Acts 1:15-20
And in this day after
Peter rose up in the middle of the brothers he spoke. And the crowd of people were upon him, about
one hundred and twenty. “Men, brothers,
it was necessary for the writings to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit
foretold through the mouth of David regarding Judas – the one who became the
guide for the ones who seized Jesus. Since
he was having been counted in us and he assigned this service by the lot. On one hand, therefore, this one procured a
place out of the pay of the unrighteousness and after falling head-long his
middle burst apart and all of his inward parts were poured out. And it became known to all the ones who live
in Jerusalem, therefore they called that place by their own dialect Akeldam,
this is a place of blood. For it has
been written in the book of Psalms, ‘May his lodging become abandoned and let
there be nobody who lives in it,’ and ‘let another take his place of office.’
Thoughts for Today:
First Thought:
It is interesting to
see what can happen when people come together to pray as we saw them doing
yesterday. We see the number rise fairly quickly to 120 because they are
focused of God and God’s desires. What is really cool is that certainly
not too many of these 120 had ever been very far away from Jerusalem. But
a few decades later and we know that the whole Roman Empire had heard of Jesus
Christ. A few millennia later and every continent now has followers of
Jesus Christ living on it. God can take a seemingly small and
insignificant group of people and turn them into a movement that has changed
the world.
Do you want to be a
part of that? What do you need to do to be a part of that?
Second Thought:
Judas dies (Matthew
27:3-5 tells
us that Judas killed himself) after handing over Jesus to the Jews. Some
think Judas handed Jesus over in order to force Jesus to become the military
leader that Judas thought him to be. Others think Judas handed over Jesus
to save his own skin. Some think Judas handed over Jesus because he was
disappointed that Jesus wasn’t teaching the way he wanted. Whatever the
case, it is clear that Judas was more interested in his own belief of what God
should be doing than his quest for what God was actually doing.
How often does the
pursuit of our own thoughts lead us into disappointment? How often are we
guilty of following what we think God should be doing rather than following
what God is actually doing?
Passage for Tomorrow: Acts 1:21-26
4 comments:
So does that mean Judas was a self-monger? And to your first thought is that along the lines of what we talked about in Sunday school last week?
Yes, actually. That is the heart of the issue. Judas was very much interested in his own understanding of what God "should be doing" and not nearly as much interested in what God was actually doing. Inherently that makes him self-mongerish. Not that self-mongerism always leads to suicide, mind you. But self-mongerism does tend to lead to disappointment in God's plan.
As to the first thought, how do you mean it? We talked a lot about how the crowd leads to making bad decisions. Or am I not referencing the part of Sunday School to which you were referring?
no like the part with the making of disciples when we were talking about big churches I think?
Oh. You mean the part about fostering small groups of close relationships so that the church can grow big but grow big in a healthy way because people are connected?
Yeah, I think that's a pretty good thought to tie in here. We don't really know how this early church was organized, but I've got to believe it was a big group made up of "clusters." Those in each cluster looked out for one another and cared for each other while the leaders of the "clusters" were connected with each other to help maintain unity.
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