Acts 1:12-26
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
My name is Spencer and I am one of the pastors here. We are continuing through Acts 1. We're going to finish out the first chapter in verses 12 through 26. I'll be on page 1053 in those black Bibles. If you want to grab one of those and follow along, the text will be there. So, it has been said from this general area that I have bad taste in movies by certain people who remain nameless. First off, it's false. I have a pretty wide variety in taste in movies. I like popular movies. I like some superhero movies. I like some Disney movies. I like all kinds of movies. There is a category of movies that I get criticized for liking: the more artistic, weird type of movies. One of those is a movie that came out a few years ago called The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.
It's awesome. It's great. It's a Coen brothers movie, which if that means nothing to you, it means you probably won't like this category of movies. But they basically shot this movie, which was like a bunch of short stories. It was a Western setting, but it was a bunch of disconnected stories. You had one kind of story and there was a part, and then it kind of moved to another story, the little mini-part, and then another story, then another story, and that was it. And you could try to tie together some thematic kind of threads that could be pulled through them, but they were just a bunch of different short little stories put together, and it was nice. I say that to say, that's kind of what this morning is going to feel like.
This whole last part of Acts chapter 1 is a bunch of just mini-parts. Typically when we isolate passages that we're going to walk through, you can kind of see some themes that are pulled through, some main ideas. And then every now and then we get a collection of little stories, little pieces like this, that you just kind of go one at a time and look at, and they're nice each to look at and their own right. So that's what we're going to do this morning. This is all kind of sandwiched between two massive events. In fact, two of the biggest events in the Bible. So last week we're in the Ascension. So Jesus ascends and then commission, he commissions his church and then ascends, and then next week the Holy Spirit will descend.
We're going to see Pentecost. Those are two of the biggest moments in the Bible. And in between that, we've got a few of these little mini-parts that we're going to walk through. So I want to help us see four different things this morning as we walk through this text. The first is, is we're going to look at the original leaders and notable figures from the early church.
The second thing we're going to see is the importance of prayer. The third thing we're going to see is the lingering tragedy of Judas Iscariot. And lastly, we'll see a leadership void filled. So we're going to see these four things. And then we're going to see how this applies to us in our current season. So let me pray for us and then we'll walk through this together.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for the good news of the gospel that saves us, that claims us, that sets us apart to be a people who are obedient to the Great Commission and in all things seek to please you. God, we look at passages like this that articulate wonderful truths that we need. And I pray that we would have ears to hear them this morning as we seek to walk out of here. It's not just hearers of the word, but as doers of the word by the power of the Holy Spirit. And as we pray, amen.
All right, pick up in verse 12. It says, then they returned to Jerusalem from the Mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day 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, 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.
Okay. First thing I want us to see is these original leaders and notable figures that are here in the early church. They just witnessed the miraculous ascension. And they're doing what they were told to do, which is to go back to Jerusalem to wait for the Holy Spirit to come upon them. And then what we get here is a list of disciples with a notable absence, which is Judas Iscariot, which we'll get to in a moment. So I want to look at these disciples first. I think it's helpful for us to not just skip over, sometimes you get a list of names and you just, I just want to skip on to the next thing. I think it's helpful for us to sit for a moment and consider these are the disciples who became the apostles, the leaders of the early church.
And our faith, the reason we're in this room is because they were obedient to what Jesus called them to do in leading the church. So I think it's helpful for us to recognize them and to take a look at them for a moment. So I want to look at this list of disciples first, starting with Peter at the top. So here are the 11 disciples. Should be on the screen behind me. We'll go one name at a time. Peter, who is called Simon Peter. This is the same Peter who makes the confession that Jesus is the Christ. And then Jesus says on this rock, which is what Peter, his name now means, rock, I will build the church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. That Peter becomes one of these central leaders.
He's not the sole leader, but he becomes one of these central leaders in the early church. We see this in the early part of the Book of Acts, especially. So we've read about Peter. He's one of the most popular disciples, his denials, all of that. He also was widely considered to be the disciple behind the Gospel of Mark, that he was the main source for Mark's Gospel that John Mark wrote. Then you've got John. John's the only disciple who was at the cross when Jesus Christ died. He's the only disciple that didn't abandon Jesus. He's the disciple is described as the disciple whom Jesus loved. John wrote the Gospel of John, first John, second John, third John and the Book of Revelation. His brother is James.
So James, the brother of John, and this really this list of three at the very top, these are the three disciples who spent the most time with Jesus. When you see he had the 12 and then he also had the three that he spent time with. And James is the brother of John. He is the first disciple and apostle to be martyred, to be killed for his faith. We're going to see that in the Book of Acts. And there are a lot of repeat names that happens in their culture. So a lot of James's. So we're going to have to differentiate in a moment. But that's James, the brother of John. The fourth is Andrew. This is the brother of Peter. The fifth is Philip. This is a, he's from the same hometown as Peter and Andrew.
That's Bethsaida. Then we have six, which is Thomas, who I would argue gets a bad rap because what is the nickname that we get to Thomas? He's doubting Thomas. I don't think that's really fair. He had one moment of doubt. You can read the rest of the Gospel of John. There are other moments where he displays faithfulness, but we all remember his worst moment when he doubted Jesus. But also in history, he is the one that took one of the ones who took the Gospel first to India, all the way to South India. I was, my daughter is on a new soccer team and I was getting to know one of the parents and trying to be missionally engaged with some of the different parents on the team. And there's a man that I met who's from South India.
He's actually from the province where Thomas went to. And he's Hindu. And I got to talk to him this week about our Christian faith and how Thomas was the one who went down there. And there are Christians that still exist in South India today because Thomas was faithful. Number seven is Bartholomew. I'm going to be honest, we don't know much about him. He doesn't have a lot of dialogue in the, I'm sorry, he doesn't have any dialogue in the Gospels, no dialogue in the Book of Acts. And in church history, it's possible that he was the one that led and took the Gospel to Armenia, which is fun fact, one of the only still majority Christian nations in the Middle East. So sometimes that you have unsung heroes that aren't written about in history.
I think Bartholomew would probably fit into that category. His faithfulness not recorded, but probably there's a massive effect that came out of his faithfulness. Number eight is Matthew. That's the tax collector, turned follower of Jesus Christ, one of the most hated people in his culture. Jesus claims him, brings him with him and he wrote the Gospel of Matthew. Number nine is James, son of Alphaeus. So this is a different James, son of Alphaeus, sometimes called James the Younger. So sometimes called James the Younger, which he was differentiated from James the brother of John. Ten is Simon the zealot. He likely belonged to a national sect, a Jewish national sect called the zealots who were trying to overthrow the Roman government by force.
So he left the zealots and then joined Team Jesus. And then number 11, Judas, son of James. This is Judas who also goes by the name Jude or Thaddeus, which is probably something that he needed to do, given the name that he had and what it kind of shared with someone else that you don't want to be associated with. Kind of like being born in the 30s, unfortunately, and being called Adolf. You just, you got to choose a new name. You got, you got to go a different direction. It's the name that an unfortunate time in history, and he later becomes Jude and Thaddeus. So that's the top, that's the 11. That's the apostles of the church. And then we get a mention of the women in Jesus's family. It says together with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus and his brothers.
Okay, so that phrase, the women encompasses a list of women who were faithful in following Jesus Christ all the way to the cross. When most of the disciples cut and ran and cowardice and fear, the women did not and they followed Jesus all the way to the cross. This would have been Mary Magdalene, the Galilean woman who was afflicted by seven demons and Jesus cast those seven demons out. This would have been Joanna, the household manager for Herod who had money and helped support the mission of Jesus in those three years and was at the empty tomb to discover with Mary Magdalene. The empty tomb where Jesus rose from the grave. This would be Mary, mother of Jesus Christ. The mother of Jesus who raised him, who prepared him for his ministry.
So then there are other Mary's that were involved in this. This would be the woman who followed Jesus faithfully. And then it also mentions Jesus's family, so not just Mary, but his siblings. Mary went on to have other kids with Joseph, and we get a few of them here. We get James. So James, he's going to be later. We're going to see the book of Acts. I know a lot of James's. You've got to be careful, depending on who is who. He's going to be a bigger figure later in the book of Acts, a notable leader in the book of Acts. Also wrote the book of James, which we just read from in our liturgy this morning. Joses, also called Joseph, that would be named after his daddy. Simon and Jude, who wrote the book of Jude.
And then Jesus also had two sisters who would have been here. So you have 120. We're going to learn this number in a moment. Followers of Jesus that have followed all the way back to Jerusalem as they wait for the Holy Spirit. And it's good for a moment to pause and recognize these early followers that our faith gets built upon.
Okay. Number two, I want to look at the importance of prayer. Because buried in that list, it says all these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer. So it says they were devoted to prayer. Didn't just say that they had a few prayers. It says they were devoted. Like if you've ever seen a kid who ends up falling in love with an instrument and they devote themselves to it and they practice and they practice and they practice and they practice or a kid that falls in love with a sport and they devote themselves to the game and they practice and they practice devotion. This is giving yourself to something with energy, with time, with desire. They devoted themselves to prayer. Christ ascends to the right hand of God, the Father, gives him this grand commission and they pray.
They were literally told they were going to take the gospel to the nations in that 40-day period. They heard multiple commissionings telling them to go make disciples. They were told to the nations to every people. They were told Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth. They had this big task that God had given them. And it says they prayed. They devote themselves to prayer. And I think that's really important for to sit in because I think that I think if Jesus came back and gave us an extra special commission in America, I think they came back and said, I want you, the American church, take the gospel to every single town in America. But I want a gospel-centered church in every single town.
I think if we heard that, I think that our next move after he was gone would be to start planning and start strategizing. I think there'd be lots of meetings. I think Lutherans would have a synod, Presbyterians would have a Presbyterian General Assembly, Baptist, we'd have some committees, no doubt, some task force. We come up with like, you know, the most workshop title for the type of mission movement we're going to see America 250 explosion, 2.0 exponential, etc. We'd find a way to brand it and make t-shirts for it. And we'd plan and we'd strategize and we'd think and we'd meet. And I think that we'd neglect to be devoted to prayer. I think we think about all the different ways that we could reach people as opposed to falling on our faces before the Lord and pleading before God to do a mighty work.
You know who prays? Weak people. Weak people pray. People in need pray. People in need of God to do something that we cannot. That's who prays. And the early church, these men and women understood this. They heard the task. They knew it was ahead of them to an extent. They understood it was huge and they prayed because they knew without God they could not. This church would not advance without God. So they prayed because weak people who know they cannot do it pray. It's one of the things that Thomas Watson, the old Puritan once said. He said, prayer as it comes from the saint is weak and languid. But when the arrow of a saint's prayer is put into the bow of Christ's intercession, it pierces the throne of grace.
And it's like, yeah, because prayer, the words we say, they're weak for weak lips. When they are put into the bow of Christ, our intercessor, our mediator, the one who offers up our prayers to the throne room, they're powerful. And we should take a cue from our disciples from these early followers, especially us, as we're about to plant a church in January. We're about to send out a pile of people. It's like we should pray. Because I know my tendency. I know that all the wrong initial instincts will come to the surface. We got to recruit. We got to think. We got to have meetings. We got to make sure that all these things are taken care of. We checked all these boxes as opposed to the primary energy and believing that the primary energy should be in prayer.
Asking God to do a mighty work. So I don't think we should miss this. As we go to plant a church, and if you look at church history, where there have been revivals, which are just moments in time where hundreds and thousands of people in a general area just start coming to Christ when the Spirit does a unique work. When you study those and every one of those, what preceded those was devotion to prayer. So we should be a people devoted to prayer. And we should see that and their actions here. It's that mini-episode. The next mini-part we're going to see is Judas, the lingering tragedy of Judas Iscariot. So when it says the 11 here, mentions these 11, what's glaring in the absence there is there's a missing 12.
Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus, is now dead and gone, and he needs to be replaced. And we're going to read how they replaced him. But I don't want to miss that what was felt, certainly in that moment, was a lot of pain. That the awful tragedy of this betrayal of Jesus is just it's hanging in the air as we're going to see in a moment. And we should consider that because listen, if you follow Jesus Christ long enough, you're going to see people who were excited about Christ, who sang all the songs, who seemingly were on fire for Jesus in so many ways. And then years go by and they leave the faith. And I think about the people that I've walked with who have left the faith and not just left the faith entirely, but have become enemies of the faith, enemies of Christ.
Vocally attacking Jesus Christ and his church. And those when I think of the day they hurt. And I don't think they're quite as painful as what they felt with Judas, who literally betrayed Jesus in a way that we do not see today. So let's walk through this as they're getting ready to replace him. I want us to see this. This is verse 15. It says, in those days, Peter stood up among the brothers, the company, the persons was about all about 120 and said, brothers, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke before him 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.
So a couple things to note. In a moment, we're going to see what scripture he's referencing from the Old Testament. It comes from Psalm 69 and 109. But also don't want us to miss. This is just one of the clearest pictures of how we get the scriptures of how the scriptures are inspired. It says, which the Holy Spirit spoke before him by the mouth of David concerning Judas. And that's just that. That's how we get the word of God. The third member, the Trinity, the Holy Spirit speaking through human agents, people, God's word that we have now. And I just think that's a beautiful picture of inspiration that we have here that the chief author of scripture, God foretold the betrayal of Judas a thousand years before.
Then we get to verse 18, which is a parenthetical, a brief little note reference articulating this painful tragedy. Verse 18. Now this man, this is Judas, 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. So that is graphic. And also, when you read the Gospel of Matthew, different. It's actually different than how Matthew records this story. The differences are that Matthew talks about him hanging himself. Doesn't mention anything about him being burst open. Doesn't mention that he fell headlong.
It doesn't mention when Matthew's talking about the field of blood, he more connects that to the betrayal of Jesus and the blood money that he took, as opposed to Luke who's connecting it to this graphic scene. Now, when you encounter two different things like this, side by side, Chet mentioned this a few weeks ago when we were finishing up Second Samuel, that there's this Western instinct within us to just be very suspect and go wait and to actually be distrusting of what's happening there, as opposed to, which is what I think what we should do, is kind of excitedly ask the question, why are they different? Why are they what's going on here? And the reason is that both Luke and Matthew are emphasizing different things.
They're keenly aware. These stories are circulating. These these Gospels are circulating. They understand the differences and their accounts, but they're purposely emphasizing different things. Matthew's emphasizing betrayal and the shame and guilt that he felt Luke is just emphasizing judgment. Thematically, they're just telling the same story from different angles to articulate different theological ideas. Now, I think we should, though, try to piece this all together. So I want to do that for you in a moment. How do you actually line these up side by side? So here, here, I think is what some of the good options to line these up. I think what happened is that Judas fell headlong, which is a poetic description of hanging himself by suicide.
So I think that's a poetic description of falling headlong. I think the rope was around his neck. And I think at some point, after this, it was a graphic scene, as Luke described, with his bowels on the ground below. Now, I had the distinct pleasure of reading. I got deep in the weeds of this week. And I read an NIH study, which is a National Institutes of Health study. I read the NIH study on what happens to bodies that are decomposing as they're hanging. And this is actually quite common. It's super gross, but it is quite common for bodies to bloat. It's quite common for scavengers and insects to come. And it's quite common for it to be graphic after a few weeks for things to fall out below. So that's an option that you can read in this passage.
You can also look at this and realize the region that this was in. This was in the region of Akeldama, which is in the Hinnom Valley. It's a rocky cliffside. What also happens sometimes with people who hang themselves after a few weeks, the body does drop and ends up becoming a graphic scene. And this would have been on cliff rocks. So it's graphic, but I think it's helpful sometimes when we have different stories, different narratives to kind of do the tough work, even sometimes when it's difficult to line them up and see that actually these two stories come together and they are very much compatible. And what Luke is trying to do is emphasize the judgment that was put upon Judas and how awful it was and how sad it was.
This is someone they knew, a friend for three years, who betrayed Jesus, who ended up like this. And that pain is still felt and it's lingering. And they need to replace him. And as you continue to read this, get past the parenthetical reference of what happened to him, you pick up in verse 20 and Peter is going to recount from the Psalms what was foretold. Peter keeps saying, he says, 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.
Okay, so that's Psalm 69:25 and Psalm 109:8 being quoted from the Old Testament to show the prophecy that this was going to happen. That both judgment came upon him for what he did and also they needed to replace him. That they needed to get back to 12 leaders again, which leads us to that episode is done to the final mini-episode here, part four, the leadership void filled. So in accordance with Psalm 109, they needed to fill this leadership void and Peter gives some qualifications for who can step into the place that Judas left behind. So he continues his speech in verse 21. He says, 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.
Okay, pause there. There are kind of three different qualifications that he gives for who can take the place of Judas. The first is that he must be a man. Now, sometimes in the New Testament, they can use different Greek words, which can mean both men and women or brothers and sisters. So adelphoi is the Greek word, it can mean brothers and sisters and anthropos is the word that can mean men and women. So sometimes if you look at your ESV, you'll see a footnote at the very bottom and it'll say men and women or it'll say brothers and sisters. This is not one of those times. The word that was used there exclusively only means man. It's a very specific designation. Jesus purposely chose 12 men to lead the church.
He could have been countercultural at the time. He was countercultural and he could have chosen women, but he did not. He chose a man, 12 men to lead the church. And that is because by God's design, as you see through the rest of the New Testament, God has called qualified men to lead the church. That is part of God's complementarian design for leadership in the church.
Now the rest of the New Testament teaches this, that this is something that is new or that you aren't comfortable with. As pastors, we are more than happy to sit down with you and walk through the scriptures and help you see some of the arguments that are bound up in this. But this is one of the reasons why it says, it uses that word and it says man. The second is that he must have been with them from the beginning of Jesus' ministry. So from the baptism, when John baptized them onward, he needs to be a witness to what Jesus did with him for three years through to the cross and the resurrection, to witness the life, death, work of Christ. And the third thing is that because he witnessed all of this, he needs to be the kind of man that will witness, that will declare the gospel.
Someone who witnessed the resurrection, the fact that Jesus Christ is alive and because Jesus Christ is alive because he conquered the power of death of the resurrection, nothing is ever the same. And that's the truth that we hold as Christians, that if Jesus Christ is alive, then nothing by comparison matters in life. Everything should center and revolve around that reality. And it should be the kind of man that believes that and will testify to what he has seen in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So he gives those three qualifications, then two men are put forward, verse 23. And they put forward two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was 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 11 apostles. So two men are suggested, they're praying, devoted to prayer. And then they cast lots, which in Bible times is essentially flipping a coin and trusting God in the process to choose whether it'll be heads or tails. We don't know exactly how the lots work. There's a lot of theories as to how it worked, those casting straws or anything of the like, but that is what happens. And it was prevalent throughout the Old Testament. This is the only instance where God's people do this in the New Testament. Now, pause for a minute, that begs a very fair question. Why don't we still do this? A couple of years ago, we're starting to plant a church, we're figuring out which one of our elders, which couple of our elders is going out.
Why didn't we just cast lots, let the lots fall where they may and break up the team and go different places? It's a fair question that gets asked. Why do we not still practice this today? And I think there's a couple of reasons that I find to be satisfactory. Some will argue that in the very next chapter, the Holy Spirit descends upon the church. And because we now have God at work within us, it's no longer necessary. So we seek the Lord earnestly in prayer as a unified people to decide which way we should go on any given matter. And I think that's a pretty helpful argument for why we don't practice lots, casting lots today. Also, another argument is that when you read about casting lots in the scriptures, it's always described.
It's not prescribed. And that's when you're trying to interpret scripture, sometimes there's a helpful category to look at. Is it just being described, meaning we're reading about a thing that happened, or was it prescribed, meaning this is commanded for us to do? And we don't see in the New Testament where we're commanded to cast lots. And this is the only time that they cast lots as the church. So I think the combination of those two arguments help us understand that there's a reason why we don't cast lots today, that we simply are just the people who are to pray, to seek the Lord, and help him, or help, seek him as he helps lead in God the church and where we're supposed to go. That's helpful to think as we think about this passage.
They end up choosing, the Lord ends up choosing, Matthias, he fills the void. And now all their leadership is in place as they get ready for the next phase, which is chapter two, the Holy Spirit descends upon the church.
Okay. So we have four different mini-episodes, which are hitting four different aspects of truth that I think are helpful for us to reflect. And I want to consider those as we close, specifically for the season that we are in. As we are getting ready to plant Oak Ridge, as we're getting ready in January to send out 60 plus people from our church to go to Lexington and to start a new church. I want to come back and hit these four and understand them for the place and the time that we're in. And they're important. So let's go back to the first one, the original leaders and notable figures. What I think is helpful about this to consider is that the church is and has always been led by people. People play a significant role in the church.
Think very practically for a moment and logistically. These 120 followers have been following Jesus for three years. This was a traveling ministry. And guess what? Only twice that we have recorded, did Jesus do a miraculous work where he fed all of them, which means that outside of that miraculous work, a pile of people needed to eat a few times a day. And when you travel with a bunch of people, there are logistics involved in that. It takes people to go and find food and to gather meals together. It takes supporters to fund that, to go and pay for the food. It takes people to go. I mean, if you're traveling from town to town to town, you have a place to sleep. And sometimes you're going to find lodging and sometimes you're going to find campgrounds.
We don't know exactly how it worked, but it took people to move this forward every step of the way. We read at one point, one of the things that Judas is accused of and is guilty of is that he was the one who managed the money and he stole from the money, which means they had a system of collecting gifts and offerings and making sure that it was used. So there are a lot of logistics that went into all the way up to right now. They're getting ready to wait for the Holy Spirit. They're in Jerusalem and that's what? It's 120 of them in a smaller place. There's one up a room. I don't know how it all worked out, but it took logistics because it took people to do those things. And I say all that to say again is that every Sunday morning as we come together as the church to worship, because we are obedient to the book of Hebrews when it says we don't neglect the gathering of the saints, but when we come together here on Sunday mornings, y'all, it takes a lot of people to pull this off.
I mean, there are kids sitting. We choose as a church, just give you a little behind the curtain scene on this. We choose as this church and the way that we have kids involved in ministry to actually have kids sitting.
Now there are churches that do not do that at all, which means that every child back there would be in this room right now. Okay. And that's a fine choice. That's fine for the churches that have that condition to do that. We don't choose to do that. We choose to have the gospel taught on their level as they get older and more mature to be able to sit in this worship gathering and learn. But that takes a pile of people on volunteers and guys, if I went like page by page, oh, I couldn't do it because it would take someone who knows the ins and outs that ministry way better like Isaac or Katie. But if they were up here and they went page by page to every aspect of what it takes to pull off Sunday mornings, you would go, boy, oh boy, I need to jump in and help like at least once a month.
This is, this is insane. There's a lot of work and it matters because we want to teach the kids in our church, the gospel. We want to have ordered worship in this space every Sunday morning. And beyond that, we have people who do hospitality. We have people who do safety. We have people in that booth every morning. We have people on the stage every morning. We have a pile of people who give themselves away to make sure that we can come together for worship. And that happens also in groups because we have group leaders who give up time and energy and effort who come to trainings that we do throughout the year. We have leaders in training who go through different types of discipleship to help be helpful parts of group.
You get the person, maybe in your group who handles the group me and make sure that, you know, it's not just pizza every week. That takes people. People are part of the church who do the work. And I want us to see ourselves in it, especially in the season where we're going to be needed to step up. It takes people to advance the kingdom. It takes people to make much of Christ. That's the first thing I want us to see. The second, I hit this one a little quicker, is the importance of prayer. As I said earlier, I think like right now we're getting ready to send out Oak Ridge. And it's going to take people that are committed to a bunch of different things. And Mike and Isaac are helping see all that happening.
We're over here figuring out how we're going to be when they're gone. But we, y'all, if you're not praying, I hear this, if you're not praying pretty much every day for what's happening over the next few months, I want to encourage you to change that. I want you to pray every day. We need to be a people that are devoted to prayer because what the work that awaits, what Oak Ridge is getting ready to go out and do, y'all, it's hard. But you listen, I don't know if I've ever heard of a church planning story. We're like, we went out and it was all easy and it was great. And like everyone was happy all the time. Like no one had opinions that like tried to wreck everything. Like it is not, I've never, never heard that story.
Maybe it exists. Maybe we'll be the first. I don't know. But given the way their history goes, I think it's going to be really hard for them. And we should pray for them every day up into and beyond. And if you're at Oak Ridge, you should pray for us because we've talked about this. We're going to have a lot of work to do when you're gone. And I'm so stinking excited about it. But boy, oh boy, we should be on our faces because we think we're going to strategize our way out of the situation we are deceived.
Now the power is bound up in coming before the Lord in prayer. All right, I've done enough. The lingering tragedy of Judas is scary. What can we learn from that as we're getting ready to be in this season that we are? Judas' leadership serves as a cautionary tale. There's a reason why when you look at the qualifications for elders or pastors in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus chapter 1, that the majority of them, the overwhelming majority of them are character based. There's a reason. And that's because it matters immensely. It's the most important element of leadership in the church. There are too many stories of pastors who fall to greed, sexual sin, domineering leadership, dishonesty. It's one of the reasons that we take elderships so slowly that Mike Goble has been an elder in training for years now.
And it's because we are taking the time to evaluate character over seasons because it matters immensely to be tested and to be ready. Character matters. And Judas is a cautionary tale of this.
Now, some people will point out. They'll say, well, you know, Jesus Christ chose 12 and then one of them still failed. And I understand what they're saying in that. I think it's a little more complicated than that statement on its face, that there's God's sovereign plan at work in mysterious ways that are thousands of years in the making. But on its face, it is Jesus Christ chose a person that he poured into for three years to watch him betray him, sell him out for 20 pieces of silver. And today still God raises up men who genuinely they love the Lord. And they're obedient to his calling and they faithfully oversee their calling for years and then in a season of weakness, they fall and they fail.
And every time that hurt, every time that happens, it hurts. And some of y'all have come from church backgrounds where you've been a part of that and you've seen it, it's painful and it hurts. And on top of that, there's an extra layer that hurts when it's just more ammo for the cynics and the scoffers on the outside to be like, yeah, that's right. Church is a bunch of money-hungry, perverted hypocrites and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't know why I went deep Southern there, but that's just it. And it hurts. And the truth is there are failures of leadership that happen in every aspect of humanity. And it does hurt when pastors fall. The enemy seemingly uses the sharpest knives to attack the people who lead God's bride, the church.
And that's why, as we're getting ready for this season, you should pray for your pastors. You should pray for Mike and Isaac as they are going out to oversee this church plant. So fourth, this is our last one: the leadership void filled. We are going to have opportunities across the board for each and every one of us to step into and lead there also. It's not just that we need future pastors, though we do. We need people to step up in every single part of our church: Kid City, hospitality, you name it. God is the God of order, and he's ordered our church in a manner and he's led us to structure our church in a way that it requires people to step into places and to own all those different aspects of leading.
And many of you have an opportunity to do that. It's an exciting season for our church. We are pumped about sending out this church plant. We are pumped about the work that they had to do, and we are excited about the work that is left here. So we need to understand that God calls his people to step into places and lead. So we should be a people right now in this season that are praying, that are seeking the Lord, and are trusting the Holy Spirit to equip us and to call us into areas that may be uncomfortable, and may be a little scary, but we're willing to be obedient because the mission matters. Because ultimately we want to be a church that keeps multiplying healthy churches. We want to be a church that keeps reaching people.
We want to be a church that continues to pull out the baptismal pool right here and watches people enter into the water and testify that Jesus Christ is Lord. We want to be a church that fulfills our small part in the Acts story. But that means we all get to step up and do it.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that you might help us in this part of Acts to be considerate of all of these things that we would see. The church is made up of people, ordinary people, that we would see the need to be on our faces in prayer, that we'd see how important it is to have leaders who display character and that we would fill all the voids that are getting ready to hit. All for the sake of us first experiencing you and the power of your death and resurrection and the gospel at work within us and the overflow of that being something we then declare to others as we seek to make disciples in our city. In Jesus' name, amen.