How convenient if Luke had told us a little more! But Paul's history is
unfinished, like Peter's and John's. This book's treatment of all the
Apostles teaches, as we have often had to remark, that Christ and His
acts are its true subject.
We are wise if we learn the lesson of keeping all human teachers, even
a Paul, in their inferior place, and if we say of each of them: 'He was
not the Light, but came that he might bear witness of the Light.'
II. God's unexpected and unwelcome ways of fulfilling our desires, and
His purposes.
It had long been Paul's dream to 'see Rome.' How little he knew the
steps by which his dream was to be fulfilled! He told the Ephesian
elders that he was going up to Jerusalem under compulsion of the
Spirit, and 'not knowing the things that should befall him there,'
except that he was certain of 'bonds and imprisonment.' He did not know
that these were God's way of bringing him to Rome. Jewish fury, Roman
statecraft and law-abidingness, two years of a prison, a stormy voyage,
a shipwreck, led him to his long-wished-for goal. God uses even man's
malice and opposition to the Gospel to advance the progress of the
Gospel. Men, like coral insects, build their little bit, all unaware of
the whole of which it is a part, but the reef rises above the waves and
ocean breaks against it in vain.
So we may gather lessons of submission, of patient acceptance of
apparently adverse circumstances, and of quiet faith that He who 'makes
stormy winds to fulfil His word and flaming fires His ministers,' will
bend to the carrying out of His designs all things, be they seemingly
friendly or hostile, and will realise our dreams, if in accordance with
His will, even through events which seem to shatter them. Let us trust
and be patient till we see the issues of events.