Bible Guys Classics: Acts 1

Hey, everybody, we're the Bible guys, and if you're just tuning in recently, just know that we are showing a little bit of reruns for a few months, and then we'll be back bigger and better than ever on August thirty first, because behind the scenes, we're taking a hiatus to do some very important things. Yeah, we're building building out a new studio and we've got some new structure. Super excited about it. So August thirty first, brand new content. But in the meantime, enjoy some of our greatest hits. Well, today we're talking about how Jesus floated all the way through outer space. He's Chris and I'm Jeff and we're the Daily Bible guys. So hey, so Jeff, here's what we're gonna do. Okay, we're gonna invite people to actually respond to us. We're going to invite them to send an email to us to play a little game that we want to call stump the pastor. That's right, So if they submit questions in a future episode, we'll use their questions to stump the past. Possibly. Well, well, oh, we're gonna. So here's what we want to do. We want to put an email on the screen. Please send your question or questions to info at the Bible guys dot com. That's right, Okay, info at the Bible guys dot com, which is right down there. There you go. So, uh, and then send your questions and so let me. Let me give it and just just in the in the headline, right stump the pastor question. Yeah, that's right. And they could be serious or funny. For instance, Uh, a funny one would be I'll ask you, Jeff, I'm gonna try to stop you right now. Okay, did did Adam and Eve have a belly button? Go? Oh? Interesting? Did Adam and You've had a belly button? No? Really, no, you don't think God just decided to They would. Have had no need for an umbelical court. Yeah, of course, of course they wouldn't. So he could have gone, you're done, you're done. He could have done that. Yeah, well what if? What if? What? Well? I was gonna I was gonna get visual on creation. But but no, no, no, he formed them out of the dust, which which then formed a dust and bilical cord. Probably not that's what I said I was gonna get. O. No, that's that's probably not how it worked. I don't know. So the Bible doesn't say Yeah. The Bible, of course doesn't. I think it's not. By the way, that's a great example of saying sometimes the answer truly is nobody knows. Nobody knows, right, because there's stumped the pastor with questions that can be answered, but then there's stump the pastor with answers that cannot be known. Yeah. So there's also all kinds of silly questions. But then you could also ask a really big hey, this is a hard question. Yeah, so I've got a hard question the pastor you know, why does evil exist? Or does doesn't God care? Or you know one of those kinds of things. Yea, those can be really really hard. Yeah. In fact, I would venture to say that would be more than a segment, that that kind of question would be a whole episode or maybe even a series. Yeah. Yeah, So we're really interested in hearing what people have to say, what kind of questions that they have, the big ones, right, But if you can find a stump the pastor one like can God make a rock so big. You can't lift it? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah, people have all kinds of those those questions as well, and those are fun, so stump the pastor be a fun one to do? Yeah, that that I'm tempted to answer that one. Go ahead, go ahead. Well, God, God can choose for himself things that are limited. For instance, it says that he chooses to forget our sin. It doesn't mean that God is you know, forgetful, forgetful or he lacks the ability to remember. But he can impose on himself limits. So the answer is very carefully phrased can he right? Not would her right? Or why would he right? But it's wood he or can he? So? Can he create a rock so big that he cannot lift it? Yes? You know why because the question starts with can he in? So? Can he put limits on himself? Self imposed limits? Well, we already know that he does. Yeah, right, and he chooses and again that's that's. Directly, that's an interesting perspective. It's it's connected to our sins, right, So, I mean, that's why he does that. But we're not. Asking why choosing to limit himself. Yeah, we're not asking why. We're not asking wood. We're saying can sure And the answer is yes. Wow, Okay, So I've never heard it that way before, So thank you for sharing. Yeah, you're welcome. So stumped the pastor info at the bibble guys dot com. And hopefully it'll be fun. Yeah, yeah, it'll be fun. So and in a future episode we'll just start pulling those out. As we go. So good. So we are continuing in this series on the Book of Acts and the forward movement of God's Kingdom. And one of the things we want to do is we just want. To strip away all the extras that kind of have built up around Christianity and just go back to the original movement of the first groups of Christians that were following Jesus. And these are tent makers and fishermen and political zealots and women and men and Jews and tiles. They are just a ragtag bunch of people that God decides to change the world with. And here we are two thousand years talking about him. So we're going to read in the Book of Acts and what did we decide? What are the verses one through one through twenty six? Here, So here go. In my first book, I told you theophilis about everything Jesus began to do and teach until the day he was taken up to heaven after giving his chosen apostles further instructions through the Holy Spirit. During the forty days after he suffered and died, he appeared to the apostles from time to time, and he proved to them in many ways that he was actually alive, and he talked to them about the Kingdom of God. Once, when he was eating with them, he commanded them, do not leave Jerusalem until the Father sends you the gift. He promised, as I told you before, John baptized with water, but in just a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. So when the apostles were with Jesus, they kept asking, Lord, has the time come for you to free Israel and restore our kingdom? And replied, the Father alone has the author to set those dates in times, and they are not for you to know, but you will receive power. Let me restart that one. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses telling people about me everywhere in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, into the ends of the earth. After saying this, he was taken up into a cloud while they were watching, and they could no longer see him. As they strained to see him rising into heaven. Two white robed men suddenly stood among them, men of Galilee. They said, why are you standing here staring into heaven. Jesus has been taken from you into heaven, But someday he will return from heaven in the same way that you saw him go. Then the Apostles returned to Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, a distance of half a mile, and when they arrived, they went to the upstairs room of the house where they were staying. Here are the names who were present, Peter, John, James, Andrew, Philip, Thomas, Bartholomew, Matthew, James, the son of Alpheus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas, son of James. They all met together and were constantly united in prayer, along with Me, the mother of Jesus, several other women, and the brothers of Jesus. During this time, when about one hundred and twenty believers were together in one place, Peter stood up and addressed them. Brothers. He said, the scriptures had to be fulfilled concerning Judas, who guided those who arrested Jesus. This was predicted long ago by the Holy Spirit speaking through King David. Judas was one of us and shared in ministry with us. Judas had bought a field with the money he received for his treachery. Falling head first there, his body split open, spilling out all his intestines, and the news of his death spread to all the people of Jerusalem, and they gave the place the Aramaic name Alkadama, which means field of blood. Peter continued, this was written in the Book of Psalms, where it says let his home become desolate with no one living in it. It also says let someone else take his position. So now we must choose a replacement for Judas among the men who were with us the entire time we were traveling with the Lord Jesus, from the time he was baptized by John until the day he was taken from us. Whoever is chosen will join us as a witness of Jesus resurreme. So they nominated two men, Joseph called Barsabus, also known as Justice, and Matthias. Then they all prayed, Oh Lord, you know every heart, show us which of these men you've chosen as an apostle to replace Judas in this ministry, For he has deserted us and gone where he belongs. Then they cast lots and Matthias was selected to become an apostle with the other eleven. One interesting thing. Yeah, well, I mean, you know, we ended up with the replacement of Judas. But I could have done without the details of his body splitting in half and his intestines spilling out in the field of blood. But you were happy to repeat it. Yes, you could have just referenced the gruesome description. Yes, that's true, that's true. I actually I actually went back. To there, went for the shock value. So Jesus floating out of space, obviously I was tongue in cheek. But Jesus, but Jesus ascending to heaven and believing and knowing that Heaven is above, he would have had to. That's a fair question. Clouds, that's what it's all about today. Where is heaven? Yeah yeah yeah, Where is heaven? Yeah yeah, Well Jesus refers to my father above, yes, so so, and then obviously here right, it's definitely not here. And Jesus ascended into the clouds. Yes, so most likely they stopped seeing him in the clouds, right, because that's sort of what it said, And so whether or not he just decided to take the journey through out of space to somewhere called heaven or decided to just blip there where no one really knows, and obviously it's not important. Good. Yeah he didn't tell us where. No, he's not important, right, But yeah, So the ascension of Jesus is pretty awesome, and. How amazing would that have been? So not only I mean, this is just like the dot on the exclamation point. At this point, Jesus had died. What a shock. Then he rose from the dead, and for the last forty days he's been talking to us. Then he goes see you guys. Right right, and they're like, what, I know? It had been amazing, Yeah, for sure, and you know and then of course, you know, the angels say, why why do you stand here gazing? Because he's some day he's going to come back in the same way that he saw You know that you saw him go. Yeah, So here it is two thousand years later, and we're knowing that the second coming of Christ is described to us in the Book of Revelation and that he is one day going to come in the same manner. Yeah, I love the fact that they're coming, say well, first of all, Jesus has promised the Holy Spirit's coming, right, so I have to leave the Holy spirits coming. No that, but in a few days, yeah yeah, and you'll be baptized with the Holy Spirit. But then they immediately go, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're excited about the Holy Spirit. But Jesus, when are you coming back? When? When are you going to solve all this? When are you finally going to defeat Rome? When are you finally going to re establish our kingdom? When do you do all these things? And you know, Christians have been asking all those questions, when is Jesus coming back? Is this the end? What's the mark of the beast and all those things? And Jesus response is the Father alone has the sort of authority to set those dates in times they're not for you to know, right, Christians get obsessed about the things that aren't super important. Yeah, we get obsessed with about these they're necessary. God told us or tells us these things through prophecy and all those because they're necessary and we should know that He does have a solution. But we get obsessed with the secondary issues sometimes. And Jesus said, okay, you're right, those things the Father knows, he'll let you know when it's time. In the meantime, you're going to be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. Go be my witnesses. Don't get distracted by secondary things. Stay focused on the most important thing. Yeah, and then we're about to see in the next chapter that the Holy Spirit comes upon them and they have a great experience and they recognize that the Holy Spirit is personal, that the Holy Spirit is powerful. And that's what we recognize today. We recognize that, you know, Jesus was here roaming the earth, and then he left, and that was the age of the Sun. And we live in the Age of the Holy Spirit, where once we believe in trust in God and believe in Jesus. The Bible literally says, the Holy Spirit comes and dwells in us. And just like God used to in the Old Testament dwell in the Temple, the Holy Spirit dwells now in the Temple, which is our body. And that's how we experience God's power in us. Yeah, it's the power of God in us. So the Holy Spirit. It becomes one of the central figures throughout the rest of the Book of Acts, and then all throughout Paul's writings but it's interesting. The Holy Spirit rarely draws attention to himself. The Holy Spirit's always pointing people back to Jesus. So the Holy Spirit is confirming salvation. He's the one that's securing people's souls. He's the one that's drawing and convicting us of our sin and drawing us to God. And he's pointing us to Jesus. He's not trying to draw attention to himself. Sometimes some Christians get super excited about the Holy Spirit to the point where he's the only focus. Right. And I had one friend say, you know, I feel like I spent a big part part of my life playing in the Holy Spirit, but not living in the power of the Holy Spirit. Right, So what do you mean by that? And he said, well, clearly, the power of the Holy Spirit is demonstrated through changed lives, people who were dead in their sins coming to faith in Christ and their spirit coming alive in Christ. It's through the results of evangelism. That's when you see the power of the Holy Spirit. And this is what he says here, right, you receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you'll be my witnesses. And then you see Throughout the Book of Acts, you'll see a lot of miracles, but they're all for the purpose of moving the Gospel forward. They're all for the purpose of convincing people of the authority of Christ in their lives, for the need of salvation that comes up over and again. So the Holy Spirit has given several roles and names, you know, like, for instance, he's called the intercessor, he's called the advocate, he's called the counselor, and in the comforter right, yes, I'm not sure if there's another name, but those are different roles of the Holy Spirit place. So God the Father in the Old Testament, you know, used to speak audibly, and the role of God the Father was you know, God is the one who sets his will. Whenever you talk about the will, even Jesus refers back to the will of the Father. Father the Father is the one that always sets the will for our lives. Jesus comes and he's the initiator of the work. He's the foreman that shows up on the scene. He's the one that starts the work and executes the will of the Father. And then the Holy Spirit, primarily among other things, is the one who completes the work in us. It's the completer of the work. And so you know, the Holy Spirit is the one who, you know, finishes our prayers. The Holy spirits the one who can you know, finally give us the power that we desperately so have lacked, you know, just just as far as humanity goes, you know, if you think about just the breadth of all of humanity. So so the Holy Spirit is able to finish the work and complete the work in us. And it's just great that you know, we have we know that we have the power within us to withstand anything evil that comes our way. And the Bible is so crystal clear about that. Yea, one more thing about the Holy Spirit. We could sort of move on, but but you know, it's always sort of bugged me a little bit. I'm confessing a little bit that people say, Holy Spirit come and and you know, fall upon us, you know, and they pray that, And there's nothing wrong with that because we all know why they're praying that. They want to experience and live in the power of the Holy Spirit. So the sentiment is is great and I'll never I'll never like yell at anybody who prais that right? But but theologically it's not true. It's it's almost like saying, like, God, please be with us as we enter into this difficult thing, and it's like, hello, He's already with you. Jesus says, I'm with you always, right, and there's you know, So praying that is just a wrong prayer theologically. A more appropriate way to pray it would be, Lord, help me to be aware of your presence. Yeah, you're here. Yeah, remind me, but I'm struggling with awareness. Yeah, give me strength, give me confidence, give me peace. And so when people say, God, you know, the Holy Spirit fall upon us, it's like he's already here. Yes, it's not as if like the Holy Spirit wasn't here and then all of a sudden he was here. And to be very technical, it's not. It's it's also very firmly and theologically it's not as if the Holy Spirit was here a little bit and then the Holy Spirit was here more right, It's like, oh, you should have seen the Holy Spirit just was so present in that service, more than he was in any other service or this time in my life, more than he was. And I understand again the sentiment is fine. I'm not trying to I'm trying. I'm not trying to knock anybody. I'm not trying to you know, correct anybody or chastise anybody. It is just theologically, we have all the Holy Spirit we will ever need. Right. As you grow spiritually, you should develop a little bit more theological depth. It's cute, you know. I have a three year old grandson right now, and his incomplete sentences were always trying to sort out what does he mean and what's he trying to do? You know, usually it has something to do with hot wheels or his bike or you know, snacks, right, But he speaks in incomplete sentences, and that's okay. He doesn't have linguistic precision yet. But now his dad, who's twenty seven, I kind of expect his dad to finish whole sentences and to be as precise and clear as he can be. I think the more you grow spiritually, the more precise your theology should become as you grow in your understanding of the Word of God. So you made a great statement here. You already have all of the Holy Spirit that you that you're going to get or that you need. The question isn't how much of the Holy Spirit do you have. The question, quite honestly, is how much of you does the Holy Spirit have? So it might be more when you're asking for the power of the Holy Spirit of God just to come down on you. I understand the sentiment, But what you're really saying is, Holy Spirit, I'm surrendering all of me right now to you and your will. And so it's really a surrender thing. We're not just asking for more power. We're saying we're surrendering to your power. That's exactly where us and so if you look back at all of those times in our lives where we felt like the Holy Spirit was very present. So to identify that is very clearly sort of a variation of what you just said. You didn't have more of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit had more of you. That's right, that's it. That's right. So yeah, just to be clear. So then I love this too, And boy, that was great. We could have just ended there, but there's a whole bunch more in this that we had covered very quickly. So they're standing around and they're looking up in heaven. Jesus goes back to heaven after saying, now, go I've given you a mission, Now go do it. You're gonna have the Holy Spirit. He's going to remember when Jesus said in Matthew twenty eight, and I'll be with you to the end of the age. Right. This is how he's going to be with us is through his spirit here. So he goes back to heaven after saying that, and he's given them two missions. Go make disciples, baptize them, teach them to everything I've commanded. You're going to be my witness is Jerusalem as Samari in the other most parts of the world. Then he goes back to them, all standard looking. The Angel goes, he gave you some instructions. Go. But they didn't understand everything they were supposed to do. They didn't know what to do next. They just knew what was what they were supposed to do on a general level, but not on a specific level. So they didn't just go running about doing crazy things. They knew the next thing that was going to happen was the Holy Spirit was going to come on them. So they went to the Upper Room and they prayed, and for a number of days. It was in a few days, one hundred and twenty of them and they're in the Upper Room. So the disciples but all the other followers of Jesus as well, are praying. When you don't know what the next thing is to do, pray, that's the best thing. Every problem is a prayer problem. The problem that they had was not what is the big picture mission? The problem was what's the very next thing to do? Right? And then the Holy Spirit does eventually come on them. While they're doing that, they're also kind of shoring things up a little bit. They're tightening things up. Jesus started with twelve, we only have eleven now, and so very strategic. They draw straws. They choose two guys, and Justice or Barsabas. Yeah, who's many names by the way, Yeah yeah, yeah, he's Joseph, No he's Barsabas. No, he's Justice. It's like it reminds me of like, you know, Apollo Creed, the Master of Disaster, you know, the King of you know, the King of Cloud. It's like he has all these names. That's right. So it's probably his family name, his Greek name, and then his Hebrew name or whatever. But so anyways, they so they pick him and they pick Matthias, and they say, these two guys have been with us from the very beginning. From jesus baptism all the way to his resurrection. They've been with us, which then really highlights I think for everybody listening, Jesus didn't only use these twelve elite people, even though they weren't elite. There were so many followers of Jesus. And so if you don't see yourself in Peter, or you don't see yourself in in Bartholomew or in John, okay, that's fine. Jesus used all kinds of followers, lots of them. And here's this guy Matthias that eventually they just draw straws. They cast lots. Casting lots would have been like dice, right, so they would have cast lots or if you think of drawing straws. And by the way, that might seem like a haphazard way to do things, but they do pray. They say God, you know who you want, right, These two are qualified. And they didn't turn it into a personality contest. Nobody was campaigning, and I think there's a lot of danger in a lot of churches when you have campaigns for elections and things like that. But they didn't do a personality contest. Instead, they say God, both of these guys are qualified, which one do you want? And then they just drew straws. And that comes from the Book of Proverbs. The Book of Proverbs says that the Lord knows the outcome of the lots. He knows the outcome of those kinds of things. So one last thought, since we're running out of time, and that is the instructions that God gave us really imply that we are to get out of our comfort zone from where we are at, because it starts in Jerusalem, and then it goes to Judea, which goes from a city to the region that they were in, which goes to Samaria, which is the next region, and then it goes to the utter parts of the world, which indicates start where you are and go out, you know, preach the gospel and bring it to everybody that you know. So we don't necessarily have to travel the globe, although we can be a part of those things. But you know, you know, so think about your own little world, your comfort zone. You know, your comfort zone would be just you and then you know, then you have your group of friends. And if your whole life look like a ripple effect, it's like you know, you have ripple effects, and you have the ability to you know, reach people you know, acquaintances, and then even beyond that people you just meet strangers and the ripple effects of our lives. So get out of our comfort zone would be my final thought. Yeah, and you start where you are. A lot of people say, man, I'd love to you know, be like Billy Graham or I'd love to be somebody God uses to change the whole world. Well, it always starts where you're at. If you're not reaching people where you are, you're not going to reach people the next level either. So do what you're supposed to do where you're at, and then let God expand your ministry as he gives opportunity. That's great. Well, that's a good place to end, and we'll see you next time on the Bible guys. Mhm m M hmm.