Pastor Scott Andrews | April 28, 2024
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Luke 6:12-16
I’ve had a great week – I hope you have. Why have I had a great week? Glad you asked…(Pic)
In his book Quiet Talks of Service, S. D. Gordon gives an imaginary account of Jesus’ return to heaven after His ascension. The angel Gabriel greeted Jesus, and asked, “Master, You died for the world, did you not?” To which Jesus replied, “Yes.” “You must have suffered much,” Gabriel said, and again, Jesus simply answered, “Yes.” “Do they all know that you died for them?” Gabriel continued. “No. Only a few in Palestine know so far.” “Well, then, what is Your plan for telling the rest of the world that You shed Your blood for them?” Jesus responded, “Well, I asked Peter and James and John and Andrew and a few others if they would make it the business of their lives to tell others. And the ones they tell could tell others, and they in turn could tell still others, and finally it would reach the farthest corner of the earth and all would know the truth and power of the gospel.” Gabriel, knowing of what stuff the disciples were made was concerned, so he asked, “But suppose Peter fails, again? And suppose after a while John just doesn’t tell anyone? And what if James and Andrew are ashamed or afraid? Then what?” “I have no other plans,” Jesus said, “I’m counting on them.”
Knowing of what they were made, Gabriel asked, what if they fail? It’s easy for us, sitting in a church 2,000 years later, half a world away, to see the plan worked. Of course, we know the plan was not left entirely to the Twelve, but they received power when the Spirit came on that first Day of Pentecost. But place yourself in Gabriel’s wings in this imaginary story. Look at the disciples of the New Testament.
Oh, but we have a problem with that. We look at those disciples, the Twelve, through the eyes of 2,000 years of history, and time has been very gracious to these men. As I pointed out when we talked about Matthew, we see these men in stained glass, with halos, folded hands, rich flowing robes, saintly smiles, deep in heavenly thought. They are St. Peter, St. Andrew, St. James, St. John. Churches bear their names. But, a careful investigation of the gospel accounts reveals an entirely different picture. We’re going to talk about that today as we meet the Master’s Men – the Twelve.
In our study, Luke has been proving conclusively, by both Jesus’ teaching and His works, that He is the Christ, the Son of God. People were following Him from all over. They had been astonished by Him. We’ve been spectators, right along with the crowds. But now, we come to a bit of a transition in the book. Jesus will continue to do His ministry. The crowds are still around, pressing in on Him. But now, the opposition is rising, precipitously. And Jesus knows, it will end in the cross. So at this point, He goes up on a mountain, spends the night in prayer, and calls His disciples to join Him in the work. In short, He says, it’s time to get involved. Time to go from being spectators, to becoming participants. You see, there’s a lot of work to do, and when I finish my work, I’ll be counting on you to finish yours.
That call still exists today. Jesus is still counting on us, His church, to do the work. Yes, Jesus did say, I will build My church, and the very gates of hell will not overcome it. He did send the Holy Spirit to enable us. But, in His sovereign and gracious purposes, He chose to use the likes of Peter and Andrew, James and John, you and me to accomplish His plan. Is it still working?
The very thought of that idea may be a bit intimidating to you. Me, be used by Jesus to fulfill the plan to build His church? Now way, not me, God could never use me, could He? We come back to this idea of just being a fan – a spectator. You think your place in the church minimal, unimportant, insignificant. I know the church has people like that – we have people like that here. And so the message is for all of us, because God uses everybody, even the most unlikely characters of all – even the most unlikely people sitting in this room. How do I know? Well, let’s meet the special men Jesus called. You see, another thing we are finding in our study of Luke is Jesus chooses people you would never expect. The text is found in Luke 6:12-16.
That’s an impressive list, isn’t it? If I asked you to name the Twelve before we read it, most of you couldn’t. You haven’t even heard of some of these guys. That’s the point. And yet Jesus used these men to turn the world upside down. The outline today is really quite simple:
- Preparation for Calling the Twelve (12)
- The Call of the Twelve (13-16)
It was time for His disciples – followers – to get involved, to join Him in the work. This is a major advance in the plan – Jesus will choose those to carry on the work after He completes His. Opposition is rising – who will carry on the work? Now, some of them had been following for a while, perhaps several months. Maybe like some of you – you’ve been following for a while. It was time for this group and some of you to get involved. I want to say this kindly – but if the extent of your Christian life is this hour on Sunday morning, I want to call you up. They had been spectators long enough. It was time to get to work.
Jesus went up the mountain to prepare to name the Twelve. We have found Jesus often prayed – sometimes all night – at major points in this unfolding drama. Not only that, in the gospels, important things happen on mountain tops. It was on a mountain – perhaps this mountain – Jesus preached His first recorded sermon – the Sermon on the Mount. It was on a mountain He often went alone to pray. It was on a mountain He took His inner circle of Peter, James and John – and was transfigured before them – we call it the Mount of Transfiguration. And there, God’s voice came from heaven again – like at His baptism – this is My beloved Son.
Some suggest, probably rightly, much like Moses received the Law, the Old Covenant, on a mountain – Mount Sinai – that Jesus, the one greater than Moses, was beginning to unfold the New Covenant. So He goes to the mountain to pray, and then summons those whom He named apostles. He called Twelve – the number is probably significant – it was in Israel’s history. Some suggest Jesus calls Twelve, a remnant from Israel through whom the promise of the New Covenant would be fulfilled. These were disciples, whom Jesus named as apostles. Let’s look at those two words. First, what is a disciple? Quite simply, we typically think of a disciple as a follower – a learner.
But second, an apostle is a compound word that comes from two Greek words meaning, to send away. Apostles were sent ones. We see both aspects of these words in Mark’s account, He appointed twelve, so that they would be with Him and that He could send them out. Notice the order. First, Jesus called them to be with Him. That’s what being a follower or disciple of Jesus is – it starts with relationship – being with Him. I need you to hear me – He calls you first to be with Him. To be a disciple – a follower – to learn from Him. The call is first to Himself. Remember that passage in Matthew 11, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” That is His call to you – follow Him – learn from Him – be in relationship with Him – and you will find rest.
Jesus first called them to Himself to be disciples – that’s what they’ve been, that’s what we’ve been in the first few chapters. We’ve been watching, hearing His teaching, seeing what He was doing. But now, the second part of true discipleship is this – being sent to do the work. You see, now, He will them away as apostles, sent ones, to share His teaching and do what He was doing. Now, there are two ways this word is used in the NT. The first is here – it’s an official designation – the twelve apostles, and there were only twelve. Matthias replaced Judas in Acts 1, and Paul speaks of himself as an apostle born later. But the first way the term is used speaks officially of this group, upon whom the church was built. The church was built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. The early church devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching. We are too – because you see, the Scripture was written by the apostles or close associates of the apostles. So in that official sense, there are no apostles today.
But, the word is also used in a secondary sense. Paul writes of the gift of apostleship in I Corinthians 12 – which seems to speak of a person given the gifting and authority to oversee churches. Likely in that sense, missionaries serve in that way. NT examples of such non-official apostles in some sense exercising authority over the churches are Barnabas and Epaphroditus, perhaps others.
But I believe Jesus still wants His church to do the same thing today. He wants us to be “apostles,” not in the official sense of the word, but He wants us to be sent ones. Those sent to do the work of the kingdom. Having been called to Him – to be in relationship with Him, it’s now time to do what He does. Here, He will send them to preach the good news – to share the gospel – to drive out demons – that is, to demonstrate God’s kingdom is here – the cosmic battle of good versus evil was coming to climax – Satan’s kingdom was coming to an end.
Think about this – lots of people want to be disciples of Jesus. And that’s a good thing. But it’s only half the job. We need to go from being disciples to being sent ones – from those called to Jesus to those sent out from Him to do the work. We say it this way in our mission statement, “We are called, by the grace of God, for the glory of God, to become (that’s discipleship) and multiply (that’s sent ones) fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ.”
So, being a follower of Jesus includes being a disciple, a learner. It is appropriate to take time to learn, to grow, to be discipled – to be equipped for ministry. But there comes a time to become a participant. Which means, we take on the responsibility of equipping others to do the work of ministry. Part of the process of being a disciple is making disciples, joining Him in the work.
You see, that brings us to our second point – let’s look at the men Jesus called. Before we get to the individual names, let me share some interesting facts with you. In every place the Twelve are listed by name, in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Acts, there are some similarities:
First, Peter is always first, and Judas Iscariot is always last. Second, there seem to be three groups of four, and those groups are always listed in order. And we actually know most about the first group, a little less about the second group, and hardly anything about the third group. Peter, Andrew, James and John, two sets of brothers, go together to form the first group. As I said, Peter is always listed first, and not only seems to be the leader of the whole band of disciples, but the leader of his subgroup. He is referred to as Simon till now – from here on out, he’ll be Peter – the rock, the name Jesus gave him signifying his place of strength and leadership among the disciples.
Then comes Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew, and Philip is always listed first, suggesting he is the group leader. Now, sometimes, the names within each group are mixed up, but the first name in the group is always first. Finally, the last group is composed of James the son of Alpheus, likely the leader of his group, Judas the son of James elsewhere called Thaddaeus, Simon the Zealot, and last, and certainly least, Judas Iscariot.
Now, as I said earlier, these men were not necessarily the patron saints we think of today – churchy kind of guys. Several of them were fisherman by trade. They probably smelled bad, spit, and swore, and they fought amongst themselves. I know you don’t like that – that I say they swore – it doesn’t match the picture you have in your minds – but I have proof. When Peter was in the courtyard after Jesus was arrested, he was confronted with being a follower of Jesus, not once, but three times. It irritated him – he lied, said he wasn’t, swore by an oath, and then swore profanely – a vile kind of swearing.
These men were full of all kinds of shortcomings. One of their most obvious was their lack of spiritual understanding. That’s a nice way of saying, they weren’t very bright. You may not like that either. But it wasn’t me who said that – it was Jesus. They almost appeared to be dense. They struggled with understanding Jesus’ parables as much as the crowds. Several times, when He finished teaching, they’d be standing there with the “lights on but nobody’s home” look. Then somebody would ask a stupid question. At which point Jesus would say something like, “Are you guys so dull, are you so slow of thinking you don’t get it?”
The bottom line is, these men were not your church-going type. They weren’t the saints of the stain glass windows. They weren’t the sharpest knives in the drawers. They were men who needed a Savior, just like you, just like me, and they needed to be transformed, just like you, just like me. But they all had one thing in common – they had hearts for Jesus. They were disciples, they were with Him. In all their shortcomings, in all their frailties, they turned themselves over to God, whose power is perfected in weakness. Some of you need to hear that. You need to know these unschooled, ignorant, fighting, fearful, inept, sometimes faithless men are the ones who turned the world upside down. They are an encouragement to every person who has ever had the thought, Jesus could never use me. Let’s look at them.
First, there was Simon Peter, the disciple with the foot-shaped mouth. Outside of Jesus, Peter is the central figure in the gospels. In the lists, he’s always first. Matthew even calls him the protos, the first, which speaks of position or rank. Peter was chief among the disciples. And the qualities that made him a leader also made him a stumbling block, mostly to himself.
Apart from Jesus, no one is mentioned more in the New Testament than Peter. No other person speaks as often, or is spoken to as often. No disciple is reproved as often as Peter, and no one but Peter is so presumptuous as to reprove the Lord. No other disciple so boldly confessed Christ, and so boldly denied Him. No one was so praised by Jesus, and no one else was called Satan by Jesus. Peter is a bundle of contradictions, inconsistencies, strengths and failures all rolled into one person. Are you feeling better now? No wonder Gabriel was concerned.
And Jesus took this guy – an inconsistent, self-centered man, and made him the first among the disciples. He is an encouragement to every person in this room who has ever tried, and failed. Every person who finds the mouth open before the brain is engaged. The one who tries really hard, but often does it wrong. The one who has a heart for Jesus. Is it any wonder later, Peter would later write, “Love covers a multitude of sins.”
Let me tell you something. I much rather have someone who’s willing to step out of the boat, face the winds and the waves when walking with Jesus, than someone who is content to sit in the boat, where it’s nice and safe, and nothing is going on. Peter is a man who failed often, but he failed trying to be like Jesus, trying to be with Jesus.
Next comes Andrew. Andrew was Peter’s brother, and most suggest he was his older brother. And they seem to be a study in opposites. While Peter was loud, brash, and arrogant, Andrew seemed to be quiet, unassuming, and reserved. He only appears here in Luke, and in the other synoptics, in their lists and as Peter’s brother. But we read a little more about him in John.
There we find Andrew was the one who found Jesus first, and brought his brother, Peter, to Jesus. In fact, that seems to be the kind of guy Andrew was. He was a man of quiet faith, and every time we see him in John, he just seems to be bringing people to Jesus. There was the time in John 6 when the crowds were hungry, too far from town to get lunch. While the disciples were wondering how they would feed such a large group – five thousand men alone, Andrew brought a boy with a lunch to the Lord – five loaves, two fish – and the rest is history.
Then there was the time in John 12 when a couple of Greeks came up to Philip and said, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” What did Philip do? He went and told Andrew. What did Andrew do? He went and told Jesus. Andrew was always bringing people to Jesus.
Do you think it was tough for Andrew, the older brother, seeing his younger brother get all the fame? “I’m the one who told Peter about Jesus – why does he get all the attention?” In fact, he’s often just referred to as Peter’s brother. Yet, all we see is a quiet, former fisherman, telling people about Jesus. He didn’t seem to care about attention. He is the picture of all those who serve Jesus in quiet and unseen ways. He didn’t seem to care who noticed. He just had a heart for Jesus and wanted others to know Him.
Legend records that later, Andrew told the wife of a governor about Jesus. She placed her faith in Christ, and the governor didn’t like it. So he hung Andrew on a cross, and it took him two days to die. Guess what he told people about while he hung there? Even in his death, he was bringing people to Jesus.
Next come James and John – a couple more fishermen, the sons of Zebedee. But later, we see Jesus names them the sons of thunder. I don’t know about you, but that sounds more like a motorcycle gang than a couple of stained-glass saints. You can even see that stitched on the back of a leather jacket – sons of thunder. Most probably wouldn’t let these guys in their church. Out of control, unbridled, harsh, tough guys.
Why were they called that? The title seems to speak of men with great zeal, passion, even aggression. We see a little of that character in the gospels. There was the time all the disciples were arguing about which one of them would be the greatest. I have no doubt James and John were in the midst of that. Why do I say that? Because later, they had mom approach Jesus and say, “Grant that my two sons be allowed to sit on your left and right hand in the kingdom.” Bold request. Jesus looked at these two sons of thunder and said, “Are you able to drink the cup I drink?” No problem, they said.
Then there was the time they were on their way to Jerusalem. They were having to stop along the way, so Jesus would send people ahead to prepare for His arrival. One Samaritan city sent word back – you can’t stay here. What did the sons of thunder want to do? They asked Jesus, “You want us to call down fire from heaven and torch that town?” Jesus, seeing the multitudes, had compassion on them. And James, seeing the multitudes, said, “nuke ‘em.” And this was after three years, right before the crucifixion. It’s no wonder Gabriel was concerned.
But they made it. Because, God uses all kinds of people. James has the distinction of becoming the first of the disciples to give his life for the Master. John went on to write the gospel of John, three epistles, and the book of Revelation. These guys who didn’t get it, who were often out of line, who had personalities like sandpaper, made it. They did the work of the kingdom.
I’m not even going to spend time talking about the rest of the guys on this list. I’ve already told you about Matthew. I could talk about Philip, who asked the Lord the night before His crucifixion, “Lord, show us the Father.” To which Jesus responded, “Have I been with you so long and you don’t know me, Philip?” I could tell you about Thomas, Doubting Thomas, “I won’t believe unless I put my fingers in His nail prints and my hand in His side.” Most of the others we don’t know much about. Most of them are never quoted as saying anything. Some of them don’t even appear outside the lists of the names of the Twelve. Are we to assume they were just a bunch of losers who never did anything for the kingdom? I don’t think so.
I will say one other thing about these men. One was Matthew – a former tax collector for Rome, a traitor to his own people. Another was Simon the Zealot. It was probably too early in history to say he was of the group of zealots that caused the rebellion in 66 AD. But most agree he had the name because of his nationalistic zeal and hatred of Roman oppression. If that is true, and I believe it is, then Simon the Zealot would have killed Matthew the tax collector. They would have been enemies. But the gospel of Jesus Christ changed these men – and they became co-laborers for Jesus – and their names will forever be inscribed on the twelve foundation stones in the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21. Stop and think about that.
I believe we see here men who were willing to serve with no press – without names in lights, without fanfare. What do I see in these men? People who loved Jesus, who were willing to serve without drawing attention to themselves. Like people today who serve in ministries like children’s ministries, or the nursery, or cleaning bathrooms, or setting up chairs. Not a lot of notoriety there. In fact, most of you don’t know their names, but God does.
Of seven of the twelve, we have no idea what their occupations were. We simply know they were called by Jesus to join Him in the work. And they went out, two by two, doing the work. And they turned the world upside down. Because one thing these men all had in common – they were with Jesus and were sent out by Jesus.
When I review these men – the twelve Jesus chose to carry on His work, I can’t help but think of someone named Thomas Mitchell. You’ve never heard of Thomas Mitchell. Thomas Mitchell was an obscure, 18th Century Methodist preacher. This is what his obituary read, “Thomas Mitchell, an old soldier of Jesus Christ, a man of slender abilities as a preacher, and who enjoyed only a very defective education.” Thomas Mitchell was just the kind of man to serve Christ.
What a muddled, messed up group of men. But they were the men Jesus chose. Look around the room – we may not like to think this, but we’re not much better. And He’s still counting on us. Remember the story we began with – the conversation with Gabriel and Jesus? Again, it left out a very important truth. Jesus would have said to Gabriel, “I’m not leaving them alone.” When Jesus ascended, He told the disciples, you’re not quite ready. Wait in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit comes to fill you, then you’ll have all you need to do the work. The Spirit came on the day of Pentecost, filled His church, and has been doing so ever since.
We are so filled, gifted, enabled, empowered to do the work of Christ. Every one of us. It doesn’t matter who you are – it doesn’t matter what your personality or skills are or aren’t – you’ve been called and empowered to do the work. And if God can use people like Peter and Andrew, James and John, Scott and Tana, Michael and Laura, Hunter and Mary Lee, He can use you.
Think of this: why has God assembled this group of people at this church called Alliance? Is it so we can all come together and enjoy moving, inspiring worship? I believe so. Is it so we can enjoy wonderful fellowship? I believe so. Is it so we can gather to hear fantastic teaching? I believe so. But is it also so we can be workers, going from here, sharing the gospel of the kingdom with lost, helpless, harassed people, in demonstration of the Spirit’s power? I believe so. Would you hear the call of the Master, today? Would you be willing to be one of the Master’s men, the Master’s women? He’s counting on Spirit-filled, empowered believers.
I close with this quote from Oswald Chambers: “God can achieve His purpose either through the absence of human power and resources, or the abandonment of reliance on them. All through history God has chosen and used nobodies, because their unusual dependence on Him made possible the unique display of His power and grace. He chose and used somebodies only when they renounced dependence on their natural abilities and resources.” Are you a nobody or a somebody? God will use you.