish a Divine society, with ranks, gradations, and orderly arrangements; He had come to establish a kingdom, and they all knew then what a kingdom meant. For the Greek, Roman, or Jewish mind, a kingdom meant more even than it does for us. It meant in their conceptions a despotism where the king ordered and did just what he liked. The Romans, in fact, abominated the name king, and invented the term emperor instead, because for them the word king connoted what it does not connote for us, the possession and exercise of absolute power. Yet, for all this, the Apostles preached Christ as a King and His society as a kingdom, because in that new society which He had called into existence, the graces, the gifts, the offices of the society are totally dependent upon and entirely subservient to Jesus Christ alone.
How wondrously the life, the activity, the fervour and power of the Church would have been changed had this truth been always recognised. The Church of Jesus Christ, as regards its hidden secret life, is a despotism. It depends upon Christ alone. It depends not upon the State, not upon man, not upon wealth or position or earthly influences of any kind: it depends upon Christ alone. The Church has often forgot this secret of its strength. It has trusted in the arm of flesh, and has relied upon human patronage and power, and then it has grown, perhaps, m grandeur and importance as far as the world is concerned; but, as it has grown in one direction, it has lost in the other, and that the only direction worthy a Churchs attention. The temptation to rely on the help of the world alone has assailed the Church in various ways. It assails individual Christians, it assails congregations, it assails the Church at large. All of them, whether individuals, congregations, or churches, are apt to imagine that power and prosperity consist in wealth, or worldly position, or the number of adherents, forgetting that Christ alone is the source of power to the Church or to individual souls, and that where He is wanting, no matter what may be the outward appearance, or the numerical increase, or the political influence, there indeed all true life has departed.
V. The results of Philips teaching and work in Samaria were threefold.
(1) The Samaritans believed Philip, and among the believers was Simon. There are some people who teach faith and nothing else, and imagine that if they lead men to exercise belief then the whole work of Christianity is done. This incident at the very outset of the Churchs history supplies a warning against any such one-sided teaching. The Samaritans believed, and so did Simon the Magician, who had for long deceived them. The very same word is used here for the faith exercised by the Samaritans and by Simon, as we find used to describe the belief of the three thousand on the day of Pentecost, or of the Philippian jailer who accepted St. Pauls teaching amid all the terror. of the earthquake and the opened prison. They were all intellectually convinced and had all accepted the Christian faith as a great reality. Intellectual faith in Christ is the basis on which a true living faith which works by love is grounded. A faith of the heart which is not based on a faith of the head is very much akin to a superstition. Of course we know that there are people whose faith is deep-rooted and fruitful who cannot state the grounds of their belief, but they are well aware that others can thus state it, that their faith is capable of being put into words and defended in argument. Intellectual faith in Christianity must ever be regarded as a gift of the Holy Ghost, according to that profound word of the Apostle, "No man can say, Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Ghost." But intellectual faith in the truth and reality of Christs mission may exist in a heart where there is no sense of sin and of spiritual want, and then belief in Christ avails nothing. There were cravings after righteousness and peace in Samaritan bosoms, but there was none in one heart, at least, and that heart was therefore unblessed. The results of St. Philips work teaches us that faith is not everything in the Christian life.
(2) Again, we find that another result was that the Samaritans were all baptised, including their arch-deceiver Simon. Philip, then, in the course of his preaching of Christ, must have told them of Christs law of baptism. The preaching of the name of Jesus Christ and of the kingdom of God must have included a due setting forth of His laws and ordinances. We do no honour to Christ when we neglect any part of His revelation. If God has revealed any doctrine or any practice or any sacrament, it must be of the very greatest importance. The mere fact of its revelation by Him makes it of importance, no matter how we, in our shortsighted wisdom, may think otherwise. Philip set forth therefore the whole counsel of God, and as the result all the Samaritans were baptised, including Simon; but then again, as Simons case taught that faith by itself availed not to change the heart, so Simons ease teaches that baptism, neither alone nor in conjunction with intellectual faith, avails to convert the soul and purify the character. God offers His graces and His blessings, faith and baptism, but unless there be receptivity, unless there be consent of the will, and a thirst of the soul and a longing of the heart after spiritual things, the graces and gifts of the Spirit will be offered in vain.
(3) And then, lastly, the final and abiding result of Philips work was, there was great joy in that city. They rejoiced because their souls had found the truth, which alone, can satisfy the cravings of the human heart and minister a joy which leaves no sting behind, but is a joy pure and exhaustless. The joys of earth are always mixed, and the more mixed the more unsatisfying.
The joy of a Christian Soul which knows Christ and His preciousness, which has been delivered by Christ from deceit and impurity and vice, as these Samaritans had, and which feels and enjoys the new light thrown on life by Christs revelations, that joy is a surpassing one, ravishing the soul, satisfying the intellect, purifying the life. There was great joy in that city, and no wonder, for as the poet has well sung, contrasting the "worlds gay garish feast" with Gods sacred consolations bestowed upon holy souls, -
"Who, but a Christian, through all life That blessing may prolong? Who, through the worlds sad day of strife, Still chant his morning song?"
"Such is Thy banquet, dearest Lord; O give us grace to cast Our lot with Thine to trust Thy word, And keep our best till last."
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 20, 25 5. Philip went down to the city of Samaria.…
5. Philip went down to the city of Samaria. This was not Philip, the apostle, for all the apostles remained at Jerusalem, but Philip, one of the seven (Acts 6:5). The city of Samaria. The Greek does not render it certain that this was the capital named Samaria, as there is no definite article. It is literally “a city of Samaria.” The district (see map) lies between Judea and Galilee. Samaria and Sychar were, at this time, two of its principal cities. It was probably one or the other of these to which Philip went.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv5, 9, 14 Act_8:5. Philip.—Not the apostle, but the deacon (Act_6:4). The…
CRITICAL REMARKS
Act_8:5. Philip.—Not the apostle, but the deacon (Act_6:4). The city of Samaria—according to the best MSS.—signifies that the capital built by Omri (1Ki_16:24), and renamed Sebaste by Herod the Great (Jos., Ant., XX. Act_6:2), was the place to which Philip went; if with some MSS. the article before city be omitted, then Samaria would mean the province of that name, and the city might be Sychar, the Sichem of the Old Testament (Joh_4:5).
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Act_8:6. The people.—Better, the multitudes—i.e., of the city.
Act_8:7. For unclean spirits, etc.—Should be rendered either “For from many of those who had unclean spirits, they—i.e., the spirits—went forth crying with a loud voice,” the genitive πολλῶν being dependent on the ἐξ in the verb compare Act_16:39; Mat_10:14 (De Wette, Meyer); or “For from many of those having (sc. them—i.e., unclean spirits) unclean spirits crying with a loud voice went forth (Bengel, Kuinoel). But the best texts (א A B C) read πολλοὶ ἐξήρχοντο; in which case the verse should be translated; “for many of those who had unclean spirits crying with a loud voice went forth”; the writer having probably, when he commenced the sentence, intended to say “were healed,” instead of which he changes the construction, and sets down “went forth,” as if the “unclean spirits” were the nominative (Alford, Holtzmann). It has been remarked (Bengel) that in the Acts the term “demons” is never used of “the possessed,” although in Luke it occurs more frequently than in the other gospels; and the inference drawn that after the death of Christ the malady of possession was weaker (compare 1Jn_3:8; Col_2:15; Heb_2:14).
HOMILETICAL ANALYSIS.—Act_8:5-8
Philip in Samaria; or, The Gospel Spreading
I. The preacher.—Philip. Not the apostle, as a late Christian tradition, mentioned by Polycrates, Bishop of Ephesus, in A.D. 198 (Eusebius, III. 31:2, Act_24:1), affirms, since he remained in Jerusalem (Act_8:1), but the deacon (Act_6:5) and evangelist (Act_21:8), who by going down to Samaria—
1. Supplied the place and took up the work of Stephen, his martyred colleague. Christ’s servants dying never want successors.
2. Counteracted the evil machinations of Stephen’s murderers, and of Saul in particular, who hoped to extinguish the faith to which as yet he was a stranger and of which he knew not the vitality; and
3. Evidenced his own confidence in the indestructibility of the gospel, whose preachers and professors might be imprisoned or slain, but whose glorious tidings could not be hindered from flying abroad and one day encircling the earth.
II. The audience.—The inhabitants of the city of Samaria or of Sychar, who were—
1. Numerous, being described as a multitude.
2. Afflicted, containing many diseased and demonised persons.
3. Deluded, being at the time bewitched by or amazed at Simon’s sorceries; and still
4. Eager, with one accord giving heed to Philip, perhaps because of having, in a measure, through Christ’s preaching ten years before (Joh_4:30; Joh_4:40), been prepared for the reception of the word.
III. The message.—
1. Its subject. The Christ. Philip entertained his hearers neither with diatribes against the magician who had so long bewitched them, nor with denunciations of the Sanhedrim who had opened against the followers of the new faith the fires of persecution, nor with commiserations of themselves who had so much sickness bodily and mental, in their midst, but with what should ever be the preacher’s theme (1Co_2:2), proclamations of the Christ—viz., Jesus—who had suffered on the cross, risen from the grave, and ascended into heaven.
2. Its confirmation. The signs which he did—
(1) the works of healing which he performed on the demonised, the palsied, and the lame, attested him a teacher come from God (compare Joh_3:2); and
(2) the cries of the unclean spirits in coming forth from their victims, not shouts of indignation at being ejected from their human lodging, but vociferous declarations of the Messiahship of Jesus or of the truth of the gospel (compare Mar_3:11; Luk_4:41), were a practical endorsement of his words.
IV. The result.—Great joy. On account of—
1. The glad tidings come to the city. The introduction of the gospel with its glorious announcements of a crucified and risen Lord (Act_13:32-33), of a finished redemption work (Joh_17:4), and of a peace established between God and man on the basis of that work (Eph_2:14-18), as well as with its sublime possibilities of salvation (Rom_1:16), to a heart, to a city, to a country, a cause of rejoicing than which better can not be imagined (Psa_89:15).
2. The wonderful deliverances wrought on its inhabitants. The healings done upon the bodies of the citizens of Samaria or Sychar were emblematic of the higher healings the gospel could, and in numberless instances did, effect upon their souls. To-day, as in Philip’s time, the gospel heals all manner of spiritual disease and emancipates souls from the power of sin and Satan (Col_1:13), besides indirectly promoting the health of bodies.
Learn.—
1. The true work of a preacher—to proclaim Christ.
2. The true prosperity of a city—the prevalence in it of the Gospel.
HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS
Act_8:5. The Inhabitants of Samaria.
I. What they heard. Christ proclaimed.
II. What they saw. Miracles performed.
III. What they did.
1. Listened to the word.
2. Studied the miracles.
3. Rejoiced in the work of Philip.
Act_8:8. Joy in Samaria.—Occasioned by four things.
I. The Gospel preached in its streets.
II. Healing brought to its inhabitants.
III. Delusions dispelled from their minds.
IV. Souls saved from the power of sin and death.
Act_8:5-8. Philip’s Mission to Samaria.
I. The conduct of Philip.—He—
1. Went down to Samaria.
2. Preached Christ to the people.
3. Wrought miracles in the city.
II. The attention of the Samaritans.—They:
1. Heard Philip preach. 2. Were seriously affected.
3. Gave heed to what they heard.
4. Believed what was preached.
III. The effect in the city.—Great joy. Because of:
1. Joyful tidings heard.
2. Wondrous healings experienced.
3. Numerous conversions made.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On vv5, 7, 14, 17, 22, 23, 24, 25 5-25. Philip, a bright, uncultured layman, sanctified in the…
EVANGELIZATION OF SAMARIA
5-25. Philip, a bright, uncultured layman, sanctified in the Pentecostal revival, “filled with the Spirit and wisdom,” rendering him eligible to the office of deacon, was too enthusiastic to content himself “serving tables.” Led by the Spirit, a fugitive from the persecutions, he had the courage to enter the hardest field of labor on the globe. The Samaritans were not only heathens, but irreconcilable haters of the Jews. Here we see how the grace of God is more than a match for every conceivable human difficulty and Satanic antagonism. This illiterate young evangelist invades old heathen Samaria with the heroism of Alexander the Great. His conversions were not the modern still-born species.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v21
Acts
SIMON THE SORCERER
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Act 8:21.
The era of the birth of Christianity was one of fermenting opinion and decaying faith. Then, as now, men’s minds were seething and unsettled, and that unrest which is the precursor of great changes in intellectual and spiritual habitudes affected the civilised world. Such a period is ever one of predisposition to superstition. The one true bond which unites God and man being obscured, and to the consciousness of many snapped, men’s minds become the prey of visionary terrors. Demand creates supply, and the magician and miracle-worker, the possessor of mysterious ways into the Unknown, is never far off at such a time. Partly deceived and partly deceiving, he is as sure a sign of the lack of profound religious conviction and of the presence of unsatisfied religious aspirations in men’s souls, as the stormy petrel or the floating seaweed is of a tempest on the seas.
So we find the early preachers of Christianity coming into frequent contact with pretenders to magical powers. Sadly enough, they were mostly Jews, who prostituted their clearer knowledge to personal ends, and having tacked on to it some theosophic rubbish which they had learned from Alexandria, or mysticism which had filtered to them from the East, or magic arts from Phrygia, went forth, the only missionaries that Judaism sent out, to bewilder and torture men’s minds. What a fall from Israel’s destination, and what a lesson for the stewards of the ‘oracles of God’!
Of such a sort were Elymas, the sorcerer whom Paul found squatting at the ear of the Roman Governor of Cyprus; the magicians at Ephesus; the vagabond Jews exorcists, who with profitable eclecticism, as they thought, tried to add the name of Jesus as one more spell to their conjurations; and, finally, this Simon the sorcerer. Established in Samaria, he had been juggling and conjuring and seeing visions, and professing to be a great mysterious personality, and had more than permitted the half-heathen Samaritans, who seem to have had more religious susceptibility and less religious knowledge than the Jews, and so were a prepared field for all such pretenders, to think of him as in some sense an incarnation of God, and perhaps to set him up as a rival or caricature of Him who in the neighbouring Judaea was being spoken of as the power of God, God manifest in the flesh.
To the city thus moved comes no Apostle, but a Christian man who begins to preach, and by miracles and teaching draws many souls to Christ.
The story of Simon Magus in his attitude to the Gospel is a very striking and instructive one. It presents for our purpose now mainly three points to which I proceed to refer.
I. An instance of a wholly unreal, because inoperative, faith.
‘He believed,’ says the narrative, and believing was baptized. It is worth noting, in passing, how the profession of faith without anything more was considered by the Early Church sufficient. But obviously his was no true faith. The event showed that it was not.
What was it which made his faith thus unreal?
It rested wholly on the miracles and signs; he ‘wondered’ when he saw them. Of course, miracles were meant to lead to faith; but if they did not lead on to a deeper sense of one’s own evil and need, and so to a spiritual apprehension, then they were of no use.
The very beginning of the story points to the one bond that unites to God, as being the sense of need and the acceptance with heart and will of the testimony of Jesus Christ. Such a disposition is shown in the Samaritans, who make a contrast with Simon in that they believed Philip preaching, while Simon believed him working miracles. The true place of miracles is to attract attention, to prepare to listen to the word. They are only introductory. A faith may be founded on them, but, on the other hand, the impressions which they produce may be evanescent. How subordinate then, their place at the most! And the one thing which avails is a living contact of heart and soul with Jesus Christ.
Again, Simon’s belief was purely an affair of the understanding. We are not to suppose, I think, that he merely believed in Philip as a miracle-worker; he must have had some notion about Philip’s Master, and we know that it was belief in Jesus as the Christ that qualified in the Apostolic age for baptism. So it is reasonable to suppose that he had so much of head knowledge. But it was only head knowledge. There was in it no penitence, no self-abandonment, no fruit in holy desires; or in other words, there was no heart. It was credence, but not trust.
Now it does not matter how much or how little you know about Jesus Christ. It does not matter how you have come to that knowledge. It does not matter though you have received Christian ordinances as Simon had. If your faith is not a living power, leading to love and self-surrender, it is really nought. And here, on its earliest conflict with heathen magic, the gospel proclaims by the mouth of the Apostle what is true as to all formalists and nominal Christians: ‘Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter, for thy heart is not right.’ One thing only unites to God-a faith which cleanses the heart, a faith which lays hold on Christ with will and conscience, a faith which, resting on penitent acknowledgment of sin, trusts wholly to His great mercy.
II. An instance of the constant tendency to corrupt Christianity with heathen superstition.
The Apostles’ bestowal of the Holy Ghost, which was evidently accompanied by visible signs, had excited Simon’s desire for so useful an aid to his conjuring, and he offers to buy the power, judging of them by himself, and betraying that what he was ready to buy he was also intending to sell.
The offer to buy has been taken as his great sin. Surely it was but the outcome of a greater. It was not only what he offered, but what he desired, that was wrong. He wanted that on ‘whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost.’ That preposterous wish was quite as bad as, and was the root of, his absurd offer to bribe Peter. Bribe Peter, indeed! Some of Peter’s successors would have been amenable to such considerations, but not the horny-handed fisherman who had once said, ‘Silver and gold have I none.’
Peter’s answer, especially the words of my text, puts the Christian principle in sharp antagonism to the heathen one.
Simon regards what is sacred and spiritual purely as part of his stock-in-trade, contributing to his prestige. He offers to buy it. And the foundation of all his errors is that he regards spiritual gifts as capable of being received and exercised apart altogether from moral qualifications. He does not think at all of what is involved in the very name, ‘the Holy Ghost.’
Now, on the other hand, Peter’s answer lays down broadly and sharply the opposite truth, the Christian principle that a heart right in the sight of God is the indispensable qualification for all possession of spiritual power, or of any of the blessings which Jesus gives.
How the heart is made right, and what constitutes righteousness is another matter. That leads to the doctrine of repentance and faith.
The one thing that makes such participation impossible is being and continuing in ‘the gall of bitterness, and the bond of iniquity.’ Or, to put it into more modern words, all the blessings of the Gospel are a gift of God, and are bestowed only on moral conditions. Faith which leads to love and personal submission to the will of God makes a man a Christian. Therefore, outward ordinances are only of use as they help a man to that personal act.
Therefore, no other man or body of men can do it for us, or come between us and God.
And in confirmation, notice how Peter here speaks of forgiveness. His words do not sound as if he thought that he held the power of absolution, but he tells Simon to go to God who alone can forgive, and refers Simon’s fate to God’s mercy.
These tendencies, which Simon expresses so baldly, are in us all, and are continually reappearing. How far much of what calls itself Christianity has drifted from Peter’s principle laid down here, that moral and spiritual qualifications are the only ones which avail for securing ‘part or lot in the matter’ of Christ’s gifts received for, and bestowed on, men! How much which really rests on the opposite principle, that these gifts can be imparted by men who are supposed to possess them, apart altogether from the state of heart of the would-be recipient, we see around us to-day! Simony is said to be the securing ecclesiastical promotion by purchase. But it is much rather the belief that ‘the gift of God can be purchased with’ anything but personal faith in Jesus, the Giver and the Gift. The effects of it are patent among us. Ceremonies usurp the place of faith. A priesthood is exalted. The universal Christian prerogative of individual access to God is obscured. Christianity is turned into a kind of magic.
III. An instance of the worthlessness of partial convictions.
Simon was but slightly moved by Peter’s stern rebuke. He paid no heed to the exhortation to pray for forgiveness and to repent of his wickedness, but still remained in substantially his old error, in that he accredited Peter with power, and asked him to pray for him, as if the Apostle’s prayer would have some special access to God which his, though he were penitent, could not have. Further, he showed no sense of sin. All that he wished was that ‘none of the things which ye have spoken come upon me.’
How useless are convictions which go no deeper down than Simon’s did!
What became of him we do not know. But there are old ecclesiastical traditions about him which represent him as a bitter enemy in future of the Apostle. And Josephus has a story of a Simon who played a degrading part between Felix and Drusilla, and who is thought by some to have been he. But in any case, we have no reason to believe that he ever followed Peter’s counsel or prayed to God for forgiveness. So he stands for us as one more tragic example of a man, once ‘not far from the kingdom of God’ and drifting ever further away from it, because, at the fateful moment, he would not enter in. It is hard to bring such a man as near again as he once was. Let us learn that the one key which opens the treasury of God’s blessings, stored for us all in Jesus, is our own personal faith, and let us beware of shutting our ears and our hearts against the merciful rebukes that convict us of ‘this our wickedness,’ and point us to the ‘Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world,’ and therefore our sin.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On vv5–25 5. Among the many who now went everywhere preaching…
5. Among the many who now went everywhere preaching the word, the historian chooses to relate here the labors of only one. (5) " Then Philip went down into the city of Samaria and preached Christ to them. " This Philip was one of the seven, and his name stands in the list next to that of Stephen. The reason why Luke selects his labors for this place in the history, is because he was the first to preach the gospel in Samaria. Jesus had commanded them to testify first in Jerusalem; then in Judea; then in Samaria; and then to the uttermost part of the earth. Luke follows them in the regular prosecution of this programme.
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v5 city of
city of
The Jews having rejected Stephen’s witness to, and of, them, the Gospel now begins to go out to "all nations." Cf. Luk 24:47.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv9, 14, 18 The conversion of Simon:
The conversion of Simon:
v. 9. But there was a certain man, called Simon, which before time in the same city used sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that he himself was some great one;
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v. 10. to whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of God.
v. 11. And to him they had regard, because that of long time he had bewitched them with sorceries.
v. 12. But when they believed Philip preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.
v. 13. Then Simon himself believed also; and when he was baptized, he continued with Philip, and wondered, beholding the miracles and signs which were done.
Luke here adds a bit of local history which makes the victory of the Gospel stand out all the more strongly. A certain man there had been before these events had transpired in Samaria, whose name was Simon, and who had practiced magical arts and had had the people of the city and of the region impressed to the point of stupefaction with his tricks and diabolical jugglery. He advertised himself, with the humility characteristic of the people of his type, as being something great, as possessing enchantments and powers beyond natural ability. He practiced the charms and incantations so extensively employed in the Orient by both quacks and true sorcerers, that are able to perform feats that have the appearance of miracles, by the aid of the devil. So deeply impressed were the people that they regarded Simon as a manifestation of the divine power in human form. They therefore called him "Power of God which is called Great," one that was very prominently great and divine, possessing powers which are peculiar to God. All this the Samaritans had done, because for a long time Simon had bewitched them with his magical tricks. They had put their own construction upon his acts, and they had believed his words. All this was changed with the coming of Philip. For when he preached the Gospel concerning the kingdom of God and of the name of Jesus Christ, when he brought to these benighted people the one message which could give them peace of mind and the blessed assurance of salvation, the Samaritans believed, faith in the Savior was wrought in their hearts, and they sought and received Baptism, the Sacrament which seals to both men and women the forgiveness of sins gained by Christ. Note: All magical tricks, even such as are performed with the aid of the devil, serve no beneficial purpose, being made only to excite idle curiosity. The miracles, on the other hand, both those that are narrated in Scriptures, and those which the Lord performs to this day, are in every case beneficent and worthy of the divine power. When Simon lost his former following so abruptly and thoroughly, he went to see and hear Philip, and was himself brought to faith. With the rest of the people, also, he was baptized and the promise of God thus sealed to him. There is no reason, from the account of Luke, to doubt the reality of Simon’s conversion at this time. It was a very striking proof of the superior power and of the divinity of the Gospel concerning Jesus the Messiah. And Simon, he that had caused astonishment in others, was here himself almost overwhelmed with stupefaction when he became an interested spectator of the signs and of the great wonders which were performed before his eyes. Note: The devil may often, by God’s permission, succeed in seducing men by means of his false miracles and tricks of jugglery, bat whenever the power of God looms up by way of contrast, he and all his servants are brought to shame before the Mightier One.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv6, 9, 12, 14, 18, 20, 24, 25 When multitudes of people
When multitudes of people
"When many people in the city of Samaria." The location was specified previously. (See: Acts 8:5)
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they paid attention
The reason people paid attention was because of all the healing Philip did.
who were possessed
"who had them" or "who were controlled by unclean spirits"
So there was much joy in that city
The phrase "that city" refers to the people who were rejoicing. AT: "So the people of the city were rejoicing" (See: Metonymy)
translationWords
miracle
Philip, the evangelist
demon
cure
joy
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv7, 9, 14, 24 8:7 cast out . . . healed: Miracles often…
8:7 cast out . . . healed: Miracles often accompany evangelism in Acts (see study note on 3:1-11).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.