PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
Expositions of Holy Scripture: the Acts
Alexander Maclaren, 1826-1910 · 250,385 words · 359 reading sections
Peter After His Escape
II. Note Peter's message to the brethren. James, the Lord's brother, was not an Apostle. That he should have been named to receive the message indicates that already he held some conspicuous position, perhaps some office, in the Church. It may also imply that there were no Apostles in Jerusalem then. We note also that…
560 wordsSECTION 182JOHN MARK (Acts xiii. 13)
ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D. TO THE REGIONS BEYOND (Acts xiii. 1-13) WHY SAUL BECAME PAUL (Acts xiii. 9) THE FIRST PREACHING IN ASIA MINOR (Acts xiii. 26-39) LUTHER--A STONE ON THE CAIRN (Acts xiii. 36, 37) REJECTERS AND RECEIVERS (Acts xiii. 44-52; xiv. 1-7) UNWORTHY OF LIFE (Acts xiii. 46) 'FULL OF THE …
370 wordsSECTION 183To The Regions Beyond
'Now there were in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers; as Barnabas, and Simeon that was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen, which had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. 2. As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul…
718 wordsSECTION 184To The Regions Beyond
If we strictly interpret Luke's words ('I _have_ called them'), a previous intimation from the Spirit had revealed to them the sphere of their work. In that case, the _separation_ was only the recognition by the brethren of the divine appointment. The inward call must come first, and no ecclesiastical designation can d…
669 wordsSECTION 185To The Regions Beyond
Paul was not flinging bitter words at random, or yielding to passion, but was laying the black heart bare to the man's own eyes, that the seeing himself as God saw him might startle him into penitence. 'The corruption of the best is the worst.' The bitterest enemies of God's ways are those who have cast aside their ear…
712 wordsSECTION 186Why Saul Became Paul
'Saul (who also is called Paul)' ...--ACTS xiii. 9 Hitherto the Apostle has been known by the former of these names, henceforward he is known exclusively by the latter. Hitherto he has been second to his friend Barnabas, henceforward he is first. In an earlier verse of the chapter we read that 'Barnabas and Saul' were…
756 wordsSECTION 187Why Saul Became Paul
And his theory of conversion, which he preaches in all his Epistles, is but the generalisation of his own personal experience, which suddenly, and in a moment, smote his old self to shivers, and raised up a new life, with new tastes, views, tendencies, aspirations, with new allegiance to a new King. Such changes, so su…
733 wordsSECTION 188Why Saul Became Paul
It is the very inmost principle of the Gospel. The principle that influenced the servant in this comparatively little matter, is the principle that influenced the Master in the mightiest of all events. 'He who was in the form of God, and thought not equality with God a thing to be eagerly snatched at, made Himself of n…
734 wordsSECTION 189Why Saul Became Paul
His name, in its commemoration of his first success, would act as a stimulus to service and to hope. No doubt the Apostle, like the rest of us, had his times of indolence and languor, and his times of despondency when he seemed to have laboured in vain, and spent his strength for nought. He had but to say 'Paul' to fin…
685 wordsSECTION 190John Mark
I beseech you, then, learn your true life's task. Learn how to do it by identifying yourselves with the humbler brethren whom you would help. Learn the spirit in which it must be done; the spirit of lowly self-abasement. And oh! above all, learn this, that unless you have the new life, the life of God in your hearts, y…
780 wordsSECTION 191John Mark
Yes, and we find exactly the same thing in all kinds of strenuous life. Many begin to run, but one after another, as 'lap' after 'lap' of the racecourse is got over, has had enough of it, and drops on one side; a hundred started, and at the end the field is reduced to three or four. All you men that have grey hairs on …
776 wordsSECTION 192John Mark
The Church manifestly sympathised with Paul, and thought that he took the right view; for the contrast is very significant between the unsympathising silence which the narrative records as attending the departure of Barnabas and Mark--'Barnabas took Mark, and sailed away to Cyprus'--and the emphasis with which it tells…
678 wordsSECTION 193John Mark
So, my friends, let us learn this lesson, that the largest reward that God can give to him that has been faithful in a few things, is to give him many things to be faithful over. Beware, all of you professing Christians, lest to you should come the fate of the slothful servant with his one burled talent, to whom the pu…
860 wordsSECTION 194The First Preaching In Asia Minor
And so the temptations which have been sorest may be overcome, the sins into which we most naturally fall we may put our foot upon; the past is no specimen of what the future may be. The page that is yet to be written need have none of the blots of the page that we have turned over shining through it. Sin which we have…
656 wordsSECTION 195The First Preaching In Asia Minor
I. The substance of the narrative coincides, as it could not but do, with Peter's sermons, but yet with differences, partly due to the different audience, partly to Paul's idiosyncrasy. After the preceding historical _resume_, he girds himself to his proper work of proclaiming the Gospel, and he marks the transition in…
716 wordsSECTION 196The First Preaching In Asia Minor
The second Psalm, from which Paul's first quotation is made, is prophetic of Christ, inasmuch as it represents in vivid lyrical language the vain rebellion of earthly rulers against Messiah, and Jehovah's establishing Him and His kingdom by a steadfast decree. Peter quoted its picture of the rebels, as fulfilled in the…
601 wordsSECTION 197Luther--A Stone On The Cairn
'For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep, and was laid unto his fathers, and saw corruption: 37. But He, whom God raised again, saw no corruption.'--ACTS xiii. 36, 37. I take these words as a motto rather than as a text. You will have anticipated the use which I purpose to m…
667 wordsSECTION 198Luther--A Stone On The Cairn
Everybody knows how he could write and speak. He made the German language, as we may say, lifting it up from a dialect of boors to become the rich, flexible, cultured speech that it is. And his Bible, his single-handed work, is one of the colossal achievements of man; like Stonehenge or the Pyramids. 'His words were ha…
773 wordsSECTION 199Luther--A Stone On The Cairn
But I do not mean to say that the truths which Luther rescued from the dust of centuries, and impressed upon the conscience of Teutonic Europe, are getting antiquated. I only mean that his connection with them and his way of putting them, had its limitations and will have its end: 'This man, having served his own gener…
823 wordsSECTION 200Luther--A Stone On The Cairn
And then closely connected with this central principle, and yet susceptible of being stated separately, are the other two; of neither of which do I think it necessary to say more than a word. Following on that great discovery--for it was a discovery--by the monk in his convent, of justification by faith, there comes th…
720 wordsSECTION 201Luther--A Stone On The Cairn
II. Be it so; be it so! Let us turn to the other thought of our text, the perpetual work of the abiding Lord. 'He whom God raised up saw no corruption.' It is a fact that there are thousands of men and women in the world to-day who have a feeling about that nineteen-centuries-dead Galilean carpenter's son that they ha…
719 wordsSECTION 202Jewish Rejecters And Gentile Receivers
Luther was once found, at a moment of peril and fear, when he had need to grasp unseen strength, sitting in an abstracted mood, tracing on the table with his finger the words '_Vivit_! _vivit_!'--'He lives! He lives!' It is our hope for ourselves, and for God's truth, and for mankind. Men come and go; leaders, teachers…
695 wordsSECTION 203Jewish Rejecters And Gentile Receivers
Their experience in Antioch was important, because it forced Paul and Barnabas to put into plain words, making very clear to themselves as well as to their hearers, the law of their future conduct. It is always a step in advance when circumstances oblige us to formularise our method of action. Words have a wonderful po…
670 wordsSECTION 204Jewish Rejecters And Gentile Receivers
'As many as were ordained to eternal life believed.' The din of many a theological battle has raged round these words, the writer of which would have probably needed a good deal of instruction before he could have been made to understand what the fighting was about. But it is to be noted that there is evidently intende…
691 wordsSECTION 205Jewish Rejecters And Gentile Receivers
The usual results followed the preaching of the Gospel. The Jews were again the mischief-makers, and, with the astuteness of their race, pushed the Gentiles to the front, and this time tried a new piece of annoyance. 'The brethren' bore the brunt of the attack; that is, the converts, not Paul and Barnabas. It was a cun…
477 wordsSECTION 206Unworthy Of Life
'... Seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.'--ACTS xiii. 46. So ended the first attempt on Paul's great missionary journey to preach to the Jews. It is described at great length and the sermon given in full because it is the first. A wonderful sermon …
664 wordsSECTION 207Unworthy Of Life
This then is the worthiness. II. How we pass sentence on ourselves as unworthy. It is quite clear that 'judge' here does not mean consider, for a sense of unworthiness is not the reason which keeps men away from the Gospel. Rather, as we have seen, a proud belief in our worthiness keeps very many away. But 'judge' he…
373 wordsSECTION 208'Full Of The Holy Ghost'
'And the disciples were filled with joy, and with the Holy Ghost.'--Acts xiii. 52. That joy was as strange as a garden full of flowers would be in bitter winter weather. For everything in the circumstances of these disciples tended to make them sad. They had been but just won from heathenism, and they were raw, ignora…
809 wordsSECTION 209'Full Of The Holy Ghost'
I suppose I need not remind you of how, if we pass beyond this book of the Acts into the Epistles of Paul, his affirmations do most emphatically insist upon the fact that 'we are all made to drink into one Spirit'; and so convinced is he of the universality of the possession of that divine life by every Christian, that…
700 wordsSECTION 210'Full Of The Holy Ghost'
A universal gift, that is to say, a gift to each of us if we are Christians, an abundant gift that fills the whole nature of a man, according to the measure of his present power to receive--that is the ideal, that is what God means, that is what these first believers had. It did not make them perfect, it did not save t…
738 wordsSECTION 211'Full Of The Holy Ghost'
Then again let me remind you of how, from another of our instances, there comes another thought. The result of this majestic, supernatural, universal, abundant, divine life is practical sagacity in the commonest affairs of life. 'Look ye out from among you seven men, full of the Holy Ghost and of wisdom.' What to do? T…
802 wordsSECTION 212Deified And Stoned
Brethren, we have wasted much time and effort in trying to mend our characters. Let us try to get that into them which will mend them. And let us remember that, if we are full of faith, we shall be full of the Holy Spirit, and therefore full of wisdom, full of grace and power, full of goodness, full of joy, whatever ou…
715 wordsSECTION 213Deified And Stoned
But that joyful conviction, which shot through the crowd, reveals how deep lies the longing for the manifestation of divinity in the form of humanity, and how natural it is to believe that, if there is a divine being, he is sure to draw near to us poor men, and that in our own likeness. Then is the Christian doctrine o…
773 wordsSECTION 214Deified And Stoned
In verse 16 Paul meets an objection which rises in his mind as likely to be springing in his hearers: 'If there is such a God, why have we never heard of Him till now?' That is quite in Paul's manner. The answer is undeveloped, as compared with the Athenian address or with Romans i. But there is couched in verse 16 a t…
659 wordsSECTION 215Dream And Reality
Luke shows no disposition to easy belief in miracles. He does not know that Paul was dead; his medical skill familiarised him with protracted states of unconsciousness; so all he vouches for is that Paul lay as if dead on some rubbish heap 'without the camp,' and that, with courage and persistence which were supernatur…
727 wordsSECTION 216Dream And Reality
Do these facts import anything at all to us? Are we to dismiss them as simply the products of a stage which we have left far behind, and to plume ourselves that we have passed out of the twilight? Even if we listen to what comparative mythology has to say, it still remains to account for the tendency to shape legends …
681 wordsSECTION 217'The Door Of Faith'
'And when they were come, and had gathered the church together, they rehearsed all that God had done with them, and how he had opened the door of faith unto the Gentiles.'--ACTS xiv. 27. There are many instances of the occurrence of this metaphor in the New Testament, but none is exactly like this. We read, for exampl…
765 wordsSECTION 218The Breaking Out Of Discord
'And certain men which came down from Judaea taught the brethren, and said, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved. 2. When therefore Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and disputation with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to Je…
707 wordsSECTION 219The Breaking Out Of Discord
No doubt the other side was represented in the deputation. Jerusalem was the centre of unity, and remained so till its fall. The Apostles and elders were the recognised leaders of the Church. Elders here appear as holding a position of authority; the only previous mention of them is in Acts xi. 30, where they receive t…
490 wordsSECTION 220The Charter Of Gentile Liberty
'Then all the multitude kept silence, and gave audience to Barnabas and Paul, declaring what miracles and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles by them. 13. And after they had held their peace, James answered, saying, Men and brethren, hearken unto me: 14. Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Ge…
692 wordsSECTION 221The Charter Of Gentile Liberty
The next speaker is James, not an Apostle, but the bishop of the Church in Jerusalem, of whom tradition tells that he was a zealous adherent to the Mosaic law in his own person, and that his knees were as hard as a camel's through continual prayer. It is singular that this meeting should be so often called 'the Apostol…
773 wordsSECTION 222The Charter Of Gentile Liberty
The variation from the Hebrew text requires a word of comment. The quotation is substantially from the Septuagint, with a slight alteration. Probably James quoted the version familiar to many of his hearers. It seems to have been made from a somewhat different Hebrew text in verse 17, but the difference is very much sl…
801 wordsSECTION 223The Charter Of Gentile Liberty
Probably James drew up the document, which has the same somewhat unusual 'greeting' as his Epistle. The sharp reference to the Judaising teachers would be difficult for their sympathisers to swallow, but charity is not broken by plain repudiation of error and its teachers. 'Subverting your souls' is a heavy charge. The…
406 wordsSECTION 224A Good Man'S Faults
'And Barnabas determined to take with them John, whose surname was Mark. 38. But Paul thought not good to take him with them, who departed from them from Pamphylia, and went not with them to the work.'--ACTS xv. 37, 38. Scripture narratives are remarkable for the frankness with which they tell the faults of the best m…
754 wordsSECTION 225A Good Man'S Faults
The other instance of weakness was in some respects of a still graver kind. The cause of it was the old controversy about the obligations of Jewish law on Gentile Christians. Paul, Peter, and Barnabas all concurred in neglecting the restrictions imposed by Judaism, and in living on terms of equality and association in …
758 wordsSECTION 226How To Secure A Prosperous Voyage
III. The grave issues of small faults. Comparatively trivial as was Barnabas's error, it seems to have wrecked his life, at least to have marred it for long years, and to have broken his sweet companionship with Paul. I think we may go further and say, that most good men are in more danger from trivial faults than fro…
759 wordsSECTION 227How To Secure A Prosperous Voyage
What had they to help them to understand it? Well, they had this fact, that in all the former part of their journey they had been met by hindrances; that their path had been hedged up here, there, and everywhere. Paul set out from Antioch, meaning a quiet little tour of visitation amongst the churches that had been alr…
700 wordsSECTION 228How To Secure A Prosperous Voyage
Then there is another plain, practical consideration that comes out of this story, and that is, Do not be above being taught by failures and hindrances. You know the old proverb, 'It is waste time to flog a dead horse.' There is not a little well-meant work flung away, because it is expended on obviously hopeless effor…
726 wordsSECTION 229How To Secure A Prosperous Voyage
Did you ever count how many '_straightways_' there are in the first chapter of Mark's Gospel? If you have not, will you do it when you go home; and notice how they come in? In the story of Christ's opening ministry every fresh incident is tacked on to the one before it, in that chapter, by that same word 'straightway.'…
600 wordsSECTION 230Paul At Philippi
'And on the sabbath day we went forth without the gate, by a river side, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down, and spake unto the women which were come together.'--ACTS xvi. 13 (R.V.). This is the first record of the preaching of the Gospel in Europe, and probably the first instance of it. Th…
678 wordsSECTION 231Paul At Philippi
A deed is great according to its sphere. What bears on and is confined to material things is smaller than what affects the understanding. The teacher is more than the man who promotes material good. And on the very same principle, above both the one and the other, is the doer of deeds which touch the diviner part of a …
664 wordsSECTION 232Paul At Philippi
We have here an instance of the law of small, silent beginnings. Let us go back to the highest example of everything that is good; the life of Jesus Christ. A cradle at Bethlehem, a carpenter's shop in Nazareth, thirty years buried in a village, two or three years, at most, going up and down quietly in a remote nook of…
1,064 wordsSECTION 233Paul At Philippi
And that message was preached with earnestness. There is one point in which every successful servant of Jesus Christ who has done work for Him, winning men to Him, has been like every other successful servant, and there is only one point. Some of them have been wise men, some of them have been foolish. Some of them hav…
455 wordsSECTION 234The Riot At Philippi
'And when her masters saw that the hope of their gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas, and drew them into the marketplace unto the rulers, 20. And brought them to the magistrates, saying, These men, being Jews, do exceedingly trouble our city, 21. And teach customs, which are not lawful for us to receive, neither…
762 wordsSECTION 235The Riot At Philippi
The charge against the little group took no heed of the real character of their message. It artfully put prominent their nationality. These early anti-Semitic agitators knew the value of a good solid prejudice, and of a nickname. 'Jews'--that was enough. The rioters were 'Romans'--of a sort, no doubt, but it was poor p…
771 wordsSECTION 236The Riot At Philippi
We are not told that the Apostles prayed for deliverance. Such deliverance had not been always granted. Peter indeed had been set free, but Stephen and James had been martyred, and these two heroes had no ground to expect a miracle to free them. But thankful trust is always an appeal to God. And it is always answered, …
707 wordsSECTION 237The Great Question And The Plain Answer
Paul's answer is blessedly short and clear. Its brevity and decisive plainness are the glory of the Gospel. It crystallises into a short sentence the essential directory for all men. See how little it takes to secure salvation. But see how much it takes; for the hardest thing of all is to be content to accept it as a …
679 wordsSECTION 238The Great Question And The Plain Answer
I. The question that we should all ask. I know that it is very unfashionable nowadays to talk about 'salvation' as man's need. The word has come to be so worn and commonplace and technical that many men turn away from it; but for all that, let me try to stir up the consciousness of the deep necessity that it expresses…
792 wordsSECTION 239The Great Question And The Plain Answer
Then how does it come that men go on, as so many of my friends here now have gone on, all their days paying no attention to that need? Is there any folly, amidst all the irrationalities of that irrational creature man, to be matched with the folly of steadily refusing to look forward and settle for ourselves the prime …
698 wordsSECTION 240The Great Question And The Plain Answer
What did that poor heathen man know about the Lord Jesus Christ? Next to nothing. How could he believe upon Him if he knew so little about Him? Well, you hear in the context that this summary answer to the question was the beginning, and not the end, of a conversation, which conversation, no doubt, consisted largely in…
898 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.