Luke 24:49 Commentary and Bible Study

‘Behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you:’ – that is the Holy Spirit who will be given on the Day of Pentecost – ‘but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.’ The great commission is a message of repentance and remission of sin, and all this will only be possible because of the gift of the Holy Spirit of God given to believers. That must wait until the appointed time, a time determined by God from of old, and indicated precisely even in Old Testament times by the duration between the feasts. As the Passover prefigured the death of Christ on Calvary’s cross, so the Feast of Weeks prefigured the giving of the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. It was called the Feast of Weeks because Israel was to count seven weeks after Passover and on the day after the seventh sabbath they were to number fifty days (Leviticus 23:15-16). The Greek word Pentecost means ‘the fiftieth day’. On that day the Holy Spirit came down and the church was inaugurated as the body of Christ, and the church age began. Without the Spirit the apostles could not begin the work Christ had given them to do, so he says, ‘he [the Comforter] shall testify of me’ (John 15:26), and ‘when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment (John 16:8). That period of waiting was highly instructive to them because they were compelled to wait until power from on high was given, otherwise, like the armies of Israel defeated by Amalekites and the Canaanites at Hormah (Number 14:40-45), they would have achieved nothing.