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Focusing on the first chapter of the book of Acts. The church, the body of Christ was transferred from his physical body and the church was transferred to us and we become the church. In this teaching we will discuss the betrayal of Judas. Many of us have our own theory of Judas, maybe when we were younger we formed this opinion based on a lot of the artistic renderings of him with the scowl and so forth.

However, maybe Judas was the politician of the group, pretty savvy, pretty smart. Probably better educated than the rest of the group. After all, he was in charge of the money for the group. He was a fairly popular and charismatic member of the group.

There are several theories of why Judas did this. As we grew up we basically thought he was just the bad apple of the bunch but at the same time we have probably realized he did not do anything worse than things we have done in our lives. Did Judas see all this coming and turn states evidence? Did he see all this coming and jump to the other side real quick and maybe they would take it easier on him. Did he do it for the money? Probably not, 30 pieces of silver wouldn’t have gone very far, I am sure he had access to the whole treasury and that had a 100x more in it.

Did he feel like he had a hatred for Jesus and Jesus could read his mind and he was somehow an evil person? We like to point our finger at the other guy and say at least I dont do that.. But the thumb is pointing back to us as a reminder.

Maybe the betrayal of Jesus was done because it was Judas’ own way of bringing this whole thing to a head. He honestly thought Jesus was the Messiah and he was going to an earthly ruler and he was going to help make it happen. He was going to jump ahead of God and instead of getting involved in what God was doing, he was going to ask God to get involved in what he was doing. He was going to go out first and get his blessing later. This is our best guess as to what happened.

Don't you think that at the last supper when Jesus says, go ahead and do what you must do Judas took that as confirmation that he knew what he needed to do. The fact is that he did indeed betray Jesus and he immediately felt a horrible sorrow when Jesus did not become the earthly king and therefore he hung himself.

But now that leave 11, not 12 and they had to find a suitable replacement. We know him to be Mathias.

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If the religious leaders of the church thought they had an issue with Jesus when he was alive, well boy they have a bigger issue now! It’s kind of like one of those sci-fi movies when you chop the little monster in half and it basically multiplies and creates two more little monsters. That is exactly what is happening. All of the sudden, Jesus is no longer here physically, but he has multiplied in the believers.

Now there are 300, 600, 1000, 2000, 10000 and this thing is completely out of control. And that is what the book of Acts explains, it explains how this all happened. It was not by chance or circumstance it was absolutely planned. This is what Jesus referred to when Jesus said to the disciples that it was necessary that I go, but you will not be alone. You are going to have me with you, in a slightly different form.

This is another personal sermon. Jesus was not just talking to the disciples, he was talking to us. The reality of Christ living in us is exactly what Pastor Harris’s teachings are all about. He always teaches relationship, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and how it manifests itself. In this teaching Pastor Harris will teach on the events that happen on the Mount of Olives as Christ left after 40 days. We call it the ascension, because that is exactly what he did, if you recall as soon as he ascended the disciples and believers are standing around and looking up and suddenly there are two more of them. These two guys are all dressed in white and they are obviously angelic beings of some kind and they are saying men of Galilee, why are you looking up into heaven, the same Jesus you just saw go up will come again in the same manner. That is obviously our hope and we know that to be true.

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At Easter we celebrate the resurrection of Christ, the week preceding that we typically focus on the events leading up to the cross. That was the culmination of the perfect life of Jesus which was sacrificed for all of us. Now in this series we will focus on the other side of the story. If you can imagine, just for a moment, it is AD 31, 32, maybe and we are believers, maybe we are one of the 11 disciples that remain, perhaps we are one of the several hundred believers, or maybe we are one of the several thousand people that actually saw Jesus when he was living and he performed a miracle in front of our face and we believed he was something special, maybe we didn't know quite what it was but we experienced it. We are in Galilee and we hear that he’s dead. There is no instant communication, so maybe it's been a week or two. Maybe it's a rumor, we just aren’t quite sure, we are devastated and we don't know what to think.

The disciples were in disarray, we know they were at least until resurrection day. The several hundred believers were probably despondent at the news. It seemed like to us, to the believers, that the vail that had fallen as Christ was dying was still there. The sun was up but the vale was still there. We didn't know what we were going to do.

Suddenly the Church emerges. In this series, we are going to study how this happened. Our reference will be the first chapter in Acts which many of us are familiar with. However, as Pastor Harris always does, he will give us the details and insights that will make it come alive.

We know that Acts was written by Luke. Luke, as Pastor Harris will point out, Luke wrote more of the New Testament than any other person. We think of Paul as the primary author of the New Testament but Luke was very instrumental in the writing of our gospel. Luke was not one of our 12 disciples, sometimes you will ask people, “who are the 12 disciples?” and they will throw Luke in there, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and you know… but nope, he was not a disciple.

Luke was from the area above what is now known as Greece called Macedonia. He encountered Paul on one of his missionary journeys and became a believer through Paul and apparently Luke and Paul became very close. From there Luke will take on the role of early church historian. By profession Luke was a physician, he was a learned man far more educated than most of the disciples. Maybe not as educated as Paul, but close. So here you have these two deep thinkers together and they begin to share with us the history of the church. We invite you to follow along as Pastor Harris tells us the details of the birth of our faith in this series titled, “The Birth of the Church”. So let’s kick it off with the first teaching in this series titled, “The Acts of the Holy Spirit”.

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