Analog Church 02: Awaiting a Promise

Acts chapter 1, verses 12 through 26.

Acts 1:12–26

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 Alpheus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas, the son of James.

All of 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 Akildama, 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 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 Barcibus, who was also called Justice, 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.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

This is our, or I'll introduce myself.

My name's James Rathman.

I'm the lead pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

We are in the midst of a lot of exciting changes.

I got word that there are Krista, maybe you're in here.

How many people are in redemption groups?

66.

66 people in redemption groups.

Which is so exciting.

66 people meeting it uh every other week or uh weekly uh in groups here at our church.

That's pretty amazing to go from like 10 to 66.

So great work.

That's I think that's like half of this room right now, which is pretty amazing.

Um we're entering uh the second week of our series called Analog Church.

That's where we're looking at the church in Acts, so the early church, the church in its earliest moments.

We're seeing how does that church apply to us now?

How can we live with that sort of day one clarity?

Clarity of vision, clarity of purpose that they lived with in the early church that we see in the book of Acts.

So we're gonna be moving through just the first four chapters of Acts leading up into the holidays.

Now, today's text is weird, right?

There's uh a brief aside where uh someone's guts pour out in a field.

Uh they need to make a decision, and so they roll dice to make that decision.

Uh yeah, it's gonna be interesting to see what happens today.

Which those are actually both of the applications for this text as well.

Um don't go in fields with dead people with their guts pilling pouring out in them.

And roll dice to make decisions.

So we're done.

Sermon done.

Actually, we're gonna start at a different place.

We're gonna start with this question, really broad, really big, one of the biggest questions we can ask in our lives.

This question, who am I?

Who am I?

What is it that brings sort of meaning and identity to me?

Uh Augustine has this quote that I really love where he says, I know what time is until you ask me.

And I feel the same way about this question.

It's like, I know who I am until you ask me.

And then I don't know how to put that into a sentence.

I don't know how to say, hi, I'm James.

I struggle with it every week here.

Hi, I'm James, lead pastor of Redemption Church of Denver.

Thanks, welcome, good to see you all.

I just say things.

Because it's hard to put into a definition who we are.

So, this is one of those questions, this sort of problem of personal identity.

What makes one person one person?

What makes a human a human?

What are the essential fundamental qualities that must exist there for you to know who you are?

Philosophers bat this back and forth like crazy.

Uh, this problem of human identity.

And the reason they do that is because if they agreed, then they'd then they'd both be out of a job.

But as long as they keep disagreeing, then they both still have jobs.

So philosophers continue disagreeing.

There's this uh movement about 20 years old in philosophy of identity, and it's called animalism, and that says we are biological organisms.

That's it.

We're biological organisms.

We are our biology.

You and your biology are the same thing.

Don't ask any further.

If you're looking to ask any further, you're just gonna be lost.

Others say we are spatial parts of animals, brains, or perhaps parts of brains.

So when you ask, who am I, and you're thinking back on who you are, there's probably a part of your brain that is the answer to that question.

You know, it's the frontal cortex, the one that makes the decisions and the personality, those parts of you.

It's not the parts of you that get hungry.

You wouldn't think of that as who you are.

Others say we are collections of mental states or events.

We're just these bundles of perception.

So we move through the world and we have these events happen to us, and we have these perceptions that we make, and that, however many of those things we have, or whatever those things become in us, that's who we are.

That's the answer to who you are.

It's the events and the experiences that you have.

Or you could be like Bertrand Russell or Wittgenstein.

Ludwig is his first name.

They say there's nothing that we are.

We don't really exist at all.

Well, that's helpful.

See, the philosophers are not particularly helpful in answering this question.

They don't get to the heart of what we mean when we ask it.

When we ask, who am I?

We're we're we're wanting to know who am I.

That way I can kind of know, okay, what sort of story do I fit into?

What character am I supposed to play here?

And if I knew who I am, then I would also know here's how I'm supposed to act, here's what right and wrong means for me, here's the way that I'm supposed to relate to those around me, so that I can have a feeling of some sort of groundedness, some sort of sense of purpose and meaning in my life.

We aren't asking whether we're some parts of our brain or whether we're pure biology or whether there is a such thing as a mind.

We're asking how should I live?

How can I possibly answer that question a way where I could be at peace with myself and with my actions moving forward in the world?

This identity problem gets even more difficult when you add the element of time.

It's one thing to ask who I am right now, but uh, how is the person who was me?

How is that still in some sense me?

You know, there are parts of our, there are some times in our lives where we we want to look back and we want to be identified with our past selves.

Maybe we've had some big loss right now.

We're in the midst of a big loss.

And so we want to ease our conscience by looking back to one of our big wins.

Saying, you know, that guy who won back there in the past in that big way, that's really me.

And so we we want to be identified with our past selves.

We want our past selves to really be us.

Other times we look back on our past selves and we think that that can't be me.

That was the old me.

Sometimes, if enough time passes, you just become disidentified with that past self of yours.

That's why at a certain point you can just tell stories from high school and college because they can be as embarrassing as you want, and it doesn't matter because you don't really relate to that person anymore.

You don't really relate to that you anymore.

So this deepens the question further when we ask, who am I, and then who am I to where uh my story is really me.

Me throughout my story really brings definition to who I am so that I can know how I ought to be living in the world.

Because we've only looked at these Western philosophers, they've thought of everything in terms of the individual.

Uh the person who's gonna be helpful here is a Christian ethicist whose name is Lewis Meads.

And I've posted some of his quote up here, but uh I'm gonna read the first half of it for you.

He says, some people who ask who they are and expect, some people ask who they are and expect their feelings to tell them.

But feelings are flickering flames that fade after every fitful stimulus.

Some people ask who they are and expect their achievements to tell them, but things we accomplish always leave a core of character unrevealed.

Some people ask who they are and expect visions of their ideal self to tell them, but our visions can only tell us what we want to be, not what we are.

So here's his proposition.

He says maybe we can best find out who and what we are by asking about the promises we have made to other people and the promises we are trying to keep for their sakes.

Hannah Arendt is worth hearing out.

He quotes her here.

Without being bound to the fulfillment of our promises, we would never be able to keep our identities.

We would be condemned to wander helplessly and without direction in the darkness of each person's lonely heart, caught in its contradictions and equivocalities.

Promise making is the social bond that tells us who we are in our life together.

See, he's saying, what is it that makes you you?

What is it that makes you the same person over time, where you find your identity, where you find your boundaries, it's the promises you make.

The promises you make to others and keep on their behalf, and I would add the promises that you make to yourself.

That's what makes you you.

That's what provides the boundaries of your life, so that when you wake up in the morning, it's not just this blank canvas, but you actually have some direction with what you're supposed to move into because you've made particular promises.

When I wake up in the morning, I'm not responsible to every person that I meet.

I'm responsible to my wife because there's this promise that we've made.

And so it brings this direction to our lives.

Who are you?

Look at your promises.

Look at the promises that you've made to yourself and to others.

They hold through time.

You know, that's the interesting thing about promises, is for us, most of the time, we are just trapped in time that moves forward at a steady pace of one minute per minute, and yet with promises, we can we always have this opportunity with a promise made to look back, and when we violate it, all of us all of a sudden we reach back into the past and we make ourselves a liar.

And yet, with promises, we can alter the past, and with promises, we can also alter the future because we look forward into this uncertain, strange, undiagnosable future, and we reach out and we put a promise there.

And that promise brings some guidance, some vision, some order into that chaotic future.

It becomes the guiding principle for who we are, the way we ought to be living.

What we're gonna see in our text today is people living according to promises.

People living according to their own promises and the promises that God has made.

And ultimately what we're going to find is that the defining quality of our lives goes far beyond the promises that we make to each other.

The defining identity in our lives is to be found in the promises that God has made to us.

That's where our identity really lies.

So Jesus had just ascended to the throne.

That's what we saw last week.

And before he ascended, he talked to his 12 apostles, 11 apostles, excuse me, and he said, uh, you are going to be my witnesses.

You're going to go forth into Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth.

You're going to take this news that I am the king, and I'm the king over all creation, I'm the king over the whole world.

And you're going to take this gospel announcing my kingdom throughout the whole world.

And you're going to be empowered to do that by receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit that I'm going to give you.

And then Jesus ascended into heaven so that they could see with their own eyes that he became the king.

Now they're waiting.

They're waiting for the promise.

The promise is the Holy Spirit that Jesus will send.

They don't start their mission until they receive that promised Holy Spirit.

And that's what they're moving into.

So we'll pick up right where we left off.

Jesus ascends.

Some angels are like, don't just stand there.

Why are you looking up at Jesus?

He's going to come back.

Paraphrase.

And then pick up in verse 12 of Acts 1.

It says, 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, Andrew, Philip, Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaist, Simon the Zealot, 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.

So awaiting this promise, they all gather together with one accord, it says.

Why do they have one accord?

Because they're looking to the promise that Jesus had promised them.

And it brings them together.

They have one expectation amongst them.

And that one expectation is we will receive the Holy Spirit.

That is their expectation that that will be received.

And so they're praying for it, awaiting this promise.

Now, as they're praying, Peter stands up among them, and he it's as though a light bulb goes off and he realizes something.

He's like, look, there's only 11 of us apostles.

Now, this isn't gonna work.

There's supposed to be 12 of us.

There were supposed to have been 12 of us from the very beginning.

Jesus selected, hand selected 12 of us, and yet Judas, one of from among us, who was chosen for the same ministry that we were chosen for, betrayed Jesus.

And then Luke sort of interrupts Peter's speech.

Luke is the writer of Acts.

He sort of interrupts Peter's speech with these parentheses, and he tells the story of Judas, who acquires a field with the blood money that he traded Jesus for, and likely to merge these two accounts together, likely he hangs himself, and then he falls from the tree, and his body becomes distended and his guts spill out.

Welcome to church.

Good morning.

So Peter realizes that's kind of an aside.

I'm just going to treat it as an aside.

Don't be Judas.

I don't know if you needed that interpretation.

So Peter realizes this thing and he goes back to the scripture and he proves, like, look, in this psalm here, it says that this thing would happen with Judas.

He would die and his family line would be cut off, and nobody would ever live again in the field that he died in.

And then it says here in this psalm that we need to replace him.

And so Peter, interpreting these scriptures and seeing the requirement that there should be 12, they realize, okay, we need to have 12 apostles here before the Spirit comes.

We need to be all gathered in position before the Spirit is sent to us.

And in order to make that decision, they gather together or they select two people as a group.

And each of these two people meet a particular requirement in which they had been with them from the beginning, and they had been witnesses to the resurrection.

But they want the decision to finally be gods.

And so, in order for the decision to finally be gods, they don't just choose, they don't just vote, but they cast lots, which would be like rolling dice.

It's like picking who goes first in Monopoly, whoever rolls the highest.

And Matthias rolled the highest.

And so Matthias became the twelfth apostle.

Because a lot is not cast into the lap without God choosing how it falls.

God is that sovereignly in control of all things.

Now, I'll explain to you a typical sermon outline.

Typical sermon outline goes like this: you you explain the text, and then you offer an illustration of the text, and then uh you uh offer an application of the text.

So uh Jesus uh uh Jesus loves you.

Uh illustration, you know how uh you you love your son or daughter, Jesus loves you like that.

And application, uh go love other people like that.

That's a that's a sermon.

So let's try it.

So uh it explanation.

Uh okay, so if you when when there's only 11 of you and you need a twelfth, then uh it uh then you make sure make sure if there's only 11 of you that you get a twelfth, illustrate it.

Uh imagine you're on a basketball team and there's only four players on there.

Get a fifth.

And in order to choose, pick two good basketball players and then roll dice to select it.

That's the application.

So when you're making decisions, leave it up to chance.

Sermon.

That's the sermon.

Okay, so this is an odd text.

We can sort of agree there's a lot of things in this text that are just strange, they're hard to relate to.

Why did they so desperately need 12 apostles?

Why is this Peter's great big revelation?

Before the Holy Spirit comes, it's like, oh, there's only 11 of us, gotta have 12.

Okay.

Like, didn't Jesus selected Judas, he knew what was gonna happen.

I think he'll get why there's 11 of us.

And uh then the way that we're gonna make that decision is we're gonna cast lots.

That seems strange.

Definitely feels strange now.

So what's happening here?

You know, this is one of those texts, and really they're all like this.

But this This is one of those texts that we need to treat like a window.

You look through this text in order to see the whole narrative of Scripture.

And when you get the whole narrative of Scripture, then you realize that's why there had to be twelve.

That's why they cast lots.

And you'll see that it's because they were acting according to the promises of God.

You see, the Bible is not first and foremost a list of rules.

It's not first and foremost good advice.

The Bible is first and foremost narrative.

It's firstly a story.

And it's a story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end, just like any other story.

And what marks the plot points in the Bible?

What it gives us our bearings, lets us know where are we in the scripture?

What is the drama here that's unfolding?

It's the promises.

The plot in Scripture is marked entirely by the promises of God.

All of Scripture is about tracing the promises of God to his people.

And it's by those promises that we know where we are, you and I, where we are in the story of creation that we find ourselves in.

When we know where we are and how we relate to these promises, then we can know here's who I am.

When I know who I am, I know how I can live.

So that's what we're discovering.

So we look through this text and we discover that the plot of Scripture is defined by these promises of God.

And the promises of God, the Bible word for that is covenant.

It's also the homeowners association word.

There's covenants that God makes with his people.

And that's kind of a it's kind of an abstract word.

It's not one that we come in contact with often, especially the way that the Bible uses it.

And uh a helpful book for this is a book by a guy named O.

Palmer Robertson.

I don't know what the O stands for, but I think that's a cool move to just initial your first name.

Because then it becomes O Robert Palmerson or O.

Palmer Robertson, whatever.

It's a book called The Christ of the Covenants.

Ah, thank you for tolerating me.

So uh my wife is just cringing.

I can see her.

The poor thing, she's so sweet.

Okay.

Covenant is a bond in blood sovereignly administered.

When God enters into a covenantal relationship with men, he sovereignly institutes a life-in-death bond.

A covenant is a bond in blood or a bond of life and death sovereignly administered.

Now we can trace these covenants that God makes with humans throughout the whole narrative of Scripture.

And that provides us the story arc of what's happening and how the drama of creation unfolds, and ultimately the drama of redemption.

First, we can see that God makes a covenant with Adam.

And what that means is that God promises, makes this promise with Adam of I will give you these things, I'll provide for you in this way.

You live obediently to me, you live as the creature in the way that I've told you to live, and then you will have life and flourishing and joy and abundance beyond anything you could possibly imagine.

And so that's what happens.

God makes this covenant with Adam, and he says, Here, you're in this garden.

He gives him a purpose, a reason to live and how to live.

He says, Be fruitful, multiply, cultivate this garden, draw forth from the world things that without humans in it would never be drawn forth, like the world's largest watermelon and iPhones would never exist without humans in the world.

There's goodness built into creation that God wants Adam to draw out.

And he gives him this one condition.

There's one tree, don't eat from it.

In this you'll demonstrate your obedience to me.

You will, by your abstaining from this fruit, say, You are God and you have the right over me to determine my steps.

I am the creature and I ought to submit to you.

But Adam and Eve together violate that principle.

They say to God, We will not relate to you as God, who has the right over us as creatures to determine the ways that we live.

Instead, we will be complete rulers over our own lives.

And in saying that, they breach the covenant with God.

And the life that was promised to them vanishes and becomes a life of toil and pain that ends in death.

The first covenant with man, the first covenant that God makes with man, is broken.

And from that we see the brokenness move into the whole world.

And the story should have been over.

Because with the covenant being broken, we see death has entered the world, and that will be the end of the story.

Man and God are separated.

The relationship has been breached.

So the world continues on and it spirals into further and further chaos and disorder until it reaches this point of being pretty much unbearable.

And God selects one family, one man and his family to preserve through God's destruction of the rest of the evil in the world.

So God floods the world, he selects Noah, and Noah and his family are preserved through the destruction of the world.

And if once the flood recedes, God makes a covenant with Noah.

And the covenant with Noah is different than the covenant with Adam, because the covenant with Adam required that Adam obey in this way, and then God will uphold his end of the covenant.

The covenant with Noah, God just says, I will never destroy the world again.

And he knows that people will continue to be evil.

God, of course, knows that.

And what's Adam's requirement so that God, excuse me, what's Noah's requirement in this covenant so that God would never destroy the world again?

There isn't one.

There's no requirement for Noah.

God makes this one-sided covenant.

Continue on, and God selects this one Chaldean named Abram.

And God makes a covenant with him, and he says, I'm going to make you fruitful, and I'm going to multiply you, and I'm going to make you a family, and then a tribe, and then a nation, and from you kings will reign in the whole world.

And one of your offspring, I'm going to make bless the whole world.

I'm going to bless the whole world through your offspring.

And Abraham then is tested by God, and this covenant is established between God and Abraham, and it holds through.

God's promise is fulfilled, and ultimately Abraham's family becomes this nation of millions, which is the nation of Israel.

God brings together this nation of Israel, and he makes a covenant with that nation.

And he gives them a set of laws.

And he says, These laws are for your good.

And if you obey them, if you obey the way that I'm calling you to live according to these laws, then you will inherit the land forever, and you will be able to live at peace and enjoy with me your creator.

If you don't obey the laws, it will go badly for you.

And you will be exiled.

And so what happens?

They don't obey the laws.

They enter into, they are sent into an exile.

And before that happens, excuse me, another covenant is made with David.

God makes a covenant with David, the king of Israel, and he says, I'm going to put someone on your throne.

Someone on your throne who will reign forever.

Your throne will never be vacant, but they will reign forever.

God makes this covenant with David.

David, however, falls, the nation of Israel falls, disobeys the covenant, and they end up getting thrown into exile, dragged off captives to Babylon.

And while they are in Babylon mourning their exile, mourning the disobedience that they had to the covenant, to the relationship that was in place between them and God, God sends a couple of prophets while they're in exile.

And they start to speak about something new that's coming.

Saying, you know, there's going to be a new covenant between you and God.

And this isn't going to be like those old covenants.

You're not going to have to teach this, pass this down through generation to generation, not in the same way, because you're not going to have to teach these new covenant members how to be obedient.

It's going to be written right on their hearts.

God Himself, by His Spirit, is going to move in and He's going to swap out our very hearts.

The very reason that we haven't been able to benefit from any of these covenants, but instead that they've ended up only for our destruction, God is going to change our very hearts.

So flash forward, hundreds of years after the exile, a rabbi from a small town sits down, takes out one of those prophetic documents written during the exile that talks about what this new covenant will look like.

He sits down, he reads it, and he says, This is fulfilled in me.

This, of course, is Jesus, not to give away the ending, but Jesus becomes the one who fulfills the covenants perfectly.

Jesus becomes the true king that sits on David's throne, who will never leave.

David becomes the perfect Israelite who fulfills all the commandments completely on our behalf.

David becomes the new Adam who shows us that, who passes his tests in the garden, who instead of sinning in the garden continues to go through with the suffering that God is calling him to.

Jesus fulfills the covenants perfectly.

But he does more than that.

Because he fulfills our debts to the covenants.

You see, a covenant is a bond in life or in death.

And when the covenant is broken, that means it leads to our death.

Jesus took on himself our side of the covenant, our just punishment by the breach of the covenant.

So that in Christ we might be perfectly set free.

And he ushers in this new covenant, which takes place in the fulfillment, in his perfect fulfillment of the old covenant.

And he says, I'll make a new covenant with you.

I have paid your debt.

You trust in me, you're perfectly set free.

In Christ, the covenants are perfectly satisfied.

That's what we see in Jesus.

So here we are.

The apostles had seen this Christ, and he'd made a promise to them.

And he promised them that he will be sending the Holy Spirit.

They'd seen Jesus establish by his life, death, and resurrection the fulfillment of these old covenants.

You see, they know exactly where they are in the story of history as it's unfolding.

They get where they are in the narrative of Scripture.

And there's this one promise that's still coming.

And that promise is that God will send the Holy Spirit, that God Himself might dwell in us, and that our hearts might be changed.

The new covenant might be established.

So because they see exactly where they are and they interpret all of history according to the promises of God, you can see how this completely informs their way of viewing everything.

Even the worst things that they had seen, they look at and they see, look, this perfectly fits with the promises of God.

They aren't thrown off by them because they live their lives in the promises.

Here's what we see.

Peter interprets Judas.

He says, In those days, Peter stood up among the brothers, the company of persons wasn't 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.

For it is written in the book of Psalms, May his camp become desolate, let there be no one to dwell in it, and let another take his office.

You see, Peter interprets everything according to the promises of God.

He's saying, look, this whole Judas incident, this was not God's promises going wrong.

Jesus didn't wrongly pick when he picked the twelve apostles, but this is exactly what God's promises would have entailed.

God had said in the past that there will be one whose field becomes desolate, nobody is with them anymore, and there will be, and it will be right for someone else to take his office.

Peter interprets everything according to the promises.

And beyond that, there's this particular promise that Jesus had made to the apostles.

He said this in Luke 22, 28 through 30, you are those who have stayed with me in my trials.

And I assigned to you, as my father assigned to me, a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

You see, why are there twelve apostles?

Because why not eight or thirteen?

Because they're corresponding to the twelve tribes of Israel, who the covenant was made with, who the promise was made to and for of this old covenant.

So when Jesus selects twelve, he's saying we're making a new covenant, one that will be replacing this old twelve, one that will actually accomplish what I hope to accomplish through those twelve tribes.

We're really going to be accomplishing this time, through these 12 apostles, with Jesus as their king who has redeemed them, empowered them by the Holy Spirit.

The 12 tribes were meant to be a witness to the world of God's glory, that the whole world might see how good God really is.

But instead they abandoned God and they turned their backs on him and they received their just punishment in the exile.

But this time, the promise will last.

In the new covenant, the punishment has been fulfilled, and we will be empowered by the Holy Spirit.

And so, how are we going to show that this truly is the new covenant?

We're going to have a new 12.

That's why there had to be 12 apostles.

That's why, right before the Spirit comes, when they're living in light of these promises, that Peter looks and says, We need to get the 12th.

Because this new thing is about to start.

And it's going to be the same mission that the old thing had, but this time it's going to work.

And this time it's not just going to be for our nation, it's going to be for the whole world.

The 12th, as you see then, it must be chosen by God.

So that's what they do.

I'll read this last text.

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 Bar Sabbas, 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 eleven apostles.

You see, why do they cast lots?

We saw why they needed the twelve.

Why do they cast lots?

Two reasons.

One, it had to be God who chose the twelve.

To show that this is God who is re-establishing the mission and purpose of the new twelve.

This is God who is enacting the new covenant.

They couldn't just choose from among themselves because the other apostles had been chosen directly by Jesus, which is to say, chosen directly by God.

Secondly, why do we not see them cast slots later?

Because later they have the Holy Spirit.

Right now, they don't.

They're preparing, they're waiting, they're moments away.

Throughout the rest of Acts, we'll hear them say things like, It seemed good to the Spirit and to us, which means that God Himself, by His Spirit, is working with their minds to guide them towards the right moves, the right decisions.

But now, in their humility, understanding that they do not yet have the Spirit, they say, Let's do this as we have done before.

Let's cast lots.

Because ultimately that is God showing us the way that we should go in his sovereign control.

That's why they cast lots.

You see, they live completely according to the promises that God has made.

It brings the narrative structure to their life.

And when we consider how the promises that we make, they bring the same sort of structure, right?

You think of the promises you've made in contracts or at your job, the plans you've made with people, the commitments you've made to your spouse, your family, your friends, those bring this sense of direction to your life.

So when we look at our promises, we can have this understanding of who am I?

What should I do?

How am I supposed to live?

But look of what stock we are.

Why is it that when we look and assess our own promises, we can see just how fickle and broken we are?

Unable to uphold the smallest things for people and for each other and for ourselves.

Our promises are constantly broken, and so we have no real identity.

Think of how much of a struggle identity is in our lives right now.

That word is so common.

People struggling, wrestling to find what is their true identity, what is their core identity, and they're looking to perhaps themselves to promises that they've made.

And they see just how fickle it is, how it falls apart.

See, this is the new identity and the new covenant that Jesus is calling us to.

It's to not live according to the promises that we have made, the things that seemed good to us.

That's not first and foremost the core of our identity.

But it's firstly in the promises that He has made to us.

Because when we try and live according to the promises that we have made from the power within ourselves, we neglect this fact that we are of the same stock as Adam and that his sin has infected us, and that we are deeply, deeply degenerate in our souls.

And that we need our hearts themselves to be changed.

What is the promise of Christ?

But that he has taken the punishment that we deserved, freed us from the guilt of our broken promises, and made a promise to us that our hearts in him might be renewed.

So the question is, which promises are you looking to to bring you life, to bring you a sense of identity?

Are you looking to the promises that you've made yourself, or are you looking to the promises that God has made to you?

What's the foundation?

Consider it practically.

What's bringing the most definition to your life?

Are you willing to say that it, you know what really defines me?

What's making this whole arc of history happen, and then what defines me is the promise that Jesus has made to me.

That He would pay both sides of this covenant, which I never could.

It's based on this movie with Tom Cruise.

And Rock of Ages, it says, Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee.

Let the water and the blood from his wounded side which flowed be for sin the double cure.

Save from wrath and make me pure.

Jesus fulfills both sides of the covenant for us.

He saves us from our wrath by dying for us.

You're called to fulfill no side of it.

The important thing is his promise to you.

Will you hope in that?

Will you let his promise to you bring you definition?

One last quote from Lewis Mead says, no one on earth can predict the future of the natives of planet Earth by any evidential data.

What will it be?

A cosmic garbage heap, or will it be a new earth where righteousness has finally taken hold?

Not a cosmic heap, says Peter, rather a new earth.

How so?

By whose crystal ball?

According to what indicators and from what internal evidence?

With no crystal ball and no internal evidence, we wait according to his promise.

Again, the whole thing hangs on a promise.

What are you going to base your life on?

What are you going to base your identity on?

The promises you make, fickle as you are, or are you going to finally give up that project and trust in the promises that God has offered to you?

Let's take one question.

Because God is unchanging, is it fair to conclude that we can claim the promises and covenants God makes throughout the Bible as our own?

Or is there a contextualization aspect that makes them inapplicable?

So there's no one answer to that question because it depends on what covenant we're talking about, right?

So there's a couple of, if we were to, and where we are in time.

So when we look at the covenants that God has made throughout history, we see that some of them are conditional and some of them are unconditional.

The covenant that he makes to the Israelites is a conditional covenant.

You obey these things, you'll be rewarded.

The covenant he makes with Adam is conditional.

You obey these things, you'll be rewarded.

If not, you'll be punished.

And we see that play out in real time where those promises were theirs based on a condition.

And the new covenant has a condition as well.

Are you in Christ?

The benefits of the new covenant are not just generically available, waiting to be plucked, but they need to be applied by the Holy Spirit to God's elect.

Just as God chose Matthias, God does all the choosing.

And in his covenant, he selects us by no fault of our own, by no uh there's no factor that he's making his deciding point of.

Why would I apply my covenant to this person or that other person?

We don't get to know what that factor is.

But the condition of the benefits of this new covenant is faith in Jesus.

When there is faith in Jesus, then all of the promises of God become yes.

Because Jesus fulfilled the covenant perfectly.

So when you look, when you trust in the promise Jesus has made to us, you can look back through all the promises of God and say those all become yes to us.

The hope of redemption, the hope of a new heart, the protection, the care, the healing, the provision, the faithfulness, the counsel, those are all mine in Jesus.

So then that's a pretty good incentive, right?

To stop thinking, you know what, I'm not gonna define my life by my promises anymore.

I'm gonna define my life by the promise that Jesus has made.

It's a big switch.

It's a great question.

If you have any more, uh, which there likely are, uh, I'll be uh right in front of the stage after the service.

I want you to take some time to consider what are what are the promises you're living according to?

Is it the promise that uh a fulfillment that you know finally getting settled into a house will give you, or finally getting married will give you, or uh finally getting this kid out of the house, or finally getting this cure, or what promises are you living according to?

And then look and consider are you living according to the story that's really happening in the world?

Which is the one defined by God's promises.

We'll take communion and remember the greatest demonstration of his love towards us, which is that he poured out his blood, he broke his body, so that we might share in all the promises of God, by no fault of our own, but only by his graciousness.

So I'll pray, we'll take communion.

Father, I pray that you would help us to consider in a kind of complicated and at face value, not very accessible text, Lord, would you would you show us how important your promises are to us?

And would you give us a renewed confidence to go to them and actually trust in them?

Lord, so that when you say there's therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, we might say, well, if God said it, then it's probably true.

When you say God is the one who justifies, who's the one who condemns, we would think to ourselves, man, it doesn't feel like that.

I feel pretty condemned, but God justified.

I'll trust in his promises.

Father, give us faith like that, that our hearts might be transformed and that your glory might be expressed, not ours.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.