In the sermon "Waiting in Prayer" by Peter Allison, based on Acts 1:9-14, the focus is on the disciples' obedience and preparation following Jesus' Ascension. Returning to Jerusalem, they engaged in a 10-day prayer meeting, awaiting the Holy Spirit's arrival at Pentecost, which led to the salvation of thousands. The sermon highlights the historical progression of God's redemptive plan, from Noah's covenant to Jesus' crucifixion, and emphasizes the importance of learning from these events without trying to replicate them. The disciples' return to Jerusalem, despite potential fears and distractions, exemplifies their commitment to obedience and readiness for the Holy Spirit. The sermon underscores the necessity of prayer, obedience, and unity for God's work to advance, drawing parallels between the disciples' journey and other biblical events. As they prayed and waited in the upper room, they demonstrated a unified fellowship, setting aside personal agendas for the greater purpose of God's kingdom. The message encourages believers to see waiting as a time for reflection, prayer, and togetherness, fostering a community strengthened by shared faith and purpose.

Acts chapter 1. We'll be looking at verses 12-14 as they return after the Ascension. I'll start reading at verse 9. Now when He had spoken these things while they watched, He was taken up, and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold two young men stood by them in white apparel, who said, Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven?

This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw him go into heaven." Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day's journey. And when they had entered, they went up into the upper room where they were staying, Peter, James, John, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, Judas the son of James. These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and with His brothers. May God revive us according to His Word. Almighty Heavenly Father, Your Word is pure, refined, seven times as it were.

It is without error and infallible. Not able to err. Everything that it speaks of, on whatever it speaks, or is truth. Please sanctify us by Your Word this morning. Speak to us through it, by Your Spirit.

Open our hearts to understand and receive it. And please sanctify my sinful lips to proclaim it. In Jesus' name, Amen. The heart of this passage, these four verses before us, are the disciples, all of them, waiting in prayer. But this whole chapter that surrounds this prayer meeting, this lengthy 10-day prayer meeting, it details the preparation of the disciples for the great outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost and the resulting salvation of 3, 000 souls that day and thousands more that are added in the coming days and weeks.

As we have seen earlier, there's a great transition in the church. And it's a point where a significant advancement in the plan of redemption is accomplished. This is a plan that God has ordained from all eternity and has been working out in history since creation in the Garden of Eden. This great plan of His redemption, this plan of His gathering and perfecting a people, a royal priesthood to himself, it begins in the Garden of Eden. As God works it out, His eternal plan, He works it out in history.

It progresses to the covenant that God made with Noah, that He would never destroy the earth again with a flood, but he establishes civil government as the restraint on sin so that he will not ever need to destroy the earth again. So as wicked as these governments can become, nevertheless, they are what God has ordained and they do fulfill His purpose. Remember, God is praised. Even the wrath of men praises God. And then it progresses to God's covenant with Abraham where he calls to himself a people out of the world.

And then it progresses to Moses and the covenant that God made at Sinai under whom He delivered His people out of bondage and gave them the law. And then under Joshua, where they conquered the promised land. Moses was a type. The promise was that God would send a prophet like Moses from among His own people. And of course, Joshua, his name means Savior.

Jesus is called, His name is Joshua. And under Joshua, they conquered the promised land. And then later, under David, God gave them a king who prefigured Christ's kingship. And the promise was given to David that there would never cease to sit upon the throne of David, one from his own body, which we know is fulfilled in Christ, because Christ is a descendant physically of David. And so this great arc of redemptive history contains many things that are not intended to be repeated.

But that doesn't mean that We can't learn from the things that have happened. And we can't learn from these events. And so while we don't want to try and replicate what happened at Pentecost, because that was a unique historical event in God's plan of salvation. Any more than we need to replicate what happened at Mount Sinai, or any more than we need to replicate the period of glory under King David in Israel. Any more than we need to replicate the building of the temple.

See, all these things are historical. They're past. God's plan has progressed and moved forward. And so this great event of Pentecost that was prefigured or is paralleling the giving of the law at Mount Sinai, is a one-time historical event, but there are some things that we can learn. These things, we are told, have been written for our instruction.

And so while we are not trying to repeat these events or replicate them, they are still important for us to learn from. And so one of the first things that we see in these people, in these disciples, is their obedience. This is something that is very important, a lesson that is very important for us as the people of God. That we learn to obey all that the Lord has commanded us to do. So after these men in white clothes asked them why they were gazing into heaven.

They were just mesmerized, apparently, gazing into heaven. And these two men stand beside them suddenly, and they say, why are you gazing into the heavens? Jesus that you saw go is going to come in the same way. So they return to Jerusalem. They went back to Jerusalem in obedience to Jesus' command to wait for the Holy Spirit at Jerusalem.

Verse 4 he says, He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Holy Spirit. Wait for the promise of the Father. Now, there might be many temptations or excuses for not obeying this command. Just the excitement of what has just happened. They've just witnessed an amazing, incredible sight.

It's so astounding, Jesus just going up and a cloud receiving Him, Jesus being carried up in a cloud receiving Him, that they are just transfixed, staring into the sky. And how easily, in this excitement, after the men have broken their gaze, It would be very easy for them in their excitement to want to run back to families or to run to friends and start talking about what they've seen. Just think of the people that Jesus healed and he would tell them, you know, don't go tell anybody about this and these people just ignored him and he would run and Talk about Jesus Something amazing has just happened be very tempting For them to in their excitement want to run and talk about this. But they don't. They go back to this room where they're staying.

It might be easy for them to think, well, it's not really that important that we go back to Jerusalem immediately, or that we stay just in Jerusalem all the time. Maybe they would think that this little detail wasn't important. Why does it matter exactly where they wait? Isn't their home maybe as good a place to wait? We know what happened.

We know that the events that transpired with Peter's sermon would never have occurred if they were not at the temple. See, if we are to be used by the Lord, we have to be willing to obey everything that He's commanded us, even the little details. We have to be willing to order our lives and to bring them under the Lordship of Jesus Christ in everything. In everything. That means that we have to be willing to be different from other people where God's Word requires us to do something different from what other people are doing.

It means we have to be willing to take the less lucrative job if that's what the Lord's Word would require us. If that will better enable us to obey the Lord. We have to be willing to give up promotions. We have to be willing to give up our jobs if that's what's needed to obey the Lord. If that's what obedience demands, then that's what we need to be willing to do.

Now this isn't an excuse for incompetence or idleness, But we just simply have to be willing to obey in everything and regardless of the cost and to leave the consequences to the Lord. The disciples could have thought, well, Why Jerusalem? This is where Christ was crucified. They're going to want to come after us as well. There's a lot of things they could have thought.

And they could say, well, we need to protect our lives. We need to protect our families. We need to be out of Jerusalem. We can come back to Jerusalem later. But see, they didn't give us any of these excuses.

They obeyed. Obedience was necessary also for the Spirit to come. In that upper room discourse, Jesus tied obedience in the coming of the Holy Spirit. In John 14, after the Last Supper, John gives us that very lengthy account of everything that Jesus was saying to them at the Last Supper. He said, If you love me, keep my commandments, and I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Helper that he may abide with you forever, the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him.

But you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be with you." There's this connection that if they loved Him, they would obey Him. They would keep His commandments. And then He would pray for the Holy Spirit to come that Helper. And so these disciples, they demonstrated their love for Jesus by their obedience. And they demonstrated their readiness for the Holy Spirit to come.

And they returned. They returned to Jerusalem from the Mount called Olivet. They returned to Jerusalem because that was where the Gospel was going to go out from Jerusalem. And as we'll see in a little bit, that is where the temple was and that's where God said the Holy Spirit would come from. And they went into an upper room in the temple.

Luke tells us after the ascension, in Luke 24, verse 52, they worshiped Him, this is right after the ascension, worshiped Him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple, continually in the temple, praising and blessing God. Amen. Amen is what Luke says. They were continually in the temple. And that's the same thing said here in verse 14.

They continued with one accord in this upper room where they were. Now I printed out, I prepared a handout and then loaded it up on our drive, but forgot to print it out. So I'll print it out afterwards, and you can look at this handout after the message today, maybe over lunch or something. I'll print out a few copies. It tells us that they went back A Sabbath day journey.

This is the only place in the Bible that talks about a Sabbath day's journey. And the Bible doesn't explicitly say what a Sabbath day journey was, but it was obviously such a well-known distance that Luke assumed theophilists would just know what it was. That he didn't have to make any explanation of what a Sabbath day journey was. It's not in the Bible. There's no place in the Bible that says this is how far you can go on a Sabbath.

At least not that I can find. It's the only place, like I said, in the whole Bible this phrase is used. But It's commonly understood among the Jews, and it's obviously it was understood, or Luke wouldn't have made a reference to it as the distance that they traveled. It's understood, pretty much I think everybody agrees, it is about 2, 000 cubits. Just where that came from, it's a man-made law.

It's legalism. It's not what the Bible says we can or can't travel on the Sabbath day. But this is a pharisaical prescription. And Josephus tells us that the distance between the Mount of Olives and Jerusalem is five furlongs, which is about 3, 000 feet, and that's very close to the 2, 000 cubits. That is a Sabbath day's journey.

There are a couple places that talk about the 2, 000 cubits in the Bible, and I think they are worth mentioning. One of them is in the Pentateuch where it prescribed that as the distance from the cities that belonged to the Levites. And so some people have surmised that since that's how far the Levites' houses were away from the city, and they had to walk that distance on the Sabbath, therefore that must be an allowed distance to travel. I don't know if there's any truth in that at all, but I do know that in Joshua, as they were preparing to cross the Jordan, we read in Joshua 3 verse 2, So it was after three days that the officers went through the camp, and they commanded the people, saying, When you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, and the priests, the Levites, bearing it, then you shall set out from your place and go after it." And here's where the 2, 000 cubits comes in. Yet there shall be a space between you and it about two thousand cubits by measure.

Do not come near it that you may know the way by which you must go, for you have not passed this way before." They were not to go nearer the Ark than 2, 000 cubits because they didn't know the way. In other words, they were to follow this Ark. And the Ark would lead the way. They didn't know the way. It's an interesting statement.

2, 000 cubits. It's an interesting statement. Two thousand cubits. It's an interesting detail then that the disciples were to wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit the same distance from where Christ passed through the heavens as the people followed the ark across the Jordan when they entered the Promised Land. So when Christ ascended through the heavens, He sanctified the heavenly temple.

He sanctified the ark of the covenant. Because remember, that earthly temple, that ark that they were carrying across the Jordan, that was a replica of something in heaven. It was made after the pattern of the heavenly tabernacle. And Hebrews tells us that Christ sanctified that heavenly temple with His own blood, and that He passed through the heavens. And so the disciples then are waiting the same distance away from where Jesus passed into the heavens on the Mount of Olives.

They're waiting that same 2, 000 cubits away. And in that upper room discussion that we alluded to earlier, there's a discussion along very similar lines about knowing the way. Both Peter and, well, Peter wanted to follow. He said, I can follow you anywhere. And Jesus said, no, you can't.

But then Thomas, a little later, asked, why, Lord, we don't know where you're going. How can we know the way? We don't know where you're going. That's the same thing that the Israelites were told when they crossed the Jordan. You don't know the way, so stay 2, 000 cubits behind this ark.

Thomas said, Lord, we don't know where you're going. How can we know the way? And Jesus said, I am the way. And Philip then asked Jesus, and I'm summarizing a lengthy conversation there you can read about in John 14 and chapter 16. And Philip asks Jesus to show him the Father, and after a mild rebuke, Jesus gives the promise of giving the Spirit of Truth.

John 16, 13, He says, however, when He, the Spirit of Truth has come, He will guide you into all truth. So Thomas has said, Lord, how can we follow You? We don't know the way. And Jesus says, I will send the Holy Spirit of Truth and He will guide you into all truth, for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears, He will speak, and He will tell you the things to come." And so these disciples are told to wait a Sabbath day's journey, or they did wait a Sabbath day's journey away from where the Lord passed into heavens and sanctified the Ark of the Covenant. And they were waiting for the Holy Spirit who will show them the way.

Now this Holy Spirit also is pictured in Ezekiel as flowing out of the temple. And on the chart that I prepared that you don't have, so you just have to imagine it, the Mount of Olives is 2, 000 cubits away from the temple. It's across the valley of Kidron. It's a very steep valley. In that the temple faces, the eastern face of the temple is toward the Mount of Olives.

And to the south are a number of meeting rooms. So Ezekiel 10 says, Now the cherubim were standing on the south side of the temple when the man went in, and the cloud filled the inner court. And then the glory of the Lord went up from the cherubim, passed over the threshold of the temple. And the house was filled with the cloud, and the court was full of the brightness of the Lord's glory. And the sound of the wings of the cherubim were heard even in the outer court, like the voice of Almighty God when he speaks.

And then the glory of the Lord departed from the threshold of the temple and stood over the chair of him." And later on, so we have the Holy Spirit coming out from the south side of the temple, which is probably where these disciples were meeting in this room. They had entered this upper room, and Luke tells us at the end there that they were in the temple, praising God. And In Ezekiel 44, we read that the Lord said to Ezekiel, this gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter it, because the Lord God of Israel has entered it, therefore it shall be shut. And my understanding is that that gate is shut to this day. It's shut and it's filled up in.

And then of course you remember in Ezekiel we have that picture of the water that flows out of the temple. That water, and it goes into a wider and wider and wider area. And Jesus said in the temple that there would flow out of Him a river of living water. And So I think none of these details are accidental. But just as all of the aspects of the Old Covenant, ceremonial law and ceremonies were fulfilled in Christ, or in His time in 30 AD or in 70 AD.

So these details are pointing forward to what happened here at Pentecost. Now there are some people that are named. They went into the upper room where they were staying. And they are Peter, James, John, Andrew, Philip, Thomas, Bartholomew, Matthew, James, the son of Alphaeus, Simon, the son of Jellet, Judas, the son of James. Those are the eleven apostles, eleven disciples, minus Judas, Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus.

He's mentioned a little later in this chapter. So you have the eleven apostles, But then there's also women, with the women. They continue to want to accord with parents' application with the women. Calvin believes that that could be the wives of these men. There are no Bible translations I could find that translated it that way.

It's possible. It's the same word as woman or wife. And Calvin believes it's wife. I think it's probably the women because there are women that were specifically said to follow Jesus. There was Mary, the mother of Jesus.

She's specifically named here. So the women and Mary the mother of Jesus. We have these women named in other places in the Gospels as women who supported Jesus, women who went with Him, and these are women who were there at the crucifixion. They witnessed it, as well as the women who came to the tomb after he arose. So that would be Mary Magdalene out of whom he cast seven demons.

There was Mary the mother of James, the less and Joseph. And then there is, so even though Jesus had brothers, and a brother named James and Joseph, I think this is a different Mary than Jesus' mother, there was Joanna, the wife of Herod's steward, Chusa. There's also Susanna that's mentioned. Mark 15 talks about these women also looking on from afar, looking on the crucifixion from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, Zaless, and Joseph, and Salome who followed him and ministered to him when he was in Galilee, and many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem. And then in Matthew 27, many of the women who followed Jesus from Galilee ministering to him were looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and Mary and the mother of Zebedee's sons, James and John, remember the sons of thunder.

And then there was a certain, well, Luke 8 mentions Susanna and Joanna. So I think these are probably the women who are in view here that are with the disciples in the upper room, and specifically Mary the mother of Jesus, and then Jesus' brothers are mentioned specifically as being in this group. These are the brothers, remember, who didn't believe. They were the brothers who were rebuking Jesus at times, who didn't believe. And yet, now we see after the resurrection that they have believed in Jesus.

And their names are given in the Bible in Matthew 13, where they say, is this not the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas. And he also had sisters. Mark 6 mentions sisters.

So these people were all here. Later on in the chapter, we read that there are 120 of them in this room. So they're not all named here, but just Mary, the 11 apostles, and Mary the mother of Jesus are the only people named by name. But there's 120 disciples in this room. And what are they doing in this room?

Well, they're staying there. They're staying there. Maybe not 24 hours a day, but throughout the bulk of the day, they're staying in this room. And what are they doing there? They're praying.

They are continuing in prayer. In prayer and supplication. They are spending their time praying for ten days. They are spending this time that they are to wait. They didn't know, maybe the exact time, but they're just waiting.

They're waiting in this room and They're praying. They're making good use of the time of their waiting. They're making supplication. They're asking the Lord to do what He's promised to do, to send the Holy Spirit. Just because God has promised to do something doesn't mean we shouldn't pray and ask Him to do what He's promised to do.

We should continually make continual supplication that the Lord would do for the Lord to do the things that He's promised to do. Calvin says of this, Therefore, if we will not pray in vain, let us not be wearied with the delay of time. We may gather, easily gather, even by this, how needful a thing it is to pray generally, in that Christ commands everyone to pray for the whole body and generally for all men, as it were, in the person of all men." And so, these people are praying. And that's a very important point. That if we want God to work, if we want God to advance His Kingdom, If we want to see His Gospel progress and triumph and succeed and conquer rebellious hearts, then we have to be praying for that.

Continually, continually praying. And whenever the Lord has done great things, it's always been because of the prayers of His people. The victory that's recorded in Revelation 12 where Satan is cast out of heaven, it's because it says they triumphed by the blood of the Lamb and the prayers of the saints. When God's people start praying, things happen. Things happen in the heavens.

Daniel started praying. For three weeks he's praying. Twenty-one days he's praying and he's fasting. And he's not seeing anything. He gets a messenger from the Lord who then tells him that the moment he started praying, a battle broke out.

And there's been a battle going on. See, we may not see this battle, but it's happening. It's a spiritual battle, because we're battling spiritual wickedness in high places, principalities, and powers, and we need to pray if we expect God to act. Because God is ordained to act His actions through the prayers of His people. Prayer precedes God's mighty acts.

So this is a ten-day prayer meeting. If you've thought maybe an hour prayer meeting is long, try an all-day prayer meeting, and then try a ten-day prayer meeting. They spent ten days in continual prayer, ongoing prayer, and praising God, and making supplication, asking God to do what He's been promising to do. But there's another thing here that's also very important, and that is the body connection that we see developing here. This fellowship.

They continued with one accord. Continued with one accord. The Greek word, it's a homo word. We often think of those bad as homosexual, but it's actually a good word. It means together, the same heart, the same mind.

They continue together in one accord. There was a unity there as this body was being knit together so that it functioned together as a body. See how very opposite this is, The fear that scattered the disciples when Christ was arrested. They all were afraid and they all scattered. And they all deserted Christ.

John says, He who fears has not been made perfect in love. We love Him because He first loved us. They now love the Lord. And that overcame any fears that they had. And instead of scattering and being fractured, they are now being knit together.

And they are continuing with one mind and one heart. And fellowship. It's really the exact opposite of competition. Before they used to compete about who is the greatest. But factions and competitions are from the evil one.

James says that where divisions exist, where self-seeking, erythia exists, there is the demonic present. The very word for Heresy is simply the word for faction, for sects. Sects, S-E-C-T-S. Divisions of God's people. Satan divides and fractures.

But when the church begins to come together with one mind and one heart, and begins to pray, then God does great things. And when COVID came, we saw this fracturing of the church. People that relationships that were close were fractured. Families were split down the middle. Churches were divided, even in the CPC.

I think We experienced that. And I think we even had some effect from that. Just fracturing. We see the opposite here. We see a unity in the Spirit.

An agreement with one heart and one mind. They have the mind of Christ. See, they are as one body, fitly joined together, nourished by what every joint and ligament supplies. You can't have a strong body when all the pieces are at war with each other, when they're fractured, when they're not ministering to one another. In love.

Setting aside their own agendas. Setting aside their self-seeking and desire for glory, or desire for recognition. It's the opposite here. These people were coming together in a unified fellowship. So we can learn then, first, that waiting times are not wasted times.

They can be times for reflection, times of examining our own obedience, times of study, times of prayer. Waiting times are times to pray. They're not idle times. Sometimes we think of idle as, well, if I'm waiting, I can just be idle. It's an excuse sometimes we use for idleness.

We're waiting for something, so that's an excuse not to be productive. But we see just the opposite here. That in this time of waiting, they were to wait. They were to carry, to wait. Carry in Jerusalem and wait.

But they weren't idle. They were very busy. It's also a time to come together. Sometimes if you're waiting for something, maybe you're waiting for a job. Maybe you're waiting for a spouse.

Maybe you're waiting for a development. Whether it's short term, a day, an hour, or a longer term. Maybe it's even years you're waiting. But these times are to be a time where we should pull together, not pull back. We see this fellowship, this koinonia, continuing in Acts chapter 2.

It talks about them continuing, daily with one accord again in the temple, breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. There is a pulling together. When we're waiting, it's a time to pull together. It's a time to renew fellowship. It's a time to draw closer to other people, not a time to back away in fear or discouragement, or just wanting to be alone by ourselves.

So may the Lord grant to us to be a body that fellowships together, that prays together, and that prays continually and fervently for the Lord to work in us and through us and around us. Amen. Heavenly Father, We can do nothing by ourselves, but with You we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. Oh Lord, may You show us our need to be strengthened by You, our need for You to do anything at all. And may You raise within us A fervent desire to pray, to pray corporately.

A fervent love for one another that knits us together as one body and Christ fitly joined together. Lord, may You crucify all pride in us. The pride that divides and separates and destroys this fellowship. Lord, may we be those who submit ourselves to one another, those who are clothed with humility. For you resist the proud, but you give grace to the humble.

So we want, Lord, to humble ourselves under Your mighty hand, that You may exalt us in due time. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.