Acts 1:1-26
After Forty Days Jesus Taken Up to Heaven
1 In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach 2 until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. 3 After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. 4 On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. 5 For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”
6 Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”
7 He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
9 After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.
10 They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 11 “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”
Matthias Chosen to Replace Judas
12 Then the apostles returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount of Olives, a Sabbath day’s walk from the city. 13 When they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. Those present were Peter, John, James and Andrew; Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew; James son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. 14 They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers. In those days Peter stood up among the believers (a group numbering about a hundred and twenty) 16 and said, “Brothers and sisters, the Scripture had to be fulfilled in which the Holy Spirit spoke long ago through David concerning Judas, who served as guide for those who arrested Jesus. 17 He was one of our number and shared in our ministry.”
18 (With the payment he received for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out. 19 Everyone in Jerusalem heard about this, so they called that field in their language Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood.)
20 “For,” said Peter, “it is written in the Book of Psalms:
“‘May his place be deserted;
let there be no one to dwell in it,’ and,
“‘May another take his place of leadership.’
21 Therefore it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus was living among us, 22 beginning from John’s baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection.”
23 So they nominated two men: Joseph called Barsabbas (also known as Justus) and Matthias. 24 Then they prayed, “Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which of these two you have chosen 25 to take over this apostolic ministry, which Judas left to go where he belongs.” 26 Then they cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias; so he was added to the eleven apostles.
As we read John 16, we see a Savior who is tenderly preparing His friends for a grief they cannot yet fully bear—the "Great Loss" of His Physical Presence...And all of us have or will have lost someone very close to us, especially as we age...Jesus doesn't sugarcoat the coming scattering or the isolation they will feel; instead, He introduces the mystery of the "little while," a season where the world seems to rejoice in its victory while the believer weeps in the shadows...In a little while they will be without Him and His Great Presence...It will be a Great Loss for them and many of them will grieve and miss Him greatly, after being so close to Him for three years...He makes it clear that our transition into the "Abundant Life" often requires the departure of what is familiar to us so that the Advocate, the Spirit of Truth and our Great Comforter, can take up residence within us...This is the divine shift from a Savior who stands beside us to a Spirit who lives within us, proving that even when we can "see Him no longer" with earthly eyes, we are never more connected to His heart...This promised Comforter is the one who transforms our "anguish" into the labor pains of a new kind of joy—a joy that no person, no circumstance, and no grave can ever take away from us...Because He returned to the Father and sent His Spirit, our lonely rooms are now occupied by the same victory that overcame the world...And even thought Paul talks about the Jesus leaving takes away the sting of death, we still feel it with the loss of ones we love...
While Paul triumphantly declares in 1 Corinthians 15 that this "sting of death" has been removed through Christ’s resurrection, we must also acknowledge that, in this "little while" before we are reunited, the absence of those we love remains deeply felt and so sadly felt...Jesus did not ignore the tears of the disciples; He validated them, comparing their experience to the intense labor of birth—a process defined by real pain that eventually gives way to new life...The victory over death means that the grave is no longer a final destination, but it does not mean that the parting is without sorrow...We live in the tension of "already but not yet," where we take heart because He has overcome the world, yet we still navigate the lonely rooms, the empty chairs, the sad lonely holidays, that death leaves behind...Our faith doesn't demand that we stop feeling the loss; rather, it anchors our grief in the hope that our "great loss" is temporary, and that the Advocate is currently bridging the gap between our current ache and the day when our joy will be complete and no one can take it from us...
Jesus makes it clear to His Disciples and us that we will have troubles in this world...It’s such a powerful truth that the Abundant Life He talks about isn't about everything going right, but about having His Peace that stays when everything goes wrong...We learn that peace is found in a loving relationship with the LORD and not in current life's circumstances...Simply put the relationship with God is the most important thing in life, and not our current life's circumstances, according to Jesus...This peace from Jesus is secured through the Gospel—the good news that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us and rose again to conquer the very world that causes us trouble...Because He has overcome the world, we are no longer held captive by fear or the weight of our own failings...Instead, we are covered by His grace and anchored in the promise of eternal life, which allows us to walk through any storm, any tribulation, into that Valley of the shadow of death with a quiet confidence...This transformative truth shifts our focus from our problems to His presence, preparing our hearts to serve Him with joy regardless of the path ahead...
The truth of the Gospel, for me, is hardest to grasp when we are standing in the wreckage of a great loss...While we know that Jesus has overcome the world, the sting of death still feels incredibly personal and final when it takes someone we love...In these times, the "peace that surpasses understanding" isn't a feeling of happiness, but a quiet, divine anchor that keeps us from being swept away by the waves of sorrow...Jesus, by weeping at the tomb of His friend Lazarus, understands our grief perfectly; He does not ask us to suppress our tears, but rather invites us to bring them to Him...We find that our relationship with the LORD becomes our lifeline, reminding us that because of His sacrifice, His death is no longer a permanent wall, but a temporary veil...
I find myself looking at the forty days between the Resurrection and the Ascension with a sense of holy envy...This forty day period very much helped Jesus' Disciples with their grief...For the Disciples, those weeks were a Great Divine Bridge—a period of tangible, physical presence where they could touch His wounds, share a meal of broiled fish on the shore, and witness His Divinity with their own eyes...That window of time functioned as a unique balm for their grief, transforming their confusion into a concrete certainty that He had indeed overcome the grave...As "earthly humans" today, we aren't granted that same forty-day extension with our departed loved ones...We don't get to see them resurrected in our living rooms or eat with them or to tell us they are safe or to show us that God has wiped every tear from their eyes...The silence that follows the loss of a spouse or a dear friend of many years feels heavy precisely because we lack that immediate, visual confirmation of their peace in death...
The absence of a physical "forty days" leaves an earthly wound that feels wider and deeper than the one the Disciples carried after Pentecost...While they had the memory of the resurrected Jesus to sustain them, we must rely entirely on the Advocate—the Holy Spirit—to bridge the gap between our current loneliness and our future hope...We find ourselves in a position where faith must do the work that sight did for the Apostles...We cry out for just one more conversation or one more sign, yet the Bible points us toward a different kind of comfort...It tells us that even without the forty days of proof, the Advocate dwells within us to whisper the very truths we long to hear just as He did for the Disciples: that our loved ones are indeed safe, that the sting of death is a defeated enemy, and that the separation, though it feels like an eternity, is truly only for a "little while."...We are called to trust in the Divine Nature of Christ not because we saw Him on the road to Emmaus, but because the Spirit translates our groans of grief into a peace that surpasses our human understanding...
Even when we feel weak and our hearts are heavy with the "valley of the shadow," we can lean on the reality that our loved ones who are in Christ are more alive now than they have ever been...This doesn't make the emptiness in our daily lives disappear, but it changes the nature of our mourning—we do not grieve as those who have no hope...The Holy Spirit, is said to be our Comforter, He meets us in the silence of a lonely room and the ache of a missing presence, whispered reminders of the eternal home Jesus is preparing for us in John 14...This Gospel Truth is the only thing strong enough to sustain us, shifting our gaze from the empty chair to the occupied throne, where Christ sits in total victory over the grave...
The hard and true tension between the peace Jesus promises and the tribulations we experience is one of the most profound mysteries of the Christian life, yet it is where the "Abundant Life" truly begins to shine...When Jesus says, "Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you...Not as the world gives do I give to you,"...He is distinguishing between a peace that is dependent on circumstances and a peace that is dependent on His person...The world’s peace is a fragile ceasefire—an absence of conflict that disappears the moment the wind begins to howl...But Christ’s peace is an "anchor for the soul," a spiritual reality that exists simultaneously with external chaos...It is not the absence of the storm, but the presence of the Savior within the storm...The "winds will pound our houses," but the abundance of life isn't found in the house never being hit; it is found in the house remaining standing because it is bolted into the Rock of His Eternal Word...
Paul’s life serves as the ultimate laboratory for this paradox...When we read that he was content while receiving forty lashes minus one, or while sitting in a damp, dark Roman dungeon, we have to ask how such a thing is humanly possible...The secret lies in his statement in Philippians 4: "I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation."...This "secret" was that his source of joy was relocated from his surroundings to his relationship with the resurrected Christ...To Paul, contentment wasn't a feeling of happiness about his chains; it was the realization that his chains did not have the power to sever his connection to the "Spiritual World" Jesus described...The peace of that world is so substantial that it makes the tribulations of this world seem "light and momentary" by comparison. Paul wasn't ignoring the pain of the lashes; he was experiencing a deeper satisfaction in Christ that the lashes could not reach....
This brings us to the difficult question of how we can experience an "Abundant Life" when our most cherished companions, like our spouses, family, and dear friends, eventually face death...The word "abundant" in the Greek (perissos) means exceedingly, beyond measure, or superior in quality...This abundance isn't measured by a life of uninterrupted earthly longevity or the absence of grief...Rather, it is a life that is so full of God’s Presence and our relationship with Him that even grief is transformed...When we lose those we love, the abundance of Christ’s life provides a "hope that does not disappoint."...We grieve, but not as those who have no hope...The abundance is found in the fact that because Jesus conquered the grave, our relationships in Him are not ended by death, only paused...The peace of His world whispers to us that the separation is temporary and the reunion is certain...
Living on the "solid foundation of the Rock" means we accept the reality that this world is currently broken and full of "troubles," but we refuse to let that brokenness define our internal state...The "Abundant Life" is the ability to walk through the valley of the shadow of death and fear no evil because the Eternal Good Shepherd is there...It is the strength to be "sorrowful, yet always rejoicing."...We find contentment not by loving this world less, but by loving Christ’s world more...When our foundation is His teaching, we realize that the peace He brings is actually a person—Himself...He is our peace...Therefore, whether we are in a season of plenty or a season of profound loss, we are never without the one thing that makes life truly abundant...We can be content because the One who made a place for us in Heaven is the same One who stands beside us in the jail cell, the hospital room, or the lonely house, offering a peace that surpasses all human understanding...
The forty days that Jesus spent with His disciples following the Resurrection serve as much more than a historical record; they are a "Great Lesson" designed to anchor our souls during our own times of Great Grief...In these forty days, Jesus purposefully demonstrated that He had truly overcome death, providing a visible and tangible foundation for the faith of the Disciples...For us today, looking back at this period allows us to see that God understands the necessity of a transition period between the shock of loss and the beginning of a new chapter...Just as the Disciples needed that time to move from the despair of the Friday crucifixion to the power of the Pentecost, we can look to the number forty as a symbolic reminder that grieving is a process that requires time, patience, and the steady reassurance that life has indeed triumphed over the grave...
While every person’s journey through loss is unique, the forty days suggest that there is a divine rhythm to our healing...It reminds us that even when we do not have the physical presence of our resurrected loved ones, we have the "Great Lesson" of Christ’s own return to prove that God is there and that death is not the final word...Thinking deeply about this interval allows us to realize that our very much hurting earthly wounds, while so very painful, are being tended to by the same Savior who took forty days to ensure His friends that they would be ready for what came next for them...By meditating on this period, we find the strength to endure our own seasons of mourning, trusting that the same Jesus who showed Himself alive is currently holding those we’ve lost in His safe and eternal care...
Acts 1 serves as a vital bridge between the ministry of Jesus on earth and the birth of the early church, emphasizing the "Great Lesson" of the forty days returned to earth after His death...The chapter begins with Jesus appearing to His disciples over this forty day period, giving many convincing proofs that He was alive and teaching them about the Kingdom of God...These forty days was a necessary time of instruction and comfort, preparing them for the moment He would be taken up into heaven before their eyes...Following His ascension, two angels appeared to reassure the grieving apostles that Jesus one day would return in the same way He departed...This encouraged the believers to return to Jerusalem to wait in constant prayer...During this time of waiting, they sought a replacement for Judas, eventually choosing Matthias to join the eleven...This entire chapter demonstrates that even after the "Great Loss" of Jesus' Physical Presence, God provides a clear path forward, using the forty days to anchor their faith before empowering them with the Holy Spirit to be His witnesses to the ends of the earth...