“Go south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.”
Taking instruction from the angel of God, Philip arrived at the desert. In the solitary place, he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official. This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship and on his way home was sitting in his chariot, reading the Scripture.
As the Spirit told Philip, he went to that chariot and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?”
“How can I,” the eunuch answered, “unless someone explains it to me?”
So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.
“He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before the shearer is silent, so he did not open his mouth . . . Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about?”
At the question of the eunuch, Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus. As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said,
“Look, here is water. Why shouldn’t I be baptized?”
And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him.
The Ethiopian eunuch, a powerful official in charge of all the treasury of a country, heard the gospel and realized that Jesus was Christ. What he did right away was to be baptized in the name of Christ and receive the forgiveness of sins.
Although the eunuch could’ve asked for a better place to be baptized, which fit his position, he did not care about the poor surroundings of the desert, but obeyed the word of God at once. It’s because he knew what was more important than his dignity or honor.
The one who knows the value of blessings does the will of God without hesitation. Nothing can be put ahead of it. The humility of fearing God and honoring the truth is the virtue we can have when we realize who the Savior that delivers our soul from death is. God gathers the humble. All the humble who do what God commands are the main characters of the kingdom of heaven (Zep 2:1–3).