NT in 40 Days: Acts 1-5

Like the Gospel of Luke, the Acts of the Apostles is another book written to someone (either specifically or generally) called Theophilus. Nowadays I think the most interesting aspect of the first several chapters of Acts is the way the church did the best they could. I'm pretty sure that when Jesus said in Acts 1:8 that his disciples would "be [his] witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" that he intended them to reach out to Gentiles as well as Jews, but it took Peter until Acts 10 to clue in on this. In Acts 1:12-26 we see the apostles, inspired by Psalms, selecting Matthias to replace Judas. Strangely, this is the first, last, and only time in Scripture we ever hear about him. My guess is that God wanted Paul, not Matthias, to replace Judas. Paul a much more prominent person in the New Testament and he even refers to himself in 1 Corinthians 15:9 as "the least of the apostles." I just hope Matthias wasn't part of the Corinth church at the time. The takeaway is that we shouldn't expect the church (or anyone in it) to be perfect. We should do the best we can to discern God's expections of us, but we shouldn't get too wrapped up in our own conclusions.