Acts 19:17-20

Chapter 72

Prayer

Almighty God, there is no night in thy city. Thou dwellest in eternity. Through Jesus Christ thy Son, we are children of the light, we have nothing to do with darkness; our souls are birds of the morning, and we are called in the Holy One to shine as the sun in his strength. Jesus Christ is the Light of the world, and we, too, are named by that great name. We have no light of our own. The light which shines in our life is borrowed from the original and infinite lustre. We have nothing that we have not received, every good gift and every perfect gift cometh down from the Father of Lights. Thou hast called us to a religion that is a revelation. Thou hast not called us to secrecy and mystery, but to openness and far-sounding gospels, clear as the voice of love, and pleading as the tones of prayer. May we know to what we are called and by whom we are called, and knowing these things make us strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, that we may show forth unto all men that we are children of the light and not of the night. Make thy book an open secret to us. May we feel its mysteriousness, and yet rejoice in its light and sympathy. Restrain the curiosity that would become profanity, and help the faculty that would search in reverence for thy word and thy truth as for hidden treasures. Thy book opens before us like an immeasurable sky; it is full of stars, it is full of suns. May we walk in its many lights, take upon us its many colours, and have in our character the mystery that can only be explained by nobleness of conduct. Feed us with the bread of heaven. It is the food of the soul; without it we die. Lord, evermore give us this bread. Lead us by the river of God, which is full of water. Give us a sense of infinite wealth in Christ, so that all poverty, all death, all darkness, and all sense thereof may be destroyed in us. Thou hast crowned the week with thy goodness; thou hast spread our table for us; thou hast sent the gift of sleep night by night to tired eyes; thou hast surrounded us with securities not easily violated; thou hast given us love one for another, so that life lives in life, and love answers love, and a glad music unites the whole. This is the daily miracle of daily providence. Now would we give one another to thee in Christ Jesus. Nourish us, comfort us, speak to us the word we most require. Make the strong man stronger by added tenderness. Make the working servant more industrious by rekindling the lamp of his hope. Heal those that are ready to perish; show them what life is and what is death, and speak unto them from thine own heaven, and comfort such with the temporary healing of time or with the eternal healing of immortality. The Lord be with those who are not with us. David's place is empty; the father is not with the child; the mother is unwillingly absent; the little child is disappointed at not being here; the man of business has gone a long journey; some are on the sea, and some in far-away lands. The Lord bring all around us in spirit, sympathy, and religious expectation, and let the feast-board be enlarged until all for whom we ought to pray sit down and eat and drink abundantly of the Lord's provision. We put ourselves absolutely into thine hands. When we are in a great sea of tumult we would not put out a hand to save ourselves. Come to us and the waves shall be as solid rocks. Relieve the heart that is much plagued about the prodigal, the vow breaker, the little child, the life yet undirected and uncentred. Take all our affairs into thine hands, for thou who didst plant the lily and teach the bird its song, and make all things beautiful in their season, canst, and wilt, arrange all our little concerns, and make us laugh with rare, great joy, because thou hast made all things work together for good. We say our prayer at the Cross, and when we clasp our hands we put them around the body of him who died, the Just for the unjust. Amen.

Act 19:17-20

17. And this became known to all, both Jews and Greeks, that dwelt at Ephesus; and fear fell upon them all. and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified.

18. Many also of them that [now] had believed [those in whom the "fear" had wrought repentance and faith] came, confessing and declaring their [previous] deeds ["tricks"].

19. And not a few of them that practised curious ["vain"] arts, brought their books together, and burned them in the sight of all: and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver [ drachmae, about £ 1875].

20. So mightily grew the word of the Lord and prevailed.

The Sacrificial Fire

THERE was a kind of religious indignation in the man who was possessed by the evil spirit. He was made stronger than all the seven men who conjured with a Name which they did not know and love in their hearts. Nominal faith is always coming to grief. It has no backbone; it carries only a painted fire; there is no iron bullet in its gun. The devil is always real, and the more real when he pretends to be an angel of light. His cannon is full of iron. Hypocrisy only adds to the reality of devilism. It is not so with Christianity. Christianity is powerless if insincere. If I may so put it, I may say that Christianity when it ceases to be sincere ceases to be Christian. That is the difficulty of the Church. It is the difficulty of keeping up sincerity. Sincerity is sacrifice, and it is difficult to find fire every day for the altar, and to climb upon it and lie down in its hot centre and be burned in the sight of heaven. It is so much easier to do a trick; to read a word so much easier to say a prayer than to pray. There the enemy has the advantage over us. He has nothing but the meanest work to do. When he mocks he is religious; when he sneers he is at church; when he helps himself he serves the only altar he ever kneels before. It is so different with the followers of him who made the Cross the symbol of discipleship. They are watched at every point. When they fall below the line of passion they fall into criminal luke-warmness. God will have nothing tepid in his Church fire, and only fire! Christians, who are really such in their hearts, have, therefore, a hard time of it in the world. But is there any humiliation equal to that inflicted upon a man by the devil he vainly tries to expel? Look at the text for an answer. Such an unvanquished devil mocks the impotent exorcist, laughs at him, sneers at him, leaps upon him, bites him, and sends him home a sad sight! Such was the faith of the "seven sons of one Sceva, a Jew, and chief of the priests." A sermon that has to expel devils must not be a recitation but a sacrifice, not words but drops of blood. Hence it is so hard to preach; easy to write miles of empty sentences hard to cut the whole heart into little pieces into Gospel syllables. But this can be done by thy power, thou Spirit of Pentecost!

What result followed a clear conception of the majesty of the name of the Lord Jesus? The answer is given in the seventh verse: "The name of the Lord Jesus was magnified." That which could hardly be seen before grew, expanded, and unrolled itself until it filled the whole arch of the skies, and nothing could be seen but the splendour of its own light. These are the results which could be secured today if the cause were equal to the effect. Was this a merely sentimental adoration on the part of the Ephesians? Clearly not. Practical issues were realized. A clear conception of the sublimity of the name of Jesus Christ affects the whole circle in which we stand. It clears that circle of all impurity; it fills that circle with light; it lifts that circle up to heaven.

But a very painful process first takes place. Let us see what that process is? In the eighteenth verse we read: "And many that believed came and confessed." That is the great social consequence. The enemy comes in and lays his books on the church floor, and says over them, "These, one and all, are lies." You can forgive men who speak thus frankly. There might be more forgiveness if there were more frankness. Think of educated men ransacking their libraries and bringing out of their secret places all documents that were more or less tainted with falsehood, and bearing them right into the centre of Christian society, and saying, "These are lies!" That is what must be done. But that is only one side of the case. How sublime the force which constrains a man to confess that his life has been a lie! We have seen in our last study that Christianity would not mix with any other religion. The practical proof of that is in the instance now before us. When the Spirit of Christ enters into a man it says to him, "You must make no mistake about me. I never eat with idols; I never share the house with strangers; I am always master and never servant. You must go up and down, though it cost you the remainder of your life, confessing, acknowledging, and begging forgiveness. You cannot swallow the lie; you must expel it, and take the shame of its proclamation, and then we can begin anew. Marvel not that I say unto thee, thou must be born again." So many of us want our immoralities simply to rot within and pass away by processes of decay; but Christianity says it must not be so. Out with them! Name them! Brand them! Burn them! Drop them with iron hand right into the hell they deserve, one by one, each with its own curse upon it like a load that will never permit it to rise again through the billows of fire. What wonder, we may ask again and again, that Christianity makes so little progress in the world? It hinders its own way; it blocks up its own path; it will make men so good that men hate it. Were it a notion, an intellectual theory, a mental idol, a branch of contemporaneous culture, it might have the Primate's chair; but it is a new birth, coming through crucifixion with Christ and the regeneration wrought by the Holy Ghost; and therefore Christianity is by so much the self-hindering religion, but, for that very reason, the religion that never needs to be patching up its own work and doing it over again. It works slowly, surely, finally; setting on the top stone wherever it lays the foundation.

Confession never stands alone. You will find that confession was followed by sacrifice. "Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together and burned them before all men; and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver." That is the Cross! We cannot have merely sentimental confession that may be but a variation of the original guilt. Christianity always says, "This is the way to the Cross: walk ye in it." The sacrifice was expensive; the men lost their trade; and that is the last thing a man is willing to lose in an earthly direction. The men gave up business. Christianity shuts up many commercial institutions. This, therefore, let us repeat for the sake of the grave lesson it conveys, was not a sentimental confession, but a sacrifice of daily and stated income. The days of the text were not days of printing, when ten thousand copies of the Ephesian letters could be struck off in so many hours. The letters were copied from the stone by hand. The copying of the letters was itself a profession by which men sustained their families. Some of the letters had been copied by ancient members of the household, and had been handed on from sire to son, and there were those who kissed the precious documents as heirlooms of the family. These documents were taken into the open air and burned in the sight of all men; and if some of them appeared to be dropping out of the fire they were taken up and thrown into the middle of it. This was not playing at life. How tremendous in energy, how sublime in pathos, the force which could operate upon men's hearts so as to issue in this unparalleled sacrifice! The men at Ephesus who took part in the surrender are to be regarded with honour. It is easy for us to look upon a fire which is burning other people's books; but Christianity has done nothing for us until it has lighted exactly the same fire in our houses. Do not wonder you are not quite happy in your mind you have not had a fire! Do not be surprised that you are dyspeptic theologians, analyzing your notions and rearranging your ideas, and asking yourselves vexatious questions which are only meant to contribute to your own vanity. You have not had a fire! Until we have reached this point we can have no heaven. We know the trade is evil, but we do not shut it up. We compound for the continuance of the trade by giving tithes to the Church. We know the money is got by a species of swindling and public deception and trickery, but we double our pew subscriptions and keep the infernal machine grinding for us. Then we find fault with the preaching or with the Church, and we suddenly find that we must be "abreast with the times," therefore must leave the Church and take to other ways of thinking. O thou whited sepulchre! O thou lying spirit! You must burn down your place of business. I should not wonder if many a joint stock company has to be thrown into the blaze, and you may have to give up your director's fees. I should not wonder if some part of the Royal Exchange would have to be thrown in also. I do not say this must be so; I am sketching rather a large possibility than stating a solemn fact. But the lesson is the same, though the incident and the illustration may vary; and that lesson is that until we have had a fire in the house and in the heart it is blasphemy to be painting our notions in red letters and holding them up to the heavens as if they were acts of sacrifice. There are those who are going to renounce strong drinks and are going to be abstainers out and out, but they are going to keep something in the house for callers! No; you must have a fire! The "something" you are keeping for visitors will remind you of its existence, and say seductively to you, "It is now a long time since you had anything of my kind; you are stronger now and better, and have learned the manly art of self-control. Now let us renew our alliance." You must have a fire, if you are to succeed. If you mean to play with yourself, then have no fire. If you mean to see how near you can go to the edge without falling in, then I have no speech to make to you. I began by supposing that you were earnest in asking me to help you to save your life. There are those who intend giving up all evil things, but they do not exactly see why they should waste so much property by burning it; so they will hide it away in a secret drawer. I read nothing of that kind in the sacred record. There must be no secret drawers, nothing excepted, no reservations, but a dragging out of every leaf and tittle and iota, and a complete and final conflagration. Again and again, let us say, what wonder that Christianity makes such little progress in the world? Of what avail is it that we keep our curious arts and our curious books, and yet buy a weekly sermon to sleep over on Sunday afternoon? That is not the Cross.

What is the whole issue? The answer is in the twentieth verse: "So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed." The "word" had it all its own way. Devils ran out of the path lest they should be killed, and all bad things said, "Pity us, and spare us," but the great fire devoured them. We must have root and branch work. There must be no parleying with the foe. We must have no sympathy with men who teach that Christianity is a string of notions much resembling a string of unconnected beads. Christianity is crucifixion, self-dethronement, self-hatred, trust in Christ, death with Christ, resurrection with Christ; it is not a notion, but a sacrifice. Lord Jesus, why didst thou make thy way so hard in the world? We would take thee into our houses along with other great men, and give thee high place at the table; but thou art a hard man, reaping where thou didst not sow, and asking every one of us, the daintiest as well as the roughest, to stretch out his hands and his feet and be nailed to the Cross, and open his side to the sharp spear. If thy religion were something else we would like it, we would wear it, we would try to make it the fashion of our time. But who can make the Cross a fashion, or make crucifixion popular?