The Pulpit Commentary — Acts — Volume 2 — Section 76

The message wriUen out in the facte of the gospel. Paul led up his hearers to Christ. To us religion is Christ. The resurrection is the seal on the promise of life. II. Consider Tlll!l APPLICATIONS 01!' BUOH A TRUTH. 1. The essential and supreme question of every man's existence is what he is to God, and what God is to him. Our life in him. 2. There is only one religion which meets man's wants, that which has come from God. 3. The religion of Christ is adapted to the humblest as well as the highest mind, to the lowest as well as the loftiest condition.-R. Vers. 32, 33.-0pportunity. "Now when they beard," etc. The hearing of truth is the demand of man's position. Temptation "of such minds as the Athenians" to regard themselves as able to be their own teachers. Facts often stranger than fiction. Philosophy has been a great obstacle to Christianity. So still intellectual pride and prejudice. The two classes of hearers still represented-mockers and t1iflers, I. RESPONBIDILITY IN HEARING, 1. Application of mind. Concentration on the subject. Openness to persuasion. 2. Surrender of the heart to truth. The messac,e not addressed simply to reason. A speculative spirit may easily admit a cloud ~f objections and difficulties which obscure the Word. Procrastination m,sa.ns indifference. Enough is already understood and felt to justify practice. II. SPEOIAL ORIBIS OF OPPORTUNITY, Whether in listening to the Word, or in receiving Divine invitation through providential circumstances, opportunity at times gathera to a point where resistance becomes guilt. So it was in the Jewish nation at the advent of Christ. So at Athens by the visit of Paul. The Word may be taken away: 1. By the work of sin within us, hardening the heart. 2. By changes in the outward life. 3. By summons into eternity. "Take heed how ye hear;" " Work while it is yet day;" "Now is the accepted time."-R. Vere. 2, 3.-The work of three sabbath days. It was a great idea, and much more than mere idea with Paul, to" redeem the time." He would not have stayed a continuolli three weeks in one place doing nothing at all, much less doing what was good for nothing, or for very little. 'l'he time he gave, therefore, to a subject, and the stress he laid upon it, may fairly measure to a certain degree his persuasion of the value of it. There are subjects which depend upon their very mode of treatment, not in the merely ordinary sense for producing greater or less impression, but for apprising us of the estimate they purport to put on themselves. And this thought may certainly help to guide us, even in these days. It may help work conviction as to the reality of things long "believed among us," but perhaps never more attacked or less boldly grasped than at this present. For we here may notice that- I. PAUL TAKES THE OLD 'fESTAMENT SCRIPTURES AS HIS TEXT-DOOK. 1. It would have been particularly like Paul to have dealt with his subject or subjects through a period of upwards of three weeks, on their own merits, and not have laden them with any unimportant connection with things that had gone before. His method shows that the connection was not deemed unimportant by him. 2. If Paul does deal with great subjects, which might have been discussed on their own merits, in very close connection with their associations with the Old Testament, it were inevitable that those associations must cling to them. They will in a sense bring with them the atmo- sphere, or the fragrance ofit, to which they have been accustomed. 3. There can be no doubt, no contradiction, as to the connection of the promised Messiah in the Old Testa- ment with the sacrifices, which are really its most unique feature; nor can there be any doubt of the great sacrifices themselves, that they were in the main propitiatory. II. THE DEATH OF CHRIST IS THE OLD TESTAMENT TOPIC SELECTED OUT OF ALL OTHERS BY PAUL, For what conceivalile purpose should the apostles have taken all the trouble and encountered all the dangers they dfli, in order to reconcile the minds of the Jews, to whom they preached, to the identity of the foretold Messiah of the Scriptures with the Jesus crucified of late at Jerusalem? There could be no satisfactory reason for this but one, that the suffering of Christ unto death was the central requirement of the whole position. While the Jew from first to last objected to the subject (1) because the crucifixion of Christ lay at his door and on his conscience; (2) and because the Jew had never consented to believe in such e. King as Christ, such a grandeur as tho gr~1!,de1U of the crosa fQl' him, or such e. method of nicovuring aud exalting the distinctiou  '18 THE AOTS OF THE .APOSTLES. [CH, l.Vll, 1-34,