Acts, 1:12-26
Vern Peterman · Jan 16, 2005
Acts (2005), No. 03
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262318442988

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Alright, as we're starting the Book of Acts here, we had last week the end of chapter 1. And so that was chapter 1, 12 through 26. That was a two-pager that you have there. There are items in that first page, the picture, that you'll want to kind of keep in your mind and keep reference to And the reason being, a lot of the events of about the first eight chapters of Acts take place in and around Jerusalem.

And there you've got a photo of it. The other thing is, this picture off to the lower left corner appears to be the upper room, or at least we have no evidence that it is not. It's not conclusively been shown, but even archaeological excavations, historical studies, seem to point in that direction. Some have put together the idea that this continued to be the room where they met, even as is referenced in Acts 12, I think it is.

So if that is indeed the case, what it would mean is the events of Acts 2 also would have taken place there. Also relevant to the next thing we'll be getting into here this morning. All right, we had three questions to take a look at at the end of Acts chapter 1. That's on page 2 there.

Since Jesus had ascended and the disciples had already been told that they were to be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, why didn't they just get on with it right away? What did you come up with? Okay, one is wait, okay? That was one thing. Wait, hey, there must be a reason. We may not understand it all, but wait. Alright, so can you think of other reasons? First, we were supposed to wait. Yeah, part of it was just taking time to soak up what had gone on. We talked last week about this was a radical shock in their lives.

Put yourself, here's Peter, he's going to speak in chapter 2. Put yourself in Peter's shoes. You had just spent several years with this guy and you told him, you're the Messiah. You're the only one. Who else could we go? And then, on the night before he was crucified, you sat there and told a group of people in Caiaphas' courtyard, I don't even know him.

And at one point we get an indication that Jesus glanced across the courtyard saw each other. Peter was ripped. His heart was torn and shredded. It says he wept bitterly. Now, a few days later, that same guy is going to go running into the tomb. And then he's going to see the Lord resurrected several times.

And then he's going to say to the rest of the disciples, hey, let's go fishing. John 21. And the rest of the disciples say, sure, we'll go fishing with you. And they go up there and Jesus is on the shore. And he calls out, and the Greek implies this, little boys, have you got any fermented fish paste? That's the one place where the word is used. And King James translates it, meat. Other translations translate it as fish. And part of the reason is there's no single word in English for fermented fish paste.

But then he says, you know, and here are these guys, professional fishermen, they say, we know our stuff when it comes to fishing, right? And here's this guy on the shore that's just kind of made jokes with them. And he says, put your net on the other side of the boat. Like that's going to matter, you know? It's like if the car won't start, you know, lift up your right leg or something, you know? What's that going to do? And they put the net over the other side and the nets are just filled to the brim to the point where all they can do is drag it ashore. And here's Peter. And he's up on the shore with the Lord. And the Lord says, Do you love me? Of course I love you. Peter, do you love me? Three times.

That had only been weeks before. And now, there's this event. So your point's well taken. There's an adjustment here, after some just mind-rattling events, things that just shook their world. You put yourself in Peter's shoes, and boy, you just would have just gone, you know, roller coasters. of all sorts of emotions, and not just emotions, but perspectives. What does the world consist of? Here's the one, you know, here's the one who died for me, and I still don't quite understand that all yet, and he rose, and I denied him, and now he meets me on the shore, and talks to me intimately. Yeah, it's going to take a while to soak that in. Good. Anything else? Any other questions? Let's take a look at the second question.

Acts 1.14 mentions Mary, the mother of Jesus, by name for the last time in the New Testament, along with Jesus' earthly brothers.

Matthew 13.55 is where they are named. This is the first time we read of Jesus' brothers actually following the Lord. What would have taken place to precipitate that kind of a radical change? Pardon? The cross and the resurrection would have been phenomenal. There's your brother hanging.

You saw as the Roman soldiers went, wham! Wham! Drove the spikes in. And they did it often enough and they had to do it. It was sort of like, hey, it's a job. And here he is hanging. And then they apparently didn't even make the effort to get him off the cross and get him wrapped up in the tomb. Some others saw to that. Joseph of Arimathea. Nicodemus. So they didn't even care enough to do that. But, he was resurrected. That grabbed him. That grabbed him. You would think that the family members would have said, hey, let's get his body. Didn't even care to do that. The resurrection grabbed him.

Okay, number three, Matthias is selected as the disciple before the Holy Spirit is given, he is never again mentioned in scripture. We have extra-biblical, in other words, outside of the New Testament, we have extra-biblical record of Matthias, that he went down into North Africa and was involved there. We covered some of that in Bible backgrounds and church history. Something else to think about, how many of the other apostles were mentioned after this? Over half of them were not mentioned again.

It did not mean that what position they had and what they did and accomplished after that was not of consequence or not in fulfillment of what God said. The extra biblical record we have is that all of the apostles save John died a martyr's death for the faith.

And even John, Domitian, would have liked to have taken his life. It appeared the Lord spared him. The extra-biblical account was that Domitian ordered that he be boiled in oil, and it didn't kill him. So if that's true account, it would have been the Lord's miraculous preservation. And it would have been after that time that he wrote the book of Revelation. So, that's why he wasn't killed. He hadn't written the last book yet. Alright, let's take a look here, Acts chapter 2, 1-36. There's a lot of background to go over here. So, you with me there? That's Acts chapter 2, 1-36, and it's the first of about five pages there.

One of the things that happens, this is the day of Pentecost, this is the beginning of the church. This is the giving of the Holy Spirit that was promised. This is the time that they were waiting for. All those things at once, right? What you see there in the first page is that this and the events up through the beginning of chapter 8 all take place in and around Jerusalem. So that's one thing. It shows up on the map and you also see an overhead picture of Jerusalem there on the photo in the prior section.

Everybody's gathered together, what for? Ah, the Jewish Feast, the day of Pentecost. And while you're at that, let's turn over to page two. Here is a summary on the top part of the seven feasts of Israel. And a few things to note. One is, these were all feasts given in the Old Testament. You see a footnote there, and the Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy passages are all given there in kind of the list where those are found.

Passover, the first one, had already been mentioned during the events surrounding Jesus' crucifixion and His resurrection. And now, Pentecost, the Feast of Weeks is taking place, and you notice there's a certain timing. Pentecost is meaning 50th. It's the 50th day after the day after this first fruits. Here, so it's the first fruits is the day after the Sabbath after Passover. So that's the connection between the two.

That's why they call it Pentecost. But the Jews would have called it that, or Feast of Weeks, something of that sort. Of course, they had their Hebrew name for it. Interestingly, each of the Jewish feasts is mentioned in the New Testament. That's what you see in the right-hand column. Every one of them is mentioned in the New Testament. There's also additional Jewish celebration that's not on the list. You think of a Jewish holiday that's not on this list.

Hanukkah. Yes. And what's Hanukkah? Hanukkah happened between the Testaments. These were all given in the Law of Moses. Hanukkah happened between the Testaments after the Old Testament was written. So it's not mentioned in the Old Testament at all. It is, however, mentioned briefly in John chapter 10. So Hanukkah is mentioned, although it's not called Hanukkah. It's the festival of lights. You know, in Hanukkah they go and sequentially light the lights. Alright, so now you've got this gathering.

What would happen at these gatherings, these feast gatherings among the Jews? You'd have Jews who lived there in and around Jerusalem, and you have others from other places, right? Lots of people gathered. The population of Jerusalem would triple or quadruple during these feasts. And if you lived in or around Jerusalem, you were expected to host these people who came to visit.

They didn't have enough, you know, there wasn't any Jerusalem Hilton or anything like that and so it was expected if you lived in and around Jerusalem that you're going to have lots of people and so the places is crowded with people here for the final of the spring feasts for for the Jews Now something else right below that you'll see a chart that shows the beginning of the law of Israel and right below that the beginning of grace in the church We've distributed these in some prior electives, but just to make sure you got it, and you'll also have it available, look at the amazing parallels between the introduction of the law to the Jews and the introduction of the Holy Spirit, the giving of the Holy Spirit to the Church.

The timing parallels are amazing and fascinating, and ultimately the 50 days there is a consistent pattern. Anyway, I'll let you examine that in more detail. To me, it's amazing. It is also one of the evidence that this is a pivotal time. God seems to have followed this pattern in both times. Now, let's turn to page 3.

We've got a map there with the Acts 2 languages, and more important than the specific names there, which in fact may be a little hard to read in some cases, is just to show the wide distribution of where people came from, who were there on the day of Pentecost. Now, how come we've got Jews spread all over the place? How come they aren't all just hanging around Jerusalem? Why are they all over the place? like this. You find Jews from all sorts of places. How come?

Okay, Deuteronomy 28. And what does that say? Yeah, okay. God had told the Jews in the last two chapters of Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 28 is a pivotal one. God had told the Jews their future. Some of it is yet to be fulfilled. He told them If you follow me, this will happen, and I will bless you. And if you don't obey me, then you will have these curses, and this will happen." And he spells out, in truth, there's going to be a time when you don't, and this is what's going to happen. He told him, you're going to be scattered among the nations. Everywhere you go, you'll be a minority.

And when you're here, you'll wish you were there. When you're there, you'll wish you were here. this shifting around that you see Jews constantly doing over the centuries that the Lord told them well in advance that that would be the case and He told them but there will be a time when I will gather you up in your land again and that has happened and one of the charts that we showed in Bible backgrounds and also going through Revelation was the the bar chart because since the the middle 1800s they've done census and of the area around Jerusalem, and the number of Jews has just gone up by geometric growth rates, just huge growth rates in the number of Jews, fulfilling what the Lord told them 3,400 years ago would happen.

The Lord knows what's happening. The Lord's precise in those things. So now, as we've gone through this, One of the things we see that there are Jews to the east. Why would there be Jews to the east on the east side of the map in what was by the New Testament times called Parthia?

Why would they be there? Pardon? Babylonian exile. Yes, the Babylonian exile would ship virtually a massive percentage of the Jews there. Some had already been scattered about because of the Assyrian exile. Why else would you see them scattered here on the map? Why else would you see them scattered on the map?

Yes, the area around Ephesus and Colossae. About 220 BC, the ruler of the area there over Babylon also ruled the area around Ephesus and Colossae. For reasons I'm not sure are made clear, he told the Jews, he says, I'll give you 10 years, no income taxes, no taxes of any kind, if you'll move there. And so 2,000 families said, where do I sign? And moved there into Ephesus and Colossae.

So guess what? You see some Jews from that area on the Western end of what's now Turkey. You also see some in Northern Africa around Alexandria. How did that happen? It was interesting when the Greeks got to Israel, when Alexander the Great was first making his moves, Alexander the Great was surprised, this account is recorded by Josephus, surprised that Jadwa, the high priest, said, we were expecting you.

The book of Daniel said that you would come. He was almost welcomed compared to some of the other places where he had to fight hard to win. They just said, hey, you know, they said you were coming. And so there was a friendly relationship. He encouraged a number of them to move down to Alexandria because that would help them get some things established. So a large colony of Jews got themselves established in Alexandria. That may have been where Mary and Joseph went. when they went down to Egypt, because that would have been a logical place for them to end up with a colony of Jews there. Alexandria was the second largest city in the Roman Empire. So now, a large colony of Jews, a large city, a number of them, it would have made sense, would have come from there.

We also see Cyrene on the North African coast farther to the west. Where does that name show up again in the New Testament? Think about it a minute. Jesus, after being whipped, had a tough time carrying his cross. Who did they make carry it? A man from Cyrene. So that's another place that crops up there.

Even as far away as Rome, Jews came. We know from later on in Acts that there were Jews in Rome that were kicked out after this event. So anyway, there were Jews from all these different places that were gathered there. And even though Greek was a common language, many of them had dialects, sub-dialects, certain ways of talking.

Just like if you hear somebody who was born and raised in Alabama, in Alabama out in the countryside out there, you can tell they're not from Vermont. Are they speaking English? Well, I guess you'd call it that. But it still, it sounds different, okay? That's at least a part of what was represented here. It was dialects, not necessarily wildly different languages. Alright, then how about right below there? What do you see?

There's this chart, Instances of Speaking in Tongues and Acts. With this we jump ahead, and the reason we jump ahead is because in Acts chapter 2 we find this occurrence of tongues, which is really brought up substantially in four places in the New Testament, three of them we'll be seeing here in the book of Acts. One of those is here in Acts chapter 2, the next is Acts chapter 10, and the next is Acts chapter 19. And one of the things that stands out there, among the tongue speakers, you find initially Jewish believers, all Jews, and then in chapter 10, Gentile believers, And in chapter 19, believers that are in a Gentile land, but of Jewish background. So you've got Jewish believers in the Arab Jerusalem, Gentile believers in Israel, but in a Gentile camp, and then finally, believers of Jewish background, may have been Jewish or maybe not, but of Jewish background, in a Gentile land.

So those three instances where we find tongues coming up Notice that there is a purpose for each instance. We don't find tongues described as being spoken continuously throughout the Book of Acts. What we find is those three occurrences, and there is a purpose in each case.

Okay. We'll be revisiting this question, by the way. Also, in the Church History class, we covered tongues substantially. Ben and Josiah just got through with that series here. We covered the spiritual gifts substantially and some of that material, if you had a chance to take a look at it, that you might want to get a hold of. I can help you afterwards if you'd like to see that. One more thing, page four. Here's this fairly large chart, and it's titled, Some Ministries of the Holy Spirit Among Those in the Church and During the Church Age. Now, why do we say some ministries? Why don't we say all the ministries? Well, yeah. One thing is that this isn't guaranteed to be exhaustive.

The truth is, as we go through the book of Ephesians even, there are several places where the Father and Son, the Holy Spirit, about eight of them, are mentioned together about eight times in the book of Ephesians. And one of the things, just if you were to look at those instances, you would find some things that aren't on this chart. So this chart is substantial, but not exhaustive. It also for each of the things that it lists is not guaranteed to have every possible reference. So it's sufficient reference, but not exhaustive. So you may find, for example, down towards the bottom it says seals. We include two references from Ephesians. We don't include what Paul wrote to the Corinthians. So, anyway, you could expand on this. One of the things you probably notice is we've got these blue stripes on there.

What's that all about? The blue stripes are areas where it's fairly evident that the Holy Spirit exercised that aspect of his ministry on the day of Pentecost. That's what the blue stripes are all about. This might be just good to take a look at just by itself, just the chart, just to get a sense of what does the Holy Spirit do? What are the ministries of the Holy Spirit? So when the Lord says, I'm going to send my Spirit, it means a lot of things. Lots of things.

Here's a question for you. Are all the ministries of the Holy Spirit during the church age all to believers? Josiah says no. We got any contrary opinions? Pardon? Who would dare? Okay, alright. Why do you say no, Josiah? Okay, restraining sin, and this is in reference to the Restrainer being taken away, is that what you're thinking of? Yeah, Paul wrote to the Thessalonians and told them that the Restrainer would be taken out of the way. And most folks looking at it will see that as the Holy Spirit taken out during the time of the Tribulation in terms of his restraint ministry.

Okay? One of the things that you'll see on this chart is, and it's marked in blue, convicts of sin. Now this is alphabetical, fortunately, so you can find it there. Convicts of sin. This is going to be convicting of sin for the unbeliever, right? Conviction of sin.

You see, the unbeliever can't take advantage of the rest of these ministries of the Holy Spirit. Why? They haven't dealt with the sin issue. And what are they going to do about it? What if they are convicted of sin? What do they do? What's an unbeliever going to do if they're convicted of sin by the Holy Spirit?

Pardon? They're going to accept the works of Christ. Yeah. They're going to say, I've got a sin problem, and boy, something has to be done. and they're going to put their trust and faith in Jesus Christ, that's the opening door of the ministry for the Holy Spirit.

Once a person believes, now you've got the rest of the list. Now the Holy Spirit has all these other ministries in the life of those who believe. So what we see here, and one of the reasons it's in blue, is these people, though they are Jews, are unbelievers. that Peter speaks to, right? And so the Holy Spirit isn't just what Peter says, it's the Holy Spirit convicting of sin in their hearts. Convicting of sin. And that's going to be a pivotal point here. Alright, now, there's some background.

I think the thing to try to put together, because we've looked at different points of background, here are the disciples, they're gathered together, they're told to wait. I doubt they... Jesus doesn't seem to have said, here's the day and the hour. So it's just a wait. Wait until. And the marking point isn't until, you know, five o'clock on Tuesday.

The marking point is, here is the giving of the Holy Spirit. It's when the Holy Spirit is given, you're to wait until that point. And so here they are waiting, possibly in this upper room that we have a picture of and a few pages prior. They're praying together.

And all of a sudden the Lord says, okay, now. And He doesn't give them some warning, like, okay, it's a five minute warning. What happens in the room? Suddenly, okay. Yes, suddenly. Yeah, they didn't get any five minute warning from anything we know.

How many of you have been through an earthquake? Been through an earthquake. Dave has. I've been through several of them, shaken around, and it's quite something. I was working in an engineering office at one point in time, and the fellow behind me was doing some work with an ink pen, and what he'd worked on very carefully for hours was totally messed up when the earthquake hit. Because his pen went... It became a human seismograph, okay? And the whole building shook.

So that might be some kind of an example where the place where they were at was just Totally engulfed enough to draw a crowd of people and it was local It wasn't something that happened all over Jerusalem was enough to draw a bunch of people at a time as a feast time There are lots of people there in Jerusalem if you've been Now I asked about an earthquake. How about a tornado a If you've been around tornadoes, things are shaking and rattling, there's noise. And probably the tornado example is closer to what they experienced, but very local. People knew that this is the place something is happening, and this is something extraordinary that's happening, and it's going to get your attention.

That's the kind of event. So imagine, these disciples are waiting, not really knowing what does it mean when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. What's it like? Lots of noise and ruckus and wind and fire. You notice the chart that we showed there on the second page?

It shows the parallel between the law and the giving of the Holy Spirit. Here's a second parallel between the giving of the law and the giving of the Holy Spirit. Giving of the law All kinds of, you know, lightning and thunder and wind and all this kind of thing. Now with the giving of the Holy Spirit, phenomenal events as well. Okay? Physical events. Events that would grab your attention.

So here's the apostles waiting and this happens and it's not because they sat there and asked for it. It didn't happen one at a time. It didn't happen because they started practicing. It didn't happen because somebody told them, boy, you better start begging the Lord for this. They just waited. And the Lord took sovereign action to make this come about. Not by anything that they did other than just waiting. So now we run into our questions. Question number one.

The events of Acts 2 regarding the Holy Spirit are described in various ways in the New Testament. And what you'll find on that page in the beginning of the next is a listing of different ways that the coming of the Holy Spirit is described. What I'd like you to do is to look at the chart on page four and look at those verses and see if you can come up with an answer for the question, why is there such variety in the description of what took place involving the Holy Spirit in the Acts 2 account? Why isn't it just described in one standard word or phrase? Why is it, one place it says the Holy Spirit will come upon you, another place it says you'll be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Why all these different terms?

Think about that. That's your job over this next week here. Question number two. Since what we see in Acts chapter two is the beginning of the church, Should what we see there be typical of the church throughout the centuries, that is the norm, or not? When you see that and you see something described, isn't that what you should see happen all the time with the church, not the church to start it, right?

So anyway, how do you tell what should be different and what should stay the same? Now that's a real important question. How can I tell? If I say this were to be just like it, that I don't have an issue, but if I say, well, there are some things there that were comparable to what's happening now and some things that aren't, how do I tell the difference? How can I be sure and not arbitrary? How can I be sure I'm reaching the right conclusion and not just making up my mind and deciding on my own? Think about that.

Third question, Acts 2.36 tells us Peter, speaking of the Jews gathered there, And after some discourse, he says, therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.

Should Peter's approach in Acts 2.36 cause us to view the Jews in any particular way?

What view and why? My reason for that question is what was raised recently with Mel Gibson's movie, By the way, I haven't seen it, so I can't tell you one way or the other what my thoughts are, but a lot of discussion came to the fore. Some people, as a matter of fact, one pastor in town lost his job over the issue because he went and put out on the sign that Jews killed him. Is Peter's point here that we're to be looking at Jews as Christ killers, or what is he saying?

It's an important question. Because within a couple centuries of the New Testament era, even up till today, a significant portion of, I'll call it Christendom, has branded the Jews as Christ killers. That Christians ought to be furious with the Jews. That God hates the Jews. And that this is just more support for that.

Think about that. I'll be interested in hearing what you come up with and have to say. All right. Now, I've got some questions for you to ponder. Have you got some questions for me to ponder? Or anything you'd like to discuss here? Something you'd like to bring up? Yes, okay. Yeah. Okay. Ah, okay. Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up because I didn't touch on that this morning, so thank you.

The question of the casting lots, one of the points we made is this is the last time we see it in the church. And in truth, this was right before the church was brought together It's it's begun in the book of Joshua in the Old Testament. It seems to have been done From time to time throughout the Old Testament and continued up to this point and never again mentioned The only somewhat related mention is in Ephesians chapter 4 414 and we'll get there where it meant Paul uses it as more of a Something that unbelievers do with tricky dice. But it's never again mentioned in scripture in the New Testament. It is never mentioned in the time of the church. Why would they cast lots and follow what had been a centuries long tradition of casting lots to make decisions and then now after Acts chapter 1 never mention it again. Why do you think that would be? Ah!

Jesus said, wait until the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And one of the things that he told them that the Holy Spirit would do and is on the chart is what? Teach you all things to guide you. What also do we have completed now that wasn't completed at that point in time? We've got the Word of God. We have the Word of God revealed to us. And so we have something we can refer to for guidance and direction.

What was happening during the Old Testament era and up to the time of Acts chapter 1, their mindset was this. It wasn't that all of a sudden they were saying, hey, let's get some gambling going here, okay? Their mindset was this, that, look, we've made a selection here based on some reasonable criteria, but what we've done is not pick the apostle, but here's a group of those who qualify. We're not going to pick this Gentile walking by because he doesn't qualify. He hasn't been with the Lord. He hasn't seen Jesus resurrected. So they picked a group of men that qualified, but said, well, we're just looking for one. And they said, among those, we will let the Lord choose.

And casting lots, which was either done with dice, or even done today with different lengths of sticks, and you don't know which one until it gets picked out, was looked upon, and you'll see it that way in the Old Testament, was looked upon as We've made a narrowing down, and we're going to let the Lord, however, make the final choice. By the way, it's interesting, too, as you look at that, that there are various places in Scripture where the Lord replaced somebody. King Saul replaced him with David. So this replacement with somebody else who will fill the role that the other one failed to do. is something that's been exampled before. But previously it was looked at as this casting loss was a way of making decisions in which we say, we will let the Lord decide.

It wasn't a matter of pulling the casino into the situation. It's looked upon as God's the one who makes this outcome, whatever it is. But we have already made judgments and decisions to narrow down the field to those who would qualify by whatever criteria we already know about. Does that make sense? And in truth, now we have the Holy Spirit within us, and we have His Word to guide and lead us in making decisions that they didn't have at this point in time. There was no New Testament. They had only the Old Testament, which did continue to have casting of lots. The Old Testament saints, as was mentioned previously, did not have a universal and continuing indwelling of the Holy Spirit. So they would look at something like this.

Jesus said, however, of the church, you will have a universal every believer and continuing its constant indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, you don't need these lots anymore. And you will have the revealed word. Now, what we are doing is we look for the guidance of the Lord. And we've talked about what how do I know the will of God previously, even at a one quarter elective on it. But there is a sense of continuing. In both cases, you're looking to the Lord to guide you.

It's a question of what's the means. I go about doing that, and it's just within the church we see the example that after Acts chapter 1, that's not the means the Lord seems to have used. We have no instance at all that was ever used by the apostles. Now, you had a question.

Ah, yeah, very good. And that reveals their insight. That's Proverbs what? 1633 that provides that piece of insight into how they saw it. This was not starting the MGM grand or anything of the sort. This was a matter of looking to the Lord to guide in an area that people had already made some narrowing down, but for Him to decide between. But we answered your questions earlier, we've still got something there. Yes, that's right, isn't that interesting? Yes, right, right. It's interesting, the external action appears the same, doesn't it?

What is different between the Jews and the Romans is their perspective of what was taking place. The Jews saw it as, we've made a narrowing down and here's our decision finally made by the Lord himself, versus the Romans figuring, you know, we're going to cast this thing.

And by the way, the Greek and Roman society, they had, to the point of dread, They had a perception of fate. You hear about fate? And they had this idea of these spiritual beings called fates that determined your outcome. And there was a dread of the fates because it was like, man, I can't get away from this. The story of Oedipus Rex is an example of, here's fate. or the fates guiding things into just an outcome that could not be avoided. It's like, I can't do anything else, but what these fates determine will happen. What happens here is they're saying, look, these fates aren't calling every single shot, but I'm looking for the Lord to guide to make the final decision in something.

So, good point. I think it's good for us to sort that out because on the outside it looks like, hey, these guys are doing the same things as the Romans are when they're casting lots for Jesus' robe. But their perspective on what it was accomplishing, and even woven into the Old Testament Scripture, was quite different than what the Romans were looking to. They were looking for the God of the universe that created everything to make a decision versus these pagan fates who arbitrarily and capriciously made decisions with no expectation of wisdom or morality or anything of the sort. By the way, the pagan gods were neither moral nor expecting others to be. We even have some examples of pagans who prayed to their gods to be deceiving and tricking and lying and immoral. Better. Strange. Okay, other questions? Thoughts? Yeah, Dave? Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Ah, yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, I think... Right in other words.

They narrowed it down by the criteria that they already had and Then they said among these that we've narrowed down Pick you know Laura you pick them you pick the right one So it's interesting that they'd already narrowed things down What what happens now?

I think that is that is something that Christians need to learn from is is many Christians have the sense of God's will to As if it's kind of like a rat in a maze and you've got to find the right track to get to the place where the food is. And we tend to look at God's will as sort of a yellow brick road. You know, follow the yellow brick road kind of thing. Instead of God's will being basically three things. One is there are aspects of his will that are completely determined. And I don't mean that in a sort of fatalistic sense.

But for example, you have your position in Christ. And he has fixed that in place. He has predestined that you be conformed to the image of the Son. Those things are predetermined. We know that it is God's will that you walk in conformity to your position. Paul lays that out. He's praying for and urging the believers as we go through Ephesians and Colossians. He urges them, he prays for them that they would walk in their condition, in their daily life, consistent with the eternally fixed position that they have in Christ.

We know that's God's will. And so questions of, should I buy this house, or should we do this, or should I get rid of this car now, and things like that, fall somewhere way below the question of my walk with the Lord. Because the Lord's purpose, the Lord's eternal purpose, is not fundamentally founded on those minor details. Furthermore, I think something else that's interesting as well, we may want the Lord to make the judgment in things that are in fact possibly arbitrary. The Lord, if He has not clearly revealed His will already, and if He is not being explicit, He may be saying the decision on that doesn't matter, And so what happens, Christians often torture themselves because they want some special guidance on something. And the Lord says, look, I want you to walk with me. I want you to have a relationship with me. I want to share my glory with you, the Lord says. I want to be glorified in what you do. So you got three choices? Make a choice. And walk with me in it. So the Lord's focus is now different because we have the continuing and universally for every believer indwelling Holy Spirit so that we would walk with Him. So that we would glorify Him.

And one of the things we've begun to say and see and we'll see more again this morning is the Lord has designated the church to live out some things and to demonstrate some things that the Jews didn't seem to have a place in. Jesus prays for the church. He prays for the church that the world might know. We just saw in Ephesians chapter 3 that the church is the instrument of revelation to the angelic beings. We'll see in Ephesians chapter 5 that marriage is a living demonstration of the relationship between Christ and the church.

So here are some things that are phenomenal connections that didn't exist before. The apostles have a lot to learn and a lot to pass on at the point that we're starting to read this. Acts chapter 2, they have not begun to see all these things, but they will have told these things before their lives are gone. Alright, let's call it quits and let's pray.

Lord, thank you. As we have looked at this, it is evident that as the apostles had much to learn, we as well, and yet we also see the means by which you are guiding and leading us and directing us and are thankful for that. How wonderful are the gifts that you have given us through the gift of the Holy Spirit. And we just thank you that it is by the Spirit that we have the power and resurrection strength of Jesus Christ. And we just thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.