31. WAITING
Acts 1:12-14:1.
After that the Lord was parted from them, and
carried up into heaven, the eleven returned to Jerusalem, and did as they had
been commanded. They assembled together in an upper room in the city, and, in
company with the believing women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and His kinsmen
and other brethren, amounting in all to one hundred and twenty, waited for
Power and for Light as men who wait for the dawn; or as men who have come to
see a panorama wait for the lifting of the curtain that hides from view scenes
which their eyes have not seen, nor their ears heard of, nor hath it entered
into their hearts to conceive. These verses from the first chapter of the
"Acts" show us the disciples and the rest in the act of so waiting.
How solemn is the situation of these men at this
crisis in their history! They are about to undergo a spiritual transformation;
to pass, so to speak, from the chrysalis to the winged state. They are on the
eve of the great illumination promised by Jesus before His death. The Spirit of
Truth is about to come and lead them into all Christian truth. The day-star is
about to arise in their hearts, after the dreary, pitchy night of mental
perplexity and despairing sorrow through which they have recently passed. They
are about to be endowed with power of utterance and of character proportional
to their enlarged comprehension of the words and work of Christ, so that men
hearing them shall be amazed, and say one to another: "Behold, are not all
these which speak Galileans? And now hear we every man in our own tongue
wherein we were born the wonderful works of God."[31.2] With a dim presentiment
of what is coming, with hearts which throb and swell under the excitement of
expectation, and heaving with wondering thoughts of the great things about to
be revealed, they sit there in that upper room for ten long days, and wait for
the promise of the rather. Verily it is an impressive, a sublime scene.
But how do they wait? Do they sit still and
silent, Quaker fashion, all that time expecting the descent of the Power? No;
the meeting in the upper room was not a Quaker meeting. They prayed, they even
transacted business; for in those days Peter stood up and proposed the election
of a new apostle in the room of Judas, gone to his own place. Nor was their
meeting a dull one, as those may imagine who have never passed through any
great spiritual crisis, and to whom waiting on God is a synonym for listless
indolence. The hundred and twenty believers did not, we may be sure, suffer
from ennui. Prayers and supplications alone filled up many blessed hours. For
to men in the situation of the disciples prayer is not the dull "devotional"
form with which we in these degenerate days are too familiar. It is rather a
wrestling with God, during which hours passed unobserved, and the day breaks
before one is aware. "These all continued with one accord in prayer and
supplication." They prayed without fainting, without wearying, with one heart
and mind.
Besides praying, the waiting disciples doubtless
spent part of their time in reading the Scriptures. This is not stated; but it
may be assumed as a matter of course, and it may also be inferred from the
manner in which Peter handled Old Testament texts in his address to the people
on the day of Pentecost. That pentecostal sermon bears marks of previous
preparation. It was in one sense an extempore effusion, under the inspiration
of the Holy Ghost, but in another it was the fruit of careful study. Peter and
his brethren had, without doubt, reperused all those passages which Jesus had
expounded on the evening of the day on which He rose from the dead, and among
them that psalm of David, whose words the apostle quoted in his first gospel
sermon, in support of the doctrine of Christ's resurrection. We may find
evidence of the minute, careful attention bestowed on that and other Messianic
portions of Scripture in the exactness with which the quotation is given. The
four verses of the psalm stand word for word in Peter's discourse as they do in
the original text--a fact all the more remarkable that New Testament speakers
and writers do not, as a rule, slavishly adhere to the ipsissima verba in their
Old Testament citations, but quote texts somewhat freely.
The spiritual exercises of those ten days would
be further diversified by religious conversation. The reading of Scripture
would naturally give rise to comments and queries. The brethren who had been
privileged to hear Jesus expound the things which were written in the law, and
in the prophets, and in the psalms concerning Himself, on the night of His
resurrection-day, would not fail to give their fellow-believers the benefit of
instructions through which their own understandings had been opened. Peter, who
was so prompt to propose the election of a new witness to the resurrection of
Jesus, would be not less prompt to tell the company in the upper room what the
risen Jesus had said about these Old Testament texts. He would freely speak to
them of the meaning Jesus taught him to find in the sixteenth Psalm, just as he
took the liberty of doing afterwards in addressing the multitude in the streets
of Jerusalem. When that psalm had been read, he would say: "Men and brethren,
thus and thus did the Lord Jesus interpret these words;" just as, when the
109th Psalm had been read, he stood up and said: "Men and brethren, this
scripture must needs have been fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of
David spake before concerning Judas: for it is written, Let his habitation be
desolate, and let no man dwell therein; and his bishopric let another take.
Wherefore"--let us choose another to fill his place.
Thus did the brethren occupy themselves during
these ten days. They prayed, they read the Scriptures, they conferred together
on what they read and on what they expected to see. So they continued waiting
with one accord in one place till the day of Pentecost was fully come, when
suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, filling
all the house where they were sitting; and there appeared unto them cloven
tongues like as of fire, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and
began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. Then the
promise was fulfilled, the Power had come down from on high, in a manner
illustrating the words of the prophet: "Since the beginning of the world men
have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God,
beside Thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him."
The events of Pentecost were the answer to the
prayers offered up during those ten days, which we may call the incubation
period of the Christian Church. And that the lesson of encouragement to be
learned from this fact may not be lost, it may be well to remember that the
prayers of those assembled in the upper room were not essentially different
from the prayers of saints at any other period in the Church's history. They
had reference to much the same objects. The eleven and the others prayed for
the promised Power, for additional light on the meaning of Scripture, for the
coming of the divine kingdom on earth. And while they prayed for these things,
we believe, with peculiar fervor, they did not pray for them with extraordinary
intelligence. Of them, perhaps more emphatically than of most, it might be said
that they knew not what to pray for as they ought. They had very indistinct
ideas, we believe, of the "power," of its nature, and of the effects it was to
produce. That they had crude, and even erroneous ideas of the "kingdom," we
know; for it is recorded that on the very day of His ascension they asked Jesus
the question, "Dost Thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?"[31.3] In
this brief question three gross misconceptions are contained. It is assumed
that Christ was to reign personally on the earth, a great king, like David. The
disciples had no idea whatever of an ascension into heaven. Then the kingdom
they expect is merely a national Jewish one. "Dost Thou," they ask, "restore
the kingdom to Israel?" Finally, the kingdom looked for by them is political,
not spiritual: it is not a new creation, but a kingdom of earth restored from a
present prostrate condition to former power and splendor.
The notions of the eleven concerning the kingdom
continued to be much the same to the day of Pentecost as they had been on the
day of the ascension. It is true that Jesus had, in His reply to their
question, made a statement which, if rightly understood, was fitted to correct
their misconceptions. Formally a declinature to give information on the subject
about which the disciples were curious, that reply afforded a sufficiently
clear and full explanation of the real state of the case. When He spoke of the
power which they should receive, Jesus not obscurely hinted that the work of
inaugurating the kingdom was to be done by the apostles as His commissioners,
not by Himself in person. And the same thing is implied in the words, "Ye shall
be witnesses unto me," for witnesses would be needed only for one who was
himself unseen. By connecting the "power" with the descent of the Holy Ghost,
Jesus in effect corrected the third mistake of the eleven concerning the
kingdom--the notion, viz., that it was to be of a political nature. Power
arising out of a baptism of the Spirit is moral, not political, in its
character; and a kingdom founded through such power is not a kingdom of this
world, but one whose subjects and citizens consist of men believing the truth:
"of the truth," as Jesus Himself put it in speaking of His kingdom before
Pilate. And, in the last place, the words, "Witnesses unto me, both in
Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of
the earth," were certainly fitted to banish from the minds of the eleven the
dream of a merely national Jewish kingdom. If it was but the kingdom of Israel
that was to be restored, to what purpose bear witness to Jesus to the world's
end? Such witness-bearing speaks to a kingdom of a universal nature, embracing
people of every tongue and kindred under heaven.
From the reply of their Lord the disciples might
thus have gathered the true idea of the kingdom, as one founded on faith in
Christ; presided over by a king, no longer present bodily, but omnipresent
spiritually; not limited to one country, but embracing all who were of the
truth in all parts of the world. This great idea, however, they did not take
out of the words on which we have been commenting. They were to learn the
nature of the kingdom, not from the teaching of Jesus, but from the events of
providence. The panorama of the kingdom of God was to be hid from their eyes
till the curtain was lifted in three distinct historical movements--the
ascension, the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost on the multitude who had come
to keep the feast, and the conversion of Samaritans and the Gentiles.[4] The
first of these movements had already taken place when the disciples assembled
themselves together in the upper room to wait for the promise of the Father.
Jesus had ascended, so that they now knew that the seat of empire, the capital
of the kingdom, was to be in heaven, not in Jerusalem. This was a valuable
piece of knowledge, but it was not all that was needed. Only a small part of
the panorama was yet visible to the spectators, and they were still in the dark
as to the nature and extent of the coming kingdom. They expected to see a
panorama of a new Palestine, not of a new heaven and a new earth wherein should
dwell righteousness; and they doubtless continued to cherish this expectation
till the curtain was uplifted, and facts showed what they had unwittingly been
praying for, when they at length learned that the Hearer of prayer not only
does for His people what they ask, but far above what they even think.
This waiting scene, looked at in relation to the
subsequent events recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, not to say the whole
history of the Church, suggests another observation. We may learn therefrom
what significance may lie in things apparently very insignificant. We had
occasion to make this remark in connection with the first meeting of Jesus with
five of those who afterwards became members of the chosen band of twelve, and
we think it seasonable to repeat it here now. To the contemporary Jewish world
that meeting in the upper room, if they knew of its existence, would appear a
very contemptible matter, yet it was the only thing of perennial interest in
Judea at the time. The hope of Israel, yea, of the world, lay in that small
congregation. For small as it was, God was with those who formed it. Infidels
who believe not in supernatural influence smile at such words; but even they
must acknowledge that some source of power was centred in that little
community, for they multiplied with a rapidity surpassing that of the
Israelites in Egypt. Those who reject divine influence impose on themselves the
burden of a very laborious explanation of the fact. For those who believe in
that influence it is enough to say the little flock grew great, not by might,
nor by power of this world, but by God's Spirit. It was their Father's good
pleasure to give them the kingdom.
And now, in taking leave of those men with whom
we have so long held goodly fellowship, it may be well here to indicate in a
sentence, by way of r>>sum>>, the sum of the teaching they had
received from their Master. By such a summary, indeed, it is impossible to
convey an adequate idea of the training for their future career which they had
enjoyed, seeing that by far the most important part of that training consisted
in the simple fact of being for years with such an one as Jesus. Yet it may be
well to let our readers see at a glance that, unsystematic and occasional as
was the instruction communicated by Jesus to His disciples, therein differing
utterly from the teaching given in theological schools, yet in the course of
the time during which He and they were together lessons of priceless worth were
given by the Divine Master to His pupils on not a few subjects of cardinal
importance. To enumerate the topics, as far as possible in the order in which
they have been considered in this work, Jesus gave His disciples lessons on the
nature of the divine kingdom;[5] on prayer;[31.6] on religious liberty, or the
nature of true holiness;[31.7] on His own Person and claims;[31.8] on the
doctrine of the cross and the import of His death;[31.9] on humility and
kindred virtues, or on the right Christian temper required of disciples both in
their private life and in their ecclesiastical life;[31.10] on the doctrine of
self-sacrifice;[31.11] on the leaven of Pharisaism and Sadduceeism, and the
woes it was to bring on the Jewish nation;[31.12] on the mission of the
Comforter, to convince the world and to enlighten themselves.[31.13] The
teaching conveyed, assuming that we have even an approximately correct account
of it in the Gospels, was fitted to make the disciples what they were required
to be as the apostles of a spiritual and universal religion: enlightened in
mind, endowed with a charity wide enough to embrace all mankind, having their
conscience tremulously sensitive to all claims of duty, yet delivered from all
superstitious scruples, emancipated from the fetters of custom, tradition, and
the commandments of men, and possessing tempers purged from pride, self-will,
impatience, angry passions, vindictiveness, and implacability. That they were
slow to learn, and even when their Master left them were far from perfect, we
have frankly admitted; still they were men of such excellent moral stuff, that
it might be confidently anticipated that having been so long with Jesus they
would prove themselves exceptionally good and noble men when they came before
the world as leaders in a great movement, called to act on their own
responsibility. Not, certainly, as we believe, without the aid of the promised
power from on high, not without the enlightening, sanctifying influence of the
Paraclete; yet even those who have no faith in supernatural influence must
admit on purely psychological grounds, that men who had received such an
exceptional training were likely to acquit themselves wisely, bravely,
heroically as public characters. According to the actual narrative in the Acts
of the Apostles, they did so acquit themselves. According to a well-known
school of critics, they acquitted themselves very poorly indeed--in a manner
utterly unworthy of their great Master. Which view is the more credible, that
of the evangelist Luke, or that of Dr. Baur?
This document (last modifiedSeptember 17, 1997) from Believerscafe.com
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