And thence sailed to Antioch … And when they were come, and had gathered the Church together, they rehearsed all that God had done.
Apostles and Crusaders at Antioch: a historical contrast
If when we contrast the voyage of Paul and Barnabas across the bay of Attalia with the voyage of those who sailed over the same waters eleven centuries later, our minds are powerfully drawn towards the pure days of early Christianity, when the power of faith made human weakness irresistibly strong, the same thoughts are not less forcibly presented when we contrast the reception of the Crusaders at Antioch with the reception of the apostles in the same city. We are told that Raymond, “Prince of Antioch,” waited with much expectation for the arrival of the French king; and that when he heard of his landing at Seleucia he gathered together all the nobles and chief men of the people and went out to meet him, and brought him into Antioch with much pomp and magnificence, showing him all reverence and homage, in the midst of a great assemblage of the clergy and people. All that Luke tells us of the reception of the apostles after their victorious campaign is what he says in the text. Thus the kingdom of God came at the first “without observation”--with the humble acknowledgment that all power is given from above, and with a thankful recognition of our Father’s love to all mankind. (J. S. Howson, D. D.)
Missionary enterprises
I.There is great need in the world for missionaries.
1. There was great need for them in the days of the early Church.
2. There is much more need in the present day.
II. It is the duty of the Church to take up the subject of foreign missions, because--
1. TheChurch of all earthly things is the most, and indeed only, capable.
2. The Church itself, having received the glad tidings, ought from gratitude to make them known to others.
III. This duty, if rightly performed, will surely meet with success. Not necessarily at first, but eventually.
IV. It is the Saviour’s command that the gospel should be preached in all lands. (T. Newsome.)
Missionary reports
1. It is well that missionaries should occasionally return. Their return will strengthen them, and again arouse the Churches to a new interest in the missionary cause.
2. The true missionary will report, not what he has done, but what God has done with him.
3. The true missionary will report holy God has opened the door of faith to those to whom he was sent. (S. S. Times.)
The report of the mission
This was the first missionary report ever presented. Of late years these rehearsals have been common. And it is well that it should be so, provided that the accounts are truthfully given and the results anxiously weighed. Let us observe--
I. The object of the apostles’ mission.
1. You all know how ill any work must be done which has not a definite aim. What would a carpenter’s, a builder’s, a lawyer’s, or a physician’s work be without some end set before it? Too often in religious matters this is left out of sight. A clergyman, as it is said, “performs duty”--that is, he has gone through the public service, etc. But was that his end, or only the means to his end? A serious question. Far too often we do make these duties ends: if we can perform our duty (as it is sometimes said) creditably, we are ready to say, “I have done my duty; I have gained my end.” But who does not see that no amount of labour thus accomplished necessarily implies the slightest sense of the real work of the ministry? Where is the end in all this? No builder would satisfy his employer by merely being seen so many hours each day at his work, if nothing came of it, or nothing but crooked walls, leaking roofs, etc. It is even so in things spiritual. He is not a good workman who has nothing to show for it but his toil. True, in these matters, unlike the other, men cannot by any skill or any devotion secure his object: God gives, and withholds; and he who thinks that his own labour or even his own prayer can guarantee success has not yet learned his first lesson in the school of Jesus Christ. St. Paul’s object is forcibly expressed in his own words, “That ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God.” Turning, conversion, was and still is the end of the ministry.
2. If this is indeed the meaning of our office, and its responsibility, can any exhortation be more needful than that which bids the congregation remember its object and so aid its work? If its end is to turn you to God, yours surely will be the chief loss and the chief misery if it fails.
II. Its methods. We are struck by its unity, and we are struck also by its variety.
1. St. Paul appears to speak quite differently to the Jews at Antioch and to the idolaters at Lystra. With the one he argues from the Scriptures; with the other only from the book of nature. And how can it be otherwise if a man is in earnest? Does the physician proceed, without inquiry, to apply one mode of treatment everywhere, and expect the recovery of health, which is his object, to reward such unreasoning efforts? Even so it is with the physician of the soul. His first business is to ascertain where men stand, what men know and believe. Till he knows something upon these points, he can only employ the bow at a venture. To speak to a man of salvation when he has never been conscious of danger, to offer a man forgiveness who has never trembled at sin, is to cover up the mischief instead of extirpating it, to comfort a man in his sins instead of rescuing him from them. Till the people of Lystra knew that there was one God, it was idle to say to them, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” On the other hand, those who already possessed the evidence also of a Divine revelation, those whose fault it was to count themselves safe because they had honoured God with a ceremonial worship, must be instructed out of that revelation itself as to the sinfulness of sin, as to the need and the promise and the coming of a Saviour, in the language of a prophet in whom they believed.
2. More than half the failures of our ministry arise from inappropriate teaching and from inappropriate hearing. There is a man here, as there once was when Jesus Himself was the Preacher, possessed by the spirit of an unclean devil. He comes hither, drawn perhaps by custom, perhaps by a wish to gloss over his lost state, perhaps by an instinctive longing to lull the disquietude of his soul. This man meets Jesus here. But too often it is only a hearing of the sound--something about guilt, about atonement, about the mercy of God--and the man goes away as he came; what he has understood he has misapplied; the unclean spirit is still there, soothed, calmed, lulled, like the surfeited snake till its next fit of hunger. That man ought to have been told of God in conscience before he was told of God in redemption. Till he has trembled at judgment to come, till he has cried out against himself as a sinner, he can scarcely profit, he may even be fatally injured, by the offer of a pardon which he wants not, or of a Saviour whom he will only crucify afresh.
3. What cannot be done by the preacher must be done for himself by the individual hearer. Let a man ask himself, “Is that word for me? Does that suit my case? God give me the spirit of wisdom in hearing, lest ‘that which should be for my health be to me the occasion of falling.’”
III. It had also a careful regard to the carrying on of that which was well begun.
1. In the form of regular supervision. “They ordained elders in every congregation.” He who is turned to God still needs training. It is a comfort to us to believe that our assemblies for worship and instruction had their origin in the institutions of the primitive Church. It is not the one reception of the one great truth which will secure us from the risk of falling away. The minister has to learn; and if he do not learn, his ministry will soon become a vain repetition, a barren and a wearisome form, both to himself and to those who hear him. Even so is it with the congregation. They too have need to learn in the school of God; and the services of this place ate designed to help them in learning.
2. In the form of well-instructed expectation (verse 22). Neither our Saviour nor His apostles ever misled men as to the nature of the Christian life below--that it must be a conflict, and therefore a life of tribulation. (Dean Vaughan.)
Apostolic rehearsal
I. What did the apostles rehearse in the ears of the Church? “All that God had done with them.” Not all that they had done of themselves, by dint of their own efforts, by the power of their own persuasion. Not how many good sermons they had preached, what overflowing congregations were attracted to hear them, or what unbounded applause had been bestowed upon their ministry. Nor did they make their sufferings the theme of conversation: yet they were “destitute, afflicted, tormented” (Heb_11:37). “They related all that God had done with them.” Not what the Almighty had performed by His own immediate agency, independent of all human instrumentality; but what He had done by their hands, as the servants of His will.
1. God had by them communicated instruction in Divine things to the people whom they addressed.
2. They not only taught many: they were also made the happy instruments of leading a great multitude to believe in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
3. God made them the instruments of confirming the souls of the disciples.
4. God had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles.
II. To whom the apostles rehearsed the things which God had done by their instrumentality. “They gathered the Church together,” etc. Let us inquire, what were the discriminating marks by which the primitive Churches were distinguished?
1. By their disunion with the world. The primitive Christians had their “conversation in the world” (2Co_1:12), and mixed promiscuously with human society, “working with their own hands” (1Co_4:12). They were not “slothful in business”; but “fervent in spirit, serving the Lord” (Rom_12:11). Notwithstanding, they held no unnecessary intercourse with ungodly men, never selecting them as companions; for “the friendship of the world is enmity with God” (Jam_4:4). Although they were in the world, they were not of it.
2. The members of the primitive Churches were distinguished by the sanctity of their characters, and the consistency of their conduct. Each of them could adopt the language of St. Paul (Gal_2:20). The principles by which they were actuated were faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and love to His holy name.
III. What were the motives that induced the apostles to rehearse what God had done with them?
1. We may conceive that it was done to express the warm and grateful effusions of their hearts.
2. The apostles rehearsed what God had done by their means, to gladden the hearts of others.
3. They rehearsed what God had done by them, as a public acknowledgment of the obligations under which they were laid to Him. (R. Treffry.)
And how He had opened the door of faith unto the Gentiles.--
God opening doors:--He who has the keys of David can open all doors. No preacher must assume these keys to himself, but must pray that God, who only can use them effectually, will do so. And if anything is to be effected for the salvation of souls, God must open four doors--the door of the preacher’s mouth, the doors of the hearer’s ear and heart, the door of heaven. (K. Gerok.)
The door of faith
I.This metaphor sets forth that the simple act of trust in God, as revealed in Christ, is the way by which we pass into the house of God. Christ says, “I am the Door,” and faith is the means of access. This faith is the outer door, the vestibule which leads to the real opening by which we enter into all the mystery and the sweetness of the Divine home. It is a very little, low door. There are a great many much more pretentious ways to God held out to men. There are the doors of contemplation, of asceticism, of ceremonial, of a self-righteous, proud, purity of life; but a man cannot get more than a step inwards if he tries them. But there is a narrow portal yonder, and if a man will go down upon his knees, and if he will leave his sins outside, it will be like one of those narrow passages with a little tiny aperture in it, where a hunted race used to take up their abode, and which widened out into a broad apartment where a man could stand in safety and warmth and home. We go through this narrow door of trust, but we come out into the large room of our Father’s house.
II. The other side of the metaphor suggests the means by which God can enter into us. The door into our hearts is faith. There is no possibility, in heaven or in earth, for God to come with His blessings into any man’s heart except through the door of that man’s faith. You take a flask, seal it hermetically, tie a bit of canvas over the mouth of it, pitch that with tar, and plunge it into the Atlantic; and the inside of it will be as dry as if it was in the midst of African deserts. And as long as a man’s heart is hermetically sealed, which it is by the absence of faith, it is all one to him, as if there were no mercy. The ocean of mercy and love is all outside of him. Notice, in passing, how small a thing a door is--just a piece of timber worth a few shillings. Yes! but if a king comes in, there is a dignity about it. Faith in itself is nothing; it is precious because it is a means by which we lay hold upon precious things.
III. This door is to be kept open by ourselves. We read of Lydia’s heart being opened by the Lord; and we read of Christ knocking at the door, waiting for our opening of it to Him. These are two halves of a great truth. Lydia’s heart would never have been opened had she not willed. You are responsible for exercising and for continuing to exercise this act of faith. This is one of those doors that shut to in a moment if not clasped back. Day by day we must get rid of the world’s rubbish that tries to choke up the doorway, by prayer, by effort to expel the evil. The Lord stands before each of us and summons us, “Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors: and the King of glory shall come in.” Let us answer, “Come in, Thou blessed of the Lord; wherefore standest Thou without!” (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The open gate of salvation
The trouble with many people is that they want to have a hundred curious questions about God and heaven answered before they come to Christ and trust in Christ. They do not act so in other matters. If a man is out in the woods at night and has lost his way, he does not sit down on a log and wait for the sun to rise, or for someone to kindle a bonfire that shall illuminate the whole forest. No, no. If the glimmer of a candle reaches his eye, no matter how faint and far away, he rejoices--he begins at once to move in that direction. The light shows that he can be saved if he will follow it. And it is so with even the feeblest shining of the light of life which reaches a man. Let him be faithful to what it reveals, and he is sure of salvation. Says Dr. Parkhurst: “Light is a sure guide, because, unlike sound, it goes in straight lines. If you were to strike the tired, diminished end of a sunbeam a million, million miles from the sun, you are on the certain track of the sun the instant you begin treading upwards the glittering highway that that sunbeam spreads out for you. And wherever and howsoever far out upon the circumference of Christ’s character you take your position and begin threading inward any one of its radiating lines, you move by a line as straight as a sunbeam towards the heart and centre of the entire matter. One radius is as good as another for finding the centre. Each of the twelve gates thresholded a main avenue of the heavenly Jerusalem.” The gate of heaven is not away up yonder; it is wherever we look to Christ as the Opener of heaven to the penitent and believing soul. He said, “I am the door; by Me if any man enter in he shall be saved.” The gospel, whenever we study it as earnest seekers after truth, presents to us one of the pearly gates of paradise.
God’s open doors
There are few men who would pass through a gold mine, having full permission to carry away with them choicest specimens of its choicest treasures, who would not make good use of such an opportunity. All along the highway of life God is setting before each traveller opportunities to be and to do which are far more valuable than the richest treasures of gold or gems which earth offers. These opportunities are so many open doors which lead to the treasure houses of God, prepared for all who seek, and offered to all who ask. (H. W. Beecher.)
