Acts 10:38 How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good… He "went about doing good" — I. BECAUSE HE WAS GOD MANIFEST IN THE FLESH. II. AS THE ONE GREAT AIM OF HIS LIFE. The painter or sculptor gives himself up to days and nights of arduous, patient labour, it may be for years, over some favourite piece of art; his soul is inspired, cheered, sustained by the motives which his own genius and the art which he worships supply. The philanthropist pursues his scheme for the amelioration of human misery with an intensity that brooks no delay, with an absorbing interest which robs him of his sleep by night, and fills all his waking thoughts by day. But what is all this devotion to an earthly object compared with the Divine intensity of Christ in the prosecution of His life works and that in the midst of perishing multitudes? His life work was not that of delineating the human form on the glowing canvas, or the breathing marble, but the work of bringing back a lost world to peace, of reproducing the Divine life and the Divine image in the soul of man — not a mere work of fancy, but of faith, not a mere display of genius, but of goodness, not the redressing of a wrong, or the lessening of human suffering, but nothing short of a new creation in the soul that was dark and dead, sunk in trespasses and sins. III. WITH A CONSTANCY AND DEVOTION THAT NEVER FAILED. Notwithstanding all the hostility that met Him, He continued with unabated ardour. IV. TO ALL WITHOUT EXCEPTION. Like the stream that loves to linger amid its village homes, nestled amid the shadows of mountains, and the embowering foliage of ancestral trees, where there is little to disturb the even tenor of daily life, it was the special delight of our Lord to move amongst the homes of the poor and the lowly, and pour the riches of His grace around their humble dwellings. But like the rill that will not rest from the moment it bursts on its way, but travels onwards to the sea in ever widening course, and passes on through quiet villages and sweet homesteads till it becomes a great river, bearing on its bosom the mart of nations, the blessings of commerce, and making everything glad and beautiful where it flows, the stream of Divine goodness in the life of Jesus, beginning first in the mountain home at Nazareth, amid the village retreats of Galilee, went forth from that seclusion to carry its rich dower of blessings to villages, towns, and cities, and to pour its treasures at the feet of all classes and conditions of men. He was free to all, as the light of the sun, the air of heaven, the waters of the deep, broad river. His sympathies for man and all his concerns were strong, pure, enduring. V. BY HIS INSTRUCTIONS, AS WELL AS BY HIS WORKS OF HEALING. These miracles live in history as great, godlike facts, His words live in the heart, and by sanctifying the inner, bless and dignify the outer life. VI. AS AN EXAMPLE TO HIS FOLLOWERS IN ALL TIME COMING. (Alex. Wallace, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him. |
    |