Introduction

This morning we're going to start our introduction to this Bible study, Walking in the Spirit, which is subtitled, The First Days of the Last Days, and so I want to explain to you what's up with that subtitle and why we chose that. The last days refers to the time period from when Jesus ascended into heaven and when he will return again. It's also known as the Church Age, but we call it also the last days, and so if the last days were, if you take however long they're going to be, if you were to take them and put them on evenly distributed on a clock face starting at 12 and ending again at 12, we might be able to look at this Bible study and say we're going to study the first 10 seconds of the last days, okay? Roughly the first 10 years that's going to start with Pentecost in chapter 2 next week and end with the Gentiles being saved in Cornelius's house. So the first 10 seconds of the last days and what we want to do ultimately as we study through this is look at that and say Lord what do I find that I can apply to my life which we may well be living right now in the very last 10 seconds of the Church Age? What did we see the Apostles doing? What did we see the believers doing? What adjustments should I make in my life to be in agreement with what we saw at the beginning of the Church Age or at the beginning of the last days? Whenever there are real milestones in history it's usually super packed with information for us. Like for example, creation was a milestone, right? The exodus of the children of Israel out of Egypt was a milestone, the entry into the promised land. There's so much super packed information surrounding those events. The same thing is true of the beginning of the last days, the beginning of the Church Age. And I think this idea of studying the last days got birthed in my heart when we finished that last chapter of 2nd Peter chapter 3 and Peter said knowing this that scoffers will come in the last days following their own sinful desires. And we talked a little bit about then in spring about what last days means. Well when you start your study this week in chapter 2, Peter's going to use that phrase again when he gets up and addresses the people. 2 17 he quotes Joel, the prophet Joel, and he says in the last days God declares I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. You may know, you may remember if you were here for that study of Peter that I really became intrigued with the person of Peter. So even when we were done with our study, I continued to read on my own and study a little bit. And of course if you're going to study the person of Peter, you move right along into Acts. And what I realized is that for me personally, my perspective of Acts has often been the missionary journeys of Paul. I like a lot about Paul, but as you read through it looking for Peter you realize, oh no, what we really have going on here is first Acts and second Acts. We really have Peter and Paul for ten chapters and then we move into then the Apostle Paul gets saved, Saul of Tarsus, and then we have the ministry and the journeys of Paul and Silas and Paul and Barnabas and that sort of thing. So looking at those two players, those two men who make up so much of the activity of the early church, Peter and Paul, they were very, very different characters. Paul was the upper-class, religious, highly educated, type A, deliberate personality before Jesus revealed himself to him and then he stayed. His personality stayed the same even after he got saved. Peter, on the other hand, came from this working-class ethic, the fisherman, a little bit more uneducated, hard worker, impetuous, and Peter responded first to the ministry of John the Baptist so that he was prepared when Jesus came and said, Peter and Andrew, come follow me. His heart had already been prepared for that. Now both of them play a huge role in the first days of the church, but it is Peter who opens the game with the initial scores. We are going to read six of his sermons or addresses to people groups in this Bible study in the first ten chapters. It's Peter over and over again that opens the game. I want to tell you a little story just to make a link with that. A couple years ago, our son Tim played basketball for Ontario High School and Tim had been homeschooled. He had played with a homeschool group, but he had set his vision on playing for public school and so he worked super hard, did it. He, you know, made the team, made the starting lineup, first game preseason game in Caldwell. Ontario High School is playing against Caldwell High School and we're all having a great time. What's not fun about that? Everybody loves a great basketball game, right? And so we're sitting there and the tip off and Tim gets the ball. He takes a couple dribbles and I don't know, he's hardly passed, you know, mid-court and he throws up a three and he makes it. And so the whole, you know, crowd loves it. What's not to love about your team making the opening score, right? And Ontario went on to win that game. Well, a funny little superstition developed over the next eight or nine games and it held true that if you get the ball to Tim at the tip-off and he makes the score, OHS will win. If it doesn't happen that way, they won't. Well, that's another story, but even the coach got into it a little bit more than anybody should have gotten into that superstition. But that night, first Friday of December, we were driving home and I remember it well because it was a snowstorm that just came up out of nowhere. We should have died, all three of us. We were in Paul's little Mazda and it's just that our names weren't on the list for that day. The length of our life was more than that. So God saw what was happening, had to send angels, you know, so that we didn't fly under that semi. But anyway, we were driving on the way home and I told Tim, just being a good mama, you know, like way to go, you know, you got the opening score. And he hung his head down and he shook his head and he goes, that was such a homeschool thing to do. And he wasn't making a slanderous remark about his former basketball playing. What he was saying was he was the most unlikely person on that starting lineup to get the ball and to make the score. And he knew it and everyone knew it. Here's what, here's why I told you the story. I look at Peter, he was the most unlikely person of all of those disciples to grab the ball over and over in the first 10 seconds of that early church life and make the score. I mean, hadn't he just had some terrible experiences denying the Lord? I mean, first uneducated and, you know, he was unlikely. And do you, do you identify with that in your life? Do you sometimes look around and you think, I am the most unlikely person of everybody as I'm looking around my sphere of influence to make a score for the Lord. I'm pretty unlikely. So I told you that whole story so that you may remember that God chooses people. He equips them. Peter had been with Jesus all of that time. He had absorbed his teaching. He was prepared even though he had faced failures. God used those to prepare him. And when the time was right, it's like God just dropped the ball into Peter's hands and he threw it up and he scored and scored and he scored. And so I hope that that's inspiration for us even though we may feel like unlikely candidates to serve the Lord in some ways. I said that we're going to go over Peter's sermons in these next 10 chapters and observe how the Holy Spirit continued to do the work that Jesus had done physically on earth through the Apostles, specifically through Peter. But we're not only interested in the narrative of these 10 chapters, what was happening, what was going on. What we're interested in, like I told you, is how does this inspire us? How does this apply to us in what may be the final 10 seconds of the game? No game is won or lost in those first 10 seconds. It may set a tone for how things go, but it doesn't win or lose the game. We all know that the last 10 seconds are very important and there's often completely different players in that time period. So Peter and Paul, the other Apostles, opened the Church Age, but we are the ones who may be ending it. So if you haven't already opened your Bibles to Acts chapter 1, go ahead and open. We're going to use chapter 1 as our introduction today. Go through the whole chapter so that when you begin your study, you're going to start right in on chapter 2 this week. So we're in Acts chapter 1. I'm just going to start reading in verse 1.

And let's pause right there, because when we start a new book, we want to ask all those questions that help give us a foundation. First question is, who is the author of this book? And it's not stated precisely in here, but there are some clues. The author is Luke, who is that Gentile physician who traveled with Paul. And Luke has the reputation among both conservative and liberal scholars, among the saved and both the unsaved, of being an extremely accurate historian. And so it's a real gift to us today to have these writings, the Gospel of Luke, and then, of course, Acts, knowing that he was an excellent historian. The audience that's told to us here is Theophilus, one man named Theophilus. We don't know a lot about him, so we're not going to spend a lot of time on that. However, we can glean from his name itself. His name means friend of God, or God lover. So this is likely an individual in Luke's life who was interested in God, interested in God's plan for his creation. But we can also see that the Holy Spirit was behind this, because, see, the Spirit was guiding Luke to write this, and then for it to be conveyed in our New Testament. The type of book that we have is a New Testament historical narrative. So we're going to read lots about names and places and dates and times and how things worked out. And there's one other thing that might not be obvious to you as you open up your ESV or your NIV or your New King James Bible, because they're all translated into English. But the other thing that's interesting about Acts and how Luke wrote Acts is the style that he chose. Now, we're all educated women, and we can make choices in our style of writing. If our daughter is getting married, we may choose a very formal writing and write a invitation that says, the honor of your presence is requested at the marriage of our daughter, so-and-so. Write very formal, okay? We can choose to write in a very loving way. Aunt Mary, I can't even tell you how great it was to see you at the family reunion. It's been too many years. You look awesome. We can write that way. We can even text and not use full words. And that sort of thing. We have choices on our style of how we convey information. Well, so did Luke, because he was an educated man. He had choices on the style that he chose. And he chose to write in the style of the Greek Old Testament. Now, you say to yourself, the Old Testament was written in Hebrew. What are you saying, the Greek Old Testament? Well, a few hundred years before Luke came on the scene, the Old Testament, written in Hebrew, had been translated into Greek because Alexander the Great had spread the Greek-speaking language throughout much of this area. And in fact, many of the Jews by this time were Greek-speaking. So it was called the Septuagint. Luke had access to that. Luke wrote this book, what you're going to study, in the same style as that Greek Old Testament, as if to proclaim, as you read about creation and the law given and the prophets and the prophecies, this is the continuing story. This is the fulfillment of everything that you have read about in the Old Testament. So I think that that's kind of sweet that the Holy Spirit inspired Luke to use that style. All right, so back to verse one. Luke tells his friend that his first book, the Gospel of Luke, chronicled all that Jesus began to do and to teach. And now he's going to express in this work what Jesus continued to do and to teach. He doesn't say that, but by implication, I already told you what Jesus began. Now we're going to look at what Jesus continued to do and teach. And that's something for us to keep in mind as we read this, because we may perceive this book to be the acts of the apostles. Your Bible might even say the acts of the apostles, but what Luke is conveying is that this is really the acts of the Holy Spirit through the apostles and through the followers, the acts of Jesus. This is what Jesus continued to do through his spirit, through his followers, and right up to this day, right?

So Jesus' instructions are clear. Number one, stay right here, which may not have been a normal thing for them to think of to do. They didn't live in Jerusalem, remember? Peter, especially, he was a fisherman from up in the Galilee area, Capernaum. And so it would have been natural for him to go back, but Jesus' instructions, stay right here. You must stay in Jerusalem. And the other instruction is wait. Wait for the promise that I talked to you about. You're going to be baptized with the Holy Spirit. You're going to be baptized, not like John's baptism, but what I talked to you about previously. So having those instructions, the disciples had the instructions about place and about purpose, so they naturally now ask an irrelevant question about timing. Look at verse six. "Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" It's kind of like you take your seven-year-old and you look at them and you say, "Would you set the table for dinner? We'll need plates, forks, and knives." And they look at you and say, "But I don't have clean jeans for tomorrow." And you're thinking, okay, well, that's a thing, but that's not what we're talking about right here. But the disciples were interested in what they were interested in, what they had on their mind, what came naturally to them. But Jesus is very nice in verse seven. He says to them, okay, well, it's not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority, but if we can get back to what I'm talking about, he says in verse eight,

And so verse eight probably gets the nomination for maybe first or second most important verse in this whole book. It sets the tone. It tells us exactly what we are looking for here. Jesus told them what would happen to them as they waited for the promise of the Father, that they would be immersed in the Holy Spirit. And he told them what the purpose of that would be. And the purpose was power to be a witness. So power and witness are two words that you're gonna encounter multiple times in this Bible study, and it is the focus. If we were to take our minds and try really hard to listen, like that seven-year-old could try really hard to listen to mom, what's important to her? Plates, forks, and knives. That's what's on her mind, so that's what I should be thinking about, not what jeans I'm gonna be wearing tomorrow. But the disciples were interested in what naturally interested them. And what naturally interested them was, are you gonna make the image of Israel a little bit better now, the image of the Jews? Are you gonna help throw off the weight of Rome? Are you gonna make our life more comfortable? Is this the time? That's what we're interested in. And that's what naturally interested them. I think about that, and I think, I am just like them. I am just like the disciples. There are things that naturally interest me. I'm naturally interested in what you think about me that interests me. I am naturally interested in my comfort. I'm naturally interested in not being persecuted any longer or at all. I'm interested in my relationships, my to-do list, what food I'm going to eat, anything I find on Pinterest. Those are the things that naturally interest me. I'm not naturally interested in power to be a witness of Jesus Christ. I'm not naturally interested in prayer. That doesn't come natural. Those things are super natural. Now, when I use that word, don't kind of think, oh, she's talking supernatural. It's gonna get weird any minute now. I mean, as opposed to natural. Do you see what I'm saying? The natural man is interested in what affects his life, what touches him. But God, by the spirit, brings a new dynamic into our life. Through the supernatural now, these disciples, in a few days, in just 10 days, they are going to have the possibility to be interested in the kingdom of God because God is going to baptize them with the Holy Spirit, which will bring power to be his witnesses. they are going to be changed. I hope we also are changed through just reading this and recognizing this, knowing in our own heart, like I just confessed to you what naturally interests me, that we can say, oh Lord, I see you have more work to do in my life, so that by the supernatural power of your spirit, you will come and make me listen to you and what's on your mind. So you don't have to turn there, but I want to remind you of some things in the Gospel of John, which we've studied before, that Jesus told these same disciples the night after they had the Last Supper, and they were on their way from the upper room into the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus was telling them all these same things. He goes, don't let your hearts be troubled. It's gonna be okay. I'm gonna leave you. I'm gonna go and prepare a place for you. There's many rooms in my father's house, but don't be troubled. And he says, if you believe in me, anyone who believes in me will do the works that I do. What did Luke tell his friend? I told you the works that Jesus began to do and teach, and now we're gonna see what he continued to do. And then Jesus told him that night, he said, ask anything in my name, anything, and I'll do it. I'll ask the Father, and he's going to send you the Comforter, the Helper, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus. And all those terms are interchangeable. If throughout the course of this study, I say the Spirit of Jesus or the Holy Spirit, it's the same thing, okay? We're talking about the same thing. So these words now that Jesus is expressing to them now in Acts 1 are a reminder of the things he told them 40 days before, after the Last Supper. And verse nine tells us that, and when he said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight. Now, if you're like me, maybe you've read that verse a hundred times over your life, and it seems like a narrative. Oh, okay, so Jesus went up. I want you to take 30 seconds and just think about it. Think about being there. Think about being a disciple. You're talking to Jesus. He told you, wait, don't go anywhere. You're gonna get power to be my witnesses. And then he just starts rising up into the air. Is that something you've ever witnessed before? Of course not. Can you imagine? It was so incredible. And they're standing and just like looking up. And then the next verse tells us, and while they were gazing into heaven, as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes and said, men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus who has taken up from you into heaven will come again in the same way as you saw him go into heaven. So it gets more supernatural. Now we have angels on the scene talking to them, giving them more information, which is awesome for us to know that we now know that Jesus is going to come back in the same way that he left. But think about these men. Think about the eyewitnesses, not only to the life of Jesus, John's baptism, the teachings, the crucifixion, the resurrection, but eyewitnesses to his ascension. We believe, we believe these things because we have our Bibles. They knew it. They knew those things because they were standing there. God fashioned it in such a way that he chose these men to be eyewitnesses and know these things. Why is that important to us? Because most of these same men wrote most of our New Testament. And this is important for us to remember that our New Testament was written by eyewitnesses that knew it because they were there and they watched it. It wasn't a fabrication written by somebody that was making up stories. And then the Holy Spirit made the transmission of the word that was written go through these 2,000 years until we sit here in such a leisurely manner and read our New Testament and have these accounts that we can study and realize. It's quite amazing, quite amazing to think about what God allowed these men to see and experience and convey to the entire last days, the entire church age. Let's keep going on verse 12. And then they returned to Jerusalem from the Mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day journey away. And when they had entered, they went up to the prayer room where they were staying and Peter, now watch how Luke's accuracy here. Peter, John, James, Andrew, and Philip, and Thomas, Bartholomew, Matthew, James, the son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas, the son of James. He's very detailed, isn't he? Names them all. All of these with one accord were, watch these four words, devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and his brothers. Now, that phrase, devoting themselves to prayer, this is what they did for the 10 days that they were waiting. Of course, they didn't know it was gonna be 10 days. They were simply waiting. We know, looking on the other side, that they had 10 days to wait, but they were devoting themselves to prayer. I want you to think back on what you know about the gospel accounts. How much of the time did you see the disciples devoting themselves to prayer through the gospels? I can't think of much. We hear about Jesus all the time, going off in the early time, removing himself from the masses and being alone with his father, but the disciples, not so much. Isn't it fascinating that now, before we got to Acts 1, Jesus had breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was inside of them, and now they had something new that caused them to be interested in something that they weren't interested in all those years, really, with Jesus, and they were devoting themselves to prayer. I hope that the Lord will stir up within us, that that's something he will stir up within us over the course of this Bible study, that we will become more devoted to prayer. I've been asking the Lord almost every time I pray nowadays. Lord, would you teach me to pray? Because I feel like I just don't even know. You know, do you find that the more, the deeper you get into something, the less you think, like, I never knew anything about this, you know? So Lord, teach us to pray. 13 times over this Bible study, we're going to see them praying together, and we're going to see the Spirit of God teach them how to pray. Well, verse 15 tells us, in those days, Peter has the basketball. Peter stood up among the brothers, and it says, parenthetically, the company of persons was in all about 120, and that's really a fascinating little remark because according to kind of the Jewish rules of the day, they needed 120 people to make a new community. And so, isn't it interesting that Luke writes in there that there was 120 of them? So, good to go. You can make a new community here. And verse, we're going to kind of skim through this last section, but verse 16, here's what Peter had to say. He's telling everybody, well, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David concerning Judas. Verse 20, he said, it's written in the book of Psalms, may his camp become desolate, and there be no one to dwell in it, and let another take his office. He's talking about replacing Judas. And Peter proposed in verse 21 that one of the men who had been with them from the beginning, from the baptism of John until this day when he was taken up, that they must become with us a witness of the resurrection. I think that was an important perspective. I think that that was a good thing that Peter was doing. And so verse 23, they put forward Joseph and Matthias. Now, I want to kind of condense this down and just make a few bullet points about this experience here. The first sermon that Peter gives to the 120 people, he has this on his mind, that there should be an eyewitness that had been with them from the beginning to replace Judas, who was gone. And so they pray, they cast lots between Joseph and Matthias. Matthias won. Now, perhaps casting lots wasn't the best idea that they ever had. But even though the Holy Spirit was indwelling them, they had not yet been empowered by the Holy Spirit to have the spiritual gifts and the discernment. Perhaps the Lord would have had them do something different. Perhaps the apostle Paul should have been that 12th apostle. But here's what I want to say about it, because I don't know, and Luke doesn't tell us. But here's what it means to me. Perhaps Peter was hasty. Perhaps they didn't need to do that. But perhaps Matthias was a good witness. We just don't know anything. We never hear a thing about him in scripture. Maybe he was a great eyewitness. Maybe he too died a martyr's death. Maybe he affected a lot for the kingdom. Perhaps the apostle Paul was supposed to be that, and they were supposed to wait. Here's the deal. He was anyway. I mean, God had his way anyway, and we. see the Apostle Paul certainly as one of those major apostles. Here's what it means to me. If my heart's in the right place, and I see something that I think that needs to be done, and I pray about it, and I make a decision and I go for it, just trust the Lord. Just trust the Lord with it. He's gonna have his way anyway. And God's grace covers these decisions, and it covers this. So that's just kind of what I wanted to say about that first decision that they made together. But your study now is going to begin in chapter two with the words, when the day of Pentecost arrived. Again, they had to wait 10 days for this. They didn't know what was happening, but once the day of Pentecost came, and the Spirit came to empower them to do what Jesus told them it was gonna do, give them power to be witnesses for Jesus, their lives would never be the same again. These, all these disciples would be changed, and the believers would now begin to see life through the lens of the Holy Spirit. Here's my prayer for our eight weeks. I pray that we will in some fresh way, some fresh way in each of our lives, begin to see the context of our lives differently through the lens of the Holy Spirit. Because why study the Bible if it doesn't change you? We don't study for information, we study for transformation. And so, if the Lord would transform each of us just a little bit more over the next eight weeks, so that we would now see things through the lens of the Holy Spirit, I would be very happy. I read this summer, I read a quote that said, talked about how much influence we have over people, and this research said that even the most introverted person affects 10,000 people over the course of their life. Now, that's just a quote that I read. So, I don't know, I'm just gonna go with it here a little bit. So think about it, even the most introverted person affects 10,000 people over the course of their life. We'll have about 100 plus women over all of our different study groups studying this passage over the next eight weeks. Let's say on average our lives are half over. Does that depress you? But I'm just gonna go with it, okay? So let's just say that we will only affect 5,000 people yet to come, okay? I love math, so 5,000 people, 100 women. If you move your little zeros in the right places, that's half a million. That is half a million people that we, devoting ourselves to the study of these 10 chapters, devoting ourselves to prayer, have the opportunity to affect over the course of our lifetime. Now, if Jesus comes back, that's cut short, but we're not responsible for anything that didn't happen once he comes back. So that's all okay. But that's my hope is that this would, so as you go through your study guide, you're going to see these applications. What did we see in the first days that applies to our last days? So I would just invite you to really just join me in praying that, Lord, make this useful. Make this study useful. Change me in some way. For me, I admitted to you the things that I'm naturally interested in. I'm not naturally interested in the kingdom, but God, does that work in my heart? That is the spirit that you see coming out in me because I'm a pill down deep. So if you see good things come out, then that's the Lord coming out. And maybe you can feel the same way on some of those things. So I'm going to pray for us right now that the Lord would do a work. Father, we just want to commit these eight weeks and the study of these scriptures to you. Lord, we are all very ill-equipped, just like the Apostle Peter was. Well, I shouldn't say ill-equipped. You equipped him, Lord. He was unlikely, and we all feel very unlikely to do any great work for your kingdom. But Lord, we see that you choose people who are unlikely. And so Lord, we just stand here in a sense of willingness to be used by you, Lord, in any way that you choose. And Lord, we ask that you would do a work in our hearts as we study the impact of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, as we study, Lord, how you empower, how you desire to empower us to be your witnesses. Lord, we just stand with open hands and say that we desire to be used by you, and we desire the work of the Spirit in our lives so that we have supernatural eyes to see the same things that you see and the things that interest you, Lord God. So I pray for each of these ladies that are here in this group. Lord, would you help us to carve out that time to be reading and studying and praying and devoting ourselves to that, Lord, and help us to arrive back here safely the next week and to be able to dialogue together. We pray these things in Jesus's name, amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, thank you, Lord. Amen. Thank you, God, for everything you've offered during your last years and your whole life. Lord, we thank you for Mercy on Life, for remembrance of works done by patients and for a response by our friends. Thank you. Thank you.