Acts 4:20

There are two spiritual facts here presented to us: (1) that the true Christian has heard from heaven what is worth repeating, and (2) that the Spirit of Faith prompts the Christian to repeat what he has heard.

I. Notice the order in which religious belief and religious speech are here placed. We have heard; and we cannot but speak. This order has been reversed, and much mischief has been the result. Men have been trained to speak before they have believed. Faith comes by hearing faith grows by listening doubts are dispersed by waiting, and enquiry. False speech, hasty speech, make such Christians, if you please to call them Christians, as Ananias and Sapphira, and even Simon Magus; but quiet hearing and listening make such Christians as Peter, and John, and Paul. Let us speak that we believe; but let us first believe and then speak.

II. But while it is of the nature of faith to incline to speech, that testimony which is the object of Christian speech, exerts the same influence. For what is it that the Christian has heard. He has heard faithful sayings worthy of acceptation, words of salvation, words of life, words of God; the word of God to our fallen and perishing world. Its utility, its wonderfulness, the goodwill to man that it induces, the believer's own conscious obligation to the Gospel, all move him to speak. If the Christian history appeared to Him a fable, seriousness might bid him hold his peace; if the Christian doctrine were doubtful, integrity will command silence, but we say that the tendency of the believer's faith in the Gospel is to move him to speak.

III. And beside the inward impulse, there is an external demand for honest, enlightened and seasonable Christian speech. The disciple of Christ believes that which multitudes around him have not heard: and as he detects, by many symptoms, their ignorance, the spirit of faith saith, "Inform them speak." To what shall we liken the Christian in the midst of an ignorant community? He is like a fountain in the desert, he is like a beacon on a dangerous coast; he is like his Master when surrounded by a multitude of the sick and needy in Palestine. For sin in all its forms the Christian knows a remedy and has a remedy. Then keep not silence about it; but of it intelligently, lovingly, earnestly, but seasonably, speak.

S. Martin, Westminster Chapel Sermons,1st series, p. 69.

References: Acts 4:21; Acts 4:22. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iv., p. 161.Acts 4:23. Parker, Contemporary Pulpit,vol. i., p. 303.

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