Acts 20:13-38 - Homiletics

The charge.

The previous section brought before us St. Paul's labors as a missionary and an evangelist. The present section sets him before us as the Christian bishop, delivering his solemn charge to the presbyters of the Church. The qualities brought out in the charge are a transparent integrity of character; a noble ingenuousness, which enables him to speak of himself without a particle of vanity; and a resoluteness of purpose to do what is right, which no persuasion could weaken and no dangers turn aside. And then, besides, there is the most tender care for the Church of God. We see a mind full of anxious thought for the future of the Church which he loved, and loved doubly because he knew that Christ loved it and had died for it. We see a prescience and a wisdom which looked at things as they really were, and not as he wished them to be; which took a true measure of cause and effect; and did all that could be done to provide an antidote to the coming evils which he foresaw. Foreseeing the rise of heresies and false teachers, and the rapid growth of false doctrine, which would make havoc among the flock, he threw the whole vigor of his intellect, and the whole warmth of his affection, into the address by which he hoped to raise up in the clergy before him an effectual barrier against the destruction which he feared. And certainly, if words have any effect; if the eloquent speech of one whose life is still more eloquent than his tongue, can move the hearts and stir the spirits of other men, albeit they be men of inferior mould, to virtue and energy of holy action; if prayer and blessing, bursting forth from the full heart of a chosen vessel of God's grace, have any influence and bear any fruit;—it must be that this eloquent charge, so simple, so forcible, so pathetic, so plainly stamped with the image of Paul's inner man, wrought powerfully upon the minds of the Ephesian presbyters. His words must have brought back the memory of his self-denying and superhuman labors; and many a resolution must have sprung up in their hearts to live for Christ, and to be steadfast unto death in defense of his precious truth. And when they rose up from that parting prayer, with streaming eyes and sobbing voice, surely they must have gone back to the oversight of their flocks with a devotion such as they had never felt before. So great is the influence of burning words, glowing with love and enforced by example, when they proceed from one whose office and whose character alike command reverence and respect. God grant that his Church may ever be "ordered and guided by faithful and true pastors, through Jesus Christ our Lord!"