THE TEACHING AND FELLOWSHIP OF THE APOSTLES
[p. 282] THE TEACHING AND FELLOWSHIP OF THE APOSTLES
In this chapter we see christianity established here in the power of the Holy Spirit. Last week we were looking at some of the things which are characteristic of christianity as seen in chapter 1, but the coming of the Holy Spirit was needed to make them good intelligently and in power in the company of believers. It is of the greatest importance to see that the Holy Spirit has come. Many are occupied with the gift of the Spirit, and praying for a baptism of the Holy Spirit, but the fact is the Holy Spirit has come, and the great mark of His presence is the testimony He renders to Christ. The Lord Himself said, “He shall bear witness concerning me” (John 15: 26), and the effect of His coming was that the apostles preached Christ in such a way that three thousand souls were converted in one day, and brought to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, and in breaking of bread and prayers. It is in these things that christianity really consists.
Those who repent and believe the gospel are brought into them.
The effect of Peter’s preaching of Christ on those who heard it was that, first they repented. That is, they judged themselves; they saw their exceeding wickedness in having crucified and slain Jesus their Messiah. Second, they received the divine testimony to Christ as risen and exalted, and were baptised in the name of the Lord Jesus. Third, they received the Holy Spirit. These things are very great realities.
I hope I may take it for granted that all here have repented. You have judged yourself in God’s presence as guilty and lost. Receiving God’s testimony to Christ produces repentance. You see that God’s Anointed has been rejected and put to death by men, and that shows you what is [p. 283] in your own heart. They wanted to be without Christ; that is why they killed Him; and I have found the same thing in my own heart. It is good when God really brings this home to us, and we are pricked in the heart with conviction of sin.
What has God for such as repent? Well, He has Christ for all such. It is not merely some change or blessing in ourselves that we get, but Christ. God has no remedy, no resource, no blessing for man but Christ. Repentance and the reception of Christ lead to the great gain of having the Spirit. The apostles’ teaching was the setting forth of Christ. I should like to call your attention to seven things which are found here, and which may be said to constitute the apostles’ teaching.
First, Jesus the Nazaraean was “a man borne witness to by God”. Christ is the subject of every divine testimony. Look at John 5: 32 - 39. Here we see a fourfold witness to Christ — that of John the Baptist, of His own works, of the Father and of the Scriptures. Every divine testimony really centres in Christ.
It is a great thing, beloved friends, to see that God’s pleasure is to introduce that blessed Person to our hearts. God is set on filling us with blessing in Christ. We cannot find blessing anywhere but in Him, but we shall find everything to meet our consciences and satisfy our hearts if we receive God’s witness to His beloved Son.
In Psalm 81: 10 - 16 we see what God had in His mind for Israel, but they would have none of Him. They closed their hearts against His testimony. No doubt God will in a coming day bring them into blessing, but meantime we are in His thoughts for blessing. God is saying to us, “Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it”. He is waiting to feed us with the finest of the wheat and to satisfy us with honey out of the rock. How important that we should not miss this! How careful should we be not to miss the blessed testimony of the Holy Spirit to Christ now! God has no blessing for us outside Christ — no delight or pleasure but in Him.
Second, “Him, given up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God” (verse 23). Why was He thus given up to death? Because if we were to be filled with blessing in Him, He must die to remove us and our sins. We have to see that that is the way that God has taken. God has, if I may so say, relieved Himself of all that in us which was obnoxious to Him. Sins were before Him — Christ has become the propitiation for them. Man the sinner was there — Christ has come in the likeness of sinful flesh and gone into death to bear his condemnation and to put him out of God’s sight, not only in holy judgment but in holy love. God has been glorified about all we have done and all we are, and He can now speak to us of Christ. How near this brings the love of God to us when we see the way He has taken to set us aside so that He might fill us with the blessedness of Another, and that His own beloved Son! To know the love of God we must look at the cross. We can never measure its depths, but it is a delight to see that God, by the death of Jesus, has cleared the ground righteously so that we might be fully blessed in Him.
Third, “Ye, by the hand of lawless men, have crucified and slain” (verse 23). This shows us the place Christ has in the estimation of the world. He is not allowed a place here; He is disallowed indeed of men. So much so that if you find a person really giving Christ a place you feel sure it is a work of God. People think that things have changed because of the progress of religion, etc., but there is no place for Christ in the unconverted heart today any more than there was then.
The man who does not receive Christ is really in the same spirit as those who crucified Him. He says in his heart, ‘I do not want Him, I have no room for Him’.
Is it not a wonderful thing, beloved friends, that the finger of God has touched us, and made room for Christ in our hearts? It is having Christ that puts the Christian outside the world, whether politically, socially or religiously. If he speaks of Christ to his political friends, or at the social party, all are made uncomfortable; a cloud comes over the scene and he is told, ‘This is not the place for such subjects’. It is the same in the religious circle. You may talk of the minister, the choir, the bazaar for charitable purposes, etc., but speak of Christ — of His love, His death, His resurrection, His glory — and there is no response; you find you are not wanted. There is no more place for Christ in the religious world of today than in the land where He was crucified. If Christ really has a place in your heart it will put you outside things here; you will find that you cannot go along with the world.
Fourth, “Whom God has raised up” (verse 24). Here we come to God’s side. If on man’s side He was rejected and slain, on God’s side resurrection power was displayed. Everything that is for God now stands on the basis of resurrection. Everything here comes to an end by death. The best and fairest things here wither under death’s terrible blight. But here we find a blessed Man who cannot be held by death. He has been raised up and is alive for evermore where sin and death can never come. He was cut off and had nothing here, but the Holy Spirit through Peter calls attention to the joy He has entered into in resurrection. See verses 26, 28. This is a quotation from Psalm 16, which speaks of the joy of the Messiah in resurrection. When here, He was a Man of sorrows in a lowly path of grief and pain which ended in death, but He has entered into His joy in resurrection. Christ is the one “fairer than the sons of men”. The beatitudes of Matthew 5 find their only perfect fulfilment in Christ; He was the One poor in spirit, the One who mourned in presence of all the evil here, the meek One, the merciful, the One pure in heart, the peacemaker, and the One of all others who was persecuted and reviled for righteousness’ sake.
And what did He get for it here? Was He rewarded by men, or indeed at all in the present order of things? No, beloved friends, His joys were in another scene. He said to His disciples, “Rejoice and exult, for your reward is great in the heavens” (Matthew 5: 12). He entered into His joy in resurrection (see Psalm 21: 3 - 6). Think of the exceeding joy of [p. 286] Christ in resurrection! You have doubtless often prayed for spiritual joy, but the way the Holy Spirit would bring you into it would be by leading you to see that Christ has entered into all that was in the purpose of God for man, and this in resurrection, that it might be secured for you in Him. He has entered as Man into all that is spoken of in 1 Corinthians 2: 9, 10 as “things which eye has not seen, and ear not heard, and which have not come into man’s heart, which God has prepared for them that love him, but God has revealed to us by his Spirit”. Christ has entered in resurrection into all this; it is all established in Him, and the Spirit reveals it to us down here that we may have as heavenly light what soon shall be our part.
The disciples must have had the thought that when Christ got a place here they would share it with Him. But He gets a place there and shares that place with His own. He has companions in His joy; God has anointed Him with the oil of gladness above His companions. He has sanctified us by His death in order that we might share His joy. Is it not a wonderful thing to belong to such a Person, and to have such a portion with Him? But, remember, it is all on the resurrection side.
Fifth, “Having therefore been exalted by the right hand of God” (verse 33). Christ is rejected here, but exalted there. Men try to make it appear as if Christ had a place on earth — a place of honour here — but it is not so. The world that cast Him out and slew Him now builds costly and magnificent edifices professedly in His name. It is the old principle: the fathers killed the prophets, and the children built their sepulchres. But the Christian is not deceived by this. He knows Christ to be still despised and rejected by men, but he knows Him as the One whom God has highly exalted and set at His right hand. As we learn that He is not here our hearts turn to Him there, and our minds are set on things above where Christ sits at the right hand of God.
It is said of the German emperor that once on the occasion of a banquet he took his place by mistake at the wrong end of [p. 287] the table. When the attendants pointed out to him that the head of the table was the other end, he replied, ‘Where I sit is the head of the table’. Where Christ sits is the ‘head of the table’ for us. If He were here this would be our place, and the home of our hearts. But He is not here; He is at the right hand of God. How sad that a Christian should be found taken up with the politics or religion of the world, or mixing socially with those who give Christ no place!
Sixth, “Having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this which ye behold and hear” (verse 33). How true it was of Christ that He loved righteousness and hated wickedness! He showed it by going to the cross to establish righteousness and to put away iniquity. And now He has been anointed with the oil of gladness that He may share that anointing with His companions. He has received the Holy Spirit as Man that He might shed Him forth on us. How wonderful to see that there is a heavenly company on earth having part in the anointing of that blessed Man at the right hand of God!
Seventh, “God has made him, this Jesus whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ” (verse 36). All the rights and authority of God are set forth now in the Lord Jesus. He is Lord. There are poor dupes of Satan who will not give divine honours to the Lord Jesus. Such do not honour God at all. Then, on the other hand, Jesus is the Christ — God’s anointed One to bring to pass all the thoughts and purposes of God with regard to the blessing of man. God has had counsels and purposes of blessing for man from all eternity, and Jesus is the anointed Man by whom all will surely come to pass. He was Lord and Christ, but in the days of His flesh His glory was veiled. Now it is manifested by the place in which God has set Him at His own right hand. He is Lord and Christ.
These seven things are what the Spirit witnesses of Christ, and they constitute the apostles’ teaching. It was in this that the three thousand souls “persevered”. It was this teaching which formed the fellowship. The One who is Lord and Christ is the Bond of the fellowship. The apostles’ teaching [p. 288] was the testimony of God, and those who received it came into the fellowship of christianity. Christian fellowship is not merely with a local company; it is the fellowship of all those who persevere in the apostles’ teaching. There is but one fellowship. Every saint on earth is called by God to the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. This was the fellowship formed by the apostles’ teaching; that is, by the reception of God’s testimony to the crucified, risen and exalted Christ. It was a fellowship quite distinct from the religious world around, in which man in the flesh had a recognised place. It was a fellowship based on the entire setting aside of man in the flesh in the death of Christ, and it subsisted in the knowledge and confession of the exalted Man at the right hand of God. This is the fellowship to which we are called, the true and only fellowship of the assembly of God.
The apostles’ teaching and the fellowship are intimately bound up together, and then in close connection with them we have “breaking of bread and prayers”. The Lord’s supper had a great place in their hearts and it became a new rallying-point for them. The temple was the rallying-point in judaism, and while the Lord was with His own He was their rallying-point. But now the temple was desolate and the Lord was gone. What remained? Well, for one thing, the christian company remained, persevering in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship. And another thing remained: the Lord’s supper. He had instituted it on the night of His betrayal, leaving it, so to speak, in place of Himself, as His own way of bringing His saints together in His absence.
If we have been brought in any small measure into the fellowship, I am sure we shall delight to recognise the peculiar place and importance of the Lord’s supper. The voice of His love says, “This do in remembrance of me”. We cannot be in the fellowship without loving the Lord and loving His own who are in the world. If we do so we shall surely regard the Lord’s supper as an institution of the highest importance,
[p. 289] for it is that which puts us in a special way in presence of His love, and which brings us together as those who love one another. We do not break bread as an ordinance, or as a means of grace, but in response of heart to the voice of His love. He is pleased to bring us together in this blessed way that He may bring Himself before our hearts. We meet our brethren there in the presence of divine love. We are brought together in the holy unity of the love of Christ for the remembrance of Himself. And in doing this we become His memorial here. “For as often as ye shall eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye announce the death of the Lord, until he come” (1 Corinthians 11: 26).
“And prayers”. In such a position as we are called to, there is absolute need for dependence and confidence in God, of which prayer is the expression. We cannot stand in a divine position or walk in a divine path by our own power. The more we seek to keep Christ’s word and not deny His name, the more we shall feel our utter weakness and dependence. ‘As weaker than a bruised reed, we cannot do without Thee’. We must persevere in prayers.
May we have grace in this difficult day to persevere in the apostles’ teaching and in the fellowship! The natural consequence of this will be that we shall seek to take up our privilege in the breaking of bread; and the confidence of our hearts in God, with a sense of our own weakness, will find expression in prayers.