Acts 2:33-36 Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost… I. THE PROMISES OF THE SPIRIT, UNDER PRECEDING DISPENSATIONS. As the prophecies of Christ served to identify the Messiah on His manifestation in the flesh, and prove His Divine mission, so these predictions of the coming and agency of the Holy Ghost in the ancient Scriptures of the Jewish people, conspire, with the facts afterwards to be noticed as the accomplishment of them, to show that it is a Divine energy from on high which is now amongst us of a truth. II. THE COMMUNICATION OF THE HOLY GHOST FROM THE HANDS OF THE EXALTED REDEEMER. 1. The work of the Holy Ghost is essentially connected with the work of Christ. Of old the Spirit was given to foretell it, but His greater province was to attest and apply it. 2. This communication of the Spirit from the hands of the exalted Saviour makes distinctly manifest what is everywhere implied in Scripture — that the gift of the Holy Ghost is a purely gratuitous and gracious bestowment. III. WHAT IS STATED TO BE THE NATURE OF THE WORK OF THE HOLY GHOST IN THE CHURCH. What were those manifestations thus dispensed from the hands of the Redeemer, of which we read in Scripture, and some of which are matters of observation or of consciousness still? 1. There were those supernatural endowments, called in Scripture "Spiritual gifts," which first proclaimed the presence of the Holy Ghost in the Church. 2. With this stands closely connected the inspiration of the apostles. The system of truth which the spiritual gifts were to attest was that of which they were the professed expositors; and it was in the train of their ministry that these manifestations appeared. 3. We have further to advert to that, to which all that we have been dwelling upon is but subservient, as means to the end — the manifestation of that new element of spiritual life which sprung up in connection with the exhibition of apostolic truth, and which is ascribed in Scripture to the application of that truth to the soul by the Holy Ghost. The first work of the Spirit, of which we have spoken, was chiefly for attestation; the second, for instruction; this third, for regeneration and salvation. And if the Spirit appears glorious in His gifts and diversities of miraculous working, and as the source of inspiration in the apostles. and prophets, much more is it so when we view Him as "the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus," and as establishing "a law" within the renewed soul, which makes it "free from the law of sin and death." (E. T. Priest.) Parallel Verses KJV: Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear. |
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