Word of Salvation – August 2025

 

The Replacement Apostolic Witness

 

Sermon by Rev. John Westendorp on Acts 1:15-26

Scripture Readings: Matthew 27:1-10, Acts 1:15-26

 

Singing:        BoW.313       Yours be the glory
BoW.071       In You O Lord, I put my trust       [1-4] BoW.485       Lord You gave the great commission
BoW.525       Now unto Him who is able to keep

 

Theme: Appointing a replacement for Judas to complete the apostolic leadership and witness to Jesus.

 

Introd:            There have been various modern attempts to revive the office of apostle.

There is no doubt that the apostles played a very important role in the NT.

So are we missing out on something by not having apostles in our church today?

 

Today there are many churches that have a huge shortage of pastors and preachers.
So not long ago I read of someone who argued that it’s time to reintroduce apostles.
He said: We have a leadership crisis… and it’s the kind of crisis that only apostles can deal with.
So there are those who argue that we need apostles to head up church leadership.
They say: If apostles were there in the NT then we really ought to have them now.

 

The Mormons already have apostles and they use that to back up their claim to be the only true church.
Discuss the church with them and they will ask:  Does your church have apostles?
No?  Why not?  They were there in the Bible.
They will then tell you: We have apostles… and that shows we are the true biblical church.

 

This morning we’re looking at this text that talks about the appointment of an apostle.

So let’s see if it supports the claims of those who want apostles in the church today.

 

A]        THE COMPLETION OF THE APOSTOLIC LEADERSHIP.

 

1. Let me set the scene. Jesus has just left the disciples and ascended into heaven.

Those disciples of Jesus have met together with a small group of believers.
But they are acutely conscious that one of the twelve… one from that inner circle is missing.
There was an empty place in their ranks.  Now it’s ‘The Eleven’ instead of ‘The Twelve’.

 

For more than forty days that empty place has reminded them of this horrible reality:
That it was one of them who had betrayed Jesus.
Peter says: He was one of our number… he shared in this ministry.
It wasn’t some outsider… it was an apostle who did that dirty deed.
So appointing a replacement was to fill the gap.  And that would help heal the wound.

 

In this situation Peter, as usual, takes the leadership.
And in that process he spells out what had happened.
It was only some six weeks ago… so it is still fresh in his mind.

 

So Peter gives us the second of only two accounts of what happened to Judas.
Matthew gives us the first account in Matthew 27.
But here Peter fills in some of the details that are missing from Matthew 27.

First he shows us that Judas botched the job of taking his own life.
Either he didn’t make a good knot on the rope or the rope broke.
In any case he made a terrible fall that burst him open.
So Judas died a horrible death with his innards spilled out all around him.

Secondly Peter reinforces what the chief priests did with Judas’ reward money.
They bought that burial field… but Peter shows that they bought it in Judas’ name.
Those religious leaders didn’t want to be associated with that blood money.
So, since the money rightfully belonged to Judas they bought the field in his name.

 

But Peter says all this to make clear that it’s time to put all of that behind them and to move on.

So he spells out his proposal to appoint a replacement.

 

2. When we read Peter’s proposal then it makes sense in view of Jesus’ original intention.

Are you aware that Jesus had quite deliberately chosen 12 apostles?
That was to show a parallel between the O.T. and the N.T.
In the O.T. there had been 12 tribes in Israel.
They were named after the 12 patriarchs, the twelve sons of Jacob.
And so Jesus deliberately chooses exactly 12 apostles for the N.T. Church.

 

In fact, on a number of occasions Jesus makes a very deliberate connection.
For example, in Matthew 19:28…
Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things,
when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me
will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”

 

But what is now going to happen to that promise?
Will it be “eleven apostles… on eleven thrones… judging eleven tribes…”?
Surely it makes sense to appoint a replacement for Judas.

 

It also makes sense because leadership is important in the church.
And if you need more leaders you appoint more leaders.
The apostleship was a very small, self-contained leadership group in the Church.
And the church needed them because there are already 120 disciples meeting together here.

And we know that there were many more followers of Jesus.
Paul on one occasion mentions more than 500 who witnessed the resurrection.
That means a mere eleven leaders for more than 500 people.
So even just looking at it from a leadership point of view the proposal makes good sense.

 

3. We should also remember that (although unknown to them) Pentecost is about to happen.

Ten days after the ascension God’s Holy Spirit is poured out on the church.

But can the Holy Spirit really fall on a church with an incomplete leadership team?

 

Turn over a moment to Acts 2 and the Pentecost event to make clear what I mean.
Notice that in verse 14 Luke makes a point of the leadership team being complete.
Luke writes: Then Peter stood up… with the eleven…!
IOW on Pentecost Sunday there is a united witness from the completed apostolic band.
A team… a team in which there are no gaps any longer. So there are again twelve.

Pentecost is – in a real sense – the birthday of the N.T. church.
And that church is founded on the twelve apostles.
Just as the O.T. church – Israel – was founded on the twelve patriarchs.
So these twelve – as it were – represent the whole N.T. age.
And the Spirit comes on a completed and unified leadership team.

 

So there is a sense in which the events in our text are a preparation for Pentecost.
The disciples had been told that the Counsellor… the Comforter was coming.
God’s Spirit… who was more than able to deal with the scars left by Judas’ betrayal.

But that doesn’t mean that they may not begin to deal with the issue themselves.
So we can applaud these first steps… this first action of the young church.
All of the 120 or so followers of Jesus in Jerusalem are called together.
And Peter takes the initiative to find a replacement for Judas.
All so that the church will be ready for the big event of Pentecost.

 

B]        THE PROCESS FOR CHOOSING THE REPLACEMENT.

 

1. There are some people who would violently disagree with my explanation of this story.

They give five different arguments why this whole thing is just a huge mistake.

1. i) They claim that God already had a replacement in mind for Judas… and it wasn’t Matthias.
   They say: Ask yourself which apostle dominates the rest of the NT?
   It wasn’t Matthias… it was the great apostle Paul… he is God’s replacement for Judas.

 

1. ii) They support this by pointing out that we never ever hear of Matthias again.
   He totally drops out of the picture – all we have is a folklore legend that he went to Ethiopia.
   Of course they ignore the fact that several other apostles drop out of the picture too. (Thomas!)

 

iii)         They remind us: Jesus had told His followers to wait. Vs.4 Wait for the gift my Father promised…!
But they didn’t wait… and it got them into trouble… the wrong person got appointed.
These people then apply this text and say: Look what happens when we run ahead of God.

 

1. iv) The blame of course is put on Peter, who just doesn’t have the patience to wait.
   This is typically impulsive Peter as we see him so often in the gospels.
   He’s always been ‘like a bull in a china shop’ and here is a prime example.

 

1. v) These people argue that the whole process is flawed… they turn the appointment into a lottery.
   This is the only time the casting of the lot is done by the church in the NT.
   Okay, they ask God to overrule… but they only give the Lord two men to choose from.

 

So the argument goes that the apostles should have waited until Pentecost.

And because they didn’t it gave Paul all sorts of problems later defending his apostleship.

Now for a long time these arguments appealed to me.  Here is a big stuff-up in the early church.

 

2. But I want to stress that I no longer believe that the apostles got it wrong.

I am more convinced than ever that they did the right thing.

There is not a hint anywhere in the N.T. that the Lord was displeased with this action.

 

First of all – notice that it was done in obedience to Scripture.
And you and I know that when we obey the Scriptures we can’t go too far wrong.
In fact – when it comes to following the Scriptures Jesus already set the pattern.
At every step of the way – in all that happened – He showed that Scripture was being fulfilled.

Event after event in the life of Jesus had already been predicted in the O.T.
So Jesus had pointed out that His betrayal too would be according to Scripture.
In John 13:18 Jesus quoted Psalm 41:9 and spoke of His betrayal in these terms:
It is to fulfil the scripture, “The one who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.”

 

But the fulfilling of Scripture didn‘t end with the betrayal.
In Math.27 we are told that the thirty pieces of silver were also to fulfil Scripture.
And so was the buying of the potter’s field with Judas’ reward money.
But all this simply brought to mind yet other Scriptures to the apostles.
Ps.69²⁵ – which prophesied the death of the betrayer – that his place would be deserted.
Ps.109⁸ – which prophesied that another should take his place… there had to be twelve.

 

So on the basis of the Word of God the Apostles act… and they do that in faith.
So their biblically based appointment not only removes the scandal of Judas’ betrayal.
Not only does it begin the process of healing and fill the empty place in their ranks.
But by obedience they show their faith that Jesus will build His church just as He promised.
In this way they set the pattern for us: we must always be faithful to the Word of God.
Blessing comes to us as we are obedient to what God requires of us in the Scriptures.
And we bring disaster on our lives when we act contrary to the Word of God.

 

3. In the second place we should not think that this lottery was a gamble for the apostles.

To those brought up under the O.T. this was not at all an unusual practice.

 

God had given Moses and Aaron the Urim & Thumim to serve a similar function.
They were stones (like dice) used by the high priest to give guidance from God.
And God had promised to direct His people as they prayerfully used those stones.
So the O.T. often used them for knowing the mind of God in uncertain situations.

 

Here we should remember that this church in Acts 1 is still the O.T. church… Pentecost is still to come.
So they are simply still acting in an O.T. way.
And we need to keep that in mind.
An elder once seriously suggested to me that we should use this method too.
His idea was to put all the names of our church members in a hat.
And then we should elect elders by drawing names out of the hat.
If that was good enough for the apostles it should be good enough for us.

He forgot that the apostles were still in O.T. mode.  Everything changes after Pentecost.
That’s why we never hear again of the church using this method to know God’s will.

 

That leaves us with one small question about the process.
Why did they give the Lord only two candidates to choose from?
It’s like saying: Lord, we want you to choose a replacement…
But to make sure we get the kind of person we want you’d better pick out of these two.

 

I think there are two possibilities that both make good sense.
First that there were very few who qualified… maybe only these two men.
Or perhaps they narrowed it down and couldn’t decide between these two candidates.
And so the final decision is handed over to the Lord.

 

C]        THE QUALIFICATION AND CALLING OF AN APOSTLE.

 

1. There is one other matter we need to take up in this text.

These verses give us a good insight into the qualifications of an apostle.
And that will help us to evaluate whether the Mormon apostles are genuine.
And whether it is really a good idea to have apostles in the church today or not.

 

Here we do need to make a distinction.
The word ‘apostle’ was used not only of the twelve disciples.
Paul was also called an apostle and so was Barnabas.
So there was a wider apostleship… but there were also The Twelve.

 

For the apostles belonging to the twelve there was one very important requirement.
And the replacement for Judas had to meet that requirement.
He had to be familiar with whole earthly ministry of Jesus.
Right from the time of John the Baptiser through to the ascension.

IOW he had to be familiar with the whole life and teaching of Jesus.
He had to be able to answer questions about the life and teaching of Jesus.
And there were few who would have qualified for that.
Jesus had begun with a very small following… just twelve.
But Joseph and Matthias qualified. They had been there all along, maybe on the fringes.

 

It is interesting that in this regard Paul would not have qualified either.

And it goes without saying that no one… no one today qualifies to be an apostle in that sense.

 

2. But there is a second requirement for an apostle: They especially had to witness to Jesus’ resurrection.

 

That was especially why Jesus had chosen the apostles.  To give us certainty that Jesus is alive.
They must proclaim to the world that Jesus has arisen from the dead.
So here is the heart of the issue… the core of what it means to be an apostle:
An eyewitness to the resurrection!
And then not only to have been there on the occasions when Jesus appeared;
But also to be willing to stand up and say: Yes, Jesus lives. I can testify to that.
In fact, they were called and set apart to make that truth known to the world.

 

Obviously the eleven met those requirements.
And so did Joseph and Matthias.  They all witnessed the resurrection on our behalf.
But later we meet a few other leaders, over and above the twelve, who also fit the bill.
Paul: because Jesus made a special appearance to him.
And God commissioned him to bring that good news that Jesus lives, to the Gentiles.

 

Today, by definition we can no longer have apostles.
The Mormon apostles use the name only to give some weight to their claims.
And churches today that want to reintroduce apostles have got it wrong.

In fact there are churches that claim what they call ‘apostolic succession’.
That apostleship was passed on down to others.
And that today we still have an apostolic ministry in certain leaders, such as the Pope.

 

No!  Apostles ceased when the last of the witnesses to the resurrection died.

And we can now claim to be an apostolic church only if we follow their gospel and their teaching.

 

3. Today we should see the appointment of Matthias as a divine appointment.

The final choice was prayerfully left to God for whatever the reason.

And that was entirely appropriate.
Just as Jesus called each of the original twelve so the Lord now called Matthias.
For his task he needed the Lord’s authority.

Apostleship was a responsible position of leadership.
And before long it was going to cost many of the apostles their lives.
In proclaiming that they knew Jesus was alive they became martyrs for their faith.
Soon there would be new gaps… James would die at the hand of Herod.

 

But the twelve had served their purpose.
We read that Matthias was accepted by the other 11 apostles.
And he stood with them on the day of Pentecost.
Even Paul – in 1Cor.15 – recognises the completeness of that circle of the twelve.

 

All of this becomes a reminder to us of the faithfulness of our Saviour.
He promised that He would build His church… and I am now greatly encouraged…
I am not part of a church that was founded on eleven apostles and one betrayer.
I am part of a church founded on 12 authorised witnesses to His resurrection.
And that wins hands down on any kind of watered down apostleship today.

 

In Revelation 21 the New Jerusalem has the names of the twelve apostles on the city foundations.

So you and I are now part of something that Jesus has begun and that we know He will complete.

That’s why we Christians should never treat the church as an optional extra.
You and I are a part of that church that is founded on the twelve apostles
So like the apostles let’s get on with our calling and work for Jesus the Master-builder of His church.