If you've been worshiping with us over the past couple of weeks
or so, you know that we are working our way through the book
of Acts. We're right at the very front
end of it. In the last few minutes, last
scene that we saw, the disciples were clumped together on the
Mount of Olives, staring up into heaven as they watched Jesus
ascend into heaven. And as they watched them go,
they had the command of the Lord in their minds.
Wait in Jerusalem until you receive the power of the Holy
Spirit, and then be my witnesses in Judea, Samaria, to the ends
of the earth. Wait in Jerusalem.
What does that wait look like? re/max chapter 1, verses 12 and
following. And then the disciples returned
to Jerusalem from the mountain 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 Alpheus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas the son of
James. All these with 1 accord were
devoting themselves to prayer together with the women and Mary
the mother of Jesus and his brothers.
Lord, we ask that you would bless us as we seek to
understand these words and to be moved and changed by them.
Make it so. Lord Jesus, we pray this evening
in your Son's name we ask, Amen. Please be seated and if you
would grab your Bibles, turn to Acts chapter 1 continuing on in
verse 15. In those days, Peter stood up
among the brothers. The company of persons was in
all about 120. And he said, Brothers, the
Scriptures 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 Judas 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 a keldama, which is the field of blood.
Peter continued. For it is written in the book of
the Psalms. May as camp become desolate, and
let no one dwell in it, and let another take his place.
So one of the men who have accompanied us during all this
time, that Jesus, 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 come with
us as a witness to His resurrection.
And they put forward 2 Joseph called Burr Sabbath, who was
also called Justice, and Matthias.
And they prayed, and they said, Lord, you, Lord, who know the
hearts of all, show 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.
And this is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God, the grass Withers and the flowers fade,
but the word of our Lord it stands forever.
Thank you for joining us this evening again, as always, it is
a joy for us to be able to worship together the Lord Jesus
whenever we are called to do so. But it's particularly
appropriate here. When we are faced with some
concern over the next couple of days is a great opportunity for
us to gather like this is God's people.
My grandparents were from the old country and they never
stopped wanting to talk about the old country.
Whenever we get together as kids, that the subject would
always come up and they would talk for on ad nauseam about the
old country. And as a young kid, I was bored
silly. It would really bug me that
every time we get together, I'd hear about these dead people
that I'd never seen in these places over across the seas that
I'd have no contact with. And it was just something there.
I was always like, can we get past this so we can get on to
the fun part of the day? But my my folks would slightly
indulge my grandpa parents who would go on these memory tours
of what it was like in the olden days.
Once I became a Christian, I remembered some of those
moments. And one of the things that I
remembered about them was that my have a great, great, great
uncle somewhere that was a priest back in the old country.
And I on the one side and on the other side, I have a great,
great great grandfather or whatever there was a preacher
on. And suddenly those stories
became much more meaningful to me.
Of course, it was after my grandparents had passed.
And so I wasn't able to keep track of learn a whole lot about
those things. But it was intriguing that once
I had a personal connection to all those stories, once I once
those stories were meaningful in my own life, suddenly I was very
interested. The book of Acts is filled with
great stories, is going to be something that largely
captivates us because there are stories and they're moving
stories. They're powerful stories of the
work of the Lord and the work of the Holy Spirit in his Kingdom.
It's a great story book just to read, but it's also possible
that you could read it and be slightly bored because you're
reading about someone else's history.
We're not. When we look at the book of
Acts, we are reading about our history specifically.
We are under the exact same call, the exact same command
that the Lord put upon the disciples when He had gathered
them together before His ascension, when He put them
together. And He said, wait for the power
of the Holy Spirit, and then you will be my witnesses in Judea
and in Jerusalem, in Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the
earth. That command is given not just
to the disciples, not to the original 12, but to all those
who claim the name of Jesus Christ.
Now, this is going to be important because otherwise, as
we do work our way through the book of Acts, you're hearing
somebody else's story. I don't think that's the case.
I believe that it is the case that that command that we are to
in the power of the Holy Spirit, witness to the resurrection of
the Lord Jesus Christ in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and
to the ends of the earth. I believe that that remains the
responsibility of every single Christian here.
Now we go about that calling differently.
Not everybody here is called to be a pastor.
Not everybody here is called to be in youth ministry.
Not everybody is called to work in the blessing board.
Not everybody is called to witness to the person across the
street, but all of us in one way or another, live underneath that
calling of through the power of the Holy Spirit, witnessing to
the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ in Jerusalem,
Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
We all have that. That responsibility is bearing
upon each and every one of us. If you're a follower of Lord
Jesus, Jesus Christ, and that's not clear to you at this point,
please look again at the Scriptures, read the word, talk
to somebody. Of course, if you talked with
me, I'm going to encourage you exactly in that area.
But the idea, the perversion, the satanic perversion, that
it's somebody else's job and not mine, that God has called me to
himself simply to save me, not to give me a task, not to give
me a responsibility, is something that we cannot fall
victim to. We must recognize that it is Our
Calling, our job to as effectively and as passionately
as it laid upon the disciples. It is our call to, in the power
of the Spirit, witness to Jesus Christ, be his witnesses in
Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
That is our call. And so this is our story.
And so it behooves us than to know what the disciples did
after receiving that call, if that's everybody's call.
In other words, my, my understanding is that every
Christian in this room has some kind of a specific calling from
the Lord to do the ministry that he has called forth.
Yes, the great blessing of our salvation is that we have been
redeemed from our sins and we are in relationship with the
Lord Jesus Christ for all eternity.
Nobody can take that away. That is the greatest blessing,
of course, of the of the cross and the work of the cross on our
behalf. It is glorious above all else.
And we can talk about that, and we should talk about that, but
running parallel, tied to that in an inescapable bond is a
responsibility that everyone of us has to be ministers, to be
servants in this world. It is not simply our faith to
simply to take it in and to benefit from it.
It is also our faith to give into the world, into God's
Kingdom, that which he has given to us.
Each of us, everyone of you have the responsibility now.
Mine is easy to see. I'm a pastor.
I'm called to be a pastor. I'm called to do this kind of
work. It's easy to say, well, Henry,
you've got a clear calling. I'm a housewife or I'm a
secretary, or I'm a janitor, or I'm an engineer or I'm in the
medical field. Every person, every person who's
a follower of Jesus Christ is under that same restriction to,
in the power of the Holy Spirit, witness to the coming of Jesus
Christ. And so I think it helps us then
to explore exactly what it is that waiting on the Lord looks
like. Because for many of you, you're
going to know what your ministry is.
Some of you have been working in a certain area of ministry for a
long period of time. You're going to know what your
service is. You're going to know how God has
gifted you. God's gifted me to work with
kids. God has gifted me to work in a
humanitarian ministry. God's worked with me to pray for
and to pay for missionaries throughout the world.
Some of you are going to know your ministry.
I still think this passage of Scripture can speak to you as
you are awaiting the fulfillment of God's work in your life.
But for a whole lot of people, they know that they're called to
the Lord and they hear, they know that God, the service in
God's Kingdom, is upon all of us.
And yet the unsteadiness. While I'm new to the church or
I'm new to the faith or I'm young, I'm too young or or my
days of service have gone past. That's never the case for any of
us. So what does it look like that
the disciples waited on the Lord.
They OK remember the the story. If you're if you missed the 1st
11 verses of the chapter, go back at some point and read
them. Jesus has gathered his disciples
together at Mount, at the Mount of Olives, and he said to them,
listen, you're supposed to wait in Jerusalem until the power of
the Holy Spirit comes upon you. When the power of the Holy
Spirit comes upon you, you're to be my witnesses in Jerusalem,
Judea, Samarian to the ends of the earth, the concentric
sayings sprouting out until you include the whole world.
OK. That's the responsibility that's
given to the disciples. Then they see the ascension,
which is the Lord rising up to assume the authority over all
the world whereby he can make these commands and express his
desire for his people. And so then the disciples go
back. This is in verse 12, then of our
texts. Then disciples return to
Jerusalem from the mount, call, all of it, which is near
Jerusalem about a Sabbath day's journey away.
Sabbath day is about 1/2 of a mile or so.
So they're outside of Jerusalem about a Sabbath day.
They go to the to the upper room and they wait.
Now what does waiting look like? The reason why this has captured
my attention is that I know, I know that there's passion here
because I know that it's passion sent by the Lord himself.
There's passion to be faithful to his calling.
There's passion for everyone who who's a Christian here to do
something, service in his Kingdom.
That's what he redeemed us for. That's what he made us for.
It comes hand in glove with our salvation.
And so I know that there's a passion, a desire to serve, and
yet some people are just waiting.
And that's good as long as we're waiting the way the disciples
waited. How did the disciples wait?
Well, let's look at this passage in particular.
Let's look at a parallel text, which is where Luke also records
the ascension and the Gospel of Luke at the very end, he records
the ascension by saying this. While Jesus was blessing them,
he parted from them and was carried up into heaven and they
worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, where
they continually were in the temple blessing God.
OK, so they're supposed to wait for the power of the Holy
Spirit? What does that mean?
They just kind of camped out on their lazy boy chairs and waited
around saying OK come on Holy Spirit, get going.
That's not at all the picture. What's the picture?
The picture here is that they are praising God.
They gather together to praise the Lord.
In other words, worship is what they occupy their time with
between. When the Lord says to them wait
in Jerusalem for the power of Holy Spirit, what do the
disciples do? They wait.
But waiting is not this passive. We're just not going to do
anything. They are active in their worship
of the Lord, the praising the Lord.
Now, that's easy for us to imagine.
I mean, they just saw the guy resurrected from the dead and
raised up into heaven. They're told that he's going to
come again in the same power. They're told that they're going
to have the power of the Holy Spirit and be able to witness to
his life of death and resurrection.
Of course they're worshiping God.
That's an easy thing to say. But notice where they're
worshiping God. They worship the Lord in his
temple. In other words, they gathered
together with the people of God to worship.
I can't tell you how frustrating it is to me to run into
Christians that believe that they have a calling, a ministry
from God, believe that they are serving the Lord in some fashion
or another, and they are disconnected from the people of
God. I can't tell you how frustrating
that is because it runs completely counter to the whole
Scriptures, which detail for us that the people of God is where
the Lord is working. It is through whom the Lord is
working. Of course we are to work with
those who are outside the community.
Of course we're supposed to work outside the walls of this
church, but we're supposed to do so as a body, as a community.
The disciples come and they are waiting for the Lord.
How do they wait for the Lord? They wait for the Lord by
worshipping Him with God's people.
If you're looking for where the Lord is calling you to serve, if
you're saying, look, I know that I should be serving somewhere
and given my age or given my, my physical abilities or given my
interests or something, I don't know where that's going to be.
Be with the people of God, Worship him and be with the
people of God. It is impossible, impossible for
us to hear the voice of the Lord, for the hear the calling
of the Lord unless we are with the people of God.
That's simply the way the Lord has played, has designed his
redemption for us to work together like this, in this
fashion. So the first thing that we see
here is that the disciples while they're waiting, what does
waiting look like? It's not passive.
That's the point of all of this, the waiting while we are being
empowered by the Spirit into acts of service.
And I suspect that all of us, no matter what your job is, no
matter what you how invested you are in ministry of this church
or in the ministries that are happening around this this
neighborhood, no matter how invested you are, all of us can
learn what it means to wait for the power of the Holy Spirit.
That means being in God's with God's people worshipping the
Lord together. What else does it mean?
Look in verse 16 verse sorry verse 14, verse 14.
After hearing of the disciples Peter, James, John, Andrew,
Philip, Thomas, Bartholomew, Matthew, James, James and Simon
all all of these with 1 accord were devoting themselves to
prayer. This would be a perfect moment
to make a comment about how small the disciples must have
been because they all got there together in one Honda Accord.
But I am way too mature to make that kind of a joke at a moment
like this. So with all one Accord, they
devoted themselves to what? To pray.
Now what are they praying about? They know what the Lord has
called them to do. Wait for the power of the Holy
Spirit. The Lord has promised them the
power of the Holy Spirit. He's going to fulfill that
calling. He has said called them to be
witnesses. They know what their job is.
They know where they're supposed to go, Jerusalem, Judea,
Samaria, the ends of the earth. They know what they're supposed
to do. What are they praying about?
They are praying specifically for the very same reason that
all of us are, to be praying for the Lord consistently, to
emphasize an awareness of our dependence upon Him.
It is the Lord who does these things.
It is God through through whom whose power we work.
It is the Holy Spirit that empowers us and enables us to be
faithful in the calling that He has given to us.
And we need to emphasize that by praying in our prayers.
What we're doing is saying, God, we do not rest upon our own
strength. We do not count on our own
abilities. Rather, we know our own
fallibility. We know our brokenness.
We know our sinfulness. We know that you have given us a
great and glorious task and that you are sovereign over all
things. You can do all things.
Therefore, with that attitude we come in prayer.
But not just prayer. They come praying with 1 accord.
They come united together in prayer.
Now what does that mean? If you are looking for a service
of ministry, if you are looking for where God is calling you
specifically to put your time and energy, if you are, if you
know that the Lord has called you to service and yet you don't
know if you're fulfilling that faithfully, here's what you do.
You get out of three or four different people and you ask
them, Christians, brothers and sisters who you worship with.
You say, brothers and sisters who I worship with.
I need you to pray for me over a blank period of time.
Make it manageable over the next 10 days.
I need you to covenant with me that you will pray for me so
that I will hear well what the Lord is calling me to do.
That's what it means to pray in one accord.
It means that they all get together.
Not that they all recite the same words or anything like
this, but that they have the same passion, the same desire
for this. And notice that they are devoted
to that prayer, devoted to that prayer.
I don't want to embarrass myself by talking about the limitations
of my own prayer life. I pray, but nobody would mistake
my prayer life as one of devotion, that I am devoted to
prayer. But that's what the Scriptures
are calling us to, to have a passion, to be consistent, to be
persistent in our prayers. That's what it means for us to
wait upon the Lord, not to be passive, but rather to wait in
passion in our prayers and our dedication and our devotion to
the Lord. They waited for the Lord and
they studied Scripture. Look in verse 16.
In those days, Peter stood up among the brothers, about 120 of
them, and said verse 16 Brothers, the Scripture had to
be fulfilled. The Scripture had, OK, So what
are they doing in these period of time?
It's about 10 days between the ascension of the Lord and the
coming of the Holy Spirit. What are they doing while
they're waiting in Jerusalem? They are worshipping the Lord,
they are praying together, and they are studying the
Scriptures. It is the power of the
Scriptures. If you feel called to a
ministry, if you're involved right now in a ministry area, if
you feel called to serve your neighbor, if you feel called to
minister to those who are poor and broken.
If you feel like your job is to carry the love of God out into
this world and you're not covered it in scripture.
If you're not overwhelmed in Scripture, you are failing to
capture the 1 medium that the Lord promises us that He will
speak to us through. He speaks to us through his word
by the power of the Spirit. This is what we're talking
about, the power of the Spirit working in the church for the
world, blessing of the world. And that power of the Spirit
comes to us through the word of God, through his scriptures.
And so consistently in that period of waiting where we're
like, Lord, what are you leading me to?
What's next on for me? How am I able?
How am I supposed to be more and more faithful to you?
You must cover that in prayer. You must cover that in the
scriptures. And here's what you do.
You don't sit there and say, OK, Lord, I'm going to turn blindly
to this passage, put my finger down and whatever you tell me to
do in that text, I'm going to do.
That's not it. What you do is you immerse
yourself in the God of the scriptures and buying by being
immersed in the God of the Scriptures.
It's early in the morning. No it's not.
By being immersed in the God of the Scriptures He speaks to us.
There is a 2000 years of church history that proves the
truthfulness of the scriptural witness that God speaks to His
people through the scriptures. How lazy or arrogant or self
assured must we be to ignore the word of the Lord?
And by the way, they're studying the Scripture.
They're not just looking at it. They're not doing randomly
scanning through the text. They're studying the scripture.
How do you know that? Look at the text that Peter
references. This is in verse 20.
May is camp. Become desolate and let there be
no one to dwell in it and let another take his office.
OK, Now those are from the Psalms, we're told.
And I defy anybody who was going to tell me they know where those
texts are from. Those are OK.
This is not like Psalm 23 that many of us are going to be
familiar with, or Psalm 100 or Psalm One, or Psalm 150 or Psalm
22. Some of the texts in which were
this is from Psalm 69, an obscure verse in Psalm 69 and an
obscure verse in Psalm one One O 9.
Now why do I think they're studying the Scriptures?
Because you don't connect. You don't read those passages
and connect them to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus
Christ unless you're saying to yourself, you're dedicated to
the word and you're saying God speak to me of Jesus Christ.
When I look at this word, speak to me of Jesus Christ.
And when you say speak to me of Jesus Christ, O Lord, and you
read Psalm one, O 9, you come up with this text, you see the Lord
living in and breathing through it.
When you say, Lord, speak to me in this text, you see Psalm 69
that speaks of the of the coming love and grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ. The disciples were worshipping
our God and Savior. They were praying fervently with
one mind. They were studying the word of
God together and they were obsessing, focused upon Jesus
Christ. Look in verse 21 there.
So this is Peter now saying, OK, so Peter says, look, we've lost
Judas Iscariot. Now some of you guys know the
story that Judas is the one that betrayed Jesus and that
ultimately Judas was killed. And we read a little bit about
that with died because of that. And so instead of 12 disciples,
you've got 11 disciples. And Peter says, hey, we've got
to replace this person. How do we replace Judas?
How do we find his fulfillment? Look in verse 21.
And so one of the men who had been accompanying the Auster all
during the time the Lord Jesus went in and out among us,
beginning with baptism until the day in which he was taken of one
of these men must be come with us a witness to the
resurrection. In other words, somebody needs
to fill the position that Judas was in.
Who's that person going to be? It is somebody, it's this easy,
who has been with Jesus, somebody who's been with Jesus.
That's the kind of reflection that all the disciples have as
they are waiting for the power of the Holy Spirit to come upon
them. They're waiting for the power of
the Holy Spirit and they are anticipating with great joy and
eagerness the fulfillment of that text where they are walking
in relationship with Jesus Christ.
That's the essence of being sent a witness to the Lord is that we
are witnessing to that relationship that we have with
the Lord. Now, none of us, we're not in a
position and I don't there are Christian communities that use
the term apostle and they call each other apostles and those
kind of things. And that's not, we're not
becoming like Matthias here by saying, by linking ourselves
with the disciples and saying that we have the same calling
the disciples have, that we too are called to go to all the
world, that we too are called to be witnesses to Jesus Christ,
that we too are called to be empowered by the Holy Spirit.
I'm not saying that we are therefore identical to the
disciples. It is clearly different that
Matthias here was able to see and witness and walk and teach
and be taught by and to to talk with Jesus Christ.
That's not the kind of discipleship that we are blessed
with. We are blessed with hearing of
Jesus Christ through the word of God.
And so when we're reading the Scriptures so passionately, like
we were talking about, what we're doing is we're becoming a
meshed in who Christ is. We're seeing him for who he
really is. We're learning more about him.
We are deepening our relationship with him.
And during that time, we are waiting for him to direct us in
the ministry, in the service in which he has promised to us,
which he has commanded to all of us.
So what the disciples are doing is they're saying here, we need
to find somebody who was locked on to Jesus, which is the very
definition of what it means to be a disciple, to be locked into
Jesus. So how do you know if you found
your calling? How do you know if you've
discovered what God calls you to do?
Well, I think we have a great expression of this From verses
21 down through 24, we see Peter leaning into three things.
Four things really. The general expression of the
Scriptures. How do you know your calling?
It's laid out before us in the Scriptures, and that's why Peter
spent so much time studying the Scriptures.
Secondly, he uses common sense. Notice that in verse 2122, he
sits there and says, look, Jesus picked 12 of us.
We lost 1. He divided the ministry among
the 12 of us We need to fulfill. We need to add in that one.
We need to become 12 again. Common sense.
I can't tell you how frustrating it is to have some people come
up and say, I really think we should do this, and there's no
sense of common sense at all in what they're saying.
God has blessed us with common sense.
Use it. God has blessed us with the
Scriptures. Read it.
Then thirdly, look at verse 24 when they had prayed prayer.
Once again, prayer is from the beginning of this text to the
end. It's woven into what it means to
wait on the Lord, to be prayerful for him.
And then look at the end. And they prayed.
You, O Lord, who know the hearts of all, show us the one whom you
have chosen. They trusted in the Lord.
Now you'll notice at the end of the story, just to wrap this up
for a second, that they cast lots.
They roll dice, they pull straws, whatever.
And you've got Matthias and you've got Joseph and the pulled
dot. They, they cast lots, lots of
random expression. And the lot falls on Matthias
and he becomes the the next apostle.
The Christian Church no longer cast lots.
That's that was a way in the Old Testament and in the pre Holy
Spirit era, the pre Pentecost era, whereby you would express
your trust in the Lord Lord, we trust that you are going to be
the one who is sovereignly in control of these dice.
You're the one who is sovereignly in control of the
ermine in the Thurman. You're the one who's sovereignly
in control of the straws that we pull out.
All that makes sense to us, but with the coming of the Holy
Spirit is the promise that the Lord now is present with His
people in a way that we express our trust and dependence on Him.
Not by chance, not by games of chance, not by by random
expressions of how we trust the Lord is going to show Himself,
but by leaning into the power of the Holy Spirit that He has
promised for each and every one of us.
So what does it mean for you? What I'm hoping is that through
this text, every one of us is challenged to re evaluate where
it is that God has called us. What has God called you to do?
What's your service? What's your ministry?
What's your focus? How are you fulfilling the
calling that the Lord has given to us to witness to Him?
Because that's a responsibility for every single one of you.
And if you don't know, it's a calling to wait.
What does waiting mean? It means worshipping the Lord in
the midst of His people. It means devoting yourself to
prayer with one or two or three or four other followers.
It means being passionate about your study of Scripture and
being open to the way in which the Lord will speak to you in
this regard. It is focusing upon Jesus
Christ. And if you are absolutely
confident that you know what God has called you to serve and how
God's called you to minister, and you are dedicated full bore
ahead of that, I would still maintain that nothing is better
than surrounding yourself with the people of God in worship,
dedicating your life in prayer, studying the scriptures, and
focusing upon Jesus Christ. If we want to fulfill that
calling that He has given to us to witness to the entire world
through the power of the Holy Spirit, we do so by waiting upon
the Lord and giving ourselves over to Him.
Yes, let's pray together. Gracious Lord our God, we
acknowledge to you that all too often we push off the
responsibility to minister to this world around us on to other
people, A professional class of ministers, those who know more
of the scriptures than we do, those who are good at these kind
of things, are called to these kind of things.
And we deny the central reality of the calling to be your
disciple, to follow after you, to do that what you are doing,
and to minister in your name. Lord, I express that confession
in my own life. I express that confession for my
brothers and sisters here. I know it's a case for them as
well, Lord. And so, Lord, we trust in your
grace that you will forgive us of that sin, for sin it is, and
that you will cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Lord, call us to a time of patience, of waiting for the
power of the Holy Spirit to come upon us so that we can pray
well, we can worship well, we can study well the Scriptures,
we can focus in upon you. Well, Lord, make that so in our
lives, so that we can come out the other side, empowered by the
Holy Spirit, witnessing to our Lord Jesus Christ in Jerusalem,
Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
Lord, make it so in our lives we pray through Christ our Lord, we
ask. Amen.