We know how universal was the field opened for the work of the gospel. Go ye into all the world, said the Master to the apostles, and preach the gospel to the whole creation. This general order which ever abides, does not however supersede the direction which the Holy Spirit knows how to supply in detail to the Lord's glory. He will have the servant subject to Christ and exercised livingly about His will: a matter of the deepest moment for all who would serve Him thoroughly, and as obligatory now as of old though we may lack some of the means of intimation. This truth remarkably appears in what follows as elsewhere.
“And they went through the Phrygian and Galatian country, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia, and having come over against Mysia, they attempted to proceed into Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus permitted them not; and passing by Mysia they came down to Troas. And a vision, appeared to Paul by night: There was a certain man of Macedon standing and beseeching him and saying, Come over into Macedonia and help us. And when he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. Having therefore sailed away from Troas we took a straight course unto Samothracia, and on the morrow unto Neapolis, and thence unto Philippi, which is a city of Macedonia, first of the district, a colony. And we were in this city staying certain days” (ver. 6-12).
It is not only in the unconverted that man's will is treated by scripture as evil: the believer now, as living in the Spirit, is exhorted to walk in the Spirit, and the power is vouchsafed in the Spirit given, though His power will not act in positive blessing save to Christ's glory in dependence on Him and obedience to His word. So it is of high moment to remember that it is not otherwise in the work of the Lord, where the laborer is constantly exposed to the danger of being guided by fair appearances or of following what pleases his own mind, or it may be the suggestions of others whom he respects. The Lord is jealous, as valuing our subjection and fidelity and confidence in Himself, that we look to Him Who does not fail to act by the Spirit that His will be known and done. The work is His, and He only is adequate to its direction in gracious wisdom and power: we are at best only His journeymen in that work. How happy to work as well as walk by faith, guided by His eye and succored no less than sent here or there by His grace. In a world given up to self-will and all its baneful ways, how sweet to Him that His servants do not forget their absent Lord any more than their own blessedness in having Him to make His will plain, that their hearts refer to Him, that their faith expects from Him all needed to glorify Him and to preserve themselves from straying.
So was the work of Paul and his companions ordered of the Lord; as it is here set out in the written word, that we may labor in the same spirit of faith, and neither forego the like favor nor reduce scripture to a dead letter. “And they went through. the Phrygian and Galatian country, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia.” The allusion to Phrygia and Galatia as the combined sphere of their visitation is full of interest. as a fact; but how striking the absence of detail where our curiosity would have demanded a great deal. In the Epistle to the assemblies of Galatia we have not only the fruit of sowing the gospel seed there but circumstances revealed of high value and solemn warning. Of Phrygia we know scarce any particulars, save that Paul and Silas did then go through that region as well as Galatia, “having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia.” Was this province of Asia then wholly barren? Was it hopeless soil? From the beginning of the gospel, witnesses thence (Acts 2:9, 10) had heard the mighty works of God spoken in their tongue and that of Phrygia, among many others; yet here Phrygia is visited, Asia is not; while in the all-wise direction of the Lord the region of Galatia and Phrygia sees the apostle going through it in order, “stablishing all the disciples” and not evangelizing only (Acts 18:23), and Paul visits Ephesus after Apollos had wrought there not in vain, and, to his own learning the way of God more carefully; and there the apostle brings on the little nucleus of disciples into full Christian truth and privilege (Acts 19), and carried on the work for more than two years, first in the synagogue, then in the school of Tyrannus, so that, not the capital only but the province also, “all they that dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks,” and that word, not without special powers wrought of God by the hands of Paul, “mightily grew and prevailed.” He Who knew all hearts, and alone can employ any mouth to God's glory, the Holy Spirit forbade their speaking the word in Asia now. Those who believe in man may show their real unbelief in God by caviling at the present prohibition; those whose confidence is in His grace will admire His admirable care in leading to the right place of testimony then, and in working later in the place now prohibited when He deigned in His goodness to create a fruitful oasis if not more than one in that desert. He knows infallibly, as an apostle even did not; and He it is who is still here to guide the work to the praise of the Name of Jesus. As He knows the time to sow, so He ensures a harvest at the right season.
Nor was this the only prohibition about the same time. For “having come over against Mysia, they attempted to proceed into Bithynia; and the Spirit of Jesus permitted them not” (ver. 7). Here the evidence is as plain as possible to those who justly estimate scripture of the personal action of the Spirit in correction even of the apostle's proposed movements. “They attempted to proceed into where we know (1. Pet. 1.) sojourners of the dispersion, i.e. Christian Jews were, as well as in Galatia and pro-consular Asia; but this was not now the mind of the Lord for His service. And an expression is employed, more than usually, though by no means uniquely, connecting the Spirit with the Lord, which has therefore so much the more appropriate force in the passage, “and the Spirit of Jesus permitted them not.” The Spirit is as we all know a divine person and may be spoken of simply as the Spirit or the Holy Spirit; He may be introduced in a general way as the Spirit or the Holy Spirit of God, or as the Spirit of the Lord, i.e. Jehovah. Again He may be specially designated where truth required it, as the Spirit of the Father, of the Son, of Christ, or as here, of “Jesus,” in each case securing an appropriateness not to be reached otherwise. Scarce anything shows or produces more looseness of conception among Christians than the neglect of these fine and wonderful distinctions found in no other books with any approach to scripture, found in every book of scripture where the subject matter admits of them, and in perfection, whoever may be the inspired writer, and when ever written, so as to point to one unerring and divine Spirit, the true Author. “The Spirit of Jesus,” blends the personal interest of the glorified Man Whose Name it was their heart's desire and the great object of their life to make known, subject to His will, with the power of the Spirit Who is the energy that works in the new man.
“And passing by Mysia they came down to Troas. And a vision appeared to Paul by night: There was a certain man of Macedon standing and beseeching him and saying, Come over into Macedonia and help us. And when he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them” (ver. 8-10).
Thus the Lord helped His servant in a positive manner. They all needed direction for their work; and Paul alone saw the vision: a favor frequently shown him; and of the highest character, which no creature has a right to expect. Grace gave him revelations also. But though set in a very different place in the assembly, the condition and wants of which are so far apart from the primitive state God never fails for present difficulties. It is we who fail in waiting and counting on Him, though the prime directory of His written word is complete as it was not then. But special honor was put on one who was behind none in position, and whose labors were most abundant and blessed. All were immediately impressed by the apostle's vision and turned their eyes and steps toward Macedonia.
But it is well to notice that the language is “we,” and not “they” as heretofore. Luke thus modestly but without doubt lets us see that he at Troas joined the apostle's company. That I he inspired writer was a personal witness from this point is surely not a slight matter; but no error can be more profound in principle than the human notion that a higher character begins to attach to his account. Not so: inspiration excludes all question of degrees of assurance or authority. It is equally of God, whether the writer witnessed what he wrote, or not. The Spirit of God alone secures absolute truth, which no seeing, hearing, or research could effect. Man cannot rise to the divinely given, save as a receiver. He may be indefinitely exact but is necessarily human. God as He knows all, communicates what is due to His glory in love to His own.
In fact there is no more minuteness in what is conveyed during the writer's presence. Conversations, differences, journeys, preachings were given when he was absent no less than when with the apostle's companions. How comforting this quiet evidence that in the inspired word we have to do, not merely with, good men doing their best, but with a God Who cannot err or lie. He provides us with His account through man of these spiritually instructive facts. Later in the history we learn that they made a little stay in the Tread where then at least was an assembly (ch. 20.); but there was no indecision now, no tarrying by the way: the gospel must be preached forthwith in Macedonia. “Having therefore sailed away from Troas we took a straight course unto Samothracia, and on the morrow unto Neapolis, and thence unto Philippi, which is a city of Macedonia, first of the district, a colony. And we were in this city staying certain days” (ver. 11, 12). The description is most exact. It would not have been true to call it the chief city or capital of Macedonia; but of that part or district it was: a Roman colony too, not a Greek, which had a somewhat important bearing on the incidents that follow, of which we have so graphic a sketch. There Roman armies had engaged in deadly strife not with strangers, but one with another. There the fate of the moribund republic was decided. There the coming empire of the world began to dawn, an empire which was to last as no predecessor had done, though it had the unenviable distinction of contact with the Lord of glory,. not only in His despised birth but in His crucifixion of shame; as it alone, after succumbing long and notoriously, is destined to live again for a brief but awful space of lawlessness closing in a vain blasphemous and destructive opposition to His appearing from heaven in glory. But there were far other and happier reasons which made the entrance of the gospel and the founding of the church in Philippi full of holy interest. The work began in face of an ensnaring spirit of evil and of an adverse unrighteous world, with singular simplicity, with joy rising high and loudly above sorrow and shame, with a display of divine grace no less than divine power. There was nothing exactly like this at Antioch, Corinth, Ephesus, Rome, Thessalonica, though each no doubt had characteristics of admirably suited and special favor. Philippi too went, not without severe trials, and peculiar difficulties, but as a whole in spiritual power to ripe experience beyond known parallel without so painful a brand of declension as we know befell the once fair and bright assembly, in Ephesus. God would have us learn how the good seed took root and bore fruit at Philippi. Let others boast in the old almanac of man's tale as vain and unreliable in the ecclesiastical as in the secular sphere. Here the believer can rest in the certain truth of God and profit by that which He Who knows all gives for our refreshment, or admonition. We see alas! how fading was that which grace made so good, and true, and faithful in its measure; for where is that assembly now? how was it in the next generation after Paul's Epistle to all the saints there? If it had stood as the Latin church, it had like Rome been but a pillar of salt with every truth falsified (save perhaps those elements which the Athanasian creed owns), and every way of grace changed into Judaizing. This would have been but deeper dishonor of Christ, and the assembly at Philippi, as in almost all the apostolic plantations, has passed away, that men might learn, were they not blinded by worldly wisdom and the fleshly mind, that the power and even the truth of the church of God rests not in an ecclesiastical succession, but in the living energy of the Holy Spirit working in the bond of Christ's confessors, who are worse than nothing as a witness if untrue to Him, who are just of price in God's sight as they do His will and reflect His grace.