They prayed for the Spirit to come (1:12–14)

3.    They prayed for the Spirit to come (1:12–14)

12 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day's journey away.
13 And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James.
14 All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.

Their walk back to Jerusalem, being only the kilometre permitted on the sabbath, will not have taken them more than a quarter of an hour. Luke then tells us how they occupied the next ten days before Pentecost. In his Gospel he says ‘they stayed continually at the temple, praising God’,43 and in the Acts that in the room where they were lodging, ‘they all joined together constantly in prayer’ (14). It was a healthy combination: continuous praise in the temple, and continuous prayer in the home. Luke does not tell us whether the upstairs room was the ‘large upper room, all furnished’,44 in which Jesus had spent his last evening with the Twelve, or whether it was the house of Mary the mother of John Mark, in which later many members of the Jerusalem church gathered to pray (Acts 12:12), or some other room. What he does tell us is that their prayers had two characteristics which, Calvin comments, are ‘two essentials for true prayer, namely that they persevered, and were of one mind’.45 I will take them in the opposite order.

a.    Their prayer was united

Who were these people who met to pray? Luke says that they were ‘a group numbering about a hundred and twenty’ (15). Professor Howard Marshall suggests that the reason why the number is mentioned is that ‘in Jewish law a minimum of 120 Jewish men was required to establish a community with its own council’; so already the disciples were numerous enough ‘to form a new community’.46 Others have detected symbolism in the number, since the twelve tribes and the twelve apostles make twelve an obvious symbol of the church, and 120 is 12 &times 10, as the 144,000 of the Book of Revelation is 12 x 12 x 1000. Yet others suggest that the 120 must have been only a percentage of the total believing community, since on one occasion ‘more than 500’ had seen the risen Lord at the same time,47 although, to be sure, this may have been in Galilee. At all events, the 120 included the eleven surviving [Acts, Page 53] apostles. Luke lists them (13), as he has done in his Gospel.48 And the list is the same, with only minor variations. For example, the inner circle of four, who had been named in the Gospel as pairs of brothers, ‘Simon and Andrew, James and John’, are now Peter, John, James and Andrew, putting first those who were to become the leading apostles, and also separating the natural brothers as if to hint that a new brotherhood in Christ has replaced the old kinship (see verse 16, ‘Brothers …’). The next two pairs are also rearranged, although no reason is apparent. Instead of ‘Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas’,49 Luke writes Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Mathew. The remaining apostles are the same, except that of course the traitor Judas is omitted.
    In addition to the eleven apostles are mentioned the women (14), presumably meaning Mary Magdalene, Joanna (whose husband managed Herod’s household) and Susanna—the trio Luke has named in the Gospel50 as ‘helping to support them [sc. Jesus and the Twelve] out of their own means’, together perhaps with ‘Mary the mother of James’ and the others who found the tomb empty51 and to whom the risen Lord later revealed himself.52 Then, placed separately as occupying a position of particular honour, Luke adds Mary the mother of Jesus, whose unique role in the birth of Jesus he has described in the first two chapters of his Gospel, together with his brothers (14), who had not believed in him during his earlier ministry,53 but who now—perhaps because of the private resurrection appearance to one of them, James54—are numbered among the believers.
    All these (the apostles, the women, the mother and brothers of Jesus, and the rest who made the number up to 120) joined together constantly in prayer. ‘Together’ translates homothymadon, a favourite word of Luke’s, which he uses ten times and which occurs only once elsewhere in the New Testament. It could mean simply that the disciples met in the same place, or were doing the same thing, namely praying. But it later describes both united prayer (4:24) and a united decision (15:25), so that the ‘togetherness’ implied seems to go beyond mere assembly and activity to agreement about what they were praying for. They prayed ‘with one mind or purpose or impulse’ (BAGD).

b.    Their prayer was persevering

The verb translated joined … constantly (proskartereoœ) means to be ‘busy’ or ‘persistent’ in all activity. Luke uses it later both of the new converts who ‘devoted themselves to’ the apostles’ teaching [Acts, Page 54] (2:42) and of the apostles who determined to give priority to prayer and preaching (6:4). Here he uses it of perseverance in prayer, as Paul does several times.55
    There can be little doubt that the grounds of this unity and perseverance in prayer were the command and promise of Jesus. He had promised to send them the Spirit soon (1:4, 5, 8). He had commanded them to wait for him to come and then to begin their witness. We learn, therefore, that God’s promises do not render prayer superfluous. On the contrary, it is only his promises which give us the warrant to pray and the confidence that he will hear and answer.