Choosing People For Completing The Mission Series

Choosing People for Completing the Mission

Acts 1:12 - 26

Last week we began a series that I am calling “Completing the Mission that Jesus Began”

The mission we are to complete is to seek out people who are not believers yet and lead them to faith in Christ.

The Power for the Mission comes from the Holy Spirit who lives in every Believer.

The Motivation for Completing the Mission, comes from the fact that Jesus is coming back!

Read Acts 1:12 – 26

There are some important principles we need to learn from this historical narrative that are applicable to our lives and this church.

1. God Completes the Mission through people.

2. God calls people through the church.

3. God blesses those that surrender to Complete the Mission.

1. God completes the Mission through people.

It's a marvelous thing to realize that God works His will through people. He is in the process today of completing the Mission that Jesus began and He is doing it through people just like you.

For the most part God does not use overly supernatural means to complete the mission, but rather works through ordinary people.

Ill. God doesn’t send an angel to Time Square to announce to all the people that Jesus is the only way to be saved. God doesn’t speak in an audible voice so that everyone in the world can hear and say I love you.

God doesn’t write in fiery letters in the sky that we need to repent from our sins and put faith in Jesus.

God just uses people like you and me to show the world how much he cares and to tell them how to be saved from the consequences of their sin.

Ill. In the Old Testament when God wanted to deliver Israel from their enemy, the (Judges 6:11) Midianites used an ordinary person named Gideon. What was the battle cry that God gave Gideon’s army of 300? "the sword of the Lord and of Gideon." In other words, it wasn't just the sword of the Lord, but it was the sword of the Lord and Gideon because God accomplishes His mission through people.

Ill. In order to accomplish the mission of delivering the children of Israel out of Egypt and across the Red Sea, and to destroy the army of Pharaoh, God used a man named Moses with a stick in his hand.

Ill. To accomplish the mission of delivering the children of Israel from destruction in Persia, He used a young woman named Esther.

God places people into various places for the purpose of carrying out His mission.

He has placed you where you live and work so that the world might see Him through you and hear from you of His great plan of salvation.

As God was about to give birth to His church, God wanted to make sure that the proper people were in the proper place to complete the mission. Today it is no different.

In that day, the ranks of the disciples have been depleted by one and that one being Judas Iscariot.

T. S. How did God choose someone to Complete The Mission? He did it through the church.

2. God calls people through the church.

Verse 12 They would have probably entered through the eastern gate of Jerusalem when they returned from the Mount of Olives which was less than a mile from the city.

Verse 13, They went upstairs to the room where they were staying. The second floor room in a house was usually the largest room in the house.

Look at who was present: Peter, John, James and Andrew; Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew; James son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James.

“The women" were also present which probably included, Mary Magdalene, Mary the wife of Cleopas, Mary and Martha, Salome and other women as well as the mother of Jesus.

They were disciples of Christ just as much as the men.

Verse 14, "and with His brethren." Now, this is a marvelous thing. Jesus’ brothers had come to believe in Him as the Messiah even though they had doubted Him during most of His earthly ministry.

Note: There are some who teach that Jesus had no earthly brothers because Mary had no other children besides Jesus. That is not true.

We even know their names: James, Joseph, Simon and Jude. And James and Jude figure very prominently in the New Testament. James wrote the epistle of James and Jude wrote the epistle of Jude. James was the first lead pastor of the Jerusalem church.

Note: Mary the mother of Jesus was in no way deity. She is not to be worshiped. No one is to pray to Mary. Nowhere does the Scripture tell us to do that. She was a wonderful person, but she was a sinner saved by grace.