67 - Scattering the Spread of the Gospel Seed to the Samaritan Sectarians [B]

Suffering the Spread of the Gospel Seed to the Samaritan Sectarians. Acts 8: 1-8

In this chapter we see the shift out from Jerusalem to Samaria. This is a striking expansion northward into Samaria. We will see why this is shocking and why it would have been so arresting in terms of grabbing the attention of the Jews in the first century when this happened. What happens in the fist eight verses is revolutionary but most of us don't get it because we are not familiar enough with the history and background of the culture of that time.

In much of the Bible we have stories, we have narrative—that is the key word in postmodernism; everything is a narrative. We have stories; we have history, and what makes good history is that there is always a tension between the hero and the enemy. The ultimate hero in all of the narrative in the Bible is always God. He is the one who is ultimately doing all of the work in working behind the scenes to bring about his plan and purpose. So we see in the first seven chapters of Acts God through the Holy Spirit authenticating and empowering and directing the apostles' witness in Jerusalem, and then in the second division God is the one who is allowing persecution to develop to expand the witness of the church into Judea and Samaria. This is what Jesus had mandated in Acts 1:8.    

Samaria is what was referred to in the Old Testament as the northern kingdom of Israel. The capital of Samaria was the city of Samaria. Until the days of Herod the Great the term Samaria referred to both the city and the region or territory of Samaria. But in 27 BC Herod the Great decided to rename the capital "Augusta" in honor of Caesar Augustus. The other major town Sychar was where Jesus encountered the woman at the well in John chapter four.

Acts 8:1 ^NASB "Saul was in hearty agreement with putting him to death. And on that day a great persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. [2] {Some} devout men buried Stephen, and made loud lamentation over him. [3] But Saul {began} ravaging the church, entering house after house, and dragging off men and women, he would put them in prison." The point here is that Paul began to destroy the church. Christians were being beaten and thrown into jail, and it was an intense persecution against the believers in Jerusalem. The best thing for them was to leave so that they could go some place where they could continue to live their lives in some measure of peace, and with some measure of economic stability carry on their business. They were being driven out of Jerusalem. This was also God's plan so we must remember the principle: when bad things seem to be happening God is the one who works all things together for our good, and He is probably using that to bring about opportunities for us to minister in the lives of others and to communicate the gospel.  

Acts 8:4 ^NASB "Therefore, those who had been scattered went about preaching the word." There are a couple of words here that we should pay attention to. The first is the word "scattered." It is the Greek verb diaspeiro [diaspeirw] which is used in an agricultural context of a farmer sowing or scattering seed on the ground, and it is the Greek root from which we get our word "disapora" which means a scattering, a scattering of the Jewish people throughout the world. So this is the scattering, the diaspora, as it were, of the Christians out of Jerusalem. The word is used twice, once in 8:1 and again in 8:4, introducing us to the topic of what happened among these scattered Christians now that they are no longer in Jerusalem. And what they are doing is preaching the Word.

But what does that mean, to preach? In much of Christianity today the average Christian (perhaps 99%) thinks that there is a difference between preaching and teaching. If people come to a Bible church from a background where there was a certain rhetorical or oratorical style of homiletics that is taught in seminaries today—three points and a poem, a lot of nice stories, a few good jokes, and everybody goes home feeling good about themselves—they think that that is preaching, and that is what should happen on Sunday morning. They come to a teaching church and they say, well you should be in a seminary. They get this idea that the in-depth teaching on a biblical book is what happens in a seminary classroom, but not in church, you don't want to scare the sheep! So if students get it in 30 hours in seminary then they ought to be able to make it through Romans, for example, in six or seven hours from the pulpit. It is just the reverse of the way it should be. There should be thirty hours in the seminary so they can go teach the book in 300 hours out in the pulpit. But we have done these things backward because we want to dumb everything down to the lowest common denominator and not scare people. But we are to dig into things and really get into teaching the Word, and that is what preaching meant in the original context. It has the idea of teaching and explaining the Word but most significantly explaining the gospel. There are a lot of different ways to explain the gospel.

So here we have the emphasis on preaching the Word, and the Greek word that is used here is euaggelizo [e)uaggelizw] which means to give the gospel. This is where we get our English word "evangelism." Many times when we read in the text of Acts and it says that they were preaching the Word the Greek word there is not kerusso [khrussw] which is the verb for proclaiming—the word for teaching is didasko [didaskw] from which we get our English word "didactic." Here in our text we have euaggelizo, the primary word that is used that way in Acts. kerusso is also there, which is very interesting and informative.

So they were scattered around and were giving the gospel to everybody. They are evangelising everybody in Judea and Samaria.    

Now we are going to focus on Philip. Acts 8:5 ^NASB "Philip went down to the city of Samaria and {began} proclaiming Christ to them." Some Bibles include the article there, the city of Samaria, which in the English would indicate a specific city. In other translations it may say "a city." In the Greek text there are some older MSS that have the article present, which would indicate "the city" but it doesn't name the city. So it is just assuming probably a large city, a significant city. But in the majority of MSS there is no definite article there. There is no indefinite article in Greek so it wouldn't be a city; it would just be "went down to a city of Samaria." It was understood what it would be. There were two large cities in Samaria. One is Sebaste, the new name for the old capital city that had been originally built by Ahab. It was basically a Roman city and basically Gentile in its makeup. If we just think a little bit about Acts why would we say that this city could not be Sebaste because it was primarily a Gentile city? Because in Acts 10 and 11 Luke makes a big deal about the fact that the first apostle to take the gospel to the Gentiles is Peter as a result of his vision that God gave him at the beginning of Acts chapter ten. It is only after he took the gospel to the Gentiles in Caesarea (Cornelius's household) that there is a major conference back in Jerusalem to try to figure out what the role of the Gentiles was going to be in the church. They didn't think about the Samaritans and what happened here with Philip as including the Gentiles. So that tells us right away that this probably wasn't the old city of Samaria or Sebaste, it was another city. The only other major city in Samaria was the city of Sychar. That is important because Sychar is sitting at the base of Mount Gerazim.

Why is Mount Gerazim so important? When the Jews first came into the land and they had defeated Jericho and Ai they went to Mount Gerazim and Moses put half the tribes on one side (Mount Gerazim) and half the tribes on the other (Mount Ebal) and they read the entire Mosaic Law antiphonally, back and forth with the echo going across the valley. They had a sort of renewal of the covenant ceremony there before God. So this was a significant city in the history of Israel. It is also significant because Sychar was where after the exile that the Samaritans established a sect of Judaism that was pretty heretical. They rejected most of the Old Testament except the Pentateuch. They didn't believe in resurrection because there was no real hard core teaching, they said, on resurrection in the Pentateuch. But they revered Moses, the Sabbath and a few other things. So Sychar was a significant location because it is right there at Mount Gerazim. It gets to the heart of the religion of the Samaritans which was in competition with the Judaism of the day.

This is why Philip is going to this city, it is the center of their religious system. And he "preached Christ to them." What word do we think is there? It is kerusso. What is important about this? What this tells us is that "preaching Christ" using kerusso is a synonym for evangelising. Think about that, because most of the time we read the word kerusso in the New Testament it is talking about proclaiming the gospel. A kerux was a herald. The only way to get the word out was to send a herald who would go from block to block and verbally announce whatever the announcement would be. That is the image of the evangelist. He is out there making the announcement that God has sent His savior to die on the cross for the sins of the world. That is what preaching is.

Preaching isn't three points and a poem or a certain rhetorical style, preaching is announcing or proclaiming the good news that Jesus Christ has died on the cross and paid the penalty for the sins of the world. The other key word that is used of what happens in the pulpits in churches is the Greek word didasko, the verb to teach, and that has the idea of giving instruction. That is what provides edification and growth for the members of the body of Christ. So preaching, biblically, is related to the proclamation of the gospel and teaching is the explanation of the Word of God. The idea of an emotional devotional or some sort of shallow three points and a poem, a motivational speech, has nothing to do with the biblical role of the pastor-teacher. He is to proclaim the gospel—Paul told Timothy to do the work of an evangelist—and he is to explain what that means for the Christian life.      

What is the response? Acts 8:6 ^NASB "The crowds with one accord were giving attention to what was said by Philip, as they heard and saw the signs which he was performing." Just as a side note, one of the things we run into with people when we talk about faith. For example, if we are talking to someone with a lordship salvation background: people who think that the faith we have that saves us is a gift from God, He gives us saving faith, it is qualitatively different from any other kind of faith; and the way that we know we have saving faith and not just run of the mill faith is because we will have works in our life that are consistent with being a child of God. And of we don't have these kinds of works in our life then maybe we didn't believe in Jesus with the right kind of faith. There are many scholars in the evangelical world who teach that.

John MacArthur is very well known for that in his Lordship gospel. They will usually go to a passage like John chapter two where Jesus is teaching in Jerusalem and it says many people believed on His name, but Jesus didn't trust Himself to them. Ah, you see, that's because they were unbelievers—that's their interpretation. But the phrase that is used there in John 2 is the same phrase that is used everywhere else in the Gospel of John some 95 or 96 times for believing in Christ for eternal life. It is consistent, so that would mean that these people believe in Jesus but there is no indication it would be the wrong faith. And they always come back and say, See, the reason you know it is not real saving faith is because they believed because they saw miracles. Later on they will quote out of context Jesus saying, Greater is the faith of someone who hasn't seen these things.

But He is not saying that the faith of a person who believes because of the signs or miracles is not real faith. In fact John, the writer of the Gospel says, in 20:30, 31 ^NASB "Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name." What is the "these"? The previous verse is talking about the resurrection, and John says, "And Jesus did many other signs that are written in this book. But these …" These what? These signs. So miracles was the attestation that gave credibility and credence to the message of the evangelist as this new work was being started in the early church. There were miracles that took place, there was healing that took place—demons cast out, Acts 8:6, 8—and as a result of that it got the people's attention. They heeded the words spoken by Philip. The word translated "heeded" is the Greek prosecho [prosexw] which means to pay attention to something, to devote one's self to something, and nautically it had the idea of the captain who kept his ship on course. So it has the idea of focusing intently on something. So we are told that the multitudes with one accord focused intently on the things spoken by Philip. There is not an emotional reaction here, they are focusing intently, hearing him, and observing and watching the miracles which he performed. This sets things up for the gospel.

Why is it so important that Philip is taking the gospel to Samaria? We need to appreciate the impact of what has happened here in these first eight verses, this incredible response to Philip who is not a Hebrew Jew but a Hellenistic Jew. The Hebrew Jews would have really had a problem going up into Samaria and a Hellenised Jew would not have had all of the prejudices against the Samaritans that the others did, so that was probably part of what is going on in the background here.

As has been pointed out until the days of Herod the Great Samaria was basically a term that referred to a territory and to a city that was the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel first built by Ahab. In 27 BC it was Herod who changed the name of the city. Going back into the Old Testament, there was the defeat of the southern kingdom of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar in 586. Prior to that, in 722 the northern kingdom of Israel had been defeated by Assyria. The northern kingdom of Israel is the territory that we are talking about in Acts 8. The typical procedure for the Assyrians when they conquered a territory was to round up most of the native population so they couldn't start an insurrection and relocate them. They would move them around and scatter them. That is where we get the notion of the ten lost tribes of Israel. The ten tribes were basically the ten tribes in the north. But we are also told in 2 Kings that as the Assyrian invaders were coming down from the north those who had any good sense in the northern kingdom sold their property or just evacuated and headed south to get away. So many members of those ten tribes went south into Judea, so they didn't lose the identity of those ten tribes. There were a number of Jews who were relocated into other parts of the Assyrian empire and that was the original disapora or scattering of the Jewish people. The ten lost tribes is just a myth.

What happens between the defeat of the northern kingdom and the defeat of the southern kingdom is that there were various other Gentile people who were relocated by the Assyrians into this territory (Samaria). There were some Jews who survived and remained and over the course of time they intermarried with the Gentiles so that the Samaritans were considered to be a mongrel people. They were not considered by the Jews to be Gentiles but neither were they considered to be Jews. They were just sort of half-breeds out there in no-man's land, which is why the Jews in Judea who had returned from Babylon looked down upon them and rejected them.

2 Kings 17:24 ^NASB "The king of Assyria brought {men} from Babylon and from Cuthah and from Avva and from Hamath and Sepharvaim, and settled {them} in the cities of Samaria in place of the sons of Israel. So they possessed Samaria and lived in its cities. [25] At the beginning of their living there, they did not fear the LORD; therefore the LORD sent lions among them which killed some of them." They brought all of their pagan religions with them into God's land. They set up all of their pagan temples and it has irritated the justice of God. So God is going to bring punishment upon them because they are desecrating the land that God has set apart for the people of Israel. In the Mosaic Law, specifically Leviticus 26, God said that if they obey all my laws I will remove all of the wild, ravenous animals from the land. And of yhou disobey my laws I will bring them back and send them among you. So this fits within this contract that God has made with His people and because there is this violation of the Law by these Gentiles in Samaria God sends lions among them and there are large numbers of people who are being mauled and killed. So much so that, verse 26, they have to send a messenger back to the king of Assyria: "The nations whom you have carried away into exile in the cities of Samaria do not know the custom of the god of the land; so he has sent lions among them, and behold, they kill them because they do not know the custom of the god of the land." As a result, verse 27, "Then the king of Assyria commanded, saying, 'Take there one of the priests whom you carried away into exile and let him go and live there; and let him teach them the custom of the god of the land.' [28] So one of the priests whom they had carried away into exile from Samaria came and lived at Bethel, and taught them how they should fear the LORD."

What happens is that they develop a syncretism, i.e. where they begin to blend the teachings of the Torah with some of the pagan ideas. [29] "But every nation still made gods of its own and put them in the houses of the high places which the people of Samaria had made, every nation in their cities in which they lived." This is the background of a separate Samaritan religion which was quite distinct from the biblical Judaism of that time. They believed that only the Pentateuch had authority. They were monotheistic, they worshipped the same God as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They honoured Moses, they observed the Sabbath, they observed circumcision on the eighth day for male children, they observed the Torah. However, the Jews in Judea rejected them as complete heretics, thought of them as sort of semi-Gentiles, and as a mongrel race. The Jews despised them and hated them and would go out of their way to avoid them.

On the Samaritan side they give their own interpretation of events. They claimed that they are descendants from the Jewish tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. This is seen in John 4:12 in the conversation Jesus had with the woman at the well. The Samaritans believed that the exile of the Israelites in 722 was not as extensive as the other Jews claimed, that there was only a partial resettlement and it wasn't as large as the Assyrians claimed. In order to account for the hostility that developed between the Samaritans and the Jews the Samaritans believed that the Jews were guilty of apostasy. They set up an alternate sanctuary and they set up a temple on Mount Gerazim. When the Jews returned from Babylon they started to rebuild the city. When they first came back the Samaritans sought to help them and the help was rejected—well they are not clean. They are not Levites, they are not appropriate for the rebuilding of the temple, and this story is told in Nehemiah. In Nehemiah 6:1-19 we read about the opposition.

Their leader was a man named Sanballat, a native Samaritan. Nehemiah 6:1 ^NASB "Now when it was reported to Sanballat, Tobiah, to Geshem the Arab and to the rest of our enemies that I had rebuilt the wall, and {that} no breach remained in it, although at that time I had not set up the doors in the gates, [2] then Sanballat and Geshem sent {a message} to me, saying, 'Come, let us meet together at Chephirim in the plain of Ono.' But they were planning to harm me. [3] So I sent messengers to them, saying, 'I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you?' [4] They sent {messages} to me four times in this manner, and I answered them in the same way.'" Finally what Nehemiah does is reject them, and they go off and have a little pity party and then they no longer want to be friends with the Jews.

As mentioned, they built a temple on Mount Gerazim And it was throughout this next period of time, from about 400 to 200 that we have the Greek period, the time of Alexander the Great, his death in about 327, the break-up of the Greek empire into four different parts. One part goes to the Seleucids and they have control of Syria and Turkey. Another part goes to the Ptolemies and that goes down into Egypt, and what is between Syria and Egypt? It is Israel. So they are constantly fighting for the land in between and for the first part of this period the Ptolemies are in control and then it went to the Seleucids. The Samaritans tended to be somewhat too friendly with the Seleucids. The Seleucids produced such leaders as Antiochus IV, known as Epiphanes, who is the type of the Antichrist whose rise we see predicted in Daniel chapter seven. He is the one who went in and sacrificed a pig on the altar in the temple in Jerusalem. The Seleucids passed laws making it a death penalty for Jewish parents to have their children circumcised. If anybody was found with a copy of even a verse from the Torah, from any of the Scriptures, then the whole family would be executed. This eventually led to a revolt led by the Maccabees against the Seleucids. One of the eventual Maccabean leaders was a high priest and ruler by the name of John Hyrcanus. In about 128 BC he took a Jewish army north into Samaria and destroyed the temple on Mount Gerazim. So the Samaritans have nursed this hatred and desire for revenge against the Jews for over 100 years, and in 6 AD the Samaritans sneaked in under cover of night on to the temple mount. They brought a bag of bones and some dead bodies and carcases and placed them in strategic locations all over the temple mount and in the temple, which would desecrate the temple and really angered the Jews in Jerusalem. So they were always almost at a point of full warfare. This went on consistently throughout this entire period. They had tremendous animosity and hatred for each other. It is in that context that Philip takes the gospel to Samaria.

There are two events in Luke chapter ten that help us understand what is going on here with Philip going to Samaria. Jesus has a conversation with a certain lawyer in Luke 10:25 ^NASB "And a lawyer stood up and put Him to the test, saying, 'Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?' [26] And He said to him, 'What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?' [27] And he answered, 'YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND; AND YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.'" Some of the MSS don't have all of that. Most of them just have "with all your strength," which is where it should end. It is interesting that back in the Hebrew it says, "You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart," i.e. everything inside of you, your whole immaterial nature, with all of your soul, which is going to emphasise more of your mental capacity. And it doesn't say strength in the original. It says, "with all of your" and then it uses an adjective which is translated 98 per cent of the time with the word "very." It is an idiom. It really means when you don't have a word left you climb to the epitome of vocabulary. You've already described everything you can think of—with all your soul, with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your very—everything you've got, is what he is getting to.

Now Jesus answered him.  Luke 10:28 ^NASB "And He said to him, 'You have answered correctly; DO THIS AND YOU WILL LIVE.' [29] But wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, 'And who is my neighbor?' [30] Jesus replied and said, 'A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead. [31] And by chance a priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. [32] Likewise a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side." Here are two religious leaders who are supposed to be implementing the Law and they try to ignore this man on the side of the road. [33] "But a Samaritan, who was on a journey, came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion." Now the man in the ditch that has been beaten up and robbed is Jewish, and this is a Samaritan. The question was: who is your neighbour? Jesus is saying that of all of these the Samaritan is the one who acts like a neighbour, the person who is loving the Jewish person.

Luke 10:34 ^NASB "and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on {them;} and he put him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him. [35] On the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, 'Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I return I will repay you.' [36] Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers' {hands?}" What is He illustrating? He is illustrating the kind of unconditional love that we are supposed to have. It is picturing the kind of unconditional love that God has in sending Christ to the cross.

The next example we have is the story about Jesus deciding that when  he needs to go to Jerusalem up to Galilee, rather than going across the river and going up through Perea He is going to go up through Samaria. He comes to Sychar where it is thought that Philip is, right there at Mount Gerazim, because that is the center of the Samaritan religion. He goes to a plot of ground that Jacob had given to Joseph where there is a well and there is a Samaritan woman who comes out to draw water. Jesus says, "Get me something to drink." The woman looks at Him because she has never seen anything like this: a Jew talking to a Samaritan; this just never happened. Secondly, it is a Jewish man that is talking to her and that also would never happen. So she says, "Why is it that you, being a Jew, are asking me for something to drink? You know Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans." John 4:10 ^NASB "Jesus answered and said to her, 'If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, 'Give Me a drink,' you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.'" So Jesus is witnessing to this Samaritan woman who at the end of the conversation comes to realise that He is the prophet that Moses had predicted, and she gets all excited and runs back into town and starts telling everybody that the prophet that Moses had predicted, the Messiah, is out at the well and to come out and see Him. Everybody comes out and they see Jesus, and they respond to the gospel. All of this is just a few years before the episode we are looking at in Acts chapter eight.

So God has prepared the soil here in several different ways and it is an ongoing picture of God's grace to those who are undeserving and of how God is breaking down and breaks through the barriers that human beings setup saying, I am not going to go witness to them because why would I want to talk to that person. They are Muslim, Hindu or they are from some other country, or they don't live their life in a place that I am comfortable going to, etc. But that is not how God works and it is not what it means to love your neighbour.

This is a shocking picture, by the way. What Philip has done in taking the gospel to this town in Samaria and their response in believing in Jesus as the Messiah would have been 3-inch headlines in the Jerusalem Times the next morning! And all of the Jews would have been judging and condemning all these idiot Christians who were going and talking to the Samaritans. But it is just going to blow everything wide open, and part of the result is that it is going to create even more division between the Christians and the Jews in Israel at this particular time because of the tremendous success that the Christians were having. And it is all because of the Holy Spirit who is working in and through them.