(_a_) That our attitude to the Gospel is a revelation of our deepest
selves.
The Gospel is a 'discerner of thoughts and intents of the heart.' It
judges us here and now, and by their attitude to it 'the thoughts of
many hearts shall be revealed.'
(_b_) That our rejection of it plainly shows that we have not the
qualifications for eternal life.
No doubt some men are kept from accepting Christ by intellectual doubts
and difficulties, but even these would alter their whole attitude to
Him if they had a profound consciousness of sin, and a desire for
deliverance from it.
But with regard to the great bulk of its hearers, no doubt the
hindrance is chiefly moral. Many causes may combine to produce the
absence of qualification. The excuses in the parable'--farm, oxen,
wife'--all amount to engrossment with this present world, and such
absorption in the things seen and temporal deadens desire. So the
Gospel preached excites no longings, and a man hears the offer of
salvation without one motion of his heart towards it, and thus
proclaims himself 'unworthy of eternal life.'
But the great disqualification is the absence of all consciousness of
sin. This is the very deepest reason which keeps men away from Christ.
How solemn a thing the preaching and hearing of this word is!
How possible for you to make yourselves fit!
How simple the qualification! We have but to know ourselves sinners and
to trust Jesus and then we 'shall be counted worthy to obtain that
world and the resurrection from the dead.' Then we shall be 'worthy to
escape and to stand before the Son of Man.' Then shall we be 'worthy of
this calling,' and the Judge himself shall say: 'They shall walk with
Me in white, for they are worthy.'
'FULL OF THE HOLY GHOST'
'And the disciples were filled with joy, and with the Holy
Ghost.'--Acts xiii. 52.
That joy was as strange as a garden full of flowers would be in bitter
winter weather. For everything in the circumstances of these disciples
tended to make them sad. They had been but just won from heathenism,
and they were raw, ignorant, unfit to stand alone. Paul and Barnabas,
their only guides, had been hunted out of Antioch by a mob, and it
would have been no wonder if these disciples had felt as if they had
been taken on to the ice and then left, when they most needed a hand to
steady them. Luke emphasises the contrast between what might have been
expected, and what was actually the case, by that eloquent 'and' at the
beginning of our verse, which links together the departure of the
Apostles and the joy of the disciples. But the next words explain the
paradox. These new converts, left in a great heathen city, with no
helpers, no guides, to work out as best they might a faith of which
they had but newly received the barest rudiments, were 'full of joy'
because they were 'full of the Holy Ghost.'
Now that latter phrase, so striking here, is characteristic of this
book of the Acts, and especially of its earlier chapters, which are
all, as it were, throbbing with wonder at the new gift which Pentecost
had brought. Let me for a moment, in the briefest possible fashion, try
to recall to you the instances of its occurrence, for they are very
significant and very important.
You remember how at Pentecost 'all' the disciples were 'filled with the
Holy Ghost.' Then when the first persecution broke over the Church,
Peter before the Council is 'filled with the Holy Spirit,' and
therefore he beards them, and 'speaks with all boldness.' When he goes
back to the Church and tells them of the threatening cloud that was
hanging over them, they too are filled with the Holy Spirit, and
therefore rise buoyantly upon the tossing wave, as a ship might do when
it passes the bar and meets the heaving sea. Then again the Apostles
lay down the qualifications for election to the so-called office of
deacon as being that the men should be 'full of the Holy Ghost and
wisdom'; and in accordance therewith, we read of the first of the
seven, Stephen, that he was 'full of faith and of the Holy Ghost,' and
therefore 'full of grace and power.' When he stood before the Council
he was 'full of the Holy Ghost,' and therefore looked up into heaven
and saw it opened, and the Christ standing ready to help him. In like
manner we read of Barnabas that he 'was a good man, full of the Holy
Ghost and of faith.' And finally we read in our text that these new
converts, left alone in Antioch of Pisidia, were 'full of joy and of
the Holy Ghost.'
Now these are the principal instances, and my purpose now is rather to
deal with the whole of these instances of the occurrence of this
remarkable expression than with the one which I have selected as a
text, because I think that they teach us great truths bearing very
closely on the strength and joyfulness of the Christian life which are
far too much neglected, obscured, and forgotten by us to-day.
I wish then to point you, first, to the solemn thought that is here, as
to what should be--