Acts 20:20-21 And how I kept back nothing that was profitable to you, but have showed you, and have taught you publicly, and from house to house,… 1. Paul considered his hearers; he acted as a wise physician; he studied each individual case and gave to each a portion of meat in due season. There are great public utterances to be made, and private individual messages to be attended to. The gospel is not to be delivered with want of discrimination; but is to speak to every soul as if it were the solitary occupant of the universe — the one creature in the presence of the Creator. 2. In recounting his ministry, Paul said, "I have taught you publicly, and from house to house." One would like a record of his house-to-house talk. To have heard Paul speak on great themes in a little sphere would have been an education. What child has not been fascinated by seeing what appeared to be the whole sun inside a frail dewdrop? And what traveller has not paused a moment to see some kind star condescending enough to hide itself in the depth of a crystal well, as if it were shining in two heavens at once? To have seen Paul at the fireside, or to have heard him talking to some little child, or to have watched him at some bedside near the dying sufferer — to have heard his voice when it was attuned to the hearing of one listener alone! Men are seen in little things, on small occasions. This great gospel will go anywhere, and be just the same whether drawn on a large scale or a little one. Do not be discouraged because you can only discharge a public ministry; and do not you be discouraged because you can only discharge the house-to-house ministry. Each man has his own gift of God. Happy he who works his own gift and not another man's, and wise the people who, recognising the one gift, do not bemoan the absence of other accomplishments. 3. What did the apostle say both "publicly and from house to house"? (ver. 21). The one thing that cannot be changed is the message which the gospel has to deliver to the human heart, and that message cannot be expressed in more significant terms than "repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ." If your religion rested upon other foundations, I wonder not that it has been much troubled by contemporary assault, but if your religion finds its foundations in ver. 21, it cannot be touched. Where is there a heart that can say in its most serious moments that it has no need of repentance? What man is there that does not feel, under the pressure of his own guilty memories, that he needs a help other than his own? If that man has to be delivered, he must be delivered by another hand than his own, and that action is best represented by the words "faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ." 4. Having laid down some outline of his manner of life and doctrine, the apostle comes to a point of departure (vers. 22, 23). It was a dark outlook; how is the darkness relieved? In this case as in all others: by an immediate and definite reference to Divine providence. "I go bound in the Spirit unto Jerusalem." When a man lives in this doctrine, he may go forward into darkness, but he goes forward with a solid and solemn step. Not one ray of hope in all the outlook! "In every city — bonds — afflictions." What a tribute to the sustaining power of the doctrine he had taught! The bonds were many, the afflictions were heavy; what outweighed them all? The sense of God's presence and God's favour. If one thing above another has been demonstrated by Christian history, it is that the Christian spirit may be so vital in a man as to make him forget all care and pain and labour and sorrow, and make him triumph and glory in tribulation also. What comforted Paul will comfort us. This is the eternal quantity of the gospel — never changing, never lessening. There are amongst us men who can rise in the Church today and say, "But for the grace of God, I would not have been a living man this day." The men who would render such testimonies are men whose intellectual sagacity has been tested and proved in the market place, in the realm of politics, along the lines of ordinary social life. I have buried the child of a man who had no consciousness of God, and I have seen that man reel back from his child's open grave mad with hopeless grief. I have also buried the child of parents who have lived in God, and as the little coffin has been let down, they have been enabled to say, "It is well with the child." In such extremities we find out the value of man's religion. (J. Parker, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And how I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you, but have shewed you, and have taught you publickly, and from house to house, |
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