Bible Commentaries

Chapter16

Prayer

Almighty God, we do not know thy way: it is in the sea, it is in the great waters, it is in the midst of the firmament of heaven, and the clouds are the dust of thy feet, and thine eye shineth like lightning from the east even to the west. We have heard of thee, and our hearts have trembled with fear. We have thought of thee, and our spirits have glowed with love. Sometimes clouds and darkness are round about thee; sometimes the light is thy robe. We cannot tell what thou art, or what thou wilt be to us at any moment, but this great prayer we can utter through Jesus Christ our sacrifice: Give us thy Holy Spirit, and it shall be well with us. Let thy grace dwell in our hearts, beautiful as a guiding cloud in the daytime, radiant and warm as a flame of fire in the night season. If our hearts are filled with thy grace, there shall be no room for the enemy. Fill our hearts with thy truth, and our minds with thy light, as thy truth and thy light are known in the Son of God, and in our soul there shall be the seal of heaven.

We thank thee for thy book, so grand in doctrine, so wondrous in its outlook, so tender in its benedictions, so beautiful in all its gospels. May we know it, love it, reproduce it in our lives, and show that we are men in whom is the indwelling and inspiring God. May our life be a secret like thine own; may men take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus and have learned of him. May we surprise them not by our information, but by our wisdom. Behind and above all that we say, may there be a mystery of light and of love, not to be solved by the common understanding. May we in Christ, thy Acts 7:1-53

1. Then said the high priest, Are these things so?

2. And he said, Men, [omit Men] brethren, and fathers, hearken; The God of glory [the term is applied to the Incarnate Word, John 1:14] appeared unto our father [Stephen if even a proselyte might use this expression] Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, [his ancestral home was called Ur of the Chaldees] before he dwelt [the Greek word implies a settled residence] in Charran,

3. And said unto him, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall shew thee. [The destination of the emigrants was known before they started from Ur.]

4. Then came he out of the land of the Chaldans, [with Babylon for its capital] and dwelt in Charran: and from thence, when his father was dead, he removed [caused him to migrate] him into this land, wherein ye now dwell.

5. And he gave him none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on: yet he promised that he would give it to him for a possession, and to his seed after him, when as yet he had no child.

6. And God spake on this wise, [ Genesis 15:13-14] That his seed should sojourn in a strange land; and that they should bring them into bondage, and entreat them evil four hundred years.

7. And the nation to whom they shall be in bondage will I Exodus 3:12.]

8. And he gave him the covenant of circumcision: [given the year before Isaac was born] and so Abraham begat Isaac, and circumcised him the eighth day; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat the twelve patriarchs.

9. And the patriarchs, moved with envy, [the same word is used Acts 17:5] sold Joseph into Egypt: but God was with him, [the argument being that as God's presence is not circumscribed, neither should his worship be confined to place].

10. And delivered him out of all his afflictions, and gave him favour and wisdom in the sight of Pharaoh king of Egypt; and he made him governor over Egypt and all his house.

11. Now there came a dearth over all the land of Egypt [the oldest MSS. omit the land of"] and Chanaan, and great affliction: and our fathers found no sustenance.

12. But when Jacob heard that there was corn in Egypt, he sent out our fathers first [before he himself went away from Canaan into Egypt].

13. And at the second time Joseph was made known to his brethren; and Joseph's kindred was made known unto Pharaoh.

14. Then sent Joseph, and called his father Jacob to him, and all his kindred, threescore and fifteen souls.

15. So Jacob went down into Egypt, and died, Acts 7:54-60

TRUTH would always seem to produce a double effect. Some time ago we read that when the people heard Peter's speech they were pricked in their hearts, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the Apostles, "Men and brethren, what shall we do?" When the people heard Stephen deliver substantially the same message they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed on him with their teeth. This is the history of preaching. It is the history of preaching today. This wonderful divergence of feeling is developed in every congregation where the truth as it is in Jesus is proclaimed with faithfulness and power. The Gospel is either a savour of life unto life or of death unto death, that is to say, it either saves men or it kills them. No man is the same after a sermon that he was before. It is a solemn thing to be in the sanctuary at all, and no man can pass through the services of the sanctuary, with any interest either on one side or on the other, and be precisely the same at the end as he was at the beginning. In proportion as this is not so the Gospel is not preached. We must not confound the permanent with the accidental. If men can hear sermons now, and be simply amused or pleased, gratified or delighted, something has been left out in the statement made by the preacher. He has concealed the Lord's sword, he has thrown water upon the burning fire, he has delivered but a one-sided message. "The word of the Lord is sharper than a two-edged sword; it pierceth to the dividing asunder of the joints and marrow." Where preaching has become child's play, and hearing a dreary mind's pious entertainment, then the great features of apostolic preaching have been lost. Have you come hungering and thirsting after righteousness, earnestly desiring to see the Father, the Acts 7:54-60
(continued)

LET us now turn to the fourth aspect of the great speech of Stephen; let us look at this defence as refuting some practical mistakes. We form notions of things, and we say such notions stand to reason, and that being so rational they must of necessity be right and wise, and therefore indisputable. It is very strange to observe how our theories and preconceptions are upset by facts. Given such a case as is represented in the seventh chapter of the Acts , to find what the issue would be, and there would be no difficulty in outlining an issue of considerable pleasantness. As a matter of fact, the issue on the one side at least upsets some of the most mischievous sophisms which vitiate human reasoning. For example, you would say without hesitation that character will save a man from harm. You would maintain this doctrine with some vehemence, it is so plausible. The very sound of the terms is a kind of argument in its favor. With this good character there will be a good passage through society. Character will be its own introduction. Character will be its own defence. Where there is nobleness of character there will be ananimity of blessing. That would be so in certain conditions of society, but those conditions are not present in our life. There are certain conditions in which holiness is an intolerable offence. It mars the bad harmony of the occasion. It stops the flow of evil thinking and evil speaking: it is a check that must be got rid of. Stephen was a man of blameless character, wise, benign, kind to everybody, a servant of the Church, devoted to his ecclesiastical business. Yet when he was called upon to make his defence, and had made it, his character stood him in no good stead. He was treated as an offender. The meanest criminal could not have received more malignant treatment. What, then, comes of your theory that character is its own defence? A bad world cannot tolerate good men. If we were better we should be the sooner got rid of. It is our gift of compromise that keeps us going. It is our trick of playing the double game that saves us from Stephen's fate. We are ambidexters. We are as clever with one hand as we are with the other, and it is this faculty that may be preserving us from a similar catastrophe.

You would further say that truth needs only to be heard in order to be recognized and accepted. Truth carries its own music. The fragrance of truth is wafted upon every wind, and all passers-by know the sacred odour. Only let a man stand up in his age and speak the truth with a clear voice, with a keen accent, with a burning earnestness, and men will recognize it, and will fall down loyally before it and will assist in its coronation. That would be the theory, what is the fact? Show where truth has ever been crowned so readily and harmoniously. Truth spoken to the true will always be so received but truth spoken to the false invites a conflict and challenges a contest of strength. It is not enough, therefore, that you have the truth in order to make your way in the world instantly and successfully. You have to consider the conditions in which you speak the truth. If men were really in earnest one sermon would convert the world. But men are not in earnest. All parts of a man are not equally in earnest. There is a possibility of a man being divided against himself in this matter. Part of his nature votes one way, and part another, and therefore truth must stand outside until the controversy can be in some degree adjusted.

Then you would, in the third place, frankly say that regularly constituted authorities must be right. You smile at the suggestion that one odd man can have the truth, and seventy regularly trained and constitutionally appointed men do not know the reality of the case in dispute. You would contend that it stands to reason that it must be so. Do you mean to say that the court does not understand the truth better than an anonymous blasphemer called Stephen? Anonymous so far as social influence and social standing are concerned. Consider the case. The Church must be right; the court must be infallible. We cannot allow ourselves to be bewildered and befooled by eccentric reformers and by individual assailants. All history reverses such opinions and misconceptions. The truth, it would seem, has always been with the one man. It is when a man is alone that you get him in reality and in the sum total of his being. The moment another man joins him he is less than he was before. The moment a man enters into a congregation he loses the most of himself. The sense of individual responsibility is almost lost. Your friend is not the same to you in a crowd as when he is face to face with you alone. Then you have him in the totality of his powers, affections, sympathies. So the Almighty seems to have elected the individual man, and through him to have spoken to the crowd, the multitude, or the race. It does seem singular that the regularly constituted authority should be wrong, and that the one man should have God's message. But he has not God's message simply because he happens to be one. He must not inspire himself. No man is called upon to make a self-election. You are not great because you are eccentric. You are not wise because you are solitary. Do look at both sides, and indeed all sides of the case, and gather wisdom from the widest inferences. But being called, being inspired, having within you the assurance that what you know is the truth, and being prepared to establish that assurance by daily sacrifice, daily humiliation, and daily pain, go forward, and at the last the vindication will come.

Another mistake which this great defence refutes is that personal deliverance in trial is the only possible providence. Look upon the case. Stephen is one; the enemy is many. God is supposed to be looking on. What did God do for Stephen? Let us sit in judgment upon this, and suppose a possible interposition of the divine hand. Instantly we should say there is only one thing that God can do, and that is to lift his servant right up above the crowd, and place him securely beyond the reach of his infuriated opponents. What a childish solution of the difficulty! Why that is the very idea that would occur to the simplest mind that could look at the case. It is the first rush at a popular riddle. There is nothing in that answer. If that were God's method of deliverance, his method of prevention would balance it, therefore there would never be any need of deliverance at all. Does the infinite Father wait until his children are in this position, and then simply extricate them from personal danger? If that could be his method at one end, it would be balanced by a similar method at the other; and therefore, let us repeat, his children never could be in any difficulty at all. There must be something better, something grander than this. What it is I cannot tell until I have read the revelation. But my whole nature says that simply to loose the man and send him home from among the crowd would have been a defence worthy only of a manufactured deity. What did God do for Stephen under the painful circumstances of the case? He wrought upon the inner spirit and thought of His suffering one. The miracle was wrought within. "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." Any miracle of merely personal deliverance set side by side with that miracle of grace would be an anti-climax and a pitiful commonplace. If Stephen had been delivered bodily, and had then uttered this prayer, it would have been but a mocking sentiment. It would have belonged to an effervescent nature, that being unduly urged by a sense of selfish gratitude wanted to play a magnanimous part in relation to parties who had been defrauded of their prey. But wounded, worsted, overwhelmed, without comfort, without hope, sure only of one thing, and that thing death, he said, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." It was a moral miracle; it was a spiritual conquest; and any religion that will evoke such a spirit in its believers, and lead them under such circumstances to offer such prayers, needs no vindication of its divinity. This is the eternal miracle of Christian faith. It enables men in the most distressing circumstances of life to forgive animosity. Who can perform that miracle but God? Silence might have been a sullen acquiescence in an inexorable fate. But under such circumstances, to pray, to pray for others, to pray for forgiveness, is a sublimity of faith we can never know, because we can never live the martyr's life. But if in these high, heroic heights we cannot so discover the sublimity of Christian faith and patience, there are lower levels open to us every day, along which we may move with the grace of men who can suffer and be strong, who can be stoned and yet pray for the forgiveness of those who inflict injury upon us. If we could pray for forgiveness on account of others, and could really ourselves forgive, our Christianity would be its own unanswerable and triumphant defence.

Another mistake which is refuted by this issue is, that life is limited by that which is open to the eyes of the body. It would have been a poor case for Stephen but for the invisible. "If in this life only we have hope, we are of all men most miserable." Moses endured as seeing the invisible. The old pilgrims sandalled their feet and grasped their staves with a braver confidence day by day, because they "sought a country out of sight." Should we be the sport of accident, feathers driven by the fickle wind, if we could see heaven open? We should bear our losses as if they were increase of riches if we could see the opening heavens. Stephen said, "I see heaven opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God." We see nothing now but flat surfaces badly coloured, paint without blood, feature without fire. We have not had the baptism of suffering which gives a man the inner vision—heart-eyes, to whose penetration there is no night. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. I see—that is the cry of Christian experience. I see the meaning. I see the further shore. I see God's purpose. These sights come upon a man in sublime tragedies, in last crises, in the hour and article of death. In great dangers God shows us great sights. What did Elisha ask the Lord to do in the case of the young man who saw the gathering hosts surrounding his prophet master? Elisha's brief but comprehensive desire was "Lord, open his eyes that he may see." That is all we want. The enemy is near, I know it: but the friend is nearer. God can come in where there seems to be no room. Like his own light he fills all space, and yet leaves room for every mountain, planet, and blade of grass. He fills all room, and leaves all. The angels are nearer than we suppose. Things are not most against us when they so seem to be. What we want is vision, sight of the heart, inner eyes, and these are the gift of God.

"I see." Stephen's spiritual faith made him forget that he had a body. Think of trusting his spirit to a God that had allowed his body to be killed! This is the sublimity of faith. Did Stephen say, "God has taken no care of my body, and therefore he will take no care of my spirit?" That would be rough reasoning, a chain without links, an empty nothing. Stephen showed in this crisis what the spirit can do. He showed what it is in the power of the heart to accomplish. When the spirit is inspired, when the heart is sanctified, when heaven is opened, when Christ rises to receive the guest, there is no flesh, there is no pain, there is no consciousness but in the presence of God, the absorption of the heart in the infinite love. If you feel the body it is for want of the thorough sanctification of the spirit. If the flesh is an encumbrance to you it is because the spirit has not finished its education. When the heart seizes God as an inheritance it fears not them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. The supreme concern of man ought to be not as to the fate of his body, but as to the destiny of his soul. What has happened to the Church? Nothing that was not foretold by Christ. This whole tragedy had been foreseen and fore-described. Before Christ sent out his messengers he told them exactly what would befall them. He took care to reveal all the sorrow, he spared nothing of the dark side of the picture. He said to the messengers in effect, "They will hate you, persecute you, starve you, bring you up before kings and Judges , they will not hear half that you have to say, they will spit upon you, they will tear away from you every endearment of life, they will turn your day into night, they will mingle poison in your drink, they will tear you bone from bone, they will set fire to your quivering flesh, they will thrust you down into a nameless and dishonoured grave—if they can." The messengers went out not under summer skies, blue as the morning of heaven, but they went out under a cloud of infinite thunder, and they knew that at any moment that terrific cloud might burst and they be overwhelmed in the storm. How have you gone out from Christ? To exchange opinions, to bandy notions with men to compare your last intellectual drivellings one with another? You have gone out to take a year's rest, during which time you may revise your theological conclusions. You will not be martyrs! You will come home without a spot upon your garments that will betray hard travelling, and without a single sign of anybody having ever been fluttered for one moment by your most innocuous presence. How have you gone out from Christ? To be his ministers, to speak the truth, to set fire to error, to beard the lion in his den, to challenge the hosts of darkness? Then Christ's word will be realized in your case, for the word of the Lord endureth for ever.

Stephen condensed a long life into a few days. But recently we have seen he was appointed to his office, and now he lies bruised, mangled, killed. Yet he had a long life. He may live again in the young man at whose feet his clothes were laid down. That young man may rave awhile, but in his raving he is only trying to quiet his conscience. It will be needful for this man Saul to be very violent for a time, in order to keep out of his ears appeals he would rather not hear. He will try to find in madness a solace for what he has done. It is a trick of our fallen nature. We do the wrong thing, and then run away in order to lose in violence the sense of what we have done. Stephen's resurrection in certain spiritual senses may take place in Saul. We do not know who is hearing us, or who is watching us, or into whom we are transfusing our spirit. We live in one another. God maketh the wrath of man to praise him. What if by-and-bye we find Saul modelling his own speeches upon the lines of Stephen's defence, and longing to be stoned, that he may find in this suffering some compensation for painful memories? We cannot tell. Life is a mystery, and time its explanation.