the book of Acts Week 2 | February 23, 2025

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, good morning everyone. How's everyone doing. Thanks for being
here this second week of our sermon series exploring the
Book of Acts together. My name is Jared, one of
the pastors. Here on your table, there are contact cards.
I would love to know what's going on in your life,
how I can be praying for you. So be sure
you either talk to me today at some point let
me know what's going on with you, or fill out

(00:20):
a contact card so I know how to best shepherd
you in this season of life. Last week we launched
a sermon series covering the Book of Acts, and as
we did that, in the first eleven verses of Acts,
Chapter one, we discovered two main ideas. First, we noted
that God has given us everything that we need in
order to know and follow Him. Everything that we need

(00:40):
to know and follow Jesus we've been given by the
Holy Spirit. And second, we explore this idea that we
all have parts of our spiritual journey where God says
to us wait this morning. We're going to continue to
zoom in on this second idea by exploring what the
disciples did together as they were waiting for the promised

(01:00):
Holy Spirit to come in their waiting, We're going to
see how they navigated the temptation towards disunity and what
they specifically did in order to be unified together. So
disunity and unity, these are the two themes that are
going to sort of serve as an outline for us
together as we're exploring the second half of Acts chapter one.

(01:23):
How was the early church tempted towards disunity and what
did they do to pursue a unified life with each other.
That's what we're examining together in this second week of
the Book of Acts. So I was preparing to do that.
Let's first pause and let's pray together. So Heavenly Father,
thank you for each and every person in this room today.

(01:47):
Thank you for the people in this broader community. Lord,
we know that you are the creator of the author
and giver of life. You sustain us in this moment.
Teach us to have a longing for your kingdom and
to work not just as individuals, but to get the other,
as a spiritual community, as a greater city, even as
a nation. For us to pursue Your kingdom. Lord, we

(02:08):
do not put our hope in anything but the kingship
of You, Lord Jesus. So teach us to have hearts
that are tuned in to your rule and reign, submitting
ourselves to you. We love you, we need you. It's
in your precious and holy name we pray Amen. So first,
let's explore some of the ways that the disciples were

(02:28):
tempted towards potential disunity. What was happening that could be
straining their relationships with each other. First of all, the
example that's certainly the most obvious in our text today
is that of Judas. Verse fifteen. We read in those days,
Peter stood up among the believers, a group numbering about

(02:50):
one hundred and twenty, and said, brothers and sisters, the
scripture had to be fulfilled in which the Holy Spirit
spoke long ago through David, concerning Judas, who served as
guide for those who arrested Jesus. He was one of
our number. He shared in our ministry, the fact that
Judas was one of them, that he was one of

(03:14):
the twelve disciples who was closest to Jesus. The fact
that the apostles knew this man very well, they had
spent nearly three years with them, but none of them
picked up on the truth that this man was a traitor.
This fact had to have shaken their confidence with regards
to each other, like who what else am I not

(03:37):
noticing about these people? That might be true? These people
I thought I knew very well? Who else is hiding something?
What am I missing? Can they really be trusted? As
we see in Matthew Chapter twenty, it was only a
few weeks ago, at this point in time, that James

(03:57):
and John approached Jesus and said, Hey, when you bring
your kingdom in, can we have the places of honor
at your left and right hand? That was a week
ago that this happened. This self senered request caused a
huge amount of tension among the apostles. Matthew, twenty twenty four.
We read when the ten other disciples heard what James
and John had asked, they were indignant. This memory was

(04:23):
certainly fresh in their mind. Was that tension resurfacing in
the light of judas betrayal? Were people taking a hard
look at James and John? In the description of Jesus's
apostles in verse thirteen, we see another picture of potential division.
And I've pointed this out before, but I think it's

(04:45):
worth repeating here. Within Jesus's inner circle of twelve Apostles,
we find a man named Simon the Zealot and a
man named Matthew who is a tax collector for the
Roman Empire. This easy to miss detail when we're reading
has huge relational undertones. You see, during the time of Christ,
the nation of Israel was under Roman occupation. They'd been

(05:07):
conquered by the Roman Empire, and one of the distinct
characteristics of being occupied by Rome was being under a
heavy system of taxation. This is how Rome funded its
war chests for conquering new nations, this is how they
squashed rebellions. It was through taxation. And to collect these taxes,
Rome Wan empower a few local people to be tax collectors,

(05:32):
and these individuals were considered like scum of their own people.
They were not well thought of. Instead of hating and
resisting the Roman occupation, tax collectors were actively helping the
Romans to oppress their own nation by gathering taxes for Rome. Sadly,

(05:52):
the Romans, they didn't generally struggle to find people to
fill these roles. People were very willing because they would
get very rich lining their own pockets being a tax collector.
See In addition to collecting the tribute from Rome. They
are also permitted to take an additional tax for themselves.
They even had Roman soldiers at their disposal to help

(06:13):
them collect these taxes. To be a tax collector was
to willingly betray your own people, so you could not
only sort of avoid the suffering associated with being occupied,
but you could become rich off the backs of your
own own kinsmen, own people. Jesus himself gives very clear

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insight into the shameful character of a tax collector in
Matthew eighteen fifteen through seventeen. These are the words of Christ.
If another believer sins against you, go privately and point
out the offense. The other person listens and confesses it,
you've won that person back. But if you're unsuccessful, take
one or two others with you and go back again,
so that everything you say may be confirmed by two
or three witnesses. If the person still refuses to listen,

(06:57):
take your case to the church. Then if he or
she won't accept the church's decision, treat that person as
a pagan or a tax collector. According to Jesus, tax
collectors because of their greed and self senterness. They're sort
of on the outside looking in, so How remarkable is

(07:17):
it that one of Jesus's closest friends, one of the Twelve,
was a tax collector for the Roman Empire, Matthew. But
even more remarkable is at the exact same time another
one of his apostles was called a zealot. See, zealots
couldn't be any more different than a tax collector. They're

(07:39):
on the opposite end of the spectrum. They were so
devoted to the Old Testament law and the set apart
nature of the Jewish nation that they believed that paying
taxes to the Romans was the same thing as idolatry,
because it's say, violently oppose Roman occupation. Their goal was
to incite a rebellion overthrowing the occupation of his by

(08:00):
violence and force if necessary. Zealous were notorious for assaulting
Roman soldiers, even for killing their fellow Jews that they
considered to be collaborators. Zealots were typically not well thought
of either, because they typically just made things worse for everyone.

(08:21):
So you can imagine the tension that existed within Jesus's
own group of followers, his closest twelve. The one extreme,
there's Simon the Zealot, a person who violently and militarily
opposed Roman rule. I would rather die than to pay
a nickel to Rome. And the other extreme, there's Matthew,
the tax collector, who has maybe been at Simon's doorstep

(08:45):
before saying pay up Rome. You have these two people
living in close quarters with each other. There's probably a
lot of fights, a lot of arguments that scripture just
doesn't document for us. Were these tensions, these arguments resurfacing
in the middle of this stressful and confusing season of

(09:06):
Jesus's death and apparent resurrection. We're Simon and Matthew triggered
by each other even more because of all that's been happening.
What had the last Lee week looked like for them
in terms of their relational unity, their conversations? Excuse question?

(09:29):
So I was just in jail read and when I
got in jail that uh huh. Two, I know what
I read and what's really going on? Okay? Starting it
said with Jesus blind may not He asked me, and

(09:53):
he said, what do you see? He said, I see
people that fall around look like Indeed, he said, okay
again he's and I would love to talk to you after.
Can let me continue this and then afterwards, let's let's
have a conversation. How's that is that? Okay? I would

(10:17):
love to help you to clear up that confusion just
after services that okay, Well, no worries man, okay. So
in our text furthermore, we see a picture of relational tension.
We see the temptation he divided uh. In the description

(10:38):
of who is with the the the apostles as well,
verse thirteen says those present were Peter, John James and
Andrew Phillip and Thomas Bartholomew and Matthew James, the son
of Alpheus, Simon the Zealot, Judas, son of James, along
with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and
his brothers, Jesus' brothers. Something it's easy for us to

(11:02):
overlook here in this description is that Jesus's brothers did
not believe in him during his ministry. We read this
in John chapter seven, Verses one through five. Jesus went
around in Galilee. He did not want to go about
in Judea because the Jewish leaders there were looking for
a way to kill him. But when the Jewish festival
of Tabernacles was near, Jesus's brother said him leave Galilee.

(11:24):
Go to Judea so that your disciples there may see
the works that you do. No one who wants to
become a public figure acts in secret. Since you're doing
these things, show yourself to the world. This is a
sarcastic request, it says, for even his own brothers did
not believe in him. So jesus brothers sort of like
egging him on a little bit here, No doubt. The

(11:44):
Apostles were grateful that people were starting to respond to
the gospel, no doubt, But more than likely they are
also probably a bit skeptical of Jesus's brothers. Now you
witness a lot of his miracles while he was alive.
So why are you leaving? Now? Are you a wolf
in sheep's clothing? Do you have ulterior motives? The Apostles

(12:07):
probably had some of their own hard feelings against these people.
We were with Jesus the entire time, and you weren't.
You mocked him, You mocked us, and now you want
to show up and just like everything's good seintext. We
aren't told explicitly if there was relational tension there among
Jesus's followers. We aren't told explicitly if that's true, but

(12:29):
we can easily imagine how the potential for disagreement and
disunity would have been present by considering our own lives,
we can imagine the supercharged emotion that these people were
feeling in the midst of all that had happened over
the past week. Even the fact that there's only eleven
apostles at this point in time, this symbolically showed that

(12:51):
they were fractured and disunified. As theologian F. F. Bruce describes,
that the total of twelve apostles was significant. It courus
responded to the number of tribes of Israel. It marked
them out as leaders of the new Israel. So Jesus,
through his ministries, through his life, his death, his resurrection,
he was ushering in God's kingdom a new Israel. By

(13:14):
his own words, he didn't come to abolish the law
or the Old Testament witness. He came to fulfill it.
And his death and resurrection was a culmination of everything
that God has been doing with his people, through his people,
for his people. With this point in their present form,
the apostles could not be effective witnesses of the redemption
and the wholeness of God's kingdom, because in their own

(13:35):
number they didn't represent the fullness of Israel. By only
having eleven members, they were incomplete. They were a remnant.
This is why we see Peter saying in verse twenty one,
it's necessary to choose one of the men who had
been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus was
living among us, beginning from John's baptism to the time
when Jesus was taken up from us, for one of

(13:56):
those must become a witness with us of his resurrection.
As a group, they weren't whole. They were fractured. They
were disunified, as in these descriptions of disunity that I
want us to consider ourselves this morning, especially in light

(14:17):
of everything that's happening in our country right now, the
current political climate that Jake alluded to. Here in this room,
we have vastly different ideas regarding rightness in the public
are in the public arena, how justice should be pursued,
what government should and should not do. We live in
a very divided country, and as a church we are

(14:37):
certainly not immune to that. Here in this room, there
are people with very conservative leaning ideas, there are progressives
and more liberal people there are moderates. There are those
who are informed and very active politically. There are those
who are unaffiliated and frankly unconcerned. There are things happening

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within the landscape of education, both nationally and locally, that
have some people very concerned strong feelings about that. There's
the ongoing immigration debate that it's very close to home
to some people. There's the idea of government waste versus
public assistance. See just like Simon the Zealot and Matthew
the tax collector, undoubtedly all of us sitting in this

(15:21):
room do not share the exact same opinions and ideas
when it comes to the best way of navigating everything
that's facing our country right now. In many ways, we
face the exact same temptation to be disunified, to be fractured,
to be at odds with each other, to not be
a picture of the wholeness and redemption of God's kingdom.

(15:44):
And that's just politically speaking. We also have very different
theological ideas right at our core. We're a melting pot
of a lot of different faith traditions. In this room.
There are people who grew up Baptists or people who
grew up Methodists, people who grew up luth Catholic. There
are some people who didn't grow up in the church
at all that came the faith later in life. There

(16:06):
are many many minor theological beliefs that we could differ
on here in this room, things that we could easily
divide over, things that we've seen the historical church divide over. See,
our world is much different than the world of the
early Church, but in many ways we face the same hurdles.
We face the same temptations, the same pitfalls. There are

(16:30):
plenty of reasons for us not to be unified here
in this room. There are plenty ways that if we're
not vigilant, we could experience fracturing and incompleteness with regards
to our spiritual community. But thankfully, we do not see
a picture of disunity in our texts, and I do
not see a picture of disunity here in this church.

(16:53):
So that being said, let's now shift our focus one
hundred and eighty degrees. Let's now consider the unity that
we see in our passage today. Verse twelve. Then the
apostles returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount
of Olive, a Sabbath day's walk from the city when
they arrived, they went upstairs through the room where they
were staying. Those present were Peter, John James, and Andrew

(17:13):
Philip and Thomas Bartholomew, and Matthew James, son of Alpheus,
and Simon the Zeala Judas, son of James the different
Judas verse fourteen. They all joined together constantly in prayer.
They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the
women and marry the mother of Jesus and with his brothers.

(17:36):
So some commentators speculate, but it's not necessarily certain that
the upper room where the disciples are staying here is
This may have been the exact same place that Jesus
Ate the Last suffer with his apostles. This may have
been the same room that Jesus washed his disciples feet,
where he spoke to them about his kingdom, the same
place where we read in Matthew twenty six that they prayed,

(17:57):
they sang a hymn together before they went out, in
Jesus would be betrayed arrested. This may have been the
same spot. Regardless of the exact geographic location, we are
told in the text that they all join constantly together
in prayer. See the apostles. Even in the middle of
the relational tension, they remembered the instructions of Christ. During

(18:19):
the moments leading up to his death, they were unified
in the ways that they could be. We read Jesus
praying this with his disciples and John seventeen, only days
before he would die. Holy Father, you've given me your name.
Now protect them by the power of your name, so
they'll be united just as we are. I pray that
my followers will all be one, just as you and

(18:39):
I are one, as you are in me, Father, and
I am in you. And may they be in us,
so that the world will believe you sent me. See,
in a lot of ways, disciples didn't know what else
to do, So when they're waiting for the Holy Spirit
to come, they did what they could do. They prayed
together in unity. In fact, as we'll see as we

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study the Book of Acts together, almost every important crescendo
of God's redemptive action throughout this book is accompanied by
his followers praying. In regards to this observation, theologian M. M.
Turner says the following this portrayal of prayer is never
in danger of suggesting that the true initiative in salvation
history lies in believers in their determination to pray. God

(19:28):
is only fulfilling what he longed before promised without answering
questions of cause and effect. This fact gives us a
unified picture of the close relationship between prayer and God's
decisive acts of salvation. In other words, throughout acts, what
we see as a very unified picture of God's purposes
and his followers requests, like what God is doing and

(19:51):
what his disciples are requesting, we see a strong unity
there from chapter to chapter, including our text today, the
disciples are showing that their hearts are tuned in into
God's mission by the way that they are unified in
prayer regarding that mission. They aren't causing the Lord to
do anything through prayer. They're joining with God and what

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he's already busy doing. They're not exerting power over the Lord.
They're actually showing submission to his kingdom by saying, we
know this is what your kingdom is like, and so
we're joining with you. We're unifying in prayer towards this
and it's here that I want us to invite us
to see ourselves as a church. Over the past year

(20:35):
One of the things I've been doing is meeting with
other local churches to discuss how we can work together
to better serve and love the youth of the Near
east Side. As small, individual churches were often limited in
what we can do, but we've worked together as followers
of Jesus, what we can accomplish greatly increases. Currently, I'm
on a steering committee for what is called the Near
east Side Youth Collaborative. Nearly a dozen churches are working

(20:58):
together having these conversations of what can we do in
our local neighborhood and our local peace of the Near
east Side to just be more present in the life
of youth. It's through these relations that some of our
members here at Indy Metro have been serving together once
a month on Friday evenings by going together Woodriff Place
Christian Church to play and interact with about fifty or

(21:18):
more kids who regularly show up just to play in
their gym. So we play games with the kids, we
serve a meal, we teach a lesson about God's love.
In fact, Hannah, the woman who organizes and runs this program,
just this morning she met with our Sunday Morning missional
community that meets downstairs at nine am. She met with
them to speak about how they can continue to expand

(21:39):
and solidify our involvement with these kids. I've been in
conversations with with Brailin at Eleve, Indy to see if
we can have something regular here for the kids that
they serve board game nights, chest nights. We don't have
a gym, but we have a room. We have a
room that we can hang out with kids and love
on them. Many of you have also noticed my friend
Carrie who's joined us here this morning. She's from Living

(22:02):
Faith Church, which is literally just around the corner on Michigan,
and she's also on the steering committee of the Near
east Side Youth Collaborative, and I've asked her to come
to day to share with you some of the ways
that you can be involved in loving and serving the
youth of this community, ways that we can be united.
So let's welcome Carrie. She comes up to tell us
some things that she's been doing, so let's welcome her.
She come. Yeah, So my encouragement is introduce yourself to Carrie,

(22:30):
ask her questions. Maybe you don't have four point thirty
to six available, but you're still interested. She's creative. She's
a teacher, she has to be, so she has ideas
of how you can continue to get involved in what
they're doing. I also want to say Living Faith has
been a huge blessing to us. They've opened up our
building for a family to have a funeral service there,
so they didn't want to have it in this space,

(22:50):
so that they were reminded every dime that they walked in.
So they graciously opened it up. Hosted that we had
a part of our ceiling fall down, and Cody, the pastor,
as a handy man, He's like, hey, man, I can
help you put that back. So they're awesome people, honest,
awesome ministry partners. I'm glad to call you my friend
and everything. So let's pray for her and then continue
on here. So God, thanks for Cary, for what you're

(23:12):
doing in her heart. Thank you for the kids that
she's serving. Continue to use us to link with them.
Continue to show that the unity of your Kingdom. Although
we're different faith communities, we work together under the same
king the same Kingdom. Lord. So again, yep, thank you
for her, thank you for their work, and send your name,
I pray God. Amen, Let's thank her again. For coming

(23:34):
this morning. So the early church, they were joined together
constantly in prayer. They were unified. When they didn't know
what else to do, they prayed. So as we start
to transition to a time of communion, that's what I
want us to do right now, was preparing to take
the Lord's supper. As we continue to wait on the

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Lord and what he's doing and bringing together various churches
in this area to love and serve the local youth,
I want to spend some time an individual prayer at
our tables. I want us to seek the Lord's purposes
for us as a church, his larger purpose of what
he's doing and bringing together many churches to work together
in this way. So at this point I'll place a
prayer prompt up on the screen. I want you to
spend the next few moments just joining with everyone else

(24:17):
in the room praying for this Pray for the youth
of the near east side, that they would flourish, play,
Pray that they will experience the love of Christ, and
that more and more adults, mentors and positive role models
enter their lives as the local churches join together in unity.
So let's spend the next few moments praying for this.
After that Amy will come up and lead us in communion.
So let's pray together.