More sermons on Biblical characters

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A FULL MAN-STEPHEN .

THE PAINTED FACE-JEZEBEL .

PERPETUAL THANKSGIVING-PAUL .

II Acts 6: 8

During the busy and eventful weeks immediately following the day of Pentecost, people separated by wide chasms were brought into the fold of the Christian brotherhood. Among this number were foreign-born Jews and home-bom Jews. These had hated each other heartily in the past, but now they were being welded together by the bonds of their common faith in Jesus Christ. This growing spirit of brotherliness, however, was not permitted to continue without hindrance. Something took place at the time of our story that came very near splitting the infant Church into angry and opposing factions.

The cause of this unfortunate situation was this: many of the recent converts to Christianity were not allowed to return home. They were cut off from all financial support. They stood face to face with pinch¬ ing poverty. To meet the demand for immediate help, big-hearted men came forward, such as Barnabas, who gave their all to the support of these needy and home¬ less converts. The funds thus obtained were put into the hands of the Apostles and were administered by them.

But for some reason the administration of the Twelve did not prove satisfactory. The foreign-bom Jews be¬ came convinced that they were not getting a square

deal. They claimed that their widows were neglected in the daily ministration. Then it was that the Apostles very wisely decided to remedy the evil by a further organization of the Church. They saw that they themselves had been undertaking too much. They realized that they had been giving their time and their energies to a much needed work, but to a work to which they were not especially and divinely called.

For this reason Peter and his fellow Apostles came before the multitude with this wise suggestion: “It is not reason that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables. Therefore, look ye out among you seven men full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. But we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” That was an exceedingly wise decision. And great is the pity that all ministers of the Gospel have not exer¬ cised the same high and holy wisdom.

You see that these Apostles were in danger of being side-tracked. They were in danger of giving all their time to work to which they had not been appointed. Had they done so, they must needs have lost much of their effectiveness in their own divinely appointed work. And the danger that they faced and avoided is one that has only grown greater with the passing of the years. In our day the machinery of the Church has been greatly multiplied. Preachers are better trained today than they have ever been before. But I am afraid that the modern Church, with all its weak spots, is weakest in its pulpit. We as ministers have become skilled in many ways, but we have done so at a great price. Too often we have lost our skill at doing the supreme things. We have forgotten how to “give ourselves continually to prayer and the ministry of the Word.”

When the multitude heard the suggestion of Peter and his fellow Apostles, they greeted it with hearty welcome. And it is my opinion that there was at least one name that was immediately suggested to almost every man and woman that was then present. “They are going to select seven men to administer the tem¬ poral affairs of the Church ? Then I know one who is just exactly fitted to he president of that committee. I know one who is exactly the man to he Chairman of the Official Board.” So one of the listeners said to his neighbor. And the neighbor answered immediately: “Yes, I thought of him the instant that Brother Peter made the suggestion. You are thinking of our young brother, Stephen, no doubt,” And so he was and so was almost everybody else. Thus Stephen was chosen and was made president. And I have a fancy that his elec¬ tion was unanimous.

Now it is with real pleasure that I introduce to you this morning Stephen, Chairman of the Official Board. This ancient lay preacher is one of the most charming personalities in all the history of the Church. His whole story is told in two chapters of the New Testament. We watch him live for but one brief day of his life. We see him pass early and swiftly. But he abides long enough to leave his name written in¬ delibly upon our minds and hearts. He appeals to us as embodying in himself the very highest and kingliest qualities of Christian manhood.

Doctor Luke’s admiration for this gifted young man is very evident. He has one word that he applies to him again and again, and that is the word “full.” In the estimation of Luke, there was a fine well-roundedness, a fascinating fullness about Stephen. He did not im¬ press Luke as being a fractional man. He was not a one-sided, half-baked individual. He was well-rounded, full-orbed. He was finely balanced, well grown. He impresses bis biographer as one the elements of whose character were so mixed that nature might stand and say to all the world, “This is a man.”

Stephen—full. But what is the next word? In what did Stephen’s fullness consist? That is a su¬ premely important question. There are some full folks that we cannot away with. We say, “I could like him, but he is so full of himself. He is so full of irony. He is so full of sarcasm. He is so full of trickery and treachery.” There are some people who repel us be¬ cause their souls are peopled with varied and unat¬ tractive demons.

But what of Stephen ? “Stephen, full of faith.” That is the first fine element of his fullness. He was a man not with a meager and timid and invalid faith. He was a man not with a sickly little handful of faith. He was a man full of faith, so full that though doubt came and knocked at his door every morning and every noon and every night, Stephen simply smiled and shook his head and said, “No room. Faith is my guest now.” “Stephen, full of faith.”

That means, of course, that Stephen was on good terms with God. That means that God delighted in Stephen and that Stephen delighted in God. That means that there was a fine intimacy between them, an intimacy that can exist in no other way. “For without faith it is impossible to please God. For he that cometh to God must believe that He is and that He is a re¬ warder of them that diligently seek Him.”

Not only was Stephen full of faith toward God. He was also full of faith toward men. It does not take a wise man to see why this is true. How do we know that Stephen trusted people? How do we know that lie believed in folks? Here is positive proof: folks believed in him. The whole brotherhood regarded him with fine firm trust and confidence. And cynics and misanthropes are never so trusted. If you put a ques¬ tion after everybody’s name, do not forget that they will put that same kind of mark after yours. But faith begets faith.

Not only was Stephen full of faith, but he was full of wisdom. “The children of this world,” said Jesus, “are wiser in their generation than the children of light.” Yes, that is true, but Stephen is a lovely excep¬ tion. Stephen had that faith that could see visions and dream dreams, but he was more than a dreamer. He was a man of hard-headed common sense. He was a man who brought those faculties that would have made him a leader in the world of finance or of politics and dedicated them fully upon the altar of his Lord.

“Stephen, full of wisdom.” If there were hard ques¬ tions about the administration of the Church they con¬ sulted Stephen. He was always ready with a sugges¬ tion that showed the keen insight of genius. If there was an individual with perplexities and problems with which he did not know how to cope, he came and talked with Brother Stephen about them. Though young in years he was wise. He was so wise that the keen historian Luke, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, said that he was “full of wisdom.”

“Stephen, full of power.” If there was a fine virtue that he seemed to be more full of than any other it is this of power. Where Stephen went, things happened. Changes took place, revolutions were wrought, and it stands written in the Record, “they were not able to resist the spirit and the wisdom by which he spake.” He was full of power. The word used for power here is the one from which we get our modem word, “dyna¬ mite.” This young saint was full of moral dynamite. He was a spiritual tornado. He swept things before him with an irresistible force.

Full of power—that is not the word that we may use about the Church as a whole in this day of grace. Full of power—that is not the way we would go about describing most of the church members that we know. Fnil of power—that is not even the word that we would use to describe the majority of our ministers. Full of eloquence, it may be; full of learning; full of fine and gentlemanly qualities; full of a thousand desirable char¬ acteristics. But full of power—that is a description that, sad to say, describes only the few.

And yet was there ever a day when powerful saints were any more needed ? Were they ever more needed in the pulpit and were they ever more needed in the pew ? I know we have decency and respectability and kindness of heart. We have money and culture and social standing. But power—do we possess that abso¬ lute essential? “Mount Vernon Place Church, full of power.” Is that the way our church is entered upon the books of Heaven? Is that a fit description of us as individuals ? Surely it ought to be. Surely our oppositions are terrific enough to make power an abso¬ lute necessity. And yet we must realize that the word “full of weakness” would be a far better description of too many of us.

But, for our consolation and encouragement, let us bear in mind that this fine fullness may be ours. “Full of power” may as fitly describe you and me as it did Stephen of this far-off day. He who made men mighty centuries ago makes them mighty still wherever and whenever He has His way. “Ye shall receive power,”

He is saying to us at this moment. “Tarry ye till ye be endued with power.” Oh, believe me, if our Chris¬ tianity is the Christianity of the Hew Testament, it is a mighty something. It is a force in the presence of which the thunders of Niagara and the sweep of tor¬ nadoes will be as weak and trifling things.

Then there is one more fullness that Luke ascribed to Stephen. “Stephen, full of grace.” And when you hear that you recall that bejeweled sentence from John’s Gospel: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace . . .” Christ was full of grace. Christ’s servant Stephen was also full of grace. That is, he was charming. He was magnetic. He was fascinating. He was attractive.

“Stephen, full of grace.” He cast a spell over folks. He was as winsome as the springtime; as attractive as sea music. When folks were in his presence, they found themselves strangely comforted and helped. The bro¬ ken-hearted forgot to sob when he was by. The hope¬ less forgot their despair. The wounded forgot their hurts. The barren and desert-hearted began to dream that the dreary wastes within their own souls might be made to rejoice and blossom as a rose. He was a gracious man.

And yet he did not win men merely to himself. What says that bright star yonder that keeps eternal lids apart in the night sky ? It says, “I owe my charm to another. I would have no beauty except it were given me. For me to shine is the sun.” And so Stephen, full of grace, spoke to men of a gracious Savior. As they went away from listening to him they said, “I will go and learn something of his charm. I will go and consult the same Specialist that he has consulted, and see if He cannot smooth the care lines and the frown lines and the sin scars out of my own face/’

“Stephen, full of grace.” And that grace spoke in every tone of his voice. It looked out through his kindly eyes. It shone in every lineament of his face. “And they saw his face,” the Record says, “as it had been the face of an angel.” Truly he had found the secret of real beauty. Ho, every one that thirsteth for real charm, every one that longs to he genuinely and truly attractive, come and sit at the feet of the young preacher Stephen. He can show you how to become winsome with the very winsomeness of Jesus. He can show you how to lay hold on that which many of us lack so much and long for so much. He can show us how to he full of grace, full of charm, such grace and charm as cannot hut be a blessing to the whole circle, whether large or small, that we are privileged to touch.

But you say, “That is well enough for Stephen living in the very shadow of Pentecost. But it is not possible for me. It is easy enough for Stephen to be full of these fine graces. But I have no hope personally of any such fullness. If I even make a start in that direction my life is soon depleted of its energies. All my moral forces are soon exhausted. Therefore, I see no hope for myself either for today or for tomorrow.”

But before you reach this dismal conclusion, let us ask the secret of Stephen’s fullness. What is the secret of the continued fullness of our old home spring down in Tennessee? It is not the fact that that spring never gives out any water. It is not the fact that no one ever stoops to drink its laughing life. It is giving, giving, giving all the time. Indeed it would exhaust itself in

SO MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS less than an hour but for one fact. It is fed from hidden and inexhaustible sources. Far back in the heart of the great hills is a reservoir that can give from generation to generation and never be exhausted.

And this is Stephen’s secret. He is a greatly gifted young man. I am aware of that fact. There was not another man in the Church in his day who had his abil¬ ity. He had an intellect that in its wide and daring grasp of things was a rival to that of St. Paul. But this does not account for him. Neither is he accounted for by saying that he was a well-trained, a finely cul¬ tured young man.

What, then, is the secret? How comes he to be full of all the fine graces that we have mentioned ? These are but the natural outcome of another fullness. It is mentioned by Luke in the very beginning and accounts for all else. Listen: “Stephen full of the Holy Ghost.” Here then is the spring from which all these rivers flow. Here then is the sun that lighted all these winsome stars. You can only account for Ste¬ phen’s graces and fine enviable qualities by saying that he was a man in whom Christ dwelt in the person of the Holy Ghost.

And surely this blessed fullness is just as much within reach of you and of me today as it was within reach of Stephen. “Jesus Christ is the same yester¬ day, today and forever.” What He did, He does. Wherever He has been able to get possession of men as he got possession of Stephen He begets those same high qualities. Oh, may we not this day, because of the needs of our own lives, because of the needs of our homes, because of the needs of our church, offer our¬ selves fully to Him. He waits to be gracious. He waits to enter in and possess us. For “we are His witnesses as is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey Him.”

And look a moment at the outcome of this fullness. “ Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, and therefore full of faith and wisdom and power and grace.” But what was the end of it all ? What did it amount to ? The first result of this fullness was not simply that he was a joyous and sunny Christian. He was that. But what we want to notice especially is the effect of his fullness upon the world, upon the people of his own day and the people of all days that have come and are to come after.

Stephen, then, full of the Holy Spirit was full of highest usefulness. He was appointed to a position that looked quite small. He was to help administer the temporal affairs of a semi-pauper Church. But he made these temporal affairs to administer to highest spiritual ends. He gave out bread in such a fashion as to make men hunger for the Bread of Life. And when he passed out a bit of money to the needy he did not forget to tell them where they could buy wine and milk without money and without price. He worked with his might in his small sphere and God honored him and made him a mighty preacher.

And how effective he was in his preaching. Jeru¬ salem was a proud and wicked city. It was full of cultured and religious aristocrats. Those aristocrats would have given a world to have been able to ignore Stephen. ^Nothing would have suited them better than to have been able to treat him with cool and complete contempt. But they could not ignore him. They might as well have tried to ignore a burning building when the wind was high. They might as well have tried to ignore a cyclone. There was hardly a man in Jerusalem stupid enough and sleepy enough not to know that Stephen was in town on a business trip for his King.

Mark you, I do not say that everybody welcomed Stephen’s message. I do not say that everybody who heard him repented and became a follower of Jesus Christ. Many did. Many even among the priests yielded to his impassioned appeals. Many hearts were softened. But this was not true of all. Some were made only the more bitter. Some had all the serpents within their souls awakened into activity. Some were led to hate him with a hatred that only his life blood could satisfy. But this I say, they could not remain stupidly and stolidly indifferent.

And do I not voice the longing of your heart this morning when I say, Oh, for a Church that the world cannot treat with indifference. Oh, for a band of saints that it is absolutely impossible to ignore. Oh, for a ministry that will divide audiences and communities and cities and continents into those who are either out and out for Christ or out and out against Him. Oh, for a Christianity virile enough to compel the active opposition, the open antagonism of the forces of evil that refuse to be won. The Church of Jesus Christ can stand any amount of opposition. “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” But the direst of all dire calamities is for it to become so effete, so powerless, so dead, that it is not worth fighting.

Stephen, full of the Spirit, I repeat, became Stephen, full of highest service. Where he labored many fell in love with his Lord. Where he labored opposition grew bitter. His enemies ground their teeth like enraged beasts. But Stephen with a fine high courage continued his message. He went on with his sermon, though he knew that every sentence that he nttered was becoming a stone in the hands of his enemies. He spoke right on though he knew that he was digging his own grave as he spoke. “Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost; as your fathers did, so do ye.”

The assembly becomes a mob. The young preacher is hurried out of the city. The scene that follows is noth¬ ing more than a common lynching. These men have not been able to resist his inspired logic. They have been publicly humiliated. They will have their re¬ venge. And so they pelt him with stones. His angelic face becomes bruised and blood-stained. A few minutes later he lies battered and broken and very still. And the wolves have had their prey.

But they had not been able, with all their stones, to kill his open vision. “I see the heavens open,” he cries, “and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.” Though they killed his body they were not able to kill his Christlike spirit of forgiveness. As he falls a victim to their hate he throws around their cruel shoul¬ ders “the sheltering folds of a protecting prayer”: “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.” Though they killed his body they were not able to destroy his peace. “Be quiet,” says the mother, as she puts her baby to sleep. But God can put his child to sleep amidst the howl of mobs and the flying of stones. And so Stephen fell asleep.

Stephen, full of the Holy Ghost, was a blessing while he lived. An abiding blessing he has been through all the changing years. One young man stood by that day well pleased with his death. But he was never able to banish the picture of the angelic face of this flrst Christian martyr from his mind and heart. At last this proud man fell prostrate on the desert sand with this cry upon his lips, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ?” And I feel confident that the first of the saints that Paul greeted when he reached the heavenly country was “Stephen, a man full of the Holy Ghost.”

Ill

Hear the text: “When Jehu was come to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it; and she painted her face, and tired her head, and looked out at a window. And as Jehu entered in at the gate, she said, Had Zimri peace, who slew his master V’ This face at the window gripped the attention of Jehu at once. It held the fascinated attention of every man with him. No man could pass this face by and utterly ignore it. It was far too strik¬ ing, too arresting for that.

Now of course Jezebel was not striking simply be¬ cause her face was painted. The painting of the face was quite a common thing in that day. It was fairly prevalent among the American Indians. It is even sometimes practiced among ourselves by the exceedingly bleached and the exceedingly young. So far as I know it is quite an innocent form of disfigurement. It is also at times quite perplexing. Why a young girl, for instance, with the fresh roses of youth upon her cheeks, would take pains to hide these lovely flowers under a glaring coat of artificiality, is beyond my comprehen¬ sion. But so she often does. However we are inter¬ ested neither in the young girl nor in Jezebel because of her paint.

As we get a glimpse of the face of this woman,

Jezebel, we cannot fail to recognize something of its

coarseness and cruelty. In the springtime of life she may have been a beautiful girl. But that is passed now. Years of sinning have left their ugly marks and scars upon her and no skill of painting can wholly hide them. In fact any outward adornment is ever a poor substitute for the loss of inner loveliness. When the hot blasts of iniquity have withered the fair flowers of the soul there is little to be gained by trying to repro¬ duce them outwardly upon the cheeks.

But if this painted face of Jezebel is striking for its cruelty, it is no less striking for its strength and intelligence. Jezebel is capable and forceful. She is the worst hated woman in the Bible. That alone im¬ plies strength. We do not hate weaklings and pigmies. We hate giants. Jehu calls her the “cursed woman.” She is the evil genius of her day. She is the Lady Macbeth of the Old Testament. She has all the ambi¬ tion and all the brilliant, dashing courage of that illstarred queen. She also has all her flinty cruelty and stoniness of heart. Surely Lady Macbeth’s prayer was answered in full on behalf of Jezebel.

. . Come, you ministering spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here.

And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;

Stop up the access and passage to remorse.

That no compunctious visitings of nature

Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between

The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts

And take my milk for gall, you murthering ministers.

Wherever in your sightless substances

You wait on nature’s mischief! Come, thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,

That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,

Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark To cry, ‘Hold, hold!’ . . .”

Here then is a woman whose name has become a synonym for all that is basest and most bloody. Here is a woman whose life ended in direst and ghastliest tragedy. And every one feels that it should have been so. Every one must feel that in dying as she died she was but reaping as she had sown. But how did she come to be the monster that she was ? How did Jezebel come to be a name to make us shudder? It was not always an ugly name. There was a time when a queen mother and a father who was king thought it a fit name for a beautiful and tender baby girl. How do we account for J ezebel ?

Now, there is one easy w T ay to account for her and that is to say that she was born a monster. We love to think, as others have pointed out, that those people who go greatly wrong are made of different material from that of which we ourselves are made. We love to think of them as constructed of the slime and ooze of things, while we ourselves are composed of much finer and purer material. But in so thinking we are wrong. We are wrong for the simple reason that no child ever comes into the world wholly bad. I know it means much to be well born. I know that some children do not have as good opportunity in this respect as others. But no child is ever a monster from the be¬ ginning.

So what Jezebel became was not altogether a result of bad birth. “Every child comes into the world with the kiss of a loving Father upon its innocent soul." And there is not one single stain upon the whiteness of its little heart. It has the possibilities of descending into the depths. But it also has the possibilities of ascending into the highest heights. The path it takes is determined in some measure by its heredity. We are conscious of that. But it is determined in far greater measure by its teachers.

The supreme cause of the moral failure of Jezebel, I think, was that she was born in a heathen palace and had an early training that was bad. She was nurtured in an atmosphere that was foul and filthy. She was trained in a religion that infected its votaries with moral leprosy. The gods to whom she was introduced were gods of filth and lust. They were mere dumb symbols of iniquity that neither had nor claimed the slightest power to make men good. They neither had nor claimed the slightest longing to make men good.

As was perfectly natural, this early training cast its blight over JezebeEs entire life. It is hard indeed to get over a wrong training in childhood. It is possible, through the good grace of God, to do so. But it is very rare indeed that those wrongly trained avail themselves of that possibility. Of those who come into our churches, of those who even attend our churches, the overwhelming majority are the ones who had some sort of religious training in youth. In my entire min¬ istry I never recall to have seen one single man or woman converted who had not in some fashion been brought into contact with the teachings of the Gospel in their young and tender years.

Then Jezebel had a second handicap. She made an unfortunate marriage. Her husband, you remember, was named Ahab. Ahab was nominally a follower of the Lord. But in reality his religion counted for naked nothing. The big difference between him and the woman he married was that while he was weak and and wicked she was strong and wicked. If Ahab had been a man of true and vital faith, if he had been strong through the power of God, he might have saved his gifted queen and through her he might have gone far towards saving the nation. But she dominated him and turned him to her religion, instead of him turning her to his.