Acts 1:21,22

Wherefore of these men which have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us.

The familiar side of Christ’s life

There are many ways of regarding the life of Christ: e.g., the philosophical or ideal, as in John’s Gospel; the historical, in its larger world relation, as in Luke and St. Paul’s Epistles; or, as here, the familiar. A proverbial touch may be detected in the phraseology of the text recalling Psalms 121:8. Such an expression indicates “the daily round” as distinguished from the special occasions of life. Note two or three reflections upon the great fact of the dwelling amongst us of God’s Son.

I. This contact must be a ground for the most complete sympathy between Him and us.

1. How thoroughly He shared the occupation, interest, and outlook of man. He entered into human thought, and looked upon the universe as it appears to the human eye and mind. Nothing human was indifferent to Him. All questions of labour, of the family, of social or political affairs, were and are of concern to Him. He is one with us.

2. He was a partaker in the suffering and shame of men. Pain, sorrow, disappointment, formed the alphabet of His experience as of ours. These were for Him a discipline as well as for us, and He regarded them and the problems they present as one of ourselves.

II. How independent christ was of external circumstances and associates. It has been said that “no man is a hero to his valet.” Familiarity breeds, if not contempt, at any rate, loss of reverence. Can we conceive of Jesus losing in moral dignity or the esteem of men by daily intercourse? Here He receives the title “Lord,” and His going in and put is “over” His people, i.e., authoritatively, as shepherd over his sheep. He chose a life least calculated to produce social or political effects, yet His influence was enhanced by that fact. His work so absolutely depended on Himself that political influence or high social position mould have injured it. But was He Himself affected by His station in life? Carlyle’s vices, we are told by Froude, were to be looked for, considering his nature and upbringing as a Scottish peasant, and even his virtues were those of people of humble circumstances. Were the virtues of the Peasant of Galilee subject to this drawback? Nay; for we see how He towers above His contemporaries and followers. To such an age He could owe nothing, and the best of all ages have done Him homage and tried to imitate Him.

III. It is just this “daily round” of life that needs saving. Five-sixths of life consists of routine, and what would be the use of a religion that could not affect this? There is a constant tendency to detach the common things of life from moral considerations. Christ’s parables discovered the mystery of the kingdom of heaven that was latent in men’s daily lives. Who shall tell how much the childhood of Jesus has done to purify home life, or His work as a carpenter to ennoble labour? (A. F. Muir, M. A.)

The election of Saint Matthias considered and applied

On the day which is appointed to commemorate the Apostle Matthias, our Church has selected for the Epistle a portion of Scripture from the Acts of the Apostles, the only portion of Scripture in which his name is to be found. Whatever else is related of him in uninspired authors is attended with uncertainty, however worthy of remembrance. One circumstance is mentioned concerning him by two respectable writers among the early Christians, viz., that he was one of the seventy disciples whom the Lord Christ, during His earthly ministry, sent forth to work miracles and to preach in His name. This circumstance proves that he was known to Christ, and Christ to him; and that Christ had distinguished him among His followers.

I. The first piece of instruction which I think we may learn from this portion of Scripture history is that among the good and faithful servants of God bad and unfaithful men my be found. Judas Iscariot was a traitor among the twelve apostles. Satan, as we read in the Book of Job, was among the sons of God when they came to present themselves to Jehovah. Among the early converts to the faith of Christ, Ananias and Sapphira, and Simon Magus, were discovered to be insincere. Our Saviour’s parables of the wheat and tares growing in the same field, and of the good and bad fish caught in the same net, give us the like view of His Church here on earth. We know that His Church triumphant will be presented to Him “a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but holy and without blemish.” The ministers of Christ’s Church, though especially called to be examples to the people whom they are appointed to teach and lead, are certainly not exempt from this corrupting influence: neither is it to be expected that they should be. They are still but men, liable to temptation as the rest of mankind, and subject to the peculiar temptations of their calling.

II. But another piece of instruction which we may learn from this portion of Scripture history is that, though wickedness be foreknown, foretold, and predetermined by God, it is wickedness notwithstanding. To God, who knows all things, it was certainly known that Judas would act the part which history relates he did. Was Judas, then, innocent on this account? Mark the language of the historian in writing of it: “This man [Judas] purchased a field with the reward of his iniquity.” Take another instance of the like kind in our Lord Jesus Christ: “Him,” says St. Peter, “being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.” Let no Christian, therefore, set the foreknowledge and predestination of God against the willing agency and responsibility of man, as if they were inconsistent and at variance with each other, and could not both be true. And let those who would excuse their impieties, by pretending a fatal necessity, be told that, if their sins be decreed and inevitable, so also is their punishment; and if they cannot but choose the one, they must equally choose the other.

III. A third piece of instruction which we may learn from this portion of Scripture history is that when, by death or otherwise, a minister of Christ’s church is removed from his customary sphere of spiritual labour, it is the duty of the bishop, patron, and people, as far as lies in them, to appoint a good and well-qualified minister in his place. We may notice, however, in the election of Matthias what was thought particularly necessary for his office. “Wherefore of these men which have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John unto that same day that He was taken from us, must one be ordained to be a witness with us of His resurrection.” It was an accurate knowledge of Jesus, from the beginning of His public ministry, which was from the time of His being baptised by John to the day of His ascension into heaven. And this knowledge was to qualify the apostle to be a witness of the resurrection of Jesus. Next, therefore, to honesty of character and sincerity of affection to Jesus, this information was a needful quality in a preacher of the gospel. The same quality is still needed in preachers of the gospel, though not to, be obtained from visible intercourse with the holy Jesus. They ought to be well acquainted with the history of His life; with the prophecies of the Old Testament concerning Him; with the manner of their fulfilment, as far as they have been fulfilled; and with all the evidences which clearly prove Him to be “the Christ, the Saviour of the world.” To state this knowledge properly and effectually, their hearts also ought to be warmed with love to Jesus, and to the sinners whom He came “to seek and to save.”

IV. A fourth piece of instruction which we may learn from this portion of Scripture history is the duty of prayer in the case of the ordination of ministers generally, and on the appointment of any individual minister to some particular field of labour in the church of God. This duty was carefully performed by the apostles and disciples of Christ in the instance before us. Let private prayer be added to that which is public, that the Holy Spirit may direct the minds and hearts of all parties concerned in the ordination of ministers. Having thus prayed in faith, they should receive the minister sent to them as Christ’s ambassador, to be reverenced for the sake of the King, his divine Master. But, more than this, their prayers should be seconded and followed up by active and cheerful efforts to help him in the great work to which he is called; to unite with him, in their several spheres and stations, in promoting and extending his labour of love, in teaching the young and ignorant, in strengthening the weak, in correcting those who fall into error; and, by their own bright and consistent example, glorifying God, and causing God to be glorified by others, through them. (W. D. Johnston, M. A.)

The reality and requirements of the Christian ministry

(Ordination Sermon):--

1. Here was one of the noblest ventures of faith ever made by man. Viewed from the world’s side, it was, as great faith always is, frivolous trifling or daring madness. A little company of ignorant men, in a small province of the Roman world, had for three years followed up and down their land a new teacher, who professed to come from God, but had been crucified and slain. They had been terrified and scattered, and now they gather together in an upper room, and talk of choosing one in the traitor’s stead to complete their broken number. They speak great words: they seem to look forth into the wide world around, as though it waited for them, as though they had a message for it, and power over it. Either their minds were full of the darkest delusions, or they were acting in the very might of God. And which was the truth the event may tell us. Prom that completed company a voice awoke to which the world did listen, and before which it fell. No visible strength dwelt in them as they went forth on their errand. They were scourged, imprisoned, slain. Their weapons were endurance, submission, love, faith, martyrdom--and with these they triumphed. They preached “Jesus and the resurrection,” and hard souls yielded and were gathered into the new company, and wore its cross and carried on its triumphs, until the world trembled at the change which was passing on itself. And so they have advanced with unfaltering step from that day to this, until all that is mightiest in power, and greatest in nobleness, and highest in intellect, has bowed down in adoration before that witness of the resurrection of Jesus.

2. The acts which we are here this day to do are but the carrying out of those which then were wrought, and we may see in the course of their work what should be the issue of ours. Here is--

I. The strength in which each one of those sent forth is to labour, and the spirit in which he is to be received. Here is his strength--he is called by God to this office (and woe be to him if he rush into it uncalled), and goes about God’s work: he may be, he ought to be, conscious of weakness, and therefore he may be strong; for conscious feebleness may drive him from himself to God in Christ. In spite of appearances, at all times in his ministry there is strength for him: “I witness not of myself, but of the resurrection of my Lord; my words are not mine, but His; I witness not by strength, but by weakness, glorying in infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” And as having such an office they are to be received, not for their natural eloquence or power, not for their acquired skill or learning, but for the supernatural presence which will make their weakness strong.

II. The nature of their charge--they are sent to bear the witness of Christ’s resurrection. All is shut up in this. They come from God to the world with the message of reconciliation; and this message is the incarnation of the eternal Son, His death, His rising again, and from this the truth of the ever-blessed Trinity, and man’s restored relation to his God. This is what man’s heart longs for unconsciously, and what the asceticism of the natural man is so restlessly craving for where it can never find it.

III. How are we to discharge this great vocation?

1. We must be deep students of God’s Word. Where else are we to learn our witness of Christ’s resurrection? Here it is written clear and full--in the Old Testament in type, prophecy, and promise; in the New in fulfilment, act, history, and grace. In it, day by day, we must live with Him. Thus must our message sink into our own hearts. Even as they “who companied with” Him “all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among them,” learned unawares, day by day, the truth they needed, so must it be with us.

2. We must be men of prayer. The union of these two is the essence of the apostolical character. “We will give ourselves continually to prayer, and the ministry of the Word”; and without prayer we cannot bear this burden. How without it shall we have an insight into Scripture? how turn what we read to profit? how have power with God or with our brethren? In prayer, in real, hearty, earnest prayer, all things around us are set into their proper places. In prayer our minds are armed for the coming temptations of the day; they are cooled, refreshed, and calmed after its vexations, fatigues, and anxiety. On our knees, if anywhere, we learn to love the souls of our people; to hate our own sins; to trust in Him who shows us then His wounded side and pierced hands, and to love Him with our whole heart. Nothing will make up for the lack of prayer. The busiest ministry without it is sure to become shallow and bustling. To come forth from secret communing with Him, and bear our witness, and to retire again behind the veil to pour out our hearts before Him in unceasing intercessions and devout adorations, this is, indeed, the secret of a blessed, fruitful ministry. Nor let us suppose that at once, and by the force of a single resolution, we can become men of prayer. The spirit of devotion is the gift of God; thou must seek it long and earnestly; and His grace will work it in thy heart. Thou must practise it and labour for it. Thou must pray often if thou wouldest pray well.

3. We must be men of holiness.

(1) Because without this there cannot be reality in our witness. We cannot testify of the resurrection of Christ unless we ourselves have known its power. Even though our lives be correct, yet our lives must be unreal unless the truths we speak have thoroughly pervaded our own souls. If we have for ourselves no living faith in a risen Saviour, we cannot speak of Him with power to others. We must be great saints if we would have our people holy. The pastor’s character forms, to a great degree, the character of his flock. We must show them in our risen lives that Christ indeed is risen. This is a witness, from the force of which they cannot escape.

(2) Because we are in the kingdom of God’s grace, and to us is committed a dispensation of His grace. Every act of ours will be real and effectual only so far as God’s grace goes with it; and though He may be, and is, pleased to work by His grace even at the hands of the unholy, yet who can say how greatly such unfaithfulness does mar His work, how much is lost which might be gained? How can the other necessities of our character be supplied if we fail here? How can we be students of God’s Word without God’s grace? How can they pray for themselves or their people who have not the Spirit of grace and supplication? How can they draw down the blessed dew on others who even repel it from themselves? Who can have daily audience of our King but those who dwell within His courts? (Bp. S. Wilberforce.)

Witnesses of the resurrection

The fact of Christ’s resurrection was the staple of the first Christian sermon. The apostles did not deal so much in doctrine; but they proclaimed what they had seen. There are three main connections in which the fact is viewed in Scripture. It was--

1. A fact affecting Him, carrying with it necessarily some great truths with regard to His character, nature, and work. And it was in that aspect mainly that the earliest preachers dealt with it.

2. Then, as the Spirit led them to understand more and more of it, it came to be a pattern, pledge, and prophecy of their own.

3. And then it came to be a symbol of spiritual resurrection. The text branches out into three considerations.

I. The witnesses. Here we have the “head of the Apostolic College,” on whose supposed primacy--which is certainly not a “rock”--such tremendous claims have been built, laying down the qualifications and the functions of an apostle. How simply they present themselves to His mind. The qualifications are only personal knowledge of Jesus Christ in His earthly history, because the function is only to attest His resurrection. The same conception lies in Christ’s last designation, “Ye shall be witnesses unto Me.” It appears again and again in the earlier address reported in this book. “This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses,” etc., etc. How striking the contrast this idea presents to the portentous theories of later times. The work of the apostles in Christ’s lifetime embraced three elements, none of which were peculiar to them--to be with Christ, to preach, and to work miracles; their characteristic work after His ascension was this of witness-bearing. The Church did not owe to them its extension, nor Christian doctrine its form, and whilst Peter and James and John appear in the history, and Matthew wrote a Gospel, and the other James and Jude are the authors of brief Epistles, the rest of the twelve never appear afterwards. This book is not the Acts of the Apostles. It tells the work of Peter alone among the twelve. The Hellenists Stephen and Philip, the Cypriote Barnabas--and the man of Tarsus, greater than they all--these spread the name of Christ beyond the limits of the Holy City and the chosen people. The solemn power of “binding and loosing” was not a prerogative of the twelve, for we read that Jesus came where “the disciples were assembled,” and “He breathed on them, and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost, whose soever sins ye remit they are remitted.” Where in all this is a trace of the special apostolic powers which have been alleged to be transmitted from them? Nowhere. Who was it that came and said, “Brother Saul, the Lord hath sent me that thou mightest be filled with the Holy Ghost”? A simple “layman.” Who was it that stood by, a passive and astonished spectator of the communication of spiritual gifts to Gentile converts, and could only say, “Forasmuch, then, as God gave them the like gift, as He did unto us, what was I that I could withstand God?” Peter, the leader of the twelve. Their task was apparently a humbler, really a far more important, one. They had to lay broad and deep the basis for all the growth and grace of the Church in the facts which they witnessed. To that work there can be no successors.

II. The sufficiency of the testimony. Peter regards (as does the whole New Testament) the witness which he and his fellows bore as enough to lay firm and deep the historical fact of the resurrection.

1. If we think of Christianity as being mainly a set of truths, then, of course, the way to prove Christianity is to show the consistency of its truths with one another and with other truths, their derivation from admitted principles, their reasonableness, their adaptation to men’s nature, and the refining and elevating effects of their adoption, and so on. If we think of Christianity, on the other hand, as being first a set of historical facts which carry the doctrines, then the way to prove Christianity is not to show how reasonable it is, etc. These are legitimate ways of establishing principles; but the way to establish a fact is only one--that is, to find somebody that can say, “I know it, for I saw it.” And my belief is that the course of modern “apologetics” has departed from its real stronghold when it has consented to argue the question on these lower and less sufficing grounds. The gospel is first and foremost a history, and you cannot prove that a thing has happened by showing how very desirable it is that it should happen, etc.

all that is irrelevant. It is true because sufficient eye-witnesses assert it.

2. With regard to the sufficiency of the specific evidence--

(1) Suppose you yield up everything that modern scepticism can demand about the date and authorship of the New Testament, we have still left four letters of Paul’s which nobody has ever denied, viz., the Epistles to the Romans, Corinthians, and Galatians, whose dates bring them within five-and-twenty years of the alleged date of Christ’s resurrection, Now we find in all of them the distinct allegation of this fact, and side by side with it the reference to his own vision of the risen Saviour, which carries us up within ten years of the alleged fact. It was not a handful of women who fancied they had seen Him once, very early in dim twilight of morning, but it was half a thousand of them that had beheld Him. He had been seen by them, not once, but often; not far off, but close at hand; not in one place, but in Galilee and Jerusalem; at all hours of the day, abroad and in the house, walking and sitting, speaking and eating, by them singly and in numbers. He had been seen too by incredulous eyes and surprised hearts, who doubted ere they worshipped; and the world may be thankful that they were slow of heart to believe.

(2) Would not this testimony be enough to guarantee any event but this? And if so, why is not it enough to guarantee this, too? If the resurrection be not a fact, then the belief in it was--

(a) A delusion. But it was not; for such an illusion is altogether unexampled. Nations have said, “Our king is not dead--he is gone away and he will come back.” Loving disciples have said, “Our Teacher lives in solitude, and will return to us.” But this is no parallel to these. This is not a fond imagination giving an apparent substance to its own creation, but sense recognising the fact. And to suppose that that should have been the rooted conviction of hundreds of men that were not idiots finds no parallel in the history and no analogy in legend.

(b) A myth; but a myth does not grow in ten years. And there was no motive to frame if Christ was dead and all was over.

(c) A deceit; but the character of the men, and the absence of self-interest, and the persecutions which they endured, made that inconceivable.

(3) And all this we are asked to put aside at the outrageous assertion which no man that believes in a God can logically maintain, viz., that--

(a) No testimony can reach to the miraculous. But cannot testimony reach to this: I know, because I saw, that a man was dead, and I saw him alive again? If testimony can do that, I think we may safely leave the verbal sophism that it cannot reach to the miraculous to take care of itself.

(b) Miracle is impossible. But that is an illogical begging of the whole question, and cannot avail to brush aside testimony. You cannot smother facts by theories in that fashion. One would like to know how it comes that our modern men of science who protest so much against science being corrupted by metaphysics should commit themselves to an assertion like that? Surely that is stark, staring metaphysics. Let them keep to their own line, and tell us all that crucibles and scalpels can reveal, and we will listen as becomes us. But when they contradict their own principles in order to deny the possibility of miracles, we need only give them back their own words, and ask that the investigation of facts shall not be hampered and clogged with metaphysical prejudices.

III. The importance of the fact which is thus borne witness to.

1. With the Resurrection stands or falls the Divinity of Christ. Christ said, “The Son of man must suffer many things, and the third day He shall rise again.” Now, if Death holds Him still, then what becomes of these words, and of our estimate of the Character of Him, the speaker? Let us hear no more about the pure morality of Jesus Christ. Take away the Resurrection and we have left beautiful precepts, and fair wisdom deformed with a monstrous self-assertion, and the constant reiteration of claims which the event proves to have been baseless. Either He has risen from the dead or His words were blasphemy. “Declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead,” or that which our lips refuse to say even in a hypothesis!

2. With the Resurrection stands or falls Christ’s whole work for our redemption. If He died, like other men, we have no proof that the Cross was anything but a martyr’s. His resurrection is the proof that His death was not the tribute which for Himself He had to pay, but the ransom for us. If He has not risen, He has not put away sin; and if He has not put it away by the sacrifice of Himself, none has, and it remains. We come back to the old dreary alternative: if Christ be not risen your faith is vain, and our preaching is vain, etc. And if He be not risen, there is no resurrection for us; and the world is desolate, and the heaven is empty, and the grave is dark, and sin abides, and death is eternal. Well, then, may we take up the ancient glad salutation, “The Lord is risen”; and turning from these thoughts of the disaster and despair that that awful supposition drags after it, fall back upon the sober certainty, and with the apostle break forth in triumph, “Now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first-fruits of them that slept.” (A. Maclaren, D. D)