Acts 4:2

Acts 4:2

Apostolic Teaching

I. The Apostles taught. (1) Christianity is an educator of men; it teaches them to think. That is the meaning of the word "educate" to lead out the mind, to develop its dormant faculties. And this the Gospel is eminently calculated to do. It stimulates the human mind wherever it goes. (2) Christianity teaches men to know. That is the meaning of the word "instruct" to pile up in the mind the proper materials of knowledge. Christianity is aptly described as a revelation; that is, it brought Divine verities within the sweep of our intellectual vision, verities which before lay inaccessible to us. (3) Thinking answers not its paramount purpose, except as it leads to knowing; and Christianity, as a system of instruction, conjoins thinking and knowing, thereby fulfilling our idea of teaching.

II. They taught the people.Keen students of history, sacred and profane, are able to discern two stages in religion. (1) The first is that in which is awakened within us reverence for the High worship of that which is above us. This was the goal of Jewish culture profound reverence for the High. (2) Christianity teaches us to reverence not only that which is above us, but also that which is under us. The Gospel has been preached to the poor. (3) Christianity cultivates reverence for the High andreverence for the Low. "They taught the people."

III. They preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead. (1) They preached the fact of the resurrection. (2) They preached the doctrine of the resurrection. (3) Thus their doctrine was much in advance of the highest Gentile and Jewish teaching. The truth, which is only sparingly revealed in the Jewish Scriptures, and feebly apprehended by half a dozen eminent saints, shines upon us from every chapter of the New Testament, and is the common property of every believer.

J. Cynddylan Jones, Studies in the Acts,p. 90.

References: Acts 4:5. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iv., p. 155.Acts 4:7. Homiletic Magazine,vol. vii., p. 147. Acts 4:7. A. B. Bruce, Expositor,2nd series, vol. ii., p. 458. Acts 4:8. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iv., p. 156.