Acts 23:11

THE PASTOR’S WAY OF PEACE

‘The Lord stood by him, and said, Be of good cheer, Paul: for as thou hast testified of Me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome.’

Acts 23:11

This was in the Antonian citadel, in the night. The immediate sequel of the text is the conspiracy for St. Paul’s assassination, when at dawn of day the ‘more than forty’ arranged how and where they might fall upon their victim.

In such a frame is set this radiant picture. Serene and infinitely at liberty, He Who always knows the way to the solitudes and sorrows of His people stood by His Apostle’s side. He called His servant by his name. He placed Himself in sympathetic contact with his fears. And He lifted him out of them with the sublime reassurance that the servant was in the path of the Master’s will, and therefore altogether safe in the escort of the Master’s love and power. The path was developing and ascending. Jerusalem was about to be exchanged for Rome. And Jesus Christ guarantees St. Paul’s safety here and his safety there, assuring him of a deep inward continuity through all the changes, as well as of a rest and refuge amidst all the storms.

There is in the message to St. Paul an intimate relation to ourselves, to the pastors of to-day. How shall we read that message out?

I. It is a message of the power of Christ to transcend and transfigure difficulty.

II. It is a message that Christ is able to transfigure life’s deep changes, till they are as it were harmonised into one song by the reconciling magic of His will. From Jerusalem to Rome, from a place which, with all its alarms, was yet redolent to him of memory and old ways, to the world-city, dangerously new and different; that was a great change for St. Paul.

III. What better can I do than move you to pray for your clergy, chosen servants and messengers of Christ?

(a) Pray that in all their care and labour the Lord may evermore stand by them, morning, noon, and night, saying to them, at the heart of all circumstances, ‘Fear not; I am with thee.’

(b) Pray that the sevenfold Spirit may fill their spirit with counsel, and with the might of truth and love and with the great gift of power for God with men.

(c) Pray that the heavenly Scriptures may be evermore lighted up to them by that same Spirit, and that the sure Word, in its fullness and its sublime proportion, which is of God, may be their lamp, and oracle, and song.

(d) Pray that they may have grace faithfully to fulfil their call to be, above all men, preachers of that Word, and that they may evermore rejoice to set forth from it before all men our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, as our all in all, for this life and the life to come, for pardon, holiness, and heaven, in His finished work, in His everlasting working.

—Bishop H. C. G. Moule.

Illustration

‘The responsibility of the congregation was a thought which Bishop Westcott touched on many times; never, perhaps, with more force than in this passage from one of his Ordination addresses. “Priest and people act and react one upon the other. They suffer together, they advance together. If it is true, as we all must admit, that the priest must use for his people every grace of the Spirit with which he is endowed, it is no less true that the people on their part must use for their priest that sevenfold gift which they too received by the apostolic laying on of hands. To them also is entrusted a stewardship of sacred treasures by which those that have rule over them must be supported. This truth, this vital truth, has, I think, been commonly overlooked; and there has followed, naturally, on the one side an assumption of lordship, and on the other side a suppression of spiritual force.”