Sunday Morning Worship Service – May 31, 2020

All right, good morning. Well, this is a beautiful day the Lord has given us and I couldn't have asked for a nicer one, just like the right temperature.

If it were a little warmer, some of you would fall asleep. If it were a little colder, some of you would be shivering.

So it seems like it's just right for this morning. Well, a couple of announcements, you've got your announcement sheet and song sheet there.

But the protocols are still, for being able to just completely do everything that we did a few months ago, are still not all clear for us yet.

So we're going to continue to meet, you know,

Wednesday night like we have been for the last few months and still not ready to start on, you know,

Sunday school and open up the nursery and all that yet, but should be able to do that very soon.

I do want to mention that Saturday afternoon and evening is graduation open house for Allison McCann and all are invited, maintaining social distancing and hand sanitizers and masks as you wish.

Now, I got an idea. If that concerns you, here's all you need to do. Just wear a sign that says

I am a protester and you can get as close as you want and you can do anything you want and nobody will bother you.

So there you go. So that's this Saturday. Thank you. That's this Saturday afternoon.

I want to open with a couple of verses from Psalm 57 verses 7 and 8 before our opening hymn today.

Psalm 57, 7 says, my heart is fixed, O God. My heart is fixed. I will sing and give praise.

Awake up, my glory. Awake, psaltery and harp. I myself will awake early.

Trust you have awakened early this morning and are ready to worship the Lord together. Jim's going to come and lead us in the opening hymn

Before the Dawn. Jim? Thank you,

Pastor. And on your handout sheets there, Before the Dawn, we'll sing all four verses together.

I won't ask you to stand. Excuse me. We'll sing all five verses together of Before the

Dawn. All right, let's bow for prayer, shall we?

Our Father, this morning, what we just sang is an anticipation of the future when all will bow the knee before the

King of Kings, right now even as we see what's going on in our world, in our country, in cities around our nation, in one not too far from us, our hearts are grieved because it seems like there is no ruler, there's no ruler that's accepted, that is whose authority is bowed before.

And yet it reminds us of the just and righteous rule of the King of Kings that shall come where there will be no insurrection, there will be no rebellion.

And we bow before you today, our Lord and our God, we are grateful and thankful that we can do so, we can be a people who are submissive to your word and to your will.

We pray that as we have gathered together today to worship you, to open your word and be encouraged and challenged by it, that you would speak to us and give us wisdom even as we wait, this we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

I want to read for our psalm reading today, Psalm 37, Psalm 37 and verses 27 to 40.

Psalm 37, verses 27 to 40. Psalmist David writes, depart from evil and do good and dwell forevermore.

For the Lord loveth judgment and forsaketh not his saints. They are preserved forever.

But the seed of the wicked shall be cut off. The righteous shall dwell therein forever.

The mouth of the righteous speaketh wisdom and his tongue talketh of judgment. The law of his

God is in his heart. None of his steps shall slide. The wicked watcheth the righteous and seeketh to slay him.

The Lord will not leave him in his hand nor condemn him when he is judged. Wait on the

Lord and keep his way and he shall exalt thee to inherit the land. When the wicked are cut off, thou shalt see it.

I have seen the wicked in great power and spreading himself like a green bay tree. Yet he passed away and lo, he was not.

Yea, I sought him, but he could not be found. Mark the perfect man and behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace.

But the transgressors shall be destroyed together. The end of the wicked shall be cut off.

But the salvation of the righteous is of the Lord. He is their strength in the time of trouble.

And the Lord shall help them and deliver them. He shall deliver them from the wicked and save them because they trust in him.

The Lord add his blessing to the reading of this song today. We'll sing our next hymn together.

On your song sheet, the hymn, Trusting Jesus. That psalm encourages us to trust in the Lord and wait on him.

Let's sing about that, shall we? Trusting Jesus, number 405 in your song single sheet.

It's good to look out and see real people instead of the paper people that we had in the pews and nothing that is a substitute for reality for real people.

There's no substitute for the local church either. And it's wonderful to be assembling together again.

Actually, last week was the first week that we assembled, but what a way to get back together again in the open, literally, and it's a first for us, at least in the years

I've been here. That's a lot of years. I never have had a service outdoors before. And I hope it's not the last.

And certainly the weather was cooperating and what a way to show our appreciation to the

Lord. Let's sing a number of, again, Trusting Jesus, all four verses together.

♪ Simply trusting every day ♪ ♪ Trusting, trusting every day ♪

As we pray together today, we want to remember to pray for our missionary of the week, which is Sam Slobodian, who leads a ministry that works with local pastors, national pastors, and church planters in Russia and in the

Ukraine. We also want to continue to pray for Bob and Jerry, as Bob awaits results from biopsy that he received this week.

So I'm gonna pray for Bob. His biopsy was last week, results coming soon. I also want to pray for,

I'll just leave it as an unspoken request. And so we've got that remind the other day, as unspoken request to pray.

We'll mention that to the Lord in prayer. Also pray for Jan Dean, her family.

Her brother passed away earlier this week. And just pray for God to give grace and comfort to that family.

As I pray today, part of my prayer is going to be, I'm not exactly sure of the source.

I think it might be from what's called the Book of Common Prayer. I would not normally use such a thing, especially in our public praying.

I'd rather do that more extemporaneous. But there's a section in that Book of Prayers that is titled

In Time of Insurrections and Tumults. And it's just very well expresses the request of our hearts in this particular time in our nation.

So let's look to the Lord in prayer, shall we? Almighty Lord God who breaks the power of the oppressor and stills the noise and tumult of the rabble, stir up by great strength we beseech thee and come to help us.

Scatter the counsels of them that secretly devise mischief and do bring the dealings of the violent to nothing.

Cast down the unrest from high places and cause the unruly to cease from troubling.

Allay all envious and malicious passions and subdue the haters and evildoers that our land may have rest before thee and that all the people may praise thee, our help and our shield, both now and evermore.

We also pray, our Father, for your people who are hurting today and in need.

We think of this particular unspoken request and the uncertainty and anxiety that lies behind it.

We pray that you would sustain the individual so concerned. We pray also today for Bob and Jerry and pray that you would give grace, continue to give grace to them.

Thank you so much for their expressions of trust and faith in you in this time of difficulty, physical affliction.

We pray as they wait for the results of this biopsy from the other day that you would give them peace of mind.

May they rest in you. We also pray for Jan and her family and the loss of her brother.

I pray that you would give comfort and peace of mind and heart. Thank you for the assurance that we who are

Christ have that to be absent from the body is to be present from the Lord. I pray that they might have that comfort and assurance today.

We also pray for Sam Slobodian and the ministry of Baptist International Evangelistic Ministries.

The labors in Ukraine and Russia as Sam supports these, various church planters and young churches.

I pray that much would be accomplished through that ministry. May you bring glory to yourself through it.

Father, we again thank you for our time together today and we realize how easily we take for granted these great privileges of the body of Christ gathering together.

Continue to bless our time this morning we pray and we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.

Before we have another hymn, just to mention next Lord's Day be the first Sunday of June, so we will be having the

Lord's table together. We'll do that like we did last week. We have a whole bunch of those little packets so we'll not be passing things around and also not passing offering trays.

So if you have an offering to give today, the place to give it is in that little box on the table.

So you can do that on your way after we're dismissed this morning. All right, so let's have another hymn before the message, shall we,

Jim? Thank you, pastor. God leads us along in the next song to sing.

Sing all three verses together. God leads us along. ["God

Leads Us Along"] All right, we got stuff to get used to.

Finally, after many, many years, we were able to get a wireless microphone which is very helpful for the one speaking, but it's never been used before.

So we'll have some, hopefully, no more technical difficulties to deal with. I wanna just express gratitude to Kent Foster who is hiding behind the window over there who really helped get all the sound equipment and everything together and get it set up and do all the sound checking and all that stuff that we did

Friday evening. And just really appreciate Kent. And Ed came as well to help out with that and get things set up, came early today.

So appreciate these men. For our scripture reading before our message today, Acts chapter one,

Acts chapter one, and just read a few of the verses from verse 12 and following. And the context of this, you remember,

Jesus has risen from the dead 40 days earlier. And then in verses six through 11 is the account of the ascension,

Jesus ascending up into heaven. And we read of that in verse 11. Jesus had told the disciples in verse four that they were to wait in Jerusalem until the

Spirit of God was given as a gift from heaven. So we pick up in verse 12 after the ascension says, then returned they unto

Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is from Jerusalem a Sabbath day's journey. And when they were come in, they went up into an upper room where abode both

Peter and James and John and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon Zelotes and Judas the brother of James.

These all continued with one accord in prayer, supplication with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and with his brethren.

Just a brief prayer. So our Father, I pray that you would speak to us this morning about the ministry of waiting.

And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Well, over the last 10 weeks, we've been in quite the holding pattern, haven't we?

10, 11 weeks, I guess it's been. None of us could have imagined on March 15th when we left the church building after having service and then an afternoon, had a meal and then an afternoon time together that it would be 10, 11 weeks before we would gather back together.

And still, obviously, things aren't yet back to normal. As I mentioned earlier, we still have some protocol things to figure out to be able to get all of the things that we did before this virus crisis hit back to normal.

I'm going to refuse to use the term the new normal. I think we're kind of getting programmed to never accept what is really normal again.

But we're still waiting. So we continue to wait. And fortunately, we're not doing the waiting so much in isolation like we were in those earlier weeks.

But one thing we've, I hope, discovered is the importance of the ministry of waiting.

That the waiting cannot be a self -absorbed time when we just are only thinking about ourselves and our misery or whatever.

I think one of the problems that we're seeing, one of the problems we're seeing with all of the rioting and insurrection going on in cities, part of it is due to impatience.

Impatience of people who are not willing to wait for justice to take place, which it shall, or to wait for the resolution of things as they would normally resolve themselves, but want to take things into their own hands.

This is not a ministry of waiting when violence is incited and property is damaged and destroyed, people's lives are thrown into turmoil and upheaval, business is destroyed, and so forth.

No, a time of waiting should be a time of ministry. And we see this ministry of waiting in the end of the first chapter here in the book of Acts.

This is a meantime, this is a waiting period for the disciples.

As I mentioned back in verse four, the Lord Jesus told them on the day of ascension to go to Jerusalem and to wait, and to wait until the

Spirit of God is to come and will come upon them as this gift from heaven. Now the thing of it is, the disciples didn't know how long that was going to be.

Now we know because we have the historical record. It was only about a week later, but they didn't know that.

They didn't know how long it was going to be. This was just a meantime for them.

This was just a waiting period for them. But they didn't wait sitting on their hands, they didn't wait wringing their hands, they didn't wait in great deal of lamentation and woe because they were locked down in an upper room somewhere.

There was actually some ministry going on in that waiting. And when I'm talking about ministry,

I'm not thinking of it in maybe like we would think today in all of its different manifestations or different areas.

There's ministry that takes place, for example, in Acts chapter six when the widows were being neglected at the daily ministration, the serving of the tables.

And you had that election of individuals who would, we'd call them the first deacons of a sort, that would give themselves to that ministry, whereas the apostles said we will give ourselves to the ministry of prayer and to the word.

So ministry takes on different forms. But what we also realize is that ministry, whatever form it takes, is always under the

Lord. We're ministering under the Lord. And so that's what's going on with the disciples here as they wait, they're ministering under the

Lord. But I want us to see several ways in which they're doing that ministry and what that kind of ministry requires.

In the first place, the ministry of waiting requires obedience, it requires obedience.

But not the slavish kind of obedience like we've had to go through in the last few months.

The slavish obedience that says when you walk into the store, some store and they have a sign on there that says you can't enter here without a mask.

Well, whatever your attitude is toward the mask, if you don't like to wear a mask, you have to wear a mask if you want to go in there and shop.

And so you obey, even though you may not want to. This is not what

I'm talking about here. We're talking about a kind of obedience that is an obedience motivated by love, love for the

Lord Jesus Christ. Again, I remind you in verse four, Jesus commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but that they should wait.

And before the crucifixion, in that last day before the night of the

Lord's Supper and so forth, Jesus instructed his disciples and he told them that if you love me, you will keep my commandments.

And so what Jesus is desiring of us as he desired of his disciples was an obedience that is motivated by love.

And that love, if we have a love for the Lord Jesus that motivates us to obey him, that love will motivate us to obey him even if it means overcoming our own personal preferences.

You remember, many of these disciples were professional fishermen. And there's this open -ended promise that sometime the spirit of God's gonna come, go to Jerusalem and wait.

And they might prefer to go up on the Sea of Galilee and wait, where they can at least catch some fish, have some good time catching some fish or something.

So no, their obedience overcame that personal preference. And a loving obedience to Christ will also help us to overcome our perhaps very rational fears.

These disciples had reason to fear going to Jerusalem. I mean, after all, remember, they were marked men as followers of Jesus.

And yet, nevertheless, they went to Jerusalem, they obeyed, they waited in Jerusalem.

So it's an obedience motivated by love, but it's also an obedience that's motivated by faith, by a faith in the

Lord Jesus Christ. Why are they in Jerusalem? Why are they waiting?

Not only because Jesus told them to wait, to go there and to wait, but because of what he told them to wait for.

Again, in verse four, he says, wait for the promise of the Father, which you've heard of me. So their being in Jerusalem and waiting in Jerusalem is a practical, visible manifestation of their faith in the

Lord Jesus, who gave them a promise, and now they're waiting for that promise to be fulfilled.

And look at the manner of this waiting, this obedience unto the

Lord. They obeyed delightfully, and it's expressed in their promptness.

Verse 12 begins, then they returned. So it's like Jesus ascended into heaven, and they understandably stood there gazing up into heaven, watching him as he goes.

I mean, just right now, where you are here, outside, look up, what do you see?

You see that con trail, that chem trail,

I mean, the plane trail in the sky? Now imagine you're one of the disciples on that hillside, and you're standing, and you see

Jesus ascending into heaven and you're watching, and you're watching all the way up.

It's kind of like the spectators that watched the SpaceX rocket take off yesterday from Cape Canaveral, right?

Have you ever had the privilege of doing that? It's a fascinating thing to be at Cape Canaveral when one of those things takes off, when those rockets takes off.

We were able to do that many, many years ago when one of the space shuttles took off and launched, and we literally stood there watching as that shuttle went off into the sky, and we watched until we could see it no more.

That's what the disciples were doing, and then they were told by the angel, why are you standing there gazing up into heaven?

Jesus is coming again, and what's the next thing they do? They return to Jerusalem, and why did they do that?

Because Jesus said, go back to Jerusalem and wait. Their delightful obedience is expressed through promptness.

It's also expressed through the thoroughness of their obedience. Jesus said, go to Jerusalem, not

Bethlehem, not Hebron, not, go to Jerusalem.

They went to Jerusalem, and their obedience is reflected and expressed by their steadfastness, because in verse 13, we read that they went up into an upper room where abode

Peter, James, and so forth. They abode there, and that word means to remain, to stay, and it's in the present tense.

They were remaining in a place over a period of time, so there is a consistency in their obedience, a steadfastness in their obedience, and verse 14 expresses it this way.

These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication.

So the ministry of waiting involves obedience. Then secondly,

I would have you notice that this ministry unto the Lord of waiting also involves spiritual unity, spiritual unity.

Again, verse 14, as it says, they continued with one accord.

They were of the same mind. Now, there were a bunch of people in this room. There were the 11 disciples, and we also read in verse 14 that there were also the women, however many there were, and among those women was

Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Jesus' brothers, the other children of Mary, and so here were these people, and how many there were in this upper room, we don't even have an exact number, but here's the thing, we do know.

No two of them were the same, and yet they would put aside those differences of opinion or whatever and focus on a like -minded endeavor, and that like -minded endeavor was to keep their interest centered on this purpose, the purpose of waiting for the promise.

So healthy unity of God's people overcomes the diversity of the people, of the individual, overcomes that, and it also overcomes any potential rivalry that might be instigated within the group, and here's where I get that.

So the group that is there are the 11 disciples,

Peter, James, John, Andrew, Philip, et cetera, and then there was also the women, and then there was also

Mary, the mother of Jesus, and then there were the brothers of Jesus.

Now think about that dynamic, that group dynamic. Who would take charge in that situation?

Who would be the likely one to step forward representing Jesus? Would it be his mother?

She wasn't necessarily opposed to such a thing. Remember the first miracle

Jesus performed at Cana, Galilee? They've run out of wine. Do something about this,

Mary said. Or what about his brothers? I mean, after all, they could argue, hey, you know, listen, we lived with him for 30 years, or however many years those brothers were alive after Jesus was born.

We lived with him for all those years. I think one of us, you know, James, the brother of Jesus, for example, should take charge and be the spokesperson for the group.

But no, healthy unity overcomes those potential rivalries and the various diversity within the group, and instead focuses on the purpose, and the purpose for these disciples at this time was to wait for the promise.

And as they're waiting, this healthy unity, furthermore, centers on the basics.

What are the basics? The basics are what God has said, and what we need to do.

What has God said? There's a promise coming. And what do we need to do?

We need to wait, and as verse 14 tells us, we need to wait in prayer and supplication.

Healthy spiritual unity centers on the basics of the responsibilities of the body, to be listening to what

God has said, and to be appealing to the God who speaks as we pray and as we offer supplications.

And that prayer and supplication also expresses the desperate need that healthy unity has for the

Lord. Do you wonder what they prayed about? I mean, think about this. Here they are, and they're on this open -ended period of waiting.

What are they praying for? Maybe they're praying for safety and protection from the hostile

Jews that would want to destroy them. Maybe they're praying for that promise to come quickly.

Maybe they're praying for the Lord Jesus to come quickly, because after all, they just saw him go into heaven, and they were told he's gonna come in the same way that they'd seen him go.

Well, we don't exactly know what they were praying for, but the thing of it is, they were. They were praying, and so one of the ways they expressed this healthy spiritual unity was hearts that are united together in prayer.

The ministry of waiting requires obedience. The ministry of, you know, love that competition?

I thought that would be one of the neatest things about having an outdoor service. See how we can compete against the motorcycles that power by, or these guys who think they're hot with the loud mufflers, you know, that kind of thing.

But nevertheless, so the ministry of waiting requires obedience, it requires spiritual unity, and then the ministry of waiting focuses on the

Word. It focuses on the Word. And this comes out in most of the rest of this chapter, verses 15 through 23.

Won't take the time to read it all, but here's the synopsis of it. Peter gets up, now

Peter becomes the spokesperson. Not Mary, not James, the brother of Jesus, not one of the other brothers, but Peter gets up.

And Peter gets up, and he says, gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, we got a problem. And the problem is that Judas, one of the 12, is gone.

He defected from the faith, and he had an office as one of the 12, and we need to replace him.

He needs to be replaced. But on what basis did he say that? Well, look at verse 16.

Verse 16, he says, men and brethren, this scripture must needs have been fulfilled which the

Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake before concerning Judas, which was guide to them that took

Jesus. In other words, Peter is appealing to the scriptures. Peter is focusing on the

Word, and says the Word tells us that we've got to act here. But what

I want us to see, first of all, in Peter's appeal to the Word, is his recognition that the

Word of God is a divine Word. It is divinely given.

It has come from God himself. He says David spoke by the Holy Spirit.

So here's God speaking and using a man. And this is exactly what

Peter says in his second epistle, 2 Peter 1, 21, about how

God's Word has come to us. Holy men of God did not speak in time past by their own will.

They didn't dream up what they were gonna write down and what they were gonna say. But they were born along by the

Holy Spirit. And what Peter is saying here in Acts 1, 16 is that this is the way

God's Word has come to us. God's Spirit bore

David along to write these words. And these words must be fulfilled.

So he recognizes the divine character of the Word is coming from God and is being absolutely accurate.

That is, what God has said must come to pass. Now, another thing that I find interesting in this section, and it carries over to our ministry of waiting as well, and that is, not only do we need to be convinced of the divine character of the

Word, but we need to be eager to understand what that Word meant in its original meaning and intent.

So look at verse 20. In verse 20, Peter says, it is written in the book of Psalms, let his habitation be desolate and let no man dwell therein.

And then, in another Psalm, and his bishopric, or his office, let another take.

Now, what Peter's doing here is appealing to two different Psalms and a verse in each of those

Psalms. So the first of those two quotations is from Psalm 69, and in Psalm 69, verse 25, the psalmist,

David, wrote, let their habitation be desolate and let none dwell in their tents.

So Peter takes that verse and applies it to this situation. But what's important is to understand, well, what did that verse mean in its original placement?

And in the original placement of that verse, in Psalm 69, you look at the beginning of the

Psalm, and David is in dire distress. He says, save me, O God, for the waters are coming unto my soul.

I sink in deep mire, and so forth. And he is in this distress, verse four, because of his enemies.

They that hate me without cause are more than the hairs of mine head. They that would destroy me, being mine enemies wrongfully, are mighty.

And so he realizes, David does, he's in that mess, distress, because of his enemies.

Now there is in this Psalm 69, several messianic hints.

So for example, in verse eight, he said, I am become a stranger unto my brethren and an alien unto my mother's children.

In verse nine, he says, for the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up. Do you remember that being spoken of Jesus? And the reproaches of them that reproach thee are fallen upon me.

And in verse 21, he said, they gave me also gall for my meat, and in my thirst, they gave me vinegar to drink.

So the Psalm has some obvious messianic connections there. And then, verse 25, let their habitation be desolate.

So what is David praying in the original Psalm? He's praying, so destroy my enemies.

Destroy my enemies in such a way that their camp is deserted, and there's no one left to occupy their tents.

All right, that's the original Psalm, the first one. The second one is Psalm 109.

And in Psalm 109, verse eight, again,

David speaking, he says, let his days be few, and let another take his office.

Peter takes that Psalm and applies it to the current situation. What did it mean in its original context?

Well, again, David is oppressed by some wicked, ungrateful enemies. We see this in verses two and following.

He says, for the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened up against me. They have spoken against me with a lying tongue.

They compassed me about also with words of hatred, fought against me without a cause. For my love, they are my adversaries, he says.

And then in verses six through 20 of Psalm 109, he appeals to God for judgment upon those enemies.

Again, we'll not take the time to read all of that, but I would just point out, if you have your Bible open to Psalm 109, just skim down and notice all the lets, the lets.

So in verse eight, let his days be few. Verse nine, let his children be fatherless. Verse 10, let his children be continually vagabonds and so on through that passage of Scripture.

So what is the meaning of let his days be few and let another take his office in Psalm 109, verse eight?

What David is praying for is for the end of the life of his enemy that it would come soon so that his position of responsibility would be vacated and that he, the enemy, will stop his oppression, whatever form that oppression might take.

All right, so the important thing is, that I want us to get, is when we look to the

Scripture, we wanna be sure that we understand the meaning and intent of the Scripture as it is given.

And from there, we can make appropriate and legitimate application.

And that application has to be tightly connected to the original meaning and intent of the word.

Now Jesus gave us a precedent for this. So if you have, and can turn to John chapter 13.

In John 13, verses 18 and 19, Jesus said this.

He says, I speak not of you all. I know whom I have chosen, but that the

Scripture might be fulfilled, he that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me.

Now I tell you before it come, that when it is come to pass, you may believe that I am he. So there in the middle of verse 18, at the end of verse 18,

Jesus is quoting the Scripture. Specifically, he's quoting Psalm 41, verse nine.

He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me. And in that original text, in Psalm 41,

David again, is referring to the defection of one of his close associates,

Ahithophel, who went to serve David's enemies and to fight against him.

And so, what Jesus did, in seeing what David wrote, is he saw

David as a type of himself, and he saw Ahithophel, the traitor, the enemy, as a type of Judas.

And so, Jesus legitimately applied that Psalm 41, nine to this situation, that the

Ahithophel reclining at table with us is going to betray me.

The one who ate a meal with me, Judas is my Ahithophel.

All right, now back in Acts chapter one, Peter does a similar kind of thing. He takes those two portions of the

Psalms, two different Psalms, and he applies those texts to Judas.

Jesus' enemy, Judas, has been removed, and his position is vacant and needs to be filled.

You see this in verse 25, though, and I want to remind you of this, that Judas' position is not vacated by his death, but by his defection.

Look at verse 25. Peter says that he may take part of this ministry and apostleship from which

Judas, by transgression, fell, that he might go to his own place.

So Judas vacated that office by his defection from the faith, turning his back on Jesus, and not by his death.

Here's the bottom line, here's what I want us to get from all of that little analysis.

It is that the ministry of waiting focuses on the word and sees it as God's divine word, discovers what is that word, what does the word mean, and then what does it mean in our situation.

We do this even while we wait, even while we wait. And then finally, the ministry of waiting requires submission.

There was earlier the submission of obedience, we saw that, but I see a different expression of submission as this chapter ends in verses 24 through 26.

Three different ways that we express submission to our Lord, and one of those ways is through our dependence upon him as we express that dependence in prayer.

So Peter makes his appeal, he says Judas is gone, his office is vacated, it needs to be filled.

So what are we gonna do about that? Well, verses 21 and following,

Peter lays out some guidelines. He says we need to find someone who has been with us since the beginning of Jesus' public ministry.

And then they came in verse 23 to the point of appointing two different individuals, Joseph Barsavus, surname

Justice, and Matthias. So they've got these two individuals. Which one?

This isn't a popularity contest. He didn't ask, which one do you like better to the crowd in the upper room?

Which one do you think will have the more charismatic, effective ministry as an apostle?

He didn't go that route. They didn't go that route. What did they do? They submitted the question to the

Lord in prayer and thereby expressed submission as they depended upon him.

We see this in verse 24. They prayed and said, thou Lord which knowest the hearts of all men, show which of these two you have chosen.

So they recognize that, and we need to as well, our abilities are limited.

We can only do so much. We can understand the scripture, we can apply the scripture, we can know what the scripture requires of us.

But there comes a place where we also have to submit to the Lord in the working out of the details of that scripture.

Which of the two? Show us which of the two we should, you have chosen.

So we express our submission through dependence in prayer. Then we express our submission through confidence in God's sovereignty.

Through confidence in God's sovereignty. How did the disciples do this?

It's at the end of verse 24. They have these two individuals set up, but then they say,

Lord show us which one you have chosen. So they recognize that God in his sovereignty already had

Judas' replacement picked out. Already had that in mind. What we want to do is we want to submit ourselves to that sovereign choice of our

God. So the prayer on the part of these disciples was not a prayer for God to make a decision, but for God to reveal what he had already chosen ahead of time.

We express our submission through dependence in prayer. We express our submission through confidence in God's sovereignty.

And then we express our submission by accepting God's expressed will. And this is exactly what they did in verse 26.

They prayed, and then they gave forth their lots. And the lot fell upon Matthias.

That lot, as it was cast, pointed to Matthias. And what did they do?

They numbered Matthias with the 11 apostles. He became apostle number 12.

So the ministry of waiting requires obedience. It requires of us this submissive spirit.

It requires that we focus on the word. And it requires of us to be spiritually united around the things of the

Lord. So as we continue to wait to come out of this in -between time, and you can talk about it being the in -between time of March 15th to when everything is back to normal, or we can talk about it from the in -between time of Christ's ascension to the promise of his coming.

Whatever the case, as we continue to wait, we do so ministering unto the

Lord, ministering through unity as God's people, through loving, faith -filled obedience to our

Lord Jesus, focusing on the word, and humbly submitting ourselves to the will of our

God. May we do so. Let's pray. So our

Father and our God, we do thank you today for this passage of scripture which gives us not only guidance for times of waiting, but it gives us encouragement that those times of waiting can be useful, productive, they can be beneficial to one another, and they can be used for your glory to bring about your purposes even in the meantime.

So may we be a people who wait well. This we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

I'd just like to close with the hymn on the back of the last page of the song sheet that you got when you came in, you came together today.

Take My Life, we'll sing the first and the last stanzas. Take My Life and Let It Be.

All right, together. ♪ Take my life and let it be consecrated also ♪ ♪

Take my life and let it be consecrated also ♪

Let's go ahead and begin the Lord's day and enjoy the sunshine and all, and get some rest and refreshment.

This is what the Lord would have us to do on the day of rest, the day of set aside to worship and to serve him.

And I trust the remainder of the day will be a great blessing to you as well.

Let's be dismissed in prayer. And now, O Lord, may your peace rule our hearts.

May your grace supply our every need. May your mercy grant forgiveness.

May you be with us as we go our separate ways. May you bring us back together again by your grace on the

Lord's day. And may we also have the grace to wait well.

We pray in Jesus' name, amen. All right, Lord bless you. You are dismissed.