Christ is Life Podcast

In the spring of 2008
I got a call from my wife. She was in major panic mode. It was hard to understand what she was saying at first, but obviously something was wrong. When she finally got it out, I learned that her dad had had a major heart attack, another major heart attack. He had had several in the past. He eventually ended up at Baylor Medical City in Dallas, and the doctor there said that because of his previous heart attacks, because of all the damage that had been done with those and the damage that was done with this one that his only hope for survival was if he could get a heart transplant.
And so we sat in the hospital
and we just waited
and we waited
and we waited,
not knowing if a heart was going to come, not knowing if he was going to survive, or even if a heart did come, if this procedure would take we had no idea. There was nothing that we could do. We couldn't do the doctors couldn't do anything. We couldn't do anything. All we could do was sit there and wait.
Was one of the most difficult
periods of our lives.
I made some hospital visits this week, some of our members and I checked on one person who had had some stroke like symptoms, and he was in the hospital, and he had numbness on one side of his body, and his speech was slow, and his short term memory was gone, and he was dealing with a number of issues, and they really thought he had a stroke, but all the information that came back was that he didn't have a stroke, they didn't know what it was, and so he was just sitting in the hospital, continuing to experience these effects and the damage and the things that were done, and he was just having to wait. They still don't have any answers. Today, he's still just waiting, not knowing what's going on with him, not knowing what happened, not knowing if he'll ever know or if it's ever going to be any different. I went to visit another one of our members, 81 years old, who had complications with diabetes and he had to have his leg amputated below the knee. This was a 81 year old man who was a former division one college athlete, and now he's just sitting in a hospital waiting, not really knowing what life is going to be like with only one leg. I visited someone else who had had a pretty extensive back surgery, and she was in so much pain after the surgery, and she's wondering if it was going to take and if it really was going to work. All she knew was that she was experiencing pain and it would be months before she ever knows. And so now she's just sitting there waiting going, I don't know if I made the right choice. Is this going to impact me in any way I went to see someone else who had been in the hospital for over a month, finally got out and got to go home for a day, and then began to experience complications again, only to find themselves back in the hospital, sitting there again, just waiting, not knowing if the answers will come, not Knowing if healing is coming, not knowing what to expect day after day, just sitting there, waiting. Waiting is one of the most difficult things that you and I have to do and experience, especially when the situations and the circumstances that we're in are not favorable towards us, you've been there. It doesn't have to be necessarily an illness, although that could be where you had to wait, or where you're even waiting right now. There are certainly other things that come up where we have to just wait in the unknown. Your spouse walks in and says they want to be separated, they want a divorce, and there doesn't seem to be like there's anything that you can do about the situation that you're in, and you're just waiting, and you're asking and you're begging God to move and change your spouse's heart and to do something. But yet the answers aren't coming, and you just wait,
you don't know what to do.
Some of you have had a doctor tell you that you have infertility issues, and you, just after getting over the initial shock of it, have to sit there and just wait day after day wondering, are you ever going to be able to have children? You just don't know. So you just wake up every day and you you wait some. Of you have lost a job before, and the finances were getting low, and the money was not there to pay the bills, and you're begging and asking God for something to provide, but it's not coming, and you're just sitting there having to wait. Some of you are facing major decisions, or you've had major decisions to to make, and you don't really know what to do, and you're you're begging God, you're asking him to give you an answer to move, and the answers don't come the next day, and they didn't come the next day, and they didn't come the following week, and they didn't come that month, and it's maybe even been a year or more, and you're still in that period of waiting, just wondering, God, are you going to answer? Are you there? What are you going to do? I'm just waiting on you to move can be so difficult sometimes when we have to just wait, when we have to wait on things to change, when we have to wait on the Lord not knowing what he's up to or if he's ignoring us, or what's going on in our lives. And so what do we do when we have to wait? What do we do in the waiting while we
wait?
Two weeks ago, we began this message series called life in the Spirit. On the book of Acts. We made it through the first 11 verses and in that particular message, you may remember, if you were here, that we covered this verse where Jesus was meeting with the disciples after His death, after his resurrection, and just before his ascension, and he says, Do not leave
Jerusalem,
but wait,
I know we've been talking about this mission, we've been talking about Kingdom work. I've been training you and prepping you for three years, and it's time. It's getting close to be time. But right now is not the time to go. Right now is not the time to do. Right now is the time
to wait.
So the disciples found themselves just waiting day after day, wondering if and when the Lord was going to move. And so we ask the question, if this is where we left off with the disciples in the waiting, what did they do when they waited? What did they do in this in between period when they were just told to sit there and wait? And we're going to see that as we finish out this chapter today, the way Luke opens up this section as he says, then after Jesus' resurrection, I mean not His resurrection, His ascension, right? They had just met final time. Tells him to wait on the Holy Spirit. He's going to use them as their witnesses. And then he ascends back to heaven, he says. Then after that, the apostles returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount of Olives, which is a Sabbath day's walk from the city. When they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. Those present were Peter, John James and Andrew Philip and Thomas Bartholomew, Matthew James, son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James. In other words, Luke wants to make sure that we know that the 11 remaining apostles are there. In this upper room, there's 11 of them, because, as you know, Judas Iscariot had betrayed Jesus, and he's going to fill us in on more information about Judas in a little while. But the thing that we don't want to skip over too quickly here is that Jesus had met with his disciples, he had told them to go to Jerusalem and to wait. And what we see in the very next section is then the apostles returned to Jerusalem that they did exactly what Jesus said to do. And I don't want to skip over that too lightly, because one of the hardest things there is to do is to wait. We might feel like the Lord tells us to wait, but then we go really like, I feel like I should be doing something. And so our tendency, a lot of times, is to get after it and to run after it and to chase after it and figure out what it is that we're supposed to be doing. But he told them to wait, and they went to Jerusalem
and they waited.
So we need to understand, and what we need to see here is that, in other words, they trusted Jesus. Jesus said the best thing that you can do right now is wait, and they trusted him, and they waited. And when the Lord tells you and I to wait on something, the best thing that we can do is trust Him as the one who sits above all things and sees things from a different perspective than we do, and then
we just wait.
He goes on and says, while they're waiting, they all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the. Women and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers. So in other words, Luke wants to make sure we recognize and realize that it wasn't just the 11 disciples that there were there were women that were there. If you read the gospels, we know that there were a number of women disciples that spent time with Jesus during His three year ministry, there were some of the women that even helped fund his ministry, that we can read about in one of the Gospels, that they helped pay for the resources and finance the ministry of Jesus. The women were the first to experience and see Jesus when he was resurrected, and to begin to share with others that he had been raised from the dead, Luke, make sure to let us know that Mary, that Jesus's mother, was present in this and perhaps the most interesting thing that we see here is that he references that his brothers were there. And the reason that's interesting because if you know this, if you've read the gospels, that his his brothers, Jesus, his own brothers, didn't really buy into this idea of Jesus being the Messiah. Yeah, sure. You're the chosen one, the anointed one, the one that the Old Testament talks about as the one that was going to come and be the savior and rescuer of the world. Yeah, right, Jesus, you're just our brother. Perhaps there's something about seeing your brother be resurrected from the dead that changed their mind about that, right? I mean, not the kind of thing you experience every day. They saw their brother die, they saw their brother be buried in a tomb, and then all of a sudden, their brother was alive again. And that kind of thing might cause you to second guess whether he really was the Messiah at that point, and it certainly did, because now they were there and they were together, but above and beyond learning and recognizing who was there, we see what the apostles did while they were waiting. First and foremost, what we see is that they spent time praying. And they didn't just spend time praying. They were constantly praying. They were devoted to prayer. It doesn't mean that they were I mean 100% of the time constantly kneeling and praying before God, but that they were in this spirit of prayer. They were constantly keeping their eyes focused on Jesus. They were setting their hearts and minds on him praying. The early church prayed and not just prayed, but they prayed together. Notice this, you might read those words and go they all joined together in prayer, and maybe your mind goes to, oh, that's kind of cool. Yes, they were all together in the same room, play a praying like you and I are in the same room. But really this is written in the NIV and and it's not an incorrect statement to say that they were together. It's just not the complete picture of what Luke is trying to say here, because the Greek word doesn't mean that they were just physically joined together. What he's trying to communicate here is that they were of one mind, and they were of one accord. And you'll even see that in some of the translations. In other words, they were united together under the mission that God had given them. You're gonna wait on the Holy Spirit, you're gonna be my witnesses in this. And so they've gathered together under that one mind, under that one accord of going we are about to be a part of something way bigger than ourselves. We're believing it to be true. We're trusting Jesus for it to be true. And so we're waiting with one mind and one accord focused on what Jesus has for us. Together. They were living in Unity together. And so that is one of the things that when we see that written about them, then we go, yes, that that applies to us. Of course, today, that when you and I find ourselves
waiting,
first and foremost, we pray,
what do we do in the waiting? We pray. We fix our eyes on Jesus. We lift our concerns to him. We place him on him, we ask for him to move and in his own timing and to lead with clarity around those things. But we don't just wait alone. We don't just pray alone. We wait together and we pray together in the waiting. Jesus unites us together as brothers and sisters in him with him being the head of the church. The early church joined together. They prayed together. And these are two themes that we will continue to see over and over and over again throughout the book of Acts. This Greek word where they all joined together and they were of one mind and one accord occurs seven to eight times in the book of Acts. And even when it doesn't, you'll see other instances where this is just the description of what was happening there. This idea and this thing of them praying together. We see 31 times in the book of Acts that they were praying together, 31 times it's mentioned in 20 of the 28 chapters of Acts. And so the early church were of was of one mind. They were of one accord. They spent time praying together, which says so much to you and I today, as the church as well. We meet together, we pray together. We're of one mind, and we're of one accord. Luke goes on and tells us that in those days, during that time of waiting while they were there, Peter, one of the apostles, stood up among the believers, and he puts a parenthetical remark in here and says, This was a group numbering about 120 and so we go, okay, well, there were 11 names of the apostles. There were women, there was Mary, his brothers. He goes, Oh yeah. Well, by the way, there were even more than that. There were about 120 believers at the time, which is obviously a super small fraction of the population in Jerusalem, and, of course, the whole Roman Empire. But that won't be the case for long, and we're going to see that as we continue throughout the book of Acts, verse 15, I mean 16, so Peter stood stands up, he says, Brothers and sisters, the Scripture had to be fulfilled in which the Holy Spirit spoke long ago through David concerning Judas, who served as a guide for those who were or those who arrested Jesus. He was one of our number and shared in our ministry. And so Peter, they're in the waiting. Jesus tells them to wait. They're gathered together. They're of one mind. They're of one accord. They're praying and seeking his face. And the other thing that we see what they do while they are waiting is focusing on Scripture. They're reading scripture. They're looking for scripture to speak to them. And the reason they're looking for the scriptures to say something to speak to them is because of what he says right here. Peter says the scriptures had to be fulfilled in which the Holy Spirit spoke long ago through David. Recognizes that these were not just men who were writing things down on paper. There was something bigger that was going on there. The Holy Spirit was active in moving and working in them and through them. This is the same Peter who, in the New Testament of your Bibles, wrote First Peter and Second Peter. And if you go to Second Peter, you'll see that he writes there that the writers of Scripture, he says, were carried along by the Holy Spirit. In other words, they were being inspired by the Holy Spirit to write what it is that they were written. This is literally, in other words, the word of God, the way that he speaks to us and reveals truth to us, reveals Himself to us. And so Peter, with the apostles and the disciples, their attention on the scriptures. Are saying, Look, I'm looking at this particular set of Scripture, which we'll see in just a moment. And he's saying that through David, the Holy Spirit was at work to reveal to us that we will need to replace Judas Iscariot. And so we'll get into that in a little bit, whenever he gets there. But I just want to highlight again, what do we do in the waiting, we pray. We fix our eyes on Jesus. We don't wait alone. We unite together with other believers, and we pray together. And we focus on God's words. We focus on Scripture. We read Scripture anticipating that he will reveal things to us through His word while we're in the waiting. This is what they did. This is what we do today. Now, Peter stands up and he makes this remark, and he makes this remark concerning Judas Iscariot, and it's kind of like he's riding along and going, Oh, well, maybe, since I mentioned his name, I should make sure that everybody knows what happened to Judas. And so he's going to let us know what happened to Judas, but he's not going to do so in such What shall we say political correctness terminology here, he just tells it like it was, he says, with the payment he Judas received for his wickedness, Judas bought a field. There he fell headlong. His body burst open and all his intestines spilled out. Gross. Everyone in Jerusalem heard about this, so they called that field. In their language, akodama, that is filled of blood. Luke is not simply trying to just make sure that we know that Judas died and that he was no longer with them. What Luke is making sure we understand is that Judas Iscariot was judged. He received the judgment of God for His betrayal to Jesus, and ultimately for his unbelief in Jesus as the Messiah and and we'll even see in just a little bit that he's going to say something about the eternal resting place of Judas compared to the other 11, and so I'll point that out as we continue to go as well. Okay, so he mentions Judas. He makes this parenthetical remark about God's judgment and about those things happening to him, but now he gets into the scripture that he had referenced just a second ago. He says, For it is written in the book of Psalms, may his place be deserted. Let there be no one to dwell in it, and may another take his place of leadership. May another take Judas iscariots, place of leadership. Now this is taken. This particular section of scripture is taken from two different psalms that Peter is referring to here, Psalm 6925, and Psalm 1098, now, if you were to go back and read those, you wouldn't be reading them and going, oh yeah, that's talking about Judas Iscariot. It doesn't jump out at us in that particular way, but God through His Word and through the situation, sitting above all things in the chair that only he sits in has a way of working in people's lives within their current context and addressing certain things that were going on, but also through what he was saying to them moving forward. To say this will apply in a much bigger and greater way to Jesus in the future, and that's what he's talking about here. And so he's referencing this, and it's, of course, making application to David, but that one day they were going to need to replace Judas Iscariot, and this is how the Lord would make them aware. How did they know this to be true? In the waiting
scripture told them so
God revealed it to them through His Word.
When you and I are in the waiting
and we're reading His word, look for what God is saying to you in the waiting about whatever your next steps are and whenever those might be. This is one of the ways that he speaks to us as well. He goes on in verse 21 and says, says, Therefore
because
this was written in the Psalms, therefore because of what God's word, because of what Scripture says, it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus was living among us, beginning from John's baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become a witness with us of His resurrection. So again, we see the basis for this decision is, of course, in the Old Testament, scriptures. But the other thing that we see here are the requirements for being an apostle, the requirements for being an apostle, the one that they would have to look for to be someone that they were going to choose to take Judas place, is someone that's been there from the beginning, someone that was living among them from the beginning, and they go all the way back to John's baptism. And so this isn't someone that joined in Jesus' ministry halfway through, or even at Jesus's goes all the way back to John's baptism, someone who was there in that time, someone who was with them for the entirety of his ministry, and experienced Jesus' death on the resurrection, and was an eye witness of the resurrection that they could testify to and tell others about, and then also witnessed him being taken up, which we just read about at the end of the last section of Acts there. And so these are the requirements for being an apostle. So if someone comes up to you today and tries to tell you that they're an apostle of Jesus Christ, you can say, I don't think so, buddy, because I don't think you were alive 2000 years ago around John's baptism, and all the way through this to witness this and to find this. And so this is one of the things that we learn along the way. Now, these were the descriptions. These were the requirements that they were looking for. They had to find someone that met those. And apparently there were only two guys who met that description. So verse 23 They nominated two men, Joseph called barsabbas and also Justus and Matthias. One of the interesting things is that these are the two men, and they're about to choose one of them to become one of the 12 Apostles, to be involved in Jesus' kingdom, work in them and through them as part of the early church, and to accomplish so much that we're still talking about it today, but this is the last time that we see their names written in the Bible. The reason I highlight that is that there are a lot of times when you and I tend to look around and we see someone that God has uniquely wired to have kind of a bigger stage, a bigger platform, an upfront scene, ministry where God is doing things that's noticeable out in the world, like like Peter, who's talking in this section, and we'll see all throughout acts. But also, there were people who definitely were a part of His kingdom work, but weren't, evidently, that seen and that up front that it didn't get noticed and talked about as much and get all of the attention. But did it still matter? You better believe it still mattered. It was such a big deal that they had to have one of these guys replace them, because God had plans to do something in and through them, and so let that be an encouragement to you as well, with whatever it is that your role is. So he makes us aware of what we're doing here in the waiting who the guys are, what they were supposed to do, and now they've got to choose someone. How do they do it? Then they prayed, Lord, everyone you know, everyone's heart, show us which one of these two you have chosen to take over this apostolic ministry, which Judas left to go where he belongs. Then they cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias, so he was added to the 11 apostles. Now, when you and I read that today, it can come across as if, geez, the apostle, just like, ran to Vegas and started rolling some dice baby on who it was that was going to become one of the 11 apostles. I mean, is that really the way that they chose who was going to be the remaining last apostle? Well, it is the way that they did it, but it's not exactly maybe what it seems, this was actually quite common in the Old Testament. You'll go back and read the Old Testament, you'll see that this was one of the ways that decisions were made. But the thing that we need to notice, above and beyond this are two things. Number one, we need to notice what they said first, before they did it. Number one, they prayed. We already had a description of what they were doing in the waiting. They were constantly praying. They were of one mind and of one accord. And look at their prayer. God, you know, everyone's heart, they said, Show us. This is what our request is. Show us which one of the two you have chosen, there's a recognition that God already knew, that he already had made the choice because of being the Sovereign Lord. And so they were just going to reveal what you've already known and what you've already chosen to us. And so even though they did it in this way, they were trusting in God to speak. They were asking Him to reveal the choice that he had made. Their trust was in God, not just some luck of rolling the dice here. Okay, so that's the first thing that we need to see. But here's the other thing that we need to see as we turn the page into Acts two, beginning next week, when the Holy Spirit begins to come and permanently indwell believers. This is the last time that we ever see decisions being made through the casting of lots. And there's a reason for that, because the Holy Spirit, who is the third person of the Trinity, we're not talking about some spiritual just force that's out there. We're talking about God the Father, God the Son. God the Holy Spirit, the omniscient God, the One who knows all things, the all wise God, comes to dwell in you and unites to your spirit. And so now you have access to him who knows all things and knows how to put all things together in the best possible way. So we don't need to go to casting lots. We can turn our attention to the Holy Spirit dwelling in us and trust that out of his knowledge and his wisdom, He will speak to us about the decisions we need to make.
And so this is what we do.
We trust in the Holy Spirit living in us to reveal what our next steps are, decisions that we make. And honestly, that's the first thing that I want to highlight as we begin to kind of land this a little bit in way of application. And we've talked about all these but I just. Want to make sure we don't miss what we've said here today. The very first thing is, when it comes to being these periods of waiting, where you and I find ourselves in the waiting, first of all, we wait on the Holy Spirit to give us next steps. This is not the time if the Lord said to wait, and he's not being clear about things that we start to take matters into our own hands. Google should not be the first place that we turn YouTube should not be the first place that we turn to figure out whatever our next steps are going to be. It's the Holy Spirit. And we pass those requests along to him, and then we wait, and we wait on his perfect timing, and if he doesn't share it within a day or two days, or it's a week or it's a month, we don't move until he says to Move. Do not get impatient. So that's the first application. The next thing. We've said it many times throughout this thing, but we pray continuously and listen, it's okay when you're in the middle of the waiting, and especially if it's waiting in unfavorable situations and circumstances, to pray for God to do something about those, to remove those, but you put it in his hands, and if he chooses not to deliver you from whatever, those are that again, we pray and we continue to stay focused on Him. And here's what we do. We don't just pray for him to move us through this more quickly. We're praying for him to remind us of what he's doing in the waiting because God is not just up to doing something once we get out of it and we go, yeah, God brought me out of that, and now he's really doing something in my life. No, no, God's not going to miss an opportunity to do something even in the middle of the waiting. And so we're praying for him to reveal the things that he's doing in the waiting, reminding us of all that we have in Christ, in the waiting, to guard our hearts and our minds against the things that the enemy wants us to believe in the waiting, that he's not there, that he's not for us, that he's just not thinking about you in this moment. And so we we pray and we ask him to move, but we also pray, and we ask him to remind us and renew our minds to the truth of all that we have in him and what he's doing in the waiting.
Third we read and
we meditate on Scripture. We saw Peter. We saw the apostles doing this earlier. We highlighted it already. The thing I just want to mention about this make sure, sometimes in the waiting, and we don't want to be there and we want to get out quickly, we enter into the religious checklist of things, maybe God. I know God wants me to read my Bible so, so if I if I read my Bible, if I read it in the morning, I read it at night, and I don't miss something, then maybe I'll get out of the waiting faster. That's, of course, not what we're talking about here. We're not talking about a religious checklist. We're not doing this to get us out. We're reading scripture to experience the living God. He speaks to us through His Word, the Holy Spirit carried the writers along. He revealed certain things to the disciples to take their next steps in. So we're reading to experience our Creator and our Lord and our Savior and our Father in asking Him to reveal these things to us in his own timing. So sometimes the spirit will just speak a gentle whisper on our hearts. A lot of times he'll speak to us directly through what we're reading off the pages of Scripture, because the Holy Spirit is involved in that as well. Finally, the last thing that we talked about before was we unite together with other believers, guys, we do not wait alone. Do not wait alone. Stay in community with other believers. Pray with them. Look for what the Holy Spirit is saying through the other people. God puts us together as family, to teach one another, to pray with one another to support one another and encourage one another. So don't
wait alone.
Pray, read scripture, listen for the Spirit's voice, ask Him to guide your next steps in and through community.
Let's pray together.