Acts 28:20

Chains

Because of the hope of Israel I am bound with this chain. Acts 28:20.

Have you ever tried what it feels like to be fastened to another person by a rope or a chain? Some of you have run three-legged races, and that was great fun because you were doing it for sport, and because you never tried it for more than a few minutes at a time. But if you were fastened day and night to another person for two years never able to move farther than the length of the chain unless they allowed you to do so don't you think you would grow rather tired of it?

Well, that was St. Paul's position for two years in Rome. He lived in his own “hired” house and might have his friends come in to see him, but his house was really a prison. He was not permitted to leave it, and he was always guarded by a soldier whose wrist was fastened to his wrist by a chain. Every few hours the soldier on duty was changed. Some of them might be kind and allow Paul to walk about his house, but others would be inconsiderate and make him stay in one room.

Now, although we have not to wear iron chains like Paul, we are all more or less bound by invisible chains that keep us from going where we should like to go and from doing what we should like to do. Some of them are good chains and some of them are bad.

The first chain I want to speak about is home.

Sometimes we are inclined to fret about the rules and limitations of home. Sometimes we get cross and annoyed because we are not allowed to do what we want, or what other boys and girls do. But be sure mother has some good reason for forbidding you to do that thing, and some day you will thank her for it.

And there is another sense in which home is a chain. Some day you will grow up and go out into the world. And then you will find that the memory of a good home is like a chain holding you back from what is mean, or bad, or unworthy.

The second chain is the chain of circumstances. Sometimes we dream of the splendid things we should do if we were rich or powerful. What beautiful presents we should give to the people we loved! What lovely surprise gifts we should send to those who had few of this world's goods! What a number of wrongs we should right.

Now I think St. Paul was bound in that Roman house by the chain of circumstances just as much as by fetters of iron. He was a man who had been accustomed to go where he liked; he had travelled a great deal from place to place both by land and by sea; he had a passion for missionary work; yet there he was tied to one house for two long years.

What did Paul do with his chain? He made the best of it, and he made such splendid use of it that he perhaps did more good in those two years at Rome than he did in any other two years of his life.

First of all there were the soldiers who were chained to him. He taught them about Jesus. Now soldiers, you know, are moved from place to place, and many of these soldiers carried the news of the gospel to far- distant parts of the Roman Empire.

Then there were his own special friends, who visited him Luke, and Timothy, and John Mark. He comforted and helped them.

And there were the Jews and Gentiles in the city who came to see him, and to whom he preached about Jesus of Nazareth.

Besides all that, Paul wrote in Rome some very beautiful letters to the Christians in other places. It was from there that he sent the Epistles to the Ephesians, the Philippians, the Colossians, and to Philemon.

So you see the chain of our circumstances is really a blessing in disguise if we make the right use of it. We are in the very best place we could be, and the place where for the present we can do the most good.

But there is another chain by which we are more or less bound, the chain of had habits. When we are small those chains are just like tiny silken ropes, but as we grow older, they increase in strength until they become terrible steel fetters. Now, unlike the chains of home and circumstances, these are chains we ought to try to get rid of, and the sooner we begin the better, so that we may break them before they grow strong.

And how are we going to break them? Well, of course, we must try with all our strength to do so, but that is not enough. If we are going to trust to our own strength we may never be able to break them at all.

Have you ever heard the legend of the knight and the wonderful stone? This knight was captured by the Saracens in the Holy Land and flung into a dungeon to die. A nightingale used to come and perch on the window of his prison and cheer him by her song. The knight fed her with some of his. own scanty fare, and one evening he said to her, “Ah, sweet bird! If only you could help me to escape!” The nightingale flew away and was gone for three days. The knight thought she had been killed by some hawk, but on the evening of the third day she returned bearing in her beak a stone. The knight took the stone, and, by accident, touched his fetters with it. They fell off him. Then he went to the dungeon door and touched that also. The door flew open, and the knight left his prison and managed to escape to England.

We need to touch our bad habits with the magic stone of the love and the power of Jesus, and they will fall off us.