I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Acts 1-3.

    I want to start by making a comment on my title. The Book of Acts (also known as the Acts of the Apostles) is really just a continuation of Luke’s first book, “The Gospel of According to Luke”. By writing this book Luke tells us that he thinks we need to know more than just what Jesus said and did. We need to see how those who had seen those things first hand applied them.
    After Jesus ascended into Heaven, the remaining disciples regularly gathered for prayer and worship. At one of these gatherings Peter proposed that they needed to select someone to take Judas Iscariot’s place among the Twelve. Those gathered agreed with Peter and nominated two men. They chose between the two men by “casting the lot”. In this way they allowed the Holy Spirit final say in choosing Judas’ successor. There was a time when congregations in the Mennonite Church selected their pastors in this manner, and while there were flaws in the system I think it provided for a better system than our current one where we select our pastors from among those who seek the position.

    I firmly believe that Peter selected the time he did to propose replacing Judas because most, if not all, of the remaining disciples were present. By Luke’s count that means there were around 120 such disciples who chose to continue to pursue following Jesus’ teachings. That is not a very large number to start a religious movement. I was going to go a different direction when something very significant struck me about those 120 believers. “They all met together and were united in prayer.” Right there Luke tells us something important about this small group. First, they all met together on a regular basis. Second, they were united in prayer. I know that I do not pray enough. Even worse, I do not pray enough with other believers. This small group of believers had lost their leader. All most people knew about them was that He had been executed by the Roman authorities. Then, all of sudden something changed. The Holy Spirit descended upon them and 3,000 people joined their group in one day. They did so, at least in part, in response to Peter’s sermon. Peter did not cut them any slack in that sermon, “you nailed him to a cross and killed him.”
    So, the lessons I take from this: we need to meet regularly and pray, we need to rely on the power of the Holy Spirit to make change, and we need to not sugarcoat the sins our audience (or ourselves) have committed.