Manna in the House: Expositions of the Acts

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CHAP. 1:1–8. The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen: To whom also he showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God: And, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me. For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence. When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power. But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.

THIS first portion of the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles seems still to linger on the holy theme of the Saviour’s Resurrection and Ascension, as if the writer were unwilling to quit it. St. Luke, the undoubted author of this book, had, indeed, closed his Gospel with a brief account of the Ascension of Jesus; how, in the very act of blessing them, He was parted from His disciples, and carried up to heaven: but he here gives a still more circumstantial detail of that most wondrous event, and to the same pious friend, dear to himself as well as dear to God, to whom he had dedicated his Gospel narrative.

And, indeed, while we are reading the earlier portion of this chapter, one cannot realize that we have quitted even the personal history of Jesus. It is His name which forms the subject of the first verse of this first chapter; and, though it is somewhat anticipating the fact, it is the same name, “the Lord Jesus Christ,” which occupies the most conspicuous position in the last verse of the last chapter—Jesus, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last! One loves to trace how this Name is, as it were, the thread on which every incident of Gospel as well as apostolic history is strung—how the Name of Jesus is the key-note of all that these his followers both did and taught from the day that they through the Holy Ghost had received commandment to go forth and preach repentance and remission of sins in His Name among all nations, and were endued with power from on high for the purpose.

St. Luke here specifies the period during which Jesus remained on earth after His resurrection. For “forty days” he tarried here; and there might have been moments when these ardent and affectionate followers of their risen Lord may have admitted a hope that the Master whom they loved so dearly would yet abide with them, and be Himself their comforter. As day after day passed by, and week after week went on, and still Jesus lingered, as though unwilling to part from them, they might have indulged the thought, as their question seems to imply, that He would at this time restore the kingdom to Israel, and Himself sit on the throne of his father David. Human hopes, perhaps human ambitions also, mingled with their desire to know; and yet one cannot but perceive a great and manifest change both in the tone and purport of their present question, from their earlier inquiries of the same tendency. And, though Jesus no doubt rebukes, or, perhaps, we should rather say, represses the curiosity, so gentle and so tender is that rebuke, rather diverting than actually forbidding their thoughts, pointing their attention to present duties rather than future hopes, that one rejoices to think how great a change had come over their spirit since the day when they had disputed among themselves which should be the greatest, or when two of them had ambitiously sought for their own aggrandizement the highest posts in that kingdom. The question of, the disciples here recorded, however something of earth and earth’s infirmity may have been mixed up with it, seems more to indicate a longing for their Master’s exaltation than their own advancement. There is no mention of themselves, no allusion to the posts of honor on the right hand and on the left hand of the Saviour’s throne; no such unseemly claim as was once put forward by one of them, “Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee: what shall we have, therefore?”

There can be little doubt that these forty days of the Saviour’s stay on earth after his Resurrection were employed by Him in the same way, with regard to all His disciples, as the very first day was with the two chosen ones on their memorable walk to Emmäus, when “He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.” So, here, is it said that “He spake unto them of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.” How tenderly, how carefully, with what consummate wisdom, does the Lord make ready His people for the work He employs them in! And, even with all this, they were still to wait the Lord’s time and the Lord’s hour ere they set forth on their mission. How sweetly, too, was the injunction to “wait” linked with the recollection of their Lord’s promise, as they had themselves heard it from His own gracious lips. You remember how, on that night of sorrow preceding his Crucifixion, He had said to them, “It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.” And here He reminds them of His own words, “Wait for the promise of the Father, which ye have heard of me.” And what a testimony, too, is here given to John the Baptist’s mission! “I, indeed,” said John, “baptize you with water unto repentance; but He that cometh after me is mightier than I: He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” And here Jesus adds, “Ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.” It is in these apparently incidental allusions that we find such undoubted confirmation of the preceding history of the four Evangelists; and I think that our previous meditations on the Gospels would be incomplete if we did not carry on our inquiries through this narrative also of the various acts of the Apostles—written, remember, by an Evangelist himself, and one, too, who could say of himself that he had been a sharer in many of the scenes he describes, and of whom we may therefore add, in his own words, in his own Gospel, that “he had perfect understanding of all things from the very first.”

Bouchier, B. (1858). Manna in the House: or, Daily Expositions of the Acts of the Apostles (pp. 1–5). Wertheim, Macintosh, and Hunt. (Public Domain)