《The People ’s Bible–Acts (Vol. 2)》(Joseph Parker)

16 Chapter 16

Verses 1-5

Chapter53

Prayer

Almighty God, our heart is full of praise, and our tongues would bless thee in thine own house, in the morning light of thine own day. This is our joy in Christ thy Son; in him alone have we liberty, because in him alone we have pardon and purity. We would that our liberty might grow into our highest joy, so that, though standing in the decrees of God, we might feel upon us the warm sunshine of infinite love. We would be thine, and therefore truly our own. We would derive our proprietorship from God, and hold ourselves at thy gracious bidding; thou art Sovereign, but thou art also Father, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, whom he revealed and represented, and to whom he called us by the words of his teaching and by the pathos of his death. By thy good Spirit we have accepted and obeyed the call, and now we are all here before God to acknowledge our sin, to mention our mercies by name, and to praise the Lord with a loud and unanimous hymn for all his tender compassions. Thou hast kept our house about us, our table has been spread, the birds have sung in our roof-tree, and the fire has gone up to heaven whence it came, as if consciously obedient; in our bed we have found sleep, and our tired eyes have been brightened again by rest; the staff is not broken, there is still meal in the barrel, and oil in the cruse; thou hast blessed us, and we will bless thee, yea, our whole life shall be a doxology never ceasing, always increasing. We are the guests of God, we eat at his table, we sleep in his arms, we awake within the circle of his love, and we go in and out because of his almightiness. Break our hearts where they are hard! Destroy our will where it is not thine own; put thy sword through every evil desire, and cut in two every purpose that is not rooted in wisdom and in love. May the weak man or woman become strong; to the perplexed give an unexpected answer of grace; to the heavy-laden give strength that shall carry the burden as a plaything; to those who are out of the way, burdened with darkness that has no limits, cold with winter wind blowing from all points of inclement heaven, send warmth from thine own hidden fire; to those who cannot pray in words send the spirit of supplication. Thou knowest us altogether, and in that fact we find our rest. We are here but for a little time. To-morrow we shall be gone, and the place that knoweth us now shall know us no more for ever; the air is full of farewells; the earth opens itself to offer the hospitality of death, and we are hastening like a post, flying like a shuttle, vanishing like a cloud; there is no figure in all thy universe to represent the instability of our present life! We now take hold of hands, and take hold of hearts, and as one Prayer of Manasseh , standing at the Cross, invoking the name that is above every name, we give ourselves to thee! Seal us, give us the spirit of adoption, help us to say with the heart, Father! let the last cruel link of Satan"s iron chain fall away from our life, and give us liberty! Amen.

Acts 16:1-5

1. And he came also to Derbe [reversing his former progress along the same road, which he now entered upon through the "Cilician Gates," a huge fissure in Taurus, 80 miles long] and to Lystra: and behold, a certain disciple was there [at Lystra, see Acts 14:19], named Timothy, the son of a Jewess [Eunice, 2 Timothy 1:5], which believed [G. a "female Jewish believer"], but his father was a Greek [G. "Greek"].

2. The same was well reported of by the brethren that were at Lystra and Iconium.

3. Him would Paul have to go forth with him [Silas for Barnabas and Timothy for young John Mark]; and he took and circumcised him [did it himself, as every Jew might, Luke 1:59], because of the Jews [the illiberal party among the Jews forbad Jewesses as well as Jews to marry Gentiles, and accounted the offspring of such as did illegitimate. They had therefore not circumcised Timothy, while those of their party who had joined the Jerusalem Church insisted upon the circumcision of the Gentile Titus. The liberal Jews, on the contrary, allowed Jewesses to marry Gentile husbands, and circumcised their male offspring on the principle "partus sequitur ventrem." These would be the kind of persons Paul hoped to convert. So far from being inconsistent, Paul was as emphatically opposed to Judaistic bigotry when he circumcised the Jewish youth Timothy as he was when he refused to circumcise the Gentile youth Titus [ Galatians 2:3] that were in those parts [see Acts 15:21]: for they all [both parties of the Jews] knew that his father was a Greek.

4. And as they went on their way through the cities, they delivered them the decrees [ Luke 2:1] for to keep, which had been ordained of the apostles and elders [cf. Acts 15:1 and Acts 15:2, with Acts 15:24] that were at Jerusalem.

5. So the churches were strengthened in the faith, and increased in number daily.

Incidental Aspects of Apostolic Life

PAUL took Silas with him, but still there was a sense in which he must have been alone. He could not give up a man like Barnabas and think no more about him; we cannot shake off our old associations and pay no heed to the sweet and tender memories of the time that is gone. He who can forget old friends is no Apostle of Jesus Christ. Besides, Paul was going, as he himself phrased it, "again" unto churches where he had ministered, and into churches which he himself had founded. The people would ask questions whatever he himself might resolve to do; they would wonder who the stranger was; they would ask about Barnabas. Here is a side of life that we may but indicate, and dare not attempt to reveal or exhaust. Awkward questions are asked about old friends, old service, and old associations. A man suddenly asks you how you like your church life now, and you have to say, perhaps, that you have given it up. The man is then sorry that he asked the question, nevertheless it cut you in your very soul like a sword with two edges, so that the drawing out of it was as cruel as the putting of it in. We ask questions that open graves and heart-wounds and memories we wish to seal up and leave until the fuller light shall come which shall bring warmth and comfort as well as revelation. The man who has not seen you for years asks you how that sweet little boy of yours Isaiah , and it seems to you incredible that a grief that filled your house with darkness had not made itself known to him who was your friend. You say he has passed through the gate into the city. Your friend is sorry that he touched your wound almost ruthlessly, but he meant it in love, and you excuse him. Paul could not go over the old ground without the Churches saying—"And Barnabas?" What must Paul"s answer have been? He was a faithful Prayer of Manasseh , true as steel, pure as gold refined: he knew not the genius of equivocation and the fine art of telling lies. In such questions and such answers he might find the chastening and correction needed by his fervid temper. We have to account for old associations being ruptured, we have to explain new faces and new relationships. Happy would Paul have been if he had said: "We have agreed to part, we thought it better for the interests of our common cause. Barnabas has gone in one way, and I have gone in another, and when we meet, will not the day be Sabbath day, and our conversation warm as the love of heaven?"

Paul came to Derbe and Lystra. "And behold, a certain disciple was there named Timotheus." Long ago we read in these pages that the witnesses laid down their clothes at the feet of a young man whose name was Saul. Thus we begin. We begin in obscurity, we are pointed at as hardly to be identified, to be seen rather as men in the shape of clouds, than really living figures. A tree does not show its roots. If the foolish tree could be taking itself up in order to show its antecedents, it would soon be killed. Our root life must be hidden, and all that we have to do is so to lift ourselves up in God"s light and rain, as to bring forth leaf and bud and blossom and luscious strengthening fruit. "Herein is my father glorified, that ye bring forth much fruit." We may be now nothing more than" certain disciples" named without a name, revealing an unknown name to show that it was a name unknown. But we may still be disciples, scholars, learners, students, inquirers, eagerly waiting for more light, and sometimes almost irrationally impatient with the sun for not shining more brightly upon the page we are anxiously perusing. We can never be more than "disciples"; the saints are disciples, so are the angels, yea, the archangels that by Divine sovereignty were permitted to break up Divine solitude are still disciples! The point can never stretch itself across the whole line, the finite must ever be position without magnitude, sustaining no appreciable relation as to magnitude to the Infinite! We shall always be obscure in the universe. Timotheus attains to great fame in the little place that gave him birth, and becomes quite a well-known man in larger spaces; but in relation to the universe, the empire of stars and planets, the kingdom of constellations and of sky upon sky full of radiant cities of God, why, Paul himself is an unknown name! We find our joy in discipleship. It is enough for us to have the Book, to be reading it; and whenever we turn over a page we celebrate a birthday. Read on, poor old pilgrim; trim thy glasses, dull with the dew of tears, and look again; thou shalt have young eyes by-and-by, and begin to read quite freshly; there is no old age in heaven!

"The son of a certain woman which was a Jewess... but his father was a Greek." Happy Prayer of Manasseh , to stand between two civilizations! This was an honour which in his early years Timotheus could not appreciate; but could any relationship be sublimer? Greek for a father, and Jewess for a mother! What must the boy have been? Two such fires meeting in his blood; two such histories recounting themselves in articulate eloquence in his memory! What his inward ear must have heard! What stirrings there must have been in his soul! How able to look well round him and to understand, distantly and somewhat indistinctly, it may be, the mystery of Law and the mystery of Beauty! His religion might go up into superstition, his philosophy might develop into scepticism and sneering; if he touched Christ, he touched One who to the Jew was a stumbling-block and to the Greek foolishness, but to the believing Timothy the power of God and the wisdom of God. We ourselves know somewhat of this double relationship in life. Your mother prayed—your father never prayed; or your father was a believer and your mother had no faith. You are a child of the night and of the day, and you feel it, and sometimes you are plunged in the darkness of the one parentage, and sometimes you are away on the bright broad wings of the other into the light. To the world, not understanding that your mother was Jewish and your father Greek, you are a contradiction and a mystery. But is it possible that a Jewess could marry a Greek? I should have said, No, but for what you have done; you make it possible to believe that a Jewess may have married a Greek. I have know a religious man marry a woman who never prayed; that is a greater miracle than a Jewess marrying a Greek. I have known a Christian woman marry an alien who had sung her hymns in hypocrisy that he might impose upon her credulity. There Isaiah , therefore, no difficulty whatever, after English experience, in believing that long centuries since a woman who was a Jewess married a man who was a Greek.

Timothy "was well reported of by the brethren that were at Lystra and Iconium." Character is very subtle. Timothy never asked any man to speak well of him, and yet no man could speak ill of the youth. We must not ask for characters, we must so live as to be indisputably trusted and honoured. Do not appeal to one another"s charitable judgment for a character, but so live that character will come. Character grows; character has its own seed in itself; character is not put on; it develops, increases, shows itself without ostentation, and throws a subtle claim upon confidence without ever pandering for patronage. Young Prayer of Manasseh , you who are as young as Timothy was at the time of the text, your character is known. Do not suppose you are living in darkness; men say of you, "We cannot account for it, but that young man excites suspicion"; we cannot lay our finger upon one thing he ever did, to our knowledge, that is wrong, but—" and then come the indications which cannot easily be put into words, but which are so expressive as to leave no doubt of the speaker"s deepest meaning. On the other hand, thank God, every hill has a sunny side. Men are regarding other youths one by one, saying, "He is true," "He is honest," "He is to be trusted," "He is energetic," "He is persevering"; "We cannot give you dates and facts, but our whole feeling about him is that he is sound as an oak." Live your character; do not be painted as good men, but paint your own character in your own blood. The true man cannot be hidden though he be in a bush; he will burn through it and attract the notice of wandering men and speak to them the Divine mysteries.

"Him would Paul have to go forth with him." Paul could not do without youth. Had not Paul Silas along with him? Yes; but he said, I must have a young voice near me; I like the ring of young speech. I wanted to bring Mark , who was young enough, but I could not bring myself to accept his association, any more than I could persuade myself to bring a staff that was broken in the middle; but I love youth. A young man can run, a young man is not burdened with a sense of his own respectability; a young man is here, and there, and yonder, and back again before we know well what instructions we have given to him. God bless the young life! Paul must have a boy with him, a disciple, one who was spelling out letters and words of one syllable, but whose young blood was aflame with sacred and sacrificial enthusiasm. He proved himself to be an Apostle by his love of the young. There are those who would snub the youthful soul, who would not permit him to be seen or to be heard. Paul loved the young, took them with him, and would never give them up so long as they were true; but if ever they began to shake in his hands and prove themselves fickle, he would give them up and their uncle Barnabas with them. He must have steadfastness, faithfulness, resoluteness; a soldier could not do with a coward; only be true, and Paul would be your lifelong friend.

He took and circumcised Timothy. This from Paul, who would not circumcise Titus! But the reason is given: "because of the Jews which were in those quarters: for they knew all that his father was a Greek." Timotheus was partially of Jewish descent; it was therefore no breach of the Apostle"s stern policy that, under circumstances so peculiar, he should respect a temporary prejudice. Now they start, Paul, and Silas, and Timotheus. "And as they went through the cities they delivered them the decrees for to keep that were ordained of the apostles and elders which were at Jerusalem." Do not be afraid of the word "Decrees" in this connection. We have seen what those decrees were; they were decrees of liberty. What they signed was the Magna Charta of the Church; not a set of opinions, dogmas, superstitions, and decrees which were to bind down the human mind and fetter and overweight men"s aspirations, but they were decisions pointing in the direction of ever-widening liberty and light. It was freedom centred in God and in the Cross of Christ. Christ"s followers are not lawless; they have decrees to keep. The spirit of authority is the spirit of rest when it brings with it the assurance that the authority is not arbitrary but rational, not local but universal, not imperfect but Divine.