Acts 13:36 For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep, and was laid to his fathers, and saw corruption: Literally, "ministered to his own generation." The place of this text in St. Paul's address should be noticed. In it he reaches the height of his argument. The passage is an endeavor to show that Old Testament prophecy could not be exhausted in the persons whom its first reference might seem to concern. It was not even true if its applications were thus limited. Its references were to Messiah; they all met in Jesus of Nazareth, and therefore he must be acknowledged as Messiah. He presented to his audience one crucial test. David says in one psalm, "Thou shalt not suffer thine Holy One to see corruption." Now, could that possibly be limited in its application to David himself? Our text is the overwhelming answer: "David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep, and was laid unto his fathers, and saw corruption." The words could only be true of Messiah. They were true of Jesus of Nazareth. The seal of his Messiahship was his resurrection. We fix attention now on the description given of David as a man who "served his own generation." Dean Plumptre says, "There is, perhaps, a suggested contrast between the limits within which the work of service to mankind done by any mere man, however great and powerful, is necessarily confined, and the wide, far-reaching, endless ministry to the whole human family which belongs to the Son of man." If God is pleased to spare a man so long as to reach the fullness of old age, that man really lives through nearly three generations; and yet it is only upon one of them that even he can exert an active influence. The first generation moulds him, with its various educational forces. The second generation he may distinctly impress with his own individuality; of it he may become one of the potent forces. On the third he can only exert a passive influence; he is, for the most part, out of sympathy with it, and he presently finds that he had better step aside, and let the current of life and thought pass on. No matter how long we may live, no one of us can influence more than just our one generation of thirty years or more. Some men serve their generation by being before it, and giving expression in it to the thoughts and truths and sentiments which properly belong to the age that is yet to be. Such men do a great work by anticipating the coming time and preventing the transitions and changes from becoming too abrupt. Such men must accept the peril of being misunderstood, and called hard names until they die, and the new generation recognizes in them its heroes, forerunners, and apostles. Some men belong precisely to their own generation: they are exactly adapted to it; they never get beyond it; they are born into its thought and feeling; they live in it, work for it, worthily express it, and pass away with it; usually leaving no name only the good fruitage and the silent seeding of their good works. These are the thousands of the unknown ones, but they are the "salt of the earth." And some men seem to be always in the past generation. Their thoughts and feelings all belong to times past and gone. A queer, old-fashioned life they live amongst us, and their very talk sounds strange. And yet these links we need, lest, in the pride of our present attainments, we should try to break the bonds of the holy and the good that have gone on before us. No generation dares forget the past out of which it has come. But no generation can afford to keep only a downward and a backward look; it must lift up its head, peer away yonder, and hail the "good time coming." We may all serve our generation in three ways. I. WE MAY WITNESS FOR GOD IN IT. Every generation wants men and women who really believe in God, and make it plain to everybody that they do believe in him. In one form or in another, the belief in the living God is put in peril in each succeeding generation. Sometimes the unbelief is intellectual, and sometimes it is practical; but every generation produces its "fools" and its "wicked," who secretly or openly say, "There is no God." Then we may minister to our generation by a clear and constant witness to the living God; not as by our word only, but by the impression we make on men that we are actually living under the "great Taskmaster's eye;" by the signs we show that all our life is spent in his fear; and by the tone of all cur thought, relationship, and duty, which plainly indicates the abiding sense of his presence. Thus David served his generation, bringing the sense of God to men whenever he came into relations with them; and it is the honor of Mohammed that he laid this down as the very foundation of Islamism, "There is no God but God." II. WE MAY SERVE OUR OWN GENERATION BY BEING OUR BEST POSSIBLE IN IT. For every generation needs, in all its spheres, such models and examples as may be to it a constant inspiration. And exactly what we all may do, wherever our lot is cast, is this - keep the moral standard up, and raise the moral standard higher. And this can only be done by lives, by examples, by personal character. What we are may be the leavening force of our generation in our sphere. But it would seem that, in this respect, David sadly failed. We cannot say that he served his generation by being the best possible in it. And yet, maybe, if we rightly knew his age, we might come to feel that he did Even taking into account his grievous fall, the main current of his life was, to his people, a high and inspiring example; a stream of influence that made for righteousness. And certainly we may find the perfect example of the "best" in David's greater Son. III. WE MAY MINISTER TO OUR GENERATION BY MANFULLY RESISTING THE EVILS THAT MAY AFFLICT IT. For every generation has its conflicts, and wants its holy warriors, its brave soldiers, as well as its noble leaders. Evil is active in every age. The enemy of God and righteousness "goeth about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour." It is true that we best oppose to evil the solid, steadfast, quiet persistence of godly character; but we are not fully faithful to our God or our generation if we let any phase of social, political, or moral evil grow up in our midst unchallenged and unresisted. And in this our Lord has left us his holy example. There is a sublime force in his fearless denunciations of Pharisaic conceit and Sadducean laxity. He always called things by their right names, and sought, with wholesome reproofs and warnings, to purify a corrupt generation. And the man who faithfully serves his generation may be sure of this - his influence will never fade out, will never die. And God will show one day how he helped on his kingdom of righteousness and peace. - R.T. Parallel Verses KJV: For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep, and was laid unto his fathers, and saw corruption: |
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