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Acts 28:16-31
 his paragraph constitutes the last page of the first chapter of the history of the Christian Church. In the course of our study of this book we have followed the story of about a human generation. According to the plan of the risen Lord, we have been following the witnesses in their work in Jerusalem, in Judaea, in Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth. Luke tells the story of the movement from Jerusalem to Rome, and there he ends; but the end is full of suggestiveness and value. The book is an unfinished fragment, and incomplete. The very first words of the book suggest our need of the knowledge of another book, if we are to understand it. Certain facts are referred to, and are taken for granted, of which we know nothing apart from the Gospel story.
 ow having followed this movement, having watched the Church witnessing in Jerusalem, seen its failure there as well as its victory; and having followed this wonderful servant of God, this great pioneer missionary on his journeyings, through perils often; we at last find ourselves with him in Rome. Now we feel that we should like to settle down to a new chapter; we have shared this man's passionate desire to reach Rome, imperial mistress of the world's cities, seated upon her seven hills, from whence the highways run out through all the earth; now let us see how things developed. But the book is over, and there is no further record. Why not? Because more was unnecessary. The same story will be repeated in every decade, in every century, in each millennium, until the Lord shall come; and to write the whole history was unnecessary. Enough was written, to reveal the secrets of power, to bring into the light the perpetual perils threatening the Church, to indicate directions, and to provide all that was necessary for the Church to fulfil its mission until the consummation of the age.
 ut this last page is full of interest, because we arrive at Rome. Paul arrived there in the days when she was under an imperial despotism. The golden days of the Republic had passed away. Gradually the dictators had usurped the power of the people, and at that moment the city of Rome, and the Empire, were under the despotism of an emperor, and of all the emperors perhaps in some senses the worst. These were the days of Nero. When Paul arrived in Rome, Nero would not be more .than twenty-five years of age; but already his hands were red with the blood of murder. His mother, Agrippina, had been murdered about a year before Paul's arrival; and in all probability, though this cannot be stated with as much certainty, Octavia his wife was also already murdered. Nero occupied the throne of the Caesars; cruel, lascivious, weak.
 aul did not see Rome as Rome is seen to-day. When he arrived, the central architectural wonder was not St. Peter's. When he arrived the Colosseum was not there. Upon the Capitol was the temple of Jupiter, and the great Citadel; and on the Palatine the three houses respectively of Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula, which had been joined together, until they were then united as the palace of Caesar. Passing into Rome, one of the things most conspicuous to the eye of the apostle would be a temple to Mars, reminding all those arriving in the city, of the fact that the strength of the empire was based upon her warlike character.
 ome at that time was the very centre of paganism. There is a brief sentence, and yet full of suggestiveness in Conybeare and Howson's account of Paul's journey, in which it is said:
"Rome was like London with all its miseries, vices, and follies exaggerated; and without Christianity."
 hat then of the people in Rome? One has to draw an average among conflicting statements concerning the population; but we may safely say that within the circuit of twelve miles, all included within Rome proper, there were resident, when Paul arrived, two million people. One million of these were slaves. Those are approximate figures, but it is accurate to say that about half the population of Rome were slaves. Of the one million citizens, there were about seven hundred senators; a thousand had been the number, but their number was gradually decreased as the power of the emperor increased. There were about ten thousand knights, mostly occupying the public positions in Rome; and about fifteen thousand soldiers. The vast majority of the remainder of the citizens were paupers. The wealth of Rome was massed in the possession of a very few. This great multitude of pauper citizens were proud of their citizenship, and held the slaves beneath them in supreme contempt. One of the tourists of the time declares that they had but two cries, one was "Bread!" and the other was "The Circus!" Thousands of these pauper citizens had no home of their own. Managing somehow to obtain the bread that satisfied the hunger of the day, crowding to the circuses at night, watching the gladiatorial combats, they were living upon bread and excitement. Thousands of them slept at night upon the parapets, and in public places of the city.
hen think of the million slaves, and remember that these conditions were so different from ours to-day. All the professional men, manufacturers, and trades-people were slaves. These pauper citizens held themselves aloof from those beneath them in the pride of their citizenship, and they disdained to touch, not merely a trade, but also a profession. Slaves were ground under the cruel heel of oppression: so much the property of their masters that these masters could take their life without any protest.
"On that hard Pagan world disgust
And secret loathing fell;
Deep weariness and sated lust
Made human life a hell.
"In his cool hall, with haggard eyes,
The Roman noble lay;
He drove abroad in furious guise
Along the Appian Way.
"He made a feast, drank fierce and fast,
And crowned his hair with flowers-
No easier and no quicker passed
The impracticable hours."
 nto that great centre, where ancient paganism was seen in its ultimate results, on the very verge of a break-up, and yet full of an amazing, an awful, and a world-wide power, at last passed Paul, the apostle of Jesus.
hen in Rome it was my privilege to listen to some lectures by Dr. J. Gordon Gray, on the Footsteps of Paul in Rome; and under his direction to see some of the places which almost surely were the haunts of Paul. He told us of a bronze medallion of the second century, preserved to-day in the Vatican Library, having upon it portraits of Peter and Paul. It is quite true that these may not be accurate representations, but all subsequent art, whether in sculpture, or in painting, has taken this medallion as being so. Dr. Gordon Gray believes that we have in that medallion a true representation of their appearance. This is his description of Paul:
"Paul is the man of deep thought, wiry in form, slightly bald, with beard long and pointed. The expression of the face is calm, even benevolent, not without a touch of sadness. His countenance has an air of refinement, which is by no means belied by the fact of his having wrought with his hands to minister to his necessities. The impression thus taken from that bronze plate enables us to picture him as he taught in his hired dwelling."
aul, at the time, was about sixty years of age, and writing of himself soon after he described himself as "such an one as Paul the aged." He was prematurely aged by all the toil and the suffering of the thirty years in which he had been a follower and a disciple and an apostle of Jesus Christ.
 is first activity on arrival in Rome was that of calling together his own people; for he could not, as his custom had been in other cities, go to them, for he was a prisoner, chained to a soldier. Nevertheless he was most considerately treated during the first imprisonment. The first meeting was by invitation. He claimed, in the presence of those of the Jewish synagogue in Rome, that he was wearing the chain, "because of the hope of Israel." They said, they had had no letters blaming him, but they knew about this sect, that it was everywhere spoken against. The opinion that they held of the sect was that it was a break with Judaism. There is nothing more interesting in all the addresses and the writings of Paul than his constant effort to show that Christianity was not a break with Judaism, but its fulfillment. For the hope of Israel, for that which had been the central hope of their religion in bygone days, for that imperishable hope that had been at the heart of all their history, for that he wore the chain.
his first meeting was followed by a more formal assembly. We have no detailed account of Paul's discourse, but Luke has given us the theme of it. He talked from morning till evening to these men of two things. First, "testifying the Kingdom of God." That was the rock foundation of the Hebrew economy. Notice the fine and wonderful art with which this man in Rome, among the Hebrews, pleaded the cause of his Master. He began by testifying the Kingdom of God; the Theocracy. That is what the Hebrew people were, in the purpose of God. In that they made their boast. He testified to that, showing first how he had not departed from the foundation position of the Hebrew people. Then secondly, he persuaded them, arguing with them "concerning Jesus," from their own writings, from Moses, and all the prophets. The picture ends sadly; it is one of division. Some believed, and some disbelieved; they were not able to come to any decision. They departed, after Paul had spoken his final word.
his whole book of the Acts is the story of God's final striving with the Hebrew people. In the life of our Lord He came first to the Hebrew, the Jew. He said upon one occasion to a woman who asked His help, "It is not meet to take the children's bread, and cast it to the dogs." That little incidental word revealed the fact that He came first to the Hebrew people. They rejected Him. They had their new opportunity beyond His rejection at Pentecost, and yet another in that period in which this man had stood in Jerusalem. Jerusalem finally rejected Christ when it rejected Paul. After that Paul strove to reach them in every city. He went first to the synagogue, first to the Hebrew. The word of Paul in Rome was the final word. Ere very many years had gone, after a period of oppression, tyranny, and suffering, the Roman eagles were carried through Jerusalem, and the nation was swept out. It was the occasion of the last and solemn abandonment of the people, this word spoken by Paul to the Hebrew rulers in that city of Rome, the central city of the world.
he words he quoted were words which had been spoken to Isaiah in that great vision, the record of which we have in the sixth chapter, when his whole ministry was changed. Our Lord quoted these very words in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew, in the course of the parables of the Kingdom. When He was showing why the Kingdom was to be taken from the Jewish people, He quoted the same words. John also quoted exactly the same word in the twelfth chapter of his Gospel, where he was giving the last things in the presentation of the Kingdom to Israel. Mark these occurrences of these words in the Bible: Isaiah, Jesus, John, and Paul. If we say that Paul quoted them from Isaiah, we shall say that which is correct, but do not forget that they were not the words of Isaiah, but the words of Jehovah spoken to Isaiah about these people. The declaration is that they themselves had closed their eyes, because they would not see; and therefore God had made them blind; that they themselves had hardened their heart, because they would not yield; and therefore God handed them over to their own hardness of heart. But it is interesting and solemn to remember that here in Rome, the city to whose yoke the Hebrew people had bowed the neck anew, in order to encompass the death of Christ, Paul's final word of excommunication was spoken.
 o we pass to that which is in some senses the most interesting part of this final page, the last two verses. There were two years, of which we only know what these two verses reveal, and what is found in the letters to the Philippians, the Colossians, the Ephesians, and Philemon; for those four letters were written undoubtedly, during this first imprisonment, and not during the second.
here is a difference between the "lodging" of verse Twenty-three (Acts 28:23), and the "hired dwelling" of verse thirty (Acts 28:30). First he was in a lodging, possibly the guest of some friend, his soldier guardian still by his side. It was in a lodging where he received the Jews; but after that he turned to the Gentiles, he was for two years in his own hired dwelling. He was a prisoner, and a prisoner of Rome, waiting the pleasure of the emperor. At any hour it might be that he would be called to appear before the emperor to whom he had appealed. Consequently he was in Rome at the charges of Rome. But in order that he might do his Christian work in Rome, he hired his dwelling. Independent of the patronage of Rome must the apostle be, if he would deliver the Gospel to Rome. There came an hour when a Roman emperor espoused the cause of Christianity, when he provided the house in which there should be the Christian worship of God, when he became a patron of the Christian Church. That was the darkest and most disastrous hour that ever came to that Church. When the emperor provides the house, he will dictate the message. When the secular power governs the affairs of the Church, the word "Church" will be employed, in order to meet the requirement of the secular power. Simple and yet sublime is the graphic word of the last picture in the Acts of the Apostles, that a prisoner of Rome, at the charges of Rome, will yet for the doing of Christian work in Rome, hire his dwelling.
here he kept open house, receiving all that came to him. Undoubtedly many patrician Romans went in those two years into the dwelling of that strange and wonderful Hebrew Christian, and listened to him. We shall find in his letters references to nobles in Rome, who had passed under the influence of the Gospel. But there came to him, visiting him, abiding with him, a little band of faithful souls, referred to in his letters as coming 'to him in Rome. Luke and Aristarchus had accompanied him, and remained with him. Tychieus was there for a while, but was presently sent away with a letter to Ephesus. Timothy also was there for part of the time. Epaphrodittts came to see him from Philippi, bringing with him the gifts of the Church there. Onesimus, the runaway slave, found his way into the dwelling of the apostle, and was brought under the spell of the Gospel, and to Christ, until he served with love this man in his imprisonment. Mark too, from whom he had parted once in anger, also was there for part of the time, and one called Jesus, or Justus, a disciple of Epaphras. Then Epaphras, whose portrait Paul had drawn in his letters, and who stands upon the page of the New Testament as one of the most wonderful saints of the whole period, " one of you," who agonized in prayer that the Colossians might "stand perfect and complete in all the will of God," he too came to Rome. During those days also Demas was with him. That group of faithful souls went to that open house, were taught by the great apostle, inspired for new work, and sent out upon new missions.
wo words tell the method of Paul. The first is "preaching," and the word is not eitaggeltidzo, the preaching of the Gospel, but kerusso, the proclamation of the herald, "preaching the Kingdom." That picture of Rome is still in our minds, Rome, mistress of the world, with Nero as the central figure. But there was another man in Rome, proclaiming the Kingdom of God. The other word is "teaching”-and it is literally discipling-"the things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ." For the Romans, for all visitors outside the Christian faith and economy, there was the proclamation of the Kingdom of God; but for the disciples, there was the teaching of the things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ.
hat is all that Luke has recorded. But during that period Paul wrote some letters: the Philippian letter, the Ephesian letter, the Colossian letter; and the half -page letter to Philemon. Measure the teaching given to the disciples by these letters, then we shall know some of the things he taught concerning Christ during those two years. Christ the well-spring of joy, as in the Philippian letter; Christ in all the glory of essential Deity embodied, as in the Colossian letter; Christ filling His Church, and making it the medium of manifestation in unending ages, as in the Ephesian letter; Christ taking Onesimus back to his master, making his master receive him no longer as a slave, but as a brother. "Teaching the things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ."
he last word here is, "none forbidding him," akolutos. Our translation is I think a little weak. Sometimes we translate all the fire, and passion, and dynamite out of a word. The last word is "unhindered." But Paul is in prison? Unhindered. But Nero is on the throne? Unhindered. That is the last word, flaming in light, thrilling in power, telling the secret of the new force right at the heart of the world, at its strategic centre. Only one man, mean and contemptible of bodily presence, if we are to believe his own description, but that man unhindered. That last picture of Paul in Rome is full of value.
hat must be the deepest note of the Christian witness to the cities of to-day? The Kingdom of God, not the caprice of a king, nor the decision of a parliament, not the will of the people, which may be as mistaken as the caprice of a king. We stand not for monarchy, or democracy; but for Theocracy, for the Kingdom of God, for the government of God, for the fact that He is King of the kings, for the fact that His law must be the criterion by which all human laws are measured, for the fact that only as His will is done can the people enter into the heritage of their own life. The Kingdom of God was the deepest note of the witness of the one man in Rome; and must be the deepest note of the witness of the Church in every city.
ut not that alone. Also "teaching the things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ." That is to say, that the Kingdom of God must be interpreted by the Lord Jesus Christ, He Himself being an interpretation of the King. We know God as King if we know Jesus. He Himself was also the interpretation of life in the Kingdom, for He was subject to the will of God in all the mystery of His human life. So that in this Lord Jesus Christ we have the unveiling of the King Who is over the Kingdom; and of the men who are in the Kingdom, when they realize the meaning thereof.
 et the central word is neither that of this interpretation of the unveiled King, nor this revelation of the subjects of the Kingdom. The central word is that of the mystery of the Cross whereby the rebel may be made nigh again, and the chaos may give place to cosmos, and all the weariness and wounding and woe may give place to rest and healing and happiness. Where the Christian witness is true to this Kingdom and to this interpretation, the issue is that the witness is unhindered; in spite of emperors, enemies, prisons, and chains. "The word of God is not bound," and whatever may be the massed forces against its testimony, it is they which must crumble and pass and perish, as did Rome and Nero, and not this word of the testimony. May it be ours to be true to that testimony in life and speech, to the glory of His name. In proportion as we are so, the one word forever describing the Church will be the word with which this book ends, unhindered!
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