Acts 2:1-21

Chapter 5

Prayer

Almighty God, are we not all in one place, with one accord, and is not our heart steady towards thee in love and in eager expectation? Have we not come together in the one all-uniting and all-reconciling name of Jesus Christ thy Son? Wilt thou then withhold the gift of the Holy Ghost, and allow us to abide in our own emptiness and poverty of mind and heart wilt thou not rather open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing until there be not room to receive it? Thy blessing is always larger than our space, thou doest unto the children who pray unto thee exceeding abundantly above all that they ask or think. Thy grace is an eternal surprise, thy providence is a daily miracle. If thou dost not astonish us by great interpositions which our eyes can see, it is because of the daily appeal which thou dost make to our understanding and our heart, by thy care and gentle patience.

Thou hast beset us behind and before and laid thine hand upon us: thou knowest our downsitting and our uprising, our going out and our coming in, and there is nothing in all our life on which thine eye doth not rest with the anxiety of love. The very hairs of our head are all numbered; thou dost notice the falling sparrow. Thou dost not neglect to baptize any root that is in all thine earth, thy great impartial sun throws its infinite splendour over all thy works which we behold. We will expect great things from thee, our hearts shall be warmed by a special hope, our eyes shall look for the blessing as if they would bring it. Behold this desire is of thine own creation, and this expectancy cometh forth from the Lord of hosts, and thou wilt not forsake the work of thine hands, thou wilt not inspire a prayer that thou mayest deny it.

Thou knowest with what psalms and loud thanksgivings we have come into thine house. Every heart has brought its own tribute of love and praise, no life before thee in all thy courts is dumb, but everywhere is the sign of thy presence and thy life. Hear the thanksgiving of those in whose houses thou hast set a great light, hear the blessing of those who praise thee for life giving and for life sparing, and for afflictions survived the Lord send after such thanksgiving, answers of inspiration that shall guard and guide, ennoble and bless, the praising life.

Thou knowest who have come with songs that have in them suggestions of sorrow: they will sing though it be in the night time: whilst they sing, the darkness lowers itself upon them, in the very midst of their praising their hearts are stung with cruel memories, and in the very house of God, the enemy faces them as if even here they should find no rest on the day thou hast made for thyself. The heart knoweth its own bitterness, the life is aware of its own agony, weakness, poverty, and helplessness. Are not these the conditions upon which thou dost visit us in Christ Jesus was it not when there was no arm to save, when there was no eye to pity, that thine own eye and thine own arm brought salvation? Thou dost address thyself to our weakness; it is because of our nothingness that thou dost come unto us; when we are weak then are we strong; emptied of ourselves and of every broken trust we have ever recorded, thou dost come to us with the fulness of thy salvation, and with the infinite sufficiency of thy grace. Therefore our hope is in God this day: were we rich and increased in goods in our own deluded imagination thou wouldst not come to us, but because and though we are blind and naked and miserable and have nothing, and because our tearful eyes are lifted up unto the heavens, thou wilt come to us in Jesus Christ, the ever-living Priest, the one Man whose prayer is ever acceptable.

We put ourselves into thine hands, thou didst make us and not we ourselves, we know not what a day may bring forth: we are plagued by our own ignorance, we are deceived by the pretensions of a strength that can do nothing, we are misled by spiritual enemies on every hand, our convictions are trifled with, our best vows are laughed at, and our endeavors after the better life are mocked by foes invisible. Yet amid all this experience of temptation and danger and distress, we know that the Lord liveth, that he regardeth them that put their trust in him, and that he will not leave them desolate in the time of his visitation. Lord, how long? Take our little life into thy keeping: its days are but a handful that a child can number, yet is our life the beginning of thine own we begin to be immortal as thine own eternity.

Be with those whom we have left at home those who are afraid of the cold, such as are weak and in pain, and are ready to die. With those for whom the physician can do no more, before whom he has let his hands fall in helplessness, saying that his resources are at an end. Thy resources have no end, thou dost begin at the point of our exhaustion, and when we say there is nothing more, behold thou dost create gardens round about our feet, and lead us forth into paradises unsuspected. Gladden thy desponding ones with new hope, give them that sureness and constancy of faith in thyself, before which death dies away, or comes with excuses, because we are sent for to the King's inner chamber. Amen.

Act 2:1-21

1. And when the day of Pentecost [the second of the three great Jewish feasts, the Passover being the first, and the third the Feast of Tabernacles] was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place [the upper room].

2. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind [lit., a mighty wind borne along], and it filled all the house where they were sitting.

3. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire [a comparison, not a reality], and it sat upon each of them.

4. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues [languages they had not known before], as the Spirit gave them utterance.

5. And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven [it was to the Jew much to be desired that he might die and be buried near the holy city].

6. Now when this was noised [cried abroad], the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language.

7. And they were all amazed and marvelled, saying one to another. Behold, are not all these which speak Galilæans?

8. And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born? [there was no jargon or incoherent speech].

9. Parthians [from India to the Tigris], and Medes [east of Assyria], and Elamites [in the district known to the Greeks and Romans as Susiana], and the dwellers in Mesopotamia [between the Euphrates and the Tigris], and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia.

10. Phrygia, and Pamphylia [all countries within Asia Minor], in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya [anciently applied to the African continent], about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome [sojourners from Rome], Jews and proselytes [persons who have come over].

11. Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God [the majesty of God].

12. And they were all amazed, and were in doubt, saying one to another, What meaneth this?

13. [But] Others mocking said, These men are full of new [sweet] wine.

14. But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and said unto them [spake forth unto them], Ye men of Judaea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken [the only instance of the word in the New Testament] to my words:

15. For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. [Wine was drunk by the Jews with flesh only, and flesh was only eaten late in the day.]

16. But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel [with perhaps one exception the oldest prophetic book];

17. And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams:

18. And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy:

19. And I will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke:

20. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come:

21. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord [an expression which does not occur in the Gospels, though so common in the Old Testament] shall be saved.

The Outpouring of the Spirit

MARK the very critical care of the divine Head of the Church, in fixing special times for the communication of special blessings. Here we have the largest possible opportunity which God himself could have secured for the communication of his supreme gift. Pentecost was a harvest festival: about that time people could come with the least degree of danger, from various outlying countries and districts. In the spring time the sea was troubled violently, and in the winter almost impassable, but in the quiet solemn harvest time everybody seemed to be more at liberty than at any other period of the year, and the sea and the land seemed rather to invite than to repel the traveller. So at the very time when men were released from the greatest pressure of business, and when the elements were most favourable to voyaging and journeying, God came down in the great heaven-wind and the great heaven fire and owned and crowned the redeemed and expectant church.

There are opportunities even in divine providence. The days are not all alike to God. Not only has he chosen what we call the first day or the seventh day, as a day of rest if you read carefully the whole record of his providential dealings with the world, you will find that he has chosen a hundred days. We in our narrow interpretation of things bind him down to one day, whereas is there in reality a single day in our life that he has not a lien upon? He may not say, "I will claim most of every one of those days, from the very beginning to the very end thereof: and one day I will have all for myself," but does he not come in upon birthdays, days of deliverance, times of surprise, days of unusual sorrow, periods when anxiety sharpened itself into agony, and when the whole life seemed to be one cruel and burning pain? Has he not come in upon our wedding days, and joyous days of every name and kind, saying in gentle whispers, "I have some share in these?" Let your drinking be a sacrament, let your eating be a religious festival, let all your bell-ringing and heart-enjoyment have in them subtle suggestions of divinity and of religious sacrifice.

God is not the God of one day only; he takes up the one day and specially holds it before us, but only symbolically. What he does with that day he wants to do with all the others, but his is an educating and not a driving process; it is little by little that he moves, almost always imperceptibly, nevertheless most constantly and surely. He will not rest until he has secured every whit of us, judgment, imagination, conscience, will, and every element that enters into manhood and we shall be sanctified, body, soul and spirit.

Not only did God seize the largest possible opportunity, but he also availed himself of the largest memorial feast known in Israel. There was no feast like the Pentecost; there were three great things done at that time there was a remembrance of bondage. This feast was fifty days after the leaving of Egypt, and was fixed on account of the leaving of Egypt: it was a feast of deliverance and triumph, and yet having in it, sobering it and chastening it all the way through, memories of cruelties endured and of oppressions survived. Thus whilst the heart was tender, while Egypt seemed to be just behind Israel like a threatening spirit, and whilst Israel was confident of its final escape from thraldom, just then, at a critical point, visible to no eye but the eye of Omniscience, was this special communication of divine grace made to the human heart.

At the Pentecost all the sacrifices were offered. On other occasions there might be partial sacrifices, but at the pentecostal season the whole series of sacrifices was gone through, and one became added to the whole, the offering of two wave-loaves, two loaves made of fine flour and leavened, were taken up and waved, before the Lord, in token that loneliness had given place to union, that isolation had entered into companionship, that that which before was without fermentation, inspiration, and movement, had now begun to lift itself towards the heavens in wordless but most significant aspiration and prayer.

At the Pentecost it was specially required that Israel should remember Sinai and the giving of the law. Thus all through, Israel was called upon to bear the memory of thunder and lightning and earthquake, and a great shaking of earth's stablest things. Will there be any other period in all the history of the earth yet to come, dating from the giving of the law, when amid thunders and great wind-storms and lightnings there shall be given some better gift than the stern law, before which all men fell down as self-accusing offenders? Will the great voices, the solemn thunders, the appalling fires, always be used for the giving of mere law? Or will they one day be turned as it were into a sanctuary from the midst of which God shall breathe his spirit of peace and rest and sanctification and love?

On this occasion we have the largest possible union. For example, here is the largest possible union of nationalities. There were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men out of every nation under heaven. Jerusalem was never so full as then there was therefore a union in the introductory sense of mere nationality and association. There was always the largest union of desire. Note the word accord. The instruments were all in tune together: there was but one feeling, one wish, one desire; the assembly was without mental distraction or moral discord; quarrelling, clamour, suspicion, jealousy, envy these were all outside; within the gathered circle there was but one spirit, one expectation, one hope, one growing wonder the silence that precedes revelations.

Have we known the mystery of silence, or has there in our very own quietness always been an undertone of trouble? Know we the restlessness of an eloquence so eloquent that it says nothing? Or are our ears filled with minor noises and are a hundred colloquies proceeding within us? If so, it is not along that noisy thoroughfare that God comes to the heart. God has promised nothing to disunion: the man that creates disunion in the church must instantly be put away: he is worse than an infidel, he is worse than a drunkard, a liar, a thief. The man who utters one jarring note in God's assembly is a thief in heaven; he is not stealing some property that was mine, 'tis his, 'tis trash he is stealing the very riches of the divine grace.

The Christians, then, were gathered with one accord: that is the eternal term. They were also gathered in one place: that is the transient word. The place is nothing, the accord is everything. At the time the place was of importance, but since that time place is nothing. Neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem, because at both will men worship the Father; but the accord, the union, the trusting heart, the rhythmic fellowship this is the eternal quantity, and he who meddles with it is a violator within the very shadow of the altar. Yet who thinks of this? If a poor moral cripple should be caught suddenly in some moral fault, then is the imperfect and blind church enraged with him, but the man who is speaking ungracious words, making unlovely statements breathing a spirit of dissension in the church who takes note of him? Number me with the wildest drunkards that were ever lost in the wild night, rather than with those men who with bated breath even, can seek to mar the union, the sweet accord, of Christ's redeemed church. I know of no gospel for such men. It hath not entered into the infinite compassion of God to have pity upon them. To all the rest of you I have gospels high as heaven, wide as the horizon, but to the marplot in the church, to the spirit of disunion, to the disciple of dissension, God has given me no message except the message of anathema and excommunication.

Then we have the the largest possible bestowment of the divine gift. There is one word in the first verse which must not be omitted, and that is the word all. By that word all you must not understand the apostles only: the word ALL includes the apostles, the disciples, the followers of Christ of every name and degree. This suggestion is of the utmost practical importance: we are not to sit aside and say we have no part or lot in this bestowment of the Holy Ghost: we are not to suppose that popes, prelates, preachers, ministers, leaders, alone have this gift of the Holy Spirit. This is a common gift, accept it, ask for it, claim it in Christ's name. If men being evil know how to give good gifts unto their children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit unto them that ask him? At this moment I happen to occupy the level of what is called a minister, but on that level I claim no more of God's Spirit and grace than the humblest man in all the church may claim. Get rid of any idea that would lead you to worship the priest: cleanse yourselves of that defilement. We are all God's clergy. We are a royal priesthood, we have to maintain the priesthood of believers: I am not ordained by a priest, I am ordained by a priesthood. To this ministry I am not called by one man bearing any distinctive name of official pre-eminence, but called, if truly called, by the consenting voice of the priesthood of the church.

We must not imagine that a minister merely as such has greater spiritual privileges than a mechanic. It must not be supposed that because a man is entrusted with a high trusteeship, that therefore God has been partial to him. We are all in the priesthood, we are equally priests before God, our priesthood has no standing but in our holiness. Not in our intellectual capacity, not in our technical training, not in our official status, but in the sanctification of the will and of the heart the total sacrifice of the man to the God.

As to the church all meeting in one place, do not believe in a place-church. God's church is everywhere. Many of you belong to God's church and may not know it. Poor outsider, you think that the sect is the church: that is your fundamental sophism. What is your heart, what is your heart's desire, what is the uppermost wish of your mind, what is the sovereign purpose of your life? If you can say it is to know God's will and do it, to find out God unto perfection and serve him and be like him, then you are in the church, whatever particular place you may occupy. And you who were born but yesterday, are as much a priest as the venerable teacher who is about to close the record and pass on to his higher status, only that he has the advantage of you in time, it may be also of opportunity, but speaking of the nature, essence and substance of things, you also, new-born child in Christ's kingdom, are a priest in Christ, unto God.

Jesus Christ made a great promise to his disciples when they asked him whether at that time he would restore the kingdom unto Israel. It is always interesting to observe how great promises are fullfiled. The very greatness of the promise necessitates that the fulfilment of it shall be upon a scale proportioned to itself. We have often been amazed because we have wondered how Jesus Christ would find equivalents of the great propositions which he laid before the people. We were unable, for example, to conjecture how he would leave the world; we insisted that the Man who came into the world as no other man ever came should not be allowed to leave the world in an ordinary way, should not be allowed to lure us at the one end, and mock us by a common place at the other; we must see him go out. And when we were told that he ascended, imagination said, "It is enough, it is in infinite in grandeur, and it satisfies the mind in its highest moments."

Now we have the question before us, how will he fulfil the promise which was given to his apostles, when he told them to wait until they were endued with power from on high? That would be no commonplace realisation of that promise, nor was there one. "And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance." Again imagination says, "It is enough, I knew not," my feeble fancy continued, "how that great promise would be carried into effect, but hearing as I do of the suddenness of the coming I remembered that the Lord will suddenly come to his temple, and remembering as I do, when poor Elijah hid himself in an unbuilt chamber in the rock there went by him fire, wind, earthquake, and then the still small voice, so I see here the old ministry, the grand old agency of rushing mighty wind, cloven tongues as of fire, sudden seizure of things, and marvellous world-enclosing eloquence." God always takes care to satisfy the imagination, to say the least of it, and often to confound it. Specially does he take care to satisfy the moral nature, and to call upon conscience to say "It is right."

We see from this revelation how helpless we are in the matter of spiritual revivals. What did the apostles do towards this demonstration of divine power? They did nothing but wait, pray, hope, "expect what the world, so fond of action, would call nothing. That is all we can do towards a right revival of religion and virtue. Have nothing to do with those persons who organise revivals, beware of those persons who lay traps for God, have nothing to do with, any mechanised resurrection of spiritual life. Let us read the word " suddenly," reverently, prayerfully, let us read it with secret expectation that the Lord may at any moment come, the darkest hour of the night, or at cockcrow, or early in the morning, and our business is only to wait and watch and lovingly listen as if we might at any moment hear the first foot-beat on the far-away road.

We need to know the power of waiting. There are those who tell us that we ought to be doing something practical, and they degrade that word "practical" into a kind of mechanical exercise. Is he doing nothing, who continues steadfast in prayer? Is he doing nothing, who speaks great words of wisdom and who calms the heart in the midst of its searching trouble? Is he not a great preacher and a great evangelist, who, by sympathy, love, tenderness, includes all men in his wrestling prayer and gives all men who hear him to feel that every case has been lifted up in a light where the king and the angels can well see it? To be practical is not to be demonstrative, to be building wood, hay, stone and metal, it may be to give thought, to offer suggestion, to stimulate the mind, to check the ambition, to elevate the purpose of life. The disciples and apostles, previous to Pentecost, did everything by doing nothing.

We see also how unmistakable fire is. Who can mistake fire? The difference between one man and another is a difference of heat. Heat, or fire, is the secret of all things. God is fire. It is so in all things. The difference between one reader and another is a difference of fire; the difference between one musician and another is that one man is all fire, and the other man all ice. The difference between one preacher and another is a difference of fire. Who can mistake the gift? Did not our hearts burn within us while he opened unto us the Scriptures? So with a true revival: we shall find it manifesting and vindicating itself, not in an accession of intellectual cleverness, but in that burning glowing fervour which purifies whatever it touches, consuming the dross and leaving the fine gold for the king's using.