Acts 13:36 For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep, and was laid to his fathers, and saw corruption: I. THE SWEET REASONABLENESS OF THE TRUE LIFE. "David served." There was a man of like passions with ourselves; and he lived out his life, a truly human life, a life of rare powers, of rich and varied endowments, of widest-ranging experiences and most exquisite sensibilities; and of that life the simple but sublime summation lies in this spirit-given word, "served," and service, according to highest, holiest wisdom, is supremely reasonable and worthy of man; for still that voice is sounding, "I came to minister." Such a life of all "reasonable service" opens to every man. How, you ask me, has it then become possible for men to ask, "Is life worth living?" The possibility lies largely in the lives. There are lives, alas! which almost demand the grim reply of blunt-spoken Samuel Johnson, "I do not see, sir, the necessity for your living." Lives of service fit into this universe of reason, for our universe is most reasonable. All God-made things serve. Thus they show their reason. There is a need-be for them; they move to ends. Whatever truth may be in evolution, this for me is at present the chief truth — all the past has served unto this present, all this present is seen aiming at some coming fulness; and here I bow before the holy reason of an all-ordaining will. II. The RANGE of the true life. "Served his generation." This true life, lived with rational purpose and with heroic patience under law and by love, this reasonable life of Christ-like service, is no mean, contracted, slavish thing of low and narrow aims and dismal drudgery. It is wide. It is strong. It is joyous. It has the sweep and the freshness of the sea in it; round and round it courses, generously leaving the broad shores and stealing with a resolute gentleness into every little quiet nook. It has the beauty and the strength of the mountain in it; it gladdens every healthy eye, and uplifts the weary into fresh power. It has the outstreaming gladness and the beneficent onroll of the great continental river in it; it brings its rich tributes from afar and deals them out freely adown its long-drawn banks. It claims its "generation" for its field. With the boldness of purest charity it owns no bounds save the stretch of its own years and the outreach of its own love-constrained forces. David served his own generation. How variously he served! As the shepherd lad in the Judaean farmer's home; as the young minstrel before the maddening king; as the brave, cool, self-mastering soldier in days of trial and of triumph; as the faithful friend and the eager patriot; as the singer of the deepest songs of the pious heart and unwearying worker for the coming temple; as the Prince of Judah and King of Israel; as the saint — ay, as the sinner. And how patiently he served! from elastic youth to decrepit age. Let us go and do likewise. Let us serve our generation, our whole generation; all the circles of life that, in wider and yet wider spheres, sweep around us. We are central. Souls are ever insular. My own selfhood is the centre of my possible activity. All around me sweep the concentric circles of impressionable life. Here we see the inspiration, the grandeur, the far-reaching projection, yes, the endless perpetuity, of the true life. Our lives go down the centuries and out into eternity in the following lives of those who have been blessed and uplifted by our own. Ideals of youth; yes, have them! cherish them! It is sometimes stingingly said, oftener sneeringly thought, that the man of ideals is not the man for the rough, real, practical work of his times. Young men, be not deceived! Never were there men of loftier ideals than the Hebrew seers. They were preeminently the men of and for their times. III. The RULE for the true life, "According to the will of God." Yes! according to this will; here we meet the regulative principle for these resolute, aggressive lives. Under the law of God: O surest bulwark of freedom! With the counsel of God: O sublime advice! After the pattern of God: O glorious ideal! It is the child recognising the paternal voice falling from the throne of love. The "I ought" of my soul is its answer to the "I will" of my King. Regulated movement is everywhere. Shall I not know it? "Thy will be done" is nature's universal cry. Shall I stand in the profane without? No "unchartered freedom" mine, for I am child and He is Father; therefore am I not without law, but under law. There is for me, as for all things, the chief end. My chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. His plan then, His will, must be my law. Now, God's law is ever the same, for He is one and changeless. But that one will has its personal, special, individual applications to each man, and to each man in each age. The infinity of its author is reflected in that law's inexhaustible fulness and its endless variety of possible adaptations. Like Paul it can make itself all things to all men, and that, too, in order to win each to the high and blessed life which God would have him live. Like God's ever old yet ever fresh face of nature, the Word of God has new features for each new student, for each moral artist, each soul sculptor working out his own realisation of the one grand ideal — the true life for godlike man. The work varies with the man and with the varieties of the man's age. Innovations are the law and the life of human society, specially within its field of highest, intensest activity, which is, or ought to be, the Church. Paul's work is not the Baptist's; the Baptist's is not Malachi's; Malachi's is not Isaiah's; nor Isaiah's Elijah's; and yet to each the law of the Lord was a light and a lamp. "In that purest light of Thine we see all things clearly" — no shade of the many-coloured, ever-moving web of life left out of view! IV. The REWARD of true life. David's was two fold. It was both human and Divine. Men honoured him. God crowned him. Men honoured him; "he was laid unto his fathers." He passed into the ranks of the never-forgotten, the honoured, the beloved dead, whose memories make the past a power and the future a joy. Live in the Spirit; and so become the fathers, the progenitors of the progressive centuries; make them fresher, sweeter, saintlier; then, indeed, men will rise up and call you blessed, acknowledging that the potent wine of your loving, laborious lives is stimulating them. And God, your own God, will not be unfaithful to forget your works of faith and your labours of love. God did indeed remember David and all his travail. David won the Divine recognition; and, in signal manner, God has kept guard over his life work; his royal line lives on in David's greater Son, and his sweet songs go singing down the centuries, the guide of our childhood to God and the comfort of the parting soul. God accepted David's work, and enshrined it in His holy places. That Davidic work was manifold, but its three highest manifestations were David's literary, political, and religious activities. A new literature, art, and song! How we need them! New states of society, and happier forms of national existence! How the world is crying for them, and the cry sharpens into agony in the lands most civilised! The new temple, the living temple of the Spirit-born, the Christlike! Oh, blest solution of a thousand, thousand problems! (J. S. McIntosh.) Parallel Verses KJV: For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep, and was laid unto his fathers, and saw corruption: |
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