Godbey's Commentary - Acts - Romans - Enter His Rest

ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
CHAPTER VII.
EXPATRIATION.
1-7. Despite the awful doom of the antediluvians, the people after the flood soon became terribly
wicked. While they constantly ploughed up the bones of their antediluvian predecessors, fear and
trembling appalled them so they were constantly resolving to be good. Ah! the road to hell is strewn
with good resolutions. The postdiluvians had inherited evil hearts from their predecessors. Hence
a wicked life inevitably followed, as it always will unless we go to God and receive a new heart.
Despite the grand boom given to holiness in the flood, when all of the wicked were taken out of the
world and righteousness ruled the only surviving home, yet wickedness so increased that God found
it necessary in the third postdiluvian century to begin de novo, calling Abraham to leave the world
and identify himself with God alone. In the home of his childhood, in the beautiful alluvial plains
of Mesopotamia, that delightful rich, level country between the Tigris and the Euphrates, the cradle
of the postdiluvian world, first settled by the sons of Noah after the deluge, where at a later date
Nimrod gave himself imperishable notoriety by attempting to found a human government
independently of the Almighty (though nowadays all the governments on the globe are Nimrodic
without a blush). Such was the wickedness of his native land that God required Abraham to leave
his kindred and country and follow whither He led. This is now and has ever been the first step in
a true heavenly pilgrimage. A prophet is without honor in his own country. Expatriation as a rule is
a sine qua non in a really fruitful ministry for God and souls.
“Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”
As a rule, you must leave your native land if you would be eminently useful.
REGENERATION AND SANCTIFICATION.
8. While the physical birth emblematizes regeneration, it is equally true that physical circumcision
typifies sanctification. The Jewish law was to circumcise eight days after birth, illustrating the fact
that we should get sanctified about eight days after conversion, thus giving a little time to receive
light on inbred sin and intelligently seek its removal. John Wesley has a powerful sermon on the
circumcision of the heart, preached from
Deuteronomy 30:6: “I will circumcise thy heart, so as to love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart, soul, mind and strength, that thou mayest live.”
Here we see that the circumcision of the heart is necessary to perfect love, which is the condition
of spiritual life and admission into heaven.