If Simon Peter, relying on his own strength, fell before the enemy, he did not fail when he relied on the help of his Master. When arraigned before the rulers, elders, scribes and all who belonged to the family of the high priest, Peter and John were filled with the Holy Spirit, and instead of being in the dock they were the judges of those who before whom they stood. Peter plainly and powerfully accused them of having crucified the One in whose Name the impotent man had been healed, adding, “This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner” (Acts 4:5–11). Furthermore Peter said, “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other Name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (verse 12).
Here was the fulfilment of the words the Lord had spoken to His disciples, when He said, “Settle it therefore in your hearts, not to meditate before what ye shall answer: for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist” (Luke 21:14-15). Well might the elite of Israel’s religious schools of learning marvel as they saw “the boldness of Peter and John, and perceiving that they were unlearned and ignorant” as regards what the men of this world account to be knowledge. They also “took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus” (verse 13).
The great secret of their boldness, and of their being able to speak with divine conviction, was their having been with Jesus. They had been trained in a school of learning that far surpassed all the schools in which the high priest, the scribes and the elders had been educated. In the company of the Son of God they had learned the secrets of God, acquiring divine knowledge in which the great men of Israel, and of the world, were “uninstructed.” Surely it was far better to be instructed in the wonderful things of which the Son of God spoke than to be learned in the traditions of men, and to have letters from the schools of perishable knowledge.
The Knowledge of the Father
It was a very solemn matter that the great cities of Galilee had rejected the Son of God and the testimony of His mighty works, but “At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so Father: for so it seemed good in Thy sight” (Matt. 11:20–26). The blessed Lord felt His rejection with an intensity that no human heart could enter into, so that He turned to the only One who could enter into the depths of the feelings of His heart. The Father could understand, and the Son knew that what had taken place would not, could not, set aside the Father’s will. Indeed the Son knew that the very wickedness of Israel would but make way for the opening out of the wider counsels of God for the blessing of men.
Into the knowledge of the Father’s counsels the wise and prudent of this world could not enter, but those whom men accounted to be babes as regards the knowledge of this world, and who indeed were babes in God’s family, were those to whom the Father vouchsafed the secrets of His counsels. In the company of the Son of God they heard the most wonderful revelations, and their hearts were prepared of God to enter in some measure into what the Son revealed. The time would come when, having the Holy Spirit, they would be able to apprehend more fully what the Lord had spoken unto them.
The earthly kingdom of Israel was being refused to the rightful Heir, but something far greater had been given to Him, so the Lord could add, “All things are delivered unto me of my Father” (verse 27). Here was the opening out of something far beyond what had been offered to Israel. What had been refused Him by His own people, and what He had refused to take from the hand of Satan, would assuredly be His, for He would not only have Israel’s throne, and all the kingdom of the world, but “all things,” all in heaven as well as on earth the Son would take from the hand of His Father, being already His in the counsel and purpose of the Father.
No man knew the Son but the Father, but the Son had come to make the Father known, and it was to the babes, not to the lettered and instructed in the things of this world, that the Son made known the Father, Here was knowledge that Abraham did not have, nor Moses, nor any of the Old Testament saints, but in the Son of God in Manhood there was this wonderful knowledge to impart to those the Father had given Him out of the world. Later the Son said, “O righteous Father, the world has not known Thee: but I have known Thee” (John 17:25). This precious knowledge is not to be found in the schools of men: it was only to be found in the Son of God, and by those of whom He spoke when He said to the Father, “And I have declared unto them Thy Name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith Thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:26).
The Mysteries of the Kingdom
After the Lord had spoken the first parable of Matthew 13, the disciples asked Him, “Why speakest Thou to them in parables?” (verse 10). Jesus answered “Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.” The very words that unfolded these great secrets to the disciples of the Lord hid them from the men of this world. It was an immense privilege for the disciples to be under the teaching of the Son of God, even as He said to them in this same chapter, “For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them” (verse 17).
Having finished all His parables of Matthew 13 the Lord said to His disciples, Have ye understood all these things? They say unto Him, Yea, Lord” (verse 51). In some measure they were even then able to understand what the Lord had revealed, although the full meaning would await their being indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
Friends of the Son of God
There were the things that the disciples learned as “babes,” and the things they learned as “instructed unto the kingdom of God” (Matt. 13:52), but in John 15:15 there were the things that Jesus disclosed to His friends, the deepest secrets of His heart. As His friends Jesus spoke of His great love for His own, saying, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend. Ye are my friends.” This is the extent to which the affection of Jesus for His own would take Him, right into death, with all that death meant for Him. If then He would die for them, was it any wonder that He would make known to them the things that were dearest to His heart?
The things that were dearest to the Son of God were “all things that I have heard of my Father.” It is not that He was prepared to make known some of the things that He had heard of His Father, but all things. He had not kept anything back of those wonderful secrets; and these are the things that the Holy Spirit has brought to us in the pages of John’s Gospel. The Lord had said to Nicodemus, “If I have told you earthly things…how shall ye believe if I tell you heavenly things” (John 3:12). These heavenly things, the things of eternal life, were the things disclosed to His disciples. When challenged by the Lord regarding leaving Him, Simon Peter could say, “Lord to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life” (John 6:68).
God’s Son had spoken to His own of the work of the Father, of the Father’s will concerning Himself, and concerning their blessing, of the Father’s hand in which they were safely kept, of the Father’s commandment, and the Father’s House to which He would take them, of the Father’s love for them, and of the Father’s glory, the Father’s word, and the Father’s Name, and much more of the things of the Father. These were wonderful unfoldings, things that lay in the eternal secrets of God, but which the Son came to make known to His friends. How highly favoured the disciples were to have such precious secrets from the lips of the Son of God.
He Opened Their Understanding
It was but in a feeble way the disciples were able to enter into what the Lord spoke to them when with them before His death. They never seemed to be able to take in that He must die before entering into His glory, nor could they understand the Scriptures concerning Him. What a difference there was when, in resurrection, He expounded to the two on the way to Emmaus the things concerning Himself from “Moses and all the prophets,” and when He spoke to the eleven disciples of the things that “must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms,” and when He opened their understanding “that they might understand the Scriptures” (Luke 24:27, 44-45).
“He shall teach you all things”
The privileges of the Lord’s disciples were unspeakable, as taught of Him, and as having their understanding opened to understand the Scriptures. Something more was needed to equip them for His service, and that was the coming of the Holy Spirit, and of this the Lord spoke to His own before leaving them. Among the many things the Holy Spirit would do for Christ’s own was “He shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said to you” (John 14:26). What a wonderful education the disciples had! They may have been unlettered, quite unlike the doctors of the law, but they had the secrets of God, and knowledge that the schools of these doctors could never impart.
Other functions of the Holy Spirit are found in John 16:13-14, where the Lord says, “He will guide you into all truth…He will show you things to come. He shall glorify me: for He shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you.” These were the “uninstructed” men that appeared before the learned men of Israel. Was it any wonder that Peter and John were marked by boldness, the holy boldness that the knowledge of God and the indwelling and filling of the Holy Spirit gave?
What was given to the disciples at the beginning is also given to the saints in this day. With them we have the teaching of the Lord, our understanding opened to understand the Scriptures, and the Holy Spirit within us to teach us all things, and to guide us into all the truth. No doubt the disciples had their special testimony, and special gift and grace for that testimony, as Scripture shows, but like those “unlettered and uninstructed men” we have been taught in the school of God, and have learned of things which “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man…but God has revealed them unto us by His Spirit” (1 Cor. 2:9-10).
All that is acquired in human institutions of learning, all the instruction in the philosophies and sciences of this world, and from all the religious teachers of the world, will pass away, but what is learned from the Son of God and from the Holy Spirit will abide for ever. Gifts have been given to the church to bring us to “the knowledge of the Son of God” (Eph. 4:13), we are to increase “in the knowledge of God” (Col. 1:10), and to be united to understand “the mystery of God…in which are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:2-3).
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