So, we are continuing in the book of Acts. We are still in the first chapter of Acts today. We'll finish that up. So, our scripture reading today is taken from Acts chapter 1, beginning in verse 9, which is on page 1080, if you're using the Black Bibles that are provided for you. So, if you are able, I invite you to stand for the reading of God's Word. beginning in Acts 1 verse 9. And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes and said, Men of Galilee, Why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven. Then they returned to Jerusalem from the Mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day's journey away. 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. 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 to those who arrested Jesus. For he was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry. Now this man acquired 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, Akeldama, that is 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 the resurrection. And they put forward two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also called Justice, and Matthias. And they prayed and said, You, Lord, who know 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 disciples, apostles. The grass withers, the flowers fade, and yet the word of the Lord remains forever. You may be seated. Waiting is hard. If we were a more, if we'd trained our children in more Baptistic worship services, I assume that I could have gotten a hearty amen from the children. Waiting is hard, but isn't that sort of the, that's the lie adults tell you, kids, though, as though waiting is only hard for children. But adults are probably worse at waiting than children. It's easier to do something than to wait. It's hard to wait for growth, whether it's in ourselves or in someone we love. It's hard to wait for trials to pass, again, whether our own trials or the trials of a loved one. It's hard to wait for that to come to an end. It's hard to wait for good news, but then it's hard to wait for bad news. Probably now I know that many of you will be sending me this email this week, but the email or parting words that every pastor dreads to hear are, can we have lunch? Because every pastor knows that if this were a good lunch, you would at least give warning. Hey, I want to share with you some exciting things. Could we have lunch today? But that foreboding, empty, do you have some time this week? Could we have lunch? There are only so many things that can mean. And the waiting. Yes, how about today? No, I'm better. I'm good Thursday. I have four days to consider what this lunch is about. But, you know, whether it's good news or bad news, we we struggle to wait. And we put it on children, the whole idea like it's hard to wait for a gift. But it's hard for us to wait for gifts also. I think adults struggle with waiting at Christmas time or at birthday times almost as much as children do. Especially if it's a gift that's been promised. I mean here, some of the last things Jesus said to his disciples were, wait. Go to Jerusalem and wait. for the promised gift of the Holy Spirit. Go, wait, there is a promised gift coming your way. And so what does it look like to wait? What does it look like, what does this pre-Pentecostal church look like? And so the first thing we see is sort of on the negative side, what we often fall into when we're waiting. And then second, some positive, like some actual actions. Because in Christianity, the waiting is not so much an inactivity as it's a call to sort of specific activities in order to wait well. How do we wait well? sort of gives us, do you ever wonder, like, those first couple of verses, or at least the last verses of the ascension? You know, Jesus is caught up, he's hidden by clouds, the Shekinah glory of God covers Jesus as he heads off to heaven. And the disciples, I mean, they're just sort of natural. A dude leaves the earth and continues to ascend, and your sight is naturally drawn to that. And they're looking up. And isn't it strange, the angels, how they interact with the disciples? Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven. Do you ever feel like the angels just don't get us? Like they're unnecessarily harsh? You know, the angel shows up with Zechariah and tells him, hey, you who are super old and your wife is advanced in years, you're gonna have a baby. And he says, what? How am I going to know that's going to happen? And the angel's response is like, I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God. I just said it was going to happen. That's how you know it's going to happen. You know what? Shut your trap. You're not going to talk till your baby comes. I do not understand these people. Or here, they're just, they're naturally, their Savior, their Redeemer, their friend, their Lord has ascended to heaven. Like they've barely moved on from it and suddenly two angels are there chastising them. Why are you looking at heaven? Why are you gazing into the skies? Did you not see what just? But what's going on here? What is, if it's not a full chastisement for them, maybe it's a warning. Maybe it's a warning for you and me. Because what they say is, you don't need to stare at the heavens. Jesus is coming back exactly the same way as He left. You know, when you're younger and you're waiting for your dad or your mom to come home, you know, you stand there at the window, staring out the window. I remember I used to, as a child, I used to walk, this is back when you were allowed to leave your home, I would walk to the corner of the street and wait for my dad's bus, for the bus to bring my dad from downtown Cleveland. And it was always amusing the times that he would fall asleep on the bus, because I would watch his bus come and go. And then I'd know to turn and walk past my house the other way, and he would eventually be dropped off much farther away, but at the other end of the street. And I knew that I would see him there. But my mom never went to wait for him at the bus stop. And you might say, well, it's because she had other things to do. It's also because she was mature enough to know he was coming. You know, children and dogs don't really know that. Like, the master of the house leaves, the dog's like, that's it, I'll never see him again. And then he comes back, he's like, I can't believe you're back! So in one sense, there's this reminder like, hey, he said he's coming back. You don't have to gaze into heaven. You can trust him. I think by now he has proven if he has said it, he's going to do it. You know, there's a couple ways that we still sort of stargaze or heaven gaze. You know, we just went through the book of Daniel. And we can gaze into heaven with all our charts and predictions of, well, when's he coming back? Oh, this is a perfect time. Oh, this, look, everything is lining up. The stars, the wars, the fires, the earthquakes, everything is coming together. I think it's going to be next Tuesday. And we gaze into heaven, longing to figure out when, even when Jesus is, some of Jesus's last instructions is, it's not for you to know. If the very apostles are given the warning, it's not for you to know, how much more so you and I, it's not for you to know. He said he's coming back. You can trust him. Stop staring into heaven. I think another way, though, that we sometimes heaven gaze is when, and maybe this is more of the struggle for some of us here than finding the right dates, but just kind of bouncing from teaching to teaching, you know, looking for, you know, downloading more and more podcasts and sermons and getting more and more stuff and more and more information and more and more. And like, just, I just want to be filled and I just want to be filled. And we go from conference to conference or retreat to retreat. And we just, oh, I just, I just want to be filled. And that filling never overflows to anyone else. there's never actually an impact on how I'm living in between those fillings. And so we can heaven gaze just by thinking, oh, oh, I just want to be closer to Jesus. And Jesus says, well, the power I'm giving you is to be my witnesses. to your loved ones, to your neighbors, to your communities, to the world. This isn't just a power so that you and I can have a nice close one-on-one, but so that you would actually love others. And so sometimes we can heaven gaze and forget that the whole point was that we would be empowered to love other people. So what are some positive ways that they wait? They apparently received the information, or at least the chastisement, from the angels. Jesus had told them to wait in Galilee. They were on Mount Olivet, or the Mount of Olives. It's just a historical, geographical commentary. He's not saying that it was the Sabbath. He's just giving a length of space. It was about a Sabbath's journey, a Sabbath day's journey, which was about About a half a mile, 2,000 feet. Here in this, we're given one of the first of many pictures of sort of, here's the church as it stands right now. And we'll see this, like Luke uses this kind of language at different times to sort of summarize and move to the next phase of the church. And he'll say, he'll give like, so here's the numbers of people that were coming. Here's how the church was acting and interacting. And so then it kind of closes that section and moves on to the next section. So here, even before Pentecost, there's this kind of summary statement. First, a statement of who's here. The 11 of the 12 disciples are still here. The women who had followed Jesus. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is here. If you remember from the crucifixion, Jesus looked at John, one of his disciples, and asked him to care for Mary, his mother. He says, your mother, behold your son, and he entrusts his mother to the care of John, one of the apostles. But isn't it interesting, he says his brothers are there also. Now in Greek, here's a little bit of unnecessary information. In Greek, brothers can mean brothers and sisters, because it's like masculine. If it's everyone, you still use the masculine, and it just saves time and space. It's like saying mankind instead of personkind. So mankind, it doesn't mean that we're just talking about all the men of the earth. It means we're talking about everybody. So brothers, in context, sometimes means brothers and sisters. Now we know in Mark that Jesus also had sisters, so it's quite possible that this is one of those places where it means brothers and sisters. But regardless, it's Jesus's family, which, by the way, here's a fun, hopefully encouraging aside for you. Jesus's brothers, by the time of Jesus's ascension, believed in him. And if you aren't aware, there was a time when Jesus's brothers thought he was insane. There was a time when they were trying to quiet him. They were trying to bring him home, get him to quit saying these crazy things. And how incredible that when Paul is talking about the gospel and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we know that Jesus intentionally came and revealed himself to Peter specifically, Peter who had denied him. And so it's just this beautiful picture that the resurrected Jesus would come to Peter and say, yes, I know you did, that's why I died, to save you from yourself and your sin. But then Paul says also, and then to James, his brother, that'd be a, I mean, sibling rivalries are always, my brother joined Mensa once, and I know he's super smart. I know you gotta be super smart. Mensa's that kind of genius group. You gotta pay to be in it, so how genius is that? Could you imagine? Like James, this dude's nuts. And now dead. And why didn't he just listen to us? And Jesus appears to him. He's like, hey, I'm not crazy. By the way, again, the only choices Jesus is God or crazy. He's not just a good man with some nice teachings that we could all get along with. Because he said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. He said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. He says, before Abraham was, I am. It's not a good person who claims to be God. It is either a lunatic, or a deceiver, or God. And so James, being given the gift of seeing the resurrected Jesus, and how quickly then they all realized, like the whole family is there with the disciples and the women who had followed. And it says, and so they're waiting, they're all together. There's about 120 of them and they're together in this room and they're waiting. And what do they do while they're waiting? They're not just sitting around like, well, does anyone know what it's gonna look like when the Holy Spirit comes? Is he gonna look like Jesus? What do they do? It says they were devoted to prayer. with one accord they were devoting themselves to prayer." It's interesting, you could do an Old Testament study of how many times in the Old Testament waiting and praying go together. That there is work involved in waiting, even in waiting for God's promises. And that work is prayer. We talk about prayer. In language of last resorts. And resignation. Don't we? Well, I guess I can pray. Well, at least I can pray. Well, I suppose we can just pray. Just pray. So think about for a moment the idea of just praying or at least I can pray. The creator and sustainer of the universe. The one who holds everything together by the word of his power. invites you to intercede on each other's behalf. invites you to join His Son. We talked about last week how Jesus is the ascended high priest. He has ascended to heaven and is interceding for us. In Romans 8, we're told that Jesus is constantly praying for you and for me. And you and I are invited to join Jesus in praying to the Father who delights to answer His Son's prayers. And we would say that that's just praying? This is not a statement about like how, you know, if you prayed with more faith, God would do the things you want. But if we prayed with more faith, maybe we would want the things God does. I'm not saying that we're always going to understand what God is doing, or that we can misapply some of his promises. But God invites us to even throw His promises in His face in prayer. I mean, what do we think the apostles and the 120 were praying for? We don't know, but I assume part of that prayer would be that God keep His promise, that He would pour out His Spirit. They were praying for the Holy Spirit to come. Are you waiting for deliverance from a besetting sin? A sin you just can't get a grip on? Pray. Pray for that deliverance. Are you waiting for a loved one to return home? Or more importantly, just come back to Jesus. Pray. Pray. God, you said... Amy and I have prayed that. God, you said... You said you would be God to me and my children. So do something. Are you waiting for the darkness to lift and joy to return with the morning? Pray. Pray. Pray. Waiting is praying. Praying is waiting. My prayer every January for Hope of Christ is that we would be a house of prayer. That we would be a people that when folks looked at us, they would say they are a people of one accord devoted to prayer. Because we know that the one that we pray to is devoted to us. All of the things, all of the desires, all of the plans we have for the next year and the next five years. to just give them over to God in prayer constantly. God, don't let us attempt to do anything that wouldn't just automatically bring you glory. That you wouldn't look at this ragamuffin collection and say, well, clearly they didn't do it on their own. God must have been involved. We pray. and we work. And I hesitate to separate praying and working because there's that lie or that false teaching of, you know, we pray as if God's listening and then we get to work as if He's not. And so yes, pray as though God's listening and he answers prayer, but then eventually you gotta do something as if God doesn't work and isn't listening and isn't paying attention. And that's a ludicrous, this is a false understanding of what obedience in both prayer and in action looks like. Prayer is never in the place of obedience, and obedience never undermines prayer. What is the work that they get to here in the end of this chapter in verses 15 to 26? Well, there's, first of all, the work of understanding Scripture. It's not explicit, but implicitly we see that Peter is already doing the work of understanding how the Old Testament pointed to and was fulfilled in the life of Christ, including the crucifixion and betrayal of the life of Christ. So there's work of understanding Scripture. There's the work of defending the faith and bearing witness to Christ. This is the fourth time that the disciples are listed by name, three of them in three of the Gospels, and then again here in Luke, and it's intentionally done for a fourth time so that you notice that the 12 disciples are missing one. Judas Iscariot is not numbered among them, and certainly, of course, he's dead, but there's more to it than just that he is dead. Because the reality is, if you had seen Judas among the 12 during the three years of Jesus' ministry, you would not have tsk-tsked, You would not have said, oh, there goes Judas. You would have seen one of 12 followers of Jesus Christ, one of 12 ministers, one of 12 who were called apostles. You would not have predicted that he would fall so far from Christ and from grace. Some people wonder, like, did Peter jump the gun in bringing Matthias on as an apostle? After all, it's 12, the number is 12, even it recognizes we need to get it back to 12. That's why the meditation verse, because Jesus had told them, listen, you 12 are going to sit on 12 thrones and rule the 12 tribes of Israel one day. And so they recognize, well, 12 is an important number. We should probably replace Judas. But then, maybe if they'd waited for the Holy Spirit, and nine chapters later, they would find that there was already a plan to replace Judas with Paul. And so some people look at this and say, see, this is what happens when you try to work before the Holy Spirit shows up. You do stupid things. I just don't think that's true. There's nothing in here that indicates they were heading off the reservation. There's one sense in which we're told that the life and death of Judas was known to every inhabitant of Jerusalem. In one sense, there's the need to replace Judas because Judas himself was a smear on their testimony of Jesus Christ. Are you kidding me? I hear one of the 12 followers is the one that turned him over. How much can we even follow this guy if one of his own betrayed him? And so there would be a need for someone else to replace, to come in and fill the place that Judas filled as a witness of Jesus Christ. Do you ever notice how much people, even inside the church, how much we gravitate towards stories of failure in church leadership? We love, I mean, maybe we love to hate them, but we sure love to read about them or hear about them. Whether it's, you know, whether it's YouTube videos or entire seasons of podcasts or just the stories, even, you know, whether they're stories in the newspapers or stories in Christian publications. And I was thinking today about how there aren't enough stories about, hey, another pastor faithfully shepherded his flock this week. Hey, another group of elders were faithful and loving the flock that has been entrusted to their care this week. Hey, we're going to spotlight this deacon in Christianity today. We're going to have a two-part on how boring it is that he just does his job and work faithfully and serves sacrificially. It is heartbreaking. that Judas walked away from Christ. But here are some that thought Jesus was insane, and here they are of one accord, devoted to prayer together. Here's one who denied he knew Jesus, still leading. God's people shepherding the flock, caring for the little lambs. Every failing, every falling should serve as a warning, certainly, if not to all of us at least, to those who would lead God's people. It's in us all. I know missionary agencies that, as they're encouraging their missionaries before they come on the field to raise all of the support needed for their three-year time, one of the reasons they give, or one particular missionary agency, is everyone will steal given the right incentive. It is in us all. So part of the devotion to prayer could also have been devotion to prayer for one another. It's in us. This isn't just Judas. This isn't just God's, God ordained for Judas to do this, but Judas did this and the things God ordained came about and it's in us all. Because remember, Peter is speaking of this, and Peter himself denied Jesus. The difference between Judas and Peter's denial, the difference between their betrayal is what they did when confronted with the wickedness of their actions. Judas first tried to undo it by his own power, and then unable to undo it, sought to pay for it with his own life. Peter knew there was nothing he could do to undo it. When the resurrected Jesus shows up on the shores of Lake, the Sea of Galilee, he jumps into the water and rushes to the side of Jesus, knowing that in my sin, there's no safer place to be than beside my risen Savior. With you there is forgiveness, so that you may be feared. The apostles, the disciples, they choose one. They have some qualifications to put out for him. He simply has to be a witness of Jesus Christ. If he's going to bear witness, he has to be a witness. He has to have been with us throughout this time, from the baptism of Jesus through his death and ascension. Because the whole point is that he's going to be a witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ and why it matters. By the way, this helps us understand Not that we have time for freebies, but here it is. This helps us understand why we don't call people apostles at Hope of Christ or in the Presbyterian Church. Because there's a very specific qualification that is listed here. Judas is replaced because of the need for the 12, and there is a need for them to be witnesses, actual eyewitnesses of Jesus Christ. That's why Paul refers to himself as one abnormally born. He's not talking about his mom. He's talking about when he became an apostle. It was because Jesus appeared to him in resurrected form. to him who was not an eyewitness during Jesus's earthly ministry. So he calls himself an apostle, but abnormally born. And we see that the apostles seeing it important to replace Judas before the work begins, but you will notice when James not the brother of Jesus, but when James the apostle, the brother of John, is martyred later in Acts, this process is not repeated. There isn't a sense of, we need to replace all of the apostles as they die with the next group of apostles. There is simply a, the apostles, the apostolic work is foundational work that now is built on by the next generations of leaders who will be called elders and pastors and bishops and deacons, but not apostles. The apostles had a very specific intentional ministry. And so they find two that qualify. And they cast lots. They flipped a coin. They drew straws. They rolled the dice. Now that's a little misleading because I skipped where it says, first they prayed. It's not that they were like, eh, doesn't matter. Who's got a coin? Let's just, let's figure this out. No, they said, clearly these two, at least by our abilities, Lord, these two are both qualified. So you show us whom you have chosen. You know, in Proverbs it says, the lot is cast in the lap, but the decision is the Lord's. If God is sovereign over great, massive movements of stars and galaxies and planets, He's also sovereign over which side a coin lands on. Now, before you say, all right, we got an easy way to elect elders and deacons and set budgets, It's the last time in the Bible casting lots is used. Never happens again, right here in Acts 1. Never happens again. They don't use it when looking for folks who will serve the church and free up the apostles to preach the word. They don't use it when, like Paul doesn't say, you know, cast lots for elders to Timothy or to Titus. But they do it here. after praying. So just some quick things about this passage. Some of these are just warnings for all of us. It's often assumed that the, and we probably, maybe as leaders we make it seem like this and I apologize. It's often assumed that the greatest threat to the church is apathetic, just immature Christians. The reality is the greatest threat to the church are leaders who would walk away, or leaders who would fall away. An apostate pastor an ungodly elder will do far more and far more lasting damage to a church and her reputation than any immature believer who's simply trying to find a place to be fed. Are you praying For your pastor and elders and deacons. And not just praying that they do things that you like, but praying that they would be protected from Satan. Second, and this probably seems like a no-brainer, but true faithful leaders don't just respond outwardly to a call, but must respond inwardly. Judas responded outwardly to a call to follow Christ, but he did not respond with his heart to the obedience that it takes to follow Christ. Three, we often look for skills and giftedness and techniques to determine whether a leader is worth following. In one sense, Judas was good with numbers. He was trusted as their treasurer, and they had a tax collector. So Judas must have shown himself to be better with numbers than Matthew the tax collector. But skills and even outcomes aren't a measure of spirituality. Like, I don't really want to admit this to you, but being a gifted talker is not the same thing as being spiritually mature. Just because I can talk good, well, that doesn't mean that my heart is in a good space with God right now. Too often we look for skills and techniques were results. One of the men who preached at Presbytery last Saturday, he put it this way, you know, we focus often on the three B's, bodies, budgets, and buildings. How many, how much, and how big. Pastors will boil it down to nickels and noses. Is that the measure of how our church is? Or is the measure measured by each individual heart and soul? Where are we in turning back to Christ individually, corporately? Another thing that we see in this is that the communal work of the kingdom cannot be overemphasized. And it's not just the work of the elected leaders, or even the appointed leaders. Yes, the eleven were of one accord and devoted to prayer, along with the women who had also followed Jesus, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and the brothers who had so recently called him insane. All of them were of one accord and praying together. The work of the church is not the work of its leaders, but it's the work of all of us together. And the work, whether appointed or ordained, whether elected or someone flipped a coin for you, or you're simply here among God's people, the work is the same for all of us. to bear witness to the work of Jesus Christ. The resurrected Jesus Christ has saved me from my sin, has washed me. I am a child of God because of what Christ, the Son of God, has done. We bear witness, or as that one old pastor used to put it, it is simply, we are a gathering of one beggar telling another beggar where we found bread. and pointing each other to our need for Christ and the offering of Christ. May we be a people of one accord devoted to prayer and witnesses of the resurrected Jesus Christ. Let's pray.