The many ways and the one work of God.
It is interesting to see how God works in many ways toward one end, and how, from the first day of the Christian era, he has been acting on the world and on the Church, making all things to move toward one glorious issue.
I. THE MANY WAYS OF GOD'S WORKING. We may be reminded:
1. How he defeats his enemies. "They which were scattered abroad upon the persecution … traveled … preaching the Word," etc. (Acts 11:19). If the enemies of the truth had been its best friends, they could not possibly have taken a course more favorable to its circulation and establishment than the one they took. God overrules the designs of his foes, and turns their attacks upon his kingdom into actual support. Again and again has the enmity, the cruelty, the violence, the cunning of sin been compelled to subserve the interests of righteousness. Mischief smites down the standing corn of truth, but, so doing, it sows living seed from which a large harvest will rise.
2. How he teaches his 'fiends. Those who were scattered abroad went "preaching the Word to none but unto the Jews only" (Acts 11:19). They did not understand that the gospel was intended for mankind: this was an enlargement of view which the Christian Church had then to gain. Its Divine Master had to teach it this most necessary lesson. How should he do this? He might have done so
3. How God uses his servants. "Then departed Barnabas … to seek Saul" (Acts 11:25). Barnabas served God and his race in one way, Saul in another. Barnabas was not the man to do what Paul afterwards did. He had not the evangelizing, organizing, literary faculty in anything like the same degree in which his illustrious colleague possessed it. But he served the Church and the world in his own way. It was a valuable contribution to the cause of Christ and of the kingdom of God to introduce the distrusted convert to the confidence of the Church (Acts 9:27), and to give him such an opening for the exercise and training of his varied powers as that he now enjoyed at Antioch; it was an eminent and precious service thus to place on a firm footing and to bring into the foreground the man who was to be the means of doing such work as Paul accomplished for mankind. What immeasurable service have the fathers and mothers and teachers of our great reformers, evangelists, preachers, etc., rendered their race! Other men have other spheres to fill; that of Paul was the sphere of abounding activity. We may be sure that he had a great deal to do during those twelve months at Antioch, in "teaching many people" (Acts 11:26). Some in quieter, others in more active scenes; some in virtue of intellectual, others by means of moral and spiritual gifts; some by their influence on a few influential men, others by their action on the multitude; some by impressing their convictions on men by direct personal appeal, others by organizing and arranging; all in the way chosen of God and pleasing to him, play their part and do their work in their hour of opportunity.
II. THE ONE WORK OF GOD. At Antioch it became convenient to distinguish the converts to the new faith by some name which marked them off from the Jews; they were called "Christians." It is a mark which speaks of the rising tide of truth. It reminds us that God was working out a grand design, far, far beyond the elevation of a favored nation, viz. the redemption of the whole race of man by faith in Jesus Christ; he was and is engaged in "reconciling the world unto himself in Christ."—C.