The New Ministry of the Spirit

This book may well be called the Acts of the Holy Ghost, since He is here thus pre-eminent. Out of all the references to the Spirit of God found in the New Testament, four-fifths are found here. He filled disciples with His own power, separated and sent forth missionaries, appointed overseers in the Church, and witnessed with disciples. But more than this, this is the book of His personal presence. He was so among them that they walked in His comfort — r 7Taf)a!{X7j(7eL — in his paracletism; that is, He became actually the Paraclete, the personal substitute for Christ’s own self. And how beautifully is this personal presence acknowledged at that first council at Jerusalem: ‘’ It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us’’ — He meeting with and counselling with them, and all coming to a common conclusion! How august, yet how precious, such a sense of His actual personal presence, when Peter can say to Ananias, ’ Why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost,’’ as though He stood there behind Peter as the real presiding officer! Yes, there He was, the Holy Spirit, making more than good to them Christ’s absence, so that in Him their ascended Lord had come back to stay and dwell among them and in them; to plan for them, and send them where He would have them go; to embolden them in presence of foes, and encourage them by stretching forth His hand to heal and save. Here, indeed, are the Acts of the Spirit, for without Him not a step is taken. The Church is the body of Christ, and Christ is the head, and the Spirit of Life is the vital power filling the body, guiding its movements, and working through its members.

Within the compass of this book the Spirit may be seen exercising all His gracious offices, in the new birth of regeneration, the nurture and growth of sanctification and edification, the enduement and endowment of service, convincing gainsayers and converting even persecutors, and both edifying and multiplying the Churches.

So all important is this ministry of the Spirit that it is the only law of consecration known in the Acts. Every person and place and time which He touches becomes sacred. Every worshipper whom He guides is a priest, every spot he fills with His presence is a sanctuary, and every day becomes sacred because His work pervades it. We look in vain here for any traces of ecclesiasticism, ceremonialism, sacramentarianism; or, if found here, they are only as relics of a perverted Judaism or leavening paganism, curiosities, interesting only to antiquarians and befitting a museum.

Prayer and preaching make a sanctuary wherever believers gather, and wherever souls are new-born is a new shrine of the Nativity. Even temple courts have no longer a monopoly of worship. The house of Mary, the gateway at Lystra, the jail at Philippi, the school of Tyrannus, market-place or theatre, street corner or river side, if only praise and prayer go up and blessings come down, become hallowed, and believers say, ‘’ Surely God is in this place; this is none other but the house of God, this is the gate of heaven.”

I. One most marked effect of the Spirit’s presence was seen in the tinsel fisJi spirit which He breathed into saints. ‘’Sacrifice,” as Mr. Froude has said, ‘’is the first element of religion, and resolves itself into the love of God. Let the thought of self intrude; let the painter but pause to consider how much reward his work will bring to him, and the cunning will forsake his hand, and the power of genius will be gone. Excellence is proportioned to the oblivion of self.” In witnessing for Christ His image so filled disciples as to displace that last idol — self; and the Spirit so filled His own temple as to pervade it with an atmosphere of self-forgetfulness.

Observe, for instance, the absence of all money considerations or salaried offices. No soft-lined nest allured the self-denying worker; no tempting bait drew the preacher to bite at the devil’s hook of greed; no increase of stipend cleared his eye to read the doubtful call of Providence. As yet no ‘* crozier golden” had made ^’bishops wooden.” Service seems to have been, if not gratuitously rendered, supported only by free-will offerings.

Is there no possible voice here for the Church of to-day? Is not jealousy for money compensation any hindrance to true missionary work? Imagine Philip sending ahead a financial agent to secure proper remuneration for his evangelistic work in Samaria; or Barnabas, that son of consolation, charging so much a week for his ministry to new converts at Antioch; or Peter, hesitating at Joppa till he knew whether the fee for his visit to Cesarea would at least cover expenses and entertainment; or Paul, taking a collection at Mars Hill, or asking offerings to cover rent for his hired house at Rome. While it is lawful that they who preach the gospel should live of the gospel, that law may easily become a cloak for avarice. We must go outside of this short history of early missions to find a vindication for growing rich upon pew-rents, while a thousand millions are dying without the bread of life; or, for paying hired singers and operatic ‘’stars” enough every year to put three or four more missionaries into the field. Satan never won a greater victory than when he made the pulpit a horse-block whereby to vault into the saddle of ambition; or the pastorate a comfortable hammock of luxurious ease; or the service to souls an avenue to wealth. Such perversions have gone far both to destroy the simplicity of a life of faith and the power of an unselfish witness to Christ.

This voice and this vision must once more waken the Church. Everything depends upon having the Spirit with us in His presence and power.

2. He alone can supply new apostles. What a divine voice is heard in the conversion of Saul! Suddenly arrested in his persecuting career, threatening and slaughter are exchanged for prayer and preaching; the fiery breath of the Cilician dragon gives place to ardent, fervent witness to Jesus. The arch-persecutor and destroyer becomes foremost of Apostles and pioneer of missionaries. Hear God’s voice in this event, proclaiming the sovereignty of that grace which snatches from the hands of Jewish rulers the chalice full of the poison of their wrath, and makes of it God’s chosen vessel to bear before gentiles and kings, yea, and the very Israel which those rulers represented, the hated name of Jesus.

The Spirit alone can separate His saints for missionary service. He is therefore the ultimate Source of supplies for the field. The same Barnabas and Saul, sent forth by the Church, were also sent forth by the Holy Spirit, and in this double fact we have God’s voice, announcing the twin condition of all successful missionary ministry: that the labourers shall be closely linked with the Church as its representatives, and be qualified as well as commissioned by the Spirit of God. The authority of the Church is secondary to that other and higher authority; but both are needful as conditions of the highest service. We must not be reckless of forms, but must seek a higher than any formal ordination or separation. Where workmen are independent and irresponsible, amenable to no authority, their zeal is sometimes without knowledge, and they are more active than efficient. Not a few who entered by no regular door but climbed up some other way, have proved more adepts in subtraction and division than in addition and multiplication, in missionary mathematics. To keep the Church in close touch with the field, the missionary must be sent forth by the Church, as one who is known, loved, trusted; then the work at home and abroad is bound together by a living bond, like the nervous system in the body with its effluent and refluent action.

But, on the other hand, no human election, education, ordination, can qualify for God’s work. The Spirit says, ’ * Separate Me — for the work whereunto / Jiave called tJieni,’’’’ Instead of our appointing labourers and then asking for them proper qualifications, must we not invert the order? and first waiting to see whom the Spirit appoints and anoints, send them forth. Laying hands suddenly on no man, laying stress on graces more than on gifts, we must value above all else the one qualification which makes all others needless — namely, that they who go forth have been under the tuition and bear the commission of the Spirit of God.

The Church that is prepared by prayer and fasting to hear and heed the Spirit’s voice will be a missionary Church. But that is always a still small voice, and is drowned by the voices of worldly clamour, of contending passions and hollow mirth. The Moravian Brotherhood has led the van, both in proportion of workers sent forth and of gifts contributed to their support, because in the constitution, worship and working of the ‘Unitas Fratrum,” the Spirit finds less to hinder Him from being heard when He speaks. And so it is out of revivals of religion that missionary impulses have been born or revived. Meetings for fasting and prayer, and for deeper spiritual life, have been the matrix where missionaries have been moulded. While Laodicean churches have lulled their members to sleep with an easy religion of the world and a monotonous drone of ritual, and religious club-houses have drawn disciples into the snares of luxurious indulgence and refined selfishness, the purer, and generally the poorer, Churches have been fertile mothers of missions all over the world.

3. The Spirit uses His own schools and teachers for training His servants. Witness that significant record of the service rendered by the tent-makers of Corinth to the eloquent Apollos. When that gifted Alexandrian Jew, so mighty in the Septuagint Scriptures, came to Ephesus, like certain other disciples whom Paul found in Diana’s capital, he had not got beyond John’s baptism of repentance. And Priscilla and Aquila, who made tents for a living, turned their home into a theological school for this one pupil; and it was in their humble lodgings that this silver tongue was taught to expound the way of God more perfectly, and, with a new baptism of the Spirit, mightily to convince the Jews that Jesus was the Christ. What a lesson on missionary trainingschools, when some obscure saint gives the finishing touch to God’s choicest workman!

4. The Holy Spirit makes every work a divine calling. Tabitha’s resuscitation at Joppa was another voice of God proclaiming that service depends on no sphere, and is limited by no narrow circle of work. All forms of honest labour may witness for God, and alms-deeds have no stereotyped model. Dorcas may have been a chronic invalid, dumb or palsied and bedridden. But she had left to her, hands that could hold a needle; and the coats and garments that she made to clothe widows and orphans were as true signs of a missionary as the sermons of Peter or the tours of Paul. Whoever in his calling abides with God, is a missionary. If there be first a willing mind it is accepted, according to that a man hath and not according to that he hath not. Then the willing disciple, like Hercules, is a victor, whether he walks or works, stands or sits,

5. The Spirit of God is heard all through the Acts, teaching that witness to Christ is natural and necessary to a true disciple, and is a condition of His full salvation. The tenth chapter of Romans presents God’s scheme for universal missions: a message of faith, heard by the ear, entering the heart, and then going out by the gates of speech to find its way to another ear, another heart, another tongue; and so each hearer, who becomes a believer, becomes also a witness. What can be more sublimely simple and more quickly effectual! A word of life winging its way from lip to ear, from ear to heart, from heart to lip, and so in endless circles till the last unbeliever hears the message.

Here is an Apostolic succession, indeed! And observe that he who hears and believes, but does not confess and proclaim, breaks up the succession and like a wheel whose inaction clogs the machinery, so far as he is concerned, stops all the other wheels and disturbs the divine order. He who believes but does not testify, is not only hindering the growth of the Church, but its continuance; for without witnesses there can be no new generation of believers. Missions are the nursing-mother of converts and Churches. Love seeks not inlets, but outlets, and is jealous of limits.

6. The Holy Spirit’s administration in the Church will make both giving and going easy. He so unites saints in one body that members have care one for another, and move together, in common work for common ends.

The dearth which Agabus foretold was a voice of God, calling disciples to send relief to hungry saints in Judea. Infinitely more, then, is world-wide famine of the Bread of Life, God’s call for prompt and ample provision for poor and starving souls. All believers form one community, and suffer or rejoice together. There must be no schism in the body. And the whole race is by nature one family, and what some lack, the surplus of others must supply, until, as John Howard said, ‘’Our luxuries give way to the comforts of the poor; our comforts to their necessities, and even our necessities to their extremities.” No want must plead in vain.

Each, according to ability, should contribute willingly and cheerfully; and remoteness of abode must become neighbourhood of need. When this lesson is learned as only the Spirit can teach it, even our poverty will abound unto the riches of our liberality. Nature and sin have made all men akin. “He that withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him; “man’s inhumanity to man still keeps countless thousands mourning their own awful destitution. Missionary meetings must not only ‘* work up” the missionary spirit, but “work it down,” deeper and deeper, till it reaches our selfishness and casts it out. To this only the Holy Spirit is equal. When He actually resides in the Church, and presides over it, every appeal in behalf of lost souls becomes a plea in Jesus’ name; nay, Christ becomes the pleader, and it becomes easier to respond than to refuse.

A new standard of giving will be adopted by the Church whenever the Spirit once more pervades it with His living power. Greed is to-day dominant even among disciples. It is changing some of them into coin, so that they have a metallic ring and will drop into the coffin with a chink. The ministry of money is not understood or appreciated; men are purse-proud because they have no sense of stewardship; they think of their gains as their own, and of giving as an act of merit; and so become arrogant and sometimes defiant in their avarice. How quickly when God’s Spirit possesses us do we see that nothing is our own, and even we ourselves are slaves paid for in blood and made free at a great price; and so we, and all we have, belong to our Redeemer! To such a man hoarded gains seem heaps of cankered coin whose rust is an accusation.

There is another and more awful side to this matter. Ananias and Sapphira died for the sin of sacrilege in trifling with their stewardship. Achan was guilty of a similar sin and suffered a like judicial death. Something devoted to the Lord and His by right was kept back from Him for selfish ends. That zvas all! But at these two turning points in sacred history there stand two cairns of black stones — mute warnings that just there is the point of peril, where the step, the slip, may prove fatal. When God in any way calls for our gifts, at our peril we withhold; no sudden death-blow may fall, but a subtle putrefaction or silent petrifaction attacks character and leaves spiritual life to awful decay and deadness.

7. When God’s Spirit moves in the Church there is a holy cessation of all undue carefulness as to results. However much we rejoice over converts, we are not unduly depressed when Paul’s experience at Rome is repeated; when notwithstanding untiring toil and testimony in preaching and teaching, some believe not, or even harden themselves in rejection of the truth.

To some the same divine word which is a savour of life to others, becomes a savour of death unto death; not wings by which to soar, but weights by which to sink. God drops down roses of paradise, but when they touch hard hearts, they become like burning coals of fire. The book of the Acts is a narrative of missionary labours, but records as many failures as successes. But in God’s eyes our failures are often successes, and our successes are often failures. Duty is ours — let Him take care of all other issues.

The New Acts of the Apostles abounds in voices and visions of God. But not every one hears or sees. Once He spoke in thunders, now in whispers; once He was seen in flashes of light, now He reveals Himself only to the vision of faith. They who walk the crowded thoroughfares with the worldly and the frivolous, amid the din of Mammon worshippers and the blaze of fashion’s superficial glory, will neither hear the voice nor see the vision.

The drift of the age is toward the idolatry of self, and no man can serve two masters. We must make our choice. He who often seeks God in the secret place and keeps silence before Him, will hear voices that wax louder and clearer until the closet of communion becomes the audience-chamber of the King; and will get such glimpses of the glory of God, that to him a door will again be opened into Heaven itself.