Acts 1:18-26

¹⁸After that the Jewish leaders used that same money to buy some farm land. Judas fell down in that place and his belly split open, and all his guts fell out, and he died.

¹⁹Everybody that lived in Jerusalem heard about this, so they called that place Akeldama in their language. That means the Farm Land of Blood.”

²⁰Peter kept on talking, he said, “God’s man called David wrote about Judas a long time ago, and it is in God’s book, in the part called Psalms. He wrote, ‘Empty out his house, God, and let nobody else live in it.’ And he also wrote, ‘Let somebody else have his job.’”

²¹And Peter said, “So now we need to pick somebody else to be one of us 12 close followers, that have that job. He will help us tell people the true story, that Jesus is alive. Yes, Jesus died, but then God made him alive again. The man we pick has to be one of the men that went around with our leader Jesus here, and he has to be one that was with us all those 3 years, from the time that John baptised Jesus, right up to the time that God took Jesus up into heaven.”

²³So they all talked together and found 2 men that did all those things. One man was Joseph Barsabbas. He also had another name, Justus. The other man was called Matthias.

²⁴Then the close followers of Jesus prayed. They said, “Judas left his job, and went his own way, and now he is dead. He went to that bad place. And God, you really know everyone, and you know the way they are thinking. Please show us the man that you want to take the place of Judas, to do his job, and to be a close follower of Jesus.”

²⁶So the close followers put the names of the 2 men into a jar and one man shook it. Then he closed his eyes and took out one of those names. That name was Matthias. So Matthias joined the 11 close followers, to work with them.