Last Sunday in worship we concluded the first chapter of our study called Acts: Chronicles of the Church. The Book of Acts in our New Testament is a history of the early church. In fact, Acts is pretty much our only history of the earliest years of the church, though we can glean much from the other New Testament writings. I approached the study last Sunday by answering the conventional questions of who, where, when, why, and what. We were reminded that the first chapter of Acts records the time Jesus spent with his followers between his resurrection and his ascension, and the time the followers spent waiting for the coming of the Spirit.

After Jesus' ascension, we saw about 120 believers gathered together in prayer and learning to be of one mind concerning those things of most importance. We watched them select a replacement for Judas and we paid particular attention to the selection process they used. We wondered who was included in the 120 believers besides those named in the text (i.e., in addition to the eleven, the women, and Jesus' family).

We also noted that there was a ten day period between Jesus' ascension and the Spirit's coming. We made an educated guess that one of the reasons the Spirit did not come immediately to the apostles was that they first needed to do some relationship mending. Perhaps they also needed to learn some patient dependence on God.

If you are interested in the history of the nascent church, I hope you will subscribe to our podcasts, or simply listen via your computer. See the Media Section of our website. If you know of someone without internet access, they can request a CD of each week's message from the church office. In addition to what I covered in the Sunday morning teaching segment, here are a few notes from Acts 1:12-26. Specific questions which people have asked have been answered elsewhere on our website; see the Ask a Question button on our Acts page.

v. 12 – the distance from the Mount of Olives to the room where the apostles were staying was a Sabbath's day's walk. This is how far it was acceptable for a faithful Jew to travel on the Sabbath. This does not mean that the apostles arrived in Jerusalem on the Sabbath. In fact, forty days after Easter (1:3) would have been a Thursday.

v. 17 – here we see the pathos of Peter and the other ten, if not of all who traveled with Jesus. We imagine the pain they feel. Judas was one of their own. Judas was also betraying them when he betrayed Jesus. The Apostle Paul would later experience something of this feeling when Demas deserted him. (2 Timothy 4:10).

vv. 18 – There are three basic stories about Judas' fate, two of them in scripture and one in early church records. Luke tells us in Acts that Judas bought a field where he met his death by falling. Matthew, on the other hand, says that the chief priests bought a field and Judas hung himself. Did Judas buy the field or did the chief priests? Did Judas die by hanging or by falling in the field? Some students of the Bible reconcile the accounts by weaving them sequentially into the same story. Judas buys a field, takes his own life, the rope later breaks and he falls injuriously to the ground. The chief priests then purchase the ground and give it to the poor. But other students of the Bible prefer to see the differing accounts as evidence of the Bible's integrity reflecting two different stories that circulated in the years following Jesus crucifixion, and giving two different origins for the burial ground known as the Field of Blood.

vv. 21-22 – Note that the qualifications to serve in this place of distinction in the early church were not education, social standing, family name, or wealth. Whoever was to become "one of the twelve" simply needed to have been with Jesus from the beginning of his ministry through his ascension. The office of an "apostle" as seen in the twelve did not continue in the church, and most of these men do not appear again in the Book of Acts.