Acts 17

Acts 17:1-9

THE WHO MADE A Acts 17:1-9. THERE was nothing tame about Paul, the preacher. When it was announced that he was to speak, audiences were not lacking. When he finished an address, friends had been made who would die with him, and enemies created who would fain kill him. There were as many prisons in his path as there were pulpits; more mobs than peaceable assemblies. In Philippi, the chief city of Macedonia, he went with his traveling companion to the riverside, and addressed the women accustomed to go there for prayer; but among them was a damsel possessed with the spirit of divination, which Paul, in the Name of Jesus Christ, cast out. The result was a prison cell for both himself and Silas. He seldom entered a city without creating a sensation. The average minister enjoys an occasional ovation, or, once in a long while, stumbles upon an ardent opposition. Paul created both upon every appearance! How and why? Our text answers these questions. It traces it first of all to HIS MANNER“Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apolloma, they came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews: “And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath days reasoned with them out of the Scriptures”. “As his manner was” is a significant phrase. A remarkable man always has a marked “manner”. With Paul it was that of an enthusiast. “As his manner was, [he] went in unto them”. Joseph Parker reminds us that Paul might be expected to change his “manner”. He got into trouble in Philippi. Will he keep out now? He has passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia in silence; has the smitten warrior learned discretion? Since his experience at Philippi has he decided to say nothing to which men can take exception? So it is with the average; but Paul was not the average! “The synagogue of the Jews” was a possible “battle-field, and instantly he stripped for the fight.” The world in the church and the world out of the church is always joining forces to suppress Christian enthusiasm. Their combined attack crushes the spirit of the small man. The country is full of Gospel ministers who boast their discretion, when they ought, rather, to talk of their cowardice; who pride themselves on their prudence when “puerility” is the word. They have been in Philippi. The opposition there was such that they have decided to save themselves from a like experience; so, when they go to Thessalonica, they will avoid all subjects of controversy and do to suit everybody, the devil included. That is an end to enthusiasm and death in the ministry.

There is many a pulpit into which that North Carolina negro should be admitted for prayer. When the white minister had concluded his service in a colored church, he called upon this deacon to lead in petition, and the black brother proceeded after the following manner, “Oh, Lord; gib him de eye of de eagle dat he spy out sin afar off. Glue his hands to de Gospel plow. Tie his tongue to de line of truf. Nail his ear to de Gospel pole. Bow his head way down ‘tween his knees, and his knees way down in some lonesome, dark and narrer valley, where prayer is much wanted to be made. ‘Noint him wid de kerosene ile of salvation and sot him on fire.” There are all too many men in the ministry who have suffered their fellows to “wet-blanket” the fires of God.

They need anointing! Paul’s manner was that of a logician. “Three Sabbath days he reasoned with them out of the Scriptures”. Mark the phrase, “Paul reasoned”. The country is filling up with little men, made in the mold of the modern theological seminary, who think that “reasoning” is a mental process characterizing the skeptic only. If a man doubts God’s Word, then he “reasons”; he may boast himself “a Rationalist”, but if he believes the Book, he is to be dubbed “credulous”, “mentally soft”, a “traditionalist”, if you please. It is remarkable how men can construct theories without regard to facts; and how folly affects an egotist! “Reason!” What boasted Rationalist of the past is to be so much as mentioned with Paul? Logic was native to the great Apostle.

His Epistles are 1900 years old, yet they are worthy a place in the logician’s text-book. “Reason” was Paul’s custom. He reasoned with the Thessalonians “out of the Scriptures” (Acts 17:2); “he reasoned in the synagogue every sabbath, and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks” (Acts 18:4); he came to Ephesus and entered into the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews (Acts 18:9); before Felix “he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come” (Acts 24:25). Here is a man who is an exponent of revelation, yet his method of presenting the same is by “reasoning”! Truly, there is “a reason for the hope that is within us”, and God’s best ministers can make that so evident that men shall not be able to resist their argument. O. P. Gifford said truly that “an appeal to the will that is not preceded by instruction to the intellect amounts to little in the long run. The church has a right to demand of its minister that he grapple with the reasonable doubts of men.” He illustrated: “Some years ago I spent a week in the City of Washington, and passed a midnight with a friend, the astronomer of the Naval Observatory. We walked through the streets of the deserted city and climbed the winding stairway under the dome.

He stepped up into the chair where he spent nights and nights of his life and trained the telescope until within its lens swung the red face of the god of war. He slipped from his place and lifted me into it, and in a moment I had the benefit of years of his training and the best telescope in the American Republic.” The churches of Jesus Christ have a right to demand leaders who can carry their people up to the heights and show them the face of God. When you can do that there will be no further occasion of criticism. Until you can do that there will be occasion of nothing else. In other words, reason confirms faith. The manner of the minister should be that of the logician; his arguments, like those of Paul in the fifteenth chapter of I Corinthians, ought to proceed from premise to conclusion, carrying increasing conviction with every additional sentence. His manner was that of a Bible teacher. “Three sabbath days Paul reasoned with them out of the Scriptures”. The greatest sensation of the first century church was produced by the men who knew the Book. Peter, in the streets of old Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, based his whole appeal upon the plain statements of Scripture; Stephen pointed his sermon by an appeal to sacred history, beginning with Abraham and concluding with Jesus; Philip, in the streets of Samaria, “taught the things concerning the Kingdom of God and the Name of Jesus Christ”.The sensation of the twentieth century is along the same lines, and if it be worth while, it is associated with a knowledge of and impartation of the Sacred Scriptures. It is not produced by the man who discusses the subject, “Dam It; Did She Swear?” as one minister recently did. It does not occur out of such subjects as “The Ass, the Man and the Boy”—a sermon from one of Ӕ ?sop’s fables. The theme is too asinine!

It was a sensation, of course, and yet only a shocking one, when years ago Bishop Potter used the doxology to dedicate a saloon. It may have been a sensation when Crapsey departed from the plain teaching of the Book and was excluded from the Episcopal church, but, after all, it was only an episode, and already the public has almost entirely forgotten that small critic of Scripture.

R. J. Campbell’s “New Theology” was justly described by a fellow critic as a “tempest in a teacup”. Who concerns himself now that a certain fellow introduced the dance into his church, and what other interest than disgust does one feel over the conduct of a Reverend of Los Angeles, who followed his Sunday evening service with a parsonage “Smoker”? When secular Journals must excoriate the conduct of so-called ministers for their immoral methods of reaching men, the whole Church of God has occasion to blush, and Christianity shrinks for very shame. Instead of getting down to the level of the habitue of the dance, the patron of the theatre, the crowd about the card table, it might be well, as the Los Angeles “Time” once suggested, for “ministers to take higher ground and attempt to lift people up, under the conviction that the dwellers in the dank marines would be profited by the pure and bracing air of the high hills of God”. The first essential, then, for the minister who would create a sensation that is worth while is a knowledge of the Book. As one has written, “Law has its literature, medicine its literature; and so the church has its literature, and it is one Book. A man may not know Hebrew or Greek, and yet if he knows the Spirit of the Book, he has mastered its power. And a man may know both Hebrew and Greek and stand high in Oriental scholarship, and not have a conception of the Spirit of the Book. You know the difference between the preacher who skates in a spirit of criticism over the frozen surface of the intellectual side of the Bible, and the man who has come out of its tides as Naaman came out of the Jordan with his flesh like the flesh of a little child. It is possible for a man to know that the Bible has a coat of many colors and not know Joseph; but the churches have a right to demand that the man who teaches should know Joseph whether or not he is posted on his clothing. Newcomb, the astronomer, says we should “cultivate a receptive attitude towards the universe. Go out and lie on your backs on a moonless night in an open space and study the whole dome spangled with fire until it draws you to itself as the sun draws the moisture from the throbbing sea. So should we cultivate a receptive spirit toward the great dome of truth we call the Bible, spangled with history, prophecy, proverb and psalm, with epistle and gospel, until we are drawn from earth into the heat of it, and feel the power of its endless life.” I tell you that the minister who does that will make a sensation. The sorest spiritual need of the twentieth century is “reasoning out of the Scripture”. There is nothing more anomalous than that a man should enter the ministry and essay to teach Christianity without being familiar with the textbook and conforming both his opinions and instruction to the sentences of the same. It was affirmed of Polycarp that there was a remarkable agreement between what he said and what the Scriptures taught. Such agreement did more than make a sensation; it rendered the name of Polycarp almost as immortal as that of Peter and Paul. Paul’s injunction to Timothy, then, is not out of date—“Preach the Word”! HIS MESSAGE Christ is the sinner’s substitute. “Opening and alleging that Christ must needs have suffered”. It would be interesting to take the subjects of Paul’s sermons, as recorded in the Book of Acts, or as revealed in his Epistles, beginning with Romans and concluding with Hebrews, and compare them with the pulpit themes announced in the church column of the daily paper. Paul does not seem to have had time to discuss the ephemeral questions of the day. He kept eternity in his vision, and hence spoke of Christ as the sinner’s substitute. Theodore Cuyler, the grand old man, in late life said, “The atonement is the cardinal doctrine of the New Testament; the very core of Christianity is the sacrificial death of its Divine Founder. All its paths converge on Calvary.

The Gospel does not underrate ethics, or the duties of human brotherhood, or the sublimest display of the Divine love, and it transcends all other revealed truths in saving power. If I could deliver but one discourse to a congregation composed of all nations of the globe, this should be my text, ‘Christ Jesus died for our sins.’” This is the touchstone for every pulpit.

The highest success in preaching lies just there. Paul’s keynote, struck amid the idolatries of Corinth and in defiance of Caesar’s lictors at Rome, has been the secret of converting power everywhere. Luther preached this Gospel of atoning blood to slumbering Europe, and it awoke the dead. Amid all his emphasizings and defenses of the Divine sovereignty, Calvin never ignored or belittled the atonement. Cowper sang of it in sweet strains among the water-lilies of the Ouse, and Bunyan made the Cross the starting point for the Celestial City. John Wesley proclaimed it to the colliers of Kindwood, and the swarthy miners of Cornwall.

Moody’s bells all chimed to the keynote of Calvary. Spurgeon thundered his doctrine of vicarious atonement into the ear of peer and peasant with a voice like the sound of many waters.

The heart of God’s church has in all ages held to this as the heart of all Christian theology, “Christ Jesus died for our sins” This sublime central truth is no more obsolete today than yonder sun in the firmament! That message has never yet failed to produce a sensation. It succeeded in old Jerusalem; it stirred the Samaritans; it failed not in Philippi; it wrought marvelous things in Thessalonica; it accomplished converts in Corinth; it brought even the novel loving Athenians into new love and light. It is the sensation of the ages—the sensation of “life from the dead”! His message made Christ to be Victor over the grave. He was no Rationalist resenting a miracle; he counted it “not a thing incredible that God should raise the dead”. Had he been in London when R. J. Campbell denied this doctrine, or in the Modern Seminary that does the same, he would have charged him and it with preaching “another gospel”, and pronounced against such teaching the Divine curse. A school examiner asked this question, “What is false doctrine?” to which a small boy replied, “Please, sir; it is when the doctor gives the wrong stuff to the people who are sick.” There is no mistake about it; and the doctor of divinity, whose message assures no victory against the grave, deals in the potion of death. “If,” as Paul himself, in his Epistle to the Corinthians, says, “Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.

They also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable” (1 Corinthians 15:17; 1 Corinthians 15:19).This is also a doctrine which produced sensations in the Apostle’s day.

Paul preached it in Antioch, in Pisidia, affirming that God raised Him from the dead, and the sensation brought the whole city out the next Sabbath Day to hear the Word of God. “But the Jews, filled with envy, spake against those things which were spoken by Paul”. Paul preached it at Thessalonica; it created enthusiasm on the one side and opposition on the other. Paul preached it at Athens. “Some mocked, and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter”. Paul preached it before Agrippa, and Sadducees and Pharisees were at once at enmity one with another. Paul preached it before Felix until that auditor was filled with fear, knowing that after the resurrection, the judgment. It is a singular thing that after twenty centuries we have come upon another time of such apostacy in the faith that no doctrine so instantly divides audiences and affects controversy as this same blessed truth of the “resurrection from the dead”.

If one wants a sensation that is worth while, let him preach what the Scriptures say concerning the “resurrection from the dead”. He will excite accusers and accomplish converts, and they combine to make a sensation; but it is a sensation that will honor God, since it is according to the Holy Word. His message affirms Jesus of Nazareth to be the Christ. “This Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ”. That is what Peter said on the day of Pentecost. That is what Stephen asserted when they stoned him to death. That is what Philip affirmed, and hence his converts to the faith! That is the only Gospel! The late Dr.

A. H. Strong wrote after this manner, “I am distressed by some common theological tendencies of our time, because I believe them to be false to both science and religion. How men who have ever felt themselves to be lost sinners, and who have once received pardon from their crucified Lord and Saviour, can thereafter seek to pare down His attributes, deny His Deity and Atonement, tear from His brow the crown of miracle and sovereignty, relegate Him to the place of a merely moral teacher who influences us only as does Socrates, by words spoken across a stretch of ages, passes my comprehension. Here is my test of Orthodoxy: Do we pray to Jesus? Do we call upon the Name of Christ as did Stephen and all the early church?

Is He our Living Lord, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent? Is He Divine only in the sense in which we are divine, or is He the only begotten Son, “God made manifest in the flesh”, in whom is all the fulness of the Godhead bodily? What think ye of the Christ? This is still the critical question, and none are entitled to the name of Christian who, in the face of the evidence He has furnished us, cannot answer that question aright.” If one had told us twenty-five years ago that the time would come when evangelical ministers would look askance at one in their fellowship who held to the belief in a physical resurrection of Jesus Christ and His undoubted Deity, I should have scorned his suggestion. To me the most remarkable evidence at the awful defection from the truth, which has swamped the church, exists in the circumstance that to preach these doctrines to-day is to excite surprise. Certainly we cannot be far from the final apostasy! HIS MEETING I ask you to follow the Apostle and see what is the effect of such a manner, of such a message! We have here the record of one of his meetings, and the features of it are plainly described. It was characterized by converts. “And some of them believed, and consorted with Paul and Silas; and of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few”. That is the test of every man’s manner, of every man’s message! Has he made converts to the faith that is in Jesus? There are men who can make converts to themselves, but Paul made converts to Christ; they believed not on Paul but on Jesus. In a recent great Tabernacle meeting I saw twelve hundred confess Christ publicly. Men ceased from their drinking, turned back from their profanity, left off their lechery, and are trying to live godly in this present world.

Oh, for meetings that make men clean, honest, Christian! A Japanese contractor, who was building a railroad in Japan, is credited with having said, “I have charge of a thousand men and do everything in my power to awaken a sense of honor; but the only men I trust without watching are those who have accepted the Jesus teaching.” Truly, when a man once accepts the “Jesus teaching” you need to watch him no more! He is a convert; his works are in accord with his faith; in him the truth of God has found acceptance; the Christ of God, a conqueror. This meeting excited intense apposition. “The Jews which believed not, moved with envy, took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, and gathered a company, and set all the city on an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people”. There were two classes in that opposition—the cultured, designing Jew, who hated the truth, and the lewd fellows of the baser sort, who could be bought up to execute the wrath of their superiors. It is always so! There is no more interesting study than to run through the Book of the Acts and see what sort of men opposed Paul. Elymas, the sorcerer, set himself against him; the Jews and the Gentiles combined to use him despitefully, and to stone him. Certain officials from Antioch and Iconium stoned the Apostle and threw him out of the city, supposing him to have been dead.

The owners of the damsel, possessed with the spirit of divination, resented his work and saw to his imprisonment. At Athens the cultured mocked him; at Achaia, Gallio, the deputy, made insurrection against Paul and brought him to the judgment seat. In Asia, Demetrius, the silversmith, saw that his business was endangered by the Apostle’s preaching, and he would be made to suffer the loss of the sale of his images of Diana, and he opposed him, and so on. These are not the lowest elements of society; they are called respectable folk; not a few of them well-to-do. From such, opposition to the truth may be expected. I notice that whenever an evangelist preaches the things that excite controversy and produce dissension, the people in the church and out of the church are almost certain to accept it as evidence against him. He has been “indiscreet”; he has been “overbearing”; he has been “offensively personal”. But be it understood that these phrases are not always confirmed by the facts. The Gospel is a sword; its point pricks; its edge cuts when it is skillfully yielded, and sinners turn. There is many a church in this country that would be stirred from top to bottom if Paul preached in it a fortnight. In fact, there is many a church in this country that would not endure one sermon from this peerless Apostle.

The truth throws light on conduct; the truth uncovers character; the truth does more than call to judgment—it is the judgment. The Church of God does not behave always as well as Felix did, hearing the truth with fear and trembling; it does not behave always with the civility of Agrippa—“With a little persuasion thou wouldst make me a Christian.” Sometimes it behaves after the custom of Herodias and cuts off the head of the messenger of truth. Such conduct proves the value of the meeting. A man’s ministry may be as much judged by the enmity excited as by the converts made. The minister who is loved by an unregenerate world, and accepted with favor by gross sinners, has surrendered his Divine commission, silenced the voice of the Gospel and sold the Son of God to a second crucifixion! This meeting disturbed the whole city. “When they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also; whom Jason hath received; and these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus”. It is not difficult to trouble the average city, not hard to put its rulers to confusion. The moment you let in light upon a dank hole where serpents and vermin creep, you disturb and anger them; and the moment a man preaches the Gospel, which is light, in a city where “men love darkness rather than light”, excitement will result. There are not a few folk who would rather see men possessed by the demon of drink, by the demon of gambling, by the demon of lust, by a legion of demons, than to lose their swine; who would rather destroy young women by the score and degrade young men by the hundred than to forfeit their rent from property employed for the most hellish of purposes. These are the people who cry, “Peace, Peace, when there is no peace”! and make the greatest ado when one uncovers their conduct and shows the spots on their cash. If one listened to street conversations, or studied certain newspapers, he would imagine that a righteous mayor was a municipal trouble-maker; that those clean citizens who demand that crime should be called to judgment are a controversial crowd and should be silenced. It is not difficult to see the ground of such a philosophy, or to define its intent. In a car four men were playing cards, drinking and indulging in profane and obscene speech. Just back of them, yet where he was looking into the faces of two, sat a young Christian. He was a fine tenor singer. Suddenly he lifted his voice and began: “There is a fountain filled with blood, Drawn from Immanuel’s veins, And sinners plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains.” One of the four turned and shouted, “What are you making that noise for?” “Why,” said the young man, “you are proclaiming whose servants you are, and I thought I must not be behind you in showing my colors! I am a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ and I am not ashamed of it.” The passengers applauded and the quartette scowled, but slunk away to the smoking car. That was the place for such; only a smoking car ought always to be the tail end of the train. Trouble! Yes, trouble! The true Gospel of the Son of God makes it; but who is to blame? Positive preaching creates it, but whose is the crime? It is disturbing! But the peace of death, the peace of moral dissolution, moral decay is not to be desired. Finally, This meeting exalted Jesus the Christ to rulership. They claimed that Paul and his confederates had put Jesus before Caesar, and it was true! That is where He belonged, “Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come”. Is it not written, “There is none other name given under heaven, among men, whereby we must be saved”? Paul’s ministry was meant to bring men to believe on that Name. The sin of sins is when men fail to accept Jesus as Saviour.

A young man went to Dr. Goodwin for advice. He frankly confessed a black catalogue of iniquities, and finally said, “I think now I have finished with all my sins.” Dr. Goodwin said, “There is one blacker than any you have mentioned, and yet you have committed it.” He inquired despondently, “What is it, Doctor? What can it be?” Dr. Goodwin answered, “It is the sin of rejecting Jesus.” Surely that is the sin of sins!

Drink in itself will never doom a man’s soul; dishonesty in itself will never doom a man’s soul; lust in itself will never lose a man’s life; blasphemy in itself will never destroy; “all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men” (Matthew 12:31). Do that and you are doomed; do that and you are destroyed forever from the presence of God. Unbelief bars the way to salvation. Faith swings its doors ajar!

Acts 17:10-34

AN APOSTLE IN PIONEER WORK Acts 17:10-34. CHURCH history is the record of Christianity incarnate. It is not the study of a movement so much as the history of efficient men. In the New Testament history of the church, Paul holds conspicuous place; in fact, he is the colossal figure. Peter is prominent; the fame of John is forever fixed, but Paul looms far larger than either of them. Over half of the Book of Acts is simply a record of his efficiency, and over half of the Epistles came to us by the way of his pen. As an Apostle, he left large tracts behind him, and in tracing this early church history, we are studying his footprints. The verses of this study—ten to thirty-four—of the seventeenth chapter, are, like other sections of the Apostle’s history, exceedingly suggestive. But you will note that this study does not open with a direct reference to Paul, but rather with the conduct of the brethren. “And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea”. In the fourteenth verse we read again, “And then immediately the brethren sent away Paul to go as it were to the sea”. This leads us to the study of the OF PEACE There are always beautiful brethren in every assembly; sweet brethren! There are men who have a natural indisposition to disturbance. They like an Apostle; they believe in an Apostle; personally, they are with an Apostle; but they are sorry if he stirs up ought. They are like the turtles that sun themselves on the logs of the quiet pond. They enjoy it perfectly if the waters are not disturbed, but the moment they are, they are nervous and want to hide themselves in the serene depths where the waves are not felt and the winds are not heard. The phrase here, “Immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea”, is suggestive. They didn’t wait to see how it would work out. They didn’t propose to take any risk. Peace was preferable to them to any amount of progress, and calm more desirable than the knowledge of the Christ. The brethren of this text are not without their successors. There are always men in every church who can’t brook trouble, and who feel that Christianity is a synonym for a dead calm. Such men have their own method, and without exception, they employ the same. The men who won’t be silenced they send away. It was useless to take Paul aside and counsel him. He was not a man who was open to convictions; his convictions were fixed, and they could not be changed. He believed that he had brought them from above, and it was not the business of men, born from beneath, to readjust them, and already that fact was so clearly revealed that the brethren at Thessalonica knew the futility of any attempt to seal Paul’s lips. The next natural move, then, was to send him away. “If some town must be disturbed, let it be Berea, not our city. If a fuss must be carried on, the farther from our homes the better we like it.” There are a multitude of people like that. That accounts for the removal of many a pastor. He hasn’t preached to suit everybody. He has said something to which some important man does not consent. In fact, he may have offended even the scholarly, and so come nigh to an unpardonable sin. The solution of such a problem is to get rid of the pastor.

It may be admitted that he is an Apostle of Christ. It may be admitted that he preaches in the power of the Spirit. It may be admitted that in personal life and character he is both wholesome and sweet. But since he is a disturber of the peace, he must be passed on. The peace-lovers must get the presiding elder to open a new field for him, and if he doesn’t do it straight away, they will go over his head and make their judgment known to the Bishop. There is many a parish that has sent to it a pastor whose particular reason for arrival on that field is that he might be removed from another.

At the old place they couldn’t silence him, and so they quietly, diplomatically, and even with a show of sanctimoniousness, sent him away. It is sometimes easier to send a good man away than to stand by him. There may be prominent people opposed to him. His message, though from God, may not be acceptable to very important men. It takes a hero to stand by such an one. The truest friends that a preacher ever had will sometimes fail him here. They don’t mean to be cowardly.

They have no intention of giving a wrong counsel. They actually convince themselves that they are working in the Apostle’s behalf. There can be little doubt that these brethren that sent Paul and Silas by night to Berea went back and went to bed, well pleased with themselves, and doubtless went to sleep with a self-congratulatory thought. “It was a fine work that we did to-night. We ended the trouble, and without opposing the Apostle at any point, or taking issue with him on any matter of doctrine, or even suggesting to him that he should be more moderate and careful, we got him away. The disturbed people left behind will bless our names, and we gave the Apostle such a royal send-off that he will not suspect our motives, and after all, Berea may be a better place for them and they may get bigger results there than if they had remained with us. It is a great work!” How many men have reasoned after the same manner, and have thereby escaped a real knowledge of the Divine judgment, and have gone about the business of next day not knowing that they had behaved like cowards and moral truants and spiritual derelicts! But we turn from the conduct of the brethren to the study of Paul, for in him we have A APOSTLE He knew how to husband his time. He employed the night hours in which to make his journey to the next preaching point. At the present time the average business man who must do much traveling conserves his days by traveling at night, and the average preacher and professional man economizes time after the same manner. But we go on board a train, into a perfectly comfortable bed and to a sound sleep. Paul doubtless set out on foot instead, and yet it is fairly certain that even in so far away a time the Apostle was striving to redeem his days. Time is, after all, the true investment. The man who conserves that conserves all the interests of which time is the mint. In his going, the Apostle might have had also in mind the cover of darkness, making his travel the more safe, and yet, this must not be accepted as a sign of his cowardice. The brethren who sent him away could hardly claim a Divine command for their conduct, but the Apostle in going could justly make that exact claim, for Jesus had said, “And ye shall he hated of all men for My Name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved. “But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another; for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come” (Matthew 10:22-23). The minister who goes from one city to another is often far more justifiable and has a far higher claim upon the favor of the Lord than the man who compelled, or even those who only “advised” his going. The truth is that no one city has an absolute claim upon a man’s ministry. We are not commissioned to London, New York, or Chicago, or Philadelphia, or Minneapolis, but we are sent into all the world. Preaching in Berea may be just as essential as giving the Gospel to the Thessalonians. There is no indication in the text that Paul was at all conscious of either cowardice or disobedience to the Divine command. He left no city without a witness to the Word. In Thessalonica there were some persuaded and “consorted with Paul and Silas; and of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few” (Acts 17:4). These remained behind to carry on when Paul had passed to Berea. In Berea, many “received the Word with all readiness of mind * *. Therefore many of them believed; also of honourable women which were Greeks, and of men, not a few” (Acts 17:11-12). These were left behind to carry on the work.

At Athens, “certain men clave unto him, and believed: among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them” (Acts 17:34).The truest evangelists of the Word are those who do not leave cities without a witness. The preacher, who is willing to enter a town, conduct a big meeting, secure a fine collection, and depart from it without concern for its future, is unfit to have ever preached at all. It is not an unusual thing for this writer to receive from an evangelist a letter, saying, “I have concluded a meeting here, and there have been many converts. The people are without a shepherd. Could you send a man to this city to conserve the fruits of this revival?” One instinctively feels that such an evangelist is a sincere and godly man. Paul planned adequate leadership for those left behind. We do not know which of the devout Greeks took over the work in Thessalonica, but probably Jason, but we do know that when Berea was left, Paul even temporarily parted with his dearest co-laborers, Silas and Timotheus, that they should stay to strengthen the new believers. He only called them away when a spiritual exigency arose demanding their presence (Acts 17:15).He visited no city for which his Gospel was insufficient. Athens was not only the center of culture but also the center of gross idolatry. The city was full of idols (Acts 17:16). In the synagogues and in the market place, to the rooms of philosophers, Epicureans and Stoics, Paul carried his message. There is not the slightest hint that he either sought to make a show of learning or to curry favor with the scientists or philosophers, but he trusted the Gospel of a risen Christ to conquer, and as a true warrior of the Cross, he made battle against their very citadel of falsehood. This he found located in Mars’ hill, and expressed in the multiplication of gods and voiced in a great central inscription, “To the Unknown God”. Agnosticism roused his spirit, and over against their lack of knowledge, he sets the revelation Divine. He began where the Bible begins with the “God who made the world and all things therein”, and who is “Lord of heaven and earth”, and “dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though He needed any thing, seeing He giveth to all life, and breath, and all things”; the God who “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation”. This God he preached as the One who might be found if felt after, and who, in fact, is not “far from every one of us: For in Him we live, and move, and have our being”. As a scholar, he was familiar with their poets and quoted them, and taking advantage of their concessions, he carried forth his argument to convince of the true God, not made of “gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device” (Acts 17:16-29), but Himself the author of all things; and here he comes to the true point of every sermon. HE PLED FOR “And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent” (Acts 17:30). He rested that repentance in three circumstances: First, it was the necessity of sin; second, it was the only escape from judgment, and third, it was the preliminary step to saving faith. It was the necessity of sin! At Athens Paul did not so much condemn their immorality, though doubtless that was great. History records the fact that the Greek world, in spite of its matchless physical and mental attainments, rotted morally. But Paul never dealt with surface affairs. He struck at foundation principles. He never gave primary attention to the outcroppings in conduct.

He went to the basal convictions. He never talked of the fruits of life only, but rather of the roots. Sin is not a cause; it is an effect. Men can’t turn from the true God, worship falsely, and escape the effect. They can’t enthrone idols and retain morals. They can’t adopt a false, bestial philosophy of life such as the evolutionary hypothesis and find the fruits of Christian morality in the upper branches.

The gods that men worship determine not only their characters but also their conduct. Paul’s course in Athens is a perfect illustration of his convictions to that effect. Most men are foolish in their attempted reforms. They seek a sober nation by cutting off the supply of liquor. They strive to make people clean by denouncing lust; and an upright citizenship they hope to attain by legislation against gambling. But all the laws of the land can’t restrain the sinners of the same.

That is not to say that the law is not “good and just and true”, nor yet even that it is not desirable, but it is to be reminded of a fundamental truth, namely, that we have to go deeper than the outward conduct of men. We must reach their consciences by the Gospel, accomplish a change of heart by the regeneration of the Holy Ghost and turn them from false faiths to a trust in the true and living One, thereby effecting a real repentance. It was the only escape from judgment.“Because He hath appointed a day, in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead” (Acts 17:31).If there is one thing that man hates more than another, it is the thought of judgment. There never was a worshiper of false gods who wanted to believe in it or even would believe in it. Darwinism will not admit a coming judgment. Unitarianism and Universalism will fly at you in anger if you so much as mention the subject. The same man who denies a coming judgment will deny a risen Christ. Some of them will mock. Others will politely dismiss you with, “We will hear thee again of this matter”. But some will heed. It was the preliminary step to saving faith.“Howbeit certain men clave unto him, and believed: among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them” (Acts 17:34).The Gospel is never presented in vain. We have a sure promise: “As the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: “So shall My Word be that goeth forth out of My mouth: it shall not return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it” (Isaiah 55:10-11). A great commentator said that Paul failed at Athens; that that cultured city rejected his Christ. No, Paul never failed, either at Athens or elsewhere. There were converts made there. There can be converts made anywhere. The young men candidates for the ministry ought to be impressed with this thought. They do not need to be called to churches.

The city and the country place—they constitute a call. The great commission didn’t say, “Go ye into a first-class church,” but rather, “Go ye into all the world”. It didn’t say, “Preach from a pulpit,” but it did say, “Preach the Gospel”. There isn’t even a hint in that commission that church-houses would be essential to ministerial success. Paul utilized synagogues, and we are justified in using sanctuaries. If Paul was not limited to the first, we should not be limited to the second. I came but yesterday from a city and a community in which some time since there were several churches and no Gospel. Four years ago a young man happened to visit the town and had an opportunity to study the same, and the Spirit spake to him saying, “These people perish from famine—not a famine of bread nor of thirst for water, but of hearing the Word of the Lord”. He waited no call to a church. He asked no appointment from a Bishop or Superintendent. He walked into that city, commenced his work, and to-day has the best church in it and a large country territory for his parish. Paul was a pioneer. We need such Apostles now.

Acts 17:27-28

THE OF GOD Acts 17:27-28. THIS text of Scripture gives natural rise to this topic, viz., “The Immanence of God”. If, by holding Paul’s speech before you for some minutes this morning, I shall help any to realize more fully God’s presence, God’s interest, God’s grace, and God’s love and power, then I shall not have presented my thought in vain. Paul was an ingenious preacher. In the Athenian inscription, “To the Unknown God”, he found his theme, and, from that worshipful cry of heathen souls, he started with his auditors upon a search for the God revealed; not that Paul needed to find Him, but that he wanted to introduce these benighted men into a saving knowledge of Him. But ere he could get the true God before their eyes, he must remove the false god—the god of wood and stone. The first lesson they needed to learn is needful still, viz., GOD IS A SPIRIT AND IS We will not stop to discuss the fact that “God is a spirit”. How He can be purely spiritual and yet a Personal Intelligence and Power, is difficult to make plain to those who have not eyes of faith; and for those who have such eyes, that fact has already appeared more clearly than human speech can voice it. But be it understood that the Spirit-Father cannot be found out by the natural senses. We cannot see Him with the natural eye, or lay fleshly hand upon Him, or hear His footsteps with the physical ear. The organs of the physical man are too dull and blunt to discern the Father of Lights, or lay hold upon Him. And yet God is not the unknown and unknowable One. To see the Spirit a spiritual vision is needful; to touch God and know Him is to have a hand redeemed, and to hear His passings, by, an ear of the soul is required. Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Except a man be born from above, he cannot see the Kingdom of God”. The reason is plain. That Kingdom is spiritual and can only be discerned by a vision adapted. The sensualist of the street cannot see any special reason for Christian behavior. It looks to him as if the converted man were playing the fool by turning from the sweet morsel of sin, and commencing on a course of abstemiousness in those things that excite appetite and appeal to passion, and offer satiety to both. The reasons for morality and religion do not appear to him at all.

Why? Because there is in him no faculties of mind to respond to such appeals. He has no high appreciation of the beauty of holiness; he knows no swelling tides of holy thought and purpose, such as sweep through the souls of spiritual men. The natural life can trace the lines of beauty in the face of flesh, in the form of stone, but to see that higher beauty of character, a spiritual vision is required. That is why “the pure in heart shall see God”. People of cultured intellects have considered our professed knowledge of God an assumption, a mental or moral deception, because they are not able by searching to find Him out.

And yet their inability is explained the moment a man admits a spiritual world. It is a higher world and a brighter world than that in which the intellectual egotist lives, and its very brightness blinds him.

In the old days, when, in Italy, they entombed the living in underground and darkened cells, and left them there for years, children were born to the imprisoned parents in darkness, and lived for years without ever seeing the face of man, or the light of heaven’s sun. When at last they were led into the open street above, would they see what the free-born beheld? the light of the sun? Would its beauty appear to them? Then how can a man who has lived in the dungeon of sensuality, the Symirian darkness of unregeneracy, hope to look on the all-glorious God of the Christian’s vision e’en though He stand full before him? Yes, God is known, and men come into His very presence with singing, but He is a Spirit and seeketh such to worship Him as will do it in Spirit. But Paul put before these Athenians a second lesson of large importance, namely this: GOD IS PRESENT IN LOVE AND POWERTheir gods were located; they were quite as often malevolent and impotent, as gracious and potent! Paul then must teach them how different they were from Jehovah—the true and only God. He began by affirming that “the God over all” was not far off. That is where he would begin today in defining our Father, if he stood on the acropolis of the Christian world. We need to have that doctrine restated and affirmed afresh among God’s nominal followers. Most of them—I should say, most of us—don’t believe He is near. To the average Christian God is in heaven, and heaven is some locality afar off! You can detect that conception of God in the sound of his voice at prayer. He doesn’t pray as if he was holding a face to face communication with a friend. It is the telephone pitch he puts into it, and the long distance pitch at that. It is the cry of one who betrays his fear that the words will die on the way to the objective ear. Did you ever hear a man pray, who knew with Paul that God was not far off? I shall never forget my first experience in listening while a mortal man talked to God and told Him what he wanted. It was in my church in Lafayette, Indiana, and Mr. Moody was the man. I can’t describe my feelings. I was overpowered, almost overwhelmed with the sense of God.

He was there, there in that very room, and a mortal man was talking to Him; a mortal man was asking Him to save the sinners present, just as you would ask an athletic friend to lift out of a pit one who was too weighty for your poor strength. Oh, if we would only believe that God—the omnipotent and all-loving—was here in our church, here in our homes, here in our separate praying places, that He is not far from any one of us, we would either cry with Peter, “Depart from me, O Lord, for I am unclean”, or else, with the disciples at Pentecost we would flash instantly into agents of irresistible power! And if He is near, He is not indifferently near. He is not near as the wind is near, all about, pressing upon us and infilling us, and yet indifferent to us, unconcerned about us, unconscious of us. On the other hand, an affectionate earthly father is a poor illustration of God’s interest in His own. He not only watches with abiding concern all that we do, but with unutterable affection He takes account of all that we are, and think! The very hairs of our heads He numbers in the delicacy and minuteness of His love. The smallest of us He no more forgets than a mother is likely to overlook her weakest child!

How much it would be worth to the Kingdom today, if men and women who profess Christ would accept that Scripture fact, that fact of experience also, in all its fullness! How our lives might be redeemed from fear and faithlessness, if only we would never again forget that God who is close to us is our Father, and feels an infinitely good father’s interest! Beecher says, “On the heights above Sedan, on the day of that terrible battle, there were two watchers. One, Sheridan, our own man, watched with all the enthusiasm of a warrior, but in the vast host before him, it is not probable there was one person in whose veins his blood ran. Right by his side King William watched, and there were both his sons, leading parts of that gigantic army. And though both of them, the king and the general, were warriors and watchers, the king’s heart was in his eye.

His, therefore, was the outlook of paternal love!” Oh, brethren, when we struggle against our sins, against our sorrows, against Satan, God is near, and His affectionate, pitying eye is ever upon us, and His interest ought to be a perennial inspiration! He is not present, and impotent! He is present, rather, and omnipotent! No child of His can ever fail before the great Father’s eye. How good the thought! How splendid the contrast to the weakness of the most willing, affectionate and trusted friends of earth! A few years ago a cloudburst occurred some seven miles distant from my boyhood home.

The deluge that dropped from the sky fell on a small frame Baptist Church and crushed it as if it had been an egg-shell. An acquaintance was in the congregation that filled the house at that fatal hour. At her side sat a baby girl when the sudden crash came; and a moment later when a mad sea was foaming about them, this baby girl sprang to her mother’s arms and piteously pled, “Oh, mamma, save me! Save me!” The mother kissed the cry from her baby lips and said in excited breath, “Darling, don’t fear! Mamma can save you!” Just then the foundation of the building gave way, the surging waters dashed over the brave mother, and tore baby from her arms, and from the angry bosom of the drowning mass, she cast back a despairing look, the memory of which remains in that mother’s heart until to-day and hurts as a red-hot iron. Mother was present, but impotent against heartless nature’s destructive wave.

But no power shall ever prevail against our God. His presence is infallible preservation to those who put their trust in Him (Romans 8:35-39).THE EFFECTS OF THESE FACTS OF GOD’S BEING ARE ONLY GOODA moment’s reflection will convince you of that. If God is everywhere present in love and power, what naturally follows? First of all, man is stimulated to sober living. The presence of a good man, of a pure woman, is a silent and often an effective rebuke to most forms of sin. I saw a drunken man attempting to tear down a circus tent, and with fighting against its owners, with the use of vile language, he was a spectacle to delight devils. A quiet Christian man, his uncle, approached him and instantly he was sober, silent, ashamed and sneaking for a hiding place. The women who went into some of our low theatres the other day described a young man of handsome face and splendid dress, who sat drinking in the lustful sight with relish, until suddenly he saw these pure faced women, and he blushed and retired. Every home is purer and happier because the mother’s eye is on it, the father watches his own, the brother watches the sister and the sister the brother. But perhaps Beecher is right in asking, “Than this, where is there anything of equal potency with the recognition and consciousness, ‘Thou God, seest me’?” A man is not only stimulated to sobriety by that consciousness, but he is also inspired to faithful work in whatever he undertakes. Most of us know that our fellow-men will never understand just what we have done and how; whether we have been true to our trust or have yielded to temptations of idleness, ease and deceit. But every man’s work is under God’s eye, and in the end will be accepted or rejected of Him, and all hopes of happiness depend upon the earnestness and honesty of spirit in which he wrought. It is related that when Phidias was carving the statue of Diana to be placed in the Acropolis, he was working at the back side of the head, and was bringing out with his chisel every filament of the hair, when one remonstrated, “That figure is to go up a hundred feet, and stand with its back to the wall; and why be so careful about work that will never appear to the public eye?” “The gods will see it,” he said, and with the same painstaking, he carved on. Finally, let us see that the immanence of God helps a man to endure hardship in life. The pain that a mortal can bear without grumbling, supported by the sense of God’s nearness, no tongue or pen will ever tell. The sorrow that a soul can survive and rise above, supported by the consciousness of God’s presence, would whelm Satan himself in his godless state! Nothing is absolutely too hard for the man who knows that whatever comes, “God is near!” Death itself is conquered every day and every hour by that sweet sense, “God is near!” I often think of that afflicted little fellow who was compelled to submit to a severe surgical operation. The doctor sent the father before him to say such things as might brace the boy to endure the pain. After the father had told his child that the pain would be great and the danger to life imminent, he said, “Son, do you think you can endure it?” “Yes, father, I can, if you will stand by me and hold my hand!” The surgeon was called to his work.

As the keen knife ploughed into nerve, muscle and flesh, through sinew and vein, the brave child looked on and never uttered a cry of pain. The father’s presence and touch helped him to endure!