Continuing thinking about the Upper Room we come to its Purpose. It is a preparation to establish a Kingdom that is not made by human design. The Church is that kind of structure. It is not made by men. But today we see local churches becoming like political organisations where abuses and favours abound. Jesus never designed things that way.

We must consider with great attention that the Day of Pentecost is the pinnacle and fruit of the preparation afforded in the Upper Room. If it were not for that preparation it is certain that the Church would not exist in the form it is. Such was the urgency of Jesus’ ministry this final intense discipleship given here. We see brief accounts in the synoptic gospel but we see very indepth account in John.

John must have sensed intensely what was happening, and what this meant. For this reason we get a depth in the Upper Room account that the others do not give. The communion ordinance being the pinnacle of the foundation of the Church. Broken Body and shed Blood. The Church started with brokeness and is existent in the healing and unifying power of the same.

Each disciple was about to abandon his calling, his post, because what was about to happen was outside their thinking. The Upper Room whilst at first was an intense emotional and spiritual communion with Christ became a place of great consternation. How it is in our Christian walk, we go at times from times of great COMMUNION to great CONSTERNATION. What their vision of Jesus consisted of was shattered in that sanhedrin, in Pilate’s palace and on Calvary. It needed to be so that their earthly aspiration would become heavenly revelation.

So the place of great CONSTERNATION became a place of great COMFORT. We see comfort as being consoled. But the Word shows us it is more than that. It is the reestablishment of order from chaos, and a extension of a new covenant and season. When we compare the appearence of Jesus in the Upper Room after His Ressurrection to Nehemiah and Noah, who names mean comfort, to the message of John 14 given in the Upper Room that a COMFORTER was coming. Let us transfer this to apply to us now, when we are in the place of CONSTERNATION we are taken in visitation to a place of COMFORT, where our earthly perspective is broken in a moment by a visitation of Christ as He really is. Where we are momentarily blinded by our disallusionment and our despair, not seeing God in anything, we then are taken into a place of spiritual vision where Jesus is revealed to us in clarity.

Jesus taught them THROUGH the Spirit for 40 days. No longer was there a veil over what He said. So God promises to us, that Jesus is coming to speak plainly. From this place Jesus shows them that He was departing to ask of the Father the Comforter so that in this Upper Room they would go from COMFORT to COMMISSION. From this place of revelation God was about to pour out such power that the world would know who was Christ, through Word and deed.

There is great purpose in that preparation. It is you and I enjoying the salvation God extended to us. Where we experience the lows, we are given sudden visitations that blow away our small and limitted vision, and we are taken into a whole different perspective where our mission is clear.

Let us embrace this preparation for ourselves.

Russell