The Detour That Was the Destination

No More Delay: What Are You Waiting For | Day 5

“The Spirit told Philip, ‘Go to that chariot and stay near it.’ Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ Philip asked. ‘How can I,’ he said, ‘unless someone explains it to me?’ So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.” Acts 8:29-31, NIV

A good morning to you, wherever this message finds you. Most of us know the feeling of being partway into a route we had already mapped out, the day organized, the stops in order, when something reroutes us onto a road we never intended to be on. Our first instinct is almost never gratitude. It is the quiet calculation of what this is going to cost us and how far behind it will put the plan. This morning we ride along on one of those detours, and we find out what was waiting at the end of it.

Go to That Chariot

Philip was not idle when this happened. He had been preaching in Samaria, and crowds were listening, and by any reasonable measure that was the most productive place he could possibly have been standing. Then came an instruction that made no strategic sense at all. “Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’” (Acts 8:26, NIV). Away from the crowd. Toward the emptiest stretch of ground in the story. No explanation of why, no description of who, and no timeline attached to any of it.

What Philip found there was one man in a chariot, a foreign official on his way home, holding a scroll of Isaiah he could not make sense of. “The Spirit told Philip, ‘Go to that chariot and stay near it.’ Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ Philip asked. ‘How can I,’ he said, ‘unless someone explains it to me?’ So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.” (Acts 8:29-31, NIV). Notice how that man describes himself. Not close. Not nearly there. Unable, until someone brought him what he did not have. That is an honest account of every one of us before the Word reached us, and it is the reason God sends anyone anywhere.

We have a habit of assuming this kind of work requires a longer runway than it does. Something in us wants a season of preparation first, a better moment, a conversation that has been thought through from every angle so that nothing goes wrong in it. We are not wrong to value preparation. The church rightly takes great care in training the men it calls to preach and to teach publicly, and that care is a gift rather than an obstacle. But somewhere along the way many of us have quietly applied that same standard to a driveway conversation with a neighbor, and the result is that we have been getting ready for years to say something we could have said already.

That delay usually reveals what we would rather not name. We have let our own comfort, our fear of an awkward moment, and our preference for a tidier version of the work matter more than the person sitting right there holding a question. It is worth seeing plainly. It is also worth setting down this morning, because Jesus carried every postponed conversation of ours to the cross and rose having forgiven all of it, and he has not taken back a single assignment because of it.

The Set Time Had Already Come

What happened next on that road took no time at all, because the work it depended on had been finished long before either man arrived there. “Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.” (Acts 8:35, NIV). Philip did not construct a case. He started where the man’s finger already sat on the page, in a prophecy about a Servant led silently to slaughter, and he told him whose death that was and what it accomplished.

This is the sentence the whole road was built for. “But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.” (Galatians 4:4-5, NIV). God has never once been late, and he has never needed a longer runway. The set time had fully come, the redemption was accomplished, and the adoption was handed over as a finished gift. Whatever timing problem the Christian life has, it has never been God’s.

Then the official asked the only question left. “As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water. What can stand in the way of my being baptized?’” (Acts 8:36, NIV). Nothing could, and nothing did. “And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him.” (Acts 8:38, NIV). No one on that road manufactured faith that afternoon. The Holy Spirit created it through the Word Philip spoke, and then God bound that man to himself in the water. Both of those are God’s own work, using ordinary means, on an ordinary road, through a man who simply went where he was sent.

Which leaves us with something far smaller and far gladder than a strategy. “Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” (Colossians 4:5-6, NIV). Full of grace is the tone this asks of us. Not a campaign, not pressure, not a rehearsed argument, but a gracious word offered to whoever is in front of us today.

All of it holds because of Jesus Christ, who came at the set time, lived under the law we could not keep, and redeemed us before we knew our own names for what we needed. He is the one Isaiah was describing on that scroll, and he is the good news Philip had to tell. He has already done the part that takes time. What is left for us is the part that takes a moment.

Prayer

Heavenly Father, thank you that your timing has never depended on mine. Thank you for sending your Son at the set time you appointed, for redeeming me under a law I could never have satisfied, and for calling me your own child by grace rather than by anything I managed to arrange. Forgive me for the conversations I have kept postponing until I felt more prepared for them.

Holy Spirit, you alone create faith through the Word, and I have never had to supply that power myself. Put a gracious word in my mouth today, and put me on whatever road you have already prepared, even if it is not the one I had planned. Let me be willing to be interrupted. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

The detour will probably come today in a shape none of us would have chosen, a delay, a phone call, a person appearing at the wrong moment with something on their mind. Consider that the road may have been prepared before either of you got there. Stay near it, say something kind and true about Jesus, and leave the rest to the God who has never once been off schedule. Tomorrow we watch a man come running to Jesus with a good question, and see how quickly Jesus got to the heart of it.

To God be the glory.

Pray, praise, and give thanks, for God is good and His mercy endures forever.

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