Introduction
I want to begin a series of sermons I am calling “The Apostles of Jesus.”
Given the time we will have each Sunday evening, we will only scratch the surface of the lives of the apostles of Jesus.
Nevertheless, I hope it whets your appetite to learn more about these men.
We tend to think of the apostles of Jesus as super-humans.
They were not.
Pastor John MacArthur wrote, “From our human perspective, the propagation of the gospel and the founding of the church hinged entirely on twelve men whose most outstanding characteristic was their ordinariness” (John F. MacArthur Jr., Twelve Ordinary Men: How the Master Shaped His Disciples for Greatness, and What He Wants to Do with You [Nashville, TN: W Pub. Group, 2002], xiii).
They were very ordinary men whom Jesus called, trained, and commissioned for service.
If you think of yourself as ordinary, then this series on the apostles of Jesus is for you.
Dr. S. D. Gordon was an evangelist known for his illustrations. The following illustration is graphic, but the idea expressed is correct.
In his book, Quiet Talks on Service, Dr. Gordon has a most vivid description of Jesus walking down the golden street one day, arm in arm with the Archangel Gabriel, talking intently and earnestly.
Gabriel says, “Master, you died for the whole world down there, did you not?”
“Yes.”
“You must have suffered much,” with an earnest look into that great face with its unremovable marks.
“Yes,” comes the answer again, in a wondrous voice, very quiet but strangely full of most profound feeling.
“And do they all know about it?”
“Oh, no! Only a few in Palestine know about it so far.”
“Well, Master, what’s your plan? What have you done about telling the world that you died for, that you have died for them? What’s your plan?”
“Well,” the Master is supposed to answer, “I asked Peter, and James, and John, and little… Andrew, and some more of them down there, to make it the business of their lives to tell others, and the others others, and yet others, and still others, until the last man in the farthest circle has heard the story and has felt the thrilling and thralling power of it.”
Gordon goes on to say that Gabriel knows us folk down here pretty well.
He has had more than one contact with Earth.
He knows the kind of stuff in us.
And he is supposed to answer, with a hesitating reluctance, as though he could see difficulties in the working of the plan.
“Yes—but suppose Peter fails. Suppose, after a while, John does not tell others. Suppose their descendants, their successors away off in the first edge of the twentieth get so busy about things—some of them proper enough, some may be not quite so proper—that they do not tell others—what then?”
And Gabriel’s eyes are big with the intensity of his thought, for he is thinking of the suffering, and he is thinking too of the difference to the man who hasn’t been told—“what then.”
Back comes that quiet wondrous voice of Jesus—“Gabriel, I haven’t made any other plans—I’m counting on them” (Herbert Lockyer, All the Apostles of the Bible, The All Series [Zondervan, 2013], 31–32).
Let us look very briefly at Jesus’ choice of twelve ordinary men.
Scripture
Let’s read Luke 6:12-16:
12 In these days he went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God. 13 And when day came, he called his disciples and chose from them twelve, whom he named apostles: 14 Simon, whom he named Peter, and Andrew his brother, and James and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew, 15 and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon who was called the Zealot, 16 and Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.
Lesson
Luke 6:12-16 shows us that Jesus uses ordinary people to accomplish his purposes.
Let’s use the following outline:
1. The Preparation for Jesus’ Choice (6:12)
2. The Purpose of Jesus’ Choice (6:13)
3. The Persons of Jesus’ Choice (6:14-16)
I. The Preparation for Jesus’ Choice (6:12)
First, let’s look at the preparation for Jesus’ choice.
Luke said in verse 12 that “in these days [Jesus] went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God.”
Luke regularly noted Jesus’ commitment to prayer.
Later, Luke explicitly stated that Jesus went to desolate places to pray (see Luke 5:15–16).
Jesus understood that his mission of seeking and saving the lost required his total dependence upon his heavenly Father for success.
And so he spent significant time in personal prayer, communing with his Father.
Jesus also understood that his mission of seeking and saving the lost required him to select twelve men who were central to God’s plan of salvation.
These twelve men were to be the new covenant, parallel to the old covenant sons of Israel.
They would become the foundation of the new covenant church (see Revelation 21:10-14).
These twelve men would enter into an intensive internship with Jesus.
They would spend time with him.
They would walk with him, watch him, learn from him, and serve with him.
At the end of their internship, they would witness his crucifixion, burial, and resurrection.
Then they would know for sure that Jesus was indeed the Christ, the Savior of sinners.
And then they would go into the entire world and preach the good news of salvation to all nations.
And so Jesus’ choice of twelve men was critical to the success of his mission.
Therefore, “all night he continued in prayer to God.”
Why did Jesus spend “all night” in prayer with his heavenly Father?
He did so because the choice of the twelve men was so important.
Even though Jesus was God in human form, he placed the exercise of his attributes at the discretion of his Father.
He did not possess all the knowledge.
He needed the Father to help him know whom to select to be one of the twelve.
Even though Jesus had only been engaged in public ministry for about six months, he already had a growing number of followers (see Luke 5:10-11; 5:27).
These followers were called disciples.
So, Jesus spent “all night” in prayer to God, his Father in heaven.
It is conceivable that, in his prayer, Jesus presented each of his disciples to his Father so that the Father would give him a sense of confirmation about who would become one of the twelve.
Two years later, on the night before he died, Jesus would lift the twelve to his Father in prayer, saying, “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word” (John 17:6, NIV).
Jesus’ example teaches us our own great need for prayer.
If Jesus, the sinless Son of God, spent time in prayer, thus demonstrating his total dependence upon God, then so do we.
II. The Purpose of Jesus’ Choice (6:13)
Second, notice the purpose of Jesus’ choice.
Luke said in verse 13 that “when day came, [Jesus] called his disciples and chose from them twelve, whom he named apostles.”
A disciple is “someone who follows another person or another way of life and who submits himself to the discipline (teaching) of that leader or way” (Walter A. Elwell and Barry J. Beitzel, Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988], 629).
In the Bible, the term disciple is found almost exclusively in the Gospels and the Book of Acts.
Basically, “wherever there is a teacher and those taught, the idea of discipleship is present” (Walter A. Elwell and Barry J. Beitzel, 629).
So, Jesus was the teacher, and those who put his teaching into practice were his “disciples.”
From this group of “his disciples, [Jesus] chose twelve, whom he named apostles.”
Clearly, “apostles” were distinguished from “disciples.”
The Greek word for “apostle” (apostello) comes from a verb that means “to send.”
Therefore, an apostle is “a person sent by another, a messenger, an envoy” (M. G. Easton, Easton’s Bible Dictionary (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1893), n.p.).
The word apostle is used once in the Bible to describe Jesus himself.
Jesus is “the apostle and high priest of our confession” (Hebrews 3:1).
That is, Jesus was sent by his Father to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10).
Just as his Father called and sent Jesus, so Jesus called and sent the twelve to carry on the mission that had been entrusted to him by his Father.
What qualified the “twelve” to serve as “apostles”?
They were all “disciples” of Jesus.
That is, they were all followers of Jesus.
But there were two requirements for a person to be called an “apostle.”
First, Jesus specifically called a person to serve as an apostle (Matthew 10:1-7; Galatians 1:1).
And second, an apostle had to see Jesus alive after his resurrection (Acts 1:22; 1 Corinthians 9:1; 15:7-9) (Crossway Bibles, The ESV Study Bible [Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2008], 2157).
The “twelve, whom [Jesus] named apostles,” were going to be sent by Jesus to represent him in proclaiming the good news of the gospel to all nations.
They were going to be sent by Jesus to be his official messengers.
One commentator says, “In effect, by ordaining these twelve men, God was establishing a new Israel. Just as the twelve sons of Jacob founded the Old Testament people of God, so also the apostles established the foundation for God’s new people in Christ” (Phillip Graham Ryken, Luke, Volume 1, Reformed Expository Commentary [Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, NJ, 2009], 256).
Jesus’ choice of the “twelve, whom he named apostles,” was unique.
They and they alone were chosen to represent Jesus.
They were to be the foundation upon which Jesus built his church.
And since a building can have only one foundation, its ministry cannot be repeated.
Nevertheless, in a secondary, non-technical sense, all Christians are sent by Jesus into the world to represent him.
Jesus has called all Christians.
We have been called to faith in him.
Not one of us called ourselves to follow Jesus.
Instead, he called us, and we responded in faith.
And we have also been called to serve Jesus in some particular ministry.
Just as Jesus called each apostle to serve him as an apostle, Jesus also calls every Christian to some form of service.
III. The Persons of Jesus’ Choice (6:14-16)
Finally, let’s look at the persons of Jesus’ choice.
Luke said that Jesus chose “Simon, whom he named Peter, and Andrew his brother, and James and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon who was called the Zealot, and Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor” (6:14-16).
Luke 6:14-16 is one of four New Testament lists of the twelve, the others being Matthew 10:2-4, Mark 3:16-19, and Acts 1:13.
These lists have three points of agreement:
1. Peter is always listed first, and Judas is always listed last (except in Acts 1:13, where Judas is omitted because he is dead).
2. The first four are always Peter, Andrew, James, and John, though not always in the same order.
3. There are three groups of four, with the lead position in each group always occupied by Peter, Philip, and James, the son of Alphaeus (Darrell L. Bock, Luke: 1:1–9:50, vol. 1, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1994], 543).
This group of men formed the nucleus of Jesus’ ministry team.
They were a diverse group of ordinary men.
Jesus did not select a homogenous group of men to serve as his apostles.
There were fishermen, tax collectors, a staunchly political person, and a few others we don’t know much about.
They were everyday sorts of people, showing the grassroots nature of Jesus’ ministry.
By looking at the twelve Jesus chose to be his apostles, we learn that:
1. Jesus builds his church from people of different temperaments and backgrounds.
2. Jesus calls the unexpected and unlikely to carry out his mission.
3. Jesus transforms people as they serve him.
4. Jesus equips those he calls to serve him.
5. Jesus brings out the best in those who serve him.
6. Jesus allows for false individuals among those who claim to serve him (Douglas J. W. Milne, Let’s Study Luke (Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2005), 81-82).
Jesus trained the twelve apostles for almost two years.
After his ascension and Matthias replacing Judas Iscariot, they went into the whole world and preached the good news of salvation to all nations.
All of them, except John, died a martyr’s death in their faithful service to Jesus.
Conclusion
Therefore, having briefly examined Jesus choosing the twelve apostles as outlined in Luke 6:12-16, we should trust Jesus so that his Spirit can do his work of ministry through us.
Jesus chose twelve disciples to be his apostles.
They were called to a unique office.
They were nobodies when he called them.
They become somebodies because of their faithful service to him.
Today, Jesus calls us to be his disciples.
And he calls us to serve him.
He calls us to proclaim to the world that he is still seeking and saving the lost.
Let us heed his call and serve him faithfully, even as the apostles did. Amen.
