Acts 5:12-42 - Homiletics

The advancing tide.

The gospel of God's grace in Jesus Christ crucified and risen again had issued from Jerusalem at the bidding of the Lord. Would it ever stop? would it ever cease to advance? would it ever meet with obstacles sufficiently strong to turn back its current and to arrest its progress? When the flowing tide is hurrying towards the shore, some particular wave is checked by an opposing rock, and is shivered into spray before it can reach the shore. But wait a little and the rock is sunken beneath the waters, and the waves roll on unchecked to their goal. Sometimes a temporary lull seems to have fallen upon the languid waves, and three or four in succession do not reach the bounds which their predecessors had attained. But yet a moment and the tide advances in its unbroken strength, and never fails to fulfill its destined course. It is just so with the gospel of Christ. Its advance is sure. Its strength is in the unchanging will of God. It has a course to run; it will run it. It has an end to fulfil; it will fulfill it. Hindrances, obstacles, defiance, it will meet with from man in a thousand varying forms. The opposition of hard unbelief in those who boast that they have intellect and philosophy on their side; the opposition of adverse creeds seeking to supplant the true faith; the fierce persecutions of ungodly power hoping to stop by force the progress of a hated truth; the divisions and dissensions of Christians among themselves; the abounding of iniquity and the chilling of Christian love; the sudden rise of some heresy or apostasy;—these and such like hindrances may occasionally seem to check the onward flow of the waters of life, and at times to threaten its further advance. But, like the irresistible tide of the mighty ocean, God's purpose is pressing surely on; and by the time decreed by his eternal wisdom the whole "earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea" ( Isaiah 11:9 ). The chapter now before us gives a most striking view of this irresistible advance as well as of the obstacles opposed to it. One hundred and twenty men and a few poor, weak women are, as it were, the seed which the hand of the Lord has sown in an uncongenial soil. Immediately around them was all the bigotry of Pharisaic Judaism, clinging with desperate and impassioned obstinacy to the traditions of their fathers, and ready to kill and be killed on behalf of the Law of Moses, on the one hand; and the hard, cold skepticism of the Sadducees on the other, denying with agnostic incredulity the existence of anything beyond the ken of their eyes or the grasp of their hands. In the wider circle of the outside world there was the iron heathenism of Rome. Imperial tyranny and Caesarean power; military force and the despotism of the sword; sensuality of the deepest dye; idolatry of the most aggressive and all-engrossing kind; philosophies the most adverse to the cress of Christ. How and where could the gospel make its way? Would it not die in the upper room where it was born? But what do we read? "There were added to the Church about three thousand souls;" "Many believed, and the number of the men was about five thousand;" "Believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women;" "The number of the disciples was multiplied;" and so on, marking the constant advance of the Church of God. And yet all the while every effort was being made to check this advance. There were already "prisons oft." There were the fierce threatenings of those who had power to execute them; there were stripes inflicted; there was the majesty of the law and the authority of rulers arrayed against them. But it was all in vain. The preachers could not be silenced; the preaching could not be stopped; the miracles could not be hid; men's hearts would turn to Christ when they heard of his grace; multitudes would leave the side of the persecutors and join themselves to the persecuted. The tide would flow on. It rushed over the heads of the opposing rocks. And then worldly wisdom came in with its prudent counsel, "Leave these men alone." And so for a time the work of God went quietly on, gathering strength and acquiring solidity from day to day, in preparation for future hostility from the world without, and future hindrances from corruption within. But these first fortunes of Christianity have left to the Church in all ages a model of the conflicts that await her, and of the only method of obtaining victory. They show us that through opposition and contradiction, in sunshine and in storm, amidst encouragements and under depression, the servants of God have to persevere steadily in proclaiming the grace of God and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, have to go forward in an unswerving obedience to the commandment of Christ and an unfaltering confidence in his almighty power, and that success is sure. "On this rock will I build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."