Waiting on the Lord

The second half of Acts 1 deals with a period of waiting on the part of the disciples prior to the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, which is described in chapter 2. It lasted ten days. We know that it was ten days because the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost. Pentecost refers to the Feast of Weeks, which was held fifty days after Passover. Since the Lord was taken back to heaven forty days after the resurrection, there must have been a ten-day period in which the disciples waited in Jerusalem. 

The first thing we see for the early Christians is that this ten-day period was a time to practice obedience. If we compare verse 12 with verse 4, we find that what the disciples did in verse 12 was a direct response to what the Lord Jesus Christ told them they were to do earlier. Earlier Jesus had said, “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about.” In verse 12, we find that this is precisely what they were doing. 

What do you suppose they prayed for? We sometimes talk about prayer in terms of the “ACTS” acrostic: “A” for adoration, “C” for confession, “T” for thanksgiving and “S” for supplication. I can imagine that they did each of these four things, certainly adoration. After all, God had worked among them in a great way. God had sent the Lord Jesus Christ to die for their sins and then rise again from the dead. When they prayed in those days, they must have praised God for the wisdom, love, power and grace by which He had accomplished such a great plan of salvation in their time. 

The last thing the disciples did which is mentioned in these verses is that they recognized the need for leadership and took steps to supply it. In their case, it involved the election of Matthias to fill Judas’ place. 

Some people have been critical of the disciples at this point. They have suggested that because the disciples chose Matthias by lot—that is, as we would say, by drawing straws—they were acting like pagans, since this was a pagan way of doing things. Others have argued that since we never hear of Matthias again, he must not have been God’s choice to fill the vacancy. Some have looked at Paul and have concluded that he, rather than this relatively unknown man, must have been God’s choice to be the twelfth apostle.1