Go ahead and take your Bibles and turn with me to the book of Acts. Last week in Acts 1:1–11, we saw Jesus promise something wonderful to his disciples. He told them “Go wait in Jerusalem and await the promised Holy Spirit.” Implicitly he was telling them, “Don’t drift back to Galilee and resume your fishing industry. Don’t dawdle here at the Mount of Olives. Don’t start the Great Commission yet. Get back to Jerusalem and wait.” 

 Now the passage we are going to study today, Acts 1:12–26, is all about the interim period between Jesus’s promise of the Holy Spirit and its fulfillment. Jesus promised 40 days after his resurrection, just before he ascended into heaven, that the Holy Spirit would come. The Holy Spirit came in power at Pentecost, which was 50 days after Jesus’s death or 47 days after Jesus’s resurrection. So today’s passage covers that approximately week-long period between Jesus’s ascent into heaven and the Holy Spirit’s descent at Pentecost. It’s a time of waiting. 

 And the question you might ask is “What did they do for that week while waiting for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit?” “Did they sit around playing the first century equivalent of Monopoly? Did they work on their golf games? Do they catch up on sleep? Did they reminisce about Jesus’s actions and teachings before his resurrection?” Well Luke doesn’t tell us everything they did. But he did tell us some stuff. And he could very easily have skipped this recounting of the disciples’ activities between Jesus’s ascent and the Holy Spirit’s descent. But he doesn’t. Why? 

Here’s what I want to emphasize. Luke, writing by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, takes time in this chapter to recount what the disciples do while waiting for the Holy Spirit to come. And I think he details this because their actions while waiting are commendable. And there are some things for us to learn here by observing what they do. 

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So, three things that the disciples do while waiting for the Holy Spirit. Here’s the first.

While waiting for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit…

1) The disciples gathered and prayed (1:12–14)

Look with me at verse 12.

12 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s journey away. 

A Sabbath day’s journey is approximately 2,000 cubits, or three-quarters of a mile by our reckoning. Jesus ascended to heaven from the Mount of Olives. And as we saw last week he’ll return from there as well in power. 

Jesus told them from the Mount of Olives, “Go to Jerusalem.” And to their credit, the disciples obey. Verse 12 tells us that they “returned to Jerusalem…” 

Let me just say this about the disciples. They are not always presented in the Gospels or in Acts as the cleverest of men. They are at times dull. They are often lost. Jesus gets exasperated repeatedly with them. But they are never defiant. For all their shortcomings, they love Jesus, and they obey Jesus implicitly. Jesus says, “Go to Jerusalem,” and they go.

Look at verse 13. 

13 And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room where they were staying,

This is almost certainly the same upper room where they had Passover with Jesus the night before his death. Now they are returning there forty days later. And now Luke lists the people there.

There was…

Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James. 

These are the twelve apostles that Jesus hand-picked during his ministry in Galilee. But there’s one glaring omission. Who’s missing from this list? Judas Iscariot, right? For obvious reasons. 

There was one devious, defiant member of Jesus’s entourage. And it wasn’t just Judas’s death that left him off this list. It was his treachery and apostasy. All of Jesus’s apostles eventually died. Only one of them apostatized. And that was Judas. We’ll talk more about Judas later. But for now, just note that the twelve have become eleven. 

And let me say this. These apostles deserted Jesus after his arrest. They were all disillusioned by Jesus’s death at the hands of the Jewish leaders and the Romans. But now they are backing Jesus’s ministry. They are obediently staying in Jerusalem, the very place where Jesus was killed a few weeks before! Why is that? Why would they risk their lives now to serve Jesus? Here’s why. Because they saw Jesus risen from the dead. He showed them his scars. And they believe. They saw Jesus’s resurrected body, and they believe. 

Let me just point out two facts about this list of eleven before we continue. First of all, despite the importance of those original twelve, none of these men are mentioned again in the NT other than Peter, James, and John. What do you know about Simon the Zealot, Pastor Tony? I know he was a Zealot. That’s about it. Most of Jesus’s followers over the last 2,000 years are lost to history and lost to obscurity. 

One hundred years from now, nobody will remember anyone in this room. Are you okay with that? Most of you don’t even know the names of your Great, Great Grandparents. And your great, great grandchildren won’t know anything about you. That’s okay. It’s not about us, it’s about God. It’s not about our legacy; it’s about God’s legacy. It’s not about the “twelve,” it’s about the one triune God. And even if everyone else forgets about you, God will remember you.

Secondly, if church history is correct, and there’s some debate about it, all of these eleven disciples including the one that they add in this passage as the twelfth were martyred for their faith. They die believing in Jesus. That should tell you something about their character. That should tell you something about their faith and their commitment to Christ. That should tell you something about the reality of Jesus’s resurrection. People died believing and preaching that Jesus was raised from the dead. Why would they do that? Answer—they saw him!  

So the eleven were there in the upper room, but they weren’t alone. And they weren’t idle either. Look at verse 14.

14 All these with one accord

Literally “one accord” is “with one mind.” With unity! Psalm 133:1 says, “Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!” What were they doing with unity? Well, they…

were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.

Can I just state something obvious here? Notice they weren’t praying to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Is everyone clear on that? Mary is a disciple, she’s not co-redemptrix. “She was there with the rest of the disciples as part of the gathered church, praying for and to her own Son.” 

By the way, this is the last time that Mary, the mother of Jesus shows up in the NT. And what is she doing? She’s obeying Jesus, while waiting for the Holy Spirit. She’s just another one of Jesus’s disciples. Jesus’s mother was also his disciple! 

And by the way, they weren’t praying to Peter either! They weren’t praying to “the saints.” And they weren’t asking Peter to intercede for them before the Father. Everyone clear on that? 

Let me just say this as calmly and rationally as I can. “No human being, no human is worthy of worship or veneration or receiving our prayers other than God! Nobody!” 

I was in Croatia once and I saw this shrine to Mary that people were bowing down to and burning incense to, and I thought to myself, “Where am I, India? What is this?” And I know that same kind of stuff happens in the U.S. too. I’m not naïve. And the thought that came to my mind in that moment when I was in Croatia… well I had two thoughts. One thought was this, “Mary the mother of Jesus would be appalled if she was here watching this right now. She would be horrified.” And the second thought that I had was this, “Would they arrest me here in Croatia if I took a baseball bat to this shrine?” Better not risk it.

Let’s be clear, Mary worshiped Jesus. The mother of Jesus worshipped her Son. Peter worshiped Jesus. We worship Jesus. Mary and Peter gathered together in the upper room with all the saints to pray and entreat God together. While waiting for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit… The disciples gathered together and prayed. And we should too. On this side of the Holy’s Spirit’s outpouring we still gather and pray.

Notice that they gathered together in one accord. They gathered. They got together. No lone-ranger Christianity. No monks out in the desert fighting off demons in isolation. No rugged individualism that dismisses the value of relationships. They got together, men and women both, and “with one accord” … everyone see that in verse 14?… with unity they sought God together in prayer.

Listen church, there is power in corporate prayer. There’s a time for personal prayer and there’s a time for corporate prayer. And neither should be neglected in the Christian life. There’s power when God’s people gather for prayer. 

Do you rob yourself of the benefit of that time together? Do you miss out on a time to entreat God with fellow saints? If so do like the disciples do in Acts 1. Men and women, with one accord, gathered and devoting themselves to prayer. 

And what were they praying for? We don’t know. But I doubt they were gathered to pray for their great Aunt Betsy’s cold. Or for their little dog, Fufu who has a tummy ache. My guess is they were praying for the Holy Spirit to come and give them the strength to preach the gospel. My guess is that they were praying, “God help us to live and die well, just like Jesus did.”      

Let me just make two more points from verse 14. This is a pretty densely packed verse of Scripture. Notice at the end of verse 14 that the women, including Mary, were in the trenches with the men. This is something that shows up a lot in the book of Luke. Women were essential and strategic in Christ’s ministry. When the men tucked tail and ran after Jesus’s arrest, the women stood by Jesus. They helped bury Jesus. They came to anoint Jesus. 

And now that Jesus is resurrected from the dead, this ain’t no boys club. These women are praying and seeking God. Pretty soon they will be laboring just as much as the men to get the message out to the world that Jesus is the Savior of the world. 

Now that doesn’t nullify gender roles and headship for families and churches. Don’t err on the other side. Don’t fall into the other ditch beside the road. But Luke highlights the role of women in the early church and the sweet fellowship and one accord that the women shared with the men as they waited for the Spirit.  

Secondly notice that Mary and Jesus’s brothers were part of the gathering. Yes, Jesus had brothers. Technically they were his half-brothers. They shared Mary as their mother. One of his brothers was named Jude. He wrote the second to last book of the NT, the book of Jude. One of his brothers was named James. And James would later lead the church in Jerusalem and write the NT book of James. 

Please don’t buy that ridiculous notion that Mary was stuck in a state of perpetual virginity the rest of her life. People created that theory in a time when sex was viewed as a kind of necessary evil. That’s a false notion. Mary and Joseph had children after Jesus. Jesus had brothers and sisters according to the Bible (see Matt 13:55–56). 

And what’s interesting is that John 7:5 tells us that his brothers didn’t believe in him before his death. Mark 3:21 says that Jesus’s family tried to seize him once because they thought he was out of his mind. 

So that prompts the question, why do they believe in him now as part of this band of disciples? The simple answer to that is that they saw Jesus’s resurrected body. According to Paul, Jesus appeared to his half-brother James after his resurrection (1 Cor 15:7). That’ll change your theology! And now they are part of the 120 in the upper room waiting on the Holy Spirit. 

I read once that Thomas Jefferson, a deist not a Christian, was so opposed to the doctrine of Christ’s resurrection that he actually excised it from his own Bible. It didn’t sit well with his anti-supernatural enlightenment thinking.  Instead he wrote the following in The Jefferson Bible, “There they laid Jesus. And rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulcher, and departed. Finis.” The end. No resurrection. 

Here’s the problem with that. Here’s the question that I would ask Thomas Jefferson if he were in the room right now. Why did Jesus’s disciples believe after they initially ran away from Jesus? Why did Jesus’s family believe, when at first they didn’t? Why were they all willing to risk their lives by obeying Jesus and staying in Jerusalem? They aren’t from Jerusalem. They’re Galileans. Why not go back to Galilee? 

What happened? What changed? I’ll tell you what changed. They saw Jesus alive! They saw Jesus in a new resurrection body. And that changed everything. And afterwards, they became witnesses of what they saw. 

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Go ahead and write this down as a second point. What do Jesus disciples do while they wait for the Holy Spirit? First of all they gathered and prayed. Secondly…

2) The disciples interpreted and applied Scripture (1:15–22)

Look at verse 15.

15 In those days Peter stood up among the brothers (the company of persons was in all about 120) and said, 

Peter’s going to emerge in the pages to follow as the outspoken leader of this group. Peter actually gives eleven speeches/sermons in the first fifteen chapters of Acts. Peter’s got a lot to say! Jesus wasn’t kidding when he told him, “You are Peter [Πέτρος—“the Rock”] and on this rock [πέτρᾳ] I will build my church” (Matt 16:18). Peter had a strategic role in building the church. And that begins even as early as Acts 1.

Here’s a word of encouragement for you. Has anyone here ever let the Lord down before? Has anyone here ever done something really stupid that you regret? Yeah, me too! Maybe that’s why we get along so well because we’ve all made mistakes before! 

But get this. Peter, approximately forty days before this event, publicly denied Jesus. He folded like a deck of cards. And now he standing before the disciples leading them. Jesus restored him after his resurrection. Isn’t that encouraging? We serve a gracious, merciful God… a God of second chances. Because love is patient, love is kind. And love doesn’t keep a record of what’s behind.

So Peter stands up before the 120 men and women praying in the upper room and says,

16 “Brothers, the Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David concerning Judas 

Notice if you will that Peter’s statement affirms the dual authorship of Scripture. He says, “The Holy Spirit spoke … by the mouth of David.” There’s inspiration. There’s dual authorship of Scripture. Peter believes like we do about Scripture!

16 “Brothers, the Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke … by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus. 17 For he was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry.” 

Now the Scriptures that Peter’s talking about are mentioned later. They are passages from the Psalms that prophesied about the Messiah. Peter quotes them a little later: Psalm 69:25 and Psalm 109:8. 

But before Luke gives us the continuation of Peter’s statement, he gives us an aside about Judas. Judas was “numbered among” the disciples, but not any longer. The ESV, NASB, and the NIV all indicate that by the parentheses in verses 18–19. I think that’s the right way to render this. 

Luke writes in verse 18, 

18 (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. 

Matthew actually writes that the chief priests bought a field with Judas’s money (see Matt 26:14–16; 27:3–10). Luke surely knew this. But since the money was rightfully Judas’s—he earned it by betraying Jesus! right?—in reality, the field was actually acquired by him. And it ironically became the place of his death. 

Matthew tells us that Judas hanged himself (see Matt 27:5). Luke tells us that he fell headlong and burst open in the middle. These accounts are complementary not contradictory. One of two things happened here. Either he hanged himself over a cliff and the rope broke, plunging him to his death on the jagged rocks below. Or he died from the hanging, and after his body decayed and swelled up, it fell to the ground and burst open. Either way, Judas’s ignominious deed led to his ignominious death.  

And here’s a little piece of poetic justice for you. The Greek word for “gushed out” at the end of verse 18 is the word ἐκχέω. That word is used of the Holy Spirit three times in Acts 2. So the eleven disciples who were faithful to Jesus have the Holy Spirit gushed out upon them. The one disciple who was unfaithful bursts open in the middle and has all his bowels gushed out. 

There’s a great picture for you. Faith in Jesus means the gushing out of the Holy Spirit upon you. Forsaking Jesus means Akeldama.  

19 And it became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the field was called in their own language Akeldama [that’s an Aramaic word], that is, Field of Blood.) 

By the way, there’s probably a double entendre here with “Field of Blood.” It was bought with blood money. But it was also filled with Judas’s blood. It’s like the city of Chicago. Is it “The Windy City” because it’s windy there? Or because the politicians are known for blowing a lot of hot air? Six in one hand; half a dozen in the other!

Now don’t move past verse 19 too fast. Let me point out something to you, “all the inhabitants of Jerusalem” knew about this. Did you see that? Judas had become, probably along with Jesus at this point, a source of derision. I can hear the people of Jerusalem now, “You represent that Jesus guy? Didn’t one of his own people betray him and then kill himself afterwards. What a joke!” 

“You represent that Jesus character? You’re probably just like that guy Judas. Akeldama. That’s what awaits you.” Can you hear that? Can you hear the shame and the disrepute that the disciples would have to endure? I’d be tempted to quit. Judas’s betrayal wasn’t just a betrayal of Jesus. It was a betrayal of the other eleven disciples. The circle was broken. One of their own brought shame and disgrace upon the movement. Hang on to that thought. We’ll come back to that a little later when we talk application.    

Now that Luke has filled us in on the details, he returns to Peter’s message. So here’s what Peter says. Look at verse 20.

20 “For it is written in the Book of Psalms, “ ‘May his camp become desolate, and let there be no one to dwell in it’; and “ ‘Let another take his office.’ 21 So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, 22 beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us—one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.” 

Now what’s Peter doing here? What’s he doing? He’s interpreting and applying Scripture! He’s essentially doing the same thing we are doing right now. That should blow your mind! He is using his Bible, the OT, to teach and understand and apply what God has instructed. 

So, just by way of review. The Holy Spirit is coming. Jesus told them to wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit. And what do they do while they wait? They pray. That’s good! They study the Bible. That’s good! They search the Scriptures for truth! That’s fantastic. And they aren’t just looking for information. They don’t just read it for facts. They want to apply what the Scriptures say. 

They don’t just read it for information. They don’t just read it for meditation. They don’t just read it for cogitation. They read it for application. The disciples interpreted and applied Scripture!

By the way, I’m all for information. When it comes to the Bible, I’m an information junky. I can’t get enough. And I’m all for meditation and cogitation. By all means muse upon and mull over and ponder deeply the truths of God’s Word. But don’t stop there. The final step is application. Observation. Interpretation. Application.

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And look what they do. Look at verse 23. 

23 And they put forward two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also called Justus, and Matthias. 24 And they prayed and said, “You, Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which one of these two you have chosen 25 to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.”

Notice there’s more prayer here. That’s good. Prayer, Bible reading, and application. That’s pre-church church right here. The church hasn’t even been launched yet, and they are already doing what churches do.

Look at verse 26, 

26 And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias, and he was numbered with the eleven apostles.

Jesus went up on a mountain and prayed all night before choosing the twelve (see Luke 6:12–16). A similar process takes place here. The disciples pray. This wasn’t just random happenstance like someone winning the lottery. They chose two men that were qualified for the position. Then they prayed to God. And then they left the final decision in God’s hand. 

Write this down. Thirdly, while waiting for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit…

3) The disciples shored up their leadership (1:23–26)

Eleven men is good enough for football players on a football field. But it’s not good enough for Jesus’s apostles. Like Texas A&M football, they needed a twelfth man! And they get their twelfth man before the Holy Spirit is poured out. 

Coincidently this twelfth man isn’t just important for Acts, it’s also important for the book of Revelation. Because at the end of the end, when we take part in the New Jerusalem, the foundations of the walls of that city are named after the twelve apostles (Rev 21:14). And one of the names of those foundations will be Matthias. He saw Jesus baptized by John. He saw Jesus’s ascension. And he took Judas’s place as one of the twelve. So you won’t see Judas as one of the twelve foundations of the New Jerusalem. You won’t see Paul either. You’ll see Matthias. Good for him.  

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Now, let’s transition to application. I want to spend the rest of our time together talking through some application points for this passage. You can see those four application points in your notes. 

These verses in Acts 1 absolutely fascinate me. This is the kind of passage that if you’re not paying attention, you might just speed-read right past it. Jesus ascends into heaven in Acts 1:1–11. The Holy Spirit descends in Acts 2. And you might think, “Here’s some stuff that happened between those events to take up some space. Here’s some filler. Let’s hurry past this and get to the good stuff.” 

But let me ask you a question. Is there anything in the Bible that could be described as filler? I don’t think so. And lodged in this passage, I think are some very important principles for us as a church. 

So with that in mind, let me walk you through four application principles as we close. Write quickly. I’m going to deliver these fast. 

Application:

1) When you’re not sure what to do next, it’s time to pray

You guys know my heart. I want to see San Antonio turned upside down by the gospel of Jesus Christ. I want to see a world-altering revival start right here in this church. If that’s going to happen, we need God to show up. It’s God’s work, not ours. So we need to pray.

By the way, prayer’s going to come up a lot in Acts. Luke and Acts both abound with references to prayer. There are 31 references to prayer in Acts alone! And prayer is mentioned in 20 out of its 28 chapters. So get ready, church. We’re going to be talking about prayer a lot in the sermons that follow. 

Someone asked Charles Spurgeon once to explain the secret of his remarkable ministry. He replied, “My people pray for me.” J. Edwin Orr said once, “No great spiritual awakening has begun anywhere in the world apart from united prayer – Christians persistently praying for revival.” The church father Augustine said once, “Pray as though everything depended on God, and work as though everything depended upon you.” Matthew Henry said once, “When God wants to do something special in the world, he first gets his people to start praying.” John Wesley remarked, “God does nothing but by prayer, and everything with it.” D. L. Moody said once that, “Every great movement of God can be traced to a kneeling figure.”

Write this down as a second application.

2) If you’re serious about Scripture, get serious about application

We are not just hearers of the Word. We are not just hearers; we are doers. Peter models this for us in this passage. He took two passages that he knew were Messianic (Psalm 69 and 109). And to the best of his ability he interpreted those passages and applied them. 

I’ve heard some preachers interpret this passage as if Peter made a mistake. They say he should have just stayed in Jerusalem and bided his time and waited for the Holy Spirit before he did anything. I understand that interpretation. But I don’t buy it. 

Jesus didn’t say, “Go to Jerusalem and turn your brains off. Don’t read your Bible and don’t pray. Just sit there. Just twiddle your thumbs and wait for the Holy Spirit.” He said go to Jerusalem and don’t depart from there as his witnesses until the Holy Spirit comes. What they did there in the upper room—pray, interpret Scripture, apply Scripture, shore up leadership—was good. We need to do those things too.

Part of that flawed interpretation, that Peter made a mistake, is that Matthias wasn’t really the twelfth apostle. Paul was. And so Peter impetuously did something that God would have to remedy later. Some have argued that because Matthias isn’t mentioned in the book of Acts ever again, he wasn’t really an apostle. Well, it’s true that Matthias isn’t mentioned again. But that’s also true of most of the other apostles (all of them except Peter, John, and James). 

And Paul was added to the apostles later. Paul was an apostle! But he was never called one of the twelve. He couldn’t be. Because he didn’t see the beginning of Jesus’s ministry. He saw Jesus raised from the dead. That was key to his apostleship as he argues elsewhere (see Gal 1:10–24; 2 Cor 10:1–13:10). But Paul was never part of the twelve. 

Here’s a third application.

3) Personal betrayal is not an excuse for bitterness or quitting  

Put yourselves in the shoes of the apostles for just a moment. One of their own betrays Jesus and the rest of their inner circle. They walked with Judas. They ministered with Judas. They shared meals with him. And then, at the time when they needed him most, he betrayed Jesus and them too. 

If you’ve ever experienced deep hurt in ministry… if you’ve ever dealt with personal betrayal in the church… let me assure you, you’re not the first. Jesus had his Judas. The apostles had their Judas. Paul had his Demas, Alexander, Phygelus, and Hermogenes. And seventeen hundred and fifty years before Benedict Arnold betrayed George Washington and the American cause, Jesus was betrayed by one of his twelve. 

And here’s the temptation. When we see ministers or church leaders fail us, we want to quit. “I can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to be a part of something where someone like Judas Iscariot is considered a leader.”

There are people that do that right now. “Did you see what that church leader did? Did you see how treacherous that person was? He was a deacon in the church! He was a pastor! Did you see what that televangelist lied about?” And they use that as an excuse for retreat or bitterness or quitting. 

But what did Peter and the disciples do. Next man up! They replaced Judas and got right back to it. Peter knew himself that he had failed. And his response to Judas wasn’t bitterness or resignation. He shored up apostolic leadership, he prayed for restoration in the ministry, and he and the disciples got right back to work doing the things that God had called them to do.

One of the questions that I want you to process after the sermon is this one. It’s in your sermon notes. Here’s the question, “Why is Judas in the Bible?” Why is he here? You might say, “Well someone had to betray Jesus!” Let me just say that I think that there’s more for us to learn from Judas and from how Jesus and the disciples responded to Judas and his failure than that. 

Listen, if you get burned in this life… if you experience some kind of personal betrayal or letdown from someone you love... take heart. Jesus did too. The disciples did too. 

I actually think that the persecution that comes from the world is easier to endure than the betrayal that happens with close friends or family. When an enemy of Christ betrays you, that can be painful. But when a brother in Christ betrays you, that hurts! 

And there are two great temptations in those moments: 1) Bitterness and 2) Quitting. Peter does neither. He gets back on the horse and he gets after it again. 

I think one of the things that helped Peter was his realization that God knew all along. He looked in the OT and saw Judas’s actions were predicted by God in the OT. God never gets caught off guard. God never says, “I didn’t see that coming.” God never says, “Oops.” 

In the OT, David was betrayed. And Jesus, the Son of David, the antitype to Davidic typology was betrayed too. And if God is sovereign, then truly it must be said that “All things work for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28). 

And finally. Write this down as #4.

4) Important decisions require both prayerful discernment and faith-filled action

For the record, I don’t think that we should cast lots as a church. Some of you might be wondering about that. The Moravians, a group of Protestants that were really prominent in the eighteenth century, would actually cast lots. Should we? I don’t think so.

You might remember a few weeks back I made a distinction between that which is prescriptive and that which is descriptive for us in Acts. This is one of the first instances of something that I believe is descriptive but not prescriptive in this book. The NT disciples cast lots when they had a difficult decision to make here. Luke describes it for us, but he doesn’t prescribe it for us.

One of the reasons that I think that this is the case is that despite the prevalence of casting lots in the OT, it’s never something that is affirmed in the NT. It was a Jewish custom for decision-making, and Paul nowhere in his letters or James or Peter or John tells us to cast lots when we have a difficult matter. 

But what is prescriptive in this passage for us? Here’s something prescriptive—pray! Even before they cast lots the disciples prayed. Paul affirms repeatedly in the NT that we need to be men and women of prayer. Paul says, “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17). Paul says, “Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints” (Eph 6:18). Paul says, “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people” (1 Tim 2:1).

Now here’s another thing that’s prescriptive here. Be wise. Be thoughtful. Consider the options. Pray. Discern. And then make a decision. The disciples did that here. They found two people who were well-qualified for the position. They prayed for God’s leading. And then in faith, they acted. 

I think there are some Christians that are so fearful about making a mistake that they basically immobilize themselves. Some are so impetuous that they run ahead without any prayerful discernment at all. That’s not good either. Others are paralyzed by their own fear of making a mistake; they fail to act in faith. Just do something. Risk making a mistake. I wish some people in that category would cast lots if it would help them to make a decision faster. 

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I’ll close with this. I want to tell you a little bit about a man committed to prayer named Jeremiah Lanphier. This is an excerpt from Ajith Fernando’s commentary on Acts, “In the 1850s… the United States was in a weak spiritual state, as people were preoccupied with concern for material things. In 1857 a quiet forty-six-year-old businessman, Jeremiah Lanphier, felt led to start a noon-time weekly prayer meeting in New York City, in which business people could meet for prayer. Anyone could attend, for a few minutes or for the entire hour. On the first day Lanphier prayed alone for half an hour. But by the end of the hour six men from at least four denominational backgrounds had joined him. Twenty came the next week and forty the week after. Soon they decided to meet daily, and the group swelled to over one hundred. Pastors who came started morning prayer meetings in their own churches. Soon similar meetings were being held all over America. Within six months there were more than ten thousand meetings daily in New York City alone.”

All of this was the result of one person who was committed to prayer. Here’s my challenge to you, church. You go be that person. You be that person to start a prayer group at your work. You be that prayer warrior in the midst of your family. You be that prayer warrior for your church. You be that spark that ignites a raging inferno. Maybe God wants to save two people. Maybe God wants to save 2,000! Whatever the case, let’s entreat him to do a mighty work in our midst.