The rather peculiar but instructive case of the twelve disciples being given, the apostle is next seen resuming his service among the Jews at their synagogue. Compare chap. 18:19-22. He was there according to his pledge.
“And entering into the synagogue he spoke boldly for three months, discoursing and persuading the things concerning the kingdom of God. But when some were hardened and disobedient, speaking evil of the way before the multitude, he departed from them, and separated the disciples, discoursing daily in the school of Tyrannize. And this was done for two years, so that all those that dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks. And God wrought uncommon powers by the hands of Paul, so that even upon the sick were brought from his body handkerchiefs and arms, and the diseases left them, and the evil spirits went out” (ver. 8-12).
The apostles patient perseverance was great. For three menthe he spoke boldly in the circumscribed sphere of the synagogue, “the things concerning the kingdom of God” (ver. 8) being the matter of his discourse and persuasion as we can readily conceive of all subjects the most suited, to inquiring Jew's, who knew the law and the prophets. The godly, as we hear of Joseph of Arimathea, were looking: for the kingdom of God. This involved his opening to them the sufferings of Christ: and the glories after these. It never occurred to his mind to disparage that kingdom, still less to deny it, because of higher possessions and richer grace in the great mystery as to Christ, and as to the assembly (Eph. v.) meanwhile revealed for the Christian. Even salvation as now opened in the gospel of God's grace has depths beyond the kingdom. But the Jews, from tradition with its darkening effects, and from unbelief which overlooks what is of the deepest import in scripture were apt to turn from Jesus as the Christ, and, thug got blinded in presence of that light which if heeded would have made everything manifest. It is only by light divine in Him that all things have their true character exposed; and His grace not only frees us from all fear of consequences from it, but emboldens us to desire it as the assured blessing of our souls to God's glory. Some there were who did go on in faith and taste that the Lord is good others stumbled at the word, being disobedient.
“But when some were hardened and disobedient, speaking evil of the way before the multitude; he departed from them, and separated the disciples, discoursing daily in the school of Tyrannize” (ver. 9).
The truth preached in the synagogue had now brought out plainly those who received the love of it that they might be saved, and with at least as much distinctness these whose hard rejection of it led them to speak evil of the way in presence of the multitude. To have continued longer could have answered no good end; it would have led to bitterness of altercation and reviling from the adversaries. To withdraw from them at this point was clearly of God. Thus were the disciples separated in the capital of the province, the religious center of an area far larger still. The synagogue being no longer a seemly place, a room commodious enough was due, not only to the disciples, but to the testimony; and the apostle carried on his work of daily discourse in the school of one who was, as far as we can judge, a rhetorician or philosopher.
What a contrast, in that school, no doubt at different hours of the day, between the Christian teacher and the heathen! The one was filled with the grace and truth which, as a revealed whole, came into being by Jesus and in His person, flowing from the love of God to man, and with not a whit less divine authority, than the law pronounced at Sinai more than fifteen centuries before, and last, not least, brought home to heart and conscience by the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven, a Spirit not of fearfulness, but of power, and love, and a sound mind; the other, not perhaps lacking in imaginative thought clothed in attractive language, gave out speculation, being wholly destitute of certainty on all that most deeply concerns God and man, ignorant of all means of his reconciliation with God on a righteous basis, or of forming near and holy relationships with Him, possessing no present assurance of His will nor affections for every day's enjoyment and obedience, and still less able to lift up the veil which hides the unseen and eternal. Yet here each of them addressed his hearers, Paul, if not Tyrannus, day by day: the one presenting a work of art which gave scope for excellency of speech, and the assumption, but not the reality, of wisdom; the other a simple yet deep witness, dependent. on the holy Spirit, to the One Who gave Himself a ransom for all, the testimony in its own times, for God delights in grace.
Hence it is, that the place of testimony was of no moment: all the value, virtue, truth, grace, and glory that we boast is in the One preached. Holy place, or most holy, was nothing now: Jesus only. Had He not been cast out by the people of God, by their scribes and doctors, by Levites, and priests, and high-priests? and when they slew Him by the hand of lawless men, had not God Himself testified by rending the veil from top to bottom? Earthly holiness was utterly desecrated. The temple therefore is nothing, nor Jerusalem, nor the mountain of blessing in Samaria. One sacrifice has swallowed up all others, and is alone efficacious. All centers in the crucified but exalted Jesus on high, where is the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched, not man; where is the Great Priest, even Jesus Himself. Hence the same building, which man misused for vanity, faith could use for magnifying the name of the Lord. The consecration of a building since the ascension of Christ is a return to Judaism and one of the beggarly elements of the world; and the grander the building is, the more flagrant its inconsistency with the cross. Popery in all this is consistently but outrageously wrong, in rebellion against God and the truth, resuscitating all that received its death-blow in the death of Christ; for it boasts of its temples, its priests, and its sacrifices for the living and the dead. But where is the consistency of the Anglican who, admitting the one sacrifice as already complete and accepted, contends for earthly priests as well as holy places? where of the Dissenter, who, discarding an earthly priesthood, clings to the delusion and pride of his temple; chapel, or miscalled “church”?
The practice of the early church coincided with and confirms the principle. For those who had boldness to enter into the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, the great priest over the house of God, what mattered the mere place of assembling themselves together? Alas! indeed, one of earthly splendor must cloud the truth and moral glory of the cross. An upper room, a private house, however obscure the quarter, or (if occasion required as here) “the school of Tyrannus,” any place, small or great, according to the exigencies of the time, sufficed for the assembly. If numbers grew in a large town, they might for convenience meet in many rooms, but never so, as to jeopard the characteristic truth that it was “the church,” not “churches,” in that town. Where unity is abandoned, save for the foundations it is no longer God's church, but man's.
At Ephesus as yet things were in their infancy, the disciples were separated (i.e., from the Jews who adhered to the synagogue), and the apostle discourses daily. “And this was done for two years, so that all those dwelling in Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks” (ver.10). A great and effectual door of testimony lay open to him, if there were many adversaries. Proconsular Asia had the gospel before it. Many may not have listened more than once; for curiosity reigned among the Greeks, which, if easily attracted, is not less easily sated. But if ever an attractive center existed for Asiatic Greeks, it was in Ephesus. It was a time too, when men, weary of pretentious philosophy, and sick of the mental and moral horrors of paganism, yearned after something sure, solid, and good, if they knew not what, which they had found very partially in the synagogue. They wanted, in the language of Job, “an interpreter, one among a, thousand, to show unto man what is right for him, and God could be gracious to him and say, Deliver him from going down to the pit: I have found a ransom. And in the apostle they had one of the rarest interpreters, and, more than that, one who beyond all men could feel for Jews and Greeks; for no Jew had, in his unbelief, ever hated Jesus more bitterly than he, no Greek more proudly than he despised that name. And who so much had felt or developed the riches of God's grace in Christ. For the space of two years all that dwelt, not in the city only, but in the province where the seven Apocalyptic churches and others are afterward known to have been gathered), heard the word of the Lord from one so laboriously zealous, and so every way competent to proclaim and unfold and apply it... He was content to go about preaching the kingdom; nor was it enough for him to urge on perishing souls repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. He did indeed testify the gospel of the grace of God; but he shrunk not from declaring the whole counsel of God. Nowhere do we see a spot so favored; nowhere did this wise master-builder lay a foundation so broad, deep, and strong, though indeed it was none other than that only one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. But who laid it so well as Paul at Ephesus, according to the grace of God which was given to him?
In due time God's building in Ephesus comes before us with a wonderful luster and fullness, not only in the book now occupying, us, but in the apostolic Epistle to the saints that were there, and the faithful in Christ Jesus. To no assembly elsewhere does the Holy Spirit so freely bring out the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit, and by none was it revealed as by the. apostle Paul, and to no saints communicated as to those addressed in that Epistle. Yet in the eyes of tradition the church in Ephesus is of slight account compared with that in Antioch, or in Alexandria, to say nothing of Rome or of Constantinople afterward. But God's ways are higher than man's ways, and His thoughts than those of the sons of men. No more humiliating proof of the departure from the divine estimate than is found in ecclesiastical history, with its ever increasing homage to the spirit of the world.
But we may notice the honor which God at this time put on the apostolic testimony to the Lord Jesus and the gospel in the new sphere. “And God wrought uncommon powers by the hands of Paul, so that even upon the sick were brought handkerchiefs and aprons, and the diseases left them, and the evil spirits went oat” (ver. 11, 12). The beneficent power of God in man and for man was thus attested. By and by it will triumph in the kingdom where all things are to be put into the hands of the glorified Son of man. But He is glorified already, although we see not yet all things put under Him. Meanwhile the Spirit is here on earth to bear witness of Him and His victory achieved in righteousness over Satan. This is the principle of those early displays of divine energy in man. They were testimonies to His defeat of the devil in man's favor, powers of the world to come, though of course but samples of what will be then universal. Certainly neither the church nor any individual saint has ground for long centuries to boast on this score. But God did work marvelously not only by Paul but in the assembly, as we see even in Corinth, to the, glory of Jesus, that man might learn on all sides and in every way the delivering power in His hands, not only over human infirmity, but over all the power of the enemy. Through the apostle this was manifested here with no little splendor. The God, Who gave and sent His Son to become a man as well as a propitiation for our sins, is not indifferent to man's miseries, or to Satan's malicious pleasure in rebellion and ruin. And these early days of the victory of the ascended Christ were illuminated with brilliant manifestations that all power in heaven and on earth is in Him Who is at God's right hand, and answers to the faith that called on His name, Nor was it only in the presence or at the word of the apostle: what had touched his person did not fail upon the sick who could not approach him. The faith that brought handkerchiefs or aprons from him to them had its reward: the diseases departed from them, and evil spirits (a distinct class) went out. Truly it was delivering energy to the Lord's glory in and for man; and it could not but deeply impress those who are sensitive enough to their interests and feelings in this life. But what is it at the best compared with the still deeper glory of the Son of man when God was glorified in Him dying for sin, that there too righteousness, might be vindicated and be forever on the side of man, unequivocally and absolutely of believing man?