Bible Commentaries

Chapter9

Prayer

Almighty God, our heart's desire is to climb thy hill and find audience with thee in the heavens. Is there not an appointed way? Is not Jesus Christ, thy Acts 3:1-11

1. Now Peter and John [it is to John that Peter turns for comfort after his fall] went up together into the temple at the hour of prayer, being the ninth hour.

2. And a certain man lame from his mother's womb was carried [we may carry those we cannot heal], whom they laid daily at the gate [so massive that twenty men were required to open or shut it] of the temple which is called Beautiful [named only here], to ask alms of them that entered into the temple.

3. Who seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple asked an alms.

4. And Peter, fastening his eyes [a look which read character] upon him with Isaiah 35:6] stood, and walked, and entered with them into the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God.

9. And all the people saw him walking and praising God.

10. And they knew that it was he which sat for alms at the Beautiful gate of the temple: and they were filled with wonder and amazement at that which had happened unto him.

11. And as the lame man which was healed held Peter and Acts 3:12-26

12. And when Peter saw it, he answered unto the people, Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this [man]? or why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk?

13. The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers hath glorified his Son [servant: Isaiah 42:1] Jesus: whom ye delivered up, and denied him in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined [had decided] to let him go.

14. But ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you.

15. And killed the Prince [the same word is rendered Author in Hebrews 12:2] of Life, whom God hath raised from the dead [better, raised once for all]; whereof we are witnesses.

16. And his name through faith in his name hath made this man strong, whom ye see and know: yea, the faith which is by him hath given him this perfect soundness [completeness; the only place in the New Testament in which the word occurs] in the presence of you all.

17. And now, brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye did it, as did your rulers.

18. But those things, which God before had showed by the mouth of all [all is omitted by the east MSS.] his prophets, that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled.

19. Repent [change your minds] ye therefore, and be converted [this word "converted" occurs eleven times in the Acts], that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.

20. And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you.

21. Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution [the only instance of the word] of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.

22. For Moses truly [indeed] said unto the fathers, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you.

23. And it shall come to pass, that every soul, which will not hear that prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people.

24. Yea, and all the prophets from Samuel and those that follow after, as many as have spoken, have likewise foretold of these days.

25. Ye are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed.

26. Unto you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities.

A Greater Miracle

THIS speech is a greater miracle than the cure of a lame man, in connection with which it was spoken. The great miracles are all wrought within. To heal a man with lame feet and weak ankle bones is a very small thing compared to the utterance of this eloquent and thrilling address. Compare Peter before the Resurrection with the Peter of this speech, and tell me what has happened. Surely a great cure has been wrought upon him. Who would have known the man again—the ardent, impulsive, often-blundering Peter of the pre-resurrection period? Who could have thought that ever he would have dawned into such glory, and have broken forth into such fluent and noble eloquence? Up to this time all his sentences have been broken; his speech has rather been timid with the spirit of an enquirer; we have never found in him, except upon one occasion, the boldness of an inspired expositor. But now he takes the case in hand with masterly completeness and ease, and fearing no man, because not speaking the words of man, he explains the position and vindicates it at every point with sublime and telling effect.

Peter was no conjuror. In himself the miracle had first been wrought, therefore, to work a second miracle upon the lame man became a commonplace to apostolic power. You cannot work miracles, because you yourselves are not miracles. We are but mechanical reformers; we approach the whole case from the outside, and with many a lame suggestion we attempt to mend the world's sad condition. We must be greater ourselves than any work which it is possible for ourselves to do. When we attain that superiority over our own efforts, when Peter is a greater miracle than Peter's cure, we shall see lame men leap up on every side, and behold them walking, and hear their loud thrilling songs of thankfulness because of recovered hope and newly-given strength.

In this speech Peter vindicated his apostolic primacy. You might have asked questions concerning Peter's superiority before, but after this speech every objection must be hushed. Its grandeur is so superlative, its strength is so massive, its simplicity is so frank, its mastery is so abounding, that when the grand voice ceases all men feel that the first place belongs to Simon Peter. Any primacy that is not based on merit must go down. For a time you may bolster up a man, you may preach him up, you may, in many ways, contribute to his transient primacy; but any superiority of position that is not based upon fundamental and vital merit falls before the testing touch of circumstances, and before the impartial test of time. So let this Book of God stand or fall. The priests cannot keep it up, though they be robed with white garments and crowned, and have staves and mitres in their hands. Parliaments and thrones cannot give the Bible its lasting primacy over human thought and human actions. If the inspiration be not in the Book itself you cannot communicate it; and if the inspiration really be in the Book itself you can never talk it down. By force you may quiet it for a time; but truth is eternal, it returns. Men leave it, supposing it to be dead, but it rises and reasserts its sovereignty.

Thus our position is a very independent one as regards the Bible, and as regards all the miracles which the Bible records. I do not receive the Bible because it is recommended to me by official authority. The Bible commends itself to me. It affrights me, it charms me; it appalls me by the outflashing of sudden light and unexpected glory, so that I run away from the dazzling revelation. Then it seeks me when I am weary, and lonely, and sad, and hopeless; and when all life has gathered itself into the image of a deep, grim grave. Then it talks to me as no other book can talk. So, as Peter's primacy rests on Peter's sovereign power of mind, and sovereign power of moral influence, so the primacy of the Bible over all other books rests upon what the Bible itself can do beyond all other books to give light and strength and hope to human life.

The danger is that we be not just to such men as Peter. We may take this speech as a mere matter of course. It is so that we take too many speeches. We hear an eloquent man drop sentence after sentence of singular beauty, and think that he does so simply as a matter of course. In every such sentence there is a drop of sacrificial blood. The sentences that move the world and live through all time are heart-drops. The foolish hearer may allow them to pass without recognition or appreciation, but those who have spent long time in the sanctuary of thought, and have often bowed themselves down at the altar with wonder, will recognize in such speeches as Peter's the very grace and glory of Divine truth. Consider what this man was; how he had been brought up; how often he had stumbled and blundered; how the inspired writers never shrink from telling his mistakes and sins. Then see him, in the presence and hearing it may have been of the most learned men of his day, giving this exposition and no other. Do not go beyond the four walls of the case itself, and upon this speech you may risk your greatest and deepest commendation of Peter as a thinker, as a saint, as an apostle, as an expositor of heavenly mysteries. To such men the world owes all its higher wealth.

True eloquence is forced out of men. This speech was not a prepared oration. It was not something which he took from his secret place and read, as if the whole trick had been arranged—the cure, and the wonder, and the eloquence. The sermon was as extemporaneous as was the event itself. This eloquence came out of the circumstances which had just transpired. The looking people make the eloquent preacher. All the people fastened their eyes upon Peter and John; and, as the lame man had drawn out of Peter spiritual power by his magnetic look, so the people drew out of Peter still higher power by their marvelling—their sceptical yet gracious wonder. In reply to that wonder, see how Peter declines any merely public primacy based on purely personal considerations. Peter stood before the people, not in his personal capacity, but in his representative capacity. Said he, "This is not our doing." "Whose doing is it?" "It is the Lord's doing; and it is marvellous in our eyes." And, with the infinite cunning of inspired wisdom, he magnified the occasion by attaching the miracle to the omnipotence of a God about whose existence the Jew had no doubt. Said he, "The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified His Son, Jesus." The Apostles did not snatch at praise for themselves. The original leaders of Christian thought and sentiment did not leap upon pedestals which the people, in their idolatrous wonder and love, set up as temptations in their way. They maintained their royal supremacy, their all-dominating sovereignty, by operating in the presence of the people merely as the servants and instruments of God. We must return to that allegiance to the Divine name and throne. The books you have written were written by the finger of God, in so far as they are true, and wise, and useful. The lives you have lived you have lived by faith in the Son of God, in so far as they have been true, beneficent, and honorable. You must resent merely personal eulogium. Accept it as an encouragement in the meantime; lift the wondering eyes from yourself to God, and you shall have added power every day.

Not only does Peter decline the implied eulogium of the wondering look, he takes upon himself to cut the people to pieces. No great progress can be made in moral reform until our apostles slay us. Flattery will do nothing for us—at most, will but mislead or bewilder us. We want knife work; we want to be pierced to the heart, told our sins one by one, and brought to the bar of judgment man by man, like so many hopeless and self-condemned criminals. Hear his speech in proof of what I have said. Speaking of Jesus Christ, he says, "Whom ye delivered up, and denied him in the presence of Pilate.... But ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you; and killed the Prince of Life." That man must succeed in his ministry, or he must be killed! Such a speaker of such an address cannot occupy a middle position. A man who so assails his contemporaries must have a good cause with which to sustain his heart and renew his courage, or he will be borne down, and the heel of the insulted public shall bruise his head. When did the Apostles speak with bated breath and whispering humbleness? When did they try to make the best of the case by appeasing the spirit of the people, and by an endeavor to placate sensibilities which had been strongly excited? They never lowered the tone of their impeachment. Christ's death was never less than a murder, and the men who had taken part in the Crucifixion were never treated as other than murderers. There is no euphemism here; there is no attempt here at the smoothing down of very harsh asperities. On the contrary, we have here the bitter, stern, tragical, truth, and that truth has to be repeated day by day, and age by age, until every man feels that he himself has been the murderer of Christ.

So we come back to a truth with which this message has made us familiar. We are not to put away the Crucifixion as an historical circumstance, nineteen or twenty centuries old. The Crucifixion takes place every day, and every day we nail the Son of God to the Cross. Realize this circumstance, let all its teaching sink deeply into our hearts, and there will go up the old cry of contrition and self-condemnation, and after it will come times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord.

In the17th verse the tone changes with wondrous skill. The Gospel is not an impeachment only—it is an offer. Peter says, "I wot that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers;" and he introduces this new phase of the subject with a word which united himself with the people—he called those who heard him by the name of "brethren." "And now, brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers." Is that a novel suggestion on the part of Peter himself? Has he been considering how to extricate these people from the awfulness of their position? Nothing of the kind. This17th verse repeats the very prayer of Christ Himself upon the Cross. When Jesus was dying he said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Peter, following along the same line of thought, says, "I wot that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers." So he opens a great door of hope. The Church ought to be fertile in its invention of opportunities for the worst men to return. Sometimes the Church may suggest reflections which the self-condemned man dare not originate in his own heart. Drop a word of hope wherever you can. Tell the very worst man that the door of hope, if not wide open, is yet ajar, and that the very faintest touch of his fingers will cause it to fall back to the very wall. Learn from apostolic preaching the true range and power of apostolic eloquence. Nothing could be sterner than his words, and yet nothing could be more hopeful than the application of those words. In reality, Peter said to those who were about him, "Begin again. Leave your ignorance behind you. Now take a true view of the case, and under this newly-dawning light fall down before God and ask his pardon."

Then comes the grand exhortation in which we find the keyword of apostolic preaching, and the secret of apostolic success, and that word is found at the beginning of the19th verse, "Repent." That is a word which the Church has lost. If now and again we use the word "repent," we use it as a common word, and do not throw into it all the soul's urgency. It has worked wonders in days of old. It is like the sword of which David said, "Give me that; there is none like it." This word "repent" goes to the root and to the reality of the case. Who has repented? I do not ask who has been alarmed by threatened consequences, and who, in order to escape a penalty, denounced in emphatic language, has professed a change of habit and of purpose. My question is a deeper one. Who has felt heart-brokenness on account of sin? real, genuine contrition on account of spiritual offence against God? Have we not forgotten that old word "repent" in its original signification and uses. Has the Church become too dainty in her tongue to use such words? The word "repent" is a multitudinous word: it carries many other words with it. It is a challenge, an accusation, a threatening, a hope, a law, a gospel. Truly, this word is a polysyllable in its theological suggestions, and therefore ought to be often opened out and examined, and its infinite treasures ought to be well weighed and estimated by the Christian thinker.

There is another word in the19th verse of as much importance as the word "repent;" that word is "therefore." You would not suppose the word "therefore" was a very important one; yet I hold it to be as important as any other word in the whole text. It refers to the historical and logical argument upon which Christianity is founded. "Therefore" is a logical term. "Therefore" indicates the issue and effect of an argument. "Therefore" is a word which is not given first, but last; and it carries in itself the meaning and the force of all that has preceded. Peter then, having gone back to "the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers," and having traced the history of the Crucifixion, and having explained the secret by which the lame man had been healed—the secret of faith in the name of the Son of God—and having pointed to the probable ignorance of those who had crucified the Saviour, and having shown that all this Christian idea was a fulfilment of words spoken by the mouth of all God's prophets, he gathers himself up in this one supreme effort, and, with the masterliness of an inspired preacher he says, "Repent ye, therefore"—for no sentimental reasons, but on historical grounds—on the ground of the ancient dealings of God with his people, and because of the culmination of those dealings in the recovery of the man who is standing there, the living proof of an undisputed miracle.

Then, after his wont, Peter's speech proceeds like a deep, broad river—full of wisdom, full of thought, full of hope, full of sympathy, and he ends with these warm words, "Unto you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you." Apostolic preaching was tender; apostolic preaching touched the soul of the hearer, the wound of the spirit, with a most delicate hand. Apostolic preaching was religious preaching, spiritual preaching, personal preaching, direct preaching, and it kept itself to this one theme—the turning away men from their iniquities. And because it did so it turned the world upside down. Preacher of the Living God, come back from all intellectual vagaries, romances, and dreamings, and stand to your one work of accusing men of sins, accusing yourself first and most deeply, and then revealing the living Son of God, who came with one purpose only, the purpose of blessing men—not by giving them new ideas, not by giving them stolen comfort, not by tampering with their moral position, but by "turning away every one of you from his iniquities." Blessing and iniquity never can co-exist in the same heart. The iniquity must go, then the blessing will come. The wickedness must depart, and then angels will hasten into the soul from which it has gone out. Let us know, believe, and say from time to time with frankest speech that no man can really be blessed who has not been turned from his iniquities. Ye cannot drink the cup of God and the cup of devils.