1. "When life is framed with Christ's ascension today and His return tomorrow, it becomes so much clearer. Sins which may distract us, doubts which may discourage us, questions which may nag at us and confuse us, all are weakened in the face of the certainty that we have about Jesus."

2. "I wonder how your own discipleship this week would be changed, what conversation you might start, what obedience you might attempt if you were simply more confident in Christ."

3. "As Christians, we don't know the first thing about ourselves. We don't know we can be wrong. But when I sin, I don't need to run and hide. I need to understand it. And I'll need you guys to help me understand it. And then I need to confess it. And then I need to seek forgiveness and the Spirit's power to change."

4. "Friend, when you're in one of those weird circumstances in life, when it just seems the bridge has fallen out in front of you and a corner has just produced itself right in front of you and you have no idea what to do, it's a great time to pray."

5. "Praying helps to bring us together. It re-centers our thoughts around those things that we know about God and what he calls us to do."

6. "If you have a day when you don't think you're waiting, that's a day when you've forgotten what it means to be a Christian. If your life is ever so good here in this life that you feel full and good and you need nothing else, that's a day you're not thinking like a Christian."

7. "Your spiritual stomach rumbles with hunger for the presence of God on every day you're thinking as a Christian. Every day you experience as a Christian you're waiting."

8. "When God puts you in a season of life where you have a grief, where you have a challenge, where you have a disease or illness, realize that God in His kindness and in His strange shape is putting you in a very Christ-like position for you to be taught yet again what it means to wait and rely on Him."

9. "There's not a day we're living in which is not as if we're elephants walking on tissue paper over a great vast chasm. That's every day. We're held up by the promises of God. We're waiting for the return of Christ."

10. "I was a sinner, and I needed the salvation that Jesus purchased. And I needed that more than I needed anything else in the world. Any relationship, any job, any approval, any money, any success, any esteem, I needed this. And he offered it to me by faith today."

Observation Questions

1. According to Acts 1:3, what did Jesus do during the forty days after His resurrection, and what was the subject of His teaching?

2. In Acts 1:4-5, what specific command did Jesus give His disciples, and what promise did He connect to this command?

3. What question did the disciples ask Jesus in Acts 1:6, and how did Jesus redirect their focus in verses 7-8?

4. According to Acts 1:9-11, what happened to Jesus as the disciples watched, and what message did the two men in white robes deliver?

5. In Acts 1:12-14, where did the disciples go after the ascension, who was present with them, and what activity did they devote themselves to?

6. According to Acts 1:21-22, what qualifications did Peter specify for the person who would replace Judas among the twelve apostles?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is it significant that Jesus "presented Himself alive... by many proofs" (Acts 1:3) rather than simply appearing once or twice? What does this suggest about the nature of the disciples' confidence?

2. In Acts 1:6, the disciples asked about restoring the kingdom to Israel. How does Jesus' response in verses 7-8 both correct and expand their understanding of God's purposes?

3. What is the significance of the ascension being described as Jesus being "lifted up" and received by a cloud (Acts 1:9)? How would this imagery have connected to Old Testament themes for the disciples?

4. The sermon emphasized that Christian life is framed between Christ's ascension and His return. How does this "frame" shape the way believers should understand their present circumstances and mission?

5. Why was it important for the early church to replace Judas and maintain the number twelve among the apostles? What does this reveal about continuity between God's promises to Israel and the new covenant people?

Application Questions

1. The disciples responded to the ascension by gathering together in devoted prayer (Acts 1:14). When you face uncertainty or are waiting on God for direction, what is your typical response, and how might prioritizing prayer with other believers change your perspective?

2. Jesus told the disciples to wait for the Holy Spirit before beginning their mission. In what area of your life are you tempted to act in your own strength rather than depending on God's power? What would it look like to "wait" on Him this week?

3. The commission in Acts 1:8 describes an expanding circle of witness—from Jerusalem outward to the ends of the earth. What is your "Jerusalem" (your immediate sphere of influence), and what is one specific way you could be a witness for Christ there this week?

4. The sermon noted that the disciples had "one accord" in prayer despite their different backgrounds (tax collector Matthew and zealot Simon). Is there a relationship in your church or small group where differences create tension? What step could you take toward unity in prayer and purpose?

5. The preacher shared how reading the Gospels as if they might be true opened his eyes to faith. Who in your life is skeptical about Christianity, and how might you invite them to consider the evidence for Christ's resurrection this year?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Luke 24:36-53 — This passage provides the immediate context for Acts 1, showing Jesus' post-resurrection teaching, His opening of the disciples' minds to Scripture, and His ascension.

2. Isaiah 49:1-6 — This servant song, referenced in the sermon, reveals God's plan for His servant to be a light to the nations and bring salvation to the ends of the earth.

3. Matthew 28:16-20 — The Great Commission in Matthew parallels Acts 1:8 and emphasizes Jesus' authority and His promise to be with His disciples always.

4. 1 Kings 8:1-13 — This account of God's glory filling Solomon's temple through a cloud helps explain the significance of the cloud receiving Jesus at His ascension.

5. Romans 8:31-39 — This passage affirms that Christ is at the right hand of God interceding for believers, connecting to the sermon's emphasis on Christ's exaltation and our confidence in Him.

Sermon Main Topics

I. Imagining the World Before Christianity: The Historical Setting of Acts

II. Christ's Witnesses Are Confident

III. Christ's Witnesses Are Commissioned

IV. Christ's Witnesses Are Prepared

V. The Beginning of Christianity and Its Personal Application

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Detailed Sermon Outline

We begin this morning by imagining.

Imagine a time when there was no Christianity in the world.

It's 2,000 years ago, and we're in Jerusalem.

In recent years, the Roman province of Judea had once again been troubled by patriotic independence movements. Fueled by a kind of religious nationalism which reared its head again and again in Judea.

One of the most widespread and popular movements had been stirred up just a few years earlier by John the Baptist. Baptism, immersing people in a river or lake or pool, had been a practice that had developed since the Old Testament. In which Gentiles who became Jews would publicly confess their sinfulness, their moral uncleanness by being submerged in water and brought back up, symbolically cleansed. But John had caused a stir because he was a Jewish preacher who called the people of Israel, the Jews, to be baptized. And that was scandalous.

He said that each and every person was sinful and needed to repent, even the people of Israel.

Had you been a close observer of the ministry of John the Baptist, you would have found that his ministry seemed to peak before it ended.

It seemed to peak just before the local king had had him beheaded. John publicly identified Jesus, a cousin of his, as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This very cousin came to one of John's public open-air meetings with throngs around watching. And asked himself to be baptized. And for the only time ever that we have any record of, John refused.

He felt it was not appropriate for Jesus to in any way confess moral uncleanness or sin. John said, I need to be baptized by you and do you come to me?

A brief exchange followed, and John was persuaded and baptized Jesus. From this time on, Jesus himself became a popular, popular figure, not a priest, but he was preaching in homes and houses and on outdoor hillsides for a few years until a movement grew around him that was so big that it concerned the leaders of the nation. Its body of leaders, the Sanhedrin, met to consider how to end the movement. The decision was made by the high priest that Jesus, like John the Baptist before him, needed to be killed. Only under Roman occupation, they had no authority to administer capital punishment.

But they could provoke the crowds presently filling Jerusalem for the manual Passover remembrance and sacrifices to become so unruly that perhaps the Roman governor, Pilate, could be maneuvered into doing it.

The plot worked.

The leaders arrested Jesus and had Him brought before Pilate. Crowds surged in early morning justice resulted in His execution by crucifixion. But here's where the story gets really interesting.

A few days later, a number of people, like lots of people, who were His followers and even some who weren't, began reporting seeing this Jesus alive.

They weren't saying that He hadn't been killed. His execution had been public. Everyone knew He had been killed. They had seen His body taken down and even buried. No, but now it seems many people saw that Jesus had been raised from the dead.

And was now appearing to his former followers and others. He was teaching them especially how to read the Scriptures of the Old Testament to understand that he was the promised figure of the Messiah, the national deliverer.

So friends, we join in the story at this point several weeks after Jesus' crucifixion in Jerusalem, which was currently being swollen, as I say, with Jewish pilgrims from all over Judea and beyond, from as far away as Rome itself. There were ambitious young academics like Paul who would himself come soon to be one of the leading persecutors of Christians, as these followers of Jesus came to be called. And there were Jesus' own disciples like James who had known Jesus back in Galilee where he and his brothers were fishermen. These weeks between Passover and Pentecost are the setting in which we find ourselves in the opening of the book of Acts. Let's turn there now.

Let's go to the New Testament, that's the part right out of the Bible. The fifth book in it, that's the book of Acts. If you're new at looking at a Bible, you use one of the Bibles provided, you'll find it on page 925. And very neatly, the passage today is all that's on page 925 and it is all there on page 925. That's what we're looking at today, page 925.

Or if you brought your own Bible, Acts chapter 1.

While you're turning there, I'll just say this book was written in the early 60s. We know that because at the end of the book Paul is alive and preaching in Rome. And we know that Paul was killed by Nero. He was beheaded in response to the great fire in 64 A.D. On the other hand, the book's story begins with Jesus after His crucifixion and resurrection. We know this is about 30 A.D.

So the book spans about three decades, from just after the crucifixion and resurrection into the days of Paul's ministry in Rome. The book is divided into 28 chapters. Those are the larger numbers. The smaller numbers following are the verse numbers. We are intending this morning just to look at Acts chapter 1.

I'm going to begin by reading the chapter to us, beginning at verse 1. In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach. Until the day when He was taken up, after He had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom He had chosen. He presented Himself alive to them after His suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. And while staying with them, He ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which He said you heard from Me, for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.

So when they had come together, they asked Him, 'Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?' He said to them, It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.

And when He had said these things, as they were looking on, He was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight.

And while they were gazing into heaven, as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes and said, 'Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.' Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day's journey away. 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. All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and his brothers.

In those days, Peter stood up among the brothers, the company of persons was in all about 120, and said, '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. For he was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry. 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. 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. 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.' so 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.

And they put forward two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who is also called Justus, and Matthias. And they prayed and said, 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. And they cast lots for them. And the lot fell on Matthias. And he was numbered with the eleven apostles.

Friends, this account was written by Luke for a friend of his called Theophilus. And it's really the second half of what's a large book, really a quarter of the New Testament. The gospel of Luke is the first half. If you look back at Luke, you'll find the way it begins. He mentions this.

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught. Luke seems well positioned to do this because as you read through the book of Acts, you notice all of a sudden it goes from a kind of normal narrative in the third person to a we and us story. In chapter 16, that's in Paul's second missionary journey. And from there, through most of the rest of the book, it's we and us, that means Luke was with him. So when Luke is writing this, presumably in Rome in the 60s, he's been with Paul for 10 or 15 years, and he's been many places with Paul and talked to many Christians, who had been Christians long before him.

And he's gotten the story from his careful investigations. So if the gospel of Luke was a story constantly framed around inexorably going to Jerusalem, that's the inevitable pull in Luke's gospel, then we find Acts is a story framed around constantly going out from Jerusalem to Rome. So Luke is the story of Jesus going to Jerusalem. And Acts, the second half, is the story of the good news going out from Jerusalem to Rome and to the end of the earth.

And we find in this first chapter Christ preparing and equipping His disciples for the task that lay ahead of them. The question we have as we begin our search for the story of earliest Christianity is simply, who are these first Christians? What were they like? What were these first Christians like? And I want to suggest three attributes that we see in this first chapter.

These witnesses of Christ are confident, they are commissioned, and they are prepared. They are confident, they are commissioned, and they are prepared. Let's look at each one of these in turn in our chapter. First, Christ's witnesses are confident. In these very first verses we find Christ provides His followers with what we can think of as the frame of the book.

And it's the framework beginning and ending with Christ. So they have great reason for confidence in Christ. On the one hand, we see Luke tells us of Christ's ascension. It's mentioned there in verse 2 and again in verse 9. Look there at Acts chapter 1.

In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day when he was taken up.

And then you look down in verse 9, and when he had said these things, as they were looking on, He was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven, as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes and said, Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking to heaven? This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will come the same way you saw him go into heaven. This literal, visible lifting up of Christ into the clouds was like that that Peter and John and James had seen when Christ was transfigured. At one point in his ministry, only now all the disciples, and possibly a lot more, had seen it too.

The clouds are mentioned and eventually they obscured Jesus from sight and that reminds them no doubt of when the clouds would envelop the Old Testament tabernacle when it was especially invested with God's presence. Or like when Solomon had the ark of the covenant brought into the newly constructed temple. We read in 1 Kings 8, And when the priests came out of the holy place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord. That's what they would have seen and understood with Christ going up into the clouds. The disciples, seeing the clouds surrounding Jesus as He was being taken or lifted up, was further proof of His divine power.

When Peter a few days later in his sermon at Pentecost would refer to Jesus, he would refer to him as being exalted, that is literally lifted up at the right hand of God. No doubt this was fresh in his memory, this sight. What does it mean to be at the right hand of God? It means to be in a place of God's authority, where you have all of his power.

Such an ascension was evidence that Jesus was exalted and lifted up to the right hand of God. Jesus would be spoken of again like this in Acts 5:31 when about Jesus it was said that God exalted him to his right hand as leader and savior. No surprise in Acts chapter 7 when Stephen, the first martyr, has a vision of Christ when he's being stoned. He says, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. In His last trial, Jesus had told them that from now the Son of Man shall be seated at the right hand of the power of God.

Well, now the disciples had seen yet another of their master's predictions come true. Remember what Romans 8:34 says? That Christ Jesus is at the right hand of God, interceding for us. So they saw Christ literally a sin. To out of their sight.

Seeing that, that's kind of where their view of the world starts, that's this border. But then there's another one. The other one is there in his return in verses 10 and 11. So not only would they start out with the kind of otherworldly confidence that seeing the ascension of Christ would give them, but they also had been taught that Jesus was going to return.

And when he said these things, as they were looking on, this is verse 9, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold two men stood by them in white robes and said, men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven. This is exactly what Jesus had taught them at great length in Mark 13 and Matthew 24. So in Christ's ascension here, they were getting a foretaste of the glory of His return.

And as God shone out His truth to them, it would be up to them now to act on that. They had seen His ascension, and they knew His return was coming. Jesus Christ, crucified and resurrected, is the glorious Lord, and they have seen proof of that in His exaltation physically, and promise of more upon his return. So between Christ's ascension that they've witnessed here and his return that they've just had promised to them by these angels, which Jesus had already taught them, they're angels, we can tell because they're men in white robes, that's what that's meaning. That's foundational for their new identities as witnesses of Christ, where before they had doubt or uncertainty, fear, ruling or unknown gaping, now they were confident because they had been told and shown what was to come and what Jesus would have to do with it.

The bodily ascension of Jesus just now, right before them, confirmed all that Jesus had taught to them about their, about his identity and his power and their mission.

And when life is framed with Christ's ascension today and His return tomorrow, it becomes so much clearer.

Sins which may distract us, doubts which may discourage us, questions which may nag at us and confuse us, all are weakened in the face of the certainty that we have about Jesus. And our true confidence in Christ is the one who is exalted to the right hand of God and the one returning for His own. I wonder how your own discipleship this week would be changed, what conversation you might start, what obedience you might attempt if you were simply more confident in Christ. If you simply considered more what it means that Christ has ascended into heaven and that he will return in the same way that he went. And so I pray that that confidence will be something that you know.

That's the frame that we're given for understanding the disciples in this book. Because into this frame of God's sovereignty exercised through the incarnate Son of God ascending and returning, now he inserts the plot of history, the plot of this book, which is the second thing, Christ's witnesses are commissioned. Christ's witnesses are confident, but Christ's witnesses are also commissioned. This, I say, is the plot of the book. We see His disciples commissioned here in verse 8.

If you look down at verse 8 again. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. So what are they to do with this solid confidence that they have in Christ now being all the more firmly rooted and grounded in Him? Well here Christ Himself commissioned His disciples to be as witnesses to the ends of the earth. They are people who can testify about what they themselves have seen and heard firsthand.

And friend, this commission had been a long time in coming. If you've been having ears for it, we heard it last week in Joseph's message in Isaiah 52, as the servant of the Lord is being described. In fact, this section of Isaiah that we've been in for the last several weeks The whole thing is on the servant of the Lord. It begins in Isaiah 42, Behold, My servant whom I uphold, My chosen in whom My soul delights. I put My justice upon Him, He will bring forth justice to the nations.

And again and again in these chapters of Isaiah that follow, we've seen this vision presented that is so much larger than the apostles' question here about restoring the kingdom to Israel. In chapter 52 verse 10 we saw last week, All the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God. Or a few chapters earlier in Isaiah 49:6 we read, It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel. I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth. You see the language that the risen Christ used here with his disciples was steeped in language that God had already been using with his people for generations as he had revealed his will.

When Jesus announced the Great Commission to his disciples, he was speaking in biblically familiar terms. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the very end of the age. Or if you look back in Luke's first volume, the Gospel of Luke, chapter 24, you'll see what the risen Christ said to His disciples as He was meeting with them.

On that very day when He had been raised from the dead. Luke 24, beginning at verse 44.

Then He said to them, 'These are My words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.' Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. Friends, there's the plot. It's right there in Luke 24:47, that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed to all nations. That is the plot of this story.

It's the plot of the book of Acts. It's this plan right here in Acts chapter 1 verse 8, you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. And if you were to look through the chapters of the book of Acts, you'll find that's like a table of contents. Chapters 1 to 5 are in Jerusalem. Chapters 6 to 12 are in Judea and Samaria.

And then Paul's missionary journeys begin in chapters 13 to 28. Are then to the end of the earth. Friends, this is the plot of the book of Acts. It's the plot of the history of the church. It's also the plot of our church.

And it's the plot of every Christian church's life and mission. This is what we are about, whether we are here called to go personally or send personally. That is what all 800 members of the Capitol Baptist Church are involved in up to our necks. This is what we do with our prayers, with our affections, with our time, with our days, with our monies. Do you listen to the way we pray?

Do you see the people we platform in our prayer times on Sunday nights? Do you see the people that we encourage you to pray for and get to know? If you'd like to know more about this, let me suggest that you reach out to Mark Feather. To learn more about the missions reading group. Mark, stand up.

That's the man. Find him. Ask about the missions reading group. As you consider what God would have us to do to make known the good news of Jesus, find out how he's commissioned all of us, not simply these first apostles, but all of us have a role to play in the telling of this great news. When we come to the story of the Pentecost in chapter two, looking back on what happens on that day, one of the most remarkable facts about it is all the unnamed people in that chapter who aren't commissioned as apostles in this sense, but they are transformed by the gospel and they go literally all over the world telling what they know.

That's how the gospel gets all over the place, even in those first decades. Friends, that's the plot of the book. I wonder what this great commission we've been given will mean in your life. In this year 2026. How is this plot being played out in the months that are allotted to you this year?

So Christ's witnesses are confident, Christ's witnesses are commissioned. We also see in this chapter that Christ's witnesses are prepared. So if before we've been given the frame, Right? Christ's ascension and his return. That frames everything, knowing who Christ is.

And we've been given the plot that the gospel is to go from Jerusalem to the very end of the earth. That's the story. That's what we'll be following for 28 chapters here in the book of Acts. Here I want us to consider the particulars of our passage. And what we see is that these witnesses are prepared by being taught by the Son, praying to the Father, obeying God's Word, and waiting for the Spirit.

I'll go through those again. Taught by the Son, praying to the Father, obeying God's Word, and waiting for the Spirit. We'll look at each one of these in turn.

Christ's followers are taught by the Son. Look again at our chapter. Look in chapter one, verse three. He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God. And then down in verse six.

So when they had come together, they asked him, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? He said to them, It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. Friends, these are just a few examples of the kind of teaching that the disciples had been given for the three years of the ministry of Jesus, but which was especially intensified in those 40 days after Christ's crucifixion and resurrection. Remember that time we just read about back in Luke 24, in that last chapter of Luke. Then he said to them, These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.

Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. And said to them, Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And then you think again of how Luke introduced this book of Acts. He says, In the first book of Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day when he was taken up after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen.

He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God. Friends, look at what Jesus did. He taught. He gave commands. He spoke to them about the kingdom of God.

So much of what Jesus did was talking, because communicating provides information, and information is what we need to know the truth, to build relationships, to understand the world, To make good decisions, to think rightly about ourselves and our desires, things that encourage us and things that inspire us, we need to know the truth about God and about how he has made us and what he's like and what he calls us to do, what we are made to be. I love the way Jesus interacts with the disciples' question there in verse 6. Jesus' methods as a teacher are always interesting. But here in verse 6, they ask him if this is the time for him to restore the kingdom of Israel. And you just wonder how much of what he said for the last three years did they understand.

It's not that restoring the kingdom of Israel is wrong, but it's just like, did you not hear? I mean, everything we've been saying. I mean, yeah, the kingdom is going to be restored to Israel, but a lot more is going on. And Isaiah was even talking about that 700 years ago. And I've taught you more about that.

But Jesus is so patient. You know, He's told them again and again that the Scriptures teach that God is an interest that goes way beyond Israel. It certainly doesn't leave Israel out. His ancient promises to Abraham, to Jacob, to David are not forgotten, but they will be fulfilled as part of a far greater kingdom than anything it says that the disciples still had in mind. So Jesus patiently keeps teaching them the truth.

I wonder if you've noticed since you've become a Christian how Jesus reshapes our understanding. He helps us to think better about God. God's not like this, God's like that. We see God here doing this, not that. We see God here loves this, not that, and he helps us to think more accurately about ourselves.

I'm wrong here. As Christians, we don't know the first thing about ourselves. We don't know we can be wrong. But when I sin, I don't need to run and hide. I need to understand it.

And I'll need you guys to help me understand it. And I need then to confess it. And then I need to seek forgiveness and the Spirit's power to change.

But there's more to prepare them for this great mission. They were taught by the Son, but they were also praying to the Father. Look there in verses 12 to 14. Then they returned to Jerusalem from the Mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day's journey away. 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, all these.

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

On this day when they have seen their resurrected Lord Jesus physically taken up, lifted up into the clouds of heaven, what do they all do? They all go together to pray.

Friend, when you're in one of those weird circumstances in life, when it just seems the bridge has fallen out in front of you and a corner has just produced itself right in front of you and you have no idea what to do, it's a great time to pray. It's a good time to pray. All the disciples are listed there in verse 13. They were all there, all in, and it wasn't just that they were there, but notice that it says in verse 14, They all with one accord devoted themselves to prayer. You had compromising tax collector Matthew and patriotic zealous Simon, but they had no disagreements in this moment.

On this, they would pray. And not just these 12, but this group included, it seems, over 100 more, including women like Mary, Jesus' mother, and his brothers. Friend, praying helps to bring us together. It re-centers our thoughts around those things that we know about God and what he calls us to do. Now tonight we'll be gathering at five to hold business together, Lord willing.

But most Sunday nights of the year we gather together again to close out our Lord's Day praying together. If you have not made that a priority before and you're a member of this church, could you please try to make that a priority in 2026? Please come and pray together with us. That's part of how God prepares us for those things he calls us to do. The whole second half of this chapter shows these first Christians were also obeying God's Word.

That's what they were doing when they were replacing Judas. Did you notice that in verses 15 to 26? In verse 20, Peter quotes two verses from the Psalms, quotes from Psalm 109 and Psalm 69. Now several of you have asked me, if I'm reading those Psalms, I'm not sure I'd get that out of it. How did Peter know that's what this meant, that they should replace the betrayer Judas?

Friends, I'm thinking it's because of Jesus teaching them. If he had just gone through this special seminar with them, when he walks through all the writings, the prophecies, and the Psalms showing all that pertains to them, to him. And one of the big events that just happened, he'd been betrayed by one of their own. How freaky was that? They thought they knew Judas.

How striking to find this was actually prophesied. This is actually there in the Scriptures if you just have eyes to see it. And so Jesus taught them about the Messiah, like we read in Luke 24. It would have been a natural question for them to ask. So they would have learned from Jesus to understand God's sovereign plan and provision even in this.

Another matter in this section, some have wondered if Matthias was really a kind of misfire. You know, I mean, you don't really find anything else about him. And everybody said, Isn't Paul really the guy? I mean, if you just wait a little bit longer, isn't Paul clearly like the 12th apostle? Well, a few thoughts.

For dear Matthias. You know, while we don't see much more about him in the New Testament, some early traditions suggest that even while Paul went west evangelizing, Matthias went north. He went to the Black Sea. He was the first one to take the gospel to Armenia, to Sebastopol, to a number of places there. But all the speculation of where Matthias may have gone and how his ministry compared with Paul's misses a few important points.

Some people thought, well, the problem was just casting lots. See, that was just a bad thing to have done. They shouldn't have cast lots. Well, fair point. You never see Christians doing this again.

Last time you see them doing it, it's nowhere else in the Bible, in the New Testament. I mean, this is it. But it's also interesting. Luke doesn't seem to criticize it. There's nothing critical about it here.

So I'm not sure it's presented as illegitimate. But the second observation about this whole conversation was, Matthias, was he the right one? You know, Paul couldn't have met these qualifications that Peter lays out here in verse 22. Because Paul had not been with them since the very beginning of the baptism of Jesus by John. In fact, we have no record that Paul was personally acquainted with Christ until the risen Christ later appears to him, some time after this on the road to Damascus.

So at this point, when Peter and the ten other disciples are meeting, Paul is likely still unconcerned with Christ's followers and ignorant of them. Hardly an apostle.

Most important of all, more important than any of these things we've considered, is I don't think Matthias matters that much. What matters is the number 12. Jesus was wanting it to be clear that the twelve apostles are the successors to the promises of the people of God in the Old Testament. That the promises to God's people are not upset and vacant, but rather these twelve will make it clear that God's ancient promises would be fulfilled and would be fulfilled through this new covenant people of God. These are the inheritors of God's promises.

And that's why the number 12 is so significant.

The only other thing for us to observe here is the utter reverence in which these first Christian leaders held the Bible. Scripture is God's Word. It should therefore be studied and treasured. So in our life as a church, you see how we treasure God's Word. We attempt to make it our guide and rule in all parts of our life together, in our good days and in our bad days.

In our lives outside of here, in our families, in our schools, in our businesses, in our neighborhoods, our jobs. Friend, as you look at this new year, how could studying God's Word in order to obey it become even more important in your life? Has he given you some blessing that you could steward better by taking it to God's Word to understand it more and how to be a steward of it? Or maybe some challenge, some difficulty, some trial. Friends, my wife and I faced really hard trials this last year, but God's Word has been so helpful as we've seen again and again His promises that are not affected by our particular state.

The last particular we should note here in this preparation of these Christians is they're waiting on the Spirit. Look again there at chapter 1:4.

And while staying with them, He ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which He said, 'You heard from Me, for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.' and then look down in verse 8, But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. Friends, God's Spirit has always been involved with God's people. You'll note these Scriptures which they obeyed. Peter says in verse 15, had been the Holy Spirit speaking beforehand by the mouth of David. That's the very teaching that Jesus had been doing of them.

If you look up in verse 2, it was said to be through the Holy Spirit. So, the Holy Spirit's not new at Pentecost. The Holy Spirit has been working among God's people, and yet it seems clear that there was about to be an outpouring of the Holy Spirit that would result in the regeneration and the conversion of many, many more people that had been saved before. These 120 were waiting for the baptism with the Holy Spirit. That's the way Jesus describes the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit.

In connection with the preaching of the good news about him being poured out in a large scale for the first time ever. And he uses John's water baptism as an image. And so these disciples that were told so powerfully to go in the Great Commission were told just as powerfully to wait before you go for the power from God, because they would need it. This command here in verse 4 to wait for the promise of the Father ends up being true for them, but also for providing a powerful image of the Christian life as a life fundamentally of waiting. There's some Christmas hymn we always sing, I didn't look it up for this sermon, that has the very last line about all the angels waiting around, standing around waiting.

What is that line? Somebody's gonna, wait around. That's a funny way to end. But when you understand it theologically, waiting is exactly what you and I are doing. Thus we sing, O come, O come, Emmanuel.

Thus we pray for Christ's return. If you have a day when you don't think you're waiting, that's a day when you've forgotten what it means to be a Christian. If your life is ever so good here in this life that you feel full and good and you need nothing else, that's a day you're not thinking like a Christian. You're not feeling like a Christian. Your spiritual stomach rumbles with hunger for the presence of God.

On every day you're thinking as a Christian. Every day you experience as a Christian you're waiting. So when God puts you in a season of life where you have a grief, where you have a challenge, where you have a disease or illness, where you have something that's fearful that's just happened or about to happen or may happen, realize that God in His kindness and in His strange shape is putting you in a very Christ-like position for you to be taught yet again what it means to wait and rely on Him. Brothers and sisters, we're always that reliant, just sometimes it's not obvious to us. In the push and shove and thrust of the moment, we don't think of it, but there's not a day we're living in which is not as if we're elephants walking on tissue paper, you know, over a great vast chasm.

That's every day. We're held up by the promises of God. We're waiting for the return of Christ.

So Acts 1 shows us the beginning of the story of the church, where Christ's witnesses are confident of Christ, they're commissioned by Christ, and they're prepared for the task by the Triune God. At the beginning of the message, we imagined a world without Christianity. How would we get from the point we imagined this morning to the world where within the lifetime of Jesus' 12 disciples, there would be Christians in Jerusalem, and in Judea and Samaria, and through Arabia, stretching east and south to the shores of the Red Sea and even the Indian Ocean, and westward to Rome, and into Spain to the shores of the Atlantic. How did all this happen? It would happen through those crowds of Jewish pilgrims who were filling Jerusalem even now for Pentecost, as they came from so many places.

It would happen through folks like Paul who would come to hate Christians and the Messianic movement, but then who would themselves be converted to love Christ and to take the good news about him to the nations. It would happen as humble disciples like James the son of Zebedee, according to history outside the New Testament, took the gospel all the way to Spain. The seeds of Italian and Arabic and Spanish churches were all right there in Jerusalem on that Pentecost. We'll learn more about it as we come to the story of what happened on that particular day in just a couple of weeks. But between now and then, I hope you can see that the story of how Christianity got started might be used by God to start your own Christian life.

Teenagers, when I was your age, I went from being a skeptical and cynical agnostic with a bad temper, to being a Christian because of these things. God used the account of Christianity's beginning to confound my secular materialism. I'd never been an atheist. I thought an atheist was in a very poor position intellectually, making an absolute claim when you admit you have no absolute basis for knowledge. So that's just a non-starter.

Every religion in the world is better than atheism.

But agnosticism, a cynical, skeptical agnosticism, to me seemed the height of wisdom. Who can say? Couldn't be sure. Maybe. Don't know.

Good for you.

But reading about this period, I couldn't figure out. How Jesus' disciples, who had betrayed him and denied him and scattered when he was arrested and crucified, suddenly, over the next few days and weeks, became his followers. And they shared a new understanding of him having died for their sins, having been raised, as Paul later wrote, for their justification, so that they and all of us who believe in Christ might be forgiven for our sins. Be born again, have a whole new life.

And then who went all over the world from Arabia to Rome to Spain and beyond telling people the same strange story of Jesus' death for sinners and resurrection for our justification to make us right with God.

Friends, this vexed me. I gave a lot of time as a a 12 and 13 year old, to reading and rereading and rereading, reading the Gospels very much like Thomas Jefferson would have. You know, all the supernatural stuff, I'm discounting, all the natural stuff, okay. And it just didn't work. The whole thing just wouldn't fit.

And so as I kept reading it, I realized, you know, I don't know there's not a God. I'm not an atheist. I've been reading this like I'm an atheist. Part of agnosticism is that Christianity might be false, but part of agnosticism is that Christianity may be true.

So okay, I'm gonna read this all again, but as if it's all true. And friends, I got no promise for what will happen with you if you're an agnostic and you try that, but I'll just tell you for me, that whole program ran when I allowed that it might be true, that I didn't know it was false. Because all of a sudden, when I read it, as if all the supernatural stuff was true, this is exactly what's recounted in the New Testament. It seemed to actually have happened. My skepticism melted away.

It became clear to me that there was a God and that Jesus was God incarnate, that he was crucified and raised from the dead for our sakes. How do I know this is not all true? Again, whether this seems convincing to you or not, to me at the time, God used this as the hidden key to understanding the story of Jesus, the story of the Bible, the human story, even down to my own life. I was a sinner, and I needed the salvation that Jesus purchased. And I needed that more than I needed anything else in the world.

Any relationship, any job, any approval, any money, any success, any esteem, I needed this. And he offered it to me by faith today.

That's what these first Christians would bear witness to in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and beyond. And so many of the names that we don't know sailed back home to Rome. As others rode their camels back into the deserts. As people like James, the son of Zebedee, had his life transformed. He and his brother John had been with Jesus since the beginning of his public ministry.

They'd known him back from Galilee days. James ended up becoming prominent among these early Christians. His younger brother John would write the New Testament book of Revelation that we studied last year, write the gospel of his name, three letters that are in the New Testament. If you remember the story in the gospel, the mother of James and John was pushy and she was jealous for her son's advancement in this kingdom of God that was coming. They were early adopters, they were in on the ground floor, they wanted the benefits and she wanted it for them.

But things went different directions than they thought. Jesus was crucified before any kind of national messianic reign was set up. And then Jesus rose from the dead and James was there to see and hear it all. In his busy years, he may have been the first one to take the gospel to Spain. But back in Acts chapter 12 verse 2, around A.D. 44, about 10 years after this today, we read, Herod the king killed James, the brother of John, with the sword.

James became the first of the apostles to be killed for being a witness for Christ.

He would not be the last. But it was all part of living a life waiting, waiting for Christ's coming return. That's what we're going to see throughout every chapter of the book of Acts as we look at the beginning of Christianity. And that's what you'll find in your own life if you're a Christian. We live a waiting life as we wait for Christ.

Let's pray together.

Lord, some of us here today are distracted by fullness and apparent success. And others, Lord, are desperate by a parched soul, needy and hurting. Lord, wherever we are, by youy grace reach us. Teach us how we can live waiting for Christ. We pray in his name.

Amen.