Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Acts 1:9-26, focusing on the ascension of Jesus and the early church's response. He emphasizes the importance of obedience, prayer, and unity in waiting for God's promises, highlighting that waiting is an active process that strengthens faith and prepares believers for God's will. The sermon encourages the congregation to reflect on their motives for serving God and to seek His guidance in decision-making, as exemplified by the disciples' selection of Matthias to replace Judas.
Introduction to Acts Chapter 1
of Acts, the very first church. And so we'll be in Acts chapter 1, verses 9 through 26 this morning, 9 through the end of the chapter. And hopefully you find your place there.
As you're finding your place, again, just to recap, last week was sort of the mission of the church. Jesus is there with his disciples.
He's been there for 40 days and he's been teaching them and training them and getting them prepared for what is about to happen.
He tells them about the Holy Spirit's coming and then the ascension is about to take place.
And so that's what we'll pick up today with the Lord being ascended away in chapter 1, verse 9.
And so if you have your place and you found your way there, the words will also be on the screen. We'll stand out of reading of God's word and we'll read this portion of the scripture this morning.
The Bible says in verse 9, and after he had said this, he was taken up as they were watching and the cloud took him out of sight. While he was gone, they were gazing into heaven and suddenly two men in white clothes stood by them.
They said, men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking up into heaven?
This same Jesus who has been taken from you into heaven will come in the same way that you have seen him going into heaven. Then they returned to Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day journey away.
And when they arrived, they went into a room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, John, James, Andrew, Philip, Thomas, Bartholomew,
Matthew, James, the son of Alphaeus, Simon, the zealot, and Judas, the son of James. They were all continuing, continually united in prayer along with the women, including Mary, the mother of Jesus and his brothers.
In those days, Peter stood up among his brothers and sisters, the number of the people that were gathered about 120. And he said, brothers and sisters, is it necessary that scripture be fulfilled?
That the Holy Spirit through the mouth of David foretold about Judas, who would become a guide to those who arrested Jesus? For he was one out of our number and shared in the ministry. Now this man acquired a field with the unrighteous wage.
He fell headfirst and his body burst open, his intestines spilled out.
This became known to all residents in Jerusalem, so their own language of the field is called halakamah, which is the field of blood.
For it is written in the book of Psalms, let his dwelling become desolate, let no man live there, and let someone else take his position. Therefore, from among you men who have accompanied us during the whole time of Jesus,
went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day he was taken up from among these. It is necessary that one became a witness with us in his resurrection. So they proposed to Joseph called Barabbas and the other known as Justice and Matthias. Then they prayed,
you Lord, know everyone's heart. Show us which of these two you have chosen to take place the apostolic ministry that Judas left to go where he belongs. They cast lots for them and lots fell to Matthias and he was added to the 11 apostles. Lord, we love you.
We thank you for this day today. Thank you for the opportunity for us to open your word. We'll preach through this book, such a powerful book this morning, that your words would be lifted high. In your name we pray. Amen. You may be seated.
I believe, church, this morning that why we do what we do is just as important as what we do for the Lord.
Importance of Our Motivations
I'm going to say that again. I believe that why we do what we do is just as important as what we do for the Lord. The reasons behind what we do are just as important as what we do.
And we have to ask ourselves and begin to evaluate ourselves as we process what we're doing and ask ourselves, what is the heart's motive behind what we are doing? Proverbs says it like this in Proverbs 17, 3, a crucible for silver and a smeltering for gold.
And the Lord is the tester of the hearts. When we begin to examine our heart, we understand there's ways that we do things. And it says that the Lord is the one that tests our hearts. The Lord is the one that works in our way.
There are many compelling reasons why we would do what we do. Valentine's Day is coming up and men, you're going to be compelled to go to the store and buy a box of chocolate and buy a card for your wife or take your wife out on a date or do
something nice for her. But we are compelled to do things in this earthly life.
And so we have to ask ourselves, what are we compelled to do for the Lord? And what is a compelling reason to do something?
When my wife comes to me and says, James, I really want something. And she begins to lay out these compelling reasons. We got a dog this Christmas and my kids love it.
I feel like I have to take care of it more than I should. But she laid out all the compelling reasons of why we should get a dog and the kids are going to grow up loving this dog. And I'm just thinking,
yeah, it's just a dog though. And so the compelling reasons overwhelmed the decision to get this animal. And so we got a dog for Christmas. And so we have to ask ourselves,
what is a more compelling reason than Jesus's imminent return onto this earth to tell other people about Christ?
That should be overall the most important thing that comes to our mind because one day he's going to come back and he's going to get us and he's going to ask us what we've done for him.
And we're going to stand before the judgment seat of Christ and give an account for everything we've done.
Second Corinthians says it like this in chapter five, verse 10, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each may be repaid for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. So we all have important decisions to make.
And the question you can ask yourself is, have you ever made an important decision in your life? Do you think anyone ever in here has ever made an important decision?
Raise your hand. Most of us, I would say, have made an important decision. And when we begin to make this decision, we go for the Lord and we say, God, what is this decision that you have for me? Is this the right decision? Is this the right thing? Chances are you've answered yes.
And you probably have said, I've faced some hard decisions. I've faced some difficult circumstances.
And some of those circumstances I outline like this, maybe it's adopting a child, maybe it's changing jobs, maybe it's relocating to another city state,
maybe it's deciding where you're going to go to college, or when you graduate school, what are you going to do in your next chapter? Maybe it's purchasing a home or starting a new business adventure.
Some may say, well, I'm on the prospect of getting married. And those are exciting times. And I want to make sure I choose the right spouse.
And I want to ask the Lord, what am I going to do? And what is the will of God in my life? Most of us make discovering God's will more complicated than it really is.
You see, when I was a kid, I was told that the will of God is this mystery out in the far yonders of space.
And if you do X, Y, and Z, you'll eventually hopefully figure out what the will of the Lord is in your life. And there's always this like mystical, trying to figure out things in life.
But I want to tell you this morning that God cares about the will that he has for your life. He cares about what your decisions are in life. That was meditate.
I try to take a Saturday and after I've written my message, just sort of go through and, and sometimes I'll dialogue with Allie a little bit.
Yeah, last night she was out there with me and I'm asking her some questions and just processing my sermon a little bit. And she said, James, I think it would be good to maybe tell the story of us waiting in transition. I titled the message living in transition,
waiting and trying to figure out the Lord's desire for us to become a senior pastor and leading us here.
About three years ago now, the Lord impressed upon our heart after COVID and transitioning through COVID that, that he had a desire for us to be a lead pastor. Never had this desire in my life.
I had always desired to be a second man, the associate pastor, but over the course of events that happened, the Lord began to impress upon my heart, this overwhelming desire and urge and leadership to step out by faith and become a lead pastor.
And I thought, I mean, you just like me, when, when those desires come, we all have this like instantaneous satisfaction, right? We want it to happen tomorrow. And so we began to pray and one year went by, two years went by and three years. And we're like,
Lord, you put this desire in my heart. Is it ever going to happen?
There was a couple of churches that we had been again talking to, and we had began to process and pray about, and we began talking to them.
And me and my wife would go and we'd come back and say, well, you know, this right here isn't, isn't the way, sort of jiving with, with our spirit. And so we'd have to tell them no. And we'd go back and forth.
And then we came here and the waiting that we had had was leading us to the portion that we were determined to be here through the Holy Spirit's guiding.
And oftentimes the Lord will do things in his timing, not our timing. And we began to ask ourselves, why is this happening in this situation? Why are these things going on right now in my life?
And Lord is just simply saying they're going on for a reason because I'm trying to guide you in a lot of different areas. And I'm going to spend some time today talking through that.
And so the way we approach a decision that we're going to do for the Lord has significance for multiple reasons. It has huge ramifications for the future of God's church.
And we're going to see this today. And it provides us a model as we look through what the disciples did on how to make a weighty decision and how to begin to process this. And those two things come together in a way that advances the kingdom of the Lord in a mighty way.
Understanding Jesus' Departure
And so as we process through this passage here, the first thing we see is Jesus leaves. Jesus leaves in chapter one, verses nine through 11.
You can imagine the disciples, this is the guy they followed for three and a half years. They just asked the question, as we looked at last week, are you about to set up the kingdom of God? Are you going to come and finally take over Rome?
Are you going to come and finally make us leaders in this movement that we're following you in? And Jesus says, listen, you're going to have to wait here. You're going to have power after me.
And after he gets saying this, it's like the mic drop moment of all mic drops. He finishes.
And in verse nine, it says, he ascended up into heaven and vanished in a cloud. And two men are standing there and they look at him and they say, what are you doing?
Why are you looking up? He just gave you a command. And they sort of rebuke him. And as we see this, we understand that this is an important aspect of Jesus' ministry. When you see the Jewish faith and you see the Jewish lifestyle, the husband must leave the bride in that engagement period.
And he leads and he goes and he prepares a place for an undetermined amount of time. Sometimes it's a year,
sometimes it's two or three years as he builds his house and he gets the room ready that him and his wife are going to be in. And he waits for his father to tell him, you're ready to go take care of your bride.
He has to get the approval of his father before he can go. And the Jewish understanding of this is knowing that Jesus had to leave in order to come back for us.
And so the first thing we see here is in verse nine, the ascension. Jesus physically ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God. He did this in the presence of his disciples as a visual demonstration that his mission here on earth was complete.
Him leaving was a stamp of saying, I'm done here on earth in my physical ministry and I'm passing the baton upon my disciples. And eventually 2000 years later, pleasant growth Baptist church.
As he says, this is your ministry to go into the entire world. This is your mission field that we're going to do. This marks the completion of his earthly ministry and his beginning of his reign in heaven.
Now, when we begin to think of that, we begin to think of the scripture where it says that he sits on the throne at the right hand of the father, making intercession for you and me.
He couldn't do that while he was here. He does that while he's in heaven and he sits on his throne and he reigns forever and ever over all of his creation because he is the rightful heir. He is the one who brought us into this reconciliation with God through his death, burial and resurrection.
So not only do we see the ascension, but we see the promise of his return. In verses 10 and 11, the angels appeared to the disciples and they reminded him, Jesus who left this way, he's going to come back.
He said, they said that the men of Galilee, why are you standing here gazing? He was taken away.
And in that same way, he's going to come back just as you saw him go to heaven. The ascension here assures us and helps us to believe that the second coming of Christ is imminent.
That the second coming of Christ is a real true event that's going to happen. And we must make preparation in our heart for that second coming to happen. But it also reminds us that we're not left alone.
We have a comforter that is coming, the Holy Spirit that's coming. And then we have Jesus that makes intercession for us and that Jesus is there and he loves us and he cares about us. And he's coming back one day to receive his church into his kingdom,
into his throne, into heaven as we begin to worship with him. And we look forward to that day.
I look forward to that day more than, more than my family, more than people around me. I began to look and I began to see what, what's heaven going to be like and what's the glory of God going to be like as the angels sing, holy, holy, holy.
As we stand there in the choir, as our choir just sang, we're going to stand in that choir and we're going to sing praises to the Lord because he's worthy of that. And one day he's coming back to receive us into his throne, to receive us into his glory.
But not only do we see the ascension and the promise, but we see the importance of hope. You see, the ascension does not signal abandonment.
Oftentimes we'll, we'll see this and we'll say, well, look, Jesus did these mighty things. He started an uproar and then he took off. He said, all right, disciples, I started the mess.
Now you got to fix it. You got to finish it, right? You got to fix all the mistakes that I made. You got to fix all the riots and everything that's going on. Oftentimes we can sometimes in our hearts
signal abandonment that Christ is gone. And, and the, the, sometimes we see the Christian church taking steps backwards and we see the Christian church having persecution upon it. And there's difficult things that come in and Christ is saying, listen, there's a final victory that's going to come.
There's a final victory of me leaving for a moment to come back and to have this victory.
As Christians, we live in, I like to call it the tension of life. We live in the already and not yet, right? Jesus already came.
He did his work on the cross, but then there's this not yet of his final fulfillment and returning of scripture that there, his fulfillment of promise of coming back.
And this tension causes us to begin to doubt, begin to have discouragement, to begin to, we have depression that steps in and anxiety and things that go on in our life.
And Christ is saying, listen, there's some tension because tension helps grow us.
If you've ever had surgery or you've ever had some type of physical therapy, they will put tension on certain parts of your body to help that, to grow the muscle and to grow the movement back. And in the spiritual journey, it's the same way. When we have tension,
tension does one of two things. Tension draws us closer to Christ by pulling that tension back to getting closer to Christ, or we lower the standard.
Tension happens because we're doing something that the Christ says isn't right. And we say, well, you know what? Instead of me conforming to Christ, I'm going to have Christ conform to me and Christ move his standards. And we understand that that doesn't happen. Christ's standards is eternal. Christ's standards is perfect.
And so this tension brings us into this important moment of knowing that there is this hope that is greater than any hope this world can ever offer.
If we can just simply put our faith and trust in Jesus in this ascension moment as he leaves.
But then we get to what I'm going to spend the majority of my time as the Lord pressed upon my heart last night, as I actually rewrote some stuff that's not in your fill in the blanks there.
I'm going to have you write some things down. But the question that we have to ask ourself is, what do we do while we wait? What do we do while we wait?
There's this transition, there's living, there's this moment where life is difficult, life is hard, and we don't know what to do.
And it's important aspect of our faith to understand that we will always be in some sort of waiting. We will always be in some sort of period of waiting, whether it's you have a marriage that's about to happen.
And the husband and the pastor are standing up on stage and they're waiting for that anticipation of the bride to come down. All the crowd is waiting.
Maybe it's a pregnancy and you begin to have a grandbaby or a baby that's going to come and you've got that nine month of waiting period.
It's like, oh Lord, just allow the nine months to hurry up and get here so I can hold this baby that's going to be there, this grandchild, this baby that's going to be the light of my world. And everywhere we look, anything that happens, we're always in this mode of waiting.
And as we begin to go through this church, as the church is ultimately waiting for Christ to come back, the question we have to ask ourself is, what do we do when we wait? How does this look according to scripture as the disciples laid this out for us?
Obedience and Waiting on God
The first thing they did was they obeyed the commands of Christ. Jesus commanded his disciples back in verse six,
go to Jerusalem and wait for the promise of the Holy Spirit. Now they could have said, you know, Jesus just left us.
Is his promise even true? I mean, he sit here with 40 days. He could have established the kingdom. Peter could have like, you know what guys, let's talk about Jerusalem.
They're going to kill people there. They're already mad at this whole Jesus movement that's going on. Let's just go and do our own thing. God will bless that.
No, they decided that they were going to return to Jerusalem. They were going to go to this upper room and they were going to spend this time obeying the Lord. And obedience during times of waiting is crucial. Oftentimes, and if you're like me, who's high energy, often who
likes to make things nervous anytime we're around, like we're just excited where we're like, I like to do things. I don't like to wait. I like to get things done. Oftentimes we look at waiting as not really doing anything.
But the Bible says that waiting is not passive, but it's actually active. And there's a purpose to our waiting.
And what is the purpose of our waiting? Last night, as I was reviewing the Lord laid upon my heart, six things that I've put on the screen. If you want to turn your notes over and sort of write these down, six things that waiting does.
Biblical waiting has a purpose. It has a purpose that is greater than we will ever imagine. It has a purpose that is so strong that when we begin to fully understand what this waiting does, it draws us closer to Jesus in multiple different ways.
The first thing it does is it strengthens our faith. Waiting strengthens our faith.
It allows us to trust in God's timing. It allows us to understand that the plans that I have are not my own plans, but they're what the Lord has for me. I'm going to sort of quickly go through this. And Proverbs 3, 5 says it like this.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not rely on your own understanding. The strength is this waiting builds our faith in a way that we trust in God's heart. We trust in what God has for us to strengthen our faith, to deepen our reliance on His wisdom.
The second thing we see that waiting does is it builds patience and character. It builds patience and character. Waiting helps refine our character by teaching us what perseverance looks like. It teaches what humility looks like.
It's a process that reveals our weaknesses and it helps us to grow spiritually and emotionally.
Oftentimes when it comes to, and I use sports a lot as a coach, as my kids are playing sports, when these times where Brody just recently, he won two games this past Saturday. He made six points in basketball.
He's starting to understand what basketball is and that the little ball is supposed to go into the goal. And he's starting to understand that a little bit. And so as he's doing that, they've been waiting for a win.
They've lost a lot in the last one. They won one of their first games and they've sort of been on a losing streak. And yesterday, as I saw them, they were cheering each other on and the win happened and the entire bench just surrounded the court. They all surrounded the players.
He thought they won the national championship.
Then these boys, they understood that the patience of that losing developed their character for them to win and for them to do some great things.
You see, Romans 8.25 says this, now if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with patience. There's this hope of understanding that we are waiting in patience.
Number three, align with God's timing. As we wait, we begin to align our timing with God's timing. We understand that God's plans are perfect. His timings are different than human expectations. And we need to help us to align our schedule with what God's schedule is. Ephesians 3.1,
Stephen preached on this a couple of weeks ago. There is an occasion for everything and a time for every activity under heaven. You see, when we begin to wait, we begin to reevaluate our life. We begin to say, God is,
are these things the right things in my life? Are these areas in my life the right things? I know it's difficult.
I know that I'm waiting for you to do some things, but allow my timing to be your timing, not me trying to force my timing on yours. And if you've been around for any length of time, you understand that when we force our will on God's will, it typically doesn't end up well.
God's will is ultimately supreme. So number four, it prepares us for what's ahead. Sometimes waiting is a period of preparation.
It's a time where we are waiting for a time of building wisdom and strength in different areas in our life. And it prepares us for the next stage. Isaiah 40 verse 31 says it like this, but those that trust in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles.
They will run and not become weary and they will walk and not faint. You see, waiting prepares us for what God has for us. And then ultimately number five, it deepens our relationship with God.
In waiting, believers should be drawing so close to God that it's like we can hear his audible voice, even though it's not audible. We can just sense his presence. We can sense what he's there.
We can sense that we are so close to him that when a song comes on, it's a worship song. It touches our heart to a point where we just begin to break out into almost tears.
And you may be in tears as you begin to go through that because you understand that God is there with you. And this relationship with God grows closer and closer and closer as we meditate on his word.
And as we begin to process what God has for us in scripture, we begin to draw so close to him that our relationship with him, this presence that we have with him is a multitude of joy and peace
that only comes through him. Look at verse Psalms 37 verse seven, be silent before the Lord and wait expectantly for him. Be silent and wait expectantly for him.
Because when we begin to deepen our relationship with God, we begin to hear his voice. We begin to hear what he has for us as we wait and obey his commands. And then the last thing we'll look at here is it tests and grows our faith. It tests and grows our faith.
Waiting is a test of trust. When we begin to be faithful to the Lord and we begin to say, God, I'm going to be, I'm going to trust what you have for me. I'm not going to, I'm not going to force my will and your will.
I'm going to just trust that you have a plan that's greater than my plans. It strengthens our ability to trust God even more.
Even when the outcome is uncertain, when the outcome is, I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know what's going to happen. If I make this decision, if I take this step of faith, I'm just going to trust that God's plan is greater than my plan.
Look at what Lamentations chapter 3 verse 25 says, the Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the person who seeks him.
This is a promise that God has for us that when we seek him, when we wait for him, that the Lord is going to be good for us. The Lord is going to prosper us.
He's going to take care of us if we are going to be those that wait and seek after him. And this is what the disciples did.
They understood that as they were going to be living in this transition, they had to obey the commands.
Devotion to Prayer and Unity
They had to obey the times of waiting because it was a time where they were going to grow spiritually and grow physically together. But not only did they obey the commands, they devoted themselves to prayer. They devoted themselves to prayer.
Verses 13 and 14, and they arrived and they list who was there and it says that they continued in prayer. The disciples gathered in an upper room. They were there with one another.
They had this community, this fellowship that had been together for three and a half years.
And as they began to grow together and love each other more than they ever had, they were a brotherhood and a sisterhood. The Bible says that here in just a minute, Peter stood up and said, brothers and sisters. He didn't say James and John and Mark and Matt.
He didn't say all that. He didn't say Mary and the mother of Mary.
He said, brothers and sisters, we're a bond of unity here and we're going to devote ourselves together. And they continued in prayer.
Every single one of them, the women, the men that were there, even Mary, the mother of Jesus, continued in prayer.
When we go through transition, when we go through times in our life where life seems uncertain, prayer should be the thing that is the certainty of life.
Prayer is the vital aspect of our life where we come together as a church and we seek God's face and we say, Lord, I can't do this on my own. I need you here.
Prayer is both an act of dependence on something else that is greater than us. And it's a demonstration of the unity of the body of Christ.
No good thing has ever happened in a church outside of prayer. If you look through the history of any church, if you look through the history of the church as a whole, if you look through any movement that has ever been done for the sake of Christ, it all started
with prayer. Because it was a demonstration that we cannot do this on our own and we are going to be in unified moments of growing closer to Christ and let him do the mission. Which leads us to the third thing here.
When we devote ourselves to prayer, we begin to be united in a mission. The Bible says here, they were all together in one accord.
They were united in prayer for a mission that was not themselves their own mission, but a mission that was greater than themselves.
A mission that was sent here from God that they were going to trust in the Lord and they were going to trust in each other and they were going to be unified in this moment. That when persecution would happen, they would have each other to follow them.
When difficulties would happen, when Peter and John, as we see here in a little bit, in a couple of weeks get thrown into jail,
they begin just to worship the Lord. Why? Because they're together, because they're unified in a mission that is greater than themselves. The waiting period is not just about personal preparations,
but church is about our community and our body of believers that are together, coming together and understanding that God has something great for us if we will be unified together in prayer.
So we see that Jesus leaves and we begin to ask ourselves, what do we do when we wait? And then the third thing is knowing the will of God. It's not some mystery that's out there that we can't find.
It's something that God has intimately for us and he lays it out here, not in an unknown way, but some practical steps that we can understand and know what the will of God is. The first thing we see is the need for leadership.
Leadership and Decision Making
Anytime we begin to process the understanding of what the will of God is, there must be leadership in these areas.
The Bible says that Peter, inspired by the scripture, stood up and addressed all those that were there and they ultimately needed to replace this man named Judas who betrayed Jesus. He reflects on the betrayal. He reflects on what happens.
He deals with it publicly and he says, now there's this time where we must fulfill scripture. You see, the process of knowing God's will starts and ends with scripture.
Knowing God's will starts and ends with scripture. It starts and ends with, are we knowing what God has for us in this situation? God lays out these plans in scripture and he, he asks us to interpret his will through the lens of scripture. Put on the lens of God's word.
This past two weeks ago, I went and I had my annual eye doctor appointment and they, they put this big machine.
If you've ever been to an eye doctor before, they put this machine around your eyes and they began to twist. Is it better this way or better that way? Because they want the lens that you're going to be looking through to be the best, clearest possible view. It's this big contraption.
When I was eight months old, I got my very first pair of glasses and had glasses since I was eight months old. And my mom said, when I was eight months old, I'm sitting in this chair. They had to bring in a, like a big stool.
They sat on top of the chair because I was too small.
And I sat there and they said, I sat there and I began to look through and I took my little finger and I poked it inside that little lens. And it said it took them like 30 minutes to come in with Q-tips and different things.
Cause I had to clean this lens out because this little eight year old little boy stuck his finger inside this hole that would only fit an eight month old little boy. And we do all these things.
We, I don't know why that even came to my mind, but, but it did as I was thinking through it. We go through all this because the doctors want us to have a lens. I've worn glasses my whole life, a lens to see life clearly through.
And God says, the lens that I need you to see life clearly through is the Holy scripture.
It's taking the Bible and literally thinking of it like a pair of glasses that we put on and we see the world through God's word. We take the word that God has revealed to us and we begin to interpret everything that we go through in life.
Whether it be a prophecy that's going to come to pass, whether it be what I'm going to do with my family, it's saying, God, allow the scripture to influence what I'm going to do.
God's word is revealed, not through isolated events, but through unfolding of his scripture and allowing his scripture to influence our life so clearly. It's just trusting that God, your word is secure. Your word is final.
We also see here, not only the need for leadership, but the qualities of the new leader. In verses 21 and 22, they begin to lay out what it looked like during this time. The replacement for Judas must be someone who was with them from the beginning, that witnessed the resurrection.
As I was thinking through this, I'm thinking, Lord, how is this going to apply to our church today? This is what God gave me. God's call in our life is specific.
He comes to us and he says, ultimately that first call of salvation.
I want you to come to me and know salvation and know the redemption of the Lord and know the goodness that God has given us. But then it continues on in our experiences and our commitment to the Lord that we are going to love him through our experiences, through our commitment.
As we grow closer to him, we are going to see the qualities of the Lord come out in us. Leadership in the kingdom requires those that are grounded in the word of God.
If we're going to serve the Lord, we must know scripture. We must know. And I love when people come and ask me questions. And me and Peter, we went and we hung out this past weekend. There's questions and Brody's asking me questions. And those questions begin to sharpen our faith.
They begin to sharpen our relationship with one another because we are growing in love with one another.
And as we are asking ourselves, am I a leader in the kingdom of God? Am I a leader in the word of God? Am I a leader in loving the word of God more than I love anything else? And so we have to ask ourselves, are we upholding these qualities as a disciple?
And then there's the selection of Matthias. The selection of Matthias.
After they prayed, the disciples cast lots and Matthias was chosen a part of the 11 disciples. And he became the 12th replacement here.
And as we look through that, there's some deep theological understanding here that I'm not going to have time to go through. But I want us to understand this.
Casting lots in this day was a way of seeking God's direction. It says here that it was part of their prayer and trust in the Lord.
Casting Lots for Leadership
Verse 24, they prayed and said, Lord, you know the hearts of these men. Take these apostolic ministries and allow us to cast lots so that the lots would fall in the right place. It started in prayer.
It didn't start that they cast lots. It started by saying, God, you are in control of everything.
Trusting God's will doesn't mean that we avoid decision making, but it allows us to understand that God is in control of everything.
God is in control of everything that's going to happen in my life, down to the very smallest minute detail.
And when we understand that and we can go through prayer and have unity in our community and understand that God is the one that is in charge of all these things, we understand that God selected us for this specific appointment to fulfill scripture.
And so as Terry comes in place for us, as we begin to process what happens in this message, as God had laid this on my heart to look at what this transition in life looks like,
we all go through some form of transition. Some of you may be in here and you may be transitioning to empty nesters, or maybe you just recently transitioned that. And it's all of a sudden, what do I do with all this extra time that I've got? I've got to spend time with my wife that that, that,
that I didn't used to have to spend all this time with because we had kids around and, and now I've got to relearn life there. Or maybe it's transitioning with new people coming in your life.
Maybe it's a new job, but we all go through transitions in life. And we begin to ask ourselves, as we live in tension constantly, as we wait for Christ's return to happen, are we living in anticipation of Christ coming back?
Are the decisions that we're making, are they so influenced by Christ coming back?
Where I'm going to go to the store, who I'm going to talk to across the street, it's all based on Christ coming back.
We begin to ask ourselves, where's our prayer life? How often are we on our knees with our family?
How often are we on our knees solo by ourselves and just calling out to the Lord and saying, God, I can't do this on my own. For me, it's a lot of driving.
I'm in the car a lot. So a lot of that time I'm just praying and I'm saying, God, let me be the right pastor.
Let me be the right father. Let me be the right example in our community. Guide my path, guide my feet.
I'm not closing my eyes when I'm driving. Uh, my eyes are open, but, but I'm praying and I'm saying, God, help me, help me know what your will is.
Help me know that if I'm going to implement this thing in my family's life, that it's going to be the right thing for my family based on your scripture, based on your will.
Help us as we make decisions that, that affect your church, that it's going to be for your will and for the greatness of God to be spread in our community. Help us to understand these areas.
And that looks different than each and every one of us. So we begin to process our own life and say, God, what is it in my life that I can begin to say? There's a transition.
It's tough. It's difficult. Maybe you've got a kid that's about to go to school. Maybe you've got someone that's just, that's in your family that's hurting or, or dealing with drugs or depression and you can step in and you can help them through the word of God.
Hope in Jesus' Return
Ultimately, our hope should be in the ascension that Jesus departed and he didn't abandon us. He has this promise of return and we're actively waiting.
We're waiting in a way that, that it's like the kid that that's sitting on the edge of his seat and they're waiting for coach to call him in to get into the game. And he's waiting, he's waiting.
And he looks over and the coach says, Hey son, I need you to get in. And man, he jumps off the bench and he goes in and he plays his heart out. This is what waiting looks like for us as Christians. We're waiting.
We're faithful in prayer. We're obedient to God. And we're saying, God, put me in. I'm ready, God. I'm ready to be put in to make a difference. This is what waiting should look like. And then ultimately, are we seeking the God's will and saying, God, I don't care what the decision is.
I don't care if it's how length of my hair should be. I don't care about what color boots I should have on right alley. I don't care about all these things. I don't want to be done for your honor and for your glory in everything that we do.
And so church, as we stand, as we go to the Lord in prayer and you respond, as you see fit, I want us to ask us ultimately, are we waiting?
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