IT has already been noted that the first of the week received special distinction in New Testament times through being the day upon which the Lord Jesus rose in triumph from the grave and appeared to His own. Further, it was observed that this distinction is the more strongly marked, in that the Lord appeared again to the assembly of His disciples who gathered together with that expectation, not on the succeeding sabbath, but on the first of the week, the octave of His former appearance.
We now come to the consideration of a third event which, by its occurrence on the first of the week, adds its weighty testimony in confirmation of the special claims that day has upon those who believe in the Lord Jesus. We refer to the event recorded in Acts 2 viz., the descent of the Holy Spirit.
The abiding presence of the Comforter with the disciples of the Lord on earth during His absence on high was the reiterated promise of Christ before He took His departure. His valedictory words (John 13-16) make abundant reference to the coming of the Paraclete. The Promised One was to be to them what the Lord had been, and a great deal more. So much so, in fact, that the Lord said to those whose hearts were filled with sorrow because He was leaving them, “It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you” (John 16:7).
Thus it cannot be concealed that the Lord laid the utmost stress upon the fact that the Spirit was about to be with them to abide on earth during His absence above. It was just such an assurance as this that those distressed ones needed. They were feeling what an utter blank the world would be without Christ. They had learned to love Him. They had learned, too, to depend entirely upon the resources that were in Him. Moreover they had found in the discipleship of Christ an ample compensation for what came upon them through enduring the scorn of the world as well as through resisting its blandishments. But how could they go forward in face of trial and persecution when their Master was gone?
The Lord provides for this real need of theirs by the promise that One should take His place, not less in power than Himself, to preserve them from every foe and to maintain their souls in continued enjoyment, through faith, of their privileges. “I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever; even the Spirit of truth” (John 14:16, 17). Thus while the Lord was preparing a place for them in the Father's house, the saints on earth should have the uninterrupted presence of the Holy Ghost with them and in them.
Hence the Lord's provision for them contemplates the defined period between His own ascension and His personal return for the purpose of receiving unto Himself His own, that He may conduct them into the place He has made ready for them where they are to be with Him forever. He first announces (John 14) what is His purpose in going away, and then He tells them Who would be along with them as the Great Helmsman to pilot their little bark safely across the tempestuous seas into the desired haven.
But the teaching of scripture is clear enough that the present office of the gracious Spirit of God is not solely to be the guide of the church through the world which is now but a wilderness because of the absence of the Bridegroom. His operations in and among the saints are manifold. There is not one function of the spiritual life which the ever-present Spirit of God does not make effectual by the co-operation of His own omniscient omnipotence. Does some distressed soul feel overpowered by the sense of its many infirmities?
At once comes the gracious assurance, “The Spirit also helpeth (or, joineth help to) our infirmities.” Is there a sense of powerlessness to duly express the needs of the soul in prayer to God? “The Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered.” Does one lament its utter impotence to comprehend the word of God? We have received the Spirit of God, that “we may know the things that are freely given to us of God” (1 Cor. 2:12).
So we might go on. The blessed Spirit of God is here dwelling in the church and in the believer as in a domicile, and His effectuating energy permeates every spiritual action, that rises acceptably to God. Will any therefore dispute that the Spirit of God is now on earth in a sense that He was not either in the times of the Old Testament or in the time of the Gospels? The fact is that the presence of the Holy Spirit is one of the chief distinguishing features of Christianity.
And if we ask ourselves as to the date of the advent of the Spirit, what do we learn from Acts 2? We find it was upon the day of Pentecost. This was upon the seventh octave of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and it therefore occurred on the first of the week.
This date is fixed by the law of the feasts of Jehovah, as laid down of old. The people were instructed to count from the morrow after the sabbath, from the day that “ye brought the sheaf of the wave-offering” (beyond doubt fulfilled by the Lord's resurrection on the first of the week), “seven sabbaths shall be complete; even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall offer a new meat-offering unto Jehovah” (Lev. 23:15, 16). This makes it clear that the day of Pentecost (Acts 2) was the morrow after the seventh sabbath, or, in other words, the first of the week.
Here then, we are brought face to face with the fact that the great initiatory act of Christianity took place on the day of the week so many would slight. As the antitype of the Wave-Sheaf was found in the resurrection of Christ, so that of the two wave-loaves, “baken with leaven,” was found in the church, the body of Christ, which was first formed by the baptism of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost (1 Cor. 12:13). What fitter day of the week than the first to inaugurate a new testimony for God in the earth!
But the question now arises, whether any custom of the apostolic churches in specially honoring this day is given us or not. We find that the inspired historian, in the course of his narrative of the labors and travels of the apostle Paul, shows us in a casual way (which makes the evidence not the less but the more powerful), that the early Christians were in the habit of assembling on that particular day of the week to commemorate the Lord's death in the appointed manner.
The apostolic company came to Troas after a tedious voyage of five days (compare Acts 16:11, 12; 20:6). Here they remained seven days for the purpose, as we believe, of breaking bread upon the ensuing first day of the week. “Upon the first day of the week, when the disciples (or, “we,” which is acknowledged to be the better reading) came together to break bread” (Acts 20:7).
We say no more upon this now than to point out that we here possess an authoritative instance of the practice in apostolic days of eating the Lord's supper, not on the sabbath, but on the first of the week.
But we have a second testimony of a somewhat similar nature, which confirms the first. In his exhortation to the Corinthian saints concerning the collection to be made in Gentile assemblies for the poor saints in Jerusalem, the apostle writes, “Upon the first day of the week, let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come” (1 Cor. 16:2).
Even if we do not translate (as the sense is) “Every first of a week,” the call of the apostle is without force if there was no recognition in the Corinthian assembly of the first of the week as invested with associations and claims upon the saints that no other day of the week had. Evidently there were memories and customs connected with that day which ought to move them to bestow some of their goods for the benefit of their poorer brethren and sisters at Jerusalem. If the passage means, as it undoubtedly does, that the reservation of a certain portion of their money was to be done individually at home, certainly it is also implied that, when they came together on that day to break bread, their several offerings should be thrown into one common fund.
But our point is that these two scriptures establish that on this particular day of the week,
The saints assembled to break bread, and
Contributions were then made for the poor.
One other scripture, however, must also be referred to, Viz. Rev. 1:10: “I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day.” This phrase is of singular occurrence in the New Testament, The construction of the words in the original is such as to forbid its being confounded with the more frequent phrase, “the day of the Lord.” This is the coming time indicated by prophecy as that when the kingdom of the Lord shall be established in the earth.
But “the Lord's day” is quite different; verbally it is connected with “the Lord's supper” (1 Cor. 11:20). In each case the effect of the epithet is to raise out of the common level. The saints in Corinth were in danger of reducing the breaking of bread to the level of “their own” supper, or an ordinary meal. The apostle Paul solemnly reminds them it was the Lord's supper. It was sacred to Him.
There is one day the apostle John distinguishes above the other six as the Lord's day. Which of the seven is it? Was it not on the first of the week that he saw the Lord (on two occasions at least) after His resurrection? Can there be any room for doubt that it was on the same day of the week that John in Patmos heard behind him a great voice, and turned to see One like unto the Son of Man. It was not only “the first of the week;” it was also “the Lord's day.” Now if the former term speaks to us of resurrection and grace and the new order of things of which Christianity consists, the latter speaks of the authority of Christ Himself. It is the day pertaining to Him; and such a thought is surely sufficient for every right-minded Christian. Is the believer looking for a positive injunction? Let him know it is not a question of law but of grace; not of what was established in Eden and confirmed at Sinai, but of what the Lord introduced at His resurrection, giving also indications of its connection with the heavenly people who are called out for Himself. By these indications, which have already been referred to, there is surely no difficulty in discerning what the mind and will of the Lord is.
(To be continued, D.V.)