Acts 13:2-13 As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said… (with Timothy 1 Timothy 1:6): — In words such as these we have a picture out of that earliest life of the Church, of which the books from which I take it tell the story. How fresh and vivid it is! What high enthusiasm, unhesitating self-sacrifice! We look at the mighty forces against which the first Christian disciples hurled themselves, at the spiritual torpor, the black hopelessness, the unutterable moral degradation to which they made their appeal, and we wonder at their audacity — or their faith! No hostility daunted them; no tremendous bulk of evil deterred them. They were on fire with a consuming purpose, and they did not stop, whether to measure their task or to discuss its difficulties. This, we say, is the fruit of a great enthusiasm. It always works this way, and it would be without results if it did not. Yes, but the moment we look a little closer at the story of this enthusiasm we shall see that along with it there was something more. It has been common to disparage the gifts of the first founders of Christianity, and to seek to make the more of its distinctive characteristics by making as little as possible of the men who illustrated them. They have been described as insignificant among the great of their own day; and measured in one way they were. But when we come close to some at least among them we cannot so easily disesteem them. One among them was chosen to be the leader among his fellows. Can anybody who reads the story of his life find it easy to believe that he had not in him that natural genius of leadership? The voices that have stirred the world, the messages that have thrilled and enkindled cold and discouraged hearts, have not been the voices and messages of fools. And does anybody suppose when the Church at Antioch fasted and celebrated its solemn Eucharist, and prepared to choose who were to go forth on its high errands, that Simeon, Lucius, Manaen, and the rest of them were there at haphazard? Out from these half-dozen men, more or less, were to be chosen two to be consecrated on that memorable day to a great and memorable work. Do you suppose that they did not seek for eloquence (if they could find it), for sympathy, for the quick power of understanding another's perplexities, for that infinite hopefulness of human nature which, I sometimes think, is quite its finest quality? We may be sure they did. And no less sure may we be that when Barnabas and Saul were singled out from among their associates for the rare dignity of suffering and loneliness and privation in their high office, they were chosen because, among any set of men, and in whatever service, they would sooner or later inevitably have come to the front. Yes, but how were they singled out? "There came a voice," etc. Whose voice was it? Were those men called thus to their high office by the high acclaim of a public assembly? For myself I have little doubt that before the Voice that spoke those few words was heard there had been heard another and more multitudinous one. That city of Antioch contained the first Church organised among the Gentiles, and it became in time the centre of those missionary activities by which the Roman world was evangelised. The prophets and teachers who began the work were supplemented later by Barnabas and Saul; end step by step in the simple story we may trace the unfolding of the organic life of the Church. There was an assembly first, and then there came to be the ecclesia — and it was this community of the brethren, it may easily have been, that, with more or less formality, first indicated its preferences, and pointed its finger of designation towards the men who were fittest and worthiest for the higher service of the Church. But this was not mission. That came into view when we read that the Voice which said "Separate Barnabas and Saul" was the voice of the Holy Ghost. It is not only "separate"; it is "separate Me. It is not only for the work ye are to separate them, but for the work whereunto I have called them." And thus we come into the presence of that unique distinction which forever differentiates the enthusiasm of the disciples from all other enthusiasms. It was the enthusiasm of a new creation by the power of a Divine breath. It is the sevenfold power of God the Holy Ghost. Call it an influence, water it down to be a cult, disparage it as so much mysticism, verily you will have to tear yonder story to pieces before you can get that element out of it! Bereft of the mission and work of the Holy Ghost, calling, arresting, convicting, convincing, enlightening, transforming, empowering — the whole fabric of primitive history becomes somehow invertebrate, and crumbles into a shapeless mass of incident and talk. But a still further question remains. What was not alone the evidence or token of that mission, but its authentication? Was this the whole story of that mission — that certain men being assembled together, a voice said, "Separate Me Barnabas and Saul," and that then those who were named separated themselves and went away, and henceforth did their work as men fully and sufficiently authorised and empowered thus for its discharge? On the contrary, there is something more in the history, which we may not arbitrarily leave out, and which is just as essential to its integrity as anything that has gone before. "When they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them," etc. Certainly there is no obscurity here. Juggle with the words as one may, he cannot separate the inward call and the outward ordinance, the spiritual mission and the factual commission, the Divine empowerment and the human authentication of it. There is a way which is of God's appointment; there is a ministry which He first commissioned, and which they whom He first commissioned passed on and down to others. Its authority does not come up from the people; it descends from the Holy Ghost. And, as in the beginning, its outward and visible sign was the laying on of apostolic hands upon men called, whether to this or that or the other service — pastoral, priestly, or prophetic, yet still to an apostolic ministry — so it has been ever since. We turn from this scene at Antioch to those memorable ministries that came after it. One of them stands forth conspicuous above all the apostolates of its age — unique in its energy, unapproachable in its heroism, incomparable alike in the power of its preaching and in the inexhaustible richness of its writings. What fine scorn there is in those writings for that retrospective piety which lingered regretfully among the beggarly elements of the elder order and ritual — what impatience of the latter, what bold assertion of Christian liberty, what intense ardour of spiritual enthusiasm! Yes; but what scrupulous respect for authority, what careful observance of apostolic tradition, what reverent use of appointed means. There came a day when St. Paul is to set apart a youthful son in the faith to be an overseer of the Church in Ephesus. How does he do it? Does he tell him of the work that he is to do, and then simply dismiss him to do it? Does he say, "Go, my son, and tell men in Asia Minor the story of your Lord's love, and write me occasionally how you are getting on"? Not such is the meaning of that clear and unequivocal language which he uses: "Stir up the gift of God which is in thee" — and which is in thee, not by inherited cleverness, or acquired learning, or popular endowment — but "by the laying on of my hands"; or, as the same fact is elsewhere stated, "Neglect not the gift that was given thee...with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery." And thus once and again does this apostle of a spiritual religion guard against that disesteem of the outward institutions of the Church, without which history demonstrates that religion runs thin and runs out. (Bp. H. C. Potter.) Parallel Verses KJV: As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them. |
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