Acts 3:25 You are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying to Abraham… These words were some of those addressed by Peter to a crowd of wondering and admiring spectators, and of attentive hearers also. These were gathered for him by the fret of the man whom he had delivered from his lameness resolving to cleave as long as he could to the side of his deliverer. The "common people" did on this occasion gladly hear Peter, as formerly they gladly were wont to hear his Master and their own. We are grateful to be able to recall these circumstances and this connection of the text; because on certain other occasions Peter, Stephen, and Paul, and many a time Jesus himself, had to refer to the ancestry of the Jews in order to point severest reproof and condemnation unrelieved. But it is not so now. Reproof and condemnation are only partly aimed at here. We have here - I. A WORD OF REMINDING IN DUE SEASON. The office of reminding may seem but an humble one. But how true the friend sometimes who undertakes it - who waits not for some grand occasion of instructing, of informing you of what you did not know, or of charming you with the latest discoveries of science or applications of art, but who simply brings afresh to your thought what you had long known! Conscience is such a friend when we will listen to it. It does not teach what is new, but does remind and remonstrate. God's Holy Ghost is such a Friend when you will listen to him. He both reveals the new and brings to remembrance the old, specially those dear old words, of priceless value, of Jesus. The written and spoken Word of God is such a friend. How many of its messages are but the pronounced repetitions of your own reason, experience! They are your own judgment and observation, now ushered in with all the added impressiveness that comes from the "endorsement" of the Divine page and pen. And now Peter tells his hearers no new thing. They had long ago known it, and had built much upon it. They built, though too ignorantly, large part of their hopes of salvation upon their being the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Their trust was in the covenant God made with Abraham. Their great charter was "Moses and the prophets." But had it not often come to this, that they eagerly remembered their boasted rights but kept a poor memory for their duties? They would enforce their claims, ignore the correlative demands upon themselves, long more than due! "We have Abraham to our father," was their ever-ready cry; yet they had "killed the prophets," and "stoned them that were sent to them," and had "crucified the Prince of life." "Of him," says Peter, "all the prophets spoke," from Moses the greatest, and Samuel the second greatest. And surely you won't forget that "you are the children of those prophets," and won't consent to act unworthily of that relationship! Was not this a word of reminding in due season? And was it not put very kindly by Peter to his congregation? Perhaps all the same tone of thought, all the same suggestion for memories, awake enough at the point of rights and claims, but that fade at the point of duty and responsibility, characterizes to a very large degree the present day. Men do not forget they are Englishmen; they do not forget to boast their freedom. Are they touched in one of these or the like respects, they resent it as though the apple of their eye was touched. But they forget they are the children of those who got these things for them "through much tribulation;" who fought, suffered, died, for their privileges. They forget they are the children of Reformers and Protestants, who "resisted even unto blood," and for conscience' sake were burned at the stake; that they are children of those who loved, spake, and did the truth, cost what it might. It was a very effective point which Peter made when, viewing it as a kindly reminder, he said, "Ye are the children of the prophets." II. A WORD CONCEIVED IN THE VEIN OF REBUKE. While it is not at all necessary to construe the text as the language of stern rebuke, yet it may imply some rebuke. And this deserves rebuke, when men are so willing to touch human life at all its points of contact with pleasure, self-interest, honor, privilege, but are so very shy of it at its points of contact with duty, effort, sacrifice. With the many, the strongest bent, deepest inclination of their life is still but what they can get and have, what they can say or think to the advantage of themselves. The choice is a mournfully sorry one, when it is considered to what it comes. For its one-sidedness it earns rebuke. For its cowardice it earns rebuke. For its certain unprofitableness it earns rebuke. And not least does it earn rebuke because of its higher opportunities forfeited, and nobler passions and principles wasted and alienated. The harvest is too surely reaped, of disappointment, vanity, and vexation of spirit, or self-stricken darkness itself. But let some one begin life from the diametrically opposite standpoint. Let him accept the theory that life is for duty, that it is responsible for the vaster advantages with which it began than those with which it was begun by preceding generations, that it calls for work more strenuous, and sacrifice more willing, and self-surrender more entire by very virtue of the honor and advantage it has drawn from its own forefathers; and that life is shaped for high ends. It will not fail of real fruitfulness; it will not expire, a sorrow and a shame. The gentle suggestive rebuke couched in the text touches the essential difference between two such lives. You are not the children of possession, and of ease, and of the "rest and be thankful" school; you are the descendants of a nobler strenuous, solemn race. They had large brains, they had bone and muscle about them, sinew and nerve were firm and firmly tied, and their heart was capacious. Ay, to other sort men ofttimes prefer to trace their lineage; but to this sort, the kindly rebuke of Peter, of the Word and Spirit of God, of his providence, and of our own conscience, should oftener turn us and our ambition. III. A WORD EQUIVALENT TO A STIRRING SUMMONS FOR A PEOPLE OF EXTRAORDINARY DIGNITY AND PRIVILEGE. It will be granted that the Jews were such a people. Yet, with all their honor and splendor, their unique religious privileges, and their preeminent political prestige, it must be allowed that they show but a faint type of ourselves. They rose to a pinnacle of national greatness, and great was their fall; but it was no mystery. The beginning of it was plain, the course of it was plain. It was often pointed out by priest, prophet, preacher, and by that man of the people themselves, who "was an Israelite indeed." Yet they wrought their own downfall, and cruelly undermined their own proud position, because they lost ear, heart, and pride for that which was their glory, and to its announcement greatly preferred to sound their own trumpet. But were there ever heirs like ourselves? Was there ever an heritage like ours? Of what prophets are we the children, when we think of the accumulations of knowledge, of conviction, of attestations of God's existence, providence, government, revelation, which the stream of time has been bearing down, richest freights to our shores? In such sense we are children of no obscure parentage, "citizens of no mean city, owning to a history of unsurpassed significance. Ages and centuries of the past bend their surprised gaze upon us; they compass us about with clouds of witnesses. And when the gentle reminding is passed, and the suggested rebuke seems to fail, one thing only remains - impassioned appeal, a summons that must wake all but those who are securely dead. Live we, then, worthily of our antecedents, mindful of our responsibilities as heirs of such a past. Let us flee from unfaithfulness, and. scorn the seductions of ease and luxury. Let us purge ourselves from vanity, per verseness, and serf. Let us pray for a divinely opened eye, mind, heart. And show by God's grace that we have not forgotten, but on the contrary do make it our business to remember, whose "children we are." - B. Parallel Verses KJV: Ye are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed. |
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