last week when we looked at the Ascension we remember the Mandate that Christ gave to the disciples that he left behind when he instructed them to return to Jerusalem and to wait and the waiting period lasted some 10 days and I think it's significant that we have this little paropy and this passage of time of 10 days where we get the brief description in the text of scripture of the behavior and the activity of the nent Church of Christ what were they doing while they were waiting and in what way does that instruct us even now well let's return then to the description they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called olette which is near Jerusalem a Sabbath Day's Journey if you've ever been to Palestine if you've been a visitor to Jerusalem and you've looked across the kidan valley to the Mount of Olives to get there comes a circuitous rout of winding streets the length of which is about a mile and a quarter as the crow flies you can throw a baseball it would seem from the top of the Mount of Olives over the wall of Jerusalem it's that close and I'll never forget in my first visit to the Mount of Olives and vest and I were staying at a hotel on the slope of the Mount of Olives overlooking the city at night we were sitting on the porch and all of a sudden we heard music coming from within the old city a visiting quir it wasn't the Kiev quir it wasn't that good but a visiting chir was in town and they were singing the Hallelujah Chorus and we sat there on the Mount of Olives and listened to the Hallelujah Chorus emanating from the old city of Jerusalem it was a spectacular moment in our lives and so I have that Vision in my mind when I see the disciples now returning to the Mount of Olives from Jerusalem to obey the instructions that Jesus gave them to wait and we read that when they entered they went up into the upper room where they were staying and then the 11 Apostles that are left after the death of Judas are then named in the text and we are told these all continued with one Accord in prayer and supplication with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and with his brother others so two things we see already about how the church behaved in its first week of existence the first thing that characterized the church in the early days was obedience they had instructions from the Lord and though they didn't want to wait around who had witnessed the resurrection of Christ wouldn't be eager to go out and spread the news everywhere and yet they were biting now at the bit eager to go nevertheless they stayed where they were told to stay they waited and they waited obediently secondly we are told here that when they came back to the upper room they came as a group as a body no one has ever been saved by somebody else's faith you know we're all parts of groups we're parts of families maybe part of a school class part of a booster group for a football team part of a community part of a state part of a Nation we have memberships in a host of corporate organizations but in the final analysis when we stand before God we stand or fall on the basis of our faith in in Christ or the lack of it and so in that sense Redemption is personal and individual however when Christ established his church though he saved individuals one at a time every person who's ever brought to himself he placed them in a body in a group into his church once heard of the story of a minister who went to visit one of his parishioners who was derelict in his duty and responsibility of participating in the life of the church this was one of these people that showed up on Easter and Christmas and that was it no more and the minister said to him why is it that you're never in church why aren't you involved in any of the programs of the church I know you're on our roles I remember the day you joined you've been baptized you've made a profession of Faith but you're never around and the fellow said well I don't need the church my faith is private my faith is personal I don't need the rituals and the trappings of religion I can worship God on my own outside I can attend the Church of the inner Springs on Sunday morning with Pastor pic you know him he has the largest Congregation of any church in America he said so for me to be spiritually healthy I can get by just fine on my own now they were having a picnic while this was going on and the minister walked over to a charcoal grill where there was a heap of white coals that had been burning to prepare for the cooking of the hamburgers and with the tongs he took one of the coals and he took it off the pile and moved it out to the side away from the center of the fire and continued the conversation with his member and after a few minutes he came back and he pointed to that coal he said 10 minutes ago that coal was white hot and now it's cold because once it was removed from the support system of the rest of those burning coals it lost its heat it lost its warmth it's lost its capacity to be productive in the purpose for which it was made beloved we cannot stand alone we need each other we need the support of Fellowship the mutual encouragement the strength of prayers of the community in which we are involved I was excited this morning to watch 47 people become a part of this congregation that tremendously strengthens who we are as a body there's that many more people to pray for each other to encourage for each other to be mutually supportive and that's what happened in the early church they went back to the upper room and 120 of them gathered there as a group the very beginning of the church and what did they do how did they spend their time rocking in a rocking chair waiting for the power to be Unleashed from Heaven no they continued with one Accord in prayer and supplication they gathered together for prayer you remember our Lord when he cleansed the temple from its commercialism reminded the people that his father's house was to be a House of Prayer so the church in its first century formation in the beginning week of its existence is found gathered together in unity praying Luke doesn't tell us what they were praying about but there was plenty to pray about there were plenty of time to pray Thanksgiving for what they had witnessed and what they experienced there was still lots of room for confession in their prayer time lots of time to pray for the burgeoning expansion of the church that was going to come in the near future and so they stayed together praying with one another and incidentally we are told in passing that the apostles were there along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and with his brothers just in passing this is the last reference that we have anywhere in the New Testament to Mary but we see Mary as a member of the first church I can't help but think of Mary's magnificant where she he says my soul doth magnify the Lord and my spirit doth rejoice in God my savior her son was her Redeemer she wasn't co-redemptrix with him she was there with the rest of the disciples as part of the gathered church praying four and two her own son and along with Mary the mother of Jesus were his uterine Brothers now we know from other indications in the text that during the Earthly Ministry of Jesus that his Earthly brothers were Skeptics they didn't buy into to his Messianic claims and programs they were unbelievers and James the brother of Jesus who wrote the Epistle of James indicates and we know later that he was converted by his brother's Resurrection so even the family members who had been skeptical were persuaded and converted by the resurrection of Christ and then we read in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples although the number of the names was about 120 let me stop there we have a gathering of 120 disciples now normally when we speak in Christian jargon we talk about the 12 disciples and we talk about the TW Apostles as if the term disciple meant the same thing as the term Apostle but when we look at the gospel record we realize that Jesus had many many many more disciples than the 12 he had the 70 that he sent out on a mission on one occasion and here Luke mentions 120 Paul talks about 500 who were Witnesses of his resurrection because the term disciple mothas in the Greek simply means student or learner Jesus was a rabbi going around the countryside Gathering students who followed after him listening to his teaching listening to his instruction anyone who did that was a disciple they were following his discipline but from this larger group of disciples Jesus chose 12 who would be Apostles again an apostle and a disciple are not the same thing the disciples the student the Apostle is the ambassador who is commissioned by a king or a ruler who has given designated authority to speak in his name and with his power in the ancient world if a king sent an apostos one who was sent an apostle as his Emissary his word was the word of the king carry the authority and the weight of the word of the king and so before Jesus left this planed he takes 12 men and he commissions them to be his his emissaries his ambassadors and gives them the right to speak with his authority that's why he said to them those who receive you receive me those who do not receive you do not receive me have done with this 20th century myth where we hear people saying I read the New Testament and Jesus I like but this Paul fellow I can't stomach well what we read in the new Testament is not what Jesus wrote only what was written about him by his Apostles and if you reject the apostolic witness you reject the one who commissioned them as Apostles you can't have it both ways you can't have Christ and not have Paul just as you can't Embrace Paul without embracing the one who has granted him that Authority so now we have this crisis in the early church 120 disciples gathered around for a specific purpose they've lost one member of their group there's a certain symmetry A parallelism between the Old Testament 12 tribes of Israel and the 12 Apostles of the new test now one of the Apostles is lost because he was not a Believer from the beginning he is the one who betrays Jesus and he is now dead and we're talking about Judas the scari it and so the reason they're gathered now is by the instructions of God to select a new Apostle now what's important about this is not just its interest to us as history but there is a profound theological content involved in this narrative something that's very important because this narrative gives to us the criteria for apostleship there are people running around this country today not even far from where I'm speaking now who claim for themselves nothing less than Apostolic Authority but beloved there aren't any Apostles in the biblical sense running around like Mary or Sanford or the world because no one would meet the criteria established here in the New Testament for Apostolic succession now let's look at that Peter gives this speech says men and Brethren this scripture had to be fulfilled which the Holy Spirit spoke before by the mouth of David note that in passing that David was not writing on his own impulse but under the supervision of God the Holy Spirit which the Holy Spirit spoke before by the mouth of David concerning Judas who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus for he was numbered with us and had obtained a part in this ministry then parenthetically now this man purchased a field with the wages of iniquity and falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all of his entral gushed out now I don't want to spend too much time on this because it is maob and there's no doubt about it the Gory Det Tes of the end of the life of Judas is not something you want to dream about tonight or to talk to about L great details with your children but I have to mention in the passing because there is a possible discrepancy here between Luke's account of the death of Judas and Matthews Where We Are told elsewhere in the gospels that after the Betrayal and after Judas received the 30 pieces of silver in exchange for delivering Jesus to the officials he was stricken with remorse went back and threw the coins back to the leaders and then went out and hanged himself so the first discrepancy we have here is that Judas is buried in the field that was purchased by his money which was the blood money that he got for betraying Jesus but the tradition is that after the authorities gave him this Blood Money and he threw it back at their feet they used used that money to purchase his burial plot in a place that they called the field of blood so it was his money that paid for the place of the disposing of his body Matthew said he died by hanging himself Luke gives us the glory details here of having his olls bursting apart as he's falling down the suggestion is that he hanged himself in a rather violent manner and as the result of that hanging he fell headlong until his internal organs blew up as it were and so we hear this Grim reminder of the end of the life of Judas but Peter now is telling us what else the disciples were doing in that first 10 days of waiting they enjoyed each other's Fellowship they came together in unity they came together in obedience they came together in prayer and they came together to focus their attention on the teaching of the scriptures that's how the early church was born where the disciples now trying to understand all that had transpired before them probably remembering the discussions that Jesus had with those on the way to Emmas when he began with Moses and went through the whole Old Testament and showed them how the things that they had witnessed in Jerusalem had to happen they had to come to pass because each one of these things had been in detail predicted centuries before by the Old Testament prophets and so what do they do now after Jesus ascends they run back to the upper room they get out their Old Testaments and they're searching through the script scriptures to see if there's anything in the scripture about Judas and they go to the Messianic Psalms of David and they read in the Psalms David's prophetic writing about the one who would betray the Messiah and how that one would have to be replaced so following the instructions from the Old Testament they decided to fulfill the text let another take his office and we read in verse 21 therefore of these men who have been accompanying us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out Among Us beginning from the baptism of John to that day when he was taken up from us one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection now if you look carefully at this and tear it apart you'll see that basically there are three criteria for apostil ship that the church is facing before Pentecost first of all a candidate to be an apostle had to be a member of Jesus band of disciples from the beginning from the days of his baptism at the Jordan by John the Baptist so he had to been with Jesus for that three years of jesus' public Ministry in order to qualify for selection to the rank of apostle second of all he had to have been an eyewitness of the Resurrection you see that's why none of us today could be Apostles because no one of us was numbered among those who followed after Jesus in the first century and none of us was an eyewitness of the Resurrection the third Criterion which was Far and Away the most important was to be an a Apostle one had to be commissioned directly and immediately by Christ himself just as in the Old Testament for anyone to be a prophet they had to be called by God that's why the prophets in Antiquity would give the information in their books like Amos and Jeremiah and Isaiah of the circumstances of their call where God directly and immediately set them apart to be prophets but now Jesus is gone so how can he choose a new Apostle well the method that they chose here according to the book of Acts is that they made nominations they went through their body and they selected two possible candidates and then they threw the dice toss the coin chose Lots over who would be election now that may seem that the early church are the ones who originated the state lottery that's not what they were doing here they were following an ancient tradition in the Old Testament where the use of the uran the Thum by the priest when they were not able to discern the will of God they would prayerfully cast lots in this manner to allow the casting of the lot to be determined by the pro of God so upon whomever the lot fell was the indication that this was the one that God was choosing and the lot fell upon methas and that's the last we hear of Maas and the rest of the scripture we get the record of his selection the 12 are now filled out when James is martyred shortly after he's not replaced placed but then we Face the amazing history in the rest of the book of the acts that the central figure in the book of Acts from an Apostolic perspective is not maias it's Paul the Apostle and one of the earliest controversies that face that original Christian Community was how can Paul be an apostle he wasn't a disciple from the days of the baptism of Jesus he wasn't even an eyewitness of the Resurrection he saw the glorified vision of Christ on the road to Damascus but that was after the Ascension so as far as Criterion number one Paul misses it far as Criterion number two he misses that one as well what about the third Criterion there's a reason why three times in the book of Acts Paul's call to be an apostle is recited as we'll look at when that occurs in the text when Christ himself directly and immediately calls Paul to be an apostle but even then you see this is why people say today hey Paul got to be an apostle without being part of the Entourage of Jesus during his Earthly Ministry Paul got to be an apostle without being an eyewitness of the Resurrection why can't I well I can't Benny him be an apostle people claim all the time that they have the credentials of an apostle today because God called them or God spoke to them and God said you can be my Apostle to this generation but even when Paul did not have the first two of the criteria he was instructed to go back to the Jerusalem to be confirmed in that office by those about whom there was no doubt of the fullness of their credentials you see I could say I have a call to be an apostle today but there's nobody left to confirm me that's why the early Church by the end of the first century the sub Apostolic fathers clearly understood the difference between their Authority and the church and the authority of the original Apostles because after the last Apostle died there were still teachers there were ministers there were preachers there were evangelists but no more Apostles but that drama will unfold further on as we continue later on in studying the rest of the book of Acts but for now for today we get a little glimpse of the life of the church in its pristine Purity obedient unified praying searching the scriptures submissive to Apostolic Authority that should be in front of us all the time as we seek to build this church