The Ascended Christ's Plan

**Rev. Josiah Ling** (0:00)
You're listening to the Christ Church Toronto Podcast, a recording of the Sunday Sermons of Christ Church Toronto.
Christ Church Toronto is located in Toronto's East End, and seeks to practice the ancient Christian faith today. We would love for you to join us in the future. Until then, here is today's scripture reading.
The scripture reading today is taken from Acts 1, verses 12 to 26
Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath-day journey away. And when they had entered, they went up to the room where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the zealot, and Judas the son of James. All these, with one accord, were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus and his brothers. In those days, Peter stood up among the brothers. The company of persons was in all about 120 and said, Brothers, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus. For he was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry. Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness, and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out, and it became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that field was called in their own language, Akkaldama, which is field of blood. For it is written in the Book of Psalms, may his camp become desolate, and let there be no one to dwell in it, and let another take his office. So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us, one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection. And they put forward to Joseph called Barsabbas, who is also called Justus, and Matthias. And they prayed and said, You Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place. And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias, and he was numbered with the 11 apostles. This is the word of the Lord for our church and is given for our good.

**Rev. Josiah Ling** (2:36)
Well, before we turn to our passage, bow your heads with me in prayer.
Lord in heaven, we acknowledge that you are the one reigning even now at the right hand of the Father. And as a true and elder brother, we ask that you would come now and help us and guide us in our time of need, that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you would incline our hearts to you and unite our wills with yours so that we may be encouraged through the preaching of your word. We find your word entirely satisfying this week. And to your name, we pray. Amen. Amen.
Well, you wouldn't know it if you travel there, but Montreal once served as the center of church planting and Christianity in Canada. That as I was preparing for my ordination exams, I was reading this account of James Robertson, and he's very much one of the pioneers of who was the motivators for having the spread of Presbyterianism, all these traditional old churches that we see dotted both across Ontario, but also Western Canada. And many of the men that he encouraged to plants were trained in Montreal.
Author Mark Twain once described of Montreal in his visit there, that Montreal is the city of a hundred bell towers, that you could throw a brick in Montreal and not end up hitting a church building. And yet what we see today, Montreal is very different. That Montreal is a city very much unreached. It's less than one percent evangelical Christian. It's considered one of the most unreached cities in all of North America. And the way that had happened is because through the 60s and 70s, in light of significant church corruption, by church leaders, the very ones who were sworn to protect the peace and the purity of the church, corruption had spread and there's this disillusionment with trust in the church, that what became through these two decades in the 60s and 70s was called the Quiet Revolution, one of the most radical de-churching movements in not just Canadian church history, but actually church history as a whole. That where there was a majority culture of churches and Christianity, now succumb to less than one percent. And it's hard not to think that in light of this human corruption by leadership, at the very hands who were sworn to protect this church, that we feel that Christ's kingdom might somehow be conquered, that we feel that there is this threat that somehow the church will be overcome, Christ will be overcome. And maybe some of you sitting here today know of this feeling, that the Christian church is indeed at this threat of failure by those in leadership. You know of this feeling of this very foundation of what you thought to be true and people that you thought could be trusts become shaky.