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I. THE SUBSTANCE OF OUR MESSAGE. It consists of "words." Too great a distinction is sometimes made between words and things. Brought together, ranged in the order of living thought, they are among the mightiest things on earth. But above all words of law and literature, statesmanship and science, military despatch and moral disquisition, pictorial and philosophical history, poetical and pathetic sentiment — are the words of this life.

1. It is life from death. Not life following death, as in the order of vegetation, where the sap that has fallen down into the root comes up again to vitalise the dry and barren branches. Men do not carry in their souls the seeds of this new life; its appearance is not through a development, but through a regeneration.

2. It is life through death. You get this life through the sacrifice of the Great High Priest. God breathed into "man's nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." That was all which was necessary for the first life. That you and I might have the second the Eternal Word becomes a man, that through death He might destroy and "deliver," becoming "obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross."

3. It is life for death instead of it. Death in trespasses and sins is but the forerunner of another death, a death to deepen, grow, intensify itself, and not to end with the destruction of the body, but to go on consuming the soul without annihilating it. Our message includes words of death; we would solemnly repeat them, but they are in service to the words of life, they illustrate them by contrast. If the gospel proclaims life in exchange for death, then the terrors of the death enhance our conceptions of the life that delivers us from it.

II. THE ILLUSTRATIONS OF OUR MESSAGE. Whether the apostles were sent to the temple because there so many types of the words of life were before them and the hearers, or not, certainly the temple was like an open picture-book, from which they could illuminate what they had to say. Judaism was "a shadow of good things to come." The apostles as they declared the words of this life stood in the midst of the shadow.

1. Entering the temple, the apostles passed the brazen sea (Exodus 30:17-21). Through purification the Jews were to be saved from death. Through the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost we live. The defilement of sin is the power of death — cleansed from that defilement we escape that death. Through the deep evil of our hearts we are shut out of God's presence, bathed in the water of the Spirit, made clean through the new birth, we can cross the threshold of God's palace, and bow before His throne, and minister in His service.

2. Beyond the brazen sea stood the altar. It proclaimed that "without shedding of blood there is no remission." Death for life; no life for the sinner but through the death of another.

3. Beyond and at the end of the temple was the veil (Leviticus 16:2). There was not access within the veil at all times even for Aaron, for the people at large there was no access at all. Most emphatically did this declare the holiness of Jehovah and the sinfulness of man. The drawn curtain before the Holy of Holies means that the gospel undraws it; rather, the death of Christ rends it in twain (Hebrews 10:3, 16-22). Such are the words of this life, they show the way open; they offer the privilege of the High Priest to all; they offer it continually.

III. THE ENDS OF OUR MESSAGE.

1. The inspiration of this life. "How shall they call on Him on whom they have not believed?" "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God." Thus we speak that men may live, believing that God will put life into His own words when we utter them. We do not try to play the philosopher, but we would walk in the steps of the Hebrew prophet. We would study Ezekiel's vision, believing there is a lesson in it for us.

2. For the nourishment of this life. Peter describes the believer "as born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God," and that which he recognises as the germ of life, he presents as the food of life. "As new-born babes desire the sincere milk of the Word that ye may grow thereby." The new life, God connects with means in its nurture as in its inspiration. The minister is not simply a herald, he is to be a pastor feeding his flock, a father taking care of his family. Christians want what will feed their spiritual life, and strengthen it, and refresh it, recover it when faint, revive it when feeble.

3. The diffusion of this life. It is communicative. He who conveys it to another has no less of it himself, but more. The heavens drop down rain; through a million channels does it flow to fertilise the land. Spiritual life comes from God, who makes you and me bearers of it to others. Conscious of having it and enjoying it, how can we help striving to give it to others who perish through the want of its blessing?

(J. Stoughton, D. D.)

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KJV: But the angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors, and brought them forth, and said,

WEB: But an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors by night, and brought them out, and said,