Archive of past lessons from this series can be found here.
This is week 2 of our journey through The Acts of the Apostles. Follow this link to read chapter 1, then return here to read my thoughts and add your own in the comments. Be sure to check back periodically through the week to see and respond to what others have to say.
Wouldn't you say the beginning of the church had a shaky start? Just as the disciples were coming to grips with the fact their Savior did exactly as He promised and raised from the dead, Jesus gives some final instructions and zips off into heaven. As the disciples were gazing at the sky with their mouths open, the angels appear and tell them to get to work on what Jesus told them to do.
Either they had no where else to go, or it was just as far as they could go on the sabbath (about .6 miles) without breaking Jewish law, but they returned to the upper room. Yep, the same place they shared that final meal with Jesus. I guess they figured this would be the most likely place for the promised visitation. By common consent, Peter assumes the task of leadership. Obviously irked by inactivity (or tired of praying, we don’t know) Peter was ready to jump into action. They had been told to wait in Jerusalem, not to begin organizing the church. Typical for Peter though, he was not patient.
Let’s pause for a side-note here. Luke adds some parenthesis on the story of Judas which may seem to contradict what you have read in Matthew (which probably had not been written down yet) about him hanging himself after betraying Jesus. These two accounts of Judas' death are complementary retellings of the same event, each focusing in different ways on the same details. Both accounts involve: Judas' remorse, the purchase of a field with his ill-gotten money, its reputation as “the Field of Blood,” and Judas’ gory death. The main difference is that Matt. 27:5 speaks of Judas hanging himself, while Acts speaks of his body falling headlong and bursting open with all his entrails spilling out. Scholars suggest that the field overlooked a cliff, and as Judas hanged himself, the rope (or the branch) broke, with his body falling headlong over the edge of the cliff onto jagged rocks below. Horrified observers would no doubt call this “A field of blood, indeed.”
Back to Peter, who just had to be doing something. He gets the great idea that they need to replace Judas. At the time Peter was obviously not thinking that his acts were being recorded in minute detail and church leaders would be looking to this moment throughout time as an example of how to hear from God. Because lest we think too highly of our early church fathers and how they made decisions, they drew straws and it was Matthias’ lucky day. We hear no more of the good Matthias, except for tales of his martyrdom while preaching in Ethiopia.
I do wonder if Peter should have done nothing and trusted Jesus to choose the replacement. Even though he did not know it yet, Saul soon to be Paul, was predestined for the calling of Apostle. However, I’m sure Jesus was not at all surprised by Peter’s impatience.
As I read this chapter again and again, one things that keeps jumping out at me is verse 6 - “Is this the time? Is this the time the Kingdom is restored to Israel?” Meaning, “Hey Jesus, you just conquered death, let’s go beat the snot out of the Romans.”
Jesus replies:
You don’t get to know the time. Timing is the Father’s business. What you’ll get is the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit comes on you, you will be able to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, all over Judea and Samaria, even to the ends of the world.
Do you know how much of my life is about timing? How much stress and worry is centered around time? That we spend most every day of our lives concerned about time and timing? Why did he have to go and say that?
And Jesus just says - hey, it’s the Father’s business. Just be what I’m making you to be…leave the timing to God. Oswald Chambers said it this way: “Trust God and do the next thing.” Timing is the Father’s business - and He’s seldom early.
At the end of chapter 1 we have regular men & women from regular towns with regular jobs who have had their life turned upside down since the day their Savior called them to His service. They are about to release an assault upon the world that it will never recover from. In this upper room, history was taken out of the hands of the rulers of the world. Another force was moving. They had given up more than nets to follow. With the world behind them and the cross before them, they were about to launch the church on its career of conquest. Next week, we’ll see them get started.
-Justin-
