Acts 16:8-12 And they passing by Mysia came down to Troas.… I. THE VISION. "They came down to Troas" — that is, to Troy, a modern city bearing the name, and marking the region, if not the site, of Priam's Troy, the City of the Iliad and the blind singer's deathless song. Such places are fountains of inspiration in themselves. Hill and grove, stream and plain, are vocal with great memories; and the soul that is worthy of such a scene hears, as heard voices in the air saying, "Let us, too, conquer something." But more depends upon the soul than on the scene; for whatever it looks upon the eye can only see what the eye brings with it, the means of seeing, for everything wears the hue of the spirit. Xerxes, Alexander of Macedon, Julius Caesar, and many more came to this famed region, and each one saw and heard according to the spirit that was in him visions of battles. But the man who had now come to Troy had brought with him another spirit and an eye capable of nobler visions. He brought with him a great soul, wide in the range of its sympathies, sensitive, impressionable, and glowing with the quenchless passion of love to God and man. Never in all its eventful history had Troy an eye so rich in the means of seeing whatever Troy could show. And what did Paul see upon the Trojan plain? Behold, then, the new Troy that God would have besieged and conquered, as the spring besieges, and as the summer conquers the land! Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, and the message that moulded his life came to him from the very lips of God, speaking in person. That was the highest vision of which the best man in that stage of the world's spiritual development was capable. But Paul in that great moment, not only of his life, beheld, not the Lord high and lifted up, but a man of Europe, one of ourselves, and heard a human voice pleading in the darkness for such help as he could give. It was the vision rendered possible by the Incarnation of the Son of God, and necessary by the state of the world. He beheld a man! That is the vision needed today. In all our difficulties in England, political, economic, social and ecclesiastic, the devil's policy is still to raise such a dust of controversy as to hide man from man. Penetrate to the heart of any question of the day, and there you find a man, a man asking for help. At the heart of the Drink Question, at the heart of the Labour Question, there are men, not monsters, but men, flesh of our flesh, men with difficulties, crying to us, calling to us, pleading with us. And our only hope of settling these questions lies in laying the cloud of devil's dust of passion and prejudice until we can see the man and hear what he is saying. And this great matter of missions, what is it? Do some of you young people think that, after all, it is nothing but a war of religions? that it is simply a crusade of one creed against another? Nothing of the sort. It is man's ministry to man. How shall we figure heathenism to ourselves tonight? Shall we call up a vision of idols and groves and temples and mitred priests and garlanded victims? No; all that is mere detail. If you want to see heathenism in the fullest pathos and tragedy of its fate, think of it under the guise of a man with soul enough to conceive the sublime ideas of Brahminism, with conscience enough to appreciate the grand moral precepts of Buddha, with brain enough to frame the marvellous scheme of Confucius, and spirituality enough in him to see with Zoroaster that the difference between good and evil is no measurable distance, but a distance as between day and night. We have to approach them rather in the spirit of brotherliness; for a man stands before us, and yet in a spirit of compassion for this man, so noble, so subtle, so mighty of intellect, is weighed down, is cramped, he is weary with searching and cannot find, he is a baffled man, and he asks us to help him with that very thing in the possession of which alone we are superior to him, the thing which, perhaps, when we have handed it to him he will be able to make a very much better use of than we have made. II. THE CALL. Human need is always sacred and ever oracular, for through it God speaks. The will of God is the only plain thing in this universe, the only thing that is absolutely known. Everything else has darkness and mist about it, but the will of God is absolutely plain. The will of God is gladness, sunshine, music, life. It is everywhere. Go forth into the byways and highways of London with open eye and reverent heart, and you shall see it written upon every human need, and you shall hear it speaking to you in every human cry. It is the will of God that men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth; and God's will be done! The call of God is a call to unity. "When he had seen the vision we sought to go forth." It is noticed that the word "we" comes in here for the first time. The men felt that it was a call not only to action, but to united action. There had been quarrels and partings at Antioch. Paul and Barnabas had separated; but this revelation of the need of the world came to give compression and compactness and unity to this little band. If you want to see the quarrel at Antioch in its true nature, look at it in the light of Europe's need; and if you want to see the divisions and the jealousies that divide Christian people at home, look at them against the world's need today. God is not calling us simply to action, but to united action, to cooperation, to Christian unity. Twice one man is not simply two, but two plus their unity. It does not matter how many they are. It is not the number of men that work; it is the spirit in which any number work; their unity tells. III. THE WORK. "God had called us to preach the gospel unto them." Dr. Owen, in his sermon on this text, says: "No men want help like the men that want the gospel." But what is the gospel? 1. Preaching the gospel; what is it? It is calling the righteous to repentance. There were good folk in Philippi, and Paul found them engaged in a good work on a good day. Well, then, let well alone? No, for it is not at all well. Nowhere in all Philippi was Paul more needed than among these good folk praying on the Sabbath day by the river's brim; and there is no one in all England that needs a mission more than many a good, blameless, irreproachable, man. But are there good among the heathen? Oh! yes. I am no more concerned to deny goodness to India and China than St. Luke to Philippi. There is goodness among the heathen, conscientiousness, aspiration, prayerfulness. Why, then, send missions to good people? Why? Because the goodness of the world, almost more than its badness, demonstrates the absolute necessity of the gospel. If the badness of the world proves how far down man can fall left to himself, the goodness of the world goes to show what a very little way, left to himself, he can lift himself from where he has fallen. 2. Preaching the gospel, what is it? Deliverance of the captives. As Paul passed and repassed through the streets on his way to the place of prayer, to preach to the good, kind people, he saw another phase of European life — a poor girl, on whose supposed powers of divination greedy men were making a fat living. Well, she, too, as well as Lydia, should be helped. Paul held a gospel in trust for her. Oh! yes: but think of the difficulties and the danger of doing it! For timid friends tell Paul, who had never been in Europe before; never been face to face with downright heathenism before: "She is a property, a human chattel; she belongs to the men who live upon her powers." Salvation for her means ruin for them: good money is good in Europe, and what it might mean ultimately for Paul no one could say. Then think of the scandal, the interruptions of the good work so nicely begun — all this to be stopped and a great scandal raised, and Christianity itself, perhaps. Yes, there were strong reasons for not touching this matter, and Paul seems to have shrunk from doing so. But God forced his hand. The girl followed him day by day, advertising the mission that he had been sent upon, until, at last, able to bear it no longer, he stood there in the open street and, in the name of Christ, opened fire upon the devil in her, and the more malignant devil in her masters. Yes, there was a scandal and tumult, and much trouble came of it. But it had to be done, for in this matter peace is with the devil and the fight is with God. 3. Preaching the gospel to the heathen is preaching Christ as the Saviour of lost men. Philippi held not Lydia only, not girls like that poor lost, wild one; but men like this gaoler, coarse, hardened, sceptical. What can Paul do to help that man? What does that man want? Why, he wants everything; he wants the chief thing. And so, from obeying the vision they saw and following the call they heard, God led these people into a work that touched the European town at every point of its life, and stirred it to its lowest depths. They left it in a few days a different place from what they had found it. (J. M. Gibbon.) Parallel Verses KJV: And they passing by Mysia came down to Troas. |
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