Acts 1:21,22

Acts 1:21

The Christian Ministry

I. Consider what may be gathered, in regard to the office and qualifications of an Apostle, from that portion of Scripture brought before you by the services of the day. You will observe that St. Peter defines the office as that of being a witness to the resurrection of Christ, and requires that the appointed individual should be taken from those who had been associated with Christ through His earthly ministrations. So thoroughly is the resurrection an epitome of redemption so completely may the whole of Christianity, whether as to evidence or doctrine, be gathered into the one truth, "The Lord is risen, the Lord is risen indeed," that in witnessing to the event which Easter commemorates, they witnessed to all which a sinful world was most concerned to know.

II. But why, if it were only of the resurrection that the apostles were to be witnesses if they witnessed to everything in witnessing to this was it necessary that the man chosen to the apostleship should be selected from those who had from the first been associated with Christ? The necessity is alleged in the text, and its reasons may be easily discerned. Those alone were fitted to bear testimony that Christ had risen, who had been much with Him before He went down into the grave, and much with Him after he had left it. Unless both conditions were fulfilled, there could be no convincing testimony. The Apostle must have been much with Christ not only after His resurrection, but before His crucifixion; for thus alone could he be fit to judge whether it was actually the Being who had been nailed to the tree, who was now claiming to have overcome death. We see, then, how St. Peter gathers into our text a just description of the qualifications of an apostle. It was the resurrection to which they were to give prominence and on which they were to lay stress, and if it were of the resurrection that the Apostles were called to be witnesses, their having been associated from first to last with Christ was indispensable to the placing their testimony beyond the reach of cavil. We see, therefore, with what propriety St. Peter declared that "Of those who had companied with us all the time that the Lord was among us, must one be ordained to be a witness with us of His resurrection."

H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 1858.

I. We here see one secret of the superhuman strength which sustained the Apostles in the fiery trials through which they were destined to pass. They were strong, not because of any secret possession peculiar to them as Apostles, but simply because the mysteries of another world, closing in around them, had become an abiding vision, and issued through their faithfulness to the work of grace within them, in a consistent conformity of thought and act which was above the world. They had, therefore, in all their bearing a singleness, an ease, a dignity, an energy, before which the powers of this lower world gave way. They thus acted and suffered, because they lived and moved in the realities of an inner creation, which imparted its own colour and tone to all their views and judgments. Rut this grave power was independent of their special gift as Apostles, and was promised to abide in the Church for ever.

II. This aspect of the lives of the Apostles bears on our own history. We are so apt to look on the life depicted in the Acts of the Apostles as a kind of heroic form of Christianity, which has passed away, and that we have inherited only the possibilities of a lower state, more accommodated to the actual circumstances of modern society. Such a supposition is fatal to all high sanctity or real faithfulness. Moreover, it is to mistake the very meaning and object of the Acts of the Apostles. In the Acts we behold the Church in its abiding form, as it arose through the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, and as it was promised to continue through the grace of His unfailing presence even to the end.

III. The following simple rules will by the grace of God tend to cherish that pure inner light on which the increase of spiritual perception depends. (1) Fill up some of the vacant spaces of the day with recurring ejaculatory prayers. (2) Practice con-temptation in some form, however simple. (3) Study Holy Scripture at times in prayer on your knees. (4) Learn to view all acts, all words and thoughts, as they will appear at the day of judgment. (5) Beware of a religion which depends on ardent impulses or occasional efforts.

T. T. Carter, Sermons,p. 151.

References: Acts 1:21; Acts 1:22. H. Melvill, Voices of the Year,vol. ii., p. 386; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. vi., p. 88; Bishop Barry, Cheltenham College Sermons,p. 333.Acts 1:22. Homiletic Magazine,vol. x., p. 99. Acts 1:23. Contemporary Pulpit,vol. v., p. 193.Acts 1:23. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iii., p. 159. Acts 1:24. C. J. Vaughan, Church of the First Days,p. 19. Acts 1:25. J. N. Norton, Every Sunday,p. 313; Mason, Contemporary Pulpit,vol. iv., p. 193; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. ii., p. 156; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iv., p. 106; T. M. Herbert, Sketches of Sermons,p. 264.Acts 2:1. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxx., No. 1783; J. Vaughan, Children's Sermons,2nd series, p. 148; 5th series, p. 93; J. Irons, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. x., p. 125.Acts 2:1. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. ix., No. 511; Contemporary Pulpit,vol. vii., p. 297; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. vi., p. 280; M. Wilks, Christian World Pulpit,vol. i., p. 449; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iii., p. 161.