Introduction and Preparation

Translation

Paragraph 1. LUKE’S PREFACE. Verses 1-5.

I made my first book, O Theophilus, about all the things which Jesus began to do and teach until the day of His Ascension. Prior to that event He had given instructions through the Holy Spirit to His Apostles, whom He had chosen. To whom also, after His suffering, He presented Himself alive with many proofs, being seen repeatedly by them for forty days, and discussing the affairs of the Kingdom of God. And once while He was eating with them He charged them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what was promised by the Father:

“Which you heard from me,” he said, “for John baptized with water; you, however, shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit but a few days hence.”

The author, whom we account with most to have been Luke, the writer of the Third Gospel, relates the present work to that which had preceded it both by referring to the former as “first” and by describing it as giving a narrative of “all the things which Jesus began to do and teach until the day of His Ascension.” The book now submitted to Theophilus repeats for , introduction the last scene of the former work, that of the Ascension, and thus gives double emphasis and prominence to this great event. He makes the total period of forty days from the resurrection forward but one progressive phase of the Lord’s Ascension, as does Christ himself in His remark to Mary Magdalene in John xx, 17; and Paul often, as in Eph. iv, 8-10; Phil. iii, 1-12; Col. iii, 1. As before His passion, so here Luke indicates that the chief theme of the Master’s discourse was the Kingdom of God, the supreme theme of profitable thought. In the incarnation the Kingdom drew near and John the Baptist sealed it in a baptism of water. At the Ascension it was consummated and was sealed by the Father in the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Thus, in this brief Preface, Luke has given us the key to his twofold treatment, in his former and latter treatise, of the highest purpose and plan of God, Father, Son, and Spirit, to establish once and for all the reign of the Triune God upon earth. The Gospel prepared the way; the Acts enters upon the campaign of conquest.

Translation

So when they assembled to meet Him they asked Him,

“Master, is this the time when you are about to restore the Kingdom to Israel ?”’

But He said in reply,

“It is not yours to perceive times or periods which the Father fixed by His own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.”

And having said this, He was taken up before their very eyes and a cloud withdrew Him from their sight. And while they stood looking intently toward the sky, as He was going up, suddenly two men in white apparel stood by them, who also said,

“Men of Galilee, why are you standing here looking into the sky? This same Jesus who has been taken from you into Heaven will come again just as you have seen Him going into Heaven.”

By the end of the six weeks of varied post-resurrection manifestations the complete confidence of the Saviour’s inner group of disciples had been restored. The expediency, however, of His departure to the Father is clear from the very question which they put to Him relative to the further development of the Kingdom. They are not yet able to comprehend the spiritual nature of that Kingdom, nor can they until He withdraw from them physically. They still have the temporal “at this time” and the racial “unto Israel” limitations uppermost in mind. Both these categories He sweeps aside in His final promise and program. The promise is “power” from its highest source—“The Father.” The program is, “Ye shall be my witnesses,” not to Israel alone, though you must “begin in Jerusalem,” but also “in Samaria,’ and on and ever on “to the end of the earth.” What could the Captain say further? His forces are now sifted out and seasoned. They have kept close to Him in all the period of His own conflict and triumph. They have hailed His return from death and tested the fact of His resurrection in every possible way. The time of training, of teaching, of drilling is at an end, the time for action has come. “As the Father sent me, even so send I you... therefore go!” With this they have passed the crown of Olivet and are now looking down on Bethany. He lifts His hands in blessing, “and while He was blessing them He parted from them and was carried up into heaven” (Luke xxiv, 51).

The withdrawal was not abrupt. Each of those present had opportunity for a clear experience of the Master’s final passing out of view. In that act He completed the transition begun with His rising from the grave and assumed “the body of His glory.” It were well for Christians to set their minds upon this, the Lord’s Ascension body, rather than the body of His Resurrection, as the probable type of “the body that shall be” for them. As Luke made angelic announcement of the Nativity, so the Ascension is brought to a similar close. Doubtless the significance of the angel’s words lies, not in any formal assertion of the manner of Christ’s return to earth, but in the fact of His unbroken interest in the works of His followers and the assurance of His spiritual presence with them. His own words, in John xiv, “Let not your hearts be troubled, I am going away for a little while and am to return very shortly,” are a proper commentary on this passage.

Translation

Paragraph 3. STOPPING PLACE AND PERSONNEL OF THE APOSTOLIC GROUP. Verses 12-14.

Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, about a Sabbath’s journey distant. And when they entered the city they went to the upper room, where they had been meeting; there were Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alpheus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas, the son of James. All these continued with one mind regularly meeting for earnest prayer, with the women and Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and with His brothers.

Luke’s circumstantial account of their return from Olivet, their entry of the city and going to the upper room, as well as his list of the Apostles, reflects the same conscientious and able historian that introduced himself to Theophilus and his readers in the

opening of the Third Gospel. The location of the upper room as on Zion, and not Moriah, is altogether probable. Dr. Sanday well states the evidence for the scene of the Last Supper as in the Cenaculum. The fact that the Lord met His disciples there several times after His resurrection and that the article is used in speaking of the place here and the reference to the house of the mother of Mark as a center of stated assembly for prayer (chapter xii, 12) has given rise to the very plausible opinion that all of these events, as well as that on the morning of Pentecost, occurred in one and the same place.

Luke’s insertion of the names of the Eleven and of the election of a successor to Judas Iscariot implies the breadth of background on which he has sketched so limited a number of apostolic acts in his present book. In the four lists of the Twelve given in the New Testament (see Page 45) it is often remarked that each falls into three groups of four names each; that the names in each group are the same and headed by the same leader, though otherwise. in different order; that Luke’s independence, in both his accounts, of the Synoptic tradition is as marked as his consistency. His mention of “the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and his brothers” is also noteworthy. What a relief to find our Lord’s brothers at last among His convinced supporters! Ce. Woe MY

The Eleven and the four brothers, with the women Luke had in mind (Luke xxiii, 55, xxiv, 10, Jesus’s mother, Salome, Mary mother of James, Joanna and Mary Magdalene), make a sort of inner group comprising a minimum of twenty, and we soon see that there were one hundred more of like mind in Jerusalem.

Translation

Now it was on one of those days that Peter stood up among the brethren—there was all together a crowd of about one hundred twenty persons present—and spoke.

“My brothers,” he said, “it was necessary that the Scripture should be fulfilled, namely, the utterance which the Holy Spirit made by the mouth of David about Judas who acted as guide to those who seized Jesus, seeing that Judas was reckoned as one of our number and obtained the appointment of his share in this ministry. (Now with the money paid him for his evil deed he bought a field, and falling down there face foremost, he burst asunder, and all his bowels gushed out—a fact which became widely known to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that that place received the name, in their language, of Akel-damach, which means the field of Blood.) For it is written in the Book of Psalms,

‘So ET HIS DWELLING BE DESOLATE, AND LET THERE BE NO ONE TO INHABIT IT’ (Psa. lxix, 25), and again,

‘LET ANOTHER MAN TAKE OVER HIS ASSIGNMENT’ (Psa cix, 3):

So, then, it is necessary that one of the men who have been associated with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John down to the day on which He ascended from us— one of these men should become a witness with us as to His resurrection.”

So they brought forward two men, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was surnamed Justus, and Matthias, and offering prayer they said,

“Thou, Lord, who knowest the hearts of all, indicate clearly the one of these two whom Thou hast chosen to receive the same position in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas fell away to go unto his own place.”

Thereupon they cast lots for them, and the Jot fell upon Matthias, who was thereby elected to a place among the eleven Apostles.  

Peter now manifests his sense of responsibility and gift of leadership. His address here, as is true of the six which follow, is full of dignity and directness and. carries conviction to the point of action. The style both of quotation from the Old Testament and throughout is distinctly Petrine, and doubtless Luke appropriated data handed down from the very days of their utterance. His restraint and touch of keen remembrance of the night in Gethsemane implied in his description of Judas, not as the traitor nor murderer of his Lord, but as “guide to those who seized Jesus,” is especially creditable.

Peter’s statement of the qualities of a true witness of the resurrection as reaching back to an association with the Lord Jesus from his baptism by John excludes any of the Lord’s brothers, even James, so that none of them is nominated. The naming of Joseph Justus and Matthias, never before nor afterward referred to, gives us a momentary glimpse into that company of scores who could no doubt have fully qualified for the place of Judas Iscariot. Dr. Knowling (Expositor’s Greek Testament) makes Peter’s speech fall into two parts, each introduced by the expression “necessity” at verses 16 and 21. This phrase occurs twenty-five times in the book, and Dr. Knowling says it expresses a divine necessity and is used by all the Evangelists, as by Peter here and Paul (1 Corinthians xv, 25), of the events connected with and following upon the passion. The urgency of this necessity is something like a foretaste of that power promised and soon to be realized which carries Peter and John and Stephen and James and every witnessing soul in the book with unyielding boldness through every phase of embarrassment and persecution, and even with joy unto martyrdom itself. The three steps in the election are the perfection of order and simplicity: first, nominations; second, prayer; and third, balloting. In this entire episode there is not the slightest ground for considering Peter’s act officious or unwarranted, nor for the idea that because Matthias is never mentioned again and Paul was given a great apostolic place in Acts, this election was not divinely sanctioned.

JUDAS SELLS HIS LORD (Prell)