'And they continued stedfastly in the Apostles' doctrine and
fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.'--ACTS ii. 42.
The Early Church was not a pattern for us, and the idea of its greatly
superior purity is very largely a delusion. But still, though that be
true, the occasional glimpses that we get at intervals in the early
chapters of this Book of the Acts of the Apostles do present a very
instructive and beautiful picture of what a Christian society may be,
and therefore of what Christian Churches and Christian individuals
ought to be.
The words that I have read, however, are not the description of the
demeanour of the whole community, but of that portion of it which had
been added so swiftly to the original nucleus on the Day of Pentecost.
Think, on the morning of that day 'the number of the names was one
hundred and twenty,' on the evening of that day it was three thousand
over that number--a sufficiently swift and large increase to have
swamped the original nucleus, unless there had been a great power of
assimilation to itself lodged in that little body. These new converts
held to the Apostolic 'doctrine' and 'fellowship,' and to 'breaking of
bread' and to 'prayers,' and so became homogeneous with the others, and
all worked to one end.
Now, these four points which are signalised in this description may
well afford us material for consideration. They give us the ideal of a
Church's inner life, which in the divine order should precede, and be
the basis of, a Church's work in the world. But, while we speak of an
ideal for a Church, let us not forget that it is realised only by the
lives of individuals being conformed to it.
I. The first point, which is fundamental to all the others, is 'They
continued steadfastly in the Apostles' doctrine.'
An earnest desire after fuller knowledge is the basis of all healthy
Christian life. We cannot realise, without a great effort, the
ignorance of these new converts. 'Parthians and Medes and Elamites,'
and Jews gathered from every corner of the Roman world, they had come
up to Jerusalem, and the bulk of them knew no more about Christ and
Christianity than what they picked up out of Peter's sermon on the Day
of Pentecost. But that was enough to change their hearts and their
wills and to lead them to a real faith. And though the _contents_ of
their faith were very incomplete, the _power_ of their faith was very
great. For there is no necessary connection between the amount believed
and the grasp with which it is held. Believing, they were eager for
more light to be poured on to their half-seeing eyes. They had no
Gospels, they had no written record, they had no means of learning
anything about the faith which they were now professing except
listening to one or other of the original Eleven, with the addition of
any of the other 'old disciples'--that is, _early_ disciples--who might
perchance have equal claims to be listened to as 'witnesses from the
beginning.' We shall very much misunderstand the meaning of the words
here, if we suppose that these novices were dosed with theological
instruction, or that 'the Apostles' doctrine' consisted of such fully
developed truths as we find later on in Paul's writings. If you will
look at the first sermons that Peter is recorded as having delivered,
in the early chapters of the Acts, you will find that he by no means
enunciates a definite theology such as he unfolds in his later Epistle.
There is no word about the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ; His
designation is 'Thy holy child Jesus.' There is no word about the
atoning nature of Christ's sacrifice; His death is simply the great
crime of the Jewish people, and His Resurrection the great divine fact
witnessing to the truth of His Messiahship. All that which we now
regard, and rightly regard, as the very centre and living focus of
divine truth was but beginning to shine out on the Apostles' minds, or
rather to gather itself into form, and to shape itself by slow degrees
into propositions. 'The Apostles' teaching'--for 'doctrine' does not
convey to modern ears what Luke meant by the word--must have been very
largely, if not exclusively, of the same kind as is preserved to us in
the four Gospels, and especially in the first three of them. The
recital to these listeners, to whom it was all so fresh and strange and
transcendent, of the story that has become worn and commonplace to us
by its familiarity, of Christ in His birth, Christ in His gentleness,
Christ in His deeds, Christ in the deep words that the Apostles were
only beginning to understand; Christ in His Death, Resurrection, and
Ascension--these were the themes on the narration of which this company
of three thousand waited with such eagerness.
But, of course, there was necessarily involved in the story a certain
amount of what we now call doctrine--that is, theological
teaching--because one cannot tell the story of Jesus Christ, as it is
told in the four Gospels, without impressing upon the hearers the
conviction that His nature was divine and that His death was a
sacrifice. Beyond these truths we know not how far the Apostles went.
To these, perhaps, they did not at first rise. But whether they did so
or no, and although the facts that the hearers were thus eager to
receive, and treasured when they received, are the commonplaces of our
Sunday-schools, and quite uninteresting to many of us, the spirit which
marked these early converts is the spirit that must lie at the
foundation of progressive and healthy Christianity in us. The
consciousness of our own ignorance, of the great sweep of God's
revealed mind and will, the eager desire to fill up the gaps in the
circle, and to widen the diameter, of our knowledge, and the consequent
steadfastness and persistence of our continuance in the teachings--far
fuller and deeper and richer and nobler than were heard in the upper
room at Jerusalem by the first three thousand--which, through the
divine Spirit and the experience of the Church for nineteen hundred
years are available for us, ought to characterise us all.
Now, dear friends, ask yourselves the question very earnestly, Does
this desire of fuller Christian knowledge at all mark my Christian
character, and does it practically influence my Christian conduct and
life? There are thousands of men and women in all our churches who know
no more about the rich revelation of God in Jesus Christ than they did
on that day long, long ago, when first they began to apprehend that He
was the Saviour of their souls. When I sometimes get glimpses into the
utter Biblical ignorance of educated members of my own and of other
congregations, I am appalled; I do not wonder how we ministers do so
little by our preaching, when the minds of the people to whom we speak
are so largely in such a chaotic state in reference to Scriptural
truth. I believe that there is an intolerance of plain, sober,
instructive Christian teaching from the pulpit, which is one of the
worst signs of the Christianity of this generation. And I believe that
there are a terribly large number of professing Christians, and good
people after a fashion, whose Bibles are as clean to-day, except on one
or two favourite pages, as they were when they came out of the
bookseller's shop years and years ago. You will never be strong
Christians, you will never be happy ones, until you make conscience of
the study of God's Word and 'continue steadfastly in the Apostles'
teaching.' You may produce plenty of emotional Christianity, and of
busy and sometimes fussy work without it, but you will not get depth. I
sometimes think that the complaint of the writer of the Epistle to the
Hebrews might be turned upside down nowadays. He says: 'When for the
time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again
which be the first principles.' Nowadays we might say in Sunday-schools
and other places of church work: 'When for the time ye ought to be
_learners_, you have taken to teaching before you know what you are
teaching, and so neither you nor your scholars will profit much.' The
vase should be full before you begin to empty it.
Again, there ought to be, and we ought to aim after, an equable temper
of mutual brotherhood conquering selfishness.
'They continued in the Apostles' doctrine and in fellowship.'
'Fellowship' here, as I take it, applies to community of feeling. A
verse or two afterwards it is applied to community of goods, but we
have nothing to do with that subject at present. What is meant is that
these three thousand, as was most natural, cut off altogether from
their ancient associations, finding themselves at once separated by a
great gulf from their nation and its hopes and its religion, were
driven together as sheep are when wolves are prowling around. And,
being individually weak, they held on by one another, so that many
weaknesses might make a strength, and glimmering embers raked together
might break into a flame.
Now, all these circumstances, or almost all of them, that drove the
primitive believers together, are at an end, and the tendencies of this
day are rather to drive Christian people apart than to draw them
together. Differences of position, occupation, culture, ways of looking
at things, views of Christian truth and the like, all come powerfully
in to the reinforcement of the natural selfishness which tempts us all,
unless the grace of God overcomes it. Although we do not want any
hysterical or histrionic presentation of Christian sympathy and
brotherhood, we do need--far more than any of us have awakened to the
consciousness of the need--for the health of our own souls we need to
make definite efforts to cultivate more of that sense of Christian
brotherhood with all that hold the same Lord Christ, and to realise
this truth: that they and we, however separate, are nearer one another
than are we and those nearest to us who do not share in our Christian
faith.
I do not dwell upon this point. It is one on which it is easy to gush,
and it has got a bad name because there has been so much unreal and
sickly talk about it. But if any Christian man will honestly try to
cultivate the brotherly feeling which my text suggests, and to which
our common relation to Jesus Christ binds us, and will try it in
reference to _A_, _B_, or _C_, whom he does not much like, with whose
ways he has no kind of sympathy, whom he believes to be a heretic, and
who perhaps returns the belief about him with interest, he will find it
is a pretty sharp test of his Christian principle. Let us be real, at
any rate, and not pretend to have more love than we really have in our
hearts. And let us remember that 'he that loveth Him that begat, loveth
Him also that is begotten of Him.'
II. Another characteristic which comes out in the words before us is
the blending of worship with life.
'They continued steadfastly in the Apostles' doctrine ... and in
breaking of bread.' Commentators who can only see one thing at a
time--and there are a good many of that species--have got up great
discussions as to whether this phrase means eating ordinary meals or
partaking of the Lord's Supper. I venture to say it means both,
because, clearly enough, in the beginning, the common meal was hallowed
by what we now call the Lord's Supper being associated with it, and
every day's evening repast was eaten 'in remembrance of Him.'
So, naturally, and without an idea of anything awful or sacred about
the rite, the first Christians, when they went home after a hard day's
work and sat down to take their own suppers, blessed the bread and the
wine, and whether they ate or drank, did the one and the other 'in
remembrance of Him.'
The gradual growth of the sentiment attaching to the Lord's Supper,
until it reached the portentous height of regarding it as a 'tremendous
sacrifice' which could only be administered by priests with ordained
hands in Apostolic succession, can be partly traced even in New
Testament times. The Lord's Supper began as an appendage to, or rather
as a heightening of, the evening meal, and at first, as this chapter
tells us in a subsequent verse, was observed day by day. Then, before
the epoch of the Acts of the Apostles is ended, we find it has become a
weekly celebration, and forms part of the service on the first day of
the week. But even when the observance had ceased to be daily, the
association with an ordinary meal continued, and that led to the
disorders at Corinth which Paul rebuked, and which would have been
impossible if later ideas of the Lord's Supper had existed then.
The history of the transformation of that simple Supper into 'the
bloodless sacrifice' of the Mass, and all the mischief consequent
thereon, does not concern us now. But it does concern us to note that
these first believers hallowed common things by doing them, and common
food by partaking of it, with the memory of His great sacrifice in
their minds. The poorest fare, the coarsest bread, the sourest wine, on
the humblest table, became a memorial of that dear Lord. Religion and
life, the domestic and the devout, were so closely braided together
that when a household sat at table it was both a family and a church;
and while they were eating their meat for the strength of their body,
they were partaking of the memorial of their dying Lord.
Is your house like that? Is your daily life like that? Do you bring the
sacred and the secular as close together as that? Are the dying words
of your Master, 'This do in remembrance of Me,' written by you over
everything you do? And so is all life worship, and all worship hope?