Acts 20:13-19

Chapter 76

Prayer

Almighty God, the whole lot of our life is in thy disposal; the bounds of our habitation are fixed, and we have not liberty but within thy purpose. We accept thy kingdom; thy rule is full of grace, and thine intention concerning us is good only. Thou dost love us. We know thee not in relation to the other worlds. But about this little place which is our own, we know thou hast bought it with blood the precious blood of thine only begotten Son. We do not know the meaning of this price; we can only speak it in words, but the thought which they tell fills all heaven and calls for greater space, spreads itself over the universe, and calls the room too small. We live in thy love as in a sure dwelling-place. Our habitation is in the rocks not made with hands, and therefore by hands never to be unmade. We hasten to the house of God; its doors are open; its angels are calling welcome; its banquet is spread with a liberal hand; there is a seat for every sinner, there is a welcome to every broken heart. Surely this is none other than the house of God, and the gate of heaven! We bless thee for every sacred memory, for every rising figure in the days that are gone that tells us of noble life and generous deed. We thank thee for every man who has spoken a word of deliverance to our imprisoned souls, for every hymn that has sung its sweet tune to us all the week long, from Sabbath evening to Sabbath morning back again. We praise thee for all blessings given noiselessly to the heart, as well as for all the great hospitalities and banquetings which we have enjoyed amid the noises of the thunders and the trumpets of the rejoicing skies. Thou dost make the heart rich. Thou dost not bring tears of sorrow into our eyes, but pure waters of joy, dews of heavenly grace. Thou dost not rend the heart with sharp pangs of agony, but causest it to beat with surprises of joy, with unexpected visions of light, with unlooked-for relations of the story of thy grace. How wondrous the way! How amazing the prospect! There seems now to be before us a glittering morning, a welcoming host, a prepared place, a waiting Saviour. May we know the meaning of the omens which challenge our religious attention, and arise like men who have to go a long way in a short time, and to answer questions which penetrate the core of the life. Regard us each as if an only child. We need to be caressed as well as recognized; we cannot live upon thy mere look of recognition, we must be taken up into thine arms like little children, and remember that our threescore years and ten, our four-score years, are but a handful of days less than one little trembling moment compared with the age of God. Love us. Put thine arms around us. Look at us with the eyes of thy heart. Speak to us in the tones which the soul alone can hear. Comfort us with multiplied consolations, so that the littleness of our sorrow may be lost in the vastness of thy compassion. Tell the old man that he is yet hardly born. Show the busy man that the road which he chooses may end in death, and teach him to be busy with a right purpose, and to labour under an adequate inspiration. Speak comfortably to hearts that cannot tell all their woe. Be gentle to the weak; be gentlest to those that have no strength. Look upon the little children as the sunlight looks upon the budding flowers. Bless them every one this day, and give each to feel that there is no weariness in the brightest house of all the habitations of men. We cannot make our own sick-beds, but thou wilt make them, or the angels shall give skill to our hands, and the sweet watching ones will show us how to do the most delicate of all beneficent tasks. There are some that are near us, and yet mile on mile away from our strongest help. They are ready to perish; they are appointed to die. We see them, but they see not us, for their eyes are turning morning-ward to the uplands and the cities of the quiet and the pure. They are thine. We would follow them with our little prayers if we did not know that already they were hidden in the very heart of thy love. Make this day the gladdest of all Sabbaths we have ever known. Surprise us by visitations from heaven; and wherein we think we have before seen the Cross, and felt the power of the infinite Priest who died upon it, may the revelation of his love this day eclipse every former vision, and lead us first into exclamations of delight, and then to the speechless wonder of infinite amazement. Amen.

Act 20:13-19

13. But we, going before to the ship, set sail for Assos, there intending to take in Paul [twenty miles by land, much farther by sea on account of the Cape Lectum]: for so had he appointed, intending himself to go by land [G., "to walk it"].

14. And when he met us at Assos we took him in, and came to Mitylene [capital of the island Sestos].

15. And sailing from thence, we came the following day [in their coasting voyages the ancients sought out a safe anchorage for each night] over against Chios; and the next day we touched at Samos; and the day after we came to Miletus [twenty miles by land, south of Ephesus].

16. For Paul had determined to sail past Ephesus, that he might not have to spend time in Asia, for he was hastening, if it were possible for him, to be at Jerusalem the day of Pentecost.

17. And from Miletus he sent to Ephesus, and called to him the elders of the church.

18. And when they were come to him he said unto them [ Paul's Pastoral Mirror ], Ye yourselves know from the first day that I set foot in Asia after what manner I was with you all the time.

19. Serving the Lord with all lowliness of mind, and with tears and with trials which befell me by the plots of the Jews.

Analysis of Service

Luke and his companions "went before to. ship, and sailed unto Assos, there intending to take in Paul." All these arrangements were under Paul's own hand; he was not minister only, but leader, inspirer, and servant as well. He was as deeply interested in the detail as if he had nothing else to attend to. He himself would walk to Assos alone. He would take the twenty miles' walk and make a religious exercise of the journey. He went along the magnificent Roman road, sheltered by the great oak forests that grew by its side. And he wanted no human companion; all the angels would walk with him; Jesus himself would draw near. There are times when human companionship becomes a burden, when we must be left alone, not always to sit, for then the mind has not full swing, but to walk; and walking is an appointed means and help of intellectual and spiritual study. The mind treasures its riches. Locomotion helps the processes of thought; locomotion alone the city, with its din, miles away; the work yet to be done lying far ahead. The soul feels that in silence there is a sanctuary, and that in solitude there is tender companionship. Do we walk alone? Do we go out, as the prophet was commanded to go, into the field that God may talk with us awhile? Do we "meditate in the field at the eventide"? the tired day taking its rest, the battle lulling and halting awhile, the very air calmed down into a religious hush, as if expecting some new tone from heaven. In imagination, figure Paul walking his twenty miles down to the ship, not tired of his companions, or loving them one whit the less, but conscious of a yearning after quietness yea, even silence, and after the solitude which of necessity means prayer.

Paul came, and joined the ship, and passed on with his companions. He came in due time to Miletus. From that point he might have seen the white palaces of Ephesus; and he might have been tempted to go back to the old battle-field. Therein he knew his great weakness. It was never safe to show Paul the marks of an old controversy, unless he had ample time to return to the situation and complete the purpose of the sacred fray. A trait of his character reveals itself in this comparatively trivial incident. "Paul had determined to sail by Ephesus... for he hasted, if it were possible for him, to be at Jerusalem the day of Pentecost." He had a vow to discharge, or an obligation to pay, or some hidden purpose to carry out, and therefore he felt safest on board ship. Yet he could not pass by wholly; so here the master-mind comes out again, even in this little arrangement of matters, for "Paul sent from Miletus to Ephesus, and called the elders of the Church," who came some thirty miles to see their great teacher and bishop. He must have a few words with them just at that time, not new words, but old words spoken in new tones. We can never hope to preach a new Gospel, but we can always preach the old Gospel in a new accent; we can always drop upon it a tear that never was shed before; we can always say it with the unction of additional experience, or with the emphasis of the added confidence which comes of steadfast continuance and faithfulness in Gospel doctrine and service. It is not enough to say the Gospel has been once preached, and there is an end of it. There may be an end of the mere words, or mere form in which the truth is expressed, but there can be no end of the revelation which is made to the speaker's own heart, or to the inspiration which enables him to clothe the most familiar expressions with the witchery of a new elocution taught by the Spirit of the living God On this ground the Gospel will never cease to be preached. There may be those who, looking only at forms, say, "We have heard that before." So much the worse for you if you have not obeyed it, and that is a criticism that you can never pass if your heart be in a right state before God. But every man has his own tone, has his own tears, has his own weird, or sharp, or telling, or soothing voice, and emphasis. So the Gospel is the same and not the same the same with a diversity; unchangeable, yet, as a matter of practical application, changing with all the varying phases of daily pilgrimage, and taking upon itself the newness of the present necessity.

Paul is about to make his greatest speech. Intellectually he may have stood head and shoulders above his present mental stature as he stands before the elders of Ephesus. He is not going to be intellectual now; his heart is going to speak. Some people have failed to find a heart in Paul, and have found nothing but heart in John. Did John, or any other man, ever deliver such a speech as this episcopal charge to the overseers of the Christian Church of Ephesus? We have known Paul more argumentative, more brilliant, keen in retort, instantaneous and flashing in reply, adroit in answering unexpected assaults; but we have never known him so grandly emotional, as if he had ordered his mere intellectual genius to stand back while his heart arose to tell what it was then able only sobbingly to say of deepest Christian experience and noblest Christian exhortation. We can find Paul in the speech. Some speeches reveal the speaker; that we have already seen in our studies in this Apostolic story. Pre-eminently this is the case in Paul's speech to the elders. It was not a speech delivered to a great multitude; it was not delivered in a high tone of voice, as if announcing new truths to multitudes of unaccustomed ears and strange hearers. The speech might have been spoken in an undertone. It falls into a kind of minor key; it is plaintive, pleading, tremulous, not with weakness, but with strength that wants to be stronger. Here is the Apostle Paul. If any man wishes to know what Paul was, he can find the whole man in these pathetic sentences. Listen to the now veteran speaker veteran in service if not in age: "Ye know, from the first day that I came into Asia, after what manner I have been with you at all seasons." Paul lived a public life. That is the most difficult life of all to lead. People only see parts of it. There are great breaks and chasms which separate one part from another, and the public, unable to understand such gaps, are apt to make out an accusation of inconsistency where, under other circumstances, they would see the most massive and noble harmony. Paul was able to appeal to the life he had led. Paul was a great preacher, because he was a great man. It is in that direction that all great preaching must come. Enlarge the preacher if you would enlarge the sermon. Nourish the man, give him wider teaching, larger experience of life, deeper and tenderer familiarity with all the sufferings of the people as well as with all the thoughts of the elect and leading few, and in proportion as you increase manhood generally will you increase preaching power in particular. Paul calls attention to his manner of life, not to his sermons only, not to particularly-prepared utterances, by which he said he was now ready to abide, but he says, "Look at the whole life; you have seen it; I have been no stranger amongst you; I am willing to be judged by that life." There is no reply to such reasoning. Sometimes a man's reasoning is better than a man's conduct. In the case of Paul the conduct was the reasoning, the reasoning was the conduct. He was a whole man, and challenged attention, not to sections of his character, but to his whole personality and ministry. Notice how he does this. He refers to "all seasons." He was not going to be judged in separate or unrelated details; he would be taken for all in all. The hill and the dale, the wood and the water, make up the landscape. So Paul would not be judged by preaching only, or by suffering, or by quickly spoken words, or by personal controversies, as with Barnabas or Peter; he would be judged in the totality of his purpose and action. Will it not be so at the last? Will not the Judge of all the earth repeat this judgment in his final criticism of every one of us? We judge a man a day at a time; today we cry, Hosanna! because he pleases us; to morrow we crucify him, because he has excited our momentary anger; on some other occasion we vary our judgment because of some immediate and vexatious detail. But life is not a question of single days; you must judge the supreme purpose of a man, and so judged, some of us will be better than we have ever been accounted to be, and some may be much worse. We must take in the "all seasons," the ever changing variety of circumstances attendant upon human development, and we must leave to God the final and complete judgment, because He knows what we have done, what we have resisted, what we would have done if we could. He will connect our prayers with our service, our aspirations with our attempts, our ambitions with our endeavours, and within the continual tumult of contradictions he will find the real man, and crown him, or sentence him to a great distance from the light.

Paul says he has served "the Lord with all humility of mind, and with many tears and temptations which befell him by the lying in wait of the Jews." Some people would call this egotism, or self-praise. There are two egotisms the little egotism that thinks about itself; and the unconscious and heroic egotism which never thinks about itself, even whilst apparently speaking only in its own name. Just as there are two prudences the little prudence that attends only to little things, but misses the great ones; and the all but infinite prudence which forecasts totalities and upsummings, and is apparently negligent on some occasions which take upon themselves exaggerated importance because of their nearness. Paul was never egotistic, yet he was never ashamed of his own personality. "With all humility of mind" that is the root of spiritual genius. Trust the humble mind for finding out God's meaning. "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him; and he will show them his covenant." "The meek will he guide in judgment," "but the proud he knoweth afar off." Where there is humbleness of soul there is great expository power. There may be little knowledge of mere words and phrases, etymologies and formalities of speech, but I will trust the humble mind, the broken heart, to go in unto God's dwelling-place and bring me a hot coal from off God's altar which the dainty fingers of the intellectually-proud could never touch. If we were better men, we would be better students; if we were humbler, we would be more learned; if we were less, we would be more; if we were broken-hearted lost in rivers of self-accusation and contrition we should have greater knowledge of the inner mysteries and spiritual meanings of the living God, who is the Saviour of all men.

"With many tears." Tears are good readers. They may stumble over the letter, but they have great skill in seeing the spirit. We see most when our eyes are shut, so our hearts see most when they have no eyes but tears. A ministry baptized with tears must help us: without the tears it might be brilliant or stern, or inspiring, or majestic; but with the tears it stoops, it lovingly condescends. It says to the sinning man, "I know all about your sin, and I can show you how to get rid of it, every whit." It comes down amongst the people, and speaks to their immediate life, and shows the worst how he may be better; and the best, how he may improve what he thought was approaching perfection, and crown with superlative glory that which he has already built up with a strong and industrious hand. Let us have ministers who can sympathize; let us have ministers who can cry with their hearts. We shall then find that true rhetoric is logic well spoken, that the highest argument is clothed with the supremest tenderness, and that the man who stands upon rocky-heights speaking great words of might can also come down to pray by the cradle's side, and plant the flowers of intercession around the edge of the open tomb.

"And many temptations." This is quite an outline of ministerial education! The word "temptations" may mean trials, agonies, provocations, allurements in the other direction. The word may mean an appeal to the merely carnal feelings to have nothing more to do with men who will shut their ears against heaven's music, and turn away from the appeals of Calvary. An untempted minister will never do us any good; an untried man will talk over our heads. My great preacher must be a man who has carried heavier chains than I have strength to bear, who has fought lions the very shadow of which would be too much for me to look upon. He must preach more as one who can say, "I have fought a severer fight than you are fighting; I know the devil better than you know him; I have been a mile farther in the pits of hell than you have ever gone; and now, my brother, crushed, bruised, nearly gone, you and I must, in God's sight and in God's strength, fight out this whole thing, and in the strength and grace of the Cross get back again the manhood we have lost." To speak so is to be sure of a good hearing, for the poor, self-denouncing, self-distressing heart knows the voice of experience, and instantly answers a voice that has in it the tone of a deep practical learning, and yet that trembles with the mystery of sympathy.

These temptations befell Paul "by the lying in wait of the Jews." He calls them by that strange name! They were his countrymen, but they were no longer his kinsmen. We make strange changes in the relationships of life. They, who were his own nation, his own kindred according to the flesh, now, after this Christian experience, stand back from him, strangers, aliens, unknown, heathen men. Such separations may take place amongst ourselves. There is a time when prayer itself expires, when spiritual wrestling ceases, when the teacher will teach no more in that direction, because he is speaking unto the unanswering night, and getting back nothing from the land of darkness. There may come a time when our kinsfolk will be strangers, when our familiar acquaintances will be aliens, when children of the same mother will not know one another's voices, and when the only relationship that can be acknowledged as vital and permanent will be a relationship founded upon position in the great commonwealth of Christian faith. Everything went down before Christianity in the experience of Paul; he became impatient with every claim that was not founded upon the Cross. As the day died in shadows around him, he would acknowledge no household but the household of faith, and he would have nothing to say to any man except in reply to that man's earnestness about sin, salvation, and the destiny of the soul.

Here we must stop. We must often meet around this great charge, study almost its every letter, and get its music so much into our souls as to feel as if we ourselves had been there and heard the mighty speaker as he enthralled the attention and entranced the heart of the elders of Ephesus.