Book of Acts Part 2

All right, let's pray, and then we will get rolling. Lord Jesus, as we open up your word, we ask your Holy Spirit to help us to rightly understand what is revealed in your words so that we may properly believe, confess, and do.

We ask in Jesus' name, amen. We are working our way through the book of Acts, and Josh cynically said, is this part two of 50?

And I thought that was a little anemic. This could be part two of 100. Who knows how long it's gonna take us to get through this.

And so, hang on a second here. I'm hearing an echo on the TV. Let me make sure I'm gonna kill that sound.

There we go, there we go. All right, so last week we started to take a look at the introduction to the book of Acts.

And I will say this, is that we are going to be, during our study of the book of Acts, we will be doing some excursuses like we normally do.

They are called bunny trails. But I have them pre -planned out, at least some of them, because there are particular topics that are really hot topics today that need to be addressed.

Like, we'll be talking about apostles. Are there apostles today? And things like this.

But in our discussion about apostles, we will also be discussing the offices that Christ has established in the church, and look at the negative side of this, and the warning against what's called

Korah's Rebellion, which I think is the flip side of true church governance.

Okay. All right, so here's where we left off.

We left off with the beginning. In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day when he was taken up after he had given commands through the

Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. Now, I have the words, apostles whom he had chosen, right?

That's gonna be an important topic, but I just want you to keep this highlight in your mind presently.

He presented him as alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God.

And while staying with them, he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the

Father, which he said, you heard from me, for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the

Holy Spirit, not many days from now. Next thing up here.

Now, we're gonna note, the Holy Spirit is going to come. Now, when you talk to today's evangelicals slash charismatics and you talk about baptism, they will say, there's only one baptism, and that's the baptism of the

Holy Spirit. Well, I sit in there going, well, that's weird, because when I was growing up, Pentecostal said the baptism of the

Holy Spirit was the second baptism, okay? And so they can't keep their story straight and their doctrine drifts like watching

Mars and Jupiter fly through the night sky as they drift along. You can't navigate by them because their doctrine isn't grounded in the word of God.

And I would note, there is only one baptism, the baptism with the

Holy Spirit, but you're going to note that when we get into Acts 2, the Holy Spirit has promised to be poured out on people while they are being water baptized, right?

So as we're kind of starting to lay a little foundation here, I want you to consider the implications of what happens when you don't have a proper understanding of baptism.

Now, granted, people will sit there and they will say things like this. There are primary doctrines, there are secondary doctrines, and there are tertiary doctrines, but they use these categories this way.

They'll say, therefore, as long as I agree with you on the primary doctrines, we can agree to disagree on the secondary and tertiary doctrines.

And you sit there and go, that's not how those categories were made or what they were made for.

It's not so that you can sit there and go, pfft, I can believe whatever I want, okay?

That's ridiculous. The purpose of the distinction between primary, secondary, and tertiary doctrines is this, is that we have to determine the level of malignancy when it comes to false doctrine.

You think of all false doctrine as cancer, right? So some cancers are stage one, they're in their early stages and you can knock it down and get rid of it pretty quick.

Second, then there's stage two, stage three. Stage four is bad. Stage four is things have metastasized, it's malignant, and it's questionable as to whether or not you're going to survive the ordeal, right?

So the idea then is that anybody who denies primary doctrines, we already recognize they are not of the faith, they are not

Christians, they are fake Christians, they are heretics, and they are bound for hell.

So for instance, cardinal doctrines, you cannot deny the doctrine of the Trinity and be a

Christian. Have any of you noticed that evangelicals today are beginning to wander away from the doctrine of the

Trinity as they are embracing conspiracy theories? In my sermon today,

I noted that the world has not returned to normal. And one of the things that has been burned into our culture now as a result of COVID are all of these conspiracy theories.

And I kid you not, there are Christian groups today that will judge your orthodoxy based on whether or not you took the vaccine.

If you took the vaccine, you're not truly a Christian. And it's just a matter of days before blood starts pouring out of your eyes and all of the other orifices of your body and you die a horrible death.

This is what they say. Is whether or not somebody took the vaccine the truth regarding whether or not they're a

Christian or not? No, this is just nonsense. And so what has happened is with the conspiracy mindset, you've seen the increase of people who believe in King James only -ism, believing in the flat earth, believing in all these conspiracies regarding the

New World Order and things like this, and they spend all their time playing this game called pin the tail on the

Antichrist and trying to figure out who's gonna be riding the beast and who's the whore of Babylon and all this kind of stuff.

It's just nonsense, all right? This is not what these things are for. Now granted, this does not mean that there isn't a satanic conspiracy to destroy the earth.

There is, okay? And everything we need to know about that conspiracy is written in the

Bible. And since it's all laid bare for us, nothing that they're doing is a secret, right?

And what's our attitude? The attitude of scripture is to have patient endurance regarding these things.

Christ knows what he's doing and we can tell that the world is not gonna land safely, it's gonna crash hard.

That's Jesus' intent. And so if you have a lot invested in whether or not the current regime or the empire or whatever survives,

I assure you, none of it will, okay? None of it will, okay?

No one's limping away from this crash. We're all going down and we're going down in flames. This is just how this goes, all right?

So buckle up and enjoy the ride, that's the best way I can put it. But that being the case, so cardinal doctrines would be a denial of the doctrine of the

Trinity. There are people now who are buying into the conspiracies there. You see someone sitting there going, we can't believe in the doctrine of the

Trinity because it's a conspiracy concocted by Constantine. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

He wanted to make Christianity more appealing to pagans and so he invented the doctrine of the Trinity. And I sit there and go, did your mother drop you on your head?

Because we legitimately have the proceedings of the Council of Nicaea of 325

AD. We know exactly the role that Constantine played and we know about the deliberations and the votes.

You can read it in the writings of the church fathers, it's there. And you know the role that Constantine played?

None, okay? He was there as an observer, not an advisor.

He didn't even get to vote. He had no standing in the church to do so, he wasn't a bishop.

Even Athanasius of Alexandria at the time was not a bishop and he wasn't permitted to vote.

But he had a huge, huge influence on how things went at the Council of Nicaea. The doctrine of the

Trinity is a biblical doctrine. Other doctrines. You cannot deny the virgin birth of Christ and claim to be a

Christian. If Jesus is not born of the Virgin Mary but born of Mary and Larry, then he has a sinful nature and he's not our savior, right?

You cannot deny that Jesus rose bodily from the grave and be a Christian. These are all malignant cancers.

So different Jesus, different spirit, different gospel, these all put you outside of the Christian faith.

But the Bible also makes it clear that people who err on secondary doctrines, they are to be corrected, but they are to be corrected as Christian brothers and sisters.

That's why the secondary and tertiary doctrines come into play because it's the question of whether or not we treat you as an erring brother or as we treat you as a heretic, okay?

So when you err on secondary doctrines, you're still erring. Secondary doctrines do not exist for the purpose of basically giving you the freedom to believe whatever you want to believe.

That's not how this works. So I'm on a little bit of a rant. Let's go on to the next part.

So when they had come together, they asked Jesus, and this is one of the dumbest questions ever.

Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? And you see Jesus taking a sip of his coffee and going, oh,

Jesus, ugh. This is like paying for four years of seminary, four years of seminary, and then on the final final, the one that you have to take in order to graduate, you fail the final, okay?

Now consider the implications of the question. Will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?

They're still thinking, but wait. The Messiah is gonna sit on the throne of David forever.

Is this the time when you're gonna restore the kingdom to Israel? What they've done is they've looked at the eschatological passages of the

Old Testament, and they've brought them forward and ignored the passages that talk about how

God is going to bring the Gentiles in and things like this, and so their eschatology is getting in the way, and so the idea then here is that Christ has not come to establish his kingdom on the earth in the present regime of sin.

There is not going to be a new glory days of Israel. That's not the point.

What Jesus is doing is he's sending the good news out through his emissaries that there is forgiveness of sins in him, one by him on the cross.

He's calling sinners to repent, for them to be disciples, bear fruit in keeping repentance, and then they have their citizenship in heaven now, and when

Jesus returns in glory to judge the living and the dead and brings all of the kingdoms of the earth to a complete catastrophic end, then and only then will he remake the heavens and the earth and set up his kingdom in what's coming.

Anybody trying to set up the earthly kingdom of Jesus in the here and now is setting up a kingdom of straw, and it will burn very easily and quickly, right?

Over and over and over again, people who shipwreck their faith by thinking that Christianity is all about a theology of self -glory, people who create kingdoms for themselves or think that somehow they're going to usher in.

The whole seven -mountain mandate, I want you to consider this. If you've never heard of it, it's a thing, and Bill Bright was a part of it,

Lauren Kramer, was it Kramer who was a part of this thing? I forget the names, and unfortunately,

Francis Schaeffer got kind of yanked into this thing. And basically, the seven -mountain mandate is supposedly a prophecy that God gave that basically says that once Christians conquer the seven mountains of influence in the world, the medium mountain, the government mountain, the entertainment mountain, and things like this, that once Christians can conquer all of these seven mountains, then they will take dominion over the earth, and then

Christ will then return. Yes. Yeah, that's their thinking.

Right. Yeah, these are the same people who prophesied that Trump would win in 2020. But this is called dominionism or the seven -mountain mandate, and this idea that, and by the way, this is closely related to an eschatological view called post -millennialism, right?

Post -millennialism is that Beatles songs I gotta admit, it's getting better, it's getting better all the time. It can't get no worse, right?

And so the idea then here is that historically, it's the liberals who've bought into this eschatology.

And the eschatology basically believes that the idea that Christians eventually make disciples of all nations in the most literal sense.

There are no pagans left. We win, and then

Jesus comes down out of heaven, he descends and goes, good job, you finally got your act together, you fulfilled your mission, and now

I'm king. It doesn't make a lick of sense.

It just does not make a lick of sense, okay? But I would note that the disciples were kind of suffering from a form of dominionism here.

Are you now going to restore the kingdom to Israel? All right, so Jesus just gives a very terse answer.

It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority, but you will receive power when the

Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all

Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. So the Holy Spirit legitimately sends power.

Now if you ever hear anyone says, the word here in Greek is dynamite, run, they don't know what they're talking about.

The word is dunamis, okay? It means power or authority or things like this.

It does not mean explosions, okay? This is nonsense, okay? But the idea then is the

Holy Spirit is going to empower them to do what? To be Christ's witnesses, to bear witness to the fact that they are the eyewitnesses of the resurrection, to proclaim

Christ and him crucified for our sins, and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus's name.

That's what the Holy Spirit is going to empower them to do, and if you are an apostle of Jesus Christ, you will also have the ability to operate in what are called the signs of the apostles, which means that when we look through the book of Acts, I will point this out, it is rare in the book of Acts for anybody who isn't an apostle to perform miracles.

There are a couple notable exceptions, but for the most part, the big miracles that are recorded for us in the book of Acts are performed by the apostles.

And the apostle Paul talks about, let me find this real quick here, signs, and I gotta spell it right, signs, and let's see here, it's in the epistles, hang on a second here, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm.

Here we go, 2 Corinthians 12, 12, Paul says to the church of Corinth, the signs of a true apostle were performed among you with utmost patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works.

Jesus's apostles, the ones who can be called apostles of Jesus Christ, they had a standing that ordinary apostles did not have, and let me explain.

So back in the day, in this time period, in this place, the word apostle was a common word, not an uncommon word.

And so apostello means to send, and apostellos is one who is sent.

And so the idea then here, somebody who is an apostle is one who is sent by another, either a human being or a government or a church, and so there were other apostles at the time of the church that were sent by different churches.

For instance, Antioch sent Barnabas. Barnabas is therefore an apostle of the church of Antioch.

But Barnabas is not an apostle of Jesus Christ. So if somebody shows up at your door back in the ancient world and goes, yes, who are you?

I'm an apostle. Okay, who sent you is the next obvious question, right?

Ah, Jesus sent me, I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ. That's a different category.

And if somebody says, well, I'm an apostle sent by the church of Antioch, they're not claiming anything special at this point.

There's lots of apostles from churches and things like that who are church planters and emissaries and things like this.

So we have to make these distinctions. But those who are apostles of Jesus Christ are legitimately able, as Paul says, to operate and perform the signs of a true apostle, which means that they are a different stripe than ordinary garden -variety apostles.

These are apostles of Jesus Christ. And when you look at epistles, like if I were to open up 1

Peter, for instance, in 1 Peter 1, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ.

He's not just any apostle, he's an apostle of Jesus Christ. And back in the day, apostles who were sent by another had authority to conduct business on behalf of the sending person or the sending body, okay?

So if I wanted somebody to buy a home for me in Florida, I could hire an attorney and he can be my apostle and I've given him authority to then, on my behalf, find a property, to make an offer, to make a down payment, and to do all the things necessary to take possession of that property for me.

That's an extraordinary amount of ability. But the idea then is that when somebody is an apostle, there's almost like a power of attorney that goes along with it, which is one of the reasons why when we look at the apostle

Paul in 1 Corinthians 14, the apostle

Paul says, something very interesting to the church at Corinth, and we need to pay attention.

So Paul, in talking about how there needs to be order in the church when it comes to the use of the gifts that God had given for the purpose of building up and edifying the church, which were in operation at the day, he says this, he says, you can all prophesy one by one so that you may learn and be encouraged.

The spirit of the prophets are subject to the prophets for God is not a God of confusion, but of peace. And then he says this, as in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches.

Now, I'm gonna stop here for a second. Here, this is not a Bible study on whether or not women can be pastors, but if you've talked to people in the church today, you sit there and you go, it says the women are to be silent in the church.

What do people say? Paul wrote that, not

Jesus. I'm a red -letter Christian. I follow the red letters, and Jesus is love, love, love, love, love, love.

And it's a product of his time. It's a product of his time, right? All the parts where he's talking about hell, but okay.

Yeah, so what they'll do is they're going to attack the text, they're gonna say Paul wrote that, and then they will imply that Paul was the original founding member of the

He -Man -Woman -Haters Club, okay? I'm showing my age again, okay?

This is how they'll talk, and they'll say he reflected the toxic patriarchy of the times and stuff like this, and I sit there and go, did you read the rest of the sentences that go along with this?

Because they blow up your theory, okay? Here's what he says. As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches.

They're not permitted to speak, but they should be in submission, as the law also says.

If there's anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. It is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

What's the next word? Or. Now let me ask you a question.

If I were to say, would you like vanilla or chocolate, have

I said one sentence or two sentences? One sentence, it's a question, it's an interrogative statement, right?

And what's the function of the or? It's a conjunction. This goes back to Schoolhouse Rock.

Conjunction, junction, what's that function? Hooking up phrases and, sorry.

It's a great song, it's a great song, and it has trains and stuff, and you know. But the idea then here is that what's the next word?

Or. It is shameful for a woman to speak in church, or was it from you that the word of God came?

Or are you the only ones it's reached? And then watch what he says. If anyone thinks he's a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things, plural,

I am writing to you, are a command of the Lord. Paul has the authority as an apostle of Jesus Christ to say,

Jesus commands you. So who's the one who is not permitting women to be pastors?

Jesus. This is a command of the

Lord. Women are to remain silent in the church. That's not Paul's command, that's Jesus' command, and the apostle

Paul is speaking as an apostle of Jesus Christ, and he has power of attorney to do so.

So don't sit there and tell me he's the original member of the He -Man -Woman -Haters Club. Who cares if he was or wasn't?

It's immaterial. The command for women to be silent in the church comes from Jesus, not from Paul.

Just saying, okay? And then he says this. If anyone doesn't recognize this, he's not recognized.

So what are we supposed to do with people in the church going, well, I don't believe that. I believe that women can be pastors.

The text says, as an order of Jesus Christ, don't listen to them, don't recognize them.

I'm sorry, we're gonna have to strip you of all authority in the church, and we're gonna take away your voice because you're contradicting

Jesus. You can't do that. Oh yes, we can, watch us. But do people do that today?

No, of course not, okay? It's the guys who raise their voice and go, wait a second here,

Jesus said that women can't be pastors in the church, and they said, kill him, get rid of him.

That guy has to go. Cancel, cancel, right, right? Again, I'm on excursuses at this point, but they're kind of self -induced, okay?

So the Holy Spirit comes, he's gonna give you power to be his witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth, and when he said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up.

A cloud took him out of their sight, and while they were gazing into the heavens, as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and they said, men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?

This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.

All right, now, let me ask you this question. Where in the

Bible do we have, what, there is, it's in the Bible. Where in the

Bible is it recorded what happened after Jesus disappeared from their sight? It's not in the book of Acts.

You ever wonder what happened to Jesus after he couldn't be seen anymore? It's in the

Bible, okay? You guys remember Back to the Future, okay? Especially, like,

Back to the Future 3, where they left the DeLorean in a cave in the Wild West for them to pick up in the future?

It's brilliant, okay? You have to kind of think this is like Back to the Future 3. The answer to the question, what happens after Jesus disappears and he's no longer visible because a cloud obscures them as they're watching him ascending into heaven, the answer to that is found in the book of Daniel.

It's crazy, absolutely crazy and awesome at the same time. Turn with me to Daniel, hang on a second, let me find the text,

Daniel chapter seven. Daniel chapter seven, I'll be in verse 13.

Daniel writes, I saw in the night visions and behold, with the clouds of heaven, there came one like a son of man.

Daniel was given a vision of what happens when Jesus disappeared behind the cloud. There's the clouds of heaven and poof, there's one like a son of man.

He came to the Ancient of Days, that's the Father, and he was presented before him and to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all people's nations and languages should serve him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away and his kingdom, one that shall not be destroyed.

So there, sitting in a wild west cave, written long before the book of Acts was written,

Daniel saw what would take place as soon as Jesus disappeared from sight. He goes through the clouds, appears in the heavenly kingdom, is presented before the

Father and God the Father presents him with a kingdom and places him on the throne of David and he is now king of kings and lord of lords.

It's wonderful. And you sit there and go, who wrote this book? Who wrote this book?

It's amazing, okay? When you let the Bible speak for itself and you start to connect these parts and put it all together, how did

Daniel see that 600, 400 years, centuries before Christ?

How did he see this? That's kind of the point, it's right there in Scripture so we know exactly what happened when

Jesus ascended. We continue. Now, we're gonna get into the proper discussion of apostles.

So they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day's journey away.

And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room where they were staying. Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew, Matthew, James, the son of Alphaeus, Simon, the zealot,

Judas, the son of James, all of these with one accord. They could only afford one car and it was a

Honda. Boo. Did I tell you about, did

I tell you my Autobahn joke? Not the Autobahn but, so the weird thing happens to men when they grow up and their kids grow up and they leave the house, they have more time on their hands and so there was a fellow who decided that he was gonna take up bird watching, right?

And so he went to the library and picked up a huge volume put out by the

Autobahn Society, this bird society, so that he could begin to identify and learn about the different bird species in his area and he was really excited about this, really excited.

So every time he would see a bird that he recognized from this book, this

Autobahn book, he'd go, is that a barn owl? Is that a bald eagle? Is that a, he was so excited.

And one day he saw a mockingbird in this tree and he comes out and goes, is that a mockingbird?

And the mockingbird goes, is that a mockingbird? Sorry. Barb told me not to tell it.

I love that joke. Anyway, poor

Barb, she has to endure the shame, the shame, the burn, all that kind of stuff.

I glory in it, she just withers in it. Anyway, all right. Is that a mockingbird?

Moving on. So all of these were in one accord. They were devoting themselves to prayer together with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.

Now in those days, Peter stood up among the brothers. The company of the persons was in all about 120.

So keep this in mind. When people ask the question, what does Jesus mean when he says that you will do greater works than he did?

Jesus' ministry on earth lasted three years. At the end of three years, how many Christians are there?

Roughly 120, that's it. And so when Jesus says you will do greater works than he did, he didn't say you will perform greater miracles than he performed.

Nobody has ever performed greater miracles than Christ. The greater works has to do with the fact that they will have longer ministries with greater impact than even

Christ had in an earthly sense. When Peter dies, how many Christians are there?

Significantly more than 120. He's preached the gospel throughout the

Roman Empire. There's hundreds of thousands of Christians at the time of his crucifixion.

You get the idea. So there's 120 persons. So Peter said, brothers, the scripture had to be fulfilled.

I love the fact that Peter is now singing off the same song sheet as Jesus. Remember when

Peter was being arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane. Peter tried to stop it.

He cut off the ear of Malchus, one of the high priest's servants. And Jesus stops him and says, how then are the scriptures to be fulfilled?

Put away your sword. Jesus knows full well the scriptures must be fulfilled, so he's gotta put an end to these hostilities, what's taking place is exactly what the scripture said is gonna take place.

So now all of a sudden, a few weeks later, Peter, he now is a firm believer.

The scriptures have to be fulfilled. We gotta pay attention to what the text says. The scriptures 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. He was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry.

Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness, and you can put reward in like scare quotes here, and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all of his bowels gushed out.

Now, little bit of a note, I have to bring this up. The enterprising atheist who does nothing but try to scoff and try to poke holes in the

Gospels and in the Bible will sit there and go, well, this is a contradiction. How so?

Doesn't it say that Judas hung himself? Yes, it did. Well, here it says he fell headlong and he burst in the middle and his bowels gushed out.

Yeah, what's your point? Well, isn't that a contradiction? No, nobody took him down from the branch he hung himself on, and eventually the rope or his neck gave way, and that's what happened to his corpse.

Both are true, right? It's horrible. So it became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so the field was called in their own language, akadalma, that is the field of blood, for it is written in the book of Psalms.

Now here, Peter is gonna quote two passages, and I love it, reading liberal commentaries on this because they hate how he's using

Scripture. It's beautiful, though. The Apostle Peter is inspired by the Holy Spirit and knows what he's talking about.

He says, may his camp become desolate, and let there be no one to dwell in it, and, in another text, let another take his, and what's the word, office.

Now this is where we're going to do a little bit of work, but we're gonna start with this idea that apostle is an office.

Today's New Apostolic Reformation, NAR wingnut wackerdoodles, they deny this.

They deny it, and they say, it's, apostle isn't an office, it's a function, and what are they trying to do?

Blur, it's an office. God, the Holy Spirit, says it's an office, and Peter here is quoting

Psalm 109, verse eight. The first verse he quoted was Psalm 69, 25.

He put them together by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and let liberal theologians be damned if they disagree with Peter, as far as I'm concerned.

He knows what he's talking about here, and so the idea here is that apostles of Jesus Christ, that's an office, and they have to be chosen by Christ himself, and there are criteria, and here's the important thing.

As we read the rest of the New Testament, as the apostles finish their tasks in different regions, they appoint, not apostles, they appoint presbyters and episkopos, which are actually kind of synonymous terms, okay?

Let me give you an example. If I were to go to maybe Acts 14.

Let me see if I can find this really quick. Here we go. So at Acts 14, and when they had appointed, here we got presbyteros, presbyteroi, elders for them in every church with prayer and fasting, they committed them to the

Lord in whom they had believed. So when the apostles established a church, and they're finished doing the original catechesis work in a church, what they end up doing then is appointing presbyters.

Now a little bit of a historical note here. Are any of you uncomfortable with the fact that Rome, that Roman Catholic priests in the

United States are called priests? Do any of you think that's just weird?

You can say, yeah, that seems weird to me, okay. Why would you call them priests? Aren't the Old Testament guys priests?

Here's the dirty little secret, okay? The word priest is the anglicized version of presbyter.

When they first brought the word presbyter into the English language, it got translated as priest.

So if you are faulting Rome for having their pastors be called priests, you're doing it wrongly.

Because they're not trying to hearken to the Mosaic Covenant, that's just how it works when it was originally brought into English.

In other countries, they are called presbyters. But in English, they were called priests because that's how it got translated.

Does that make sense? And it just kind of stuck. So as odd as it sounds, in the

English language, technically it's okay to call a pastor a priest, but you can't do it without educating people.

Because everyone's gonna freak out. You want me to call you priest? Well, I'm a presbyter.

Everybody who holds the pastoral office is a presbyter. But so I would not, I'm not saying we need to do that.

That's not the point. The point is this, is that when we were in Norway, okay, when we were in Norway, and I was doing my lectures in Norway a few weeks ago,

I had an opportunity to have a conversation with Bishop Mosby of the Confessional Lutheran Church there.

And he brought the topic up. And I said, all right, so what's the point that you're gonna make?

He said, listen, anybody can be a pastor, but not anybody can be a priest.

And I said, you know that that doesn't sound good in English, right? He said, I know. But he says, what

I'm saying is, is that in the Norwegian way of thinking, priests are presbyters.

Pastors, anybody can be a pastor. And I said, oh, I actually kind of needed to know that.

It's like, I'm glad I actually listened, because your assumptions that you have as an

American English speaker don't translate in other countries. And certain things that you think you have a good theological point may in fact evaporate, because it just gets lost in translation.

So you'll note then that in the American churches, there's really only one denomination that's considered to be

Protestant that continued using the word priest for their pastors, and that was the Episcopalian church, right?

They kind of held on to the historic understanding of where the word priest came from.

But you'll note that you can't use that term nowadays without people in America losing their minds.

Okay, you think you're a Mosaic covenant priest? No, why would you think that? Because you're using the same word.

No, it just shows your ignorance of church history and how things work, okay? So just a little bit of a note there.

So you'll note then that when the apostles, they established things, they then set up, here we go, presbyters.

Presbyters. And presbyters and bishops are synonymous in function with one exception.

An episkopos is an overseer that is one who oversees presbyters.

So a good way to think of it is all bishops are presbyters, but not all presbyters are bishops. Does that make sense, okay?

And so here then, we can see, we can begin to see something here, and then

I'm gonna look for the word office real quick, and I'm gonna show you this. In 1 Timothy 3, this saying is trustworthy,

Paul says. If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, and here it says episkopos, and again, it's being used synonymously with presbyter in this particular text, he desires a noble task.

So here's the idea. Apostle is an office established by Christ in his church.

Pastor, that's the term we'll use, but if you wanna be technical, presbyter slash episkopos, this is an office established by Christ in the church.

These are not merely functions. They are offices. And what do we know about offices?

People have to be qualified to hold those offices. So if anyone wants to be a pastor, presbyter, they have to meet the qualifications to hold that office.

As the presbyter at Kongsvinger Lutheran Church, I was required to demonstrate that I met those qualifications before I was called, and I must continue to be qualified to continue my call here to be able to fill the office.

The idea is this, that when it comes to a congregation, wherever two or more are gathered, there is an office that has to be filled by somebody.

The office then of preaching and teaching and ministering to the saints to equip them for the good works that Christ has called them to do, the works of ministry, right?

And there are only certain people who are qualified to fit that office. Coming back then to Acts, Peter is very clear here that the apostolic office is an office, and since Judas has vacated the office, they have a vacancy, and now they need

Jesus to choose somebody to fill that office. So some of the men, so here's the qualifications.

You have to be a dude. There were 120 Christians to choose from. You had to be a dude who had accompanied the apostles during all of the time that the

Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day that he was taken up from us.

So these are men who had to be there for everything that Jesus did.

They were there for his baptism, on to his death, on to his resurrection, and of the 120

Christians, there were two that met the qualifications, okay?

And their role then is to be an apostle of Jesus Christ and to be an eyewitness of the resurrection of Christ in the proclamation of the gospel, yes, okay?

Now, the first part, Paul does not meet the qualifications. And you'll see when we take a look at the apostle

Paul, we'll take a look at what he writes in this regard. He says that he is an apostle abnormally born and that he is what he is by the grace of Christ.

So Jesus chose a 13th apostle, is the best way

I can put it. Now, let me ask you this question. How many tribes of Israel are there?

There's 12 tribes, right? But there's 13 names. How many apostles of Jesus Christ are there?

There's 12, but there's a 13th, and that's Paul. I think that's perfect symmetry with the

Old Testament. I think that's kind of how that's working out. So let's focus on this part, and then we'll talk a little bit more about the apostle

Paul. So one of these men, they have from the beginning, the baptism was from the time of his ascension, one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.

So they put forward two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was called

Justice, and Matthias. And they prayed and said, you, Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which of these two men you have chosen.

So what did they do? They then took, which one have you chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which

Judas turned aside to go to his own place? They cast lots. They threw dice.

And it came up Matthias. And that was how Jesus chose his 12th apostle,

Marilyn. I would note,

I've seen churches cast lots today. Okay, I have. Usually it's when they have a decision that needs to be made that could tear the church apart.

And it's a tight vote one way or another. And in a case like that, then they pray and they trust it to the

Lord and then they flip a coin. That's the modern day, that's a wise way to do things.

As long as everybody understands, whatever the decision is that the coin makes, we're gonna trust that's from God. Now when it comes to choosing a pastor, you shouldn't be flipping coins.

Okay, you should not be flipping coins at all. But the idea then is the scripture is clear that when the lots are cast, it's

God who's the one who causes the lots to go one way or another. And I always like to point this out to my wife every time

I beat her at Yahtzee. So, you know. She's still mad about that. Yeah. Hey honey, look it,

I won at Yahtzee. I threw the dice and God's the one who let me win. It is an all luck game for the most part.

But yeah, you get the point. So, when it comes to the Apostle Paul, let's take a look at what he writes then in regard to him.

Because he is a standout. He is clearly an Apostle of Jesus Christ.

He's in that unique category, but he's not numbered with the 12, which is interesting. He's still an

Apostle of Jesus Christ, so he's part of that big group of Apostle of Jesus Christ, which numbers 12 plus him.

But he is not numbered with the 12, which is really fascinating. So, let me get my

Greek, just in case I need it. So, here's what Paul says. Now, I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel

I preached to you, which you received and which you stand, by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word that I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the

Scripture. He was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scripture, and that he appeared to Cephas and to the 12, and that he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, some have fallen asleep.

Then he appeared to James and to all the apostles, and last of all, as one untimely born, he appeared also to me.

So, I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church, but by the grace of God I am what

I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not

I, but the grace of God. So, here's the idea, is that when it came to filling the vacant office left by Judas, they found men who met those qualifications, and then they let

Christ choose which of the two that he wanted, and then Jesus said, basically, I have the prerogative of king of kings and lord of lords to add another apostle to my list of apostles of Jesus Christ, and I choose

Saul of Tarsus. Red rover, red rover, send Saul right over, okay?

And he comes right over, and he's now playing for team Jesus, which is great, okay?

But he's playing for team Jesus in the position of apostle of Jesus Christ, with the ability to speak commands of Christ, which is a very unique thing, but you'll note that he was chosen by Christ, and he even says untimely or unnaturally born, right?

Now, that's as far as we're gonna go today. We will continue with our study of the book of Acts in two weeks.

Next week is Ask a Pastor, all right? Peace to you, brothers and sisters. Lord willing, we will see you next time.