Praying and Choosing Matthias
Last week we began our study of the Book of Acts, which is the historical account of the early church. In this time when we as a church are very deliberately fixing our attention on the person of Jesus, Acts shows us what happens when a community of people is fired up about Jesus.
The basic theme of the 28 chapters of Acts is this: The Word of God concerning Jesus increases and the church of Jesus multiplies as Christians, empowered by God’s Spirit, witness to the risen Jesus until he returns.
In Acts chapter 1:1-11, Jesus, with whom the disciples have spent three intimate years, whom they have seen crucified and buried, this Jesus spends 40 days with them, resurrected and very much alive. He commissions them to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. Then, before their very eyes, he ascends in a cloud of glory. Then angels appear with the promise that Jesus will return again some day.
In Acts 1:12-26, we have the followers of Jesus after Jesus has left them at his ascension in the first part of chapter 1, and before the Holy Spirit comes to them at Pentecost at the beginning of chapter 2. It’s an in-between time, a waiting time. But in this time we already see what kinds of things characterize the community of Jesus’ followers, whether in Jerusalem then or in our culture now. A praying, united community witnessing to the living Jesus that they know. That is church.
Verse 12 begins simply by informing us: Then they returned to Jerusalem from the Mount called Olivet, which was near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s journey away.
This is their first act of obedience, for Jesus had ordered them to stay in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit would fall upon them. So they’re starting off well.
When they got back to Jerusalem, they went back to the upper room where they had been staying. And Luke lists the apostles, but there are only 11. Judas, it turns out, is dead. He has acquired a field with the blood money he’d received for his betrayal of Jesus. There he had fallen so hard that his body literally burst open.
It is a horrible, but more so, a tragic ending for Judas: he had been one of the Twelve. He had witnessed Jesus’ character, miracles, and teaching right from the beginning. He was in the boat when Jesus had told a storm to quit, and it did. Judas had seen demons submit to the authority of Jesus. He had seen Jesus raise someone from the dead. He had witnessed the love and the righteousness of Jesus.
Yet somehow, Judas missed it.
This is the great tragedy: to be in the community of Jesus and miss him entirely. It is, however, a very common tragedy. People grow up in church all the time, surrounded by the community and things of Jesus, and yet miss Jesus.
That is why we here at this church can never take for granted the absolute centrality of Jesus. When churches become morality centered, issue centered, tradition centered or just church centered, then kids will spend 18 years there and miss Jesus. That was common where I grew up. And unless we are very intentional about knowing him and making him known, deliberate about speaking of Jesus with our kids, our seniors, our small groups, our Sundays, we will find ourselves drifting from him.
Judas had three years in Jesus’ company, but missed him.
News of what had happened to Judas eventually got around all of Jerusalem, and the field was nicknamed, ‘Field of Blood’.
So now there were 11 apostles.
Jesus has told them to wait, and that’s what they do. But their waiting is not an inactive waiting. Not at all: they pray. And it’s not just the 11 remaining apostles. No, Luke tells us that the company of persons was in all about 120. 120, probably including people like Lazarus, Mary and Martha, maybe Bartimaeus and Zachaeus had followed Jesus from Jericho the week before his crucifixion, maybe Nicodemus.
Luke does identifythe women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.
The ‘women’, would have included those Luke mentions in Luke 8:Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna. Probably Jesus’ aunt, and Mary the wife of Clopas (John 19:25). Some of these women, all the gospels tell us, were the first witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection, and so they are certainly still here in Acts 1.
Mary, Jesus’ mother was there. This is the last mention of her in the New Testament narrative, though she is presumably present at Pentecost in Acts chapter 2. In this last glimpse we have of Mary in the Biblical narrative she is, significantly, numbered among the disciples of Jesus. She is, first and foremost, not his mother but a follower of Jesus.
And Jesus’ brothers were there, too. These brothers who once had mocked Jesus (John 7:5). Something had changed them, probably the same thing that had transformed the apostles: their encounter with the risen Jesus. The Bible tells us that at least one of Jesus’ brothers (James) had had a specific encounter with Jesus after his resurrection (1 Cor 15). Jesus’ other brothers included Judas, Joseph and Simon. (Judas is Jude, who wrote a part of our New Testament. And it is this James, Jesus’ brother, who wrote the book of James).
So the disciples, the women, Jesus’ mother Mary, Jesus’ brothers and probably others like Mary, Martha and Lazarus, these make up the company of 120 who are together in Jerusalem. And they are praying. The community of Jesus is a praying community.
Notice two things about their prayer, in reverse order from how Luke mentions them:
First, they devoted themselves to prayer.
This word `devoted’ shows up only three times in Acts, and always in connection with prayer. First here.
Then 2:42 says of the three thousand first converts that they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
6:4 the apostles say We will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word.
Prayer was something they devoted themselves to. It was one of the things that would characterize the church, as we’ll see repeatedly in Acts. It was out of prayer that the Gospel first went to the Gentiles when Peter went to Cornelius the Roman centurion. It was out of prayer and fasting and worship that the apostles Paul and Barnabas were commissioned to their ministry in the Mediterranean cities. Prayer was the church’s standard response to crisis and persecution. They were a people of prayer. They depended on it. They constantly sought God’s direction, power, intervention through prayer. They devoted themselves to it. And so it’s no wonder Acts played out the way it did. For the community of faith was constantly listening to God and responding to him.
The second thing we notice about their praying is that they were united in prayer. They were in one accord. There was a fundamental unity to this group. This is exactly what is meant in Acts 4:32 which says that the full number of those who believed were one in heart and soul. They were like-minded, bound together.
Even though there was much potential for division –
- Jesus’ brothers vs. the disciples: who was closer to Jesus? who should have had a more privileged position among the followers of Jesus?
- Peter who denied Jesus vs. Joseph of Arimathea who courageously asked Pilate for Jesus’ body for burial
- men vs. women: Both the Temple and the synagogues made provision to keep the women separate from the men, because women were considered inferior. These distinctions vanished in the early church. So Galatians 3:28 – that there is no longer male and female, for all are one in Christ. So here we have men and women, praying together in unity.
There could easily have been lots of barriers up, yet they prayed in one accord.
Jesus himself named unity as a mark of Christian authenticity. By this all will know that you are my disciples: If you love one another.
When you look at paper money, there are marks of authenticity embedded in the bill, only visible when held under a special light. We, too, are marked for authenticity, and that mark is our ‘one accord-ness’, our love for one another. People can look at Christians, at our church, and ask: ‘Do they love each other?’ If the answer is yes, they will know that we really are followers of Jesus. If the answer is no, they can legitimately dismiss us.
Tragically, so many people have abandoned the church and dismissed Jesus because they have seen such a lack of love in his church. Thank God, though, many others have come into a personal and saving experience of Jesus because of his love as they’ve experienced it in the church.
How are we doing at this? And don’t look around you at the congregation and ask how ‘they’ are doing. Ask, ‘How am I doing?’ Are you a loving presence in this congregation? Or are you critical? Do you encourage people? or do you talk about them in their absence? Are you a patter-on-the-back? or a finder-of-faults?
When people want to pursue formal membership, we let them know that one of the commitments they are making is a commitment to a lifestyle and attitude of love here at the church. I also tell them that the church, too, makes a commitment to love them, and treat them with dignity and respect and love. Because we’re the church of Jesus, and so love is who we are and love is what we do. Unity is one of the things that is to defines Jesus’ people, and here in our very first look at the followers of Jesus after his ascension we see their unity.
So this period of waiting after Jesus has left them, and before the Holy Spirit comes, it is spent devoted to prayer, in one accord….
What is prayer? It is not a religious exercise that requires deep theological insight and eloquence. Prayer is simply an intentional, two-way conversation with God: talking to him, and learning to listen to him.
And prayer is the air necessary to our life with God. People who pray know Jesus better, and see his power at work. People who seldom pray are left confused by hardship, because they’re never in a position to hear God say, ‘Trust me with this.’ Churches who pray see life change, have joy. Churches who seldom pray continually wonder why God does not seem more present and active in the church.
If we do not pray, how do we know what God wants us to do? How else do we sense him saying to us: ‘Start a Bible study in this neighbourhood’, or ‘pray for the healing of so-and-so’, or ‘get involved with ministry to India’, or ‘lighten up and choose joy’ or ‘have a service of repentance’…
A few years ago I was participating in a series of classes on the subject of prayer, led by a layman in the church I was attending. And the guy leading the class spoke somewhat disparagingly of church leadership practices in general, and strategic thinking and intentional planning, and so on. And he said, ‘Is the church to be led from the Board Room or from the prayer closet?’ He was implying that Board Rooms were unspiritual.
But the fact is, the church is to be led from both. Humble seeking-God-in-prayer and intentional, wise thinking and planning go together. The Board Room is to be a prayer closet.
It is no accident that the leadership decision the disciples are about to make concerning Mathias at the end of Acts chapter 1– and the events about to follow in chapter 2 – arise out of their united prayer.
Sometime in their ten days of waiting and praying, Peter stands up and calls for their attention. Brothers, he says, 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, and let there be no one to dwell in it’ and ‘Let another take his office’.
Two quotes from Psalms 69 and 109, both of which speak of one who wrongs the innocent man. Peter quotes these psalms to preface his statement that Judas must be replaced among the twelve apostles. Out of their united prayer together came the conviction that this leadership action had to be taken.
Now, why was it necessary to replace Judas? Couldn’t the Eleven remaining apostles spearhead their commission to be witnesses of Jesus to the end of the earth?
Well, back in the very beginnings of their history, God had called Abraham and made a covenant promise: that he would make Abraham’s descendants a great nation out of which God would bless all the nations of the world. Abraham’s grandson Jacob had twelve sons, and the descendants of these twelve sons would become the twelve tribes that would make up the nation of Israel. These twelve sons would be the patriarchs of God’s chosen people, the community of God through which God would not only reveal himself to the world, but would act to redeem the world, reconciling humanity, not just Israel, to himself. It was an astonishing privilege, one of which the Jews were acutely and jealously conscious. They were twelve tribes, and so for a thousand years the number 12 became identified with or representative of God’s redemptive community, God’s chosen people.
Then comes Jesus, a rabbi from Nazareth. His teaching strikes people as having divine authority. He is healing the sick, exorcising demons. In a very short time he has quite a following: crowds of people swarming him wherever he goes.
At one point about a year in his ministry, he goes off by himself and spends a night devoting himself to prayer. In the morning he calls together all of his followers, handpicks twelve of them, and designates them ‘apostles’ which means ‘sent ones’ or ‘ambassadors’. These are his official representatives.
Now, what is he doing? Jesus is creating a new community of God’s people, centred around himself. For he was not one of the twelve, but he was master of the Twelve. A new Israel, a new people of God was being created. This was radical and revolutionary, and it was one of the things that drew the hostile attention of the religious leaders to Jesus.
Now, here in Acts 1, the apostles, now 11, are about to go public with their proclamation of the risen Jesus as the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy, as Lord and Messiah of the Jews. Jesus is the fulfilment of God’s covenant with Abraham. The church of Jesus will be the new Israel, and membership in God’s people is no longer centred in national heritage, but in the person of Jesus.
And so, in fulfilment of the Old Testament picture, there needed to be twelve of them. So Peter says, 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 (that is, join the Eleven of us) a witness to his resurrection. One of the 120 must now become one of the 12.
There were apparently at least two men who fit the bill: Joseph, called Barsabbas, who was also called Justus, and Mathias. Then they prayed, and said, ‘You, Lord, who know the hearts of all, show us 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.’
There are some crucial things here that we need to notice. What were the criteria for apostleship? They didn’t take out an ad: ‘Apostle wanted. Please apply to Upper Room.’ No. This was a literally world-changing, eternal venture they were about to be launched on, and not just anyone could step up, not even just anyone among the 120. Not James the brother of Jesus, apparently. Not Lazarus. Not even Jesus’ own mother Mary. So who, then?
There were three criteria to be met:
First, it had to be someone who had been a witness to the life and ministry of Jesus right from the beginning, right from Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist, through his crucifixion and resurrection and ascension. There were two of them who fit that criteria. Now think about that for a second. We are so used to thinking about the twelve only as Jesus’ followers. But these two men had been a part of Jesus’ company right from the beginning. They were there when Jesus was baptized by John, when John, recognized as a prophet of God, pointed to Jesus and said, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. They were with Jesus before Matthew was, or before Philip or Nathanael.
But we never read about them in the Gospels. They were certainly among the 72 that Jesus sent out two by two at one point. They were among the faithful, for in John 6 we read how many of Jesus` followers abandoned him at one point, because they found his teaching included some hard things. And they left. Joseph Barsabbas and Mathias did not leave. They stayed, but we never read their names in the gospels.
And it’s because they had been with Jesus right from the beginning, that they qualified to be apostles. Why was this so crucial? Because you can’t witness to what you don’t know.
A witness in a courtroom is a witness precisely because they know something: they heard it, they saw it, they have expertise in a relevant area. They know.
We, too, who are called to be witnesses to Jesus, can only witness to what we know. If Jesus isn’t real to us, then the best we can do is preach morality or religion, or argue academically. But we can’t witness to Jesus. Not really. Not with any life or credibility or conviction. Our church exists to know Christ and to make him known. But only those who know him can make him known.
How well do you know Jesus? Do you know him better than you once did? We know him by his Word, the Bible. We know him by prayer, talking and listening to him. We know him by engaging with his people, the Church which is his body. We also engage with him by serving the poor and others in need. (Jesus explicitly said in Matthew 25 that when we serve them, we are serving him.)
Again, that’s why we want to be consciously all about Jesus here: to know him, and making him known.
The apostle who would replace Judas had to have known Jesus during his life, ministry, death and resurrection. That’s the first criterion.
The second criterion had to do with the heart. When they took their two candidates to the Lord by praying, the first thing they said was, You, Lord, who know the heart….
The heart mattered. It was not enough to have the facts. It didn’t matter that they could pass the Jesus 101 final: How many baskets of bread and fish were left over after Jesus fed the five thousand? Answer: 12…… What was the name of the blind man Jesus healed outside of Jericho? Answer: Bartimaeus. Judas would have known all those answers. He, too, had been with Jesus during all his ministry. It’s not enough to be theologically or Biblically literate. There’s something about the inner life, the posture toward God, character, humility….
You remember when young David the shepherd boy was first anointed as Israel’s next king? He had strong, handsome older brothers, and when the prophet Samuel saw them, he thought, ‘One of these is probably God’s chosen king. They certainly look kingly.’ But God stopped him and said, ‘You’re looking at the outside. I’m looking at the heart.’ And God chose David, who was a man after Gods own heart.
Be careful of being too impressed with gifts, charisma and the appearance of faith. The heart matters. It mattered then, and it matters now.
How is your heart? The Bible says in Proverbs to ‘guard your heart for it is the well-spring of life’. Ask yourself, What about my character do I need to pay attention to right now in order to deepen in character? how I talk? generosity? critical attitude? love of others? humility? greed? fear? We are not perfect, and God is always at work in us. God does not expect sinlessness from us. But he does look for hearts that are fundamentally oriented toward him, hearts that are in consistent posture of surrender to goodness. According to Galatians 5, you can recognize such hearts because you see in those people love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
But ultimately, only God truly knows the heart. So the 120 prayed, ‘Lord [and whenever the apostles say ‘Lord’ they mean Jesus, specifically, not just God generally] Lord, we trust these guys. But you know their hearts. So you choose.’ And the Lord did. It didn’t mean that Joseph Barsabbas had a bad heart. He almost certainly did not. But the Lord knew the hearts of Joseph and Mathias and he chose Mathias.
And that’s the third criterion for this apostleship: he had to be chosen by Jesus. Remember Acts 1:2, where Jesus had given commands to the apostles whom he had chosen. Jesus had chosen the 11. He would choose the 12th.
And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Mathias, and he was numbered with the eleven apostles.
He met the criteria of knowing Jesus, the heart, and being chosen by Jesus. And he became one of the Twelve.
And did you catch the nature of the ministry to which he was called? What did the apostles consider the central aspect of their call? Peter said, One of these must become with us a witness to his resurrection.
The resurrection of Jesus was the central declaration of the church. It was his resurrection proved that he was the Christ, the fulfilment of the Old Testament and of God’s covenant. Romans 1:4 says that it was by his resurrection that Jesus was declared in power to be the son of God so the apostles repeatedly testified to the resurrection of Jesus. It shows up in every sermon in Acts:
The first Christian sermon ever preached, by Peter at Pentecost in Acts chapter 2… in Acts 3… 4…5…10…13… 17:3 & 31… When they preached Jesus, they preached that Jesus who died for sin and in whom is forgiveness of sin, is a living Jesus, resurrected by the power of God, a living, reigning Lord. Not just a man who spoke the truth and did miracles, but the very son of God. We know that what he said about God and about himself is true because God gave Jesus his ultimate stamp of approval by raising him to life.
That’s why it was so important that Mathias had been a part of Jesus’ community from the beginning. It wasn’t enough to say, “I saw Jesus alive after his crucifixion.” They had to be able to say, ‘The Jesus who was crucified and who is risen is Jesus of Nazareth, whom I saw and heard and touched for three years. I knew him. I know him. I saw him, and he is alive, no question.’ There could be no room for doubt. And Mathias could say that.
In Matthew 28 the apostles see Jesus after his resurrection, and some doubted. (‘Could it really be Jesus, alive?’) But after 40 days, when there had been ample interaction with Jesus, and during which he offered many convincing proofs that he was alive, as we heard last week, there was no doubt. The Jesus whom they had spent considerable time with over 40 days was the very same Jesus whom they knew so well for the three years prior.
John later wrote, That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and touched with our hands… that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you.
Our faith is founded on certainty. We have a record of the resurrection of Jesus in the Word of God, from those who were eyewitnesses.
We ask: Do I know Jesus? I want a deeper experience of and love for the living, present Jesus. I want to know him. (‘Lord, help me.’) How is my heart? Is there anything there in my attitude and character, my inner life I need to pay attention to? (‘Lord, help me.’) Do I love the church, and the people of the church? (‘Lord, show me myself in this area, and show me what my first, best step is in strengthening us in our one-accordness.’)
The Book of Acts is about the fact that ‘The Word of God concerning Jesus increases and the church of Jesus multiplies as Christians, empowered by God’s Spirit, witness to the risen Jesus until he returns.
What does that look like on our end? A praying, united community witnessing to the living Jesus that we know.
That is church.
Amen.