The Servant of the Lord and His Blessing

Acts iii. 26, R.V.

“Unto you flrst, Gkxi, having raised up His Servant, sent Him to bless you, in tur» ing away every one of you from your iniquities.” Acts iii. 26 (Revised Version).

Six weeks passed between the Crucifixion and Pentecost. The incidents recorded in this chapter must certainly have occurred very soon, if not immediately, after the Day of Pentecost. The entire revolution in the whole tone and bearing of the disciples, in that short space of a couple of months, is a problem that needs accounting for. The greatness of the change is nowhere more conspicuous than in the instance of the Apostle Peter himself — two monthg before, frightened out of all his faith by a saucy maid-servant and a few hangers-on at Pilate’s court; two months before, having buried all his hopes in his Master’s grave; and now grown all at once into a hero, with altogether a new insight into Christian truth. How had it all come about? Is it to be believed that nothing had happened but Christ’s death? How could that have cleared and strengthened these men’s conceptions and faith? How could that have bound them far more closely together than ever they had been before? Something it wanted to account for the change.

If you bring in the Resurrection and the Ascension, and the gift of the Holy Spirit, you get an adequate explanation. If you try to get rid of these for the sake of eliminating the supernatural from the history, you get rid of the supernatural, and you make it unnatural; a psychological contradiction, in blank, staring antagonism to all the possibilities of the action of sane men.

These words come out of one of the three addresses belonging to this period, which are preserved for us in the Book of the Acts — addresses which, in certain respects, are unlike both what the Apostles said and thought before, and what they said and thought afterwards. They bear traces of a transition period; and the facts that we meet in them some forms of speech which we do not find at a subsequent period, and that also we do not meet in them some teaching that afterwards appeared in the course of the development of Christian doctrine, are very valuable evidence that these are authentic records of the first days of the Church.

I. — In dealing with these words, we may notice first, the boldness and loftiness of the claim which is here made for Jesus Christ.

Long ago Peter had said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And as long as Jesus Christ had been with them none of them had wavered in that belief: but the Cross shattered all that for a time; and the sad-faced two that went down to Emmaus represented accurately the feelings of all their brethren when they said, with such a bitter emphasis upon the past tense: “We trusted that it had been He that should have redeemed Israel.” In the interval between the death and resurrection, Jebus Christ was in the same category as “Theudas wi»ich had boasted himself to be somebody, and was slain and ali

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as many as obeyed him. were scattered and brought to nought.” (Acts V. 36.) There had been plenty of pretenders to the Messiahship, and death had disposed of all their claims. And so it would have been with Christ; and you would never have heard anything about Him unless He had risen from the dead. But the faith and hope in His Messiahship which had died with Him on the Cross, rose with Him to newness of life — crucified in weakness, and raised in strength and glory — as we see from such words as these of Peter here, in which he proclaims with new meaning and emphasis the mission of his Master: — “God, having raised up His Son Jesus, sent Him to bless you.”

Now the characteristic of these early addresses contained in the second, third, and fourth chapters of the Acts, is the clear decisiveness with which they put forward Christ as the fulfilment of Jewish prophecy. It seems as if the Cross and the Resurrection had poured a flood of light on the Old Testament. Psalm and prophecy assume new significance. Lawgiver and monarch have a new purpose. They point onwards to Him, and “all they that go before cry, Hosanna, blessed be He that cometh in the name of the Lord.” If we could read these discourses with sympathy for the speaker, and think of them as the eager words of a man awed and surprised and gladdened as the new light floods his mind, we should know them better. To ns they are rigid and cold, like iron bars; but they were all hot and fluid when they poured from his lips like metal from the furnace.

Almost every word here has reference to some great utterance of the past, which now for the first time Peter is beginning to understand.

For instance, “God. having raised up His Son Jesus.’* Now in these words there is no reference to the Resurrection, but if you look back for a verse or two you will see what there is a reference to. “Moses truly said unto the fathers: A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; Him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever He shall say unto you.” And what can be more clear here than that the Apostle is claiming that the ancient prophecy of a prophet like unto his brethren, raised up by God, is fulfilled in Jesus Christ? Now that prediction fi-om the Pentateuch, no doubt, refers to the prophetic order, and the word, “a prophet,” is not primarily a singular, meaning an individual, but a collective, meaning a class. But still the order does not come up to the ideal of the prophecy — as was seen even before a person appeared who did. For the appendix to the Book of Deuteronomy is plainly referring to the prophecy, and declaring the shortcomings of the whole prophetic order when it sadly says, “And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses.” When these words were added we do not know. Evidently they presuppose the existence of a series of prophets extending through a considerable period, and if we adopted modern theories of the date of the book, these would increase the significance of these last words, considered as the verdict of experience on the inferiority of all the prophets to the great law-giver in certain specified respects. That saying at the close of the book of the law is a confession of unfulfilled hopes which still burn on, though disappointed for weary years, and still spread before God His own promise as in unspoken prayer that He would accomplish His own word on which He had caused men to hope. And it seems a perfectly legitimate position to say that the prophetic order itself was a prophecy by reason of the very incompleteness of the noble men who composed it, and that not only by their words, but by their office and by their limitations, they pointed onwards to Him who is the perfect Revealer of God to man, the perfect Inspirer, to whom God gives not His Spirit by measure, nor at intervals, and who not only, like the great law-giver, beheld God face to face, but from the beginning dwelt in the bopom of the Father and therefore declares Him perfectly to men. The manifold methcds and fragmentary portions of the revelations to the prophetic order are surpassed by the one final and complete uttejance in the Son, given to the world for evermore as noon day outshines the twilight dawn. He is chief of the prophets as He is Prince of all the kings of the earth and the Priest. And all this is hinted and implied in that one significant and pregnant word: “God, having raised up His Son.”

Another great claim for Christ is suggested by that other word “His Son Jesus.” Now those of you who use the Revised Version will see that for “Son” is substituted “Servant,” and rightly. This is not the place to enter into any discussion of the reasons for that change, but I may just perhaps in two or three sentences explain it sufficiently to my hearers who do not follow the original. The Greek word, then, which our Authorised Version translates “Son” and the Revised Version translates “Servant” means, literally, a “boy” or a “child,” and like our own English equivalent, is sometimes used with the meaning of “a servant.” For instance, we talk about “a boy,” or “a maid,” or “a man,” meaning thereby to express the fact of service in a graceful and gentle way; to cover over the harsher features of authority. So the centurion in Matthew’s Gospel, when he comes to Christ and asks Him to heal his little page, calls him “his boy,” which our Bible properly translates as “servant,” — the same word that is employed here. The reasons for adopting “servant” here rather than “son” are these: that the New Testament has a distinct expression for the “Son of God,” which is not the word employed here: and that the Septuagint — the Greek version of the Old Testament — has

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the same expression which is employed here as the tranelation of the well-known phrase occurring especially in Isaiah’s prophecy, “the Servant of the Lord.”

Now it is interesting to notice that this expression, “the Servant of God,” as applied to Jesus Christ, only occurs at this period. We never find it earlier, we never find it later. “We find it here and here only, in this sermon of Peter’s, and in some other words of his in the next chapter. Altogether it occurs four times in these two chapters, and never again Does not that look like the frequent repetition of a new thought which had just come to a man and was taking up his whole mind for the time? The Cross and the Resurrection had opened his eyes to see that the dim majestic figure that looked out on him from the prophecy had had a historical existence in the dear Master whom he had lived beside; and we can almost perceive the gladness and surprise swelling his heart as he thinks — “Ah! then He is ‘My servant whom I upheld.’ Of whom speaketh the prophet this? Wonder of wonders, it is of Jesus of Nazareth, and we are His witnesses.” It is not strange that that name should be ever on his lips in these lays.

If you turn to the second half of Isaiah’s prophecies, you rvill find that they might almost be called the biography f the Servant of the Lord. And whilst I quite admit, in the same way as I admitted about the “Prophet like unto me,” that the collective Israel is often intended by the title “the Servant of the Lord,” there remain other parts of the prophecy — the shining summits of the table-land, as it were — which cannot apply to any class, but have distinctly a person for their subject, and which cannot apply to any person but One, that is the Person that died and lived again.

For instance, is there any fact in the history of any community or any person which can correspond to the words, when His soul shall make an offering for sin He shall see His seed “? Who is it whose death is the birth of His children, whom after His death He will see? Who is it whose death is His own voluntary act? Who is it whose death is a sacrifice for others’ sin? Who is it whose days are protracted after death, and who carries out more prosperously the pleasure of the Lord after He has died? Surely there is but One of whom these things, and many more that are said of the Servant of the Lord, are true.

But that name on Peter’s lips is not only a reference to prophecy, but it is a very beautiful revelation of the impression of absolute perfection which Christ’s character made. Here was a man that “had conipanied with Him all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out amongst them,” who knew Him through and through; and the impression made upon him, when he came to think of his Master’s life, was this: — “All the time that I saw Him there was never a trace of anything but obedience. All His life was pure and perfect submission to the Divine will.” Jesus asserted the same thing for Himself in many words. No consciousness of sin or incompleteness ever found utterance from His lips, but, on the other hand, words unexampled in the serenity of their claim to absolute purity: — “I do always the things that please Him;” “Which of you convinceth Me of sin?” Strange claims from one who is meek and lowly of heart! Stranger still, the world, not usually tolerant of pretensions to sanctity, has allowed and endorsed the claim, and these humble friends of His, who stood by and watched Him, who summered and wintered with Him, bear eager witness to His perfect life.

So the claim rises up into yet loftier regions; for clearly enough, a perfect and stainless man is either an impossible monster or something more. And they that fully believe that God’s will was absolutely and exclusively and completely done by Jesus Christ, in all consistency, if they will carry out their principles, must go a step further and say, “He that perfectly did the Father’s will was more than one of us, stained and sinful men.” There is one biography, and there is but one, on the title-page of which might be written, “Lo, I come. I delight to do Thy will, 0 my God,” and the last page of which might truly bear, “He did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth” — and God and man, and Heaven with its attendant angels, and hell with its baffled Prince, would attest the words.

II. — Now, turn to the next point that comes out of the words before us, the dawning vision of a kingdom of world-wide blessings.

Peter and all his brethren had had their full share of Jewish prejudices. But I suppose that when they found the tongues of fire sitting on their heads, and when they found themselves speaking in so many different languages, even they began to apprehend that they had been iatrusted with a world-wide gospel; and Pentecost taught them, if it taught nobody else, that Christ’s Kingdom was to cover all the earth. The words before us mark very clearly the growing of that consciousness of the world-wide destination of the Gospel, while yet the Jewish prerogative of precedence is firmly held. “Unto you first “— that was the law of the apostolic working. But they were beginning to learn that if there were a” first,” there must also be a ‘* second “; and that the very words of promise to the father of the nation which he had just quoted pointed to “all the nations of the earth” being blessed in the seed of Abraham.

If Israel was first to receive the blessing, it was only that through Israel it might flow over into the whole Gentile world. That is the true spirit of “Judaism,” which is so often spoken of as “narrow” and “exclusive.” There is nothing clearer in the Old Testament than that, according to its view, the fire is kindled in Israel that it may give warmth to all that are in the house; and the candle is lighted in Israel in order that it might shed light on all the chambers of the world. Israel was the first repicient, in order that it might be the transmitter of God’s light and knowledge to all the world. That was the genius of “Judaism,” and that is Peter’s faith here.

Then again what grand confidence is here! What a splendid audacity of faith it is for the Apostle with his handful of friends to stand up in the face of his nation to say: “This Man, whom you hung on a tree, is going to be the blessing of the whole world.”

Why! it is like the old Roman story of putting up to auction in the Forum the very piece of land that the enemy’s camp was pitched upon, whilst their tents were visible over the wall. So magnificent was their confidence that victory is certain.

And how did all that come? Was all that heroism and enthusiasm of confident success born out of the grave of a dead man, do you think? I do not believe it, and I do not think anybody that has an eye for the probabilities of human conduct will believe it. But the Resurrection was the foundation of it, and explains it, as nothing else can do.

III. — The last thing to be observed here is the purely spiritual conception of what Christ’s blessing is. “To bless you in turning away every one of you from his iniquities.”

What has become of all the Jewish notions of the blessings of Messiah’s Kingdom? Most of them, no doubt, had faded away, as the meaning of and need for the Cross began to be more clear, and the high and pure conception of Christ’s work which it teaches began to take definiteness in their minds. That had not been the kind of kingdom d which they had dreamed when they had sought to be

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first In it. But now the Cross had taught Peter that, as he says in one of his other early discourses, Him hath God raised up a Prince and a Saviour to give — strange gift for a prince to have in his hand — “to give repentance unto Israel, and remission of sins.”

The heart, then, of Christ’s work for the world is deliverance from sin. That is what man needs most. There are plenty of other remedies offered for the world’s ills — culture, art, new political and social arrangements, progress of science and the like. God forbid that I should say a word that might seem to depreciate these, but I tell you, and your own consciences tell you, that the disease goes deeper than these things can cure. The Bible diagnoses the disease grimly and gravely, because it knows it can cure it. You may as well try to put out Vesuvius with a tea-spoonful of cold water as to cure the sickness of humanity with anything that does not grapple with the fundamental mischief, and that is a wicked heart. There is only one Man that ever pretended He could deal with that, and that is Jesus Christ. And it took Him all His power to deal with it; but He did it I And there is only one way by which He could deal with it, and that was by dying for it, and He did it! So He has conquered.

“Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?” When you can lead a crocodile out of the Nile with a bit of silk thread round his neck, you will be able to overcome the plague of the world, and that of your own heart, with anything short of the great sacrifice made by Jesus Christ.

The one thing the world wants is the blessing He alone can give it, and that blessing is deliverance from sin. No man will understand Christ’s Gospel unless He begins there. I believe that the secret of most of the mistaken and partial views of Christian truth lies here, that people have not got into their hearts and consciences a sense of their own sinfulness. And so you get a tepid, self-sufficient and superficial Christianity; and yon get ceremonials, and high and dry morality, masquerading under the gnise of religion: and you get Unitarian and semi-Unitarian tendencies in churches and preachers and thinkers. But if once there came a wholesome, living consciousness of what is meant when men say “We are sinners,” all such mutilated Christianity would crumble because it would be felt to be all inadequate to the needs of the conscience.

So, brethren, I beseech yon, to put yourself in the right place to understand the Gospel by the recognition of that fact. But do not stop there. More than the right understanding of Christianity is at stake. It is a matter of life and death for you to put yourselves in the right place to receive Christ’s richest blessing. You can only do that by feeling in your own conscience the fact of your own personal sin, and so coming to Him to do for you what you cannot do for yourselves, and no one but He can do for you — deliver you from your sins by His forgiving love, and turn you from the inclination to them by His sanctifying Spirit.

And notice how strongly the text puts the individuality of this process. “Every one” — or rather “each one” — singly to be turned, and so, as it were, universality reached through the multitude of single souls. If all kindreds of earth are to be blessed, they are to be blessed one by one, as every one is turned from his iniquities. The inadequate notions of Christianity that I have been speaking about are all characterised by this amongst other things: that they regard it as a social system diffusing social blessings and operating on communities by elevating the general tone and quickening the public conscience — and so on. Christianity does do that. But it begins with dealing with men one by one, and men must deal one by one with it, orthey will never get its highest blessings.

Christ is like a great King, who passing through the streets of His capital scatters His largesse over the multitude, but He reserves His richest gifts for the men that enter His presence chamber. Even those of us who have no close personal union with Him receive of His gifts. Every man, woman, and child in England is better and purer to-day because Christ died on the Cross. But for their deepest needs and their highest blessings they must go to Christ by their own personal faith. As the old mystics defined prayer, so I might define faith: the flight of the solitary soul to the only Christ. You must go to Him by yourself and for yourself, and receive into your own hands the blessing which is for the world. The straight gate, like the wicket at some public hall, takes in one at a time. Blessed be God I There is nothing to pay as you pass through, and when you pass you enter into a large place.