The Book Of Acts | Season Of Waiting (March 8th, 2020) - Mike Armstrong

Alright, well we are going to uh get into God's word right now, and uh I am ready to go for this.

I hope you are too.

If you would grab uh your Bibles and turn uh to the book of Acts, okay, we are gonna be finishing out uh Acts chapter one today, and uh you uh see it all there in front of you.

Now, uh quick question for you can kind of consider here.

Uh, how do you typically handle yourself when you're forced to wait for something?

Right?

Like we're we're not good at this, are we?

When it comes to patience, it's no surprise to us that the patience is a fruit of the spirit, right?

It's something we don't have.

We need the spirit to uh give us patience.

When we are forced to wait, we're in a season of waiting, uh it is difficult.

I have found that um that my flaws in this area are exposed in many ways.

One way that I was thinking about recently uh is just when traveling, right?

When uh specifically when uh going through an airport.

Okay, I I'm I'm not exactly a frequent flyer, but I've done uh a little bit in the last uh little while.

But if you notice in airports and when we fly, there's there's just a lot of delays.

Right?

There's a lot of waiting that goes on.

First of all, I'm the kind of guy, I don't know if you're like me, but I'm the kind of guy that likes to show up uh to the airport super early.

Okay, my wife thinks it's like seven hours before the flight or something, she might be right.

And so we end up spending uh a lot of time there anyways, waiting, but I like trying to avoid the stress if at all possible.

But again, a lot of waiting, right?

There's a lot of lines.

If you didn't uh kind of check in early in that 24-hour period and do that online, you might be standing in in one of those long, snaking lines.

I know WestJet has a commercial right now, it's just all cattle, right?

You totally feel that way.

Try to get your boarding pass, and and then it's you know going through security and it's a lot of lines there, and and then it's you know, passing customs, and that might happen to the front end of your trip or or at the back end of your trip.

Of course, when we're actually uh in the air in the plane, there can also be delays that way.

I remember at least once now uh we've flown in, and after a long flight, you know what it feels like when you're ready to land, but but the plane gets kind of put in this holding pattern and they're not quite ready, and they're trying to clear the runways, and you might be like 20 minutes or another half an hour there, it just feels like an eternity when you're in that position.

How about when you finally land, okay, and you're taxiing towards the place where you can get off the plane, and everyone's waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting for that seatbelt sign.

Right, and that seatbelt sign finally, finally goes off, and everyone immediately gets up, right?

And they're standing there, and they're like cramped under the baggage thing, and they're trying to pull bags off.

It's like, you know, we have another like 10 or 15 minutes of standing here, but somehow that feels better than sitting a moment longer, but you finally get off the plane.

This just keeps going, doesn't it?

Right?

You get off the plane, and you gotta wait for your luggage.

And like everyone's your your luggage is always the last one to come off the plane.

Isn't that convenient?

Right?

And then after that, you might have to rent uh a car or something, and so you gotta wait for the shuttle, right, to take you to the to the car rental place.

And of course, your car's not ready yet, sir.

You're gonna have to wait for that, and then you jump in your car and you're ready to go.

Oh, wait, no, traffic.

More waiting.

Point is waiting is hard, right?

Really, no matter the circumstances, no matter what it is, and there's a million circumstances we could name, of course, but we don't have uh time for that.

But have you really noticed here that um as Christians, uh waiting on the Lord, uh that's kind of a big part of our walk with him.

Have you sensed that before?

Have you seen that?

I mean, the Bible itself talks about waiting quite a bit.

I mean, here are just a few uh examples of that.

David says in Psalm 27, wait for the Lord.

Okay, be strong and let your heart take courage.

And he says it again, wait for the Lord.

Okay, uh Isaiah tells us in Isaiah 40, verse 31, but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength.

Isaiah 40:31

Love that verse and it goes on.

But Paul says in Romans 8, verse 19, that creation itself waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.

Romans 8:19

It's referring to how believers were waiting for our future inheritance.

Are you waiting for eternity and the full glorification of our bodies at Christ's return or when he takes us home?

I mean, I am absolutely waiting for that day.

No question about it.

We all experience the reality of waiting for the Lord.

We're waiting for answers to prayer, right?

We're waiting for him to pour out his power, we're waiting for him to provide us with wisdom and guidance and comfort, right?

We're waiting for him to return and call uh us home to him.

You know, waiting, okay, waiting is uh what the disciples uh find themselves doing here in Acts chapter 1, in the last half of it.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

And you might remember uh two weeks ago, uh we looked at how uh Jesus He had given them the basic framework of his plan for the church.

You remember what that was?

It was it was get saved, it was get growing, and then get on mission.

He says the Holy Spirit is uh coming to help with that.

And then you remember in the next moments he he's gone.

Right?

He he ascends to be with his father, and there's those two angels standing there appearing, and as the disciples are looking up into the skies, they're saying, like, what don't worry, guys, like he's he's gonna return.

Right?

He's coming back, but but in the meantime, uh you've got your orders to carry out.

Now, for me, uh personally, that whole section of scripture, that first part of Acts there, that that really stands out to me.

I don't know, that that jumps out at the page uh to me.

Okay, and and what also kind of uh jumps out at me is is what happens in chapter two, right?

We've referred to that a few times already, and that's when when the Holy Spirit comes.

We're gonna be looking at that next week, but but for me, for for some reason, less ingrained in kind of in my mind when I think about the story of Acts is this passage here today uh in between.

I don't know, maybe it's because the the first part of chapter one and then chapter two are both kind of these action-packed events with all kinds of things, exciting things going on, where you've got Jesus kind of rallying his troops in the first part of Acts 1, and then you've got the Holy Spirit in Acts 2 kind of kicking off the explosion of the church.

And for me, it's easy to be kind of absorbed in those things, but but in the middle of these two events, uh you've got a whole lot of waiting going on.

Have you seen that?

Which I think we can all relate to.

You know, I'm sure that we would all love our lives, our walks with the Lord, our church even, to be kind of like non-stop action, right?

Like all kinds of amazing, you know, mountaintop experiences where we're seeing and sensing the Lord moving and in all kinds of uh dramatic ways.

Okay, but we know that that life is is not exactly like that.

At least it's not like that all the time.

Now, it's not to say that the Lord is not at work in those waiting type moments.

It's also not to say that we should just be kind of sitting around in neutral, kind of twiddling our thumbs doing nothing, or or or getting frustrated at God in those seasons of waiting.

That's definitely not what we see the disciples uh do here in this passage.

In fact, I think we can learn a lot.

I think we're gonna learn a lot from from what they do and and what they focus on and things that you and I can put into effect uh in our lives when you and I are in a season of waiting for the Lord.

Yeah, I'm sure if we had time and we went around the room, I think all of us in some way would be like, yeah, I'm waiting on the Lord for something.

Well, I want to pray for us right now and pray that the Lord would help us maximize that time of waiting and pour out his goodness and help us understand what the purpose of those waiting seasons are.

And so why don't you join me as we do this and then we'll get into the verses, Lord?

We uh thank you, Lord, that you are God over uh these kind of slower periods in our lives, Lord, the the waiting where we're crying out to you and we want to see you move and we want to see you work, and and Lord, we we know that we need you, and yet we can't always sense or see how you might be moving and working.

And and so, God, I pray that you would help us out in this, Lord.

I know that our hearts tend to run to other things, Lord.

We get impatient, we can get frustrated, we can despair and lose hope.

Lord, we can get distracted and we can get our minds off the mission.

Father, would you help us?

Lord, we thank you that you are such a good God, and and in those seasons where we are waiting, you are absolutely working.

Lord, you are often working in more of a behind-the-scenes way, and we may not be able to see it, but Lord, I pray that you would raise us up to be a church who trusts you, Lord, who clings to you, who continues to press into you.

So, Lord, as we uh look at this example from the disciples, as they are waiting on you, the gift of the Holy Spirit in chapter two.

Father, would you teach us?

Would you encourage us?

Would you motivate us?

Would you give us joy in these times of waiting, Lord?

I pray that we would be an example to each other and an example to the world.

Lord, we thank you for this time.

We thank you for your word and how it directs us.

Lord, I pray that our lives would glorify you.

Teach us to do this.

Help us again, we pray, in your name.

Amen.

Amen.

All right.

Well, first thing today, two things this morning.

But first one is when I'm in a season of waiting for the Lord, I will be dependent on him always through prayer.

Hey, through prayer.

Now, verse 12 is where we start to see uh this uh idea roll out here.

Look what it says.

Follow along with me.

It says, Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet.

Okay, so so that's where they were uh when Jesus was explaining uh the plan for his church, and and and when he ascended, they they were at this place called the Mount of Olivet.

Okay, so they returned to Jerusalem from there.

This mount was near Jerusalem, it says, a Sabbath days journey away.

Now, what's a Sabbath day's journey?

Well, it was uh roughly a kilometer or so, okay.

So how do they kind of get this understanding?

Well, uh Jewish leaders and observers of the law of the Torah uh had decided, and it and it had kind of become this tradition, really, uh, that this was uh an appropriate uh distance that one could walk before it was considered work.

All right, and so they decided they could they uh uh a Sabbath day's walk.

Uh you could walk uh this certain distance, uh, and it was if you went past that, it would be considered work, which would be a violation of the Sabbath.

If it was uh you know under or within a kilometer, uh you were okay.

Okay, this really comes, this tradition really comes from uh their interpretation uh of a verse in Exodus, uh chapter 16, uh 29.

You can jot that down if you want and check it out uh later.

All right, so they've come from this this mount now called Olivet.

They've come to Jerusalem now.

So they were pretty close, but they're within a in a kilometer.

Now, verse 13.

And when they had entered Jerusalem, they went up to the upper room where they were staying.

Yeah, they were staying there, or they were meeting regularly there, uh, anyways.

Now, now here we see in this next verse uh the eleven disciples.

Okay, so remember, uh Judas Iscariot, by this time, uh he was he was out of the picture.

Okay, so he was no longer with uh them.

He had betrayed Christ.

We're actually gonna see more uh about that uh here in a few moments.

Uh but here's what it says.

Here's who the characters are.

Okay, we got Peter and John, and James and Andrew, uh Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alpheus, and Simon, the uh Simon the zealot, and Judas, okay, different Judas, Judas the son of James.

Okay, so they're they're all assembled together, these eleven men uh in this room.

And remember, they'd just been given their orders, okay, from the mouth of Jesus.

Right?

And so, of course, they wouldn't have all the details all figured out, but they they know like God is about to do something.

And of course, we know, we have the benefit of hindsight, that it is like it's church planting time, right?

But at the same time, they've also been told already to kind of hang tight here, right?

This isn't gonna happen immediately.

If you look back to uh verse 4 in chapter 1, uh Jesus tells them to not depart from Jerusalem.

Okay, don't depart from here, but they are to wait, see the word there?

They are to wait for the promise of the Father.

We of course know that that means the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is coming.

Now, how long was this waiting period?

How long were they, you know, meeting together in this in this upper room and and and waiting for the Spirit to come?

Well, you know, if you uh do the math, uh you kind of take uh the time of Passover, uh, which was when uh when Jesus was was killed and when he uh rose again.

You've got Passover and then and then Pentecost, which is chapter two, when when the Holy Spirit came.

There were 50 days in between that.

Okay, Pentecost would happen 50 days uh after the Pentecost.

And then you kind of factor in here that that Jesus was was alive, he presented himself alive to uh to many people for uh how many days?

40 days.

All right, and so you've got then if you do the math, 10 more days now after he ascended until uh Pentecost when the Holy Spirit uh came.

Okay, so it's this 10-day period uh of waiting.

Now maybe you might be thinking, 10 days, that's nothing.

Man, I've I've waited a lot longer for a lot of different things than these disciples.

And of course we know, right?

We know that that waiting is a bit of a relative thing, right?

Sometimes we might wait for for hours and it feels like eons, right?

I I need you now.

And the Lord, you know, in his sovereignty, uh, he has this in a time of waiting for a couple of hours.

It could be it could be days like this.

This is like a week and a half, it could be months, it could, it could even be years.

But try and imagine uh where they were at.

They're like, he's like, go back, you know, go back to Jerusalem, don't leave Jerusalem, and the Holy Spirit is coming, the promise from the Father is coming.

And just kind of kind of put yourself in their shoes again and and and and imagine being with them.

We're meeting again, and it, you know, uh a full day has gone by and nothing's happened.

Now you've got you got two or or or three or or four days have gone by, and and wait a second here, what's is this even gonna happen at all, right?

And and and and and again, it would have been probably would have been a tough, a tough couple of days.

I mean, we're not let in on what their conversations are like.

It doesn't tell us explicitly, you know, what they were what they were feeling emotionally, right?

What were they were they stressed about this?

Were they were were were they anxious?

Was it pure excitement and anticipation of of what was gonna happen?

You know, I I kind of think about it, and I'm not trying to read too much into this here, but I think it's safe to say that that these men, and then we're gonna see there are women involved here too, like they're human, right?

And we know what it's like to be human, and and as we're waiting, we probably would have, and they would have been feeling like these kinds of emotions and these thoughts.

You wonder, did they struggle with doubt?

Was this ever you know even gonna happen?

And did we did we kind of misinterpret what what Jesus said and what he meant by that?

Because we've done that in the past, right?

Imagine what they were kind of thinking and feeling.

Again, we're not told, but but you and I, we definitely know what it feels like to wait, don't we?

To wait on the Lord, to wait on on tons of different things.

I mean, it's tax return season, right?

We're jumping into that, and I wonder how many of us are like, man, I'd really like that tax return to come quick.

You know, I got I got some plans for that.

You know, if you happen to have a return, test results from a doctor.

Right?

You know, you've had some blood work done and you have a sense that something's just not quite right, and that's taking time.

Right?

That's that's waiting.

How about you as parents?

You got college-age kids and you know, they're heading off on on spring break, right?

And and and they're traveling with their friends, and you're like, man, I'm just waiting on a text to, you know, are are are they safe?

Right?

Did they make it home?

Yeah, did they make it back uh to their campus?

Okay, any number of of prayer requests that we have for you know, more faith.

God, help me to trust you more.

God, give me strength in the face of temptation.

Like maybe for you, you're you're praying for the salvation of a loved one.

Right?

We are all extremely well versed in the area of waiting.

Right?

So the question really is for you like, well, what do you do in those times?

How how do you spend that that time of waiting?

How do you respond in the stress of that?

How do you handle yourself in the fear and and the doubts and in maybe the confusion of whatever you're facing?

Maybe it's just the unknown or or in or in that impatience that accompanies your season of waiting on the Lord.

How do you respond?

Do you kind of have like a go-to response that you do that's maybe not so great, and you see that this is kind of a pattern, and and this is kind of what I fall into.

Right?

For some of us, whenever we're forced away, we we we instinctively kind of fall into crisis mode.

Right?

And we don't we don't get that thing that we want, that thing that we're asking for, and like everything escalates.

Right?

And and my and my life is coming a part of the scenes.

Right?

And we just it's it's crisis, crisis, crisis.

Everything is the worst.

Right?

And for you, maybe it's it's panic, and you feel your your your your heart in your throat.

Okay, for you, perhaps it's it does it's despair.

Right, and and and you wrestle with that and you struggle with that, and it's it's doubt that the Lord will ever come through.

It's even love me.

For others, it's maybe not despair, but it's more it's more anger.

Right?

And maybe the root of that for you, it's it's control.

You're a control freak.

You're like, I just I want my answer now, and I don't, I'm not getting it, and so I'm cranky.

Right?

Or I'm angry towards the Lord, I'm kind of miserable to be with.

My family doesn't really want to be with me.

I may or may not be speaking about myself here.

Maybe your anger has gone even further and it's become bitterness.

You've kind of given up on the Lord.

What's the use?

I've I've asked, I've prayed, nothing seems to happen.

You get into crisis mode.

Maybe for you you found that when you're waiting, waiting for the the answers to your prayers, you found that your tendency is to run to idols.

Right?

And we run to idols, don't we, for uh for uh kind of a cheap sense or a false sense of comfort.

Right?

I'm not sensing comfort from the Lord in this, and so I I you know I'm feeling uncomfortable, and I don't like the discomfort of my anxiety or or my fear or or or my despair or my anger, and so I'm gonna run to whatever cheap thrill will make me feel better.

Do you find that you do this?

When you find ourselves in these seasons, a lot of men they they run to sexual immorality, they run to pornography because, again, it's it's a cheap thrill.

Right?

It takes no effort, it takes no commitment.

So I'm just gonna scan some things on my screen in front of me because it makes me, even just for a moment, feel pleasure.

Is that you?

Perhaps for you that's not the issue, but it could be something like a like a spending spree.

I get into a season of stress and a season of kind of anxiety and fear, and my answer's not coming, and so I just I I want to medicate through um through shopping.

Right?

I just I want to have new things because that distracts me from the problems of my life.

That distracts me from in this waiting period and gives me something to kind of play with uh for a short amount of time.

And maybe you're thinking that's not that big of a deal.

I can I can have nice things, and I'm not suggesting we should never buy anything, but sometimes we're just trying to medicate, and that's our antidote.

We don't run to the Lord, we run to the mall.

Is that what you do?

Perhaps for you, we don't talk about this a lot in the church, but we should.

Perhaps for you, the false sense of comfort that you run to is overeating.

You used to eat a lot.

I feel kind of down, I feel depressed, I'm anxious, and so I just grab a type of a tub of ice cream and just polish that thing off.

Right?

I mean, I'm not saying never have comfort food.

I'm not saying never eat a lot of pizza sometimes.

But for some of us, it's it's straight up an idol.

And I get it, people don't like to hear it.

If you don't want to talk about food, we need to.

We need to.

Is this what you do?

Do you run to idols?

Is it one of the ways something I haven't mentioned?

You're running to that thing for comfort.

Listen, that all falls apart at some point.

Usually quite quickly.

How about for you and your waiting and your season of this for the Lord?

For you, you're like, man, I just flat out refuse to wait.

I'm just gonna fix this myself.

And I'm gonna charge ahead of the Lord.

Okay, I'm gonna make some things happen here.

You ever done that?

Is that your tendency?

You ever done that?

And charge ahead, you didn't wait, and you weren't patient.

You just made a mess of the situation.

Right?

And you did something and you didn't allow the Lord to do what he needed to do in you, and so you got ahead of him, and now you've got other consequences and other issues to deal with because of that.

Right?

Think about it here.

The disciples could have decided not to wait.

They could have left Jerusalem.

Right?

They could have said, well, the Holy Spirit's coming, and then maybe he'll come later, and maybe we should get this thing started without him, and and and he'll catch up.

Right?

And let's just go, you know, tell people and be witnesses of the resurrection and let's go do that.

Of course, they they didn't do that.

They didn't try to force the mission in their own strength and their own ingenuity.

I mean, think about it, they could have disbanded as well.

Like nothing's happening here.

It's day nine.

Day nine, we're meeting in this stuffy upper room.

It's hot.

Like, let's just let's pack it in.

This is lame.

Like, what are we wasting our time with here?

They don't do any of that.

Not in their season of waiting.

Verse 14 instead here shows us exactly how they responded.

Take a look.

It says, All these, these are the the eleven, uh, with one accord were, look at it, devoting themselves to prayer.

Okay, devoting themselves to prayer.

Together, it says, with the women and and Mary, the mother of Jesus, uh, and his brothers.

Okay, this is such a uh a great verse here.

Underline that word devoting.

That that word devoted means to be busily engaged in.

Okay, the the verb tense here means that the nature of their prayer was determined, okay?

They were determined in this, but it was also ongoing.

This is something that they continued uh to do uh during this time.

There was nothing casual and kind of flippant about their prayers, like, ah, maybe I should you know pray for you know five or ten seconds or whatever, right?

There's no sense of that here in this.

They weren't like, well, we we've done that already, so like what's on TV?

Like they didn't they didn't appear to handle it that way uh at all.

The picture instead is is of them clinging to the Lord, right?

Clinging to Him in prayer, right?

Dependent on Him in every moment.

They're like, Lord, we we don't know what to do.

We don't even want to leave this room until you are here and it is clear what we are to do, until we have this promise that you have said that we will have.

I can just imagine wisdom and and patience, Lord.

Help us with this.

Lord, Lord, your will to be done.

It's not about what we want to do right now, it's about you and and your plans.

Right?

They just want the Lord's plans to be established.

They want they want the Holy Spirit to come.

And you notice how how their prayer, it was something uh that they did, it says the word is is together.

Okay, together with these with these women and Jesus' mother and brothers.

Right?

They were of one mind, they were they were unified here.

They they shared the same attitude and the same the same mindset and the same intensity uh in their prayers.

Now, hey, does this does this describe us?

Does this describe our prayers as we as we wait for the Lord?

Right?

When we find ourselves in in that season of life where we're in that that holding pattern, right?

It could be again days, it could be, it could be months, it could even be years.

It's just it's just waiting, waiting, waiting.

Right?

What happens to to our prayer life in those days?

Are we prayerless?

Uh do we tend to be too self-sufficient?

Do we just kind of pack up shop and give up and quit?

Or do we sense in in what can be such intense discomfort of those of those waiting periods, do we sense a kind of a sweet dependence on the Lord beginning to well up in our souls here within us?

And so much of what God is working to establish in us in seasons of waiting is is stronger trust in him.

Are you gonna trust me?

Or are are you gonna are you gonna cling to me?

What the Lord's doing is he's trying to get your your faith off of yourself and and your abilities and and your fears and and just angled inwards to you and onto him.

Right?

He's trying to work out the those inclinations that you have to run to idols.

He's trying to show you, hey, listen, when you run to those, they don't bring you peace.

They don't answer your deepest questions, they don't, they don't help you, they they let you down, they hurt you, they they hurt other people.

Right?

When we're in those seasons of waiting, he's trying to establish deeper patience in us, deeper hope and and rest in his sovereignty.

Do we realize that when we're faced with a season of waiting, that the Lord is preparing us spiritually?

Do you know that?

He's preparing you spiritually for what's ahead.

Have you kind of noticed as as you've walked with the Lord and as you grow as a Christian, have you noticed that like life doesn't really get any easier?

Right?

It actually gets harder, it seems.

Right?

And so guess what?

We're gonna need greater strength of character in those times.

And so in those seasons of waiting, we have to see that as like our schooling, as our education.

The Lord is transforming you in those moments.

Wait, but I can't feel it.

So what?

Stop following your feelings.

Start trusting what is true, what God's word says, what he promises.

He is training you up in those times and building again that necessary character that's that's that's missing or not fully established yet in you, this this spiritual maturity so that you can endure and you can thrive even in whatever God is calling you to next.

Right?

It's in that the uneasiness and the discomfort of waiting, where God is just he's teaching us, I think, just to be more dependent on him in prayer.

Right?

It's a big part of what we see here, it's all part of his design.

Right?

And you see again how the disciples, uh, you know, I'll come back to that word.

They they they band together.

Right?

It's like they link arms, like we're in this together, we're a we're a crew, we're a team here.

That's an important question for you and for us as a church.

As you wait for the Lord and you're and you're crying out to him, do you allow yourself to become isolated?

Do you?

That's how our culture rolls.

Right?

We're all individualistic.

Do you allow yourself to fall into that trap?

Do you realize or have you realized the weakness of that approach?

Listen, we actually provide, I was just kind of thinking about that this week, we actually provide a lot of opportunities here uh as a church uh for us to band together with each other, you with other believers, uh band together so that we can support each other and and depend on the Lord in deeper ways uh through prayer.

Have you seen that before of your church?

Have you noticed we have a lot of different on-ramps for you, if you will, uh, so that you can pray with other believers here?

Right?

We we've talked about, remember the connection cards?

I mentioned that just a few minutes ago.

I want to be careful how I say this because I don't want this to come across as guilt tripping, and I don't want this to be come across as, oh, Pastor Mike's mad.

That's not it.

But do you know that some of you have been coming here for years and and you've never filled that out?

We've never gotten that from you.

Do you know that we have 150 chairs set up right now and we've filled most of them?

Do you know on a on a busy week of collecting these, we get at most 30.

Some weeks we have like five.

Do you realize it's such an opportunity wasted for you?

I'm trying to urge you because this is this is this is to help you.

Just write something down, put it in the box at the back.

You're gonna have you're gonna have people in the church lifting these things up for you as you're waiting for the Lord.

Just jot it down.

We don't need to know all the details.

We're not saying that.

If you want to share them with us, great.

We'll be careful with those details.

We're not gonna blab them out to people.

But take the opportunity to have somebody pray for you.

That's just one way, right?

We mentioned a couple of weeks ago.

Now we've got this button on the main page of our website where during the week you forget about this, you can click on that and just type in a prayer request, and that gets sent right into our inbox, and we'll pray for you right there in that moment.

And a couple of you have started to use that.

I love it, it's amazing.

We also have post-service prayer, right?

I come up, you know, right before I say you are loved.

It's like, hey, we've got some leaders up here, come come pray.

There are honestly weeks where everyone leaves.

Everyone.

There are some of you who have never come up for prayer.

Do you really have it all together and don't need that?

If you do, come talk to me so that so that you can pray for me.

Right?

There are some that that come up every single week.

I love it.

I know that what can happen in those moments, though, right?

And you maybe feel that urging, and you're like, maybe I should go, you know, get prayer for that thing that this message is about, but in your pride, you're like, no, I don't want to show weakness.

Or for you, you kind of justify it in a super spiritual way, and like, well, I don't want to take up time for for others.

I'm actually loving others by not doing this.

Right?

We're so lame how we do that.

Right?

That's another big way that we can have people pray for us.

We're a church of prayer, right?

It's one of our distinctives.

We we gotta tap into this, but that's not it.

We have prayer nights.

We should be packing out that office.

It would be amazing for our elders to meet on a Thursday night and be like, man, that that prayer room was so jammed, we need to think about a bigger office.

We've never had that conversation.

We got small groups, obviously, small groups are a huge way for us to pray.

Not to mention, listen, listen, all the different informal ways that you can just you can ask anybody here to pray for you.

Right?

I love it when the service is is over.

You don't have to come talk to us, and you not you understand that, but you're you're talking to the person you know beside you, and then sometimes we'll see chairs kind of huddled together and people's heads bowed, and and you're praying, and sometimes there's tears being shed in that moment, and and then there's passion, you're crying out to the Lord, you're depending on him.

Love it! It's amazing.

I love walking out into the hallway, and I see people just kind of you know, got coffees in hand, and they're just they're praying for each other.

It's amazing to see.

Don't waste those opportunities, honestly.

Being devoted to prayer, it shouldn't be seen as a burden.

Like, oh man, I gotta do this.

Or I don't know all the words to say, so I wouldn't want to pray for somebody and look dumb.

It's not about that.

Humble yourself, cry out to the Lord.

It's a blessing, it's an opportunity to depend on Christ always as you wait for him.

Second thing.

When I'm in a season of waiting for the Lord, I will be convicted by his word to act in obedience.

Okay, so you're waiting on the Lord and kind of wondering what to do in the meantime.

Okay, I'm kind of just twiddling my thumbs here.

Well, we've seen that prayer is crucial.

Be getting into that big time, and now we see that it's also about getting into God's word.

Right?

Right, it's simple in terms of the concept, right?

Prayer and God's word.

That's what it is, and that's what we see in this in this passage here, and we see the impact that the scriptures had on the disciples in their season of waiting, uh waiting for the Holy Spirit, and they're gathering together together in this upper room.

We see it start in verse 15.

Take a look.

It says, in those days, Peter, remember, Peter was their leader.

Okay, Peter stood up among the brothers, brothers and sisters.

It says the company of persons wasn't all about 120.

Must have been a pretty big room.

Right?

And he said to them, brothers, okay, brothers and sisters, the the scripture, okay, so God's word had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David.

That right there is an amazing verse.

Right?

That verse shows us it so clearly that the Bible was inspired by the Holy Spirit through human authors.

Right?

Like, let's spend some time thinking about that this week.

Okay, so the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David concerning Judas.

Okay, so this is Judas Iscariot again.

Remember, I said we would come back to him?

Okay, 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, verse 18 and uh graphic description alert.

Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness, and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle, and all of his bowels gushed out, lovely.

And it became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

So that the field was called in their own language Akildama.

Uh that means field of blood.

Now remember, okay, uh Luke's a doctor.

Okay, so he's he's obviously fairly comfortable with uh with some of these details.

All right, now Matthew's gospel uh tells us that that Judas uh hung himself, okay?

So, you know, people have often looked at you know Matthew's account and Luke's account here in Acts and thought, oh, they're contradictory.

You know, they you know they they they tell different things and therefore can't trust the Bible.

Right?

People have used that.

Well, these aren't contradictory, they're they're rather to be seen as complementary accounts.

Right?

If if you and and the person beside you saw an event happen, you would probably describe it slightly differently.

Right?

And that's what's happening uh here.

Okay, so it would appear that uh the Judas hung himself.

Okay, and and in that he you know spent some time in the hot sun, and at one at some point here the he fell.

Okay, and I'm not gonna go into more details than that, you get the idea.

But now as as I read this though, and you kind of you kind of see the detail and and and and the gritty account of this, you're like, man, what's with all the what's with the gore here?

Well, likely to accentuate just the the judgment that Judas received as the betrayer of Jesus Christ.

Okay, but then also, look at this, also to tee up how how Judas' death was actually prophesied in the Old Testament.

Take a look at verse 20 here.

Okay, and this is Peter still talking.

It says, For it is written in the book of Psalms, and now this is a a reference to Psalm 69, 25.

He says, May his camp or or field, if you will, become desolate and let there be no one uh to dwell in it.

This field that Judas died in that was purchased with with the blood money that he got for betraying Jesus actually became a cemetery.

Okay, and that was actually referenced there in a in a very general way back in Psalm 69.

But Peter here, he gives another reference from the Psalm.

He says, and let another take his office, which is a more even direct reference to God's preordained plan to appoint another disciple to take Judas's place.

Okay, bringing the total number of disciples back to twelve.

You know, verse 21.

And notice what they do here with what they knew to be the Holy Spirit's direction to them through his word.

Notice what they do.

They act in obedience to it, right?

Full of conviction.

It says so, and this is Peter speaking, so 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 that he was taken up from us, that's the ascension, one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.

Right?

Do you see the conviction in that on Peter's part?

Right?

That the certitude that he and and everyone, all of them together had that within them that they had to obey God's word in this way.

Right?

We've got to appoint another guy here, right?

That they didn't look at at what was said in in these two examples of the Psalms and be like, I guess we could kind of take that as just a suggestion.

Right?

No, they they knew that that we we have to do this.

This is God God directing us and urging us through his word.

Therefore, we must we must act, right?

We we must obey.

And so, verse 23, they put forward two options.

Okay, first guy, Joseph, called Barsabbas, okay, who also, who was also called Justice.

Okay, and second guy, Matthias.

And they prayed.

Okay, prayer didn't end.

Remember, it's continuous.

They just keep doing every step of the way.

They're prayerful, Lord.

They want to seek the Lord's way and his will and all of it.

Right?

They prayed and said, You Lord, who know the hearts of all, show us which one of these two you have chosen.

Okay, so this isn't Peter being a hero here, being like, Hmm, I like Matthias better than justice.

Right?

It's not him, it's it's the Lord.

They they want the Lord's will in this, it's God's plan or bust for them.

Right?

He says, Wait to show us which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry in the apostleship, from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.

And then it says that they cast lots for them.

Okay, so so lots was kind of like casting lots is kind of like rolling a dice a little bit.

And um, it was how uh they would uh appropriately back in this day determine the will of God uh for them.

Okay, now now keep in mind here, as as we see actually in a lot of places in the book of Acts, this is uh this is a descriptive text.

Okay, so it's describing something that took place.

Okay, the the uh the other kind of text that we might see is a prescriptive text telling us to go do something.

And so we shouldn't read this text and be like, well, we we should be casting lots.

That should be our seventh distinctive here at redemption.

No, this is this is a descriptive text.

And again, this is how back in the day they determined God's choice as to who would fill Judas's role.

This is not their choice.

And what does it say?

It says, and the lot fell on Matthias, and he was numbered with the eleven apostles.

He had the total now being twelve once more.

Now, again, I I just love what is happening here.

In this very unique moment in the earliest days of the church.

I mean, the church hasn't even really launched yet, right?

The disciples, they're just they're they're waiting around.

It's it's it's you know, a week and a half of this, waiting for the Holy Spirit, it's a 10-day period, preparatory period, where they're huddled together in this room.

It's amazing.

They're praying.

We've seen that.

What else are they doing?

Well, they're in God's word, right?

They're in God's word, they're they're they're obeying it.

Okay, notice how, in this in-between season for them, you know, after Jesus explained his plan, but before it, you know, it really takes off.

Notice how they they don't do nothing.

Right?

They don't just kind of sit there.

Notice that that they act.

Okay, they they they make the most of the time, they don't waste it.

That they appear to recognize and understand that God is preparing them.

Okay, they they realize that God is setting the stage for what is yet to come.

They don't seem to give into fear, they don't give in to their doubts, they certainly don't scatter, they don't come up with a plan B and cut bait on God's plan.

No.

They follow the Lord's leading as outlined in his word and obey it with conviction.

Listen, in your Season of waiting, no matter what that might be for.

It could be for a godly person to date and hopefully at some point marry.

Maybe you're waiting.

Maybe you feel that longing for that.

That's not a bad longing.

Not at all.

Maybe for you, you're waiting on healing from a disease or some kind of illness.

It could be waiting for just you know some sense of direction.

How should I use my gifts here in our church?

Again, no matter what your specific circumstance and context is, understand that in the meantime here, so before God gives you that answer, your job is not to do nothing and just be passive the whole time.

It's not about just, well, I guess, I guess I'll just busy myself in meaningless things.

Don't we do that a lot?

You feel convicted about that?

I do, I know I do.

Our job is to pray, we've seen that.

It's to get into God's word.

And not just read it and close it and feel good about that and pat ourselves on the back, but like surrender to it.

Obey it.

Right?

Have you know, be men and women of conviction about the word and how it directs us and how it guides us.

Jesus was specifically and very uniquely preparing the apostles here by filling in that hole that was left by Judas, the betrayer, so that they would be ready for what was next.

In your season of waiting, he's preparing you too.

Do you know that?

He's sanctifying you.

He's transforming you.

He has no intentions of seeing this time go to waste in your life, not at all.

We should never approach our times of waiting as just an opportunity to be inactive or you know or or medicate our fears and our boredom and our worry with idols.

That's not it at all.

But sometimes that's what we do, don't we?

Or maybe for for for a lot of us, we kind of get like overly fixated on that thing that we're praying for.

Right?

Like, like, like like all I can think about is is the answer to that.

All I want is that thing that I'm crying out to the Lord for.

I don't care about anything else.

I don't care what God might be might be trying to accomplish in me.

I'm not even thinking about that.

I I just I just want the thing that that I I think I need.

And it's like tunnel vision on that.

When God has so much that He wants to do in you, in the interim.

Here again, we see what that looks like for us.

Right?

It's let's get into the Word of God.

Don't don't toss that book aside.

Spend some time in it.

Learn it.

Study it.

Get to know the Lord through it.

Allow him to sanctify you and make you new.

Let him grow you as a man or or woman, again, of conviction.

I I must obey this, as Peter says.

Rooted firmly in the scriptures.

Driven to act and obey his commands.

So yeah, I can imagine that today you're kind of hearing this and you're thinking, yeah, I'm waiting for something.

Right?

There's something that I've been praying for and I want.

And I want bad.

And there's an urge inside of me that is strong and I cannot turn off.

Listen, I get it.

I'm praying for things too.

But hey, what are we gonna do in the meantime?

Right?

I tell you, as I've kind of read through this and worked through this, I get I get pretty charged up here.

I get excited to kind of make the most of my waiting period here.

See that as this as an opportunity.

Not give in to you know Mike's lame flesh and and complain or whimper or or whine or woe is me that I don't have that thing yet.

Right?

No, this this is a this is a golden opportunity for us to learn deeper dependence on the Lord through prayer and to grow in our knowledge of God's word and our obedience to it so that God can be glorified.

Right, so that his will can be done.