Acts 27:23 For there stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am, and whom I serve, They determined to sail into Italy. And the Judge marked it down in His notebook; and the skipper of the vessel marked it down in his; and the sailors and the soldiers marked it down in theirs: they had an "engagement to sail into Italy." So you — you have got a little book in your vest pocket, and opposite a certain date you have a certain engagement. Did you every think, man, that you may never fulfil that engagement? What are you that you put down any engagement without, in big letters, a "God willing," or "weather permitting," or "if spared," I shall do this? God heard the determination, and He raised the winds, and He raised the waves, and they were caught in a storm; and now comes a scene. The sailors hurry to their bunks, and they get out the little heathen god that they forgot about in calm weather. Paul and Luke and Aristarchus are also putting requests to their God; but there is no visible presence, there is no image seen, and the sailors think they are very irreligious, they think them Jonahs, and have brought the storm. But now Paul stands up: "I have got it. I have got the answer; I have got the pledge of safety from my God." What is it? It is a promise: "There stood by me this night a messenger with a promise, and that is the comfort." "Ah, but I can't see your promise," says an old salt; "I would like to see those waves get less noisy in their dash; I would like to hear the fall into softness of those howling winds; the promise, where is it?" What is a promise? It depends on the promiser. A promise is either great or little, everything or nothing, according to the promiser. Oh, but this is a promise not of a man! or we would not accept it at all; this is a promise of God, and God is not a man that He should lie, neither the son of man that He should Change. Hath He said, and shall He not do it? Hath He spoken it, and shall He not make it good? Ye're right, Paul; to hide in the strongbox of your heart this promise of safety — for it is God's. Now in this text, you notice, Paul declares — what every minister should be able to declare as the kernel of his work, as the spirit in which he does it — Paul declares his connection with God, that he has a grip of infinity, that he is a man that lives not in the seen but in the unseen: "There stood by me this night" — not a man, but — "the angel of God," a messenger from heaven. So the road is open from heaven to Paul's soul. In the House of Commons in London a heated debate was taking place. It was about our Eastern policy. Gordon was out, and there was little fear as to his success, when a telegram was handed in, a despatch of the last news; and what is it? Just two words, says the cable, just two words, and they make that heat of that debate get calm and cool; it makes the noise die away. What is it? "Nile open." What does that mean? How has that changed the agitated feelings of Parliament? "Nile open." It was closed before; the Mahdi's hordes were round about the river, Khartoum was far away, but our soldiers and marines were out there for the very purpose of forcing a passage up the Nile to Khartoum; and this is the result. It is done! Our arms are once more victorious, Britannia yet rules the waves and the waters of the Nile; the Nile is open. So in this messenger of God coming to Paul we read a history. The way is open. Is it open to you? Have you got an open route to God? Preacher, hearer, minister, elder, deacon, is the road open? Can there come to us in all verity an angel of God with the soft light of this morning? Are we converted? Have we connection with God? Is the road open? Look for a moment at the special nature of this vision. The angel "stood by me," says Paul. He claims a special relationship with heaven. We believe, and rightly, in — and woe to us if the day come when we let slip belief in — special Providence, special relationship to heaven, special claim, special result, special prayer, special answer — everything is special with the child of God. Sometimes you notice from the main wires of our telegraph system a single wire following this hedge road. It strikes off from the city communication, and it goes up the avenues right to this mansion. Who is this presumes to insert into his house a special wire of the nation's electricity? He is my lord duke; he has got influence enough, he has got standing enough, he is a Minister of the Government, and he has got a special wire and a special dial and a special clerk and a special power for controlling that single wire for his messages. You have got this morning, child of God, a special wire of communication with heaven have you heard in the heart of you the click of the needle, have you this morning sent a message up to the stars of God's abode by that special wire? Is it ever used? Is it magnetised by use with the full energy of action? The crowd knowing nothing about it. You can see the wires in our Glasgow streets, but there are tubes immaterial, spiritual, that are one gigantic network in this commercial capital of Scotland, and they are reaching up to God; and if we had spiritual eyes we would see the contact with you, and with you, but alas! none with you, Christless, prayerless soul, none with you. The communication is with the Christian alone. We are all, if children of God, specially connected, and we can call up God, we can summon attention in the courts on high. We can wire the stars. Then there is a peculiarity in this to be noticed — the angel "stood by me." Ah, the angel felt choked in this atmosphere. It was a hard commission he had to perform, and he came down, down, where the Master felt it hard to live, and he stood by Paul. "Won't you stay, holy angel?" "No." "Won't you sit down." "No." The angel "stood," and the very wings of him never stopped rustling, so eager were they for their flight again to the purity above. That was a lesson for Paul, and it is a lesson for you. If Paul had had this vision every day of his life, he would be an unhealthy Christian type for you and for me; he would have had the privileges that would have shut us out from the throbbing humanity in his Epistles. The fact is, it doesn't matter what you and I have seen, whether God has taken us up to the top of the mountain and shown us His glory, so that we have come down with the light streaming from us; it doesn't matter whether He has hidden us in the cleft of the rock and passed by, proclaiming His name, the Lord, the Lord God: it doesn't matter what your feelings are, what you have seen, what is your past; it matters this: is the will regenerated? Is the will remade and reset? That is the question, and that is communion with God. It is the operation of Heaven's will on the will of man. It is the unseen suction, it is the power of the current that keeps it pointed to God. "Whose I am," says Paul. He says to himself, "Now is the time to give a word for the Master. Jupiter, what is he? what is Venus? what is Juno? what is Neptune?" God hears the testimony. "Whose I am" — right in the teeth of the heathen sailors, right in the teeth of the stoical, sceptical centurion, right in the teeth of all men — "I belong to God!" Paul takes pride in that. You notice that the very first word in his every epistle after his own name is doulos — "Paul, doulos," slave; he glories in it. The Romans fastened a little slip of brass on the ankle of the slave, and on his wrist, and on the slip of brass on the wrist was the name of the owner and the word "slave" with it; and in the forum, in the market place, the slave with the glitter of that slip of brass had to step aside to the slaves' quarters, and the proud, haughty Roman drew in his toga as the slave went by: "My slave, keep to thine own side of the pavement, please!" Ah, but Paul took a pride in the glitter of that piece of brass; it was his cherished honour. He once had aimed at a high priesthood; he once had aimed at and won the senior wranglership of Jerusalem; but Paul prided himself, boasted himself, in being the slave of the Master. Do you? "Whose I am" rings out in this loud, stunning tide of human care and crime to the Christian worker. "Whom I serve." I have to do with Christ, not with you; I have to do with the Master, not with you; not with man, but with God. Oh, get a hold of that! We need it today. We need in the holy independence of spirit, in the keen, manly tramp along the pavement of time, to repudiate all shackling. I belong to Christ, I get my orders from on high, and the strength to carry them out. "Whom I serve." And what is the hardest work we get? Salvation work. If we were more taken up with the work that is to be done here, we would have less time to pay attention to others' work. There is a great deal to be done, and the sun is getting low in our own souls. You have to draw the sword, man; you have to let it flash in the sun as you thrust, in your own God-given strength, the Canaanites and Perizzites from the land. That is your work, and if you do that work well you will do every work well. It is sore work, salvation work; first get it, and then "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." "Whom I serve." But oh, this sorrowful service! Are you going to end that way, preacher? Are you going to end with sorrow and dole and doom and woe? Service! I can find no comfort there. Ah! but do you find it here, then? That's a little bit of mistranslation, sir! It is "Whom I worship." That is the service; not outward service, not the sweat following on active toil, but the worship, the adoration of the heart — that is the service that God wants. As M'Cheyne says, "God gets more glory from an adoring look of a believer on a sick bed than from the outward labour of a whole day." It is "Whom I worship." It is this, and this is the blessed service. (John Robertson.) Parallel Verses KJV: For there stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am, and whom I serve,WEB: For there stood by me this night an angel, belonging to the God whose I am and whom I serve, |
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