Bible Commentaries

The Sunday Sleeper

Acts 20:9

In considering Eutychus, I purpose looking first at the things which may be said in excuse of his famous sleep, and then pass on to look at what was blameworthy in it.

I. And first of all, in excuse of this poor young Acts 20:17

I wish to speak to you on the happenings recorded in Acts 20:24

To be a minister is the master-purpose of Paul's life; to be a faithful minister his supreme ambition. We, too, have a ministry; we, too, call others our ministers: then let us examine our ideals, and see what it is we mean.

I. Now, behind this Christian conception of ministry, there are two other conceptions, those of the priest and the prophet (1) We may dislike the word priest, because it has become associated with evil meanings, but do not let us forget that the priestly man has always been a fact in human life. There is a sweetness of disposition about them, a delicacy of fibre, a moral sensitiveness, a spiritual susceptibility, which marks them out amid a multitude as the anointed of the Lord. (2) Again, there is the conception of the minister as the prophetic man. The priest moves in the world; the prophet stands aloof from it. The priest is the reconciler between God and man; the prophet has no element of reconciliation in his nature. The priest allures, constrains, charms; the prophet terrifies, alarms, overwhelms us. It was because the prophet and the priest were joined in Paul's ideal of ministry, because he conceived that to serve the world in the fullest sense, it was necessary not only to comfort the weary, but to attack with unsparing purpose the shams, the pretensions, the deadly hypocrisies of daily, customary, permitted and respectable life, but men rejected his ideal and slew him.

II. And now go one step farther, and you reach the vision of the ideal ministry which Paul exemplifies. He is a servant and a witness. (1) And what is a servant? We have advanced a long way, no doubt, since the day when the servant was a serf, whose very life was in the hand of his master; but far as we may advance in brotherhood and compassion, the essential restrictions of service still remain. (2) The ministry meant for Paul one other thing, and the chief of all—it was a testimony. He was a witness to two things: that once he was a sinner, that now he was a sinner saved. And that is the crowning element in the Christian ministry. We base everything upon the experience of the individual.

III. From this whole conception of the ministry is not another thing clear: that he who lives in closest touch with his fellow-men is the truest minister of Christ? We want two things today; the secularisation of the ministry, and the socialisation of the churches. The minister must throw off his professionalism or parish; and the church must throw off her ideals of respectability.

IV. Now let us mark Paul's final estimate of his lifework. Life is to be measured by its end, its spirit, its achievement; and life for Paul has had so supreme an aim that to attain that aim death itself is a price worth paying.

—W. J. Dawson, The Comrade Christ, p297.

References.—XX:24.—T. F. Crosse, Sermons (2Series), p234. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxix. No1734. A. G. Brown, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxviii. p402. J. G. Greenhough, The Mind of Christ in St. Paul, p268. Expositor (5th Series), vol. v. p33. XX:25.—Ibid. (4th Series), vol. ix. p3. XX:26.—A. G. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons for the Christian Year, pt. iii. p139. XX:26 , 27.—C. G. Finney, Penny Pulpit, No1685 , p519. W. P. Balfern, Lessons from Jesus, p303. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vi. No289.

The Sacrifice of God the Father

Acts 20:28

Let us consider the sacrifice of God the Father in the redemption of the Church of God. I discern three elements in it which we shall take in order.

I. The first element in the sacrifice of God the Father was the impoverishment of the Godhead. One of the strange and repeated statements of Scripture is that the Lamb was slain from before the foundation of the world. That statement is clear enough in its meaning, but it shades off into dark and inscrutable mysteries. The mysteries are those involved with the creation of a world which should require the slaying of the Lamb. But the plain meaning is that the purpose of redemption lay as a burden and a sorrow and a sacrifice on the heart of God long before the morning stars sang together or the sons of God shouted for joy. But the hour came when the purpose which had lain as a burden on the heart of God was manifested in time. As Milton sings so choiringly in his noble hymn:—

The Shepherds on the lawn,

Or ere the point of dawn,

Sat simply chatting in a rustic row,

When such music sweet

Their hearts and ears did greet

As never was by mortal fingers struck.

For Christ was born in Bethlehem. But was there no minor strain in the music in the heart of God the Father? What did it mean to the Godhead—to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—when the Son passed out and left the Father and Spirit behind? It meant the impoverishment of the Godhead. The sacrifice of the Incarnation was not only the pain and loss of Christ, but the pain and loss of God the Father also. "Behold I show you a mystery." And yet we can dimly realise the impoverishment of the Godhead when the Son emptied Himself of His glory and left the throne. The relationship and the intimacy of God the Father and God the Son can never be fully figured by earthly things. For it was not simply as the loss of the dearest child or of a beloved wife. It was the sending forth of a part of Himself, whereby the Godhead was impoverished. Therefore Paul in the rapture of his inspiration said, "The church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood".

II. The second element in the sacrifice of God the Father lay in His infinite sympathy with the sufferings of Christ. There is a sympathy which may be intense, heartbreaking, reaching to torture. Given a strong imagination which can discern another's pain, and a tender and unselfish heart to feel it, the suffering of sympathy may be as poignant and as hard to bear as the actual stroke. John Howard seldom entered one of the dismal dungeons of Europe without tears. He often stood among prisoners, whose state was one of abject wretchedness, the most miserable man of them all. Macaulay tells us that his father—when Governor of Sierra Leone—could not see a company of female slaves pass him by, and realise, with his vivid sympathy, the lives of shame and torture to which they were doomed, without being dazed and stunned for hours. The biographer of Mrs. Booth asserts that she could not see a neglected sore or witness a ruthless wrong without a pain which sometimes became physical nausea. It may be questioned if the pang of sympathy be not greater at times than the actual suffering itself.

III. The third element in the sacrifice of God the Father is His share in the agony of the Cross.

There are two truths which stream from this rich vein of doctrine. (1) The first is the simplest yet deepest truth of the Gospel. It is this—the proof given of the almost incredible and quite inexhaustible love of God.

(2) The second truth is God's infinite pain at sin.

—W. M. Clow, The Gross in Christian Experience, p14.

References.—XX:28.—H. Woodcock, Sermon Outlines (1Series), p51. Bishop Welldon, The Gospel in a Great City, p220. Expositor (4th Series), vol. v. p184; ibid. (6th Series), vol. iii. p277; ibid. vol. x. p280. XX:28-32.—J. Parker, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvii. p391. XX:29.—Expositor (6th Series), vol. vii. p287; ibid. vol. ix. p221. XX:30.—Expositor (4th Series), vol. vi. p194. XX:31.—J. Thew, Christian World Pulpit, vol1. p246. XX:32.—Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlviii. p30. O. J. Jones, Christian World Pulpit, vol1. p238. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vi. p67. XX:34.—Ibid. (6th Series), vol. ii. p259. XX:35.—J. Stalker, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii. p282. H. R. Heywood, Sermons and Addresses, p202. F. D. Maurice, The Acts of the Apostles, p314. J. Keble, Miscellaneous Sermons, p298. H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons, vol. ii. p1. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. pp352 , 421; ibid. vol. ix. p101; ibid. (5th Series), vol. ii. p375; ibid. vol. vi. p267; ibid. (6th Series), vol. xi. p45. XX:37.—W. P. Balfern, Lessons from Jesus, p149. XX:38.—Dinsdale T. Young, The Gospel of the Left Hand, p237. XXI. XXIII.—Expositor (5th Series), vol. ii. p152. XXI:5.—Ibid. (6th Series), vol. ix. p21. XXI:7 , 8.—A. P. Stanley, Canterbury Sermons, p134. XXI:8 , 9.—R. W. Hiley, A Year's Sermons, vol. iii. p275.