Acts 28:16-29

Chapter 104

Prayer

Almighty God, we are living upon thy promises. We sing them to our souls and repeat them in all tones and forms until our spirit knows them well, and triumphs in their music, and is rich with their wealth. Thou wilt not permit us to live upon things that are false. Thou dost lead us by him, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, towards the whole truth of God. Little by little the light grows upon our eyes; word by word comes the great sweet Gospel, which we could not hear all at once because of its vastness and grandeur. Thou dost grant unto us thy truth as we are able to bear it. Thou art always stooping to our littleness and condescending to our weakness, and making us the standard and the measure of thine action. Thou wilt not distress us by thy great power, nor thunder upon us from the infinite heights; but with all gentleness and whispering tenderness and love, thou wilt come into our hearts and take up thine abode there and speak unto us things concerning Christ, until we become well instructed in the heavenly kingdom and made strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. This is thy way, and it is good; it is well; it is best. Thou art not moved by our impatience, but by our true necessity. Thou wilt come as thou dost please, but not to overburden us or blind us with excess of light, but to train us in heavenly ways and teach us heavenly truth and inspire us with heavenly animation. Thou hast made us, and thou knowest the whole mystery of our nature. We are instruments of thy fashioning. Behold! we spend a lifetime in studying ourselves without attaining fulness of wisdom. The generations have been studying themselves, and they died without the knowledge; and still we are in ardent quest, still pursuing, still inquiring, still comparing issues one with the other, and still our cry is the utterance of ignorance. We cannot tell what we are mysteries of power, mysteries of weakness; able to pray, but more willing to blaspheme. We hold ourselves, as it were, in trust from God. We shall be glad to render up our stewardship, for it overweighs and distresses us day by day. We are never sure of our ground now in triumph, now in despair; now with both arms locked round the altar in a great grasp of love, and now with both hands wildly serving the devil. Behold! what is this? Heaven hell; a beginning an end. We cannot tell at all times, or give account of ourselves in straight words; but we put ourselves into the keeping of the Lord's Christ Son of man, Son of God, Victim of the Cross, yet Priest and Sacrifice in one, Save us from the evils of spiritual impatience. Help us to tarry, to wait as if we were serving, to suffer as if we were triumphing, and in all lowliness of mind may we say that the self has been put down and that God is on the throne of the heart. We would spend our life for thee; we would know no other master, obey no other orders, walk in no other way than thine. We know this to be the object and desire of our hearts at this moment, but the next moment we shall contradict our own speech. This it is that rends us; this is the schism in our own heart that fills us with infinite distress. We come to thy word for help. Read it to us thyself; we cannot spell it, much less pronounce the words; they chill upon our lips and fall down dead as we speak them. Oh, read the Book, thou who didst write it! Speak the reading in our hearts' hearing, and we shall be comforted by messages of music spoken to the soul. We have spoiled our few days. We thought they were so few we could surely get through them without spoiling any one, and, lo, the whole of the days are blotted and stained and perverted, and each of them is signed with the red signature of personal and continual guilt. God be merciful unto us, sinners! Wash us in the sacred blood; purify us through the ministry of the priesthood of Jesus Christ, and make us at the last, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, a glorious Church through the infinite mystery and blessedness of the Cross of Christ. Thou knowest us every one. Leave a blessing in each heart; give each some new song in thine house; divide the distressing cloud charged with thunder and storm, and let there be some bright shining of the sun that used to make us glad. Cover up the grave we can never fill; relight the fire which has been put out and is beyond our power of restoration; bring back the wanderer who has passed beyond the circuit of our poor prayers; grant unto the weak, the sick, the dying, those on whose lips the last farewell is forming, comforts, lights, messages from heaven. Be with us during the handful of our remaining days, and help us to make the four-and-twenty hours of each, bright, tender, pure, acceptable unto God. But this we cannot do unless thou dost work in us the miracle of the new heart, the clean heart, and the right spirit. God of the heavens, Glory of all light, and Saviour of all men, hear us, lift us up, give us vision of the invisible and comfort from the heavens! Amen.

Act 28:16-29

16. And when we came to Rome, the centurion delivered the prisoners to the captain of the guard: but Paul was suffered to dwell by himself with a soldier that kept him.

17. And it came to pass, that after three days Paul called the chief of the Jews together: and when they were come together, he said unto them, Men and brethren, though I have committed nothing against the people, or customs of our fathers, yet was I delivered prisoner from Jerusalem into the hands of the Romans.

18. Who, when they had examined me, would have let me go, because there was no cause of death in me.

19. But when the Jews spake against it, I was constrained to appeal unto Cæsar; not that I had ought to accuse my nation of.

20. For this cause therefore have I called for you, to see you, and to speak with you: because that for the hope of Israel I am bound with this chain.

21. And they said unto him, We neither received letters out of Judæa concerning thee, neither any of the brethren that came shewed or spake any harm of thee.

22. But we desire to hear of thee what thou thinkest: for as concerning his sect, we know that everywhere it is spoken against.

23. And when they had appointed him a day, there came many to him into his lodging; to whom he expounded and testified the kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus, both out of the law of Moses, and out of the prophets, from morning till evening.

24. And some believed the things which were spoken, and some believed not.

25. And when they agreed not among themselves, they departed, after that Paul had spoken one word, Well spake the Holy Ghost by Esaias the prophet unto our fathers,

26. Saying, Go unto this people, and say, Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive:

27. For the heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.

28. Be it known therefore unto you, that the salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles, and that they will hear it.

29. And when he had said these words, the Jews departed, and had great reasoning among themselves.

First Impressions of Christianity

Though Paul has been in bonds for some time now, yet he has been so much in the open air and has taken an active part in so many stirring incidents that we have not fully realised his captive condition. Now that he is in Rome, we feel as if he had passed through some dark way, and that a heavy gate had suddenly and ominously closed upon him a gate iron-bound and iron-riveted, a huge and ponderous door, the key of which was upon the girdle of the young, vain, cruel Nero. We feel now, as we never felt before, that Paul is in very deed a prisoner, a caged eagle, a hero humbled and uncrowned.

"When we came to Rome, the centurion delivered the prisoners to the captain of the guard." Let us look at Paul's position. Kindness was shown to him at the beginning of his sojourn in Rome. "Paul was suffered to dwell by himself with a soldier that kept him." Paul was chained to the guard. The soldier was always with him; and where there was a man there was a congregation. Paul entered upon a new ministry. The soldier was probably changed every day, or at short intervals; and Paul told his story day by day; and each soldier, fascinated by such speech as he had never heard before, went and told the story to others, so that presently the Gospel was known through the whole guard. Paul so preached that people must talk about what he had said, not speaking in a way that is so easy to forget, but driving the truth home, striking with a firm hand, speaking with a tone the soul cannot forget. Soldier after soldier went and told the story over again, so that it became quite a hope and prize who was to be the next soldier that was to guard the immortal preacher.

"It came to pass, that after three days Paul called the chief of the Jews together." There were seven Jewish synagogues in Rome, and Paul called together the chiefs or elders of them. Mark his tact, his courtesy! the features which made him what he was. Paul pays the chief of his nation deference; Paul connects himself with the people of his nation; Paul claims to be still a Jew. "For the hope of Israel I am bound with this chain." Paul would not have Christianity regarded as an accident, a new thought, a modern invention, a passing phase of popular thinking or superstition. He said: "Christianity is Judaism perfected and glorified." Paul was not the man to treat the ages as separate links. He saw God's purpose in all the rolling time; he watched the development of truth and decree and sovereignty day by day, and he saw in Christ a culmination as well as a new beginning the Ancient of Days and the Child of Bethlehem. So he is still great; he is never less than grand. One little line "for the hope of Israel" shows you the current of his mind, the strenuousness of his thought, the vastness of his spiritual comprehension. He says, in effect, "I am not following a will-o'-the wisp; I am not bounding over hill and dale after some new flickering light that may die in a moment. This Christianity is Judaism perfected, illuminated, glorified; this is the meaning of all the law and all the prophets, and all the history of ancient time. Fools indeed we are to have traced the root and the trunk and the branches and to have watched the whole growth and then to have turned our back upon the sunny and nutritious fruit." Such men are not easily shaken; they do not live in a day; they are not new men every morning, having no relation to their yesterdays. They stand upon great breadths of time; they take historical views; their keen far-seeing eyes take in horizons, and are enabled by that great vision to connect what would otherwise be unrelated, incoherent, and bewildering. To the last Paul will act in that spirit; when he dies, he will die as one who is the last birth of a great and noble life.

Here is an incidental view of the first impression created by Christianity. This sect is everywhere spoken against. A testimony of that kind is invaluable. This is not an accident, but a law. Point me to anything any man, any thought, any Church that has come up to supremacy without having had to pass through obloquy, misunderstanding, false criticism, and bitter contempt. The difficulty is that so many people break away during the process. The sect must be everywhere spoken against if ever it is to rule the world. No man comes to immortal renown through the narrow and obscure lane of respectability. That is the lane that leads down to oblivion a quiet, pretty, inviting lane; but it ends in nothing. All history is before us, and let history be our witness and our field of evidence. Show me one man in all history, whose name is united with the dead but sceptred monarchs whose spirits still rule us from their urns, who did not pass through exactly the same process as Christ and Paul. That is a matter worth inquiring into; that is a suggestion which should lead us to consideration, and to prayerful quest into far-reaching omens and meanings. This is not a matter of conjecture. The man who lay down that doctrine may be contradicted in a moment if he is wrong, and overwhelmed by a thousand instances. I have never met one. I have watched, as you have done, many men who were born, as Emerson says born red and died grey, and nothing more was ever heard of them or known about them. There are men of true respectability, good time keepers, within narrow limits very admirable persons, who are walking decorously into oblivion. The same is true in the matter of doctrine. What great truth is there that has not had to fight its way as Paul had to fight his? Even your system of astronomy has its martyrs; even so small and trifling a question as to whether the sun moves, or the earth moves, and the action of each in relation to the other, has its blood-history. We are not confined to matters theological in proof and illustration of this marvellous doctrine: all human history goes in the same direction. How needful then to have men about us who will say, "Fight on, hope on, pray on; weary not in well doing; persevere; one more prayer, and Heaven comes down; one other stroke, and victory is realised." We cannot do without exhortation any more than we can do without exposition. Great heroic voices that bid us pray again and hope on and preach once more may not be voices that convey much instruction, or are charged with new revelations, but they are needful to sustain and comfort and animate men whose hearts would fail because of the length and weariness of the toilsome way. This is the function of preaching. The preacher is not always to give new heavens and a new earth, a great revelation in every sentence that he utters; but, by shepherdly prayer, tender comfort, friendly monition, brotherly exhortation, he is to comfort, sustain, direct, and help in every way the men who listen to tones more persuasive than argument and to prayers more sustaining than formal reasoning. The sect was everywhere spoken against Who wonders? Who does not prefer the silvery eagles of Rome to the accursed Cross which has become the badge of Christianity? The Cross has a bad history; this was never in the masonry of respectability; it is a thing to be scorned and spat upon and pointed at with the left hand with disdain. Who wonders that Christianity is everywhere spoken against? It cannot be spoken about with mere respect, any more than Jesus Christ can be honestly spoken about as simply a good man. That doctrine cannot be true namely: that Jesus was simply a good man. He was God or he was the devil. Christianity does not ask for compliments, for deference due to original power of thinking; nor does it ask to be on nodding terms with men who dream dreams and invent new ways to heaven. Christianity must have all or nothing. You cannot appoint one room in your house for Christianity and say, "This is your chamber; Beelzebub is in the next room, both guests of the same large-minded host." No! Christianity must have the key of the front door, and of the back door, and of every room in the house, or it cannot take up its abode in the dwelling. It makes the front door a cross and every window a cross, the table a cross and the whole light a cross, and the whole being a sacrifice. It must be everywhere spoken against or everywhere received. This will thin down the congregation very much in every church. Do you know what a Christian is? A burning man all flame; a man of one thought, one love. Better stand in the footprints of the scorner and the unbeliever, than attempt to sit down amongst Christ's people with an indifferent spirit, and a mind that can be operated upon either in this direction or in that, and whose faith is a question to be determined by barometers, or any kind of theological instrument varying with the hear of the air, or the current of the wind, or the condition of things round about. I would that men were either hot or cold, that they would either pray or blaspheme. The only man I have no hope about is the man who is indifferent, who is absolutely without conviction, and who does not know in what direction his feet are moving.

The sect is everywhere spoken against. That is part of the process, on the way to ultimate sovereignty and complete rule. Here we have some idea of Paul's preaching and its issue. "Be it known therefore unto you, that the salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles, and that they will hear it." It is a solemn thing to have had an offer made from heaven and to have declined the overtures of the Eternal. That will be our position if we turn away from Christianity. We have had the offer of it: man after man called pastor, teacher, spiritual friend, has offered us the Gospel; every man said he was commissioned from heaven to offer it; each voice said it had no other message to deliver; each messenger said he did not invent the terms of his message. We have had the offer; that is something. It has been thundered upon us and whispered to us; in every form and tone of speech, the thing has been pressed upon us. Some have preached as sons of the storm; some have wept their message in our presence, so that we have read it with our eyes rather than heard it with our ears. The old man has come, and in harmless tones pleaded with us; the young man has sprung up, and with all the strength of youth has implored us to accept it. We have had the offer; I have hope of the man who has rejected it in great violence, but what hope can any heart have of the man who listens to music as if it were noise, and to an offer from the heavens as if it were an invention of the earth? It will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for such a man! What did Paul say? The Gentiles will receive it. Then he did not say he would give it up? Never! Unbelief did not discourage Paul; desertion did not daunt Paul; the combined opposition of his countrymen did not take away one spark from the glowing heat which burned in his holy soul. Let that be said for Paul himself.

How characteristic is this expression: "after that Paul had spoken one word." What a word it was! They were going, and he said, as it were, "Stop! one final word"; and that was a word from the prophets. It was not a piece of merely Christian enthusiasm viewed in a merely local and historical light. "I was raised from the dead to make the peroration of this appeal;" but the dead heart cared not for the dead prophet. "After that Paul had spoken one word." How little of it was his own! Line by line from the prophets only a finer accent his. But last words who can hear; last appeals who can hear, without movements of the soul full with distress and agony? And yet every appeal may be the last, every sermon may be the final discourse. We cannot tell what will be the one word that will close our opportunity. At the best the days are dwindling, the occasion is narrowing, the gate is closing swaying towards the final position: it is not yet closed. The one word is being spoken to some of us; may we have ears to hear!