047: The Life of Christ: The
Twelve Disciples
Last week we looked at the narrative of the calling of the twelve
disciples under three headings leaving the fourth for this week.
We saw that the calling of the twelve by Jesus was a:
1. Careful Consideration:
2. Prayerful Consideration:
& 3. Deliberate
Consideration:
If the Lord Jesus Christ needed to be careful, prayerful and
deliberate as the eternal Son of God who knows men’s hearts, then we ought to
be too, and exponentially more. His
greater perfection contrasted with our sin, shows us our need for careful,
prayerful, and deliberate actions. If the perfect one was in need of careful
and prayerful consideration before the great decisions of life, so too the
imperfect ones who seek to follow him and his example.
This morning we get to finish the story by looking at how this
calling of the twelve was one of ....
4. Personal Consideration:
The text of Luke 6:13 in the second clause tells us ......
He called His disciples to
Himself.
It was a particular call to a specific task--to be his personal faithful
disciples. It was an emphatic call of particular men to a specific task.
Jesus did not treat all the people who made up the multitudes in
the same way. That is an important truth
to see. In our world of democratic
principles we believe that everyone has a right to whatever anyone else
has. We democratize Christianity as we
impose our political ideals onto it. That is not right nor is it true.
There are some people to whom leaders must give more time and
effort than others. Not all men are to
be treated alike. That is a myth of
American Democratic ideals. Every one
needs to be treated according to the real need as time and energy allows. Especially, elders are to give their time to
faithful men, in order to train them that they will be able to train others
also. There is a big difference between
American democratic ideals and the way things are to be done in God’s scheme of
things. We must not impose political
idealogy on the work of the Gospel.
Jesus knew who these disciples he would call were and what they
had to offer and also how they would fulfill God’s eternal purposes and help
accomplish this great work of God on behalf of man. These disciples had already
been around Jesus: some for a year, others for months, and perhaps some for
weeks. He knew them, their character and their commitment.
Note the language in the verse is emphatic--He, that is Jesus,
called, His Disciples to Himself.
Jesus did the calling personally.
Jesus called them to the office of Disciple to follow.
Jesus called them to follow Himself.
It was a very personal thing.
As the others already called had forsaken all to follow him, so would
those who made the final cut.
Luke tells us Jesus called them to be his disciples, Mark tells us
Jesus appointed them to be sent out (apostles).
The twin concepts or call and appoint give us a wonderful picture of
what happened that day. They were called
a specific calling, with the expectation of a reciprocal relation — ‘to call,
to call unto--as we will later see. And, they were also appointed, they were
caused to be in that position, they were put in their place. The basic meaning
of the word translated here appointed is to cause a state to be — ‘to cause to
be, to make to be, to make, to result in, to bring upon, to bring, the
particular context points to a more specific meaning of to cause someone to
assume a particular type of function — ‘to assign to a task, to cause people to
assume responsibilities for a task.
Note again, there was no appeal to a choice to be made by the
disciples. They had NO “CHOICE” in it at
all. It was all initiated by the Lord
Jesus who calls and appoints these twelve to be his own disciples and the
original language conveys a sense of ownership and authority by Jesus over the
twelve.
The word for call in Mark 3:13 is ; proskale÷omai : to call to or towards a particular
thing, with a possible implication of an expected reciprocal relation. A call goes out, a specific response is
anticipated and expected.
The first example of this range of meaning in Louw and Nida’s
lexicon is Luke 6:13--when day came, he called his disciples to him’. He called
with the expectation that they would reciprocate accordingly. And, we find that
they did. They left all behind to follow the Lord Jesus Christ. The call went out, the specific response
accomplished the intended purpose.
Let’s say I bake a turkey for Sunday dinner. When I call the family, I expect them to
come, sit and share the meal. As the
authority calling my family, they do not have a choice to come or not
come. It is expected that, when I say,
“Come to the table!” that they will.
They also know the repercussions of not coming, it is discipline for
disobedience. They are compelled to come by my authority and their
accountability to it.
And even more, Jesus has a right to call men to follow him. He is Lord of all. Not just Lord of the
Christians.
proskale÷omaia Ú proskalesa¿menoß to\n o¡clon ei•pen aujtoi√ß ‘he called the crowd to him and said to them’ Mt 15:10.
33.312 kale÷wd ; klhvsißa , ewß f; proskale÷omaib : to urgently invite someone to accept responsibilities for a
particular task, implying a new relationship to the one who does the calling —
‘to call, to call to a task.’(God) called you to this through the good news we
preached to you’ 2Th 2:14.
And “so that you will know what is the hope to which he has called
you’ Eph 1:18.
And, speaking of a special calling to preach ‘because God has
called us to preach the good news to them’ or ‘… to the people there’ Ac 16:10.
It is rarely the case
when one can translate kale÷w, klhvsißa , and proskale÷omai as simply ‘to call’ in the
sense of ‘to speak to someone at a distance and tell them to come.’ Hey Peter,
come here! For example, in 2Th 2:14 it
may be necessary to render the above clause as ‘through the good news we
preached, which summoned you to do this.’ Similarly, in Acts 16:10 one may
translate ‘because God has urgently compelled us to preach the good news to the
people there.’
We are so influenced by humanism and decisionism that we want to
make everything a willful choice of the individual, rather than a calling of
God. To us a human decision and
controlling “choice” makes it meaningful.
So, we come to passages like these that speak of calling and we impose
on the text what is not there--our society’s notion of calling on the phone or
calling to dinner. The commitment expected by Jesus of the disciples is much,
much more. Jesus did not offer an appeal
for those twelve guys who thought they would like to give us a few years in
order travel with Jesus as a travelling
mission of some sort. He sovereignly
called them to the office of Disciple with a capitol “D”, that they might in
the future they might be sent out to preach.
He was going to spend his energy training and teaching them in a way he
would not teach and train the multitudes.
From here on, Jesus deals with three different classes of men in
three different ways:
1. The multitudes with compassion in Parables
2. The Disciples with careful instruction and patience
3. The Religious leaders of his day, who are already seeking to
kill him, with confrontation.
Jesus treats different types of people differently. And, he does
this that the Scriptures might be fulfilled.
We’ll see that in the coming weeks.
Even in God’s sovereignty choosing the twelve, they were willing
to serve because God had made them willing to forsake all to follow
Christ. When it is man’s choice, man can
back out of it and make his profession false or he can boast in himself. When it is God who truly calls, compels, or
summons them to be his disciple, to forsake or to leave that specific call is
of eternal consequence. God gives the
strength to do what he commands. And, among the twelve, there was nothing but
following to be found. They may not have understood all that Jesus was and
taught, but they followed. Discipleship is not about a human “choice”, it is
about divine call to abundant life. If
called, you must, MUST, follow. To use
the jargon of the day, it is pro-life, spiritual life, and not pro-choice, a
decision to follow, in a narrow theological sense.
To be his own intimate band of followers, he called 12 ordinary
men:
1. Simon, to whom He gave the Aramaic name Cephas (Kayphas in its Greek
pronunciation, though Cephas has ben the traditional pronunciation in the
English speaking world) meaning Stone (in Greek Petros giving us...) Peter see
John 1:42. Sometimes called Simon Peter together. The disciple with four names. Paul likes to call him Cephas. This shows it was not the name Petros or
Peter that was important, but the symbolic meaning of stone. In all four lists of the disciples, Peter is
listed first showing his place of prominence in the minds of the other
disciples. He was a foundation.
2. James the son of Zebedee--one of two Jameses
3. John (the brother of James), --T writer of the Gospel who bears
his name and the one whom Jesus loved.
Even among the disciples, there are special relationships.
(to James and John, Jesus
gave the name Boanerges, that is,
“Sons of Thunder”)
4. Andrew, brother of Simon Peter, who introduced Peter to the
Lord Jesus.
5. Philip,
6. Bartholomew, AKA Nathaniel
7. Matthew, aka Levi, the former Tax-collector who threw a lavish
banquet to introduce his friends and co-workers to Jesus.
8. Thomas, aka Didymus, Doubting Thomas?
9. James the son of Alphaeus, the other James.
10. Thaddaeus, aka Leddaeus and Judas, the brother of the second
James. (John 14:22), referring to this man, speaks of “Judas, not Iscariot.”
After the other Judas brought scandal upon himself and left the faith, a need
rose to differentiate this faithful Judas with the other. These different names designate the same
person. Some believe this Jude or Judas,
was the author of the epistle Jude.
11. Simon, derived from Simeon, the Cananite; Also known as Simon
the Zealot. One of the twelve apostles, called the Canaanite (Matt. 10:4; Mark
3:18). This word “Canaanite” does not always mean a native of the land of
Canaan, but is derived from the Syriac word Kanean or Kaneniah, which was the
name of a Jewish sect. The Revised Version has “Cananaean;” and in the margin,
“or Zealot” He is also called “Zelotes” (Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13; R.V., “the
Zealot”), because previous to his call to the apostleship he had been a member
of the fanatical sect of the Zealots. There is no other written record
regarding him.
The Zealotes were a sect of Jews which originated with yet another
Judas, Judas the Gaulonite. They refused to pay tribute or tax to the Romans,
on the ground that this was a violation of the principle that God was the only
king of Israel. They rebelled against the Romans, but were soon scattered, and
became a lawless band of mere brigands. They were afterwards called Sicarii, from
their use of the sica, i.e., the Roman dagger in treachery and assassination.
I can imagine that Matthew and Jude had a number of interesting
conversations. Their backgrounds and
concerns would have been so different.
But, that is what the Lord Jesus does--he calls men from various
backgrounds and standing to come together to do his will in the world. He hasn’t changed. Just look around to have
the proof you need.
And lastly we have....the infamous other Judas--
12. Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed Him. What an epitaph to have! Who also betrayed Jesus..... That is the one
thing for which this Judas in principally know.
Judas was a Son of a Simon (John 6:71; 13:2, 26), surnamed
Iscariot, i.e., a man of Kerioth (Josh. 15:25). His name is uniformly the last
in the list of the apostles, as given in the synoptic (i.e., the first three)
Gospels. The evil of his nature probably gradually unfolded itself till “Satan
entered into him” (John 13:27), and he betrayed our Lord (18:3). Afterwards he
owned his sin with “an exceeding bitter cry,” and cast the money he had
received as the wages of his iniquity down on the floor of the sanctuary, and
“departed and went and hanged himself” (Matt. 27:5). He perished in his guilt,
and “went unto his own place” (Acts 1:25). The statement in Acts 1:18 that he
“fell headlong and burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out,”
is in no way contrary to that in Matt. 27:5. The suicide first hanged himself,
perhaps over the valley of Hinnom, “and the rope giving way, or the branch to
which he hung breaking, he fell down headlong on his face, and was crushed and
mangled on the rocky ground below.”
We should ask: Why was Judas Iscariot chosen to be an
apostle? We know not, but it is written
that “Jesus knew from the beginning who should betray him” (John 6:64).
Jesus knew what he was doing. Even the choice of Judas was
careful, prayerful, deliberate and personal.
Nor can any answer be satisfactorily given to the question as to
the human motives that led Judas to betray his Master. Serious sin is, for the
most part, the result of a hundred motives and temptations rushing with
bewildering fury through the mind of the sinner.”
What we do know is this, what Judas meant for evil and personal
profit, God meant for good and great spiritual good.
The Church often finds men of treachery within her walls. Yet God
uses them for good, even when they intend evil. Often they are just ignorant of
what God really requires of professed disciples. I am here in Worcester because of the
treachery of one who denied the Scripture’s rightful place in the life of a
Church. God used that to bring about the
circumstances that brought us here even as he brought about the circumstances
that moved Pastor Jim along. Out of evil
and treachery, God can bring his ultimate good.
These men were ordinary: three sets of brothers, four fishermen, a
tax-collector, a zealot. These were men
of varying backgrounds and politics. Yet, by God’s grace, these are the men who
had a profound effect upon their world. According to the standards of the
world, they were untrained and uneducated.
Many of us have had many more years of formal education than they had
combined. Listen to Luke’s description
of these disciples in Acts 4:13 ¶ Now when they saw the boldness of
Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized
that they had been with Jesus.
What gave weight to the message preached and to the disciples who
delivered it? It was that they had been
with Jesus. They had been among those
who travelled with the Lord Jesus Christ, they had been taught by the master
teacher himself, they were his men. Two
years of training at the feet of Jesus qualified them for the work they would
do. They were untrained and uneducated, but they were not unintelligent, nor
unimportant. God used them
mightily.
When the Apostle Paul joins them, he is then the only one who can
claim to be educated and trained. Yet it
is the disciples who became apostles of whom it was said,
Acts 17:6b “These who have turned the
world upside down have come here too.
They were a threat to the status quo simply because they were
Jesus disciples, they taught what he taught and they held men accountable to
the most important news anyone can hear: despite our sin, God has provided a
means for us to be forgiven--that means is the Lord Jesus Christ.
A handful of committed disciples can have a profound impact on
others for their good and the growth of Christ’s kingdom. Only a few committed
souls can have a great effect. The key
word is committed. Not committed for
what you can get out of Christianity, but what you can do for the Lord Jesus
Christ in response to all he has done for you.
As a point of application, let me ask, if someone found a copy of
our role a few hundred years from now and went out to research us as
individuals and us as a body of believers, if they could determine what we did,
and the effect we had on those around us, what would they be compelled to
write?
Would we be known as people who followed the Lord fully or that we
were people of treachery? Would we be
known as those who followed for what we could get out of it, of for what we
could put into it in response to God’s love and grace? What would they be compelled to say about us?
More importantly, what would they say about our Lord and master
Jesus based on how we have lived and what we have written? Do we follow in his ways? Do we show forth his grace? Do we live in submission to his rule over his
people? Do we live as if we had the right to chose what we want to do and not
do? Or, do we follow in his ways? It is
only the latter that will have the godly effect of making men consider the
wonders of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Who do you promote? Yourself and family, or the Lord Jesus
Christ? Whose agenda do you follow? Whose law do you uphold? Whose light directs your path? These are important questions! If we claim to be Jesus personal disciples
whom he carefully and prayerfully and deliberately called, we should follow him
in a way that will be evident to him and to those who watch us and know us that
Jesus is our savior and Lord.
Has he really made a difference in you? Has he turned your little
world upside down? Do you see what a
privilege is yours to be called a Christian and to be a called Christian? Do you see what a Joy it ought to be to
follow Christ? A few committed men and women can make a big difference in this
lost and dying world. Point men to the
Lord Jesus as one of his faithful few.
AMEN!
No comments:
Post a Comment