And Philip opened his mouth and began at the same Scripture, and preached unto him Jesus. Acts 8:35
Do you know what a précis is? Our Grade 12 English teacher loved the concept of the précis. Every two weeks, we were given a 1000-word essay and were told to reduce it to one-third to one-quarter of its length while retaining all of its important information. That is a précis. It is a type of summary or condensation of written material. To be able to write a précis, you must clearly understand what the material is about, and you must also understand how to eliminate superfluous material while retaining the essence of the essay. That is very important when it comes to the Gospel. In our text, Philip tells us how to reduce such a powerful and important message to not just a few paragraphs or a few sentences or even a few words, but to a single word, a single name: Jesus.
The Bible is a treasure trove of examples of condensing important information into a few words. Consider the parables that the Lord Jesus told. Some of them, such as the lost sheep, the prodigal son, the good Samaritan, could easily be expanded to fill an entire book, leaving the background details and vivid imagery to our own imaginations. A preacher made a study of all of the places in the Bible that tell us how to be saved, and discovered that every one of them – John 3:16, John 5:25, Acts 16:31, Romans 10:9, and many more – present this most critical of all instructions in one simple sentence. If we had been writing it, we would have included plenty of supporting material, some diagrams and PowerPoint presentations, and a detailed listing of necessary steps in precise order. But not the Bible; it gives one-sentence answers to the world’s most important question, and a one-word solution to the world’s greatest need. That one-word solution is surely simple to speak or read, but there is nothing insignificant about it.
John 21:25 tells us that the world itself could not contain all of the books that should be written concerning the Lord Jesus. And surely eternity will not be long enough to complete the reading of such books. When we consider the great kings of Israel, we see that David’s dominion increased throughout his life, but it came to an end. So did the wisdom and wealth of Solomon. But there will never be an end to the increase of the government of the Lord Jesus (Isaiah 9:7). Nor can we ever empty the vast reservoir of meaning in that one name, Jesus. His earthly name tells of his departure from Heaven for the humiliation of earth, of His sinless and deity-proving life, of His sufferings and death, of His glorious resurrection and His return to Glory, and so much more. In that one name, Philip had an unlimited resource from which to preach to the eunuch.
If our witness and our preaching is to have any impact upon sinners, it must never stray from the Gospel’s central theme, the Saviour of Sinners – Jesus. – Jim MacIntosh