Acts 1:12-26
Acts chapter one, beginning at
verse 12, all the way through 26. This is the first congregational
meeting where the church replaces one of their lost leaders. Before
we read God’s word, let’s look to him in prayer. Our father,
as we give attention to your word, we pray that you would
open our eyes. so that we might behold wonderful
things from your law through our Lord Jesus Christ, we pray,
amen. Hear the word of the living God,
Acts chapter one, beginning at verse 12. Speaking of the disciples,
then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet,
which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day journey away. And when they
had entered, they went to the upper room where they were staying
and Peter and John and James and Andrew and Philip Thomas,
Bartholomew, Matthew, James, the son of Alphaeus, Simon, the
zealot and Judas, the son of James. All these with one accord
were devoting themselves to prayer together with the women and Mary,
the mother of Jesus and his brothers. In those days, Peter stood up
among the brothers, the company of persons was in all about 120,
and said, brothers, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the
Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David concerning
Judas, who became a guide for those who arrested Jesus. For
he was numbered among us and he was allotted his share in
this ministry. Now this man bought a field with the reward of his
wickedness. And falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and
all his bowels gushed out. And it became known to all the
inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the field was called in
their own language, Akodama, which is the field of blood.
For it is written in the book of Psalms, may his camp become
desolate and let there be no one to dwell in it. And let another
take his office. So one of the men who have accompanied
us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among
us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he
was taken up from us, one of these men must become with us
a witness to his resurrection. And they put forward to Joseph
called Barsabbas, who was also called Justice, and Matthias. And they prayed and said, you
Lord, know all the hearts of all. Show us which one of these
two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship
from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place. And they
cast lots for them and the lot fell on Matthias. And he was
numbered with the 11 apostles. Amen. You may be seated. riding down the highway out of
a town nearby to us, there’s a billboard. And on that billboard,
you’ll see the picture of a pastor and his wife. I can’t remember exactly what
all this billboard says, but there’s one thing that sticks
out in my mind. He refers to himself as an apostle. Well,
being the theological nerd that I am, I start running through
the disciple song, you know, Simon, Peter, Andrew, James,
his brother, John. And I get to thinking, no, his
name is not up there. We see in today’s culture, maybe
you scan the preaching television channels, people love to give
themselves titles. that the Bible does not give
to any man today in the church. We believe there are three offices,
the office of minister, elder, and deacon, but many give themselves
these self-proclaimed titles, and this one had named himself
apostle. Well, I talk out loud sometimes
in the car. I don’t have problems, I can
assure you. But I said to myself out loud, no, you’re not an apostle. That is over with. That was over
with in the New Testament. An apostle is someone sent by
God. Now, you might be saying, okay,
this person was sent by God. This person is an emissary, an
ambassador. They’re sent to negotiate peace
between God and his wrath man and his sin and to put to rest
or to peace those hostilities. Well, the ministry of the 11
apostles we see today needs to continue with Judas being replaced. And the question is, with whom
will they replace him? And I want you to notice as we
begin looking at this passage, there are three criteria given.
And it’s not just naming yourself an apostle. but they had to be
with Christ. Did you catch that in our passage?
With Christ from the beginning of his ministry, from John’s
baptism all the way to his ascension into heaven. The second criteria,
they had to be an eyewitness to the resurrection. With Christ
during those 40 days between his resurrection and his being
taken up to heaven. And then a third criteria. Third
criteria being Christ himself would commission them. So when
you ride down the interstate or you’re flipping through the
TV channels and you see all these folks who are self-proclaimed
apostles, were they eyewitnesses to the resurrection? Well, not
unless they’re really old. Were they with Jesus in the Galilean
ministry and in the ministry of Perea all the way to Jerusalem? Of course, they could not have
been. Were they commissioned by Christ
himself? No, they weren’t. But as we think of these criteria,
as we look at the life of the apostles, the life of the early
church in these 10 days between Jesus’ ascension and the coming
of the Holy Spirit, we see a little bit of the gathered disciples’
practice. We see a bit of what they do
until Pentecost. And while their era, while their,
while their, stretch of church life may look a little different
from ours, we can gather and glean a couple of things from
what we see in this passage for our benefit today. Now let me
stop and just mention something, maybe a little bit technical,
but something I think that will help you Everything in the Bible
that takes place doesn’t necessarily mean we should go and do that,
right? You know, the old lucky dip practice
of scripture. I’m going to flip the Bible and
I’m going to land my finger on a page and I’m going to do what
it says. Well, you don’t want to land
on, and Judas went out and hanged himself and say to yourself,
therefore go and do likewise. Everything in the Bible is not
prescriptive. Often it’s descriptive. It tells
you that something happened. But sometimes things in the Bible
are prescriptive. We should do it. There are some
things in the life and ministry of the apostles, the disciples
that should be taken into our practice. Another thing just
to think about is the apostolic age ended at the death of the
12 apostles. After that, Jesus sees fit to
rule his church through the three offices I mentioned, elders and
deacons and pastors. And we’re gonna see that unfold
throughout the book of the Acts. So everything we see in today’s
passage, we can’t say, oh, if we’re gonna be a true New Testament
church, we need to do X, Y, and Z. So think on those things. But what were the disciples doing
until Pentecost? And what were they doing until
Pentecost that we could benefit from in the life of the church
today? Well, the first thing we see is that they’re at Jerusalem.
They’re at Jerusalem as Jesus commanded them. Remember in the
book of Luke, as we came to the end of it a few weeks back, Jesus
said to his disciples, after my ascension, you go to Jerusalem
and you wait until the coming of the promise of the Father.
You wait till power comes from on high. In today’s church world,
we’re pretty entrepreneurial. I once served at a church where
any of our church problems weren’t necessarily solved by a prayer
meeting, and they weren’t really solved by looking to the scriptures.
No, we got out an Excel spreadsheet, and we figured our way through
it. It’s not a godly and biblical way, but couldn’t the disciples
have done that? They could have said, well, I’ve got an MBA from
Galilee. I’ve got a PhD from this place or that. They could
have gotten a head start. Hey, why waste 10 days? This
is 10 days. We could be telling the gospel.
But they’re at Jerusalem as Jesus commanded them. They’ve returned
to Jerusalem to the upper room. They’re going to wait 10 days.
Of course, they don’t know it’s 10 days, but they’re going to
wait 10 days till the coming of the Holy Spirit, they’re gonna
wait for Pentecost. And here’s an important lesson
for us. They’re at Jerusalem. They’re following the commands
of Jesus, but they’re waiting for power from on high. Oh, sure they could have gotten
a jumpstart, but would ministry without the spirit have yielded
the fruit that we will see in the book of Acts? Maybe you’ve
peeked ahead, you’ve gotten ahead in the book of Acts and you’ve
seen that one of the themes of the book of Acts is that the
word of God spreads. The word of God spreads from
the hearts and the minds and the lives and even the lips of
these at Jerusalem in this upper room. And it spreads from Jerusalem
to Judea, to Samaria, to the ends of the earth. But it only
does so by the power of the Holy Spirit. And so there’s something
we can learn from the disciples being at Jerusalem, obedient
to God’s command and waiting, waiting for God’s timing for
the work of his ministry, waiting on the Lord’s gift and his timing. We can MBA it, can’t we? We can
spreadsheet it. We can do all kinds of things
and say, Lord, the gospel won’t spread unless, well, we’re the
experts here. But we see a wonderful example
of the disciples, the apostles waiting and waiting on the Lord’s
gift and timing. There’s a second thing we see
in this passage. Not only are the disciples at Jerusalem, they
are at Jerusalem together. One of the things we notice in
the life of the church, we notice it through the grammar of the
Bible. It’s you, plural. When we read
the scriptures, we’re an individualistic culture, aren’t we? We love to
think that the Bible is talking about me, right? I can do all
things through Christ who strengthens me. We can win NBA games. We can put that on the back of
our soccer jersey and all the rest. No, that’s Paul saying
I can be content in suffering. I can be content in hardship.
I’m serving the Lord Jesus. We think it’s about me, but generally
when it’s not a singular you, it’s a plural you. It’s a y’all,
right? God is speaking to the church.
And so the church needs to think of itself as a gathered group
doing the work of the ministry. In fact, you think about the
basic words. of the church. It’s a compound word, the called
out ones, uh, the ones who have been called out of the world
together to serve almighty God. Uh, the church is the assembly. It’s the body. It’s the body
with many parts than arms and the legs and the feet and the,
the heads and the, uh, those with these gifts and those with
those gifts. And together we do the work of
the church. If you read through this passage
and you follow the pronouns, they, they returned, they went
to Jerusalem, they went to the upper room, they were staying
together. It’s another, it’s another interesting
phrase in this passage. They were in the upper room and
with one accord were devoted. Now our passage tells us there
were about 120. So there’s the 11 disciples,
the 12th Judas has taken his own life. Now there’s two Judas’s.
There’s Judas, the connected to James, the Judas, the greater. And then there’s Judas Iscariot,
the traitor. He’s dead and gone. But there’s
the 11. And then there’s the women, including
Mary, the mother of Jesus. But there are all kinds of disciples
who have remained faithful. And so we see the work of the
church begin with a faithful, devoted bunch. Our fellowship
hall can comfortably hold about 75 people. Once we get about
75 people over there, it gets a little crowded. This upper
room full of life, full of energy, full of waiting and watching
and praying and waiting on the Lord had 120 people in it. And can you imagine their togetherness,
their devotion? We’ll see in a few moments about
their praying and their scripture studies. But can you imagine
as they go out and as they come in, as they worship in Jerusalem,
as they wait on the Holy Spirit, their devotion, their togetherness,
their unity was quite the thing. We’ll see in a couple chapters
in chapter two, verse 42, the common theme of the church. They
gathered together, they broke bread and they prayed and they
sat under the apostles teaching. We’ve made church so complicated
in today’s culture. Churches, simply put, worshiping. It’s growing in the knowledge
of the scriptures and it’s being together for the Lord’s glory.
We’ve so complicated it today with all kinds of trappings and
all kinds of events and this and that, but their togetherness
was in the gospel. It was in the mission effort.
It was in praying that these things might be so. And so not
only are they at Jerusalem, They’re at Jerusalem together, and we
should learn from their being together about the importance
of us being together. Remember the book of Hebrews,
let us not forsake the assembling together as some are in the habit
of doing, but let us encourage each other all the more while
it is still today to gather together. So they’re at Jerusalem together.
Third thing, they’re praying. They’re at Jerusalem together
and they are praying. If any mission of Christ would
like to see success, it better be bathed in prayer. It doesn’t
matter our initiatives. It doesn’t matter our Excel spreadsheet
skills. It doesn’t matter. And you can
look at the plethora of Christian degrees across the American university
landscape, organizational leadership, missional advancement. You get
all these terms that aren’t even in the scriptures and maybe there’s
some help in them. But what about a degree in prayer? And your diploma is not something
that hangs on the wall, it’s your red knees. It’s your worn
out knees because you know that unless God does the work, your
initiatives will have no eternal and lasting fruit. You hear today
of the success of so many American churches on Thursday, I think
it was, out in the yard, had the earphones in, the podcast
on, and listened to two fellas who are, they would call themselves
recovering big evangelical pastors, and they said, we wore ourselves
out. We wore ourselves out not praying.
We wore ourselves out not ministering the word, but we wore ourselves
out creating new initiatives and designing new t-shirts for
the next big thing. And they wore themselves out
because they realized if they didn’t build it bigger and didn’t
build it bigger, bigger, build it bigger, better. I should be
able to say that because that’s the theme of our country, right?
Build it better. People would quit coming. And
that’s the struggle we face today. People want bigger. They want
better. They want faster. They want new and improved. And
what’s God’s tried and true way? Gather together. Pray. We’re going to see scripture
in a moment. and other things, but it’s really simple. But the
success of the church, the success of the mission of Jesus doesn’t
come through t-shirts and hype. It comes through sitting and
waiting and praying. And so think of the success of
our church. Do we want people to know the
gospel we so love? Yes, we do. Do we want our children
and grandchildren, our great-grandchildren to know of Christ? Of course
we do. Do we want our sanctuary repaired at some point? Yes,
we do. Do we want our missionaries to succeed in Wales or the mission
to the city through ministry to men and women in emergency
pregnancies? Do we want that to succeed? Of
course we do. Well, we need to pray. We need to pray for the
success of our worship, for the success of our disciple making,
our witnessing. We need to pray for these things.
So much to learn from these early church folks at Jerusalem together
and praying. There’s a fourth thing that they’re
doing. They’re searching the scriptures. They are down an
apostle. They’re down Judas, the traitor. And there’s an empty seat. Now, there’s 12 tribes of Israel. Jesus seems to want 12 apostles.
And so there’s an empty seat, an empty throne. There’s a lack
in the representation of God on the face of the earth. And
so verses 16 through 18 tell us of the issue. Verse 16 speaks. of Peter’s words, brothers, the
scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand
by the mouth of David concerning Judas. He became a guide to those
who arrested Jesus. He was numbered among us. He
was allotted his share in the ministry. Now this man bought
a field with the reward of his wickedness and falling headlong,
he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out. It
became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judea so that
the field in their own language was called the field of blood.
Then there’s mention of two Psalms, may his camp become desolate.
Let there be no one to dwell in it. And then let another take
his office.” They were searching the scriptures. They were searching
the Old Testament. Lord, what do we do? This seat
is empty, this throne unfilled, and we need a 12th apostle, another
emissary, another sent one to bear witness to the watching
world of the resurrection and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. Where do we go for answers in
the church? Do we go to our spreadsheets? Do we go to our wisdom of the
world? Do we go to the experts and the gurus? No, we sit down
and we open our Bibles and we learn of what God means to do
to provide for his church. Now, we won’t ever be searching
for an apostle in our congregation, but we will be searching at times
for a minister. We may be searching at times
for elders and deacons. We may need a spiritual gift
need to fill a space in Sunday school or in some way, shape
or form. But where do we go for these answers? We go to the Bible. We look to Timothy for the character
traits of an elder or deacon. We look to the scriptures for
God to give us provision for the holes and the empty spots
that God might in his providence bring before us. And so the people
of God were at Jerusalem together praying and searching the scriptures.
You begin to see a pattern here that’s healthy for the life of
the church. Well, there’s a last thing that
these do. They’re searching, I’m sorry,
selecting. They’re going to select someone
to fill the seat of Judas. And so they’re at Jerusalem together
praying, searching the scriptures, and now they will select. another
apostle. I was trying to think through
all the different things I’ve seen in my lifetime when it comes
down to selecting elders and deacons. And I can tell you when
I got out of seminary and was loaded for bear, you know, got
the Bible in your hands, you know, they taught you church
government and all the thing. I said at my first elder meeting
in about October of 2003, And we were going to mention
folks who ought to maybe be considered for elder or deacon in the church.
And I swear to you, it’s true. This really happened. The first
thing I heard out of the mouth of one of the fellow elders was
let’s make so-and-so an elder. We haven’t seen him in church
in a while and maybe if we make him an elder, he’ll start coming
back. And I just put my head in my hands and said, oh Lord,
where have I come and what is this that I am hearing? We might
as well replace Judas with somebody whose name will not mess up the
disciples rhyme song. You know, there were 12 disciples,
doo, doo, doo, doo, doo. You know, and then we sing about
Simon, Peter, Andrew, James, his brother, John. I don’t even
know what rhymes with Judas and Matthias really doesn’t. It’s
got an extra syllable in there, but can’t you just hear the American
church saying, well, we don’t want to mess up the rhyme. Or
we need somebody influential. We need somebody popular. You
know, we need somebody in the church of stature who when people,
he comes into the room, people stand, they admire him. No, they
give the criteria. Those who were with us along
the ministry of Jesus, from the baptism of Judas all the way
all the way to his resurrection. Those who were eyewitnesses of
the resurrection would be good candidates. And even those who
would commission Christ. And so they search the scriptures,
they pray. They come up with two names.
They come up with these names. And then what do they do? They
go back to prayer. Oh Lord. And can’t you hear the story
of David being selected king here? Lord, you know the hearts
of men. You see inside, we see outside. We worry about their name, not
messing up the disciples song and the rhyme. We worry about
is it a doctor or a lawyer or someone of stature in the community,
someone people, but Lord, you see the hearts. And it’s interesting,
they cast lots. Now, remember in the Old Testament,
the priest wore in his vestments, the Urim and the Thumen, and
it was a way to decide, to determine God’s will. That’s all that’s
taking place here. This isn’t anything hokey or
funny, but they cast the lots and God says, it’s Matthias. It’s he whose heart I see. It’s
he whose ministry we want. And so the selection has been
made. And so the disciples at Jerusalem,
at Jerusalem together praying and searching the scriptures
and selecting those that will serve the word of God as witnesses
to the resurrection, their life, their efforts are before us. A couple of things for us to
think about just for our edification. How often are we at Jerusalem?
Well, at the church. How often are we at Jerusalem
together? How often are we at Jerusalem
together praying and searching the scriptures and receiving
God’s provision? You know, if there’s some gaps
in your answers, we should probably be here together more together,
praying more together, searching the scriptures more. This was
the pattern of the early church, and this is the continuing pattern
today. So let me encourage you when
the church gathers, when the elders gather the congregation,
come, show up early, stay late, be engaged in the life of the
church, be a praying person. We pray on Sunday nights. What
a wonderful, sweet time that is to pray for the success of
our mission, but also for those in need. But we search the scriptures
together. We are in the book of Acts. We’re
in Daniel. We’re in Genesis. We’re in Romans
eight during the Sunday school hour. This is a rich, a rich
buffet of God’s word. And so let me encourage you.
Take example from these early church folks together, praying
together, searching and together seeking God’s provision. Pray
with me. Our Lord, we thank you that you
have not left yourself without witness in the world, but you
have raised up your church to be a light to the world, to speak
of the goodness of God in Christ for salvation. We pray that you
would bless us and encourage us in our Christian living and
our Christian witness. We pray all this in the name
of Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior. It’s in his name we say,
amen. We want to prepare for the Lord’s
supper by turning to number 197, Come Take by Faith the Body of
the Lord, and we will stand to sing. Come take by faith the body of
the Lord. ♪ And drink the blood of Christ
for us outpoured ♪ ♪ Praise and confess the wonders of his grace
♪ ♪ To rescue us he sent his Son to save us ♪