Acts 17:28

Acts 17:28

I. Since God is everywhere, we move, speak, act, think inGod. We rise up, we lie down, we eat, we drink, we work, we rest, we speak, in God, we pray to God, or men forget God; not only with God's eye ever upon us, as much upon us as if in the whole circuit of created beings there were, besides God, no other living being but our one self; not only with that all-beholding Eye resting upon us, seeing every motion of our frames, every emotion of our hearts, every thought before it is yet framed, every word when as yet unspoken; but all we do, think, speak, by night or by day, we do, think, speak inGod, encompassed by God. " InGod we live and move." This might be very blessed, the bliss almost of the blessed in heaven. But it has its awful sides also. Since we think, speak, act inGod, then every sin which men commit the foulest, most cruel, most loathsome, most contrary to the nature which God formed is committed inGod. It cannot be otherwise. God not only sees throughthe darkness, He is init. There He is, where thou turnest. Thou canst not turn away from God except to meet God. Thou canst turn away from His love, yet only to meet Him in His displeasure. Turn, then, in sorrow from thy sin, and thou wilt meet Him and see Him forgiving thee.

II. Since, then, all is of God and in God, since we ourselves, if our souls are alive, are inChrist and through Christ in God, there is no room to claim anything as our own. To claim any gift of God as our own is to rob God. But who could wish to hold anything of his own? How much holier, deeper, more blessed, more full of love, is it to draw every breath of our lives in Him, as supplying it; to move around Him as the centre of our being, and who gives us power to move. As in nature even the strength which men abuse against God is, in every separate act, still continued to them by God whom they offend, so in grace, not only the general power to do acts well-pleasing to God is given and upheld by God, but each act wherewith, from the sacrifice of Abel until now, God has been well-pleased, has been done through the power of His grace put forth in men by Him, and by Him perfected in them.

E. B. Pusey, Sermons,vol. ii., p. 372.

References: Acts 17:28. R. S. Candlish, Scripture Characters and Miscellanies,p. 493.Acts 17:29. J. Fraser, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xv., p. 230. Acts 17:30. Three Hundred Outlines on the New Testament,p. 117; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines,p. 26. Acts 17:30; Acts 17:31. J. Natt, Posthumous Sermons,p. 124; E. White, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xviii., p. 344; Homilist,3rd series, vol. x., p. 104.Acts 17:31. G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines,p. 33.