Acts 1:12-26
There is something amazing about seeing a jet take off from an aircraft carrier. A ship moving through an open sea, the plane sits on deck, the engine is started, the engine is started and the noise of the engine builds until it is screaming at full power and then the plane is released and it takes off into the sea, soaring rapidly up into the sky. There is such power and beauty in that flight.
My nephew was an officer on an aircraft carrier and I had the fantasy that when he came into the Mediterranean, I would be able to get an invitation to fly out with some of the military personnel at the US embassy and land on the carrier. My sister sailed with him on a short voyage and was treated to an air show in the middle of the ocean. Why did my daughters choose public health and publishing and not a career in the Navy?
A jet takes off and it is beautiful and that is what we see, but below the top deck of the ship there are hours and hours of work on the jets before they are ever fueled up and sent off the deck into the air. The hours spent in tuning up the engine and making sure the jet is ready to fly are essential if the jet is to take off and land successfully.
In two weeks when we come to chapter 2 and Pentecost, we will talk about the take-off of the jet. The passage from Acts today is about what happens below the deck before the jet takes off.
When Luke wrote his history of Jesus and the work of Jesus in the early church, he wrote carefully to present an accurate record of what had happened in the church. He began his second part of his work with a summary of what happened in the forty days after the resurrection of Jesus and his ascension. Now, in these fourteen verses, he tells what happened in the ten days between the ascension of Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
I believe the proper way to read this account is to see how it is the disciples prepared for the promised baptism of the Holy Spirit, and then from this we can learn how to prepare for the special work of God in our lives. I mean by this not the working of God in our lives which we see every day which is remarkable in itself, but times in the history of the church when the Holy Spirit is poured out in an extraordinary way to move not just individuals but an entire culture to an increased awareness of God. At special times of revival like these, entire cultures are transformed and move closer to the kingdom ethics Jesus taught.
When we read this account, we need to look at it to see how we can prepare ourselves so we are ready when God acts in history in an extraordinary way.
Before we look at the passage for guidelines as we prepare for revival, it is necessary to correct a couple mistaken impressions about this passage.
When Luke wrote his history of the church, the one story he told is this story of the disciples choosing a replacement for Judas who had hanged himself because of his remorse in having betrayed Jesus. It is obviously an important story for Luke to take the time to tell it.
There are some who have argued that the way in which the disciples went about this revealed that they did not yet have the Holy Spirit at work in their lives. So let’s take a look at the process.
In those days Peter stood up among the believers (a group numbering about a hundred and twenty) 16 and said, “Brothers, the Scripture had to be fulfilled which the Holy Spirit spoke long ago through the mouth of David concerning Judas, who served as guide for those who arrested Jesus— 17 he was one of our number and shared in this ministry.”
20 “For,” said Peter, “it is written in the book of Psalms,
”‘May his place be deserted;
let there be no one to dwell in it,’
and,
”‘May another take his place of leadership.’
21 Therefore it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, 22 beginning from John’s baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection.”
23 So they proposed two men: Joseph called Barsabbas (also known as Justus) and Matthias. 24 Then they prayed, “Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which of these two you have chosen 25 to take over this apostolic ministry, which Judas left to go where he belongs.” 26 Then they cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias; so he was added to the eleven apostles.
First there was a problem. There had been twelve disciples and now only eleven. Why did the death of Judas create a problem? What was so special about having twelve disciples? Why not make do with eleven?
At the Passover meal Jesus shared with his disciples the night he was arrested, the disciples had argued about who would be the greatest when Jesus came into his kingdom. In the course of his response to this, Jesus mentioned
And I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, 30 so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
What did the disciples hear when Jesus said that? It could be that the disciples were still thinking of Jesus instituting an earthly kingdom that would bring Israel back to its glory and drive out the Romans. As such a kingdom, there would be a need for one more disciple to rule, one disciple for each of the twelve tribes of Israel.
It is likely that they were at least confused about what would be happening. But as they prepared for what Jesus had promised would happen in just a few days, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, they made preparations to complete the number of disciples to the twelve Jesus had chosen.
So they were now one disciple short of the twelve Jesus had chosen. Peter faced the problem just as Jesus had taught them. He began with an understanding of the Scriptures. Jesus had taught the disciples over the forty day period before he ascended to heaven and as Luke summarized this teaching in the end of his first book, Luke,
He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.”
45 Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.
Peter had been a good student so he went to the Old Testament Psalms and drew from them verses that indicated that Judas needed to be replaced.
Psalm 69 and 109 which Peter quotes, are psalms of David that express his anger at being attacked by his enemies. The early church took Psalm 69 to be a psalm that talked about the attacks on Jesus that resulted in his crucifixion and Psalm 109 to be a psalm that talked about the betrayal of Judas.
It may even have been Jesus who introduced them to these psalms when he taught them in the forty days between his resurrection and ascension. Peter took verses from these psalms and applied these verses to their current situation.
Judas had left and someone needed to take his place.
Peter started with Scripture and his understanding of what Jesus had instructed them to do. Having used Scripture to decide what to do, now they had to determine the criteria for the candidates to replace Judas.
This was fairly obvious. When Jesus had chosen the twelve, he had chosen those who had been with him from the beginning, so they decided that the replacement should come from that same list of people.
They made a list of those who had been with Jesus from the beginning, when John was baptizing in the Jordan. From this list they choose two men who were well qualified. Eusebius in the third century wrote that these two were among the seventy-two Jesus sent out, and that is likely to be true. The two seemed equally qualified so they decided to allow God to choose between them by casting lots and Matthias was chosen.
Casting lots was simply a matter of putting two stones, a white and a black, for instance, or two pieces of bone and then shaking them up in a container and the first one to come out was the indication of God’s choice.
Some have been critical of this method of choosing, but in casting lots, the disciples relied on a common means of determining God’s will that God himself instituted. The law given by God to Moses instructed Aaron to cast lots to determine which of the two goats would be sent out into the wilderness. There are multiple references to God’s chosen people using lots
It is true that after Pentecost, there was no longer a reliance on this method of determining God’s will. With the coming of the Holy Spirit there was a better way of determining God’s will. But with the Holy Spirit not available, the disciples did not do wrong in casting lots to determine the replacement for Judas.
The process the disciples followed was a Biblical process. They started with Scripture, they reasoned and then they prayed allowing God to make the final choice.
A second mistaken impression is that the disciples choose Matthias but later Jesus choose Paul to be the twelfth disciple.
I started looking at the passage with that impression, but it seems clear, after reading the arguments of John Stott, F.F. Bruce and I. Howard Marshall, that Luke in no way indicates that Paul was the replacement for Judas. Although Paul was clearly a hero to Luke, Luke in no way infers that the disciples made a mistake in choosing Matthias.
Paul himself clearly understood that he was not among those who had been with Jesus. He understood his uniqueness. In his letter I Corinthians when he recounts the resurrection appearances of Jesus, he refers to himself as
one abnormally born.
The fact that we read nothing more about Matthias is not significant. We also read nothing about any of the disciples except Peter, James and John.
So I view this story Luke inserts as an important look at how we are to properly prepare ourselves for a great work of the Holy Spirit that we pray will come.
The disciples saw the need to fill the place of Judas and according to the ways they understood to do that Biblically, they filled his place with Matthias. A few years later with James was martyred, the disciples did not feel the need to replace him with someone else. The disciples may have been mistaken in their need to fill the vacancy left by Judas, but that does not negate the process they used to do so.
Now, what can we learn from what they did in those ten days?
Going back to the jet aircraft analogy, the motor needs to be gone over to see what parts need replacing. The screws and bolts need to be examined to see that they are tight and not wearing out. All parts of the plane are gone over and after a certain number of hours in the air, parts are replaced as a part of preventative maintenance. The plane needs to be ready for the moment when it is fueled and takes off.
In the ten days between the ascension of Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the disciples did some fine tuning of their organization. Because Luke tells the story, what they did was important. Despite what we think about their decision, from Luke’s perspective this was an important step of preparation made by the disciples.
I take from this that in the same way, we need to learn how to operate as the church of Jesus. We need to find the best way to organize ourselves so that when the Holy Spirit is poured out in a revival, we assist rather than hold back the work God is doing in the revival.
We need to be training people for the time that is coming. We need to encourage people in the church to grow in their knowledge of Scripture. We need to train people how to lead small groups and disciple those in the group. We need to train preachers how to feed their flock from God’s word. We need to disciple people in the church so they stick with Jesus when it becomes difficult to do so. We need to train leaders to analyze needs in the church and how then to create programs that meet those needs. We need to help people in the church identify their spiritual gifts and find ways to encourage them to develop those gifts. We need to make sure each person is in an accountability group that will help to keep each of us walking in obedience with Christ.
The list can go on and on. For all the things we do in the church, we need to work and prepare ourselves so when revival comes we are prepared and can be the leaders God needs us to be in a time of revival.
When you study revivals in church history, one of the reasons revivals burst and then seem so quickly to fall flat is that the church lacks proper leadership that can sustain the enthusiasm for Christ that comes.
If we are prepared for the time when revival comes, they we can help sustain the affects of revival rather than see them so quickly decline. We need to be ready, like the jet plane, so that when we are sitting on the deck and the Holy Spirit is poured out, we can take off and soar with him in a ministry of power and beauty.
That is one part of what needs to be done, but there is a larger and far more important part of preparing for revival found in this story Luke tells. Luke wrote that the disciples returned from where Jesus ascended and in verse 14 we find this detail:
They all joined together constantly in prayer
What do you think they prayed about? They met for ten days and the all prayed together constantly. This does not mean they did nothing but pray. The story in which this detail appears shows that they did more than just pray. But we can agree that “joined together constantly in prayer” means at least that they prayed a lot.
Just a bit later, in chapter 4, a description of the early church is given and Luke wrote that
All the believers were one in heart and mind.
Like the phrase “constantly in prayer”, this does not mean that they agreed about everything. There were certainly disputes and they had to work out conflicts that arose in the church. But they were one in heart and mind about who Jesus was and their desire to serve him. They were united at the core of what they believed.
That is not how they started. I already mentioned that at the Passover meal Jesus shared with his disciples on the night he was arrested, just 42 days before Pentecost, the disciples had been arguing among themselves about who was the greatest among them.
This was not something new. The mother of James and John had earlier gone to Jesus, after talking over strategy with her sons, to ask if they could sit at his right and left when he came into his kingdom. They saw that Peter was always taking leadership and saw no reason why he should be the leader. Why not James and John who Jesus so clearly loved?
Now Peter had been revealed as one who denied knowing Jesus and he denied it three times. He was still by personality a leader but could he lead after having denied Jesus? He was always so bold but when it counted, his boldness had failed him. Would the others accept his leadership? As a matter of fact, all the disciples ran away and hid when Jesus was arrested, only the women followed him. Accusations could be made against all of the disciples.
What about Nicodemus who had come to Jesus in the night because he was afraid to reveal his interest in Jesus to the rest of the Pharisees? Could he be trusted now? Or Joseph of Arimathea who had paid the cost of laying Jesus in the tomb, was he to be included in their midst?
What about Thomas who had doubted their story? Was someone this hard to convince going to be an asset to them as they took the message of Jesus out to the world?
Think of the class differences. Rough fishermen from Galilee, wealthy men and women with a sophisticated education, women who had been prostitutes, zealots and members of Herod’s household, this was a diverse group of people who might have some difficulty in getting along with each other.
Then there was Jesus’ family. Jesus was the leader of the disciples but they were Jesus’ brothers and sisters and mother. Didn’t they have more right to him than the others? They had known Jesus for as many as thirty years before he began his public ministry and called the disciples to follow him. On the other hand they had accused him of being mad and tried to get him to quit his craziness and come home and get some rest.
On the cross, Jesus had given John responsibility for his mother. What did the brothers of Jesus think about that now that they were together in one room?
There was a lot of diversity and many reasons why they might fight with one another. There were many arguments to be made about who had been most loyal to Jesus and who was now most deserving of his favor. There were many tensions that could have been simmering.
They came together in Jerusalem, perhaps in the same room where they had shared the Passover meal with Jesus, and they were constantly in prayer.
There are a lot of things that happen in prayer, but one of the most powerful is that prayer with each other brings us into unity with each other. And it is unity that Jesus was seeking for his followers as they came to Pentecost. It is unity that Jesus always seeks for his followers.
As they prayed, I imagine that they prayed for each other. When you pray for someone you begin to have a deeper appreciation for the struggles that person has. Praying for someone is a way of helping to understand who that person is. Praying for someone and praying with that person is a way of drawing people together.
As the disciples prayed for each other, they began to be reconciled. “Lord, I know that Peter denied you, but I too deserted you in the garden. Forgive me Lord.” “Lord, I was there when your family came to say you were crazy and needed to come home. They didn’t know who you were but the truth is that neither did I know who you were.”
Praying and confessing sin together draws us together, unites us.
We work a lot in the church to learn how to be a better church. There is still a lot to do. Each generation has to learn all over again the things we learned in our Christian life. There will never in this life be an end to the discipling and training that needs to take place in the church.
The tuning up we do tends to be in this light, learning more about the Bible, training to be better leaders of small groups, learning how to offer better counseling. This is not easy but it is much harder for us to pray together and work toward unity. We would prefer to work to be a more knowledgeable church, a more skilled church, a more competent church. It is more difficult for us to work to become a more unified church.
If the disciples had not worked through the tensions that existed before Pentecost, would they have been able so effectively to work to build the church when it was God’s time for the Holy Spirit to be poured out?
I believe revival is coming. I pray that it will come in my lifetime. When revival comes, if we are not unified and if we are not prepared and tuned up, the affects of the revival will be weakened.
We are a diverse congregation. We have many different social classes. We have different cultural ways of praying and expressing our faith. We have different languages, different economic levels. We are quite diverse and we like that. This is a part of international life that appeals to us. But it also makes unity a bit more difficult. We have to work harder to be one in mind and spirit.
Who are you praying with in the church? There are many groups that meet during the week for prayer. Starting at 4:45 in the morning here at the church going through the day and into the evening, there are groups that meet to pray.
Are you praying in a way that will build unity in the church? This, I think, is the challenge that faces us as we await God’s coming revival. I know from personal experience that it is not easy. But there is no way you can get around the fact that Jesus wants us to be united. Jesus wants us to be one in heart and mind.
May God grant us grace as we stumble our way toward unity in the church.
