Acts 6:1-8

Chapter 14

Prayer

Almighty God, thy mercy meets us everywhere. It is not far to seek. Thy mercy in Christ Jesus is round about us, we breathe it, we live under its influence, without it we must surely die. We speak of thy great mercy, and thy tender mercy. Thou dost fill us with amazement, because of the wondrousness of the mercy which covers all thy works. We come by the way of mercy, the way of judgment we dare not tread. On that road there are swords that slay us, and lions that devour, and wrath that burns. We come by the way of the cross. We put our feet in the footprints of Jesus Christ. We stand beside the Priest slain for us by his own hand, and because of this blood we have hope that our sin may be forgiven. We would that every night might see the destruction of the day's transgression. We would not carry the guilt of today into the unsullied light of to-morrow. We would bury it by the cross of Christ in the darkness of the night, never to be seen again. Thus do thou give us assurance that our guilt shall not be piled up against us into infinite aggravation, but shall be destroyed day by day, so that if we sleep the unwaking sleep, we shall be found in heaven, forgiven souls. Come to us in Christ Jesus, Thy Son, today, and make festival in our souls. May we enter into the Lord's banqueting house, and enjoy the hospitality of infinite love. May this be no common day in our experience. From the dawn even until the eventide, and the shining of the night stars, may there be joy in our hearts, singing as of angel voices, and lights that shine from the upper places. We would enjoy the Christian Sabbath. We would understand in our hearts the meaning of the resurrection of our Lord, and having looked into the place where the Lord lay, we would look up into the place where the Lord stands, and find in his intercession the utterance of all our prayers. We bless thee for such desires. Thou didst bring the heart out of the darkness, and gave it the joy of light. Once we had no such feeling. We were content with our chains, and found our miserable joy in our mean bondage. Now we have breathed the higher air. Now we have had gleams of the higher light. Now we begin to feel the enjoyment of a nobler fellowship, and our souls are inflamed with high and spiritual desire. Surely thou wilt open thy book with thine own hands. It shall not be to us a book of letters only, but it shall glow with divine presences and sacred influences, and out of the living pages there shall come living gospels. God grant that so it may surely be.

Show us how little we are and frail, always walking upon the brink of our own grave; feeling even in the warm summer air the chill breath of death. Show us that the flowers wither, even whilst they unfold. Give us to feel that winter is at both ends of the spring, and is a continual threatening of its life. So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Still lift up our lives above all mean fearfulness, and give us the inspiration of heroism, the noble and glorious courage of men to whom the issues of a great battle are confided. May we be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. May we know what it is to enjoy the assurance of the Divine favour. Being no more tossed about by every wind of doctrine, may we stand in the sanctuary of thy truth, and fear not fire, or tempest, or famine, or sword. Lord God of Elijah, of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the great and glorious company of the Apostles, lift us, the children of modern days, up into very noble manhood, and may the last estate of the world be better than the first.

Comfort us according to the sharpness of our pain. Our eyes are often weary because of the burden of tears. Our sleep sometimes flees away before the ever encroaching anxiety which devours the mind. We have pain of body, sorrow of soul, darkness of outlook. Our property has dwindled, our prosperity has been shaken to its foundation, or there is sickness at home, the little one is ill, the oldest of our loved ones is saying farewell. The heart knoweth its own bitterness. We pray thee, therefore, in Christ thy Son our Saviour, come to us with the comforts that heal the heart, and make us glad because of recovered confidence.

To others thou hast given great joy. Every day sees a battle won. Every night closes upon a fortune advanced. All the days are triumphs. There is no aching of the head, no pain of the heart, no distress of the imagination. Anxiety is a bitterness unknown, and fear has no place in the life. The Lord sanctify such experience, and restrain those who enjoy it, lest they fight against God.

Look over our little life, and repair it every day. The wind blows it down, the fire burns it, the enemy undermines it. Poor little life! So small to begin with, so weak at its best! Oh, pity it! Continue to redeem it. Thou hast not spared the blood of thy Son to ransom it, and therefore at the last it shall be found in thine own hand. Thou that dwellest between the Cherubim shine forth! Amen.

The Election of Deacons

Act 6:1-8

THERE is nothing concealed in the action of the New Testament Church. Verily this whole thing was not done in a corner. The case of Judas Iscariot is not covered up, nor made the least of. It is not referred to furtively as if the writer would gladly escape from the subject. Ananias and Sapphira are not names withdrawn from the sacred record because of the lies which they told. And the murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews is not passed over without reference. The whole life of the Church is brought under the shining light, and everything is narrated, with almost abruptness, as it is with certain minuteness of detail. The Church is not a secret institution. The Church of Christ was never meant to be a concealed force in society, or to have its inner life and inner mechanism, upon which outsiders were not allowed to gaze. Christianity abhors all official secrecy. It is a religion which lives in the daylight. Its registers are not hidden away in iron safes, its writing is written as with a pencil of the sun. It is well known that in consequence of its frankness the Bible has brought upon itself the opprobrium of those who are accustomed to hide all undesirable and repulsive features of character or habits of life. Who would publish an expurgated edition of the Bible! We undertake to adapt our poets to modern tastes and modern readers. There are transactions recorded in the Bible, which, if taken out of their proper atmosphere and setting, cause a sensation of revulsion in the heart, but taken in their places, read according to their surroundings, not torn out of their natural atmosphere, and perused in a high and noble spirit, they are as much part of the Bible as they are part of human life; and they have their high and noble uses in the Bible, which uses can only be understood by those who read in the spirit, and who see in death itself an element out of which life may be brought. It is refreshing to belong to a Church that is so open and fearless, whose judgments are not secret censures, and whose excommunications are not vengeful anathemas, but the just expression of well-argued conclusions.

How was this difficulty of the early Church adjusted? It might have ended in a rapture. To-day it would surely terminate in many instances with a secession. What was it that guided the Church aright in this first misunderstanding and difficulty? The spirit of love ruled the mechanism of the Church. There can be no permanent difficulties in any Church in which the spirit of love is supreme. If a Church is only a religious debating society, then we shall determine many issues merely by numbers, or merely by accidental force of some kind or other. He who introduces the spirit of debate into any community, incurs the very gravest responsibility. We do not meet to argue, to controvert, to oppose one theory to another, we meet to pray. But who can define that great word pray? We have narrowed it, and impoverished, and mechanized it, until now it has become a species of routine. If the Church could meet to pray, to bring a thousand hearts into confluence, to dismiss every dividing force, and quality and quantity, and with a thousand-fold voice to cry from the foot of the Cross to the throne of Heaven, the devil of debate would be burned in his native fire. It is most interesting to watch the rise and culmination of this first difficulty in Church government. The Apostles look well in this relation. What is their starting point? They argue all the question out, from the standpoint of a clear conception of apostolic work. Your first conception will generally determine the whole course of your argument. Starting with a noble conception, a man will naturally fall into the outworking of a noble course, and will generally reach a useful, because worthy and righteous, conclusion. What was the conception of the Apostles of their own work? They magnified their office. "We will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the Word." And the Apostles could pray! Just lately, in this very story, we heard them pray, and the place where they were assembled was shaken! And the Apostles could also preach. They divided their hearers into two classes, friends and enemies. There was no languid opinion about Apostolic preaching. The mere critic could not play his little game at pedantry under the Apostolic sermon. It was one of two things in an Apostolic sermon, repentance, surrender, crying to Heaven for pardon, or gnashing of teeth, and malignant hatred, the very fire of hell! We have come to new definitions, and definitions of a most unfortunate and disastrous kind. We pray quietly, easily, superficially, mechanically, respectably; without sensation, without passion. We could almost write our prayers and read them, and sleep over them, and so could others. The suppliant is never maddened by his own inspiration, so that he shall pray the sun down and open his eyes in unexpected midnight. These regulation hours have ruined us. These beginnings and endings have played havoc with the inspiration of the Church.

The apostles conceiving their work to be of this high and supreme kind, were rather anxious than otherwise to escape the daily ministration of the tables. Up* to this time they had taken part in the distribution of the public stock, and now they gladly seized the opportunity of leaving this necessary routine to others who were ready to undertake it, whilst they went forward to do the large and inclusive work. This supreme conception of Apostolic service, was itself ennobled by the trust which the Apostles reposed in the people. Who were called together? The whole multitude. The apostles "called the multitude of the disciples unto them." He is the great apostle who has faith in the people. Christianity is the people's religion pre-eminently. There are those in the ministry of Christ who can testify that they owe all their comfort, prosperity, and influence, to the trust which they reposed in the people. The Apostles did not form a little company. They did not select certain notables, or approved specimens, but having to deal with a people's question, they consulted the people's instinct, and therein they have set an example to all Christian associations. Let it never be forgotten, that in this first difficulty of the Church the Apostles did not undertake to settle this matter themselves, nor did they call representatives of the Church, they called the whole multitude, and left it to be adjusted and determined by the whole Church.

Whilst this was the case at the outset, it was impossible that the whole Church could constitute a committee of action, therefore the apostles said, "Look ye out seven men," who shall really be yourselves condensed. Such men as shall themselves be equal to the whole multitude. Large-minded generous men, who can see every aspect of a case, and deal with noble wisdom with the practical difficulties of life. The qualifications of the seven are plainly stated. They were to be, "men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom." There are no merely secular duties in the Church. We have divided Church service into the temporalities and the spiritualities. I am not aware that such a distinction was acknowledged by the Apostles. But allowing that some things might be called temporalities, even they were to be handled by men, "full of the Holy Ghost." Church matters are not merely matters of political system. There is nothing done in Christ's Church, whether the opening of a door, the lighting of a lamp, or the preaching of the everlasting Gospel, that is not to be done under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. A door may be so opened as to affront the Spirit of God; a visitor may be so shown to a seat as to manifest a truly Christian spirit on the part of the indicator. There is no part of our work in any section that is not holy unto the Lord. Art thou weary in well doing? Remember thy weariness is an offence to God. If man engaged me to be in the ministry I might sometimes be annoyed by it, and be tempted to flee away from it, but when God ordains a man to the ministry, and ordains him in the mountain somewhere, and ordains him at the Cross of His own Son, he is not at liberty to take offence, he does not live within the region where whims and prejudices ought to take effect. He is God's servant, whether called by this name or not, and he must take his orders from God and to God must submit his work. So, as I read Christian history; I see that the ministry is one. We are all the ministers of Christ; the doorkeeper and the preacher are both in the same ministry, there are no priests and outsiders. There is no outer circle and inner circle in my conception of the Church. You have the gift of opening a door, I may have the gift of expounding a passage, both the gifts are from the same Giver. I have no doubt that the men chosen in this text were better able to serve tables than the Apostles. We have not all the same gifts. We must rid ourselves of the mischievous sophism which teaches us that some kinds of service are menial. There is no menial service in the Church, unless you make it menial by an unworthy spirit.

Looked at as a piece of Church statesmanship, can you suggest a single amendment to this policy? Do not the Apostles vindicate their Apostleship by their noble wisdom and their general strength of mind, and by their practical sagacity? It is not every man in the Apostleship who could have settled a case so. The ancient proverb tells us that "every fool will be meddling." The reason why some ministers are uncomfortable and unsettled is that they will meddle with things that they really cannot arrange. I have confidence in the people. Impose a duty upon a friend, and show by your manner of doing it that you mean him to reveal his best quality. When this spirit seizes us all distribution of labour will not be a division of front, but will rather show that the front is more united because the labour is wisely divided. This instance gives us a glance into the inner life of the early Church. There was great success in those days. We long to have lived amid that tumult of triumph. It is dull now. It is weary monotony today. To have lived when the war-horses went out in thousands, and their riders returned with infinite spoil! Oh, they were brave days of old! There were giants on the earth in ancient times. Men were converted in multitudes. There came against the Church daily a great human flood. It is not so now. It is easy to take the census of religious attendance today. The old grave days of tumult and uproar, and rush, and sacred eagerness to be first at the sanctuary, read like a species of religious romance. Who is to blame? Has God changed, or has man become weary? In the ancient Church you see an illustration of the possibility of there being superiority without jealousy. There were the twelve Apostles and the seven helpers, and the seven did not entertain jealousy about the twelve, nor did the twelve make censorious remarks about the seven. They divided their labour, and went to work with both hands to serve the Master. Jealousy kills us all today. We dare not speak to one man lest another man should see the action. There are those who would gladly give something to know if we shake hands more warmly with one man than with another. How did this evil spirit get into the Church? Mark, I am not speaking about any particular Church, but about the whole Church of Christ, the whole world over. Jealousy is as cruel as the grave; it can only be cast out by the Spirit of God. If a man feel himself the very least under the influence of jealousy, he ought at once to betake himself to fasting and prayer. You know well enough whether there is any jealousy in your heart. If there is, I beseech you, by the mercies of God, that you kill it this very day. Could I be jealous of the success of another minister, I would be no minister of Christ myself. His success is mine. To that spirit must we come. Tell me of any Church that is crowded with eager thousands, that is the scene of daily triumphs in Christ, and I am a member of that Church. Its triumphs are ours, we are not divided householders; we are one great family.

What was the effect upon the public? When this matter was settled, the result upon the public mind is given in these words, in Acts 6:7 , "The word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly." It is equal to cause and effect. A united Church means a world impressed by the noble scene. The Church of Christ is not united today. There are Christians of high and noble quality who are not, would not, could not occupy a pulpit out of their own communion. The law forbids them. High ecclesiastical authority interdicts them and yet we are said to be all Christians. The noble purpose of Christ is marred by certain geographical distinctions and ecclesiastical arrangements, in the making of which Providence had neither part nor lot. The Church must be united before the world will be redeemed. Hence Christ's great prayer, "May they all be one, that the world may believe." We want the apostle now who can bring men together, who can magnify points of union, who can show that the Church, though divided on many minor points, ought to realize its vital union, magnify and display it, and thus Christ's soul would be satisfied.

The 8th verse deals exclusively with Stephen. We shall have something to say about Stephen presently. They made him a minister of tables, and he became the first martyr of his Master. Stephen was developed by circumstances. Being put into this office, he developed his true quality of mind and heart. There are those who cannot be kept in obscurity, and who cannot be limited to merely technical publicity. What if Stephen had been the predestined successor of Iscariot? What if this man had been unintentionally neglected? Who can tell? Into these matters we may not enter; but whoever is full of faith and power will do great miracles and wonders in every age, and if he escapes martyrdom it will be by some supreme miracle of God.