Acts 1:1-26: God's Plan for Changing the World

Acts 1:12-26: God’s Plan for Changing the World

We’ve been working our way passage by passage through the book of Acts, and today the next passage we come to is Acts 1:12-26 as the passage upon which today’s message will be based. Acts 1:12-26:

12 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s journey away. 13 And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they were staying, 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. 14 All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers. 15 In those days Peter stood up among the brothers (the company of persons was in all about 120) and said, 16 “Brothers, the Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand 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.” 18 (Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness, and falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out. 19 And it became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the field was called in their own language Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood.) 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.” 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.” 26 And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias, and he was numbered with the eleven apostles.

 As many of you know, we started a journey just last week of going through the book of Acts passage by passage. And this morning, we come to Acts 1:12-26. But before we dive into that, let’s pray. [Prayer]

One of the things that I’ve been thinking about lately is how quickly life seems to be passing by. That might sound like a bit of a random thought, but I think big reason it’s been on my mind so much lately is because tomorrow is my birthday—specifically my thirty-second birthday. And one of the things I’ve noticed with my birthdays these past few years is that they seem to be occurring more and more frequently—as if the time in between my birthdays is getting shorter and shorter. It feels like just a few months ago that I was turning 31, and now I’m about to turn 32 already? Something just doesn’t seem right about that. It reminds me of a meme I saw on Facebook the other day that seems to be making its rounds. Perhaps you’ve seen it as well. It outlines four stages of life: First, you believe in Santa. Then, you don’t believe in Santa. Then, you are Santa. And then finally, you look like Santa. Now, thankfully, I’m not in that final stage quite yet, but I seem to be approaching it surprisingly quickly—much quicker than I thought I would. And like many of you, I want my time on this earth to count for something. It’s becoming increasingly apparent that I only have a limited number of years here, so I want to make the best use of them for the glory of God. I want to make an impact. And that’s why I found the passage of Scripture we’ll be looking at this morning to be so encouraging. It reminds us that we can make an impact—in fact, we can make an eternal impact—even if we never become famous or have news articles published about us or have the kind of ministry that’s recorded in the church history books of future generations.  

Now, to set the context for this passage, Jesus has risen from the dead and has just given his disciples a mission of reaching the world with the gospel. But he also told them that, before they even attempt to carry out this mission, they need to first wait for the Holy Spirit to come upon them. Jesus then ascended into heaven before their very eyes. Then, the story picks up in verses 12-14: 12 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s journey away. 13 And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they were staying, 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. 14 All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers. Now, we haven’t yet read the entire passage that we’re going to be dealing with this morning, but already—just in these verses—we can see the contours of the main idea taking shape. And that is that God changes the world through ordinary people who are prayerfully dependent on him. God changes the world through ordinary people who are prayerfully dependent on him.

You see, as we look through the list of names mentioned in these verses, one striking feature of all of these folks is how ordinary they are. Four of them were fisherman—obviously not a particularly prestigious occupation—one was basically a con artist, another was a political revolutionary, the one woman listed here—Mary—was the wife of a carpenter, and as for the others, they were so ordinary that we hardly know anything at all about them. Yet it was these people whom God would use to change the world. There’s a really good chance that your spiritual ancestry and my spiritual ancestry can be traced back to one of these people. God used these ordinary people in truly remarkable and extraordinary ways. 

And I don’t know about you, but I find that to be such an encouragement—because it reminds me that God can use any of us as well. In fact, that’s his pattern. The Apostle Paul says it well in 1 Corinthians 1:26-29: 26 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. So here we see it explicitly stated that you don’t have to be among the elite of society for God to use you. In fact, God prefers to use the lowly so that it’s obvious that he’s the one who’s actually doing the work. That’s his normal pattern—as we see both here in 1 Corinthians 1 and back in Acts 1. 

So don’t think that God can’t or won’t use you. If these verses show us anything, they show us that there’s no limit to what God can do through you regardless of how ordinary you are. It doesn’t matter if you have an impressive spiritual pedigree or not, whether you have a college degree or not, whether you have a lot of charisma or not, or whether you have a lot of money or social standing or native talent or not. God’s pattern is actually to use ordinary people.

Yet, at the same time, that’s not to say that God uses anyone regardless of any qualifications or character traits at all. These verses in Acts show us that God uses a particular kind of person—in the words of our main idea, those who are prayerfully dependent on him. And we can see that in verse 14, where it says that these individuals “were devoting themselves to prayer.” Now imagine what you might have been inclined to do if Jesus had just given you the mission he had just given them. In the previous passage, he gave them the mission of spreading the gospel throughout the world. Talk about something that must have made them feel overwhelmed—I’m sure it was quite overwhelming. So imagine what you’d be inclined to do in response to that. I’m sure you’d give some time to prayer, but how would the bulk of your time be spent? Well, if you’re anything like most Americans, it would probably be spent in some kind of strategy meeting, right?—probably even a lengthy series of meetings in which you focused on strategic planning. And I’m not going to lie: that’s probably how I’d be tempted to spend a sizable portion of my time as well. My natural inclination would be to have my laptop open and a stack of books on the table and maybe a whiteboard and be going to town. Yet that’s not what these early Christians did. Instead, we’re simply told that they prayed. And they didn’t just pray token prayers or even have a few token prayer meetings. Instead, they “devoted themselves to prayer,” it says. They were serious about it. 

You see, there’s a very real sense in which prayer is where the battle for the advance of the gospel is won. Of course, there are a lot of other things that we do as Christians that are very necessary in order to reach people with the gospel. Obviously, in order to reach people with the gospel, we have to actually share the gospel with them in various settings. Yet after studying this material in Acts and also reflecting on my own personal experience, I’m convinced that the real battle is won in prayer. The rest of our outreach and witnessing efforts basically just amount to occupying the territory that’s already been won on our knees. Kind of like in the Civil War, when Union troops decisively defeated the Confederate troops at the Battle of Appomattox Court House in 1865. That battle brought a close to the Civil War, after which the Union Troops then moved to formally occupy Confederate territory. So the battle was won at Appomattox, while everything that happened after that was just a result and an outworking of that victory. 

And I believe there’s a very real sense in which that’s the way it is with prayer as well. You and I are in a very real battle for people’s souls. Yet that battle is won in places you might not expect at first. It’s won in the armchair of an elderly widow who can’t physically attend church on Sundays or even get out of her house very much to share the gospel but faithfully prays for our church’s outreach endeavors day after day after day. It looks like a humble prayer gathering at our church building on Wednesday evenings with 10 people in attendance faithfully praying for a movement of God in us and through us. It looks like someone who’s new to the faith and not exactly sure all that’s involved in prayer nevertheless making it a point to do the best they can and spend at least 5 minutes each day in focused prayer for those who aren’t yet Christians. That’s where the battle is won. The rest of what we do is just occupying the territory. 

So these early Christians in Acts 1 are “devoting themselves to prayer,” it says. And then out of this prayerfulness, God places something on Peter’s heart. Beginning in verse 15, the passage describes how Peter stands up among the early Christians—who numbered about 120 people in all—and explains to them that somebody needs to be appointed to take the place of Judas Iscariot as the twelfth apostle. In case you’re not familiar, Judas had betrayed Jesus and subsequently committed suicide. So now, Peter says, they need to appoint his replacement. And let’s just take note of the fact that this is the first big decision that these early Christians have to make. And it really is a big decision. There aren’t many decisions more important that who to appoint to leadership, and this particular decision is occurring at such a critical point in time that it’s guaranteed to echo throughout the corridors of subsequent church history. 

And I believe there’s a lot we can learn from these verses about decision-making. I’ve encountered a lot of Christians who find it rather difficult to make significant life decisions and who have asked me how best to discern God’s will in various situations. Maybe they’re wondering about whether it’s God’s will for them to marry a particular person or accept a particular job or move to a particular place. Or maybe it’s not even something quite on that level of importance that they’re wondering about but something that’s still important nonetheless. So how then can you discern the will of God? Let’s say you want God to use you, as we’ve been talking about. You want to make an impact. In the words of our main idea, you even want to change the world. But how do you know how to make decisions about various things that will support that? How can you discern God’s will?  

Well, I believe it’s a combination of four primarily elements that we see in this passage. We might call them “ingredients.” Four ingredients for discerning the will of God. The first is spiritual alignment. Notice in our passage how this decision came about. As we’ve already noted in verse 14, they “were devoting themselves to prayer.” We’re not told exactly what they were praying about, but they seem to have been simply devoting themselves to prayer in general. And I believe that had the effect of aligning their hearts with God’s. And it’s almost impossible to overstate how important that is for making God-glorifying decisions. One of the prayers that I’ve actually found myself praying a lot for several months now is, “God, align my heart with yours”—because I want to be passionate about what he’s passionate about. I want to be sensitive to what he’s sensitive to. I want his perspective on things to be my perspective on things. So I pray, “Align my heart with yours.” And that’s the first step to making decisions that glorify God. If you’re going to make those kinds of decisions, you first need your heart to be in alignment with God’s. And that happens through prayer, as we see here in verse 14 and also, of course, by immersing yourself in the Bible and letting your mind marinate in the Scriptures. 

And that leads us to the second ingredient for discerning God’s will that we see here, which is scriptural guidance. In verses 17-20, Peter refers to the scriptures as the lens through which he’s viewing the betrayal of Judas and as his reason for suggesting that Judas needs to be replaced. And sometimes the situations we face are like that, where the Bible gives specific instructions for how to act in that situation. So if you’re wondering whether to cheat on your taxes or not, whether to be faithful to your spouse or not, or whether to forgive somebody or not, you don’t really need to wonder about that since the Bible gives very clear instructions about those situations. Now, of course, the Bible doesn’t give specific instructions about every situation we face. But even in those situations where it doesn’t give specific instructions, it does offer us general principles that are relevant to that situation. So the second ingredient for discerning God’s will is taking into account whatever the Bible says about your situation—whether by specific instructions or by general principles. 

Then the third ingredient is what I’ll call “sanctified reasoning.” And by that, I simply mean asking yourself, “What makes the most sense here?” We see Peter doing something akin to this in verses 21-22, where he tells the rest of the group that the man whom they choose to replace Judas needs to be “one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, 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.” In other words, he can’t be a newcomer. If he’s going to bear witness about Jesus, it just makes sense that he be one of the men who personally saw the entirety of Jesus’ ministry. And that’s what I mean by sanctified reasoning—figuring out what makes the most sense. Think about your family, think about your giftedness, think about finances, think about the level of risk you’re willing to tolerate, think about all the practical things that you need to consider in order to make a prudent decision. It’s probably not a bad idea to write out a list of pros and cons and use that to evaluate your options. It’s not unspiritual to consider practical realities. 

Then finally, we see the fourth ingredient for discerning God’s will—specific prayer. In contrast to the more general prayer to which the early Christians were devoting themselves back in verse 14, we find them praying a much more specific prayer about this particular decision in verses 24-25. After selecting two men who seem to be good choices to replace Judas, they pray for God’s guidance and for him to make his will known. They say, “You, Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place”—a very specific prayer. 

Now after that, as you can see in the text, they do employ a rather interesting method of discerning God’s will frequently called casting lots. Today, we might compare it to flipping a coin. And I realize that may sound rather odd at first—like “Hmm…how are we going to make this super-important decision that’s going to affect that entire trajectory of Christian history? Oh, I know, let’s flip a coin!” That probably doesn’t sound very wise, to say that least, but you have to understand that this practice of casting lots actually has a lot of background in the Old Testament and was actually regarded rather highly as a method based on God’s sovereignty through which God would make his will known. For example, we see it commanded in the sacrificial system and even employed in the distribution of land. However, once the Holy Spirit comes in Acts 2, we don’t find any other mention of this practice among Christians. So that’s why it’s probably not a good idea for us to use this method today. Like whenever the time comes for us to appoint another elder in our church, I don’t foresee us flipping a coin in order to receive guidance about that decision. It seems that now that we have the Holy Spirit, God desires that we seek to discern his will not through casting lots or similar practices but rather through the other four elements for discerning his will we see in this passage—spiritual alignment, scriptural guidance, sanctified reasoning, and specific prayer. 

So, to give you just one example, when Becky and I were considering moving from Alabama to Pittsburgh in order to start this church, we recognized that that was a pretty big decision. And we wanted to make sure, first of all, that we were in spiritual alignment with God before making that decision. And I do believe we were. We were seeking God each day through Bible reading and prayer, we were seeking to surrender to whatever his will might be for our lives, and we were seeking to cultivate a passion for the things he’s most passionate about—especially the glory of his name and the advance of his Kingdom. And not only were we seeking spiritual alignment with God, we were also considering biblical principles. Honestly, this one was kind of easy. Jesus tells us to “go and make disciples,” and there are plenty of people who are in need of that in Pittsburgh, so that wasn’t difficult at all. And of course, there were other principles such as the qualifications for being an elder and a biblical church planting methodology that we considered, but those were all pretty straightforward as well. Then third, we employed sanctified reasoning. We considered our areas of giftedness and our natural temperaments and our life experiences and our financial situation and also just the desires of our hearts. All of those things and others were factors in our decision. And then finally—and really throughout the whole process—we prayed. We prayed a lot. 

And then, we just did it. We pulled the trigger. We didn’t wait for some special sign that God wanted us to move to Pittsburgh or sit down and try to see if we were feeling a shiver in our liver or randomly open the Bible with our eyes closed and put our finger on a verse and then see what verse our finger had landed on. No, God had already told us in the Bible to seek the advance of the gospel and had given us a desire to come here and hadn’t shown us any way in which this decision was unwise. So…we just did what we wanted. It’s really quite a liberating approach to discerning God’s will. And that’s my advice for you as well. Make sure you have these four ingredients of decision-making squared away, and then, just do what you want—as a person who loves Jesus and wants to see his Kingdom advanced. 

So in light of this passage, let me just ask you: what is God calling you to do? It could be something huge like moving somewhere or something relatively simple. Maybe God wants you to have a gospel conversation with a particular person in your life or pursue a closer relationship with someone for the sake of the gospel or explore some kind of ministry endeavor either inside or outside of our church. What is God calling you to do?  

And again, let me encourage you with what I believe is the main idea of this passage—that God changes the world through ordinary people who are prayerfully dependent on him. He did it through the people listed in this passage, and he can do it through you. And also keep in mind that most of the people mentioned in Acts 1 aren’t even mentioned by name. Remember, verse 15 stated that there were 120 people total, right? Yet the only ones mentioned by name are the eleven remaining apostles and Mary and Matthias and other guy, Barsabbas. The rest are nameless Christians. And you know what? That’s the way the vast majority of Christians are in church history—nameless Christians who die in relative obscurity. They not only start out as ordinary, but they continue to be regarded as ordinary throughout their lives. And yet, for many of them, God still uses them in truly remarkable ways. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that the vast majority of the advance of the gospel throughout these past 2,000 years has been accomplished through ordinary, obscure Christians who have been faithful to the calling that God gives them. Think about that. Sure you have a handful of famous people like the Apostle Paul and Saint Patrick and William Carey and Billy Graham who are used in truly extraordinary ways and see an unusual amount of fruitfulness from their ministry and whose names appear in the history books. But the vast majority of people who come to faith in Christ do so not through the ministries of these famous Christians but rather through the efforts of ordinary Christians who are faithful to reach out to those around them and use whatever opportunities they have for the advance of the gospel—and who are then content to die in obscurity. 

And who knows? God may end up using you in ways you never expected. For example, back in the nineteenth century, there was a man named Edward Kimball. If you haven’t heard of him, that’s not surprising, because hardly anyone has. Edward was just a regular guy who happened to teach a Sunday School class for his local church. And he must have had a lot of patience, because he taught Sunday School for the young boys of the church. I used to teach a middle school boys class myself for several years, and let me tell you, it was interesting. Middle school boys can be quite a handful sometimes. There were weeks when I probably experienced more sanctification by dealing with some of those boys than I did through the lesson I was teaching. But Edward Kimball taught that class. And one boy in particular seemed to others like a lost cause. So Edward made an intentional effort to pursue him individually, even outside of class, and talk to him about the gospel. One day, he actually went to the shoe store where this young boy worked and talked to him about Jesus. And that visit actually resulted in this young boy embracing Jesus. And do you know that young boy’s name? His name was D. L. Moody, later recognized as one of the greatest evangelists in the history of the church—certainly the greatest of the nineteenth century. God used D. L. Moody to lead tens of thousands of people to Jesus. Some even estimate that as many as a million people may have come to Christ through Moody’s preaching. 

Yet the story gets even better—because God used D. L. Moody to bring a man named Wilbur Chapman to salvation, who was then used to bring a man named Billy Sunday to salvation, who was then used to bring a man named Mordecai Ham to salvation, who was then used to bring none other than Billy Graham to the Lord. And all of this happened because one man named Edward Kimball was faithful in sharing the gospel with one of the boys in his Sunday School class. Listen to me: you can have an enormous impact on this world simply by leading others to follow Jesus, who then hopefully lead others to follow Jesus, who then lead still others to follow Jesus as well. Think about how your impact could multiply. As the old saying goes, think about how many apple trees are contained in a single apple seed. So once again, we come back to this idea that God changes the world through ordinary people who are prayerfully dependent on him.

Yet one thing that’s absolutely critical for us to keep in mind regarding all of this is that, in order for you to change the world in an eternally significant way, you first have to be changed by God. You see, there’s a difference between what we’re talking about this morning and the kind of inspirational speech you might hear at a high school graduation. Friends, this isn’t just some generic call to make a difference in the world. It’s a call to make an impact in a very specific way and with a very specific message—the message of the gospel. Notice in verse 22 that Peter refers to this as a call to be “a witness to his resurrection”—meaning the resurrection of Jesus. You see, the story begins with our rebellion against God and with the judgment that our sinful ways deserve. Yet we learn in the Bible that God sent his own Son Jesus to enter this world as a real human being, full God and fully man, on a rescue mission to save us. The way he did that was to live a life of sinless perfection, die on the cross to pay for all of our sins, and then rise from the dead in order to secure our rescue. That’s the message of the gospel. And the first step to God working through you for the advance of that gospel message is to experience his work in you as he changes you by the power of the gospel. So have you yet experienced that supernatural change of heart? Have you ever put your trust in Jesus as your all-sufficient Savior and as your only hope for eternal life—not trusting in your good works or religious observances but trusting in Jesus alone? He’s the one needed so desperately not just by this world collectively but by you and I individually.