Hechos 18:18-23

Chapter 68

Prayer

Almighty God, we stand at the Cross of thy Son, thanking thee for all goodness, for daily care, for love unbroken and complete. We bring our thanksgiving unto thee and lay it humbly and lovingly on the altar, and ask thee to take it as our only gift. We have nothing that we have not received, but thou hast been pleased to work in us a thankful heart, and we bring our gratitude to thee in return for blessings that have no number, and for compassion infinite and unspeakable. We know what sin we have done, and we hide ourselves in darkness. Thou hast set a great light before us in the Cross of Jesus Christ the Saviour, and we would hasten out of the night of our gloom and despair into the broad, glorious morning of thy pardon and mercy and love. Receive us, we humbly pray thee, every one, and let us all be released from every memory that torments and from every accusation that burdens the soul. The house is thine, and in our Father's house there is bread enough and to spare. May we eat of it abundantly, and so destroy the hunger which is consuming our inmost life. The day is thine; the beams of the sun seem to come in tender brightness as if charged with special messages of love. This is the day of resurrection. This morning all tombs are vacated, and death has no place in the earth which it has apparently conquered, for Christ is risen today, and in Christ all that are Christ's arise. He is become the firstfruits of the dead; and if we be risen with Christ we must set our affections on things above and not on things of the earth. Enable us by the power of the Holy Ghost so to elevate our affections as to show that we have been delivered from the prison of this present life, and have been introduced into the infinite liberty of thine own eternal being. Our prayer cannot be so great as thy love. All our words when put together can ask but one drop out of the firmament of thy pity. Giving doth not impoverish thee, neither doth withholding enrich thee. Thou hast unsearchable riches in Christ Jesus the Lord. Thou hast a gift for every heart; in thy love there is an answer to every necessity. There is no wound in all the smitten heart of man which cannot be healed by the balm of the Cross. So will we enlarge our prayers and add to them all that our mind can think or our imagination conceive; and when we have made the appeal all that we can make it, thou art able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. We pray to be surprised by the revelations of thy light, and the communications of thy love. May we daily be startled into some new prayer and some higher hymn of praise. Give us the occasional vision which makes our hope a still brighter flame. Come to us in some special way that shall unite all the ordinary visions of life, and make the common unusual, and the daily vision a special brightness. We thank thee for personal mercies which we may not name in the hearing of others. We bless thee for family light and security and rest; for all that makes the household the centre of our life and the strength of our confidence. We thank thee for prosperity in business, in basket and in store. Thou didst increase the flour and thou didst cause the oil to overflow the vessels. God be praised for blessings in the market-place, in the house, and in the open life, and in the secret heart. Now speak comfortably to us. Let all things temporal and sensible fall away into their proper place; and may our eyes be fixed upon the eternal glory, the eternal throne, the eternal King; and so fixed, our hearts shall forget their trouble, our weakness shall become strength, and our perplexity shall be turned into quietness and confidence. The Lord hear us when we ask for pardon. We must be heard, for the cry goes up to heaven through the Cross of Christ through that blessed Cross send back thy great reply; and every one of us shall feel that there is no past of guilt, but a great past of forgiveness, and a bright future of service and friendship and love and toil that brings no weariness. Amen.

Act 18:18-23

18. And Paul having tarried after this yet many days [after the conclusion of the year-and-a-half of security, and after the Jews' abortive attempt] took his leave of the brethren, and sailed thence for Syria, and with him [sailed] Priscilla and Aquila; having shorn his [ not Paul's, but Aquila's head. G. "and Aquila shorn as to his head," an idiom which the Vulgate rightly translates by, "Aquila, who had shorn his head in Cenchrea, for he had a vow"] head in Cenchrea; for he had a vow [the Revisers, by their punctuation of the Greek text, separate the adjective from Aquila and so shave Paul].

19. And they [Priscilla and Aquila " with Paul," Acts 18:18 . They sailed; they came; he left them ] came to Ephesus, and he left [ceased to lodge with] them there; but he himself ["by himself," or "for his part"] entered into the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews.

20. And when they asked him to abide a longer time he consented not.

21. But taking his leave of them, and saying, I will return again unto you, if God will, he set sail from Ephesus [the words omitted were supplied by copyists from Act 20:16 ].

22. And when he had landed at Cæsarea, he went up and saluted the [Cæsarean] Church, and went down to Antioch [for Syria, Acts 18:18 , was his destination. Note the summary account of the journey from Corinth to Antioch].

23. And having spent some time there, he departed [on his third missionary journey], and went through the region of Galatia and Phrygia [ i.e., Lycaonia] in order [as before], stablishing all the disciples.

Preparing for Labour

PAUL had conquered his position in Corinth. He seemed to have acquired a right to remain there. The battle had raged and Paul had been brought into rest, and confidence had been established, in some degree, between himself and the Corinthian public. Paul, seeing an opportunity of doing very much good, consented to remain there, and to work constructively rather than disputatiously. But Paul "took his leave of the brethren." This is a new tone in the narrative. Paul has not often gone away from a city in this quiet, friendly, and social manner; Paul's going out has often been amidst tumult, battle, evil-feeling, and malignant criticism and treatment. Paul now must take leave of the brethren. He has a purpose which he must carry out; that purpose will presently come before us in a few significant words. The intention was in the Apostle's heart a long time before he expressed it, and it gave, no doubt, a subtle pathos and tenderness to a good deal of his concluding service in Corinth. When his tone became sweeter and tenderer; when his appeals were more urgent and ardent, people around him might wonder at the change of accent and emphasis. They would say, "Is this premonitory? Is the spirit of death already upon him? Is he talking from under a shadow that will presently deepen into the final gloom? How sweetly he now speaks! how gracious is his whole manner! how the old rigour and sternness have become subdued! and how like a little child is this foremost of disputants, this invincible assailant of evil!" The explanation was that Paul had made up his mind to go to Jerusalem and there complete a Levitical obligation. Over part of the road he took with him Priscilla and Aquila. But their names did not come before us in this order when we first made their acquaintance. Then they were husband and wife, new they seem to be wife and husband. There is an order in these things; there is a subtle primacy of influence, character, and spiritual genius which asserts itself naturally, and which has to be carefully looked for because of its unobtrusive-ness. It would be easy to read the eighteenth verse without noticing that Priscilla comes before Aquila. Who noticed that change of relation in the public reading of the Word? Does it not seem as if Priscilla ought to be a greater Christian teacher than Aquila? What can he know of the interior of the faith-temple, the love-life, the sacrifice which is Christianity translated into its native tongue? It is not the man that should preach, but the woman always. The man should be but tolerated, for what can he know of spiritual mystery, of religious instinct, of that sharp, clear vision which, taking little heed of the letter, sees the angel behind it, and that angel, looking back to the woman's heart, what only a woman's heart can see? My wonder is, not that the order of the names should stand as it does in the eighteenth verse, but that ever Aquila should have taken the precedence of Priscilla. Go to the humble heart, if you would have a right reading of Scripture. He, or she, who has suffered most can read God's Bible best. This elocution cannot be taught for money; it is the genius of blood. You must feel, or you cannot read. Let me hear the suffering mother read sobbingly, and though her words be blurred by tears and chokings, there will come out of them gleamings of spiritual fire that will tell me that inside the whole transaction is the God of the Abrahams, the Isaacs, and the Jacobs, of all massive and sublime history.

Paul had "shorn his head in Cenchrea: he had a vow." The greatest liberalist in the Church was also addicted to Levitical obedience. The man who so strenuously and nobly fought the battle of circumcision himself took the Nazarite vow. Do not think that a liberal Apostle is necessarily a latitudinarian in action. Paul maintained a hard discipline over himself, and, therefore, could afford to be very liberal and compassionate towards other people. He is the man to be dreaded, who is severe with others and clement to himself; and he is the man to be trusted almost to the point of idolatry who keeps himself "under," who strikes himself, as Paul said he did, in the eyes, and who is gentle, gracious, and hopeful in relation to everybody but himself. Could Paul be prevented from carrying out this now? Not all the forces of Corinth, not all the seductions of Ephesus could keep back that faithful heart. The vow could only be completed in the metropolis. It was permitted by the Nazarite law for a man whose hair had grown long under the necessity of the vow to cut off his hair, but he must keep it and take it up to Jerusalem and burn it in the Temple at the appointed hour in the appointed fire. That hair could not be burned elsewhere and the law be honoured. Paul carried his shorn locks with him. Think of Paul doing it. The Apostle of liberty, the man who would not give place by subjection, no, not for an hour, to those who would limit the liberty that is in Christ Jesus, carrying up his shorn hair to burn it according to the Levitical law. We can trust that man. Sometimes we dare not approach Paul, when he is wrapped, as it were, in a mantle of light and fire, and when he is his very self, standing between heaven and earth more a figure of the former than of the latter. Then he seems a long way from us, but when he comes down to the plain level and says "I have a vow, and I must by all means keep it" we feel that a man so honest in a matter so comparatively trifling is likely at least to be severely true in matters of larger breadth which transcend oftentimes, not only our intellectual, but our moral comprehension. It is thus we must judge one another. Where we cannot understand the doctrine we can understand the action. If I cannot understand your metaphysics of the Trinity, I can understand how you keep your engagements with me; and if you fail in those engagements you can hardly be surprised if I begin to doubt concerning the metaphysics which lie beyond my usual intellectual line. Men cannot, perhaps, understand the articles of our theological belief, but they can understand our temper, our honesty over the counter, our punctuality, our ordinary honour in life. If they find us faithful in little things they must reason that we are faithful also in greater things. We may not be able elaborately to defend our theology, but we can live such a life of simplicity, honourableness, decency, nobleness, and purity, as shall make it hard work for the sceptic to get at the inner citadel which we call our theological faith. We can build such moral outworks as will cause the assailant or the sceptic a great deal of difficulty. Finding our honour so brilliant, our daily virtues so complete, our temper so magnanimous, our word a bond of adamant the unbeliever will find it hard work to say one word against our prayer, or to mock the utterance of one article of our faith.

Paul came to Ephesus and left Priscilla and Aquila there, but he himself finding that he had a little margin of time said he would look into the synagogue and reason with the Jews. That is how Paul kept holiday. We cannot run with this footman; he is swifter than the horse-rider. He does not want to look at anything in the city of Ephesus famed in a country famous for great cities. Again he says, "Where is the synagogue? Where are the Jews? Let me reason with them." But the woods around Ephesus are beautiful why not drive through them? Imagine Paul driving through a pine-wood for the purpose of sniffing the scented air. He lived in the synagogue; the Jews were the mountains he wanted to see, and the obstinacy of the unbelieving heart was the only field in which he cared to take holiday. At Ephesus he met with an unwonted reception; he so "reasoned" with the Jews there that when he talked about going farther on" they desired him to tarry longer time with them." We have seen how these Jews spat upon him, hated him, banished him from their synagogues and their cities; but at Ephesus he meets with another reception. What is the meaning of that? Is the devil playing a trick here? He has one trick that he tries occasionally not too frequently so as to spoil it and he may be trying that subtlest trick at Ephesus. Was there an attempt here to keep the Apostle Paul from Jerusalem, whither he must go to accomplish his vow? Was this a bond fide welcome? Did the Ephesian Jews speak the sentiment of their hearts? We cannot tell; but if they did not they got their answer. Paul "bade them farewell, saying, I must by all means keep this feast that cometh in Jerusalem: but I will return again unto you, if God will." Did they want him to return? Did they say anything to encourage him to come back again? He will come back; he has his greatest day yet before him! What we have seen in the eighteen chapters gone is next to nothing to the battles that have to come. Paul will be greater when he comes back from Jerusalem, for there the spur will touch his blood, and he will have a new and broader work before him.

In the twenty-second verse are the saddest words in the Acts of the Apostles. The words are but three in number, but they hide a whole grave full of shattered hopes and anticipated joys. Paul going back to Jerusalem for the fourth time! The Church will wait for him! The Church will pray with him! The Church will hold a great banqueting day after a spiritual fashion, for the noblest of her warriors has returned, and his speech will be a recital of battles fought and won. Paul went up to Jerusalem and "saluted the Church." That is all! Paul went up to Jerusalem and made his bow. Paul went up to Jerusalem and offered courteous homage to the Primate of the Church. Where the sound of festival? Festival there was none! Where the clang of trumpet, and the throb of drum, and the unfolding of red banners? There was none! Did that take place in the Mother Church? Yes. Can a woman forget her sucking child? Yes. Paul was never greater than when he held his tongue, and left the dignitaries to perish in their own vanity. What a time they might have had had they gathered around the warrior and said, "Show us your wounds and scars, and tell us what news there is from the seat of war." But no. Paul was a liberal thinker; Paul had protested against the Judaizing teachers; Paul had committed a great offence by claiming liberty in Christ for Gentile believers; and some men cannot forgive. Do not blame them until you have blamed a flint for not bleating. Did Paul change his faith or his policy because of this metropolitan coldness? No; having played the gentleman where he rather would have displayed the Christian, "he went down to Antioch; and after he had spent some time there " He was more at home among the Gentiles. Paul made short work of his visit to the Church in Jerusalem, for the door was shut and the key was lost; but when he came to Antioch he said, "The sun is brighter, the earth is greener, friends are cheerier; this is home." We cannot live on ceremony; we cannot live on dignity; we cannot be happy where persons do but touch us with the tips of their fingers, intimating thereby that they would rather not touch us at all; but only live in love, in mutual trust, in mutual prayer. See how Paul was treated at Jerusalem, but Paul will live, a growing figure, when the men who snubbed him at Jerusalem are forgotten echoes. Have faith in God; try to find out that which is true and right and good, and follow it to the end, It would be cheering to have a kind word at Jerusalem in the very midst of the battle; to have an opportunity of looking over the armour, and seeing that the panoply was in good condition. It would be cheering if the elder Apostles could come and say, "Brave heart, fight on! for our prayers and our love will follow you across all the war-fields." But at Jerusalem they were too orthodox to be Christians.