The Restraint and Constraint of the Spirit
New surprises constantly meet us in this book. And in this sixteenth chapter we find among the acts of the Holy Ghost both restraint and constraint — prohibition and permission.
This is a new character or function of the Spirit. Paul and Timothy were “forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the Word in Asia,” and when they ‘“‘ assayed to go into Bi- Acts xvi. 6,7. thynia,” “the Spirit suffered them ctagev. not.”’ The language is explicit. Why thus hindered or diverted does not clearly appear, unless this territory was reserved for other laborers, other methods, other times. For some reason, which it is easy to conjecture were we now dealing with conjectures, God’s set and full time had not come. And so, notwithstanding their purpose and endeavor, they were “forbidden,” “not suffered.”
We are twice told that the restraint was of the Holy Spirit.
Side by side with this act of restraint we must, however, place what immediately follows. Paul is guided by a vision to go into’Macedonia. ‘The vision must have been very vivid and unmistakable, for he adds, “Immediately we endeavored
Acts xvi.xo. to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us for to preach
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the gospel unto them.” And so confident was he of the call that although, instead of the open doors he had looked for, he and Silas found the strange welcome of the cruel scourge, the inner prison, and the torturing stocks, they made the prison cell echo and ring with midnight songs of praise, until the Philippian jail became heaven’s gate!
Here again we are taught a new and vital lesson. The Holy Spirit is shown to us in another of his acts of administration: the double guidance of the Apostle and his companion; on the one hand prohzbition and restraint, on the other permisston and constraint. ‘They are forbidden in one direction, invited in another; one way the Spirit says, “Go not;” the other he calls, “Come” — not into Bithynia, where they assayed to go, but into Macedonia, where he had a mission for them to accomplish in introducing the gospel into Europe.
Many a time in history has supernatural restraint and constraint changed the course of God’s servants. Livingstone assayed to go into. China, but God suffered him not, and sent him to Africa to be its missionary general, statesman, explorer. Before him, Carey planned to go to the Great Polynesia in the South Seas, but God guided him to India to lay foundations for giving a vernacular Bible to one sixth of the people of the world. Judson did go to India, but was driven to Burmah, where he built up an apostolic church for all the age. Barnabas Shaw was thrust out from Boerland, and trusted to God’s guidance of. his kine and cart, not knowing whither he went, until the twenty-eighth day brought to him the chief of Namaqualand, his “man of Macedonia,” who literally said, “Come over and help us.” How many secrets of leading are yet to be brought to light, thousands of God’s servants having been forbidden of him to follow out their plans, because he has had some unexpected open door of service to set before them! And how we need to trust him for guidance and rejoice equally in his restraints and constraints; because if we had infinite wisdom and love to guide us, we should not by one hair’s-breadth change his perfect plan for our lives! In the case of Lydia, “whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which Acts xvi.14 were spoken of Paul,” though no direct mention is made of the Spirit, it was one of his acts to open her ears and heart to the gospel. Here again may be read between the lines the Spirit’s working, as also in the strongly contrasted case of the jailer at Philippi, and later on in the active search of the Bereans into the Holy Scriptures, so that many of them believed. In Paul’s “stirred” spirit at Athens, a mightier Spirit was at work; and in the conversion of that solitary Areopagite, Dionysius, and that woman, Damaris, who, even in the idolatrous, philosophical, and self-sufficient Attican capital, believed and clave unto Paul, we may see the brooding influence of that same Creator Spirit who over the primal chaos hovered to bring life out of the abyss of death.
We meet in the eighteenth chapter, verse five, a phrase: “‘ Paul was pressed in the spirit ’ — unless the alternate reading, “engrossed with the Word” (ey Aoyw), is the true one; and we are told that Apollos was “fervent in the spir- Acts xviii, as. it,” as also that Paul “purposed in Acts xix. ar. the spirit.” These and some other kindred expressions have been thought by some wise Bible students to refer to the Holy Spirit’s acting on the mind and heart, creating a holy pressure which must find vent in testimony, a spiritual ardor and fervor which must be relieved by preaching and teaching, or a purpose which was not of the will of man nor of the will of the flesh, but of the will of God. However this be, it is beyond all doubt that in all our inward movings of conviction and affection, of yearning and praying, of determination and decision, we may, in proportion as we maintain close fellowship with him and are surrendered to him for service, recognize with joyfulness his acting and actuating.
In this latter purpose of Paul to go to Jerusalem and Rome may be found a possible explanation of his steadfastness of resolve. When at Miletus he was held fast by the Ephesian elders, and in
Cesarea Agabus prophesied that at the sacred city he should be bound and delivered over to the will of the Gentiles, so that he was tenderly besought not to go up to Jerusalem at all, he “would not be persuaded,” and his entreating friends, compelled to desist, could only say, “The will of the Lord be done.’”? Such persistence of purpose seems due not to mere obstinacy, for we are told
Acts xx.22. that Paul went, “bound in the spirit.” The same Holy Ghost, who witnessed in every city that bonds and afflictions awaited him, molded his purpose and kept him in the bonds of holy resoluteness and fixedness of heart in doing and suffering the will of God, though, like his Master,
Luke xii. 50. he could say, “How am I straitened till it be accomplished!”
The book we are studying shows us that even in disciples there may be entire ignorance, instead of knowledge, of the Spirit.
The four marked examples of pentecostal blessing recorded in this Book of the Acts of the Holy
Acts xix.6. Ghost, of which we now reach the last, have conspicuous differences as well as coincidences. The Spirit never seems exactly to repeat himself in his operations. Before, we have met his outpourings upon Jews, Samaritans, and Romans; now it is at Ephesus, not Jerusalem, Samatia, or Cesarea, and upon Greeks. The signs are similar, for these Ephesian disciples “spake with tongues, and prophesied.” But the Acts xix.6 differences in these four outpourings or effusions - are distinctions.
At Jerusalem the baptism fell upon apostles and disciples who had received Christian baptism with water and were looking and praying for the ‘Spirit’s enduement. In Samaria the Spirit was bestowed on believing converts, newly saved, and who knew of his work at Jerusalem and probably craved similar blessings, though they may not have expected them, being themselves a despised race, In Cesarea the Spirit came upon a whole congregation of Gentile hearers in advance of Christian baptism or confession of Christ, and for the first time converting and anointing acts seem to have been simultaneous.
But now, in Ephesus, there is a like manifestation of power, but under new conditions; for there appears to be no exact repetition in spiritual bestowments. These disciples have believed, but have not been instructed, nor ‘‘so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.” They
Acts xix.2. have never received Christian baptism, but only that of John, which was a baptism “unto repentance.’ They are therefore baptized into Christ, and immediately baptized with the Spirit also.
If we have here nothing more, we have both a most instructive lesson on the posszble ignorance of the Holy Spirit’s acts, even on the part of a true disciple of Christ, and an instructive example of the variety of the Spirit’s working. Think of being a subject of the regenerative act of the Spirit and yet not knowing whether there be any Holy Spirit! The new-born child of God knows not and recognizes not his spiritual Begetter! What a challenge to those who preach and teach the gospel to see that disciples shall not grow up in ignorance of the Spirit’s character and work! and yet in how many churches is there systematic teaching upon the third Person of the Trinity?
And again, as to the variety of the Spirit’s working, what catholic charity and comprehensive hopefulness we are taught! The subjects of Holy Ghost power we may find not only in intelligent disciples, but in outcast Samaritans, in unconverted but inquiring strangers and foreigners, and in untaught converts who have got to repentance, but not to true knowledge of Christ, and who have never yet known that there is a Holy Spirit. What a boundless encouragement to the missionary to feel that, whether sent to Jew or Gentile, to outcast Pariahs or Athenian philosophers, to unconverted idolaters or nominal Christians bound in the fetters of an ignorant and servile formalism, the same Spirit of God has blessing everywhere ready to be bestowed; a new Pentecost waiting to be outpoured amid the jungles of India or on the banks of the Congo; on the followers of the false prophet or the disciples of the Chinese sage; on cannibal savages or educated skeptics! We have only to preach the Word and pray in the name of Christ, and the blessed effusion will follow.
And how much depends upon the knowledge and reception of the Spirit we may learn in part from the wonderful “revival” that followed the Pentecost at Ephesus. The signs wrought among believers were succeeded by even more wonderful signs among unbelievers,
In that city and shrine of Diana and of her famous fane, gathered and clustered the magicians, masters of curious and occult arts. Even they are turned unto God. And there is a holocaust of the books which contained the very secrets of these “black arts.” “Fifty thousand pieces of silver”” — an immense fortune for those days — is the estimated value of the books or scrolls burned before all men as a sacrifice for the sake of a new-found Saviour and as a testimony to the power of the gospel. Well might Demetrius and his fellow-craftsmen be alarmed
Acts xix.20. when the “Word of God” so “mightily grew and prevailed,” and feel their trade to be in danger, and even Diana’s supremacy to be at risk!
Whenever and wherever disciples get the baptism of power, the enduement from on high, the filling of the Holy Spirit, awakenings and revivals are sure to follow — nay, they have begun. And this chapter teaches us all a permanent lesson: that when disciples have a true revival, society gets’a revolution. When the Spirit moves mightily upon children of God we may look for other mighty movements among unbelievers, and need not be surprised if the devil himself comes down, having great wrath, as though he knew that his time were short.
One more direct reference to the Spirit completes the Acts of the Holy Ghost. Paul says to the Ephesian elders: “Zake heed... Acts xx. 28. to the flock over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers’’ — bishops (sztoxoror). And so we come, toward the end of this brief book, to the same lesson emphasized toward its beginning: whatever office one holds in the body of Christ, and whatever men may have to do with selecting and ordaining officers, the Holy Ghost’s appointment and authority lie back of all true official service.
We need scarcely tarry on this thought, which we have before expanded, save for the emphasis of repetition, which for purposes of Chapter v. conviction has been said to be the “only figure of speech which is worth a farthing.”” But what calamity can befall a church of Christ greater than this: that its practical administration shall fall into unholy hands — into hands of unspiritual and even unconverted men, who, whatever their worldly qualities or qualifications, lack that one most essential requisite, the power to discern the mind of the Spirit, and so the ability and disposition to coéperate with him!
Why is this the closing lesson in these Acts of the Holy Ghost, if not because the one grand purpose of this book is to teach us that the one Head of every true church is the invisible Head; that the church is a body of believers indwelt by the Holy Spirit and administered by him; that of all important things this is the vital matter — that every officer from pastor to sexton, and every member, shall be a subordinate and servant of this unseen presiding Officer; and that the power to discern this divine Archbishop as in actual control, and setting over his church whomsoever he will, is the fundamental question of fitness for such service. Who that is blinded to spiritual truth can detect the invisible Leader? What if Joshua at Jericho had been unable to see and recognize, or unwilling to obey and follow, that “Captain of the Lord’s host” who was present on the field to organize victory!