"I Have Given Them Thy Word"

by J. Bowman, Cowdenbeath | Category: I Have Given Them Thy Word | Jun 1970

The words chosen as the title of this article (see John 17.14) were used by our Lord in the remarkable prayer He addressed to His Father on the eve of His death. As He prayed He looked back over His life's work, and forward to the future as it would affect His disciples in their testimony and service, and on to the time when they would be with Him to behold His glory. His prayer was for them as the men whom He had chosen and prepared for a great work. He had come from heaven to die. When He spoke of accomplishing His work (John 17.4) He had the cross in view although it had still to take place. He was also speaking of the work of the three years He had spent patiently teaching and training those men for their future service. They were not of high rank or education but were ordinary working men, yet He chose them that they might see and hear what prophets and righteous men had desired to see and hear (Matthew 13.17) and that they might have revealed to them things that were hidden from men of wisdom and understanding (Matthew 11.25). He was sent by God to speak words of God (John 3.34), and the men to whom He confided those things were the Twelve, even as He said, "For the words which Thou gavest Me I have given unto them" (John 17.8). With what joy He must have added, "and they received them". We know that He came to die and was under commandment to lay down His life (John 10.18), but He also received commandment to speak the word the Father gave Him (John 12.49) He uttered great statements of truth in the light of which men shall be judged in a coming day (John 12.48). He spoke publicly to the multitudes by means of parables, and He uttered things hidden from the foundation of the world (Matthew 13, 34-35). In private He explained many of those parables to His disciples, He kept nothing back. Because they were His friends He told them all. "I have called you friends; for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known unto you" (John 15.15).

It was not possible for those men to remember all the great Teacher taught them. If it had been left to their memories there would have been the possibility of omissions, and mistakes. Much of what He taught them they could not understand. How important, therefore, is the work of the Holy Spirit!

"These things have I spoken unto you, while yet abiding with you. But the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you (John 14.25,26).

His words were too important to be allowed to be forgotten or

misunderstood; they were preserved and brought again to their minds when they were able to bear them.

There is complete agreement between what the Son speaks and what the Spirit speaks. Both speak what they hear and both receive it from the same source. Regarding the Son we read, "All things that I heard from My Father I have made known unto you" (John 15.15), and regarding the Spirit, "What things soever He shall hear, these shall He speak ... He shall take of Mine ... all things whatsoever the Father hath are Mine" (John 16.13-15). The work of the Spirit in bringing to remembrance the things spoken by the Son is clearly manifested in the writings of the apostles and others. What they wrote was not simply what they were able to recall from memory. It is usually accepted that John wrote his Gospel fifty years or more after the events he records, yet many of our Lord's important discourses are given in the exact words which He spoke. Such an accomplishment is humanly impossible without the working of the Holy Spirit.

In addition to what the Lord taught them while He was with them He had much more to tell them after His resurrection. In the light of His death they were able to understand things more fully. On the very day of His resurrection He appeared unto them as they were gathered together in Jerusalem, and after He had assured them of the reality of His rising again from the dead He said unto them, "These are My words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, how that all things must needs be fulfilled, which are written in the law of Moses, and the prophets, and the Psalms concerning Me" (Luke 24.44). Then follow these words, "Then opened He their mind, that they might understand the Scriptures" (Luke 24.45).

In order to equip them for their work, the apostles were given an understanding of the Old Testament writings such as no group of men before them had obtained. From those writings they preached, and taught the disciples in the early churches. But that alone was not sufficient to enable those men to do, and to teach others to do, the will of God. Therefore, our Lord not only gave them an understanding of Old Testament types and shadows but He spent time with them, at intervals, during the forty days between His resurrection and ascension, teaching them "the things concerning the kingdom of God (Acts 1.3). This special teaching, coupled with what He taught them previously, was vital to fit them as leaders in a new divine movement and to enable them to cope with the amazing things which were so soon to happen in Jerusalem and later in other parts of the world.

The apostles were directed to tarry in Jerusalem until they were clothed with power from on high, and on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit descended on those gathered and they began to speak with tongues. This occurred in the very city where our Lord was crucified, and it brought together a multitude of Jews and proselytes. Peter took the opportunity to speak concerning recent happenings, charging home to them their awful guilt, and preaching repentance and remission of sins. The result was that three thousand repented and believed. This remarkable response on the part of the people did not take the apostles by surprise, they knew exactly what to do. The believing ones were baptized and added to the church of God in Jerusalem which had come into being that day. This was a divine movement, and those added were dependent on the apostles for teaching as to how to live and how to serve God. They realized that the apostles taught them what they had themselves received from the Lord.

As surely as Moses received from God the pattern for the building of the Tabernacle, and David received in writing from the hand of God the pattern for the building of the Temple, so surely did the apostles receive from God, the Son, the divine pattern for the planting of churches of God and for the building of His spiritual house. "The apostles' teaching" is so named because they were the recipients of it and therefore responsible to teach it to others and not because it originated with themselves. It is described as "the commandment of the Lord and Saviour through your apostles" (2 Peter 3.2).

When the saints in those early days met together the word of God was read to them from the Old Testament. Its treasures were theirs to cherish and expound in type, shadow and prophecy, but for the doctrines relevant to the new dispensation, and the form of service and worship in the spiritual house of God, the saints were wholly dependent upon the apostles who had received such knowledge from the lips of the Lord.

As time went on others learned the new doctrines and practices and became teachers and leaders. Great care was needed in passing on to others the doctrine of the Lord in its purity, without the addition of anything which was the product of human thought. Such had to be committed to faithful men, who would be able to teach others also (2 Timothy 2.2). Faithfulness was, and is, a divine requirement in men who handle the truth of God in order that the spiritual heritage which God has given them may be handed on to the following generation complete and untarnished.

Oral exposition plays a very large part in the divine purpose for the dissemination of the truth of God. As the work grew and churches of God were planted in various parts of the world, principally through the labours of the apostles, including Paul, situations arose which gave rise to anxiety, and the need for special instruction became apparent. It was not always possible for Paul to visit such places personally, nor yet to send others who were able to cope with the particular difficulties, so he found it necessary to write letters. These were written to individuals, to single churches and to groups of churches. Such letters were not, however, the result of Paul's own impulse or thought. The Holy Spirit used him even as He had used men in former times to declare God's message and purpose in written form. Paul, of course, was not the only man so used. Others, although to a lesser degree, were also instruments of the Divine Spirit for this purpose.

Such letters did not become the sole possession of those unto whom they were addressed and for whose sake they were primarily written. Paul gave instruction that his letter to the Colossians should be read to the church of the Laodiceans (Colossians 4.16). John was instructed to write in a book seven messages, one for each of seven churches in Asia, and to send the entire book to the seven churches (Revelation 1.11). Each church, therefore, heard read the messages for the other churches. Peter had read Paul's epistles and, it would appear, so had the saints in the five provinces (2 Peter 3.15,16). In a way not explained those letters, or the substance of them, were disseminated among the churches arid were acknowledged as Scripture. It is not surprising to find proof of this in the New Testament. It would be unreasonable to think that the benefit of such writings would be withheld from the churches which existed at the time they were written, since it was in the divine purpose that these writings should become a collection of writings in which the whole body of truth would be preserved.

J. Bowman, Cowdenbeath | Jun 1970
I Have Given Them Thy Word