Nothing to say, yet
Transcription
The speaker is going to cover Acts chapter 1, verses 12 to 26. They discuss the significance of the ascension of Jesus Christ and the waiting for the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem. The Mount of Olives is mentioned as a significant location. The apostles are described as obedient and returning to Jerusalem openly. The speaker also talks about the upper room and how it may be different from previous mentions. They mention the Sabbath day's journey as a unit of measure and briefly discuss the selection of Matthias as the replacement for Judas. So, if you want to, you can go ahead and turn to Acts chapter 1, if you haven't already, and we'll be covering, hopefully, my plan is to cover 12 through 26. It's a lot of verses, so I'm going to cover them in blocks of three. So, 12, 13, and 14 will be a block that I cover, 15, 16, 17, and so on. Josh, welcome back, and we miss you when you're not here. So, glad to have you back. I hope you had some good time with Haley and family time. Hope you're very good. So, last week, we discussed the ascension of Jesus Christ, and we talked about many facets of His ascension, things that it meant to the Apostle, things that it means to us today. The ascension is a milestone, you know, not only for the Apostles, but for us as readers of the Word. The main highlight here, I think, with the ascension is that as we read through this book, we're anxiously awaiting the coming of the Holy Spirit. We saw a cloud in the ascension that wrapped our Lord and lifted Him into heaven. And there was an appearance of two men dressed in white that we presume are angels. And then the purpose that they had there, of not only being just a representative of Christ, but they were reminding the Apostles, hey, we'll stand here all day. You've got stuff you need to be doing. You can look up there all the time you want to, but we've got work to do. So, we saw an obedient group of Apostles. These are the same men that we talked about being disobedient, being impatient. A number of things, but we see an obedient group of Apostles going back to Jerusalem. And they're not going back quietly, afraid someone will see that, hey, those Jesus people are over there hiding from us. They're coming back rejoicing and letting it be known that they're on their way back. They're worshiping in the temple regularly, which is the opposite of where they were just shortly before this. They were almost in hiding in the upper room in fear of the Jews, if you'll remember, when Christ appeared to them, the doors were locked. And it's just been, you know, only three verses we covered and there was so much in there. So, today I'm going to try and read through the remainder of this chapter and try to expound upon some of the words that are here, some of the things we're told. So, bear with me as we go through these, because there's a lot in here and I'm going to try and go through these. So, if you will, stand for the reading of the Word of the Living God, Acts chapter 1, verse 12. So, then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet. Mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem. It's a Sabbath day's journey away. And when they entered the city, they went up to the upper room where they were staying. That is, Peter and John, James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, Simon the zealot, and Judas the son of James. And these all were with one accord, were continually devoting themselves to prepare, along with the women, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and his brothers. And in those days, Peter stood up in the midst of the brothers. A crowd of about 120 persons were there together and he said, men, brothers, the scriptures had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit foretold by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus. For he was counted among us and received his share in this ministry. Now, this man acquired a field with the price of his unrighteousness, and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all of his intestines gushed out. And it became known to all who were living in Jerusalem, so that in their own language, that field was called Hekeldomah, that is, a field of blood. For it is written in the book of Psalms, let his residence be made desolate and let no one dwell in it, and let another man take his office. Therefore, it is necessary that of the men who have accompanied us all the time, that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning with the baptism of John, until the day he was taken up from us. One of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection. And they put forward two men. Joseph was called Barsabbas, who was also called Justice, and Matthias. And they prayed and said, You, Lord, know the hearts of all men. Show which one of these two you have chosen to take the place of this ministry, an apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place. And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell to Matthias, and he was added to the 11 apostles. Let's pray. Father, once again, we ask for your guidance as we break your bread of life. We thank you for your word, as we would not know much about you without it. You've revealed yourself to us in this word, and we thank you for that. Guide us tonight, Father. Help us. Help me to deliver your message. And I pray, Lord, that you will just help us to digest all of these words that you would have spoken. We pray for individual growth this night. You will help us to grow spiritually, to mature in you. The Lord will pray for growth of your church. I ask that if it be your will that you bring people in here to hear your word spoken, and that this church will grow so that we can have more people to present your word and to be lights out here in this dark world we live in. Father, we know all good things come from you, and we thank you for all that you do for us. And we thank you most of all for saving us in spite of ourselves. To give you 10,000 reasons to send me to hell, and here I am. Thank you for that. Lord, we love you, and we pray this in Jesus' name, and all God's children said, Amen. So as we read through verses 12, 13, and 14, we're talking about Jerusalem, we're talking about a Sabbath's Day journey, we're going through a list of names, and we're talking about the women, the brothers of Jesus. And Jerusalem is significant in New Testament history. I mean, near it, we have Christ crucified and Christ resurrected. In a broader sense of things, we have Christ ascending right there just near Jerusalem. And in Jerusalem, we're waiting for the arrival of the Holy Spirit. So Jerusalem holds a pretty important place in this teaching because of what's happening in this hub. This is a hub for the Jews, and it's a hub where the church is starting. So you can only envision that there's going to be some tension here. Mount Olivet is mentioned here, and this is also called the Mount of Olives, and it's interesting. This Mount Olivet, we talked about it a little bit last week, it's like 200 feet higher in elevation than Jerusalem is. And if you're standing on the very peak, and I've never been there from what I've read, what I've read is just a magnificent view over the wall into Jerusalem. One documentary I was watching on it that we even use the terms breathtaking. One guy says it's almost as though you can feel Jesus standing here with you. So it's apparently a pretty amazing view. The apostles waited patiently and obediently for 10 days in Jerusalem before the day of the Pentecost. So you're getting pretty familiar with this place. It's an important place. He goes on to talk about this Mount of Olives and explains it as being a Sabbath day's journey away. And this is actually a unit of measure from what I understand. So when the Israelites were in the wilderness, of course, they had the tabernacle, and all the tribes of Israel would encamp around this, and the tribe of Benjamin's over here, and the Levites are over here, and all these different tribes. And if you went from the tabernacle to the furthest point on the outer edge of where the encampment was, it was something in the neighborhood of a quarter of a mile. And the Israelites were very much a works-oriented group. They believed in just keeping the Sabbath and keeping it holy, and you could do no work. The only thing you could do were spiritual things and just the bare necessities that you had to do. So they came up with a measure of how far can you walk? How far can you walk? Because they didn't have cars. So the leaders of the Jews decided, OK, how far can they walk? We're going to make this a legalistic thing. How far can they go? Well, the one thing they have to do on the Sabbath is they have to get from their tent to the tabernacle and back roughly a quarter of a mile from the edge of the encampment to the tabernacle, and they had to go back, which makes it half a mile. The Sabbath today journey is something close to a half a mile in all the things I've read. I didn't realize that. It's kind of a Sabbath day journey. It takes all day to get there. But it's actually a unit of measure that they used legalistically and tried to apply it through the scripture. And think, well, you don't run that kind of church, Joshua. I don't know if I could live in that world too much or not. So in these verses, it talks about an upper room again. And when we, honestly, up until now, when I read about the upper room, I assumed we were talking about the same upper room that was used over and over and over again. And I ran across one commentator that says, while I'm not prepared to say that's not true, because it could be the same room over and over again, Luke uses two different words to explain these upper rooms. One of them properly translated and I'll have to read it, but one of them properly translated in Luke 22, 12, the translation is the room above ground level. That's Luke 22, 12. In Acts 1, 13, when he talks about an upper room, the translation is under the roof. So his thoughts are because Luke, the writer of both of these, didn't use the same word to describe both of these, there's a possibility that were different upper rooms because upper rooms were not an uncommon thing. An upper room was a floor above a dwelling or a business that was just a big open room that was rented out for festival purposes. They're going to come in and they're going to join this feast that the Jews are having and the family needed to stay somewhere. So they would rent out this upper room. It was a common thing. And the upper rooms always, by design, had a set of stairs that were outside. So it's not like you're going in the house and up through the house to get up to the upper room. You went around the corner of the house and hit these stairs and went up to the upper room. And it kind of provided a little more privacy for whoever was up there. It was a bit of a shield. There was no accidental interference coming in there. It would be very abnormal for that to happen. So we have this upper room. We've got 120 people in there. In the middle of the desert, you've been in Arizona, I can only imagine it was somewhat miserable there in some ways. It probably didn't smell great. But we've got this 120 people in there who are of one accord, one mind, devoting themselves to prayer, waiting for the Holy Spirit to come. This upper room had become an area of rest. It was an area of waiting. But most importantly, it was an area of prayer. Being of one accord means that all of the believers there were unified in their mindset and what their immediate mission was. Their immediate mission is we need to wait for the Holy Spirit to come. I don't know if any of them had a real clue of what was going to happen after that. But they knew something big was about to happen. Christ left so He could come, the Comforter. I think their prayers, you know, being of one mind, that means that they're not praying exactly the same words, but that they're all praying for the same things. Their intentions are common. It's almost unanimous what this prayer is. Everyone's praying for the same things. And they're most likely prayers of preparation to be prepared for the coming promise. So also in verse 13, we've got this list of names and we're familiar with about all of those. These are the twelve disciples, the twelve apostles. Eleven now, right? Judas is not there now, Judas Iscariot. But we have here mentioned in verse 14, the women. Who was the first person that Christ appeared to when He was resurrected? It was Mary Magdalene, wasn't it? Mary's there. It says clearly that Mary, Jesus's mother, was there. I can only imagine that Martha is a part of this crowd. We talked about Joanna last week. She very likely was a part of this. Susanna. A number of ladies were there. And Luke does a really a stronger job than the other Gospels do in paying homage to the works of the women here. These women are waiting for the Holy Spirit to come, just like the men are. They're anxiously awaiting as well. They had faithfully accompanied Jesus during His ministry. They had supported His cause financially. Luke 8, verses 2 and 3. They had followed Jesus from Galilee for His last visit to Jerusalem. They stood at a distance from the cross when He was crucified in Luke 23 and John 19. They made the necessary preparations for His burial in Luke 23. They reported the news of a risen Savior to the apostles in Luke 24. These were faithful women preparing to receive the Holy Spirit, just like the men there, just like the apostles. In both of His writings, He pays particular attention to this vital role that they play. And we need to not miss that. They followed Jesus as well. Verse 14 also mentions Jesus' brothers. And let's see here. We find in John 7 and Mark 3 that His brothers had denied who He was up to six months before the end. The very brothers of the man who raised the dead, who healed the blind, who did so many miracles. Eh, I've known Him a long time. They denied Him. But here we have them here. So there's a conversion that has happened to be with Jesus' brothers. With Jesus' brothers. Things are changing for the apostles. The apostles are changing. We see these brothers of Jesus have changed. What happened that they changed? Well, we know that the brother James received a rare individual post-resurrection visit from Christ. We see that in 1 Corinthians. And I would have to personally believe that His conversion happened at that visit. You are alive. Forgive me for denying you. But we see all the brothers here. So I have to think that, like in many other stories in the New Testament, this one person goes and gets his brother and says, look what I found. Look what I've seen. I found the Messiah. I found the Christ. And I'm sure that in that day when the disciples were going and getting their brothers and bringing in more disciples and apostles, I bet this looked very much like that. I've seen the Christ. It's our brother. We were wrong. We need to change the way we are. We need to recognize this. And they all came to be believers. They all were regenerated. Were regenerated. They all had faith. So I feel like it's necessary at this point. This is James, Jesus's brother. This is not the apostle James. Everybody got that? James the apostle and James the brother are two different people. Because we're using some common names here. We got other another apostle called Judas that's here with them. But it's not Judas Iscariot. So these are common names. So James, the brother of Jesus. Since he's not the apostle, what did he do? Well, he became a preacher in Jerusalem. He wrote the epistle, James in our Bibles is the brother of Jesus. He had another brother named Judas. Judas, Jesus had a brother named Judas, a half brother. These brothers were born of Mary and Joseph after Christ was born. That's the presumption that we have. And Judas wrote the book of Jude in the New Testament. So not only do we have a New Testament all about Jesus, some of it was written by his brothers. I find that very, very interesting. Former unbelieving family members who were probably some of the hardest people to reach. And I think many of us can testify to that. Power of Jesus saved his brothers. The power of God was there. Now, while all these faithful followers, these 120, and they're all of one accord, and they're all praying, and we've got the 11 apostles there, and all the followers and the brothers and the ladies and the women. While all this was of one accord, it's now time for someone to become a leader of this group. And they need to start taking care of this unattended business that those two angels, those two men in white, was trying to remind them of. And this business involves this circle of 12. Strike that. 11. 11 apostles. 11 apostles. Verse 15, 16, and 17. In those days, Peter stood up in the midst of the brothers. A crowd of about 120 persons was there together and said, men, brothers, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit foretold by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became the guide to those who arrested Jesus. And he was counted among us and received his share in this ministry. We've got an open slot here, guys. We've got to get this filled. We've got work coming. The Holy Spirit will be here any day. We need a full staff for what we're getting ready to do. This business about taking the gospel to all the nations of all the world forever, we need everybody we can get. We've got 120 here, but we've got to fill this vacancy first. And here we have Peter standing up, taking the lead, who was the one that always looked for an opportunistic moment in time to speak, ended up with his foot in his mouth about half the time. But here he is being that guy. I tell my boys, whatever you do, be that guy. Be that one. The people that work for me now, my team managers, I need you to be that guy. Peter is being that guy. I think you all know what I'm talking about. He's being the one who's needed at that time. He says in those days, and I think this is referring to this waiting period, the waiting for the promise of God, the Holy Spirit. And Peter stands up in that crowd. And this is so much, it's so much different. This time he is going to go to work. He's going to be about Jesus's business. And he's taken the first step in being the leader of this group. And as we go through this book, we will see his leadership advance. And he's going to be the leader of this group through the first 12 chapters, at least. The focus shifts a little there. But through the first 12 chapters, I see Peter very much as the leader of this group. And he uses the word brothers here in this translation. And he could have easily, it could have easily been translated believers. The way the Greek is written. My personal opinion here is that Peter makes this statement to the remaining 11 apostles, not just to this crowd of 120. When he says brothers, he's talking to those apostles. We've got to make a decision here. We've got a vacancy. So when we see that in use, I think that is a pointed message to a limited crowd. And it's not a slight toward any of the remaining members of the crowd. It's just Peter's now become that spokesman. He's the representing apostle. The fulfillment of the scriptures has become the main agenda item of the apostles at this point. Peter goes on to quote one of the scriptures needing to be fulfilled later. I intend to cover those, but I'm not going to do a whole lot of detail. Now, I'm going to wait until I get there in the passage. My personal opinion is that the most noteworthy item concerning the apostles in this first chapter is recognizing how much they are changing. They spent three and a half years with Christ and they grew, they matured. But now all of a sudden they understand. They're seeing the cross through the eye, through the lens of the Old Testament now. They're recognizing that the Old Testament, while it is a historical recording and all those laws and all that is true, and we should be trying to keep those, but now Christ has fulfilled that law. And we see that looking through the Old Testament now. And I don't think that's something that they had immediately been able to do. They recognize the work of Christ in fulfilling the law. They're now able to grasp this concept that the Old Testament, they have heard all their life is a historical recording. They have heard all their life is a historical recording, but it also points to Jesus Christ. C.H. Cosgrove stated that one of the themes of the book of Acts in general is the need for scripture to be fulfilled. And I think as we go through chapter after chapter, we're going to see that. So the message in these three verses is pretty simple. Judas was a member of the twelve. His position among the twelve is now vacant. His position needs to be filled and the mission must go on. Verse 18 and 19 discover and discuss in pretty gory detail. Honestly, how Judas died. What did that look like? And then in verse 20, there's some quotations from the Psalms that Peter uses. The first section where it says, let his residence be made desolate and let no one dwell in it is from Psalm 69. And I'll cut into those a little more deeply in a minute. And then you've got this last sentence, let another man take his office. That's a portion of another verse in the Psalms. But as I read through this account, the verses 18 and 19 of what happened to Judas, I began to recognize that this isn't the full story. There's more happened here. There's more to be known. And if you will turn to Matthew 27, I'm going to read verses 3 through 10. This is another account by Matthew of what happened to Judas. Matthew 27, verse 3, I'm going to read through 10. Then when Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that he had been condemned, he felt remorse and returned the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priest and the elders, saying, I have sinned by betraying innocent blood. But they said, what is that to us? See to that yourself. And he threw the pieces of silver into the sanctuary and departed, and he went away and he hanged himself. The chief priest took the pieces of silver and said, it's not lawful to put them in the temple treasury since it is the price of blood. And I'm going to pause right there. They're very critical of these coins that they paid to Judas. These have blood on them. This is blood money. This is blood money. They're the ones that paid the blood money. And now they're going to be all righteous and say, thank you anyway, we don't take blood money here. We hand it out, but we don't take it in. Just something to think about. In verse 7, in taking counsel together, they bought with that money the potter's field as a burial place for strangers. And for this reason, the field has been called the field of blood to this day. Then that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled, saying, and they took the 30 pieces of silver, the price of the one whose price had been set by the sons of Israel, and they gave them for the potter's field as the Lord directed. So when you compare Matthew to what the book of Acts has recorded that Luke has put here, it would be easy for someone to say, isn't there a bit of a controversy here? Isn't this a contradiction of some kind? And I could see where someone would say that, but I think one is supplementing the other more than contradicting. Because you've got Matthew who's looking at this through the lens of writing to the Jewish people. You have Luke who is looking at this writing through the lens of writing to Theophilus, whom we assume is a Gentile. And the message that needs to go to one and the other is probably a little different, but even more interesting than that, neither one of these people were there when that happened, I don't think. We don't have any evidence that Matthew stood and watched Judas hang himself, or that Matthew saw the intestines of Judas come out. They're recording a story here, and they're trying to put the pieces together and I think when you put these two stories together, it makes sense in that there doesn't have to be a contradiction here. For example, most theologians lean toward the idea that during the act of hanging himself, Judas fell headlong in the process and the end result of that is written here in Acts. That's a real possibility. There's a mythological story and it's fabricated, so I'm not teaching scripture here, I'm just going to tell you a story that got started in that day that Judas became diseased, he had an infection and he began to swell, and it was said that he swelled so much that a wagon could pass through an opening that he could not, and that over time the swelling became so severe that he ruptured. Now, I don't like fabricated stories that try to override what's in the Bible, and I feel like that's what it is, but when this verse talks about everyone in Jerusalem knew about this, this is the kind of thing that happens. When this kind of thing happens, there has to be truth in here that it happened. Some of it may be exaggerated and fabricated, but when I read these two accounts in the Bible, I don't see a contradiction here. I see one supplementing the other to provide more details. So there's some discussion around who purchased this field. Acts records that Judas paid for or purchased the field. Matthew records the priest purchased it. Either way, this is reconcilable. This is not a contradiction. Judas held the coins, they were his. He was paid. It was a wage he was given to deliver Christ for arrest. That money was his. He threw it in the temple and the priest denied it, right? They wouldn't put it in the treasury, so it wasn't the temple's money. They had to do something with it, so they bought it for Judas. And they buried Judas on that land and decided, we'll let strangers be buried here when we don't have anywhere else to bury him. Either way, I see it's reconcilable. The priest clearly didn't want the money in their coffers, so I don't think they actually bought it. I think Judas bought it. One could argue the other way. But they refused it because it was blood money and it just... so much. They were good enough to pay it, but they weren't good enough to take it. There's something there. Isn't that the story of our society today? Pick and choose when we want to be righteous. Pick and choose when we want to point at something good. So Matthew and Luke are basically two news reporters describing an event. They didn't likely witness it. It was two different perspectives. At any rate, they were descriptive and historical of what Judas did and the result of his remorse for betraying Christ. Verse 20 steers us back toward the task at hand and backfilling Judas's vacancy. Verse 20 contains two parts or a part of two different psalms. 6925 is the first part. 1098, chapter 109, verse 8 is the second part. Peter uses the verbiage where it is written in the psalms. And this is done to display a strong belief that the scriptures in general and the psalms in particular have abiding authority over the people of God. Scriptures in general and the psalms in particular have abiding validity, are absolutely trustworthy, and they must be fulfilled. There's no question here. And isn't it just a little twist different than the Peter we're used to seeing? We have to do this to fulfill the scriptures. No, you won't die, Jesus. We're not going to let that happen. Now here we have him. There's growth here. Sanctification here. Peter realizes that the apostolic office is not affected by the death or the suicide of Judas, but it's to be given to someone else. The circle of the twelve must be restored. So when we look at 6925, this first part of verse 20, let his residence be made desolate and let no one dwell in it. Spurgeon points out some pretty good things here. And in one of these verses, this is one of those verses that fits into differing applications. So we got David writing about a scenario, and this verse can and does signify that when David was writing the psalm concerning his adversaries at the time, this verse very much fits that context of what David was facing. He even found a connection between this verse and when Jesus's words in John chapter two. And I find this one a little bit of a reach to put together, honestly. But who am I to question Spurgeon, right? That's funny. Amen. Right hand. He also finds a connection that can be applied to Nebuchadnezzar's fierce decree in Daniel three. But he clearly points out the connection here where Peter is using this verse. Pointing toward Judas, because Judas is an adversary of Christ at this point. Psalm 69, I found it interesting, is second only to Psalm 22 when considering Psalms referenced in the New Testament. A new 22 was used a lot. I didn't realize how close 69 was to it. In Psalm 109, 8, Spurgeon goes on to point out that as written, it refers to David's accusers and need for a change in who's sitting in that seat. And that verse reads, let another man take his office. And the Jews looked at this verse as the doom of traitors. Both are correct in context. If Peter sees in Judas's speedy death after the betrayal, if Peter sees in Judas's speedy death after the betrayal as a fulfillment of this part of this verse. And a reason to appoint a successor. A bad man does not make an office bad. Another might use it for good. We've hoped that many times through elections and different offices in our governmental system. So we've now arrived at a point where a decision needs to be made. Who's going to fill this seat among the apostles? So like any good employer, what do they do? They lay out some qualifications, right? You're going to get this job. You've got to meet these qualifications. You're going to get this job. You've got to meet these qualifications. So, so, you know, before I go there, there's a couple of other songs here, and you might just want to write these down. I'm not going to read them, but there are some other songs here that refer to Judas. I made a note of this here, and I think it's worth noting. The Psalm 55 verses 12 through 14 is a very strong portion of verses referring to Judas. And Psalm 41 verse 9 is very strong that way. So just as a side note, if you're interested, you can take a look at those. But we're looking at qualifications here. Verses 21 and 22 state these qualifications, and there are three. You must have been in the company of the apostles for the entire duration that Jesus went in and out among them. This time period is from the day John the Baptist baptized Jesus until he ascended. And you had to be a witness of the resurrection of Jesus, the way it is written. And what Peter means here is that the individual must have seen the resurrected Lord, as we have no record of anyone actually witnessing the resurrection within the closed tomb. And the closed tomb, isn't that interesting? Jesus, who could appear in the upper room, and he just walked through walls and vanished and appeared, and he's in this closed tomb, and the stone's rolled away. But he didn't need that stone rolled away. He'd proven that already. That stone was rolled away for us. That stone was rolled away for the people of that time. That stone was rolled away so there was no denying that he was risen. That stone was rolled away for us today so that we would know that he's alive. The stone wasn't rolled away for him. He could have snapped his fingers and rolled that stone back. He could have walked through it if he wanted to. That stone was rolled away for us. So bear with me for a minute. We just read through a list of qualifications that the right candidate will possess. Hiring the right candidate can be a difficult task. I've currently got a position open at work that we posted for this week. And there's qualifications. And the title of this job is a metrology technologist that's going to report to me. And I must confess, I don't have any idea what that even means. I don't know what a metrology technologist is. I know some of the things he does. I can't do that job. I didn't apply for that job. But he reports to me somehow. So I've got to be good at faking it if nothing else. But the qualifications for this position, and the guy that's in there has been sitting in this seat for like 28 years. And I'm going to get to hire somebody two months ahead of time to train him to do it. I don't know if two months is enough, but that's what I've got. So must have completed an in-house apprenticeship. Could be operations, could be maintenance. We don't care. Must have depth in programming skills and code in the background of platforms and software. Manipulate that code. Drive the computer programming. Must be intimately knowledgeable of weight standards and practices down to one ten-thousandth of a gram. The room that he has control over sits inside of a building, but the foundation for that room has an independent separate foundation that it sits on that if an earthquake happens up to 5.0 on the Richter scale, it does not move. So this guy has control over that. And what they do is they measure standards. They compare standards to make sure things are accurate and measure and they calibrate. Must be familiar with state regulations concerning calibrations of various transmitters and process systems, temperatures and pressures and flow. And this job posting is going to be out there for a couple of weeks, and I'm pretty sure it's going to come down to two candidates, and they're both going to score equally. So I'm probably going to have to cast some lots, it sounds like. I'm going to get Josh to come over and help me so it'll have a holier. Well, we go by LOS when we get in that situation. We don't know who to choose. We pick the one that's been there the longest. That way, if it's the wrong pick, they're out of there quicker than the other one, I guess. The casting lots is an interesting scenario, and we'll talk about that in a few minutes. But if you'll recall, there were 120 people, and we'll get back on track here, I'm sorry. If you recall, there were 120 to pick from in that upper room, and we ended up with two people that fit the bill. One was named Joseph. They called him Barsabas. I think he was also called Justice. Matthias was the other choice, and as it ended up, the apostles are faced with a tough decision between these two candidates. If the decision is to pick the one that's been there the longest, they're out of there quicker than the other one. If the decision had been clear and obvious, we wouldn't have seen them casting lots, I don't think. But here you have two people that have been with the Lord the whole time, have been faithful to His ministry, have walked with the apostles, have done the deal. And now they've got to choose one, so they're going to cast lots. And they prayed, and they told the Lord, said, Lord, in verse 24, you know the hearts of all men. We just want your will in this. Knowing the intentions of the candidates' hearts to show which one was to be chosen, this was the prayer of the apostles. I think they've seen what a poor choice is, don't you? But they know their choice was intentional. We probably would have picked Judas too. In our opinion, he was a bad choice. But now we know the Scripture had to be fulfilled, so it wasn't the wrong choice. And they're wanting to ensure that their choice is the right person for this time. I'm sure they're a little confused with the whole Judas thing going on, and it was supposed to be that way. In verse 25, it talks about Judas going to his own place, and I'm not going to get into a lot of detail about the death of Judas and the gore of all that. But it talks about Judas going to his own place, and I kind of struggled with that at first. And what does this mean? I got into commentaries, and I got to reading this and reading that. And then I found a video with Piper and MacArthur were talking together about this very item, this very words. And MacArthur said, to go to his own place. And Judas and everyone else that goes to hell belong there. He's going to his own place. He chose to be there. It's his decision. It belongs to them, and they do it. And I tried to write these down as he went through it, and they just, you know how you get sometimes it just all comes out. And I've heard many speakers say that the ultimate question in that day will be, what did you do with Jesus? What did you do about him? And what is Judas's response going to be? I betrayed him and I sold him out. And I hung myself, and here I am. We're further informed in verse 26 that they casted lots to determine the outcome, and they didn't know a whole lot about casting lots. I had read a little bit in Leviticus where they had used them before. But from Proverbs 16, 33 reads, the lot is cast into the lap, but it's every judgment is from Yahweh. This was a way of allowing God to make a decision. According to this in Proverbs, this is a biblical way of making tough, blind decisions, at least in the Old Testament times. It's referred to in Leviticus 16, 8, Numbers 26, 55, Joshua 7, 14, 1 Samuel 10, 20, and 14, 41, all used in a biblical sense. We could talk about Elisha and his fleece to help make decisions. It would be very similar to casting lots. When we think about casting lots, it's done in different ways. Even in the Old Testament, they had a couple of different ways. One was very similar to us drawing straws. Whoever draws the short straw is the choice, the decision. Another way they did it, they would place a random number of stones in there with unique identifiers, and Joshua will get the orange one, and Jackie will get the blue one, and I've got the white one. And we're going to put them in this bottle, and we shake them out, and we pour them out real slowly, and the first one that falls out is the choice, good, bad, or indifferent. Or they may have even done it where the last stone out was the choice. The casting lots in the Old Testament was not that uncommon. It was something that was actually covered as a way to do this. The usage of the casting of lots in Acts is the last recorded use of this practice. You will not find it in Acts anywhere else. You will not find it after this in the New Testament. And it's pretty interesting that you don't hear anything else about Matthias after this. This is the last thing you're going to see in the Bible about Matthias. Historical recordings tell us that he went on to be a preacher in Judea, and that he just had an excellent preaching and ministry, and he taught so intensely and so extremely and so seriously that he kept the attention of the Jews to the point that they executed him like many of the other apostles. That's not in the scriptures, but it is in his rhetorical writings that we do revere to quite often as being true, so I'm not going to canonize them, but there is evidence there. So with Matthias' selection, the final preparation for the building of the church has been completed, the final resource has been added, the birth of the church is getting ready to begin, and we're going to go into chapter two next week. But we talked about qualifications a few minutes ago, and I couldn't help throw one together here. There's a little bit of an argument on who the twelfth apostle really is, right? Because you got Matthias who disappears and he was selected by casting lots, and you got God coming down and handpicking Paul. Who's the twelfth apostle here, really? What were the qualifications for picking Paul? Job title. Apostle in the ministry of Jesus Christ to spread the gospel to all the nations. Here's what we're looking for. A Pharisee of the Pharisees, a self-proclaimed chief among sinners, must be a felon, preferably a persecutor of Jesus' ministry, must have been involved in the execution of at least one follower of Jesus Christ, must have kicked against the gauge repeatedly when considering joining the Jesus team in the past. When we get to the point of talking about the selection of Paul, we're going to see that the apostles were pretty hesitant to welcoming him in. And I think quite honestly, I would have been too. There's no way I would have picked Paul. Not you, Paul. No. I mean, this is Saul, the chief persecutor of the early church. And Christ converted him. He became a believer right then and a leader among the apostles. Oh, for that to happen today in some areas, right? We can quickly note that Paul wasn't selected because of his vast love and support for Christ in the past. He was selected directly by God because of the vast love and support he would show Jesus in the future. Only God knows the intentions of the hearts of men. We said that earlier. The apostles believed that. His selecting Paul was no worse than his selecting any one of us here tonight to receive the gift of salvation. Therefore, I've concluded that Matthias was the 12th apostle and Paul was the 13th. So I've just decided we need the 13th. And I'm glad we did because he ended up writing over half of the New Testament. So knowing the hearts of men is God's work, and I ask you to bear that in mind, there's two points here in chapter one that we're closing in on tonight. One is that knowing the intents of the hearts of men is God's work. We need to leave that work to him. But we need to spread the gospel no matter what we think the intents of their heart are. Everyone needs to hear the gospel. The second thing is that really struck me in chapter one is that we need growth. The apostles needed growth. The women needed growth. The brothers of Jesus needed growth. I need growth. I think we all do. I want to see this church grow. I want to see people in here hearing the word. I don't want to see numbers. I want to see people being regenerated and hearts changed. So, as I mentioned earlier, you think about this change of the apostles and in particular Peter here. We really haven't seen it out of all of them at this point, but the change is expected from true believers. We are not who we used to be. Repentance is required and it's more than feeling or saying, I'm sorry. It's a literal 180 degree turn from what you used to be doing. It's a literal 180 degree turn from what you used to be doing, those simple ways, those things. And none of us turn away from all of them at once. We have these things that linger in our lives and we try to shelf them and it's a battle and keep fighting. Please keep fighting. And I have to ask, are there changes in your life today? Is there evidences for people to ask you? What is it within you? What is it that gives you this hope? In 1 Peter 3.15, it's one of the most valid apologetic verses out there that we should live our lives in that way. That people ask us, what is that hope within us? So we have to grow to get people to ask that. So I ask, how's your maturing going? Are you studying enough? Are you praying like the apostles did? And I just ask that you weigh those questions out in your own life. And if adjustments are needed, don't put it off. Start tonight. Start today. Sanctification is one of those things that we do have a small part in. We do have to pick the Bible up and read it. We do have to bend our knees to pray. So I ask you to give that consideration. And I thank you for your time. Let's say a word of prayer. I don't know. I'm a little bit over, I think. Let's have a word of prayer and we'll be dismissed. Father, well, you got me through another one. And I thank you for your strength to help this to happen because I can't do it on my own. I thank you for every person that is here. And I hope that something has been said tonight will resonate with them. That they will leave here with things on their mind and that they will be able to grow. And they will be able to recognize then that you judge the intents of men's heart. But we have to spread the gospel to those people. Help us to be your tool. Help us to apply these things to our life. And Father, I just thank you once again for this opportunity. We all love you, Lord. And we pray that you'll bring us back at the next appointed time safely. And we pray this in Jesus name. All God's children said, amen. Amen. Amen.
