Acts 26:28

Acts 26:28

Note:

I. Some of those hopeful and encouraging indications of character which may be found in a person who, after all, is nothing more than an almost Christian. Thus, (1) There may be a great deal of religious knowledge in such a person. This was evidently the case with Agrippa. He was a man in advance of his age. It was in no spirit of fulsome compliment, we are sure, that Paul gave as a reason for the satisfaction he felt in pleading before such a judge "Especially because I know thee to be expert in all customs and questions which are among the Jews"; and then appealing to his acquaintance with Jewish theology to certify whether, in believing the possibility of a resurrection, he was doing more than filling up the outline of those hopes and anticipations which their twelve tribes had cherished, from the days of Abraham until that day. And so, also, it may be with us. We may be before many around us in religious intelligence, may be mighty in the Scriptures, deeply read in creeds, exact, sound in all our views of the plan of salvation; and yet, by reason of all this knowledge being unapplied the will not being influenced by it, the affections not purified by it may be no better Christians than Agrippa was. (2) Other qualities of head and heart will easily occur to you as both consistent with, and often specially marking, the religion of an almost Christian such as amicableness of disposition, gentleness of temper, tastes, studies, feelings, tenderness, which, if nothing were told us to the contrary, we should be ready to conclude were hopeful indications of the Christian character. The counterfeit deceives many, and often deceives ourselves.

II. Why is it that people persuaded to go so far in the Christian life cannot be persuaded to go further? The religion of the almost Christian would go further if there were anything of sincerity in such religion as he has already. But there is not. True religion is never worth anything till you come to take some pleasure in it for itself. But this absence of love for God is not the only reason why people are satisfied to remain almost, and not altogether, Christians. There is the predominant love in the heart of something else. Little as he would like to be told it, the almost Christian might with equal truth be designated the almost idolater. The great truth that stands out everywhere in God's Word is that in the future world there are two states, and two states only. We read nothing about a middle condition nothing about a paradise of mediocrity nothing about a heaven for the almost saved. And so if we must fix a value on such a persuasion as Agrippa had, and such a persuasion as, it must be feared, many have with him, it must be this that it had been better for him never to have been persuaded at all.

D. Moore, Penny Pulpit,No. 3162.

I. What were the gains of Agrippa? For a few years more he kept the glories to which he clung; he played his part of king on the world's stage, and men bowed to him the crooked hinges of the knee and paid him lip homage, and he sat in the chief place of honour at wearisome feasts, and was the principal figure in hollow court ceremonials and empty pageants of state; and then the play was over and his little day was done, and darkness of night swallowed up all, and he carried nothing away with him when he died (except indeed his sins); neither did his pomp follow him. His gains were not after all so very large, and, such as they were, they did not tarry with him long.

II. But his losses, or rather his loss? He lost himself. He had not gained the whole world only a miserable little fragment of it, and this but for a moment, for a little inch of time; but in the grasping and gaining of this he had made that terrible loss shipwreck of which Christ speaks had lost himself; in other words, had lost all. Whatever our bonds may be, it is worth the while to break them, as in the strength of Christ they can be broken. These mountains of opposition, it is worth while to cry to Him that He would make them plain. It is well worth the while. A few years hence, and it will be with every one of us as it was with King Agrippa not very long after these memorable words were uttered, and then how utterly insignificant, not merely to others but to ourselves, will it be whether we were here in high places or in low, rich or poor, talked about or obscure, whether we trod lonely paths or were grouped in joyful households of love, whether our faces were oftener soiled with tears or drest with smiles. But for us, gathered as we then shall be within the veil, and waiting for the judgment of the great day, one thing shall have attained an awful significance, shall stand out alone, as the final question, the only surviving question of our lives: Were we almost Christ's or altogether? in other words, Were we Christ's or were we not?

R. C. Trench, Sermons, New and Old,p. 11.

I. Agrippa was a king, and must have thought of the state, station, power that he would in all likelihood have to lay down if he took up the religious profession of an obscure, despised, and persecuted sect. He loved the praise of man, and thought of the taunts, the jeers, the neglect he would have to encounter from those with whose views and habits his own had heretofore been congenial. He was a proud man, and he would have to confess that for all his life he had been in the wrong, while the fishermen of Galilee were in the right. He was the friend of Cæsar, and thirty years before it had been most truly, though most insidiously, said, "If thou let this man go thou art not Cæsar's friend!" His kingdom was of this world, and the kingdom of Christ was not. Such thoughts we may imagine passing through his mind with the rapidity of instinct. He counted the cost after his fashion, but it was too great. He never adopted either the profession or the moral practice of a Christian.

II. The case of many of us resembles that of Agrippa. We remain yet to be persuaded altogether, and distinctly to adopt the active practical life which belongs to the designation we profess, and are only almost persuaded to obey the Lord of Truth at all hazards, and to adorn the gospel of charity in all things and through all difficulties. Every rational conviction of the conscience is a visitant from God an angel sent to trouble the pool; and if it be neglected, then both the conviction and the opportunity that has awakened it must be recorded against you. Be sure of this every neglect of such opportunities is trifling with God; and every such trifling will operate to the abatement of His long suffering, till at length the fatal sentence will be pronounced: "He is joined to idols let him alone."

W. H. Brookfield, Sermons,p. 175.

References: Acts 26:28. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xv., No. 871; R. L. Browne, Sussex Sermons,p. 127; J. Natt, Posthumous Sermons,p. 371; Preacher's Monthly,vol. ii., pp. 105, 258; vol. v., p. 105.Acts 26:29. Sermons for Boys and Girls,p. 200; Preacher's Monthly,vol. viii., pp. 114, 184.