The Promise of the
Father
Old
Testament Reading: 2 Kings 2:9-15
New
Testament Reading: Luke 11:1-13
To reiterate: I
am spending the first few Sundays of the Pentecost season with a series of
sermons on the first two chapters of the Acts of the Apostles. This
morning I would like to invite you to join me on a brief Bible study
occasioned by an intriguing tidbit of the text, the occurrence of a
particular phrase that may not be altogether inappropriate for our
consideration since it is Father's Day. It is the phrase, "the promise of
the Father." The phrase occurs in Luke's preface to the Book of Acts, "And
while eating with them, he charged them not to depart from Jerusalem, but
to wait for the promise of the Father, which you heard from me, for John
baptized with water, but before many days now, you shall be baptized with
the Holy Spirit."
What promise is it to which Jesus
refers? Where did the Heavenly Father make such a promise? In context,
given what happens in chapter 2 of Acts, it seems obvious that what is in
view is the Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit. But where did the
Father promise this? Let's see if we can find out. One obvious possibility
is that Luke regards the prophecy of Joel 2:28-29:
And it shall come to pass
afterward,
that I will pour out my spirit on
all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall
prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams,
and your young men shall see
visions.
Even upon the menservants and
maidservants in those days,
I will pour out my spirit.
He does have Peter quote this passage
in Acts 2, immediately following the Spirit-baptism. "This is that which
was spoken by the prophet Joel."
That would certainly qualify as a
promise made by the Father. But the reader of Luke 24 and Acts 1 where the
phrase "promise of the Father" occurs would then be left in the dark until
Acts 2 to find out what this promise was, whereas Luke seems to expect
that the reader will know good and well what this promise is as soon as he
meets with the phrase. This would mean there must be some previous
reference in the Gospel of Luke that could be called the promise of the
Father. But what is it? My guess would be that he is referring to the
teaching on prayer Jesus is shown dispensing in Luke 11:1-13. I think the
specific reference is to verse 13: "If you, then, who are evil, know how
to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly
Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him."
I think this assurance of the Father's
willingness to give the Spirit in abundance is what Luke means by "the
promise of the Father." It is certainly a promise that might be fulfilled
by what happens on the Day of Pentecost, when the Spirit is poured out so
abundantly. In fact I am doubly persuaded because this passage as it stood
in the Q source, the sayings source used by both Matthew and Luke, had the
crucial line as follows: "How much more will your Father in heaven give
good things to those who ask him." Hear that? Not "the Holy Spirit," but
"good gifts." It is surely Luke who has made the general assurance of
answered prayer into a promise of the Father to supply the Holy Spirit.
Let me let you in on another little
secret. There are a few ancient manuscripts of Luke which have a slightly
different reading of the Lord's Prayer a few verses before this text. As
we read it, it says, Thy kingdom come." But in some copies it says, "Thy
Spirit come upon us and sanctify us." In my opinion, this is what Luke
wrote, and then copyists changed it in most manuscripts so it would sound
more like the Lord's Prayer in Matthew, which has at this point, "Thy
kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."
So this is the bottom line. Luke has
Jesus instruct his disciples, actually the readers of Luke's Gospel, to
pray for the sanctification of the Spirit. He built this right into the
Lord's Prayer, so that the people in his community would ask for the Holy
Spirit every time they prayed together. And then he followed the prayer up
with a couple of parables about confidence in prayer, culminating with a
saying on how God could certainly be counted upon to answer the prayer
Luke has just had Jesus prescribe, the prayer for the coming of the Holy
Spirit. I suppose that what Luke envisions the 120 disciples in the Upper
Room doing for 10 days leading up to Pentecost is praying for the coming
of the Holy Spirit--and then it comes!
The lesson to be drawn from all this is
quite simple. To pray for the Holy Spirit is to seek to grow morally and
spiritually, to become wider in sympathy, more patient with fools, broader
in perspective, more Christlike in character, more expansive and selfless,
more virtuous, less prejudiced, more open to what the winds of change may
blow your way. And the assurance, the confidence of it, as Jesus says, it
only common sense: if you want more Spirit, who's going to stop you? Must
you wrest it like Prometheus did from the hearth of a jealous God? No! How
could God not want you to grow in the Spirit? It simply stands to
reason that you can have as much of the Spirit as you can accommodate. The
only limits are those you yourself have set. And there is no reason you
cannot, like the man in another Lukan parable, tear down your barns and
build bigger ones to accommodate a greater harvest of the fruit of the
Spirit than you have ever known before.
Copyright©2009 by Robert
M Price
Spirit of
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