‘And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.’

And as they went on their way, they came unto a certain water: and the eunuch said, See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized? And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

My subject tonight is ‘what hinders you?’ What prevents you, what stops you from being saved; what are the obstacles, the hurdles, that are on your way to stop you from believing on the Lord Jesus Christ? And of course the first one is unbelief. Unbelief is a powerful obstacle to stop you from coming to the Lord Jesus Christ. The second is pride, not just unbelief but pride. The third is ignorance, the fourth is shallowness (just living for the here and now), but I want to look at the conversion of this man.

This is unique in the Bible because the book of Acts is the book of first things. The first prayer meeting of the church, the first apostolic sermon in chapter 2, the first miracle of the church in chapter 3, the first discipline of the church in chapter 5, the first deacons chosen of the church in chapter 6, the first African converted here in chapter 8; in chapter 10 you find the first Gentile (the Roman, Cornelius) converted, in chapter 11 this is the first time believers were called Christians, in chapter 13 you find the first mission of the early church. So it is really a book of first things happening.

God sends Philip the Evangelist and Philip is the only man in the Bible who has the title evangelist. And he was sent by God to speak to this man, and this man was converted in an unlikely place – in the desert. An unlikely place, but God sent his missionary, his evangelist, to this man for a divine appointment.