The Twelve, Part 3

It is amazing isn’t it? Just to be able to see these common men with an uncommon calling. That is what we have been looking at in this series, "The Twelve". We have been looking at twelve men that Jesus selected to be a part of his team, to be a part of his staff, to be a part of those that were going to take the gospel by the power of the Holy Spirit and continue to bring this gospel up the field. What is it about the twelve men Jesus selected to be a part of His team that we need to take time to look at in this series? How can it benefit our life and how does it shape our life? Is there anything that we can learn from their life? A lot of times we hear these names like James, John, Andrew or Peter and we think they are worlds apart from who I am and there is no way that could resemble anything in my life and there is nothing that applies to them that could apply to the things I am dealing with, but, it is exactly that when we begin to look at their life. You begin to see these twelve men that Jesus chose to be a part of His team that we would know as His disciples. These were men that had jobs, that had families and they had fears and they had flaws and things that were going on in their life and in spite of all the different things that we saw in their life last week and we will see this week; in spite of all those different things -- Jesus still chose them. I don’t believe Jesus made a mistake in who He chose. A lot of times you will pick somebody to be a part of your team and as they go forward on the team, about midway through, you are thinking "I picked the wrong person, maybe this is not good". "Can I choose again"? Jesus did not need to choose again even though there were things in their life that were not perfect and just right. Jesus still chose these twelve men that were common and had an uncommon calling.

Last week we looked at the "Sons of Thunder", James and John Zebedee. This week we will look at another set of brothers. Peter and Andrew were brothers just like James and John and they were also in the fishing business. They were from the same region that James and John Zebedee came from and they knew each other growing up and there were common things about their life. There were different things that intertwined with one another and as you study the scripture you can see more about them in Matthew, chapter four. We are going to look at John, chapter 1, where we find Andrew and Peter where they first show up in scripture. I think as a little side note -- that it is amazing to me that as Jesus selected twelve, that four out of the twelve were brothers. There were two different sets of brothers. As I studied their life it has shown me more and more that God has such a sense of humor. He has a sense of humor because these are kids that come from an identical mom and dad and yet they are totally different. When you study Peter and Andrew you find that these are men that are opposites. Even though they were brought up in the same home and ate the same pancakes and were raised in the same house, they were opposites when it compares to the different things about them.

That is a lot like all of our families. There may be some things similar with one sibling or another sibling but there may be so me of you who have siblings and they are nothing like you. They have an attitude --you don’t have an attitude, they are smarter in school, they like different things than you like, and they wear some things that you would never wear. There are some ways that they express themselves and some mannerisms and values they have and directions that they go in their life that when you look at them you think "mom and dad did, you get the wrong person when you brought them to the house"? There are some brothers and sisters that sometimes they act in a way that you think to yourself, "I know they were switched. There is no way they came from these loins".

It was that way in our home. I have two sisters. Sheila is ten years older than me and my other sister, Dena is five years older than me. Sheila’s interests are different from my interest. She is an aesthetician. That is kind of a big word for people who are working on someone’s face. She loves to work on people’s faces. She gets up in the morning and I call her and she will say she has eight appointments. I have to go and give some people a treatment. I have to exfoliate them and I have some lotions and all these different things. Delynn and Sheila will talk on the phone and they will talk about creams and lotions and evening application.