Acts 24:25 And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled, and answered, Go your way for this time… Our text brings before us a very extraordinary scene. The prisoner at the bar seems to be exercising the functions of prosecutor, witness, jury, and handing over his judge, as a condemned culprit, into the hands of the supreme Judge of all, while the judge is neither able to defend or excuse himself. It is not an unusual thing in criminal trials to see the prisoner trembling. Here is a prisoner for whom his judge has no terrors. It is not unusual to see a judge dignified and self-possessed, but here sits a poor trembling wretch on whom the words of the prisoner fall like a death sentence. At last he can stand it no longer. Why should he make himself miserable? If the arguments of the apostle could not be answered, at any rate he might be silenced. But I want to call your attention to the fact that what made Felix tremble was not an exhibition of impassioned rhetoric, but it was a solemn appeal to his reasoning faculties. I by no means disparage appeals to the feelings, inasmuch as we all have hearts, but the strength of these lies in the presence of an intellectual conviction affecting the conscience of those whom we address. I can imagine the governor, prepared to find his prisoner a half-crazy fanatic, commencing his inquiries, while a cynical smile played over his sinister countenance: "I understand, Paul, that you are an ardent adherent of one Christ. Can you now explain to me why you make so much ado about this person, who was executed as a common felon?" This gave St. Paul his opportunity. "In order that I may the better explain to you what Christ is to me, it will be expedient that I should first touch upon certain subjects connected with religion and morality, with respect to which we may probably be able to understand each other." So now it is necessary to form just opinions on those subjects, in order that we may be led to feel our need of Christ. Paul reasoned — I. CONCERNING RIGHTEOUSNESS. 1. The word has its root in the word right. Righteousness springs from that great law of right which pervades all the relations of man to his Maker and to his fellow man. The recognition of these rights and the fulfilment of the claims which they carry with them is righteousness. (1) God has certain rights in us which we are bound to respect, and these arise out of the nature of our relations with Him. (a) We are taught that of Him, and by Him, and for Him are all things. He, as the Author of our being, has created us for His own purposes; and therefore we are under an obligation to respect His intentions in thus allowing us to enjoy it. Not to do this is to wrong God, to defraud Him of His rights in us, and thus to break the fundamental commandment of the law of righteousness. (b) As these claims of God are not arbitrarily imposed, so He cannot withdraw them. George III, when pressed by his prime minister to give his assent to a measure of which he did not approve, exclaimed, "I'll not sign it, Mr. Pitt; it goes against my conscience!" "Then, sir," replied his minister, "I have no course open to me but to resign." "Very good, Mr. Pitt, very good; you can resign if you like, but I can't." The story may serve to illustrate our present point God cannot resign. (c) As the result of the existence of these rights of God in us, He must needs claim it of us first, that we should make a full and willing surrender of ourselves to Him, to live for His glory and in accordance with His will; and secondly, He must needs claim it of us that we should abstain from anything that is opposed to His proper relations with us and His will concerning us. (2) We are also under a certain obligation to our fellow men. Remember that universal bond of brotherhood which pervades the human family, and gives man the claim of kinsmanship upon his fellow man throughout the world. Then think upon the debt that we owe to society. We owe it to society that we have been fed, clothed, housed, educated, trained, and surrounded with all the comforts of civilised existence. Man, next to God, has been our greatest benefactor, and therefore man has certain rights in us. To recognise and respect these is to fulfil the law of righteousness; to ignore these is to break it. I am bound by the debt I owe to my fellow to do what lies in my power to help and benefit him as occasion may offer, and to abstain from injuring him in any way, either morally, intellectually, or physically. 2. How much of the law of righteousness do most men seem to recognise? Only one part out of four. How common a thing it is when we press men about their spiritual condition to meet with the reply, "Well, I've never done any harm to anyone." Granted; does that mean that you have performed your positive or negative duty towards God? or that you have performed your positive duty to your fellow man? The words convey no such idea. The priest and Levite did no harm to the half-dead man, but they failed to do him any good; and you do not even affirm that you have lived to benefit your fellow man any more than they. What then? To put the thing in a familiar form: you pay, or think you pay, five shillings in the pound, and then claim a quittance of the whole debt. That would hardly pass muster in a London bankruptcy court; and can you think that such a composition will be accepted at the last great assize? And what if the five shillings proves to have been paid in base coin? How few of us are there that can truly affirm that we have done no harm to anyone? Where is the godless man that has not done some injury to those around him? 3. We are now in a position to judge ourselves as to whether we are righteous. Does our own heart condemn us? You can judge for yourselves whether it be possible that these claims can be either modified or withdrawn. If they cannot, then you will of necessity begin to feel your need of that which St. Paul found in Christ. When once his eyes had been opened to see what the claims of righteousness really were, and hence to discover his own unrighteousness, there was no rest for him until he had found a new and better righteousness in Christ Jesus. II. CONCERNING TEMPERANCE. As righteousness has to do with the rights which others have in us, so temperance leads us to consider the rights which we have in ourselves. The word conveys the idea of self-mastery — capacity to govern oneself in accordance with the dictates of sound reason. 1. There are within our complex nature certain elements which are obviously designed to be supreme, while there are others that are intended to be subject to control. That this must be so is clear; for if every element within were to assert its own supremacy, our human nature would be like a house divided against itself. We may conclude with sufficient confidence — (1) That those are the higher elements in our nature, by the possession of which we are most distinguished from the lower animals; and just as the harmony of the outward world is maintained by man's supremacy over the brute, so the harmony of man's nature is to be preserved by the sovereignty of those elements which are distinctively human over those which we possess in common with the lower animals. (2) That those are the higher elements in our nature which are least dependent upon our material organism, but upon which it must depend for direction and control if our lives are to deserve the name of human. (3) That inasmuch as we were made in the image of God, the higher elements of our human nature are those which are most Godlike. As God maintains the harmony of the universe by asserting His own supremacy, so man can only hope for harmony in his own being when the God-like has chief sway within. 2. In the maintenance of this supremacy also lies the only security for our well-being, and even for our safety; for while God has made special provisions to prevent the lower animals from falling a prey to their own incontinence by establishing certain checks, He has not thus hedged round man. He is possessed of a moral freedom, and hence can either, by the right exercise of his faculties, rise to a higher level than the animal can aspire to or can sink to as much a lower level by their abuse. We do the animals an injustice when we speak, e.g., of the intemperate man as a drunken brute. Who ever knew of a brute that was of its own will drunken? So, then, there are certain faculties or elements of our nature which should be supreme, and others which should be under control. Where this order exists, there moral harmony ensues; and this is what we understand by temperance. When it is transgressed, moral anarchy must be the result; and this is what we understand by intemperance. 3. Man's moral nature may be compared to a commonwealth, in which there are ignorant and incapable multitudes who need to be governed with a view to their own good, and also intelligent and able men. who are fit to govern. Now it has sometimes happened that the supreme power has passed into the hands of an ignorant and fanatical mob, and then have followed the worst and most frightful forms of anarchy. Then, again, it has often happened that from amongst the mob there has arisen some single tyrant who, beginning with being the idol of the mob, has gone on to become its most ruthless enemy; and then sometimes follows the last woful sequel of this inversion of the proper order of things — invasion, a foreign thrall, followed ultimately by national extinction. So when these elements of our nature, which ought to be subject to control, are allowed by the frailty of our will to arrogate to themselves an authority to which they have no claim, man becomes subject to a sort of inward mob rule. Then it not unfrequently happens that from the general moral confusion there emerges into an unholy prominence some specific besetting sin which becomes a sort of tyrant, and brings all our powers and faculties under its own grim and terrible sway. Such a tyrant power is drunkenness, or lust, or avarice, when once it lays hold upon man's nature and becomes a confirmed habit. And this miserable condition invites hostile intervention from without. There is an enemy at the gates who finds our divided and self-betrayed nature at his mercy, and who can thus take possession of our being, and in the end, unless we are delivered out of his hands, procure our utter and irremediable ruin. 4. What hope is there under such circumstances that by the mere action of a will already enervated the captive can break his chains and set himself free? (1) Perhaps the answer may suggest itself, Surely the only chance for such a man lies in appealing to his own self-interest. Let him see that he is injuring himself, and he will most likely be disposed to gather up all his will power for a mighty effort against this tyrant yoke, and, thus reinforced, he may yet prevail. But those who speak thus do not make sufficient allowance for the bewildering influence which a corrupt moral condition exerts upon the understanding, nor for the actually blinding effect of passion. Look at that drunkard. There was a time when he possessed the affections of a devoted wife, a smiling home, a good reputation, and regular and remunerative employment. Look at him now. In his few lucid intervals he knows that he is destroying himself; but it makes no difference. Or take the case of the libertine, or the case of a man whose incontinence lies in his temper, his speech, or his avarice. They are not less obviously opposed to our personal interest. Or again, idleness, sluggishness, or moral cowardice are all alike clearly opposed to our well-being. No, it is easy to forge those chains for ourselves, but who can snap them? Our minds may be on the side of right, but what about that other law which holds its sway within our members? (2) No, if there be any help at all for the poor spellbound victim it must come from without. Ah! there is one in our midst today ready "to proclaim relief to the captives." Listen to the apostle: "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." Here is a new law — a law that belongs not to poor enslaved humanity, but to that mysterious and Divine Being who invades and takes possession of our humanity. Look at that balloon as it lies there uninflated; it is subject to the gravitating attraction of earth like any other object around. You may lift it up. for a moment by help of ropes and pulleys, but its rise is dependent upon your willpower, and as soon as this adventitious force is withdrawn it sinks again. But now fill it with hydrogen gas, and you introduce a substance of such relative gravity to the atmosphere that its law is to rise heavenward. Even so, you may lift your moral nature up, as it were by mere willpower, and anon, when the will ceases to be energetic, it sinks again; but let God the Holy Ghost enter the cleansed and consecrated nature, and at once we begin to rise in the moral scale higher and stilt higher to our proper level as heaven's free men. Years ago, when I had a parish in one of our largest towns, I became very much interested in a member of my congregation who was the victim of insobriety. Many and many were the pledges that he signed, but all seemed vain. We were having a very memorable season of spiritual visitation, and night after night this man attended the services, and wan deeply impressed. The last Sunday night arrived. At the close of his thrilling appeal Mr. Moody asked all present who would trust themselves to Christ then and there for salvation to rise and stand up before all while the Christians present were praying for them. At this moment a Christian worker, who was an old acquaintance of the man, saw his friend evidently in great anguish of soul. He crept up to him, and whispered in his ear, "Tom, my boy, why ar'n't you standing up?" "I can't, Jim; I have tried so often. I should only make a fool of the thing if I fell back again." "Tom, my dear fellow, now listen to me. You've prayed and made resolutions, signed pledges, and done everything except what you're asked to do now; that is, trust yourself entirely to Jesus. You've never done that." "You're right, Jim," said the other; "I have never done that. I will trust Him!" and with a sudden decision he rose to his feet; and he found Him trustworthy. From that moment the chain was broken; and five years after Tom passed away, falling asleep in Jesus. III. CONCERNING JUDGMENT TO COME. 1. A belief in this may be regarded as a corollary to a belief in the existence of God Himself. If there be a Moral Governor of the universe, we cannot do otherwise than conclude that there is a judgment to come. (1) There is a very obvious inequality in the way in which punishments are meted out to transgressors in this life. Two persons commit the same sin; the one is detected, the other escapes detection, prospers in the world, and passes in society as a very respectable member of it. Or again, two persons commit the same sin of impurity. The one is a man of high social position and of great wealth; the other, perhaps, some unfortunate girl whose affections he has contrived to entangle. Compare the consequences in the two cases. The one is ruined for life, but the man who made her the thing she is passes himself off as a very respectable gentleman. Surely no man in his senses will say that in the two cases the punishments are equal. (2) But I can imagine someone rejoining, "What you say is all very true; but you must take into consideration the man's subjective penalty. The one offender may suffer more in his conscience than the other." Here again the answer is obvious. Is it the greatest sinner that is the greatest inward sufferer? Here are two persons who have both committed the same sin — the one for the first time in his life, the other for the nine hundred and ninety-ninth. Is it not too obvious to need to be stated that the sufferings of the hardened offender are as nothing compared with those induced by a first offence? Sin is not adequately punished by its outward results in this world; and it is not the greatest offender that suffers the most severe inward penalty. I remember once applying the argument in a homely way to a navvy. When I began to speak to him about his soul and the wisdom of beginning to think about his salvation, he broke out with, "Well now, look here, sir; I don't hold with you parsons. You talk about hell, and tell us that we're to be punished over there. Now, my idea is that we get knocked about in this life bad enough. I don't think a man will suffer all that here and then be damned afterwards." "Well," I said, "what do you expect to become of you when you die?" "Oh," he said, "I don't know I Maybe that will be the end of me. Anyhow, I don't see any reason why I should suffer more than I do down here." I replied, "Now I will put a case to you. Here is a man, we will suppose, under whom you work, who keeps you at it early and late. He grinds down your payment to the last sixpence; he gets out of you whatever he can, and gives you as little as he can in return. He drives in his carriage and pair, while you go on slaving away on wages that scarcely suffice to keep body and soul together. Money flows in on him; he is returned to Parliament. By and by he becomes My Lord So-and-so; and while he, hard-hearted tyrant as he is, lives in luxury, you still go on toiling and slaving away for him, at the slenderest possible remuneration, till after spending forty or fifty years in his service you die in poverty and are carried to a pauper's grave. Now, do you think it is likely if there be a God at all that you and he shall fare exactly alike in the next world?" "No, sir," said he, with considerable warmth; "if there's a God in heaven, he ought to suffer for it." His own common sense told him that if there were a Moral Governor of the universe He must lay a heavy hand in judgment upon the successful oppressor of the poor; and the common sense of all men is here on the side of religion. 2. Now, when I turn to revelation, I find not only the statement that there shall be such a judgment, but also indications of some of its more prominent characteristics. (1) It will be according to the deeds done in the body — not the professions made or the appearances exhibited. (2) It will be according to privilege. There are large numbers of persons who plume themselves on having been baptized; but the question is, Have you ever realised the spiritual benefit of which baptism is the symbol? Are you not aware that while that blessed ordinance increases your responsibility, it must also enhance your condemnation unless you respond to the obligations that it imposes? Or again, on the other hand, there are those who pride themselves upon being evangelical Christians and strong Protestants. But better far that you had been a heathen in Central Africa than a nominal Christian, familiar with evangelical doctrine, but a stranger to the power of Divine grace. (3) It will be according to the opportunities and possibilities which have fallen to our lot in life. To whom much has been given, of him much shall be required. (4) It will bring to light the secret things of darkness and reveal the counsels of every man's heart, and then shall everyone have praise (or blame) of God according as his life's work has been. (5) It will depend upon the presence or absence of our name in "the Lamb's Book of Life." What the specific penalty in each particular case may be I will not presume to say. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" I know that it will be exactly what the sin deserves, neither more nor less. Perhaps some of you are saying, "How shall I know that my name is written there?" That question is not hard to answer. If the Lamb's own life has been through faith received into your heart, you may be sure that your name is written in the pages of the Book of Life. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." (W. H. Aitken, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled, and answered, Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee. |
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