23 For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bondage of iniquity."
Isn't this the fast that I have chosen: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke?
The evil deeds of the wicked ensnare him. The cords of his sin hold him firmly.
Jesus answered them, "Most assuredly I tell you, everyone who commits sin is the bondservant of sin.
Remember my affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall.
For if God didn't spare angels when they sinned, but cast them down to Tartarus{Tartarus is another name for Hell}, and committed them to pits of darkness, to be reserved to judgment;
For we were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.
But thanks be to God, that, whereas you were bondservants of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching whereunto you were delivered. Being made free from sin, you became bondservants of righteousness. I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh, for as you presented your members as servants to uncleanness and to wickedness upon wickedness, even so now present your members as servants to righteousness for sanctification. For when you were servants of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. What fruit then did you have at that time in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now, being made free from sin, and having become servants of God, you have your fruit of sanctification, and the result of eternal life.
lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turns away this day from Yahweh our God, to go to serve the gods of those nations; lest there should be among you a root that bears gall and wormwood; and it happen, when he hears the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart, to destroy the moist with the dry. Yahweh will not pardon him, but then the anger of Yahweh and his jealousy will smoke against that man, and all the curse that is written in this book shall lie on him, and Yahweh will blot out his name from under the sky.
He has built against me, and compassed me with gall and travail.
Your way and your doings have procured these things to you; this is your wickedness; for it is bitter, for it reaches to your heart.
Now therefore don't you be scoffers, lest your bonds be made strong; for a decree of destruction have I heard from the Lord, Yahweh of Hosts, on the whole earth.
Yet his food in his bowels is turned. It is cobra venom within him.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Acts 8
Commentary on Acts 8 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 8
In this chapter we have an account of the persecutions of the Christians, and the propagating of Christianity thereby. It was strange, but very true, that the disciples of Christ the more they were afflicted the more they multiplied.
Act 8:1-3
In these verses we have,
Act 8:4-13
Samson's riddle is here again unriddled: Out of the eater comes forth meat, and out of the strong sweetness. The persecution that was designed to extirpate the church was by the overruling providence of God made an occasion of the enlargement of it. Christ had said, I am come to send fire on the earth; and they thought, by scattering those who were kindled with that fire, to have put it out, but instead of this they did but help to spread it.
Act 8:14-25
God had wonderfully owned Philip in his work as an evangelist at Samaria, but he could do no more than an evangelist; there were some peculiar powers reserved to the apostles, for the keeping up of the dignity of their office, and here we have an account of what was done by two of them there-Peter and John. The twelve kept together at Jerusalem (v. 1), and thither these good tidings were brought them that Samaria had received the word of God (v. 14), that a great harvest of souls was gathered, and was likely to be gathered in to Christ there. The word of God was not only preached to them, but received by them; they bade it welcome, admitted the light of it, and submitted to the power of it: When they heard it, they sent unto them Peter and John. If Peter had been, as some say he was, the prince of the apostles, he would have sent some of them, or, if he had seen cause, would have gone himself of his own accord; but he was so far from this that he submitted to an order of the house, and, as a servant to the body, went whither they sent him. Two apostles were sent, the two most eminent, to Samaria,
Act 8:26-40
We have here the story of the conversion of an Ethiopian eunuch to the faith of Christ, by whom, we have reason to think, the knowledge of Christ was sent into that country where he lived, and that scripture fulfilled, Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands (one of the first of the nations) unto God, Ps. 68:31.