Acts 1:15-26

Chapter 4

Prayer

Almighty God, we know thee as the Searcher of hearts, and we tremble before thee. Thou dost search Jerusalem as with a candle; the light of thine eyes falls upon the inmost parts of the heart, and there is nothing hidden from thy vision. The darkness and the light are both alike unto thee, the wings of the morning cannot carry us away beyond thy looking, there is no height in heaven, there is no depth in hell wherein is concealment from the eyes that fill the universe. Wherewithal then can we come before thee, wherein is our standing, and on what ground do we now appear? Thou hast nourished and brought up children, but they have rebelled against thee; no child of thine on all this earth but has lifted up an arm of rebellion against the heavens: there is none righteous, no, not one. All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way, wherein then do we appear before thee but in him who is our brother and Priest and Saviour, Jesus Christ the Son of God? Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive the homage of all creation, loudest and sweetest of all, the hymn of redeemed men, who, having known the darkness and the torment of sin, have been brought into a marvellous light and into an unspeakable joy. We come before thee to speak of Christ, to bless thee for the Son of Man, to worship him as thy Son, our Priest and our one Sacrifice, who answers every question, soothes us by his grace, gives us infinite comfort by his promises, and who has pledged himself, as with the oath of his blood, to complete what he has begun, and to present us faultless before thee.

How long, O Lord, how long before we are brought into a state of obedience unto thee? We are proud and self-willed, we are ignorant of all that is deep and lasting, we seize things that flit by us, and imagine that they express eternity. We come before thee as those who are foolish of heart and void of understanding, and we ask thee to pity us and forgive us with all the infinite tenderness of thy love. Thou dost show us thyself in wondrous ways; oh, that we had eyes to see thee in all the story of the day, in all the march of the seasons, in all the displays of thy providence. Thou dost crush the bad man, and overthrow that which is corrupt, and upon righteousness and virtue dost thou set the crown of thine approbation. If for a small moment thou dost forsake men, it is that with everlasting mercies thou mayest gather them.

Take thine own way with us thy will be done. We cannot follow all thy will, nor do we know the secret of thy movement, but we know Christ thy Son, and he has revealed the Father. Work in the dark or in the light, as thou wilt, only when thou hast tried us, bring us forth as gold. Preside over the furnace, watch all the burning, when the last dross falls away, when in our purified soul thou dost see the shining of thine image, cool the furnace and present us to thyself. We would be thine: bad in our inmost heart, sullied in all the emotion and passion of our soul, crushed by burdens of our own creation still we would be thine. We are ashamed of the devil, we are ashamed of ourselves, we find no confidence and rejoicing but in the light and the truth of the Deity: Lord, may our better conquer our worse self, set up thy kingdom in our heart, that great, glad, radiant kingdom which is called the kingdom of heaven.

Help us up the road when it is very steep, draw nearer to us as the wind becomes colder, when we are affrighted by presences in the dark, and by voices mingling with the storm, let thy comforting toward us be multiplied and recall our courage in God.

We pray for those who are not here: for the bad one who would not come, for the sick one who could not come, for the far away one who wants to come, for all who are included within the circle of thy love. Have pity upon the suffering, those who are dying do thou make to live by thy presence and thy soothing: where the house is very lonely and the shadow has the deeper gloom to the eye that reads it aright than any other shadow they ever saw in the house before where the heart is very sore, where old companionships are about to be broken up, where lifelong unions are about to be sundered, where the wedding vow is about to be taken up and to pass on to other meanings, where the child is sick, where the shadow of the coffin rests upon the cradle, and where there is gloom or sorrow or weariness of any kind O, thou who didst make every star of the night and every flower of the summer day, thou who didst incarnate thyself in Jesus Christ, let thy grace be multiplied, and let thy comfort mightily prevail over all our distress. Amen.

Act 1:15-26

15. And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, and said, (the number of names [probably a synonym for persons] together were about an hundred and twenty) [of whom one-tenth were apostles].

16. Men and brethren [Demosthenes said, Ye men of Athens!], this Scripture must needs have been fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David [the beginning of the new method of interpretation] spake before concerning Judas, which was guide to them that took Jesus.

17. For he was numbered with us [he had been numbered], and had obtained part of this ministry [portion or inheritance].

18. Now this man purchased [got possession of. In old English purchase often meant acquired] a field with the reward of iniquity [a Petrine phrase, see 2Pe 2:13 , 2Pe 2:15 ]; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out.

19. And it was [became] known unto all the dwellers at Jerusalem; insomuch as that field is called in their proper tongue [in their own dialect] Aceldama, that is to say, The field of blood.

20. For it is written in the book of Psalms, Let his habitation be desolate, and let no man dwell therein: and his bishoprick [the general term office is preferable] let another take.

21. Wherefore of these men which have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us [representing the whole life and conduct].

22. Beginning from the baptism of John, unto that same day that he was taken up from us, must one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection.

23. And they appointed two, Joseph [nothing further is known of him] called Barsabas [son of the oath or wisdom], who was surnamed Justus, and Matthias [given by Jehovah].

24. And they prayed, and said, thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men, shew whether of these two thou hast chosen.

25. That he may take part of this ministry and apostleship, from which Judas by transgression fell [away], that he might go to his own place.

26. And they gave forth their lots [not votes]; and the lot fell upon Matthias; and he was numbered [the Greek word is not the same as in 2Pe 2:17 ] with the eleven apostles.

The Premature Election

"AND in those days." There were ten days between the taking up of the Lord Jesus and the festival of the outpouring of the Spirit which is now known to us by the name of Whitsuntide. In those ten days Peter "stood up." It was a pity he did so, for he had been distinctly told to sit down. But who can wait ten days? Yet those periods of waiting are interposed in every life, for the trial of patience and for the perfecting of faith. Where is there a man who can sit down ten long days and do nothing but wait? "They also serve who only stand and wait" "Stand still and see the salvation of God." "Your strength is to sit still." Mark how this is God's training of us in this matter of sitting, waiting, expecting, training us to the eloquence of silence and to the energy of standing still. Who can do it?

Peter was pre-eminently the man who could not do it. Goaded by impatience, he stood up and addressed the disciples. He was always more or less of a talkative man, letting his energy flow out in speech instead of embodying it in noble patience and heroic endurance. His energy evaporated. He will become a better man by-and-by; from Peter we shall yet hear some of the most solid and noble deliverances ever pronounced by an inspired apostle. He will burn as Paul never burned; he will excel even John in tenderness, yes, even in this opening speech, made before the time, he begins to show that delicacy of touch which so often made him conspicuous amid all the writers of apostolic letters.

It was to be feared that he would begin with a mistake, because he ended with one. On the last occasion probably, or near it, on which he saw the Lord, he said to Jesus, "Lord, what shall this man the disciple whom Jesus loved do?" A man who asks a question of that kind will commit a mistake the next time he speaks. Faults go in groups. Jesus rebuked him, saying, "If I will," that subtle lordliness of tone which always separated him from all other speakers. "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou me." The next time we hear of Peter in any conspicuous relation is in the instance before us, when during the ten days of waiting he became impatient, and stood up amid the disciples and made a speech about the vacancy in the apostolate.

The fussy church must be doing something, if it is only mischief; the mechanical church cannot stand still; church-mongers are infinitely too busy; they lack repose; they consider that if they are walking up and down very much, they are doing something, they consider that if they be sitting quietly still, looking with wonder-filled eyes to the great silent heavens in expectancy and eager love, they are doing nothing. Peter will have a vote taken, or a ballot; he will complete the broken circle he who broke the circle most, he whose crime outblackens Iscariot's, he who said, "I know not what thou sayest, I know not the man," he who with cursing and swearing denied that he knew Christ, was that not in reality selling his Lord without the silver? He stood up in the midst and began to organise the apostolate! If Judas had lived, who knows what Christ would have done to him? Peter lived, and Christ had a secret interview with him, and in that private conversation an amnesty was pronounced and Peter was re-established. No man can expel you from the church. Every expelled man expels himself. You can be put away from a visible community. You cannot be put away from Christ's bosom, Christ's family, Christ's church, but by your own hand. It is this terrific power of suicide with which God has entrusted rational life! Chrysostom was wont to say, what we now quote as a modern proverb, as if contemporaneous wit had suggested and formulated the wisdom, "No man can hurt a man but himself." Nothing that you can say against me will have the smallest effect upon me or against me, if I be true in my inmost soul, unbroken in homage, constant in devotion, perfect and incorruptible in sincerity. Nothing that I can say against you will have the smallest effect detrimental in the long run, if you be true in heart, and full of integrity towards God.

Peter excluded himself from the church. So we read, "Go tell my disciples and Peter." The first-born disinherited, the great primogeniture broken up, the first last, the leader an exile! And Judas "by transgression fell" he put himself outside the church. It is not a Papacy that can unchurch me, it is not an ecclesiastical confederation that can unchurch you. You have in your own self the power of life and death, so far as this particular matter is concerned. God has made you your own trustee. You can separate yourself from Christ, you can turn away and walk no more with him, you can commit suicide, but as for others, no man can pluck you out of your Father's hand. Let us consider well, therefore, how each soul is treating itself.

But Peter was forgiven. What was said at the secret interview, who can tell? When the hands touched one another again, one of them was just the same it always was, a rough fisherman's hand but the other was not the same the wound print made all the difference! But the grip was the same, the old, old grip, the masonry of the union was the same, and the wound only increased its tenderness. Poor soul, thou mayest be forgiven! Black Iscariot, all but damned, thou art not yet lost; seek an interview with the ill-treated Saviour, have it out between yourselves this very day, tell him all the tale without a single reservation or self-excuse, and ere you have got it all out, his forgiveness will be down upon you like an infinite blessing! He never allows the prodigal to finish his speech. He sees from the first sentence what the last is going to be, and punctuating the eloquence of penitential grief with his affectionate embrace, the sin is forgotten, as impurity is consumed in fire.

Peter begins where all wise teachers must begin, if they would continue in efficiency, and conclude beneficently. He founds what he has to say upon the Scriptures. This is the peculiarity of Christian teaching: it founds itself upon the written word, it never fears to rest itself upon that sacred testimony: even where there may be differences of interpretation, it rests upon something deeper than merely verbal exposition. Herein is that sublime possibility of all Christian sections being substantially and integrally right. The Arminian and the Calvinist, two ghosts that have often affrighted the timid church they are both right. The man who believes in the humanity of Christ, and the man who believes in the Deity of Christ are both right. How is this, then? Simply because the contradiction and the difference are to be found in interpretation, but there is always something below anything that can be written, and there is something higher than a tongue or a prophecy, or an interpretation in words! It is the spirit that unites, it is the letter that divides and kills. It is quite possible for an heterodox man to have an orthodox spirit, and it is by his spirit that he will be saved, and not by his letter. Do not tell me what your creed is: but do tell me something of your temper, your spirit, your supreme aspiration, your highest, broadest prayer what is the one desire of your heart? There is nothing true that is incompatible with love; charity never faileth. As for our conceptions, interpretations, and suggestions, they are but intermediate or transient; we are passing on through them to some further and higher generalisation: on the road let us exchange views, approach one another with a noble charity, and know that there is no one man who holds in exclusive trust the totality of the Truth which is indicated by the expression "the kingdom of God."

Grounding himself upon what is written in the Scriptures, and only partially interpreting it, Peter proceeded to take a ballot for an apostle to succeed the apostate Judas. But could Peter make a mistake when he addressed the disciples at that time? Who asked him to rise and address the disciples at all? In our last study of this chapter, we read that the disciples were told to wait for the baptism of power "Ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence." They were waiting for that baptism, and whilst they were waiting for it, Peter spoke. Peter was not endued with the Holy Ghost in the Pentecostal sense when he made this speech: we shall watch him grow; when the Holy Spirit does descend upon him and burn up all his folly, then we shall see how noble a man was concealed under the exterior of that rough and oft-mistaken fisherman.

The conditions of succession to the apostolate are very beautiful. "Wherefore of these men which have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John, unto that same day that he was taken up from us, must one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection." That is the law of the ministry today. "Lay hands suddenly on no man." The men who must come to this Christian ministry must be men who have "companied with us all the time," men who have known the Lord Jesus Christ all the time, men who were present at his birth in Bethlehem, and present at His upgoing on Olivet men who have been with him "all the time," men to whom he is no stranger, who read his character, peruse the mystery of his spirit, comprehend the beneficence of his purpose, enter into sacred and inviolable unity with every emotion that heaved his breast and that sanctified his life, men who "have companied with him all the time."

You cannot make ministers, you cannot pick out exiles and aliens and teach them this language of the kingdom of heaven, as if they were natives of that celestial empire. They must be born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but they must be born of God, and so born nothing can stand against them. They will trample down difficulties with the scorn of infinite strength, saying, "We can do all things through Christ." This is the mischief against which we have to guard, that you can buy ministers with money, that you can qualify apostles by salary, that if you offer higher prices , you would get higher genius! It is a LIE! This genius is not in the market, it is not a commodity that can be exchanged and bartered, it has no equivalent in kind, it is a fire that only one hand can light and that no storm can put out.

Having elected two men for choice, the disciples prayed: they left the case in the hands of God, but unfortunately they had first taken it into their own. Never take your own case into your own hand: have nothing to do with it: I will not guide my own life. Persons say "Be prudent" if ever you can for a moment sit yourself down, resolving to be prudent, God has forsaken you! Persons say, "Beware of exaggeration, of over-colouring; beware of enterprises that are questionable or dangerous" those persons never did anything for the world; they cannot do anything for the world: cold water never drove an engine, and a body without wings never knew the danger, the mystery, the joy of flight. If any man can resolve his life into a life of prudence he has taken his life into his own hands, and God will turn his prudence into confusion, and the question will again be asked; "Where is the wise? where is the prudent? where is the scribe?" Seek an inspired life. Say to kind heaven every day, "Not my will but thine be done. I want to build a tower, but not my will thine be done. I ask for great success, but if failure is better for me, not my will but thine be done. Here is my short programme, rewrite it or burn it not my will but thine be done." So the apostles committed themselves in prayer to God for guidance in this matter. So would I take every matter to God day by day, and say, "It is of no consequence to my poor little life, but everything is of infinite consequence to thy holy and glorious kingdom: Let it be according to thy mind, loving One, and not according to mine."

The disciples gave forth their lots. How pitiful. In a few more days they will have had the Holy Ghost. Casting forth the lots was an Old Testament plan, an initial arrangement, a small introductory mechanism, adapted to the infantile state of the world. There are men now, who would like to decide everything by lot: it seems a short and easy method, but it is no method in the house of God: we are now under the guidance of the Holy Ghost. If you were to write all the creeds of Christendom and to put them into an urn and to shake the urn after prayer, asking God that the right creed might come out, I should not wonder but that some creed would fall out of the urn that would shock the sense of nine-tenths of Christendom. There is no such way of discovering God's thought. That is not his scheme, and that is not the scheme of our life: we do not decide things by lot, in our own narrow sphere; nor do we carry things unanimously ourselves. Let me make that point as clear as I can: you, an individual man, do not always carry things unanimously: you often have to decide your course by a majority of yourself. Thus, these are the voters that live in you Judgment, Self-interest, Immediate Success, Curiosity, Speculation, Family Considerations, Health, Time, and some twenty more voters all have a seat in the council of your mind. Now those who are in favour of this course say, "Aye," those who oppose this course say, "No," and then you, that innermost You, that Self you have never seen, says, "The ayes have it or the noes," so that in reality you do not carry your own personal decisions unanimously. Sometimes your judgment does not vote at all, then the resolution is said to be carried nem. con. , no one contradicting. Sometimes you carry your resolutions unanimously, the whole man stands up and says: "Let it be done;" so various are the ways by which we conduct the personal business and discharge the individual responsibilities of life. When I have wished in critical hours to know what was right to do, I have submitted myself to three tests. First, what has been the deepest conviction of my own mind; secondly, what has been the concurrent voice of my most trusted counsellors; and thirdly, what has been the fair inference to be drawn from conspiring circumstances? With a strong personal conviction, with a confirmatory judgment from my friends, with circumstances evidently conspiring to point in a certain direction, I have said, "This is none other than God's will: if it be not, Lord, stop me at once, for he who does his own will is a fool, and he who does Thy will, will be lifted up into Thy heavens. Not my will but Thine be done."

In the case before us the lot fell upon Matthias, and you hear no more about him. I do not want to be a balloted minister: I do not want to be here because I had six votes, and another man had only five: I want to stand in my ministry by right divine, by qualifications incontestable, by credentials not written by men and that cannot be expunged by men. That is the calling of the whole church: do not imagine that Episcopalianism, Congregationalism, Presbyterianism, or Methodism will save you. We are not saved by names, traditions, or legends, nor are we an influential church because we bear an illustrious name. Every day needs its own inspiration, as every day requires its own bread.