S. THE CASE OF SIMON MAGUS

THE CASE OF SIMON MAGUS SCRIPTURE READING: Acts 8:5-24.

TEXT: Then Simon himself believed also; and when he was baptized, he continued with Philip, and wondered, beholding the miracles and signs which were done. - Acts 8:13.

We have presented to us here the conflict between the miracles wrought in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and the so-called miracles wrought by sorcerers and necromancers. I do not know anything so silly as the supernatural claims of those who deny Christ, and yet go around pretending that they are able to work miracles, through spiritualism, or through sorcery, or magnetism, or anything of that kind. But here you find the gullibility of the people. You would hardly think that if a man should come and claim to be a divine healer that the people would run after him, and yet they did run after this blasphemous man, Simon Magus. And right here in Waco, if a man were to come and claim he could do supernatural things, they would pay money to see him and quite a number of them would believe it.

"Then Simon himself believed also: and when he was baptized he continued with

Philip, and wondered, beholding the miracles and signs which were done." Now if he had been performing real miracles it would not have excited any wonder that another man could perform miracles, but he evidently saw that Philip was doing things that he knew he could not do, and it excited his astonishment.

During this last week I have read over two or three volumes of matter written by

Alexander Campbell, and particularly containing his views upon the Holy Spirit. His theory was that the demonstration of the Spirit that precedes baptism was merely the miraculous display of divine power that accredited the Word, that after a man believed and was baptized, that then he did receive the Holy Spirit, but that the only work of the Spirit on the man or in the man prior to his baptism was the miraculous display of divine power that accredited the Word; and that as the Word was sufficient to confirm, and that anybody had the ability to believe, that it was a metaphysical delusion to talk about being enabled to believe by any Spirit-power.

Well, here we have a case. Simon Magus himself believed also. He believed upon these miraculous displays which confirmed the evidence, and there was no other touch of the Spirit in his case. Now let us see how his case is distinguished from the others.

"Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John: who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost: (for as yet He was fallen upon none of them: only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.) Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost." The Holy Ghost which they here received was the power to work miracles themselves, to speak with tongues, to do supernatural things. Now Simon had not yet seen anything like that. He had seen Philip working miracles and heard him speaking with tongues, but he had not seen that power communicated by any sort of a process to anybody else. Now he witnesses the apostles communicating the powers they had to other people, and communicating it by a kind of rite, or ceremony, or laying on of hands, and when the apostles laid their hands on them they received this gift of the Holy Spirit. That suggested an entirely new thought to Simon: "And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, saying, ’Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands he may receive the Holy Ghost.’"

Here seemed to this man to be an exceedingly lucrative power; that if he had the power, by just putting his hands on a man, to make that man speak with tongues, or to make that man work miracles, or to make that man have the gift of discerning the Spirit ¾ if he just had that power, what a good thing he could make of it. And so it instantly occurred to him to buy that power. And he offered money for it, but Peter said unto him, "Thy money perish with thee." The original here shows that there is only one verb, and it means, "Thy money and thou perish," that is, "You will perish and your money will perish, and may you perish together, because thou hast thought that the gift of God could be purchased with money."

Here I want to say two or three things. The world is running wild on money, more than on everything else put together. There is more worship today of Mammon than perhaps at any previous period of the world’s history. But there are some things that money cannot buy, I do not care how much of it you have. "Thy money perish." It is a perishable thing. "Thy money perish with thee, because thou didst think that the gift of God could be purchased with money."

There is nothing that God gives us that we can buy. That is a sweeping statement, but there is a more real, substantial joy in the Christian’s heart than ever could have been obtained by any outlay of money.

Let us look at some of the things. What a great thing it would be to rich people if, just before they die they could buy repentance; if instead of having to repent themselves they could buy it. The church so-called, which has encouraged rich people to believe that, and that by great donations made in their wills, or just about the time that they are passing away, that there is some value in these good works in securing the gift of God, has helped to perpetuate the thought in the world that while you cannot buy repentance outright, yet by a sufficient outlay of money you can indirectly get in. The whole of it is false.

Take the thought as it is presented in the question of indulgences. You know that indulgences were advertised and auctioned, sold openly in the market, in Germany. A man would want to commit an offense or he would want absolution for an offense that he had committed. Now, by purchasing an indulgence he would secure the gift of God absolutely, for God only can forgive sin. "Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God can be purchased with money."

There is no way to purchase anything that relates to religion. You cannot buy a substitute. You may hire a substitute in the case of war, human war, but you cannot hire a substitute in religion. You cannot have a proxy. Your father cannot stand for you, your mother cannot, your wife cannot, your brother or your sister cannot. If your brother were to die, you could not buy one hour of life for him. No man can ransom his brother from the grave, and the redemption of their souls is precious and it ceaseth forever.

Such is the testimony of God’s Word, showing the limitation after all, that there is in the power of money. How narrow its scope! How few things it can purchase! And, after all, how immaterial these things are! They do not count for much. You cannot buy faith in Jesus Christ. If you were to propose tomorrow to give a million dollars to endow an orphanage or a school, or to build a church, you could not purchase one hair’s breadth of the divine favor with that million dollars. And so far as obtaining that favor is concerned, you are just as near to getting it by standing in absolute poverty, and not even able to give one nickel. That is one place where .the rich and the poor meet together-when they touch the divine privileges, the privileges of God, the gift of God.

I was in a church once, I won’t say where because I do not desire to be too personal, and do not desire to wound any one, but I was in a church once, a very large, fine city church, every bit of it given by one man. He gave every dollar of it, and the idea in his mind that prompted him to give it was this: He had a wayward son. That son had died in his dissipation under circumstances that left no reasonable hope of his salvation. Now this man built that church with the superstitious idea that if he took all of that son’s part of the property and put it in the church, that in some way it might affect his condition in the other world. That was a great mistake. No money given to such a thing can accomplish such a result.

We now come to look at the case of Simon Magus. He had everything that

Alexander Campbell said is needed. He had the miraculous display of divine power that confirmed the Word, and on that confirmation of the Word he believed. But he was not right. Now what was the matter with him? What was it that he lacked? Let us see! "Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter." The word "matter" here in the Greek is "word." "Thou hast neither part nor lot in this word," that is, the gospel which we preach. Thou hast no part in it. Thou hast no lot in it. You believed it with such faith in you as you had, and you were baptized upon that faith, but there was no virtue in it and you have no part nor lot in this word that we preach. Why? "For thy heart is not right in the sight of God." Thy heart is not right in the sight of God! This leads us to the solemn thought that to have a part, to have a lot, in the Word of the gospel, there must be rightness of heart in God’s sight. Now I put out a question. What is it that makes any man’s heart right? What power is it? "I will take away your stony heart. I will give you a heart of flesh," saith the Lord; that is, a heart that can feel. "And I will put my Spirit in you and then you will keep my commandments." Our Savior says that out of the heart proceed evil thoughts and blasphemy and murder and everything of that kind. They come from the heart.

Paul says ¾ I am not going to quote the precise words-he says that there can be no bodily sin, no sin of the body. There cannot be any sin of that kind. He says that all sin is without the body. What he means is, that the body in itself possesses no intelligence-that sin is a transgression of the law, and that the body cannot transgress the law. The mind, the heart, the soul of man, must commit whatever sin is committed. It is true that he may make his body an instrument for sin, but the sin must come from the inside. It must come from the thinking, rational part. It must come from that spiritual essence which was communicated when God breathed into man’s body the breath of life and he became a living soul.

Now, unless the inner man is made right in the sight of God then he can have no part or lot in this matter. As our Savior says, "Except a man be born from above, except a man be born of the Spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Now that was a matter which Simon lacked, and just one scripture, if there was not any other scripture, answers everything that was ever said upon that subject by Mr. Campbell. It says that in order to believe, in the gospel sense of that word, that the man’s belief must be from the heart: "With the heart man believeth unto righteousness." That it must not be simply an intellectual conviction based upon the testimony; that there must be a transformation in the mind.

Let us look at the case a little further. Now comes an exhortation: "Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee; for I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity." Now when he offered to buy the gift of God with money it revealed to Peter his true condition. He was a member of the church, but that was a revelation to Peter showing his standing in God’s sight, and Peter described that condition by two phrases, "the gall of bitterness" and "the bond of iniquity."

According to all the ancients the gall was supposed to supply the venom of serpents and beasts, and as you all know it is exceedingly bitter; the bitter gall, the gall of bitterness. That refers to the principle in the man, but the "bond of iniquity" refers to the habit of life. "I not only perceive that in thy heart there is all the malice and venom of opposition to God, but I perceive that in your life and practice you are in bondage. The fountain is impure and the stream is impure. The source of your thoughts and of your motives is all corrupt, and the thoughts that are the fruits of those motives and desires are also corrupt." That being his dreadful condition he gives an exhortation, and while it seems that there are only two thoughts in the exhortation there are really three. "Repent of this thy wickedness." Every scholar, judging the original language, knows that there is more in -that expression than "repent," for the word "repent" does not take an "of" after it. It is equivalent to this: "Repent and turn from thy wickedness." In other words, it expresses both conviction and repentance, and conversion in its etymological sense, conversion meaning to turn around; just as if he said, "Repent and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out," and just as is expressed in the fifty-fifth chapter of Isaiah. There is just one verse of it. I want to read it to you because it presents that thought so clearly, about repentance: "Let the wicked man forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. Seek ye the Lord while He may be found. Call ye upon Him while He is near."

Now there is in this exhortation in Isaiah precisely the three thoughts that are in Peter’s exhortation. One is a change of mind, of the thought; another is a turning away from the wickedness, and the third is a calling upon God for forgiveness. These are the three things that he calls on Simon Magus to do: "Repent and turn from your wickedness and pray God." Pray for what? Why should he pray? "If the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee." We cannot understand his going to God and asking for anything else but forgiveness. "God be merciful to me, a sinner. God forgive me for this misunderstanding of thy gift and of thy religion. I repent. I turn from my wickedness, and I pray God to forgive me." That is the thought, that is the critical thought.

Why then does Peter put in this word, "perhaps?" The Apostle Paul brings it in in a somewhat similar connection, although not in quite so intensive a form, in one of his letters to Timothy. He is giving directions to preachers how to bear with certain incorrigible cases. He says, "If God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth," that is, a man who goes out after a case of this kind does not go out with the certainty that he does in some cases of wickedness. Here the wickedness is so extreme, it has taken such an extreme form, that an element of uncertainty attaches to it. But as you don’t know the power of God you go out, thinking that peradventure God will give that man repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.

Now, Peter struck just such a case as that in Simon Magus. This sin which he had committed seemed to be a sin against the Holy Ghost. It was a question in Peter’s mind whether it amounted to that blasphemy against the Holy Ghost which has never forgiveness, neither in this world nor in the world to come. You know there are some things forgiven as to the next world which are not forgiven here. For instance, David’s sin was forgiven as to eternity, but he had to bear the consequences of it in time. "But the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness." It is different from any other sin in this, that from the time it is committed He is gone forever; gone here and gone yonder. "It hath never forgiveness." Chastisement won’t reach the case. So Peter did not know, but thought maybe this man had committed that sin. It seemed to him at least possible that that unpardonable sin had been committed, but as he was not clear in his own mind that it was a case of unpardonable sin he gives him the direction that all preachers should give to every sinner, "Repent, turn from thy wickedness and pray God to forgive you:’

Now let us see how that affected Simon. Here was evidently a power displayed by

Philip that he (Simon Magus) never had, and it was evidently supernatural. Here was a still greater power displayed by Peter, by which he could not only himself work miracles, but by the laying on of his hands he could impart that power to others to work miracles. And when this man said to him, "Thy money and thyself perish; thy heart is not right; thou art in the gall of bitterness; thou art in the bond of iniquity"-that awful denunciation hurled against his guilty soul made him tremble, but it did not make him pray. Here is what he says, "Then answered Simon and said, ’Do ye pray to the Lord for me, that none of these things which ye have spoken come upon me.’"

Right there the man’s history stops. I mean the Bible part of it. Right there, on that "perhaps." We can only conjecture as to the ultimate fate of this man. It does seem that if he had gotten down right there and cried to God for mercy, that there would have been something said, there would have been some intimation of it. There would naturally appear some record that would lead us to hope that this man was saved. But it stops and draws a veil over the case and makes it inscrutable to our sight. While the Bible does not refer to him again, Josephus does describe a sorcerer named Simon, that has led many men to think that it was the same man and if the Simon the Sorcerer whom Josephus tells us about is this man, then we know he is lost, for there was present, working his evil ways and endeavoring to thwart all the purposes of God, and one of the great instruments that led to the destruction of Jerusalem not a great many years afterwards, a certain Simon the Sorcerer. I do not know that it was the same man. History does not make it right clear, but it does make it probable that he was the man, and if so, then this profane history flashes a light on this case that supplements the testimony of the Word of God.

Now you have before you this lesson on prayer: that a man must repent; that a man must turn away from his sins, forsake them; that a man must pray that God should forgive him. And how can I enforce, any more than the mere presentation of the thought has enforced itself, this sublime exhortation of the prophet? I, do not ever know what to tell anybody more than that-that he must repent, that he must forsake his sins, and that he must pray to God, through the virtue of the atonement, to forgive his sins.

If you cannot get a man down on his knees, I do not see how you are ever going to get him up into heaven. If the spirit of grace and supplication never comes upon him, I do not see any hope for him. Do you pray? Particularly when you feel your sins, do you pray? Do you pray that

God, who puts His power and His omniscience and His love where the blood is, do you pray to God to meet you there, at the mercy seat, and take the burden and the guilt and the defilement of that sin off of you?

I venture to say that a work of grace never obtained in any community that did not have this accompaniment, and the sinners prayed. You hear me sometimes, when people come up to join the church, ask them an occasional question, "Did you feel that you were a lost sinner in the sight of God?" "Yes." "What did you do then?" That is the next question, "What did you do when you felt that?" Now if there has been a genuine conversion you may rest assured that whoever felt that kind of a conviction, prayed, and they nearly always answer, and always do in the case of a true conversion, if they understand the object of the question, "I prayed to God for Christ’s sake to forgive me." As Paul says, "Forgive ye one another as God also for Christ’s sake has forgiven you."

Now when they do pray for forgiveness, and pray for it through Christ, that sort of praying has in it the element of faith, for while the word, "faith," is not referred to by name in the case of the publican, the word, "justification," is. Jesus says, "That man went down to his house justified." The Bible says, "We are justified by faith." It is through faith that we reach justification. If I come up to the place where the blood of the atonement has been sprinkled, I feel that my only chance for forgiveness is through the virtue of that blood of my Substitute, I look at that blood and I say, "0 God, for Christ’s sake forgive me," then have I not faith in that blood? So we find what our Articles of Faith state, viz: that repentance and faith are inseparable graces. Wherever you find true repentance, you find true faith, and sometimes they shade into each other so that it is difficult to analyze as to the order of their coming, as the whole exercise of the mind is sometimes merged into such a short space of time that it is hard to distinguish the order of the exercise. But wherever there is true penitence, true penitential prayer, then there is salvation.

I close by .giving one other scripture: "How shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard?" So you see that the calling upon Him is intimately connected with faith. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word of God. Whoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, but how shall they call upon Him in whom they have not believed? That publican looked to that. He did not ask pardon outside of Christ, but in Christ. He did not ask pardon on account of any good in him, for he was all evil, but he asked ’pardon on account of the good in Christ, for He was all good. The sinner’s prayer is, "In Christ, have mercy on me." And so then Peter tells this man to repent and turn from his wickedness and pray God for forgiveness, which is equivalent to saying, "Repent and pray and have faith," for they are all involved in it. Now I submit this case to you. It shows to what particular object we should address ourselves in dealing with sinners. What is it? When Philip went down there among those sinners, what did he do? The Scriptures say that he held something up before those people. What was it? He preached Christ unto them. And that connects back ith what Luke says, that through His name repentance and remission of sins should be preached.

Let us hold up Christ before the sinner, because if he is to be saved, he is to be saved in Christ. If God’s power reaches him, or God’s omniscience reaches him, or God’s love reaches him, it reaches him where that blood is and nowhere else. Hold up Christ then as the object to which he should look.

Then we should preach repentance and turning from sin, producing works meet for repentance, or reformation; faith in the divine Redeemer, that faith evidenced by calling upon the name of the Lord, by asking God for Christ’s sake to forgive sin. That is the order of the gospel.

I don’t know who of you here are not converted, that have perhaps mere nominal church connection, or maybe you don’t belong to any church. I do press this thought on you-that if your heart is not made right in the sight of God, nothing avails you; that no man can see the kingdom of God that is not born from above; that no man can find forgiveness of sin outside of the atonement made by Jesus Christ, and that no man can get that who won’t ask for it. You have got to ask for it. The Word of God declares that the wrath of God is poured out upon all men that call not upon His name.

Now this is a question of your needs. Do you, as a sinner, not as a righteous person, get down on your knees and ask God to forgive you? You say, "Yes, I do that." On what account do you ask it? I press that question on you. Why should He forgive you? I assure you that unless your faith takes hold of the blood shed in the atonement by the Lord Jesus Christ though you should pray until doom’s day, your prayers will avail nothing. Your prayer should be, "God be merciful to me a sinner, through the propitiation for sin, for Christ’s sake."