Acts 21:1-14

Chapter 81

Prayer

Almighty God, do thou show light unto them that are groping in darkness. If any know not which way to turn, send thou the beam of light which will show the way thou thyself hast worked out. If any are cold of heart, and are filled only with the wonder of ignorance, do thou send the ardent heat from on high that shall warm the cold life and fill it with the surprise of new revelations. Thou art a continual surprise; we cannot find thee out unto perfection, saying, This is the beginning and this is the end. God is great, and we know him not. No man can see God and live. There is no searching of thine understanding. Thy way is infinite, and the clouds are the dust of thy feet. The light is thy robe, and thou dost leave our imagination behind thee, unable to follow in the wondrous pursuit. Yet dost thou tarry for us; thou dost wait until our weakness can overtake thee, and then in long speech of love thou dost reveal thy purpose to us, and show that the darkness is thine as well as the light; that thou didst make the rough hills as well as the smooth plains. Then thou dost pass on, and we lose thee, and again dost thou return and wait for us. Thus are we brought on our way stopping, wondering, praying with great agony and heart-fear, and then praising thee with loud rapture and cloudless hope. This is thy way with us; the meaning is love. We would see thee more clearly; but this is our impatience, not our wisdom, that thus speaks. So we will have no way of our own; we will not venture to take counsel as upon equal terms with God; we will say alway, "The will of the Lord be done." This we have learned of Jesus Christ, thy Son; out of him we cannot learn this greatest lesson; it is the meaning of his Cross; it is the expression of his priesthood; it is the mystery of his sacrifice. At the Cross we learn this lesson; whilst the Victim dies we hear its music and we learn its meaning. Lord, evermore teach us to speak those words with our hearts. Then we shall have no pain, no loss, no fear; we shall be lifted above the clouds, and stand in the eternal brightness. We would be hidden in the sanctuary of thy Son; our Saviour; Rock of Ages, cleft for men. We would stand in the cleft of that Rock until all danger be over-past, and whilst we are there we shall hear the still small voice, the subdued eternity, the condescending Infinite, the whisper of the thunder of God. Lord, show us how little we are, and how great; how abject, how august. Teach us that in ourselves we have lost all things; that in Christ we have found more than we have lost yea, unsearchable riches, wealth upon wealth, beyond all counting, treasures infinite. Wherein we have complained of thy way, take it as the ungrateful reproach of our ignorance. Thou knowest how shut in we are by yesterday and to-morrow two high stone walls that make a prison for our little life. Thou knowest that we cannot tell the meaning of our own words; have pity upon us, and forgive the iniquity of our prayers. The Lord accept us in the Beloved; the Lord interpret us at the Cross; the Lord answer our necessity and not our language; the Lord read the pain of our heart and the cry of our inmost soul, and listen not to the words which cannot tell the tale they mean to relate. Thou knowest us altogether: our beginning; our course; our advantages and disadvantages; our physical peculiarities; our social surroundings; the circumstances over which we have no control; the battles fought in secret; the prayers we dare not speak. Blessed be thy name, thou wilt judge with righteous judgment; thou dost not take man's view of our life, but thine own. Thou knowest us altogether, in word and thought and innermost motive. Judge us of thy great mercy; pity us in the Cross of thy Son, Christ Jesus. Thou knowest what we most need just now: some are here in great fear, and others in great hope of joy; some are just returned from the open grave, and others are just returned from the wedding altar; some are in the midst of perilous journeys and adventures; others are in darkness and in doubt, whose life is groping for results, rather than moving straight towards them; some want to turn, and feel as if they could not; some would pray, but their lips cannot speak; some are purposing goodness, and some evil. But thou understandest every one of us; thou canst come to each as if an only child. So, in Christ Jesus, Son of God, Lamb of God, bleeding Sacrifice, we put ourselves into thy hands and say, "The will of the Lord be done." Amen.

Act 21:1-14

1. And when it came to pass that we were parted [same word in Luk 22:41 ] from them, and had set sail [better, "had put to sea again after having torn ourselves away from them"], we came with a straight course unto Cos, and the next day unto Rhodes, and from thence unto Patara:

2. And having found a ship crossing over unto Phoenicia, we went abroad, and set sail ["put to sea"].

3. And when we had come in sight of Cyprus, leaving it on the left hand, we sailed unto Syria, and landed at Tyre [the whole district from Cilicia to Egypt was called Syria. On Tyre, cf. Joshua 19:29 ; Ezekiel 26:0 and Ezekiel 27:0 ; Isaiah 23:0 Hiram was Solomon's ally, and Ethbaal, father of Jezebel, is called by Josephus, king of Tyre. After its conquest by Alexander, Tyre was made a free city by the Romans, and was still a large commercial centre when visited by Paul, and perhaps also by Christ. Tyre Isaiah 30:0 miles N. W. from Nazareth]: for there the ship was to unlade her burden.

4. And having found the disciples [Acts 11:19 ; Acts 15:3 . Note that the little church in the great city had to be sought out], we tarried there seven days: and these said to Paul through the Spirit [ Act 20:22 ], that he should not set foot in Jerusalem.

5. And when it came to pass that we had accomplished the days, we departed and went on our journey; and they all, with wives and children [this little fellowship of disciples expressly associated wives and even children with the men in church action], brought us on our way, till we were out of the city: and kneeling down on the beach, we prayed, and bade each other farewell [same word as "parted" in Act 21:1 ];

6. And we went on board the ship, but they returned home again.

7. And when we had finished the voyage from Tyre, we arrived at Ptolemais [Accho of Judges 1:31 ; our Acre. An older city than Tyre and Cæsarea, it has outlived them both]; and we saluted the brethren, and abode with them one day.

8. And on the morrow we departed, and came unto Cæsarea [see Act 8:40 ]: and entering into the house of Philip the evangelist, who was one of the seven [Meyer, following Tisch. Born, puts the comma after "Philip," and takes the meaning to be that Paul's company entered into Philip's house, and even went to Cæsarea because "he (Philip) was the Evangelist of the seven," i.e., "it was not his former position as overseer of the poor, but his present position as evangelist that made him so important to the travellers"], we abode with him.

9. Now this man had four daughters, virgins [G., "virgin (or, unmarried) daughters"], which did prophesy [ "preach"; only since the seventeenth century has the English word "prophesy" been limited to the sense of prediction. R. V. ought not to have retained it in this, its obsolete, sense].

10. And as we tarried there many days, there came down from Judæa a certain prophet, named Agabus [probably the same mentioned in Act 11:28 ].

11. And coming to us, and taking Paul's girdle, he bound his own feet and hands [cf. Jeremiah 13:5 , and Joh 21:18 ], and said, Thus saith the Holy Ghost, So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that owneth this girdle [the company may have laid aside their girdles, one of which Agabus "took"], and shall deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.

12. And when we heard these things, both we and they of that place besought him not to go up to Jerusalem.

13. Then Paul answered, What do ye, weeping and breaking [G., "What are you doing that you commence weeping and (so) are breaking the heart of me?" [my heart? for I am [" I " emphatic, i.e., "my heart is"] ready, not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. [The unselfish grief of his friends touched Paul after he had conquered his own natural feelings; but loyalty to the Lord Jesus overrules all.]

14. And when he would not be persuaded, we ceased, saying; The will of the Lord be done.

The Quiet Interval

There are some endings which seem to be final. Such an ending we found in the last words of the interview between the Apostle Paul and the elders of the Church of Ephesus. It seemed as if after that ending there could be no resumption. Anything that could be said after such a communion of heart with heart that was not bathed with tears would be of the nature of an anticlimax. After such agony there is only one natural and gracious possibility, and that is silence. Silence is as eloquent as speech; in its right place it is even more eloquent. But after the interview at Miletus with the elders of the Church of Ephesus nothing was possible but silence. The night had come; the agony could not be increased; the senses reeled; all life seemed to be a mocking dream; whether things will ever come into natural course and shape again gracious time will reveal. Blessed silence! blessed time! We so often ignore those teachers, and go out in quest of noisy speakers. What can teach like time, or heal, or lift up again, or take away the very burden which at first it seems to impose? If we grow towards old age, it is only that we may grow towards youthhood again: old age being the gate that opens upon Christian immortality. Have periods of silence in your life; remit many of the controversies and difficulties to the adjustment and healing of silent, gracious, patient time. At the end of the days you will see the meaning of it all; and you, who entered into the first gate wearily, saying you could carry no more burdens and speak no more words, will pass through the second gate strong to carry, eloquent to speak, heroic to dare. But let solid, even slow, impartial time have its own way. You will only spoil its purpose by your impatience. You cannot hasten the old charioteer; he drives at a certain pace, and he will not be mocked or importuned into any increase of speed. Thank God for breaks that give us release from old cares and heavy burdens, and give us opportunity of gathering ourselves together again into still better condition and still augmented strength. Let Paul alone for a time; let him have his sail out. Thank God he has gone upon the water, that will do him good. Bless God for the alternative of the water for the land, of the land for the water; of the day for the night, and the night for the day. By these alternatives we are rested and quieted and made young again. Let us be glad that he will spend all the day on the water, and all the night, and to the lullaby of its plash may yield himself to sleep. After such communion he needs sleep; only such sleep as man can realise not animal sleep only, but that deeper, more mysterious, and gracious sleep into which the Lord alone can throw man, and out of which he comes with poignant wishes, and new impulses and new relationships, which make him forget yesterday's burden and yesterday's travail. Let him alone; he has passed through a hot fever; give him time.

In the third verse we read: "We landed at Tyre: for there the ship was to unlade her burden." Poor ship! she must have rest, too, in a way. We must have landing places, and unlading times, and standing-still periods in life. Whilst the ship stands still Paul is on the alert. Business arrangements are turned into spiritual opportunities. The moment the ship stopped Paul became his old apostolic self again. "Whilst you stop," said he, "I must be up and doing. What is this place? Who lives here? What is the religious condition of the locality?" How the war-horse stirs in him! Again and again we have thought, "He is now done, and we shall hear no more of him," when suddenly he sprang up again from the dust and was red with holy fire, palpitating with added life, quivering with holy excitement. The sail has done him good. He has opened his eyes and seen land, and now he turns a necessity of the ship into an opportunity for preaching the Gospel, or making Christian aggression. Is there not a lesson here for us the sailors of today? The place of business is closed why not inquire for an opportunity of doing religious good? Holiday to-morrow why not have a feast for the poor, and the halt, and the blind? A man has lost his train why not try to save his soul? A crisis has occurred in the business why not make it an opportunity for enlarging prayer and bringing up intercession to its agonizing and prevailing tone? The stop of one course should be the beginning of another. He never lacks opportunity who looks for it.

What was done at Tyre? We read, "And finding disciples." That is not right reading; stumbling over those words; we might imagine that the disciples were found haphazard, were come upon quite casually and unexpectedly. The real reading is, "And seeking out disciples." Why not seek out beautiful scenery? Why not discover the features of the new geography? Because Paul's promised and unchangeable purpose was to advance the kingdom of Christ. There was no scenery to Paul; there was no geography; there was nothing but lost humanity and the redeeming Cross of Christ. So may men be lifted above the very system of worlds in which they live, and count that system nothing except in its relation to the men who inhabit it, and to the opportunities it may afford for their spiritual redemption and education. Men who have not this Divine purpose in their hearts are overcome by their circumstances; a fine mountainous country would detain them a week longer on the journey; a new river would send them into ecstasies; a new specimen in botany would fill them with rapture. To Paul there was nothing in the world but two things: lost man and redeeming Christ; and he counted all things but loss that he might serve the Christ who had saved him. Paul and his company sought out the disciples not an easy thing then and there; not always an easy thing here and now. Some of you would blush if you had to ask if there were any Christians in your neighbourhood. You could not ask the question. You wait for them to turn up, but you do not give them any encouragement to disclose themselves. You, who could ask if there were artists in the neighbourhood authors, poets, great men of business, dare not ask if there were any praying people in the locality; dare not ask if any wooden shed has been put up by the hedge side, or at the street corner, or in the back places of the town in which you could meet others for prayer. Paul never asked any other questions; what wonder that he found disciples when he sought for them? "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." The man sitting next you at this moment would thank God if he could have an opportunity to speak concerning spiritual things. If Paul were here now, he would remain here all day; having delivered his sermon, he would ask the people to speak to him. He would make a business of it; nothing would turn him aside. Now and again he did disclose the one purpose of his life, and it was always in this tone: "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of Jesus Christ." He was never weary of his work, though often weary in it.

Leaving Tyre, they "came to Ptolemais, and saluted the brethren, and abode with them one day." Make the most of religious opportunities. A whole day together well spent may be more than a week together with neglected opportunities and uncultivated spaces. What a day it was! Only one; but so crowded, so many questions to ask. What eager listening! "The Apostle will be gone tomorrow; now is our opportunity; let him speak and pray and bless and comfort." That is the case always; we have never more than one day together with any certainty; we should look upon every opportunity as the last: when the man who prays for us says "Amen," we should feel as if the last knock had been delivered on heaven's door by his trembling and pious hand; and thus we would give accent to every occasion, immediate and poignant meaning to things which might otherwise be regarded as amongst the etceteras of life, crowded into some indicative term, rather than made the special and penetrating emphasis of life. Could we have Paul with us one day! We would appoint the meeting to take place very early in the morning, and some of us, looking at the dial, would say, "There are still five minutes to run before the day is quite out;" some of us would, with a kind of pardonable stealthiness, almost wish as if we could put the finger back on the dial-plate. But we allow our opportunities to pass; when the man is gone, then we begin to whine about his greatness, and the opportunities we had of praying with him in his mighty intercession. So the hearts of men are broken every day. We cannot make up anything to the absent Apostle; he was in the town; he spent a year there, or two, or five; we never knew him till the closing weeks of his ministry; the man that might have prayed lo heaven's shaking was unknown until the week before he left the village. Then the blank-eyed villagers whined about him, and said what they would have done had they known who had been amongst them. It is a whining lie! One day with the Apostle Paul! a man who never wasted a word; a man whose every look was a picture, every tone a revelation, every touch a benediction. He is still here; his great epistles are with us; his written soul lies in our houses neglected. Let us not add to our lies by whining over his personal absence!

"And the next day " Oh that there should be any next day to festivals of the soul! Mocking word! "Next" day why, that day can have no "next." To speak of it as "next" day seems to drag it down to an equality with vulgar time; speak of it as some other day, a million centuries off. Yet not so, because other people must have the festival as well as we. Paul is advancing in his course and scattering blessings as he goes. "The next day we that were of Paul's company departed, and came unto Cæsarea: and we entered into the house of Philip the evangelist, which was one of the seven; and abode with him." If we had our choice of any one day which we might spend with the Apostle Paul, I think some of us would choose this particular day. What a meeting that was! We have to meet our old selves sometimes. Do not make any mystery of the bodily resurrection until you have settled the mystery of those personal social resurrections which are taking place every day in the week. "One of the seven." So was Stephen. Paul "entered into the house of Philip." Why, this is the young man whose name was Saul, at whose feet the men who stoned Stephen laid down their clothes! What a meeting was that; what silence; what suppressed tears; what crowded memories; what self-lacerations! Philip might not have been there at all but for the very man who was now visiting him; it was owing to the persecution that Philip fled away. Day by day we have seen in our reading how Paul came upon the work of Philip, in this town and in that town, and now he is Philip's guest. May our meetings with old enemies be as sweet and gracious! You cannot escape from your old self. Tomorrow you will meet a man upon whose face your whole life will be written, and you will read it in every line. The day after, as you are lifting the wine to your lips, you will see a man the sight of whom will make you set it down again, and wish that the earth would open and let you through into darkness. Tomorrow you will see a signature every stroke of which will be like a sword-stroke on your heart. Tomorrow you will see a crushed rose-leaf, a faded photograph, a sere and yellow book which will bring up all your life. Sometimes our reminiscences are of the most joyful kind, and we bury twenty years in one grip of the hand. Sometimes those reminiscences are of the other sort, and a look doubles our age. The solemn fact to remember is that we meet men again. Lite is not closed with today. Our words have gone out from us, rolling over the waves of the wind, but we shall hear them again. Let us take care how we live. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." If you have lost money, depend upon it it belonged to some other man. If you have suffered pain, God has weighed the measure of it in his golden scales, and you have had not one pang too many. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." There is comfort in this as well as sadness. If men have spoken ill of me, depend upon it I have spoken ill of them first in some way, and in some mysterious economy God is visiting upon me my own iniquities. Do not let me stand up as the righteous and perfect man who never did anything, but who is suffering unjustly. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap" in some way at some time. The sovereign you lost was not your own; you cannot trace its owner, you cannot tell why you, poor innocent creature, should suffer so. But it is quite right. As I have done unto others, so hath God requited me. The law is equally true on the other side. If you do things good, then things good you will reap. Make a feast for those who cannot make a feast for themselves, and you shall have bread at the last; make other lives glad, and you shall have light at eventide. It is a solemn economy under which we live. If we look at the special aspect only, we tremble and complain, but if we look at the other aspect as well, we are constrained to say "The ways of the Lord are equal."

Now Paul will be besought not to go forward; his own company will say, "Perhaps you had better not." In this case Paul said nothing to the four daughters of Philip, nothing to the prophet Agabus. But in the 12th verse we read, "And when we heard these things, both we " That was the sting. When a man's nearest comrades fail him, when the people he brought with him to cheer his way stand in front of him and say, "Turn back," then, poor soul, what can he do but break right down? So did Paul. When they that were of his company besought him not to go up to Jerusalem, Paul was forced into speech, and answering, said, "What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart? for I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus." There the Roman spoke; there the Christian Roman spoke. We are told that for a Roman to fear danger was treason, but for a Lacedæmonian to hesitate was treason. Here is a man in whose tone you can find no hesitancy. Having consecrated the life first, all the details of suffering which led up to the last oblation were mere trifles. He himself body, soul, spirit was on the altar; to dwell, therefore, upon the items of martyrdom was to trifle with the sublimity of the occasion. We have given nothing whilst anything has been withheld; but having given ourselves, all other gifts are nothing.

Where is the Apostle Paul today? Where the man that speaks thus, and so? Could he live now? Would he have any following now? Would he not now be called fanatic, emotionalist, enthusiast? Would common-sensed and real-hearted men respect him now? Would not there be teachers of what is falsely called prudence who would ask him to stop and think and weigh well his course? Again and again would I teach, as for these several years I have endeavoured to teach, that there are two prudences the little prudence, that would gain its life and therefore loses it; the great prudence, that loses its life and in the losing finds it. The little prudence is the more popular; you can get at it more easily, may stroke its little sleek head more comfortably; it lies quiet under your pat, and you can make something of it. The great prudence, the sublime dash, the sacred fury will not accept any patronage; lives beyond the cloudy region of compliment and congratulation, and goes on to Golgotha, to Olivet, to heaven.