30th June 2010

Acts 12-26 – Matthias Chosen to Replace Jesus

• The women return to where the 120 believers were meeting in an upper room to pray together.
• Peter gets up and drashes two scriptures from the Tanakh to work out what to do next… they need to appoint a replacement for Judas.
• So they cast lots.
• Any form of divination was banned by their faith except casting lots. The belief was that God is divine and therefore wherever the lot falls He must have determined.
• This thinking was based on Proverbs 16:33 – “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord”
• Lots were used in this way to determine God’s will in a number of ways;
• the ownership and apportioning of land [num 26:55],
• choosing people for a role [1 Sam 10:20],
• discovering the guilty party [Josh 7:14],
• dividing or distributing people [Job 6:27]
• and the general will of God in a particular matter [Num 27:21].
• So in this passage we see two ways that the disciples work our God’s will.
• One of them is still used today and the other has been superseded by something much better… the Holy Spirit.
• Or has it?
• Although God gave us His Spirit and afterwards the disciples of Jesus never again used casting lots… so many Christians still do.
• God has chosen to meet us where we are at but then moves us gently into a higher, better and more intimate relationship with Him.
• He chose animal sacrifices because as primitive people we would use them and He used something we understood to help us gain a relationship with Him. Then He superseded it with something much better… His Son. Jesus died on the cross because that would make sense to us. We understand sacrifice and the shedding of blood.
• In this case; God used our superstitions, sanctified them and helped us connect with Him in a primitive way to Him. But now there is something far better… His Spirit. His Spirit leads us away from chance; and guessing games and urges us to understand not just His will but His heart and mind.
• But here’s the challenge…
• We still so often want to retain that primitive faith;
• We want to make sacrifices to earn our brownie points with God and trade them to get away with things we should not do or avoid things we should do.
• We want to use ‘fleeces’ and use the Bible as a daily Christian horoscope rather than open up our lives and allow Him to lead us by His Spirit.
• Is God moving me on? Or am I still stuck in my ways? Something to pray about today.