Acts 28:16-31 - Homiletics

The fall.

The main feature in these concluding verses of the Acts of the Apostles, as it is one of the most momentous incidents in the history of God's dealings with mankind, is the fall of Israel from their proper place in the Church of God. For nearly two thousand years, if we date from the call of Abraham, this one family had been separated from the rest of mankind, and eventually received institutions of such wonderful strength and vitality as to keep them separate through centuries of extraordinary vicissitudes, that they might be depositaries of God's great promise, and his witnesses in the world. But when at length the great promise made by God to the fathers had its fulfillment in the birth of Jesus Christ into the world, and the time of rest and glory to Israel would seem to have arrived, another event happened, also foretold by the prophets, viz. the rejection of their Messiah by an unbelieving and stiff-necked generation. He came to his own, and his own received him not. "Who hath believed our report?" was the prophetic announcement of this unbelief. "Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive" was the prophet's description of the gross heart of the people when the glad sound of the gospel should come unto them. And so now it came to pass. We have seen in the preceding narrative how the most gifted of men, with a profusion of love and eloquence and power which has never been surpassed, went about from country to country, and from city to city, proclaiming to his Jewish brethren the unsearchable riches of Christ. We have seen how everywhere to the mass he spoke in vain. The blessed Word of life fell on ears dull of hearing. They resented the message when they should have hailed the messenger with delight. They sought to silence that tongue in death which spoke to them of Jesus and the resurrection. And now once more a chance is given them. The generous prisoner has no sooner set his foot in Rome than he calls to him all his fellow-countrymen. Forgiving all the wrongs and injuries and violence which had embittered his life, he once more lays before them the blessed news of the kingdom of God and exhorts them to enter in. The exhortation is in vain. They judge themselves unworthy of eternal life; they will not have God's Christ to reign over them. And so they seal their own doom. The time of their fall is come—the time when the kingdom of God must be taken from them and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. But now mark the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. See how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing out. This fall of Israel, so sad in itself, so sad in relation to the great fathers of the house of Israel, so fatal, one would have thought, to the interests of the kingdom of Christ, becomes the riches of the world. From that fall emerges the great mystery of God, which had lain concealed through ages and generations, that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs and partakers of the great Messianic promise. Through that fall of Israel salvation came to the breadth and length of the heathen world. "The salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles," and they were ready to hear it. The light that had been shut up within the four walls of the commonwealth of Israel, and only shining as it were through the chinks and crannies of those walls, now that those walls were broken down blazed forth to fill the world with its heavenly brightness. The voice of Divine truth, of which only faint echoes had been heard outside those walls, now went out through all lands in all the fullness of its converting power. Now were the heathen given to Christ for his inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for his possession. The fall of Israel was become the riches of the Gentiles, and their loss the world's gain. But the mystery of God was not yet worked out. That had yet to be unfolded and shown to the world, which St. Paul told the Roman Church, "The gifts and calling of God are without repentance." Israel has not stumbled to his final fall. The eternal hand still holds him up through centuries of darkness; and the eternal voice will yet say to him, "Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee!" The time will come, for God has spoken it, when the heart of stone, which denied the Lord of glory, will be exchanged for a heart of flesh, which will love and adore him. The time will come when the long-lost sheep will return to the good and loving Shepherd who is waiting to receive them, "and so all Israel shall be saved." How or when that promised time will come we know not. But we know that it will come. And when it does come it will be to the whole human race as life from the dead. Watch for it, O ye Gentile Christians! Watch for it, O ye sons of Israel! Pray for it, all ye that love Christ! for it will be the day of the fullness of his glory, and the consummation of your bliss.