author: Ryan Hayden

Introduction

Take your Bibles with me and turn to Luke 6 again. Luke 6. We are going to look at just four verses this morning, verses 12-16, which tell us about Jesus' calling the 12 apostles.

As you are turning there, I want you to look at this picture. I first saw this picture when I was a teenager, sitting in a barber shop flipping through a magazine. It was in an ad and it had this picture and it said "would you have invested?"

!microsoft_early_picture 1.jpg

Look at these 11 people. Without context, they look like they could be running the manson farm.

I think the obvious thought is: "No. Why would anyone trust those hippies with their money?"

But those 11 people are the founders and first 11 employees of Microsoft. A couple of the richest men in the world are in that photo. One of the guys in that photo was at NASA during Apollo 13.

!microsoft2008.jpeg

I mention this photo because we are going to look today at another early snapshot of a far more important group: the twelve apostles.

And I want to ask the same question that ad asked "Would you have invested?" Would anyone think that this group was going to turn the world upside down? I don't think so, but one Person did - and He is the one that matters.

Let's read our text:

[!bible] Luke 6:12-16 - KJV 12. And it came to pass in those days, that he went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God. 13. And when it was day, he called unto him his disciples: and of them he chose twelve, whom also he named apostles; 14. Simon, (whom he also named Peter,) and Andrew his brother, James and John, Philip and Bartholomew, 15. Matthew and Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon called Zelotes, 16. And Judas the brother of James, and Judas Iscariot, which also was the traitor.

Let me ask you a question: does anyone here know anyone named Tiberius? How about Caligula? Any of your neighbors and coworkers naming their kids Commodus these days?

Those are the names of some of the Roman emperors - some of the most powerful people the world has ever known.

Ok, let's try again: Does anyone know anyone named Peter? How about Andrew? James? John? Philip? Matthew? Thomas?

These names are everywhere: from cathedrals in the greatest cities in the world, to nurseries at our local hospitals. Why? Because these men - the eleven men Jesus chose (we'll deal with Judas later) turned the world upside down.

I'm going to go ahead and tell you what my message is this morning, you can write it down, and then we are going to take the rest of our time together walking through it. I think the message of this little passage is this:

Jesus had the authority to choose His apostles, the men who would become the pillars of His new kingdom. We need to learn lessons from how He chose them, from who He chose and from where His choices were going.

Let's pray and we'll get into the message today.

Message

(Show message summary but don't read it)

Jesus had the authority to choose His apostles, the men who would become the pillars of His new kingdom. We need to learn lessons from how He chose them, from who He chose and from where His choices were going.

I told you this is what we are going to look at, and it breaks down into five different sections. Let's start with the first point:

1. Jesus had the authority to choose His apostles.

The theme of this section of the book of Luke is Jesus' authority. Every story we have looked at for months has been about Jesus' authority over some part of life:

• Demons
• Sickness
• People
• The disciples
• Nature
• The Sabbath
• I'm sure there are others.

Here the idea is that Jesus has the authority to choose His apostles.

So what is the difference between a disciple and an apostle? A big difference.

Disciple just means "learner" or "apprentice" or "follower." Sometimes we mistakenly say "the twelve disciples" but Jesus actually had hundreds if not thousands of disciples. We are Christ's disciples. We are followers of Christ.

So there is that.

An apostle on the other hand is a specifically chosen messenger with a special commission. There were only 12 apostles (maybe 13 depending on how you count the one chosen to replace Judas Iscariot.)

But being an apostle is actually more than just being a chosen messenger and that leads me to the second part of our message.

(Again, show message main message slide )

Jesus had the authority to choose His apostles, the men who would become the pillars of His new kingdom....

So the second point I want to talk about is...

2. The apostles were the pillars of the new kingdom

Now, there are twelve names here. Why did Jesus chose 12 apostles? Why not 8? Why not 16? The number is significant.

Remember, Jesus is setting up a new kingdom. Each of these apostles assume at this point that it is going to be an earthly kingdom - a new Israel.

The original Israel had 12 tribes. We know the heads of those tribes:

• Levi
• Dan
• Benjamin
• Judah
• And so on.

That number 12 and their names were all over the old Covenant: For example - the High Priest had a breastplate with 12 stones, and on each stone was one names of these 12. The tabernacle was arranged with the twelve tribes, named after twelve men, spaced around it in a specific way.

So you had these twelve men who were foundational in the Old Covenant. Now, Jesus is picking a new 12, and these men were going to be foundational to the New Covenant.

If you think I'm making too much of this, let me read you something from the book of Revelation. Revelation 21 is talking about the New Jerusalem, which will descend from heaven. Notice what it says about this city:

[!bible] Revelation 21:13-14 - KJV 13. On the east three gates; on the north three gates; on the south three gates; and on the west three gates. 14. And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

So these apostles are so important - that there names are written into the very architecture of Heaven.

These men are the foundation of the church much like the twelve sons of Jacob were the foundation of the nation of Israel. Jesus is setting up a new kingdom here.

I don't think we can overstate the importance of this choice that Jesus was making.

So what we see in this passage is Jesus exercising His divine authority by picking the men who would be the foundations of His new Kingdom.

author: Ryan Hayden

So what can we learn from this? It's pretty straightforward. Jesus chose 12 guys - here are the twelve guys - they are now the apostles.

Well, there are three lessons I think we can learn from this, again, let's go back to the statement I gave you at the beginning of the message.

Jesus had the authority to choose His apostles, the men who would become the pillars of His new kingdom. We need to learn lessons from how He chose them, from who He chose and from where His choices were going.

We've talked about Jesus' authority and how these men would be the pillars of Jesus' new kingdom. Let's start talking about what we can make of it. Let's move on to the third thing here:

Let's start by learning from how Jesus chose His apostles

Look at verse 12 again. This is important:

[!bible] Luke 6:12 - KJV 12. And it came to pass in those days, that he went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God.

Here is a question for you: Why did Jesus pray all night before He chose His apostles?

I mean, there are many instances of Jesus spending considerable time in prayer - but not many where He spent all night praying. Why in this instance?

I think Jesus spent all night in prayer because He was making a huge decision - who the Apostles would be was a huge decision - and He wanted to seek God the Father's guidance in making it.

I imagine that as He prayed, He lifted each of these men's names up to God and prayed for them specifically and asked God "Should I choose Peter? Should I choose Andrew? But what about this? What about that?"

I'm not sure how this works. I am not going to pretend that I understand the nature of Jesus. He was omniscient. He could absolutely read men's minds and He absolutely knew the future. That is plain in the scripture.

But it also seems that He gave up a measure of that when He came to this earth, and that He had to learn things. For instance, Luke 2:52 tells us that Jesus increased in knowledge.

So if Jesus gave up a measure of His omniscience when He came to this earth, it seems to me that He too had to seek God the Father's guidance in prayer.

I do not think Jesus came into this choice with total confidence. I think He had to seek God's guidance here and that is why He prayed.

And so what do we learn from how Jesus chose His apostles?

3. How Jesus chose: Jesus chose in a spirit of dependence on God.

Jesus only chose them after long consultation with God in prayer.

If Jesus, who was the Son of God, who was God incarnate, was so dependent on God when He made this decision - shouldn't we too live in dependence on God in prayer?

When we have to make a big decision - shouldn't we too seek God about it?

I mean, remember what Jesus said in John 15:5. He said "without me ye can do some things" right? No, "without me ye can do nothing."

We need to depend on the Lord. Church, I would be embarrassed to tell you how many times I've been guilty of not doing this in my own life. Too often we just do our own thing, confident in ourselves, when we should be seeking God's direction and guidance and depending on Him.

And how does God direct us? How does He speak to us?

Through His word. Through other believers. Through open and closed doors. Through authority. Through our desires and through prayer - and we cannot neglect prayer.

So we can learn a lesson from how Jesus chose His disciples, He chose them in a spirit of dependence.

Let's look at our summary again:

Jesus had the authority to choose His apostles, the men who would become the pillars of His new kingdom. We need to learn lessons from how He chose them, from who He chose and from where His choices were going.

Ok, so we've talked about the lesson we can learn from how Jesus chose His disciples. Let's talk about the lesson we can learn from who He chose.

So this would be number 4:

4. Who Jesus chose: Jesus chose ordinary men so their extraordinary achievements would reflect to God's glory, not theirs.

If you look at the twelve apostles - they were ordinary men.

• 7 of them were likely fisherman.
• 1 was a despised tax collector.
• One was a zealot - which means he was probably in a revolutionary group before he met Jesus. (I wonder how he got along with Matthew - who worked FOR the Roman government.)
• 11 of them (everyone except Judas Iscariot) were from Galilee.

And with a few exceptions, we don't really learn much about these men. They were kind of obscure. I couldn't tell you a thing, for instance about Thaddeus, but his name is on the foundations of the New Jerusalem.

The thing that stands out about the apostles is that nothing stands out about the apostles. They were a bunch of nobodies from nowhere.

And yet, learning from Jesus and empowered by Jesus, they turned the world upside down. They took the gospel across the world and helped establish Christianity.

I think this teaches us about who God uses. God likes to use nobodies. With very few exceptions, the people in the Bible God uses the most were nobodies. They weren't born in a palace, they came out of obscurity.

I don't want you to misunderstand what I'm saying. I don't think that the apostles did what they did because Jesus had an eye for greatness. Because Jesus could pick diamonds in the rough.

No, I think these apostles would have remained nobodies and lived very normal lives. The difference maker was Jesus. The became who they were because of Jesus' instruction and Jesus' empowerment.

And listen, if Jesus is calling you to something, you won't get there because you are awesome. You will get there because you are a disciple. learning from Jesus and because you are empowered by God.

That is the point. If God just picked the best and brightest and used them, if God used great men to do great things - then they would get the glory. But when God uses nobodies - He get's the glory.

As Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4:7:

[!bible] 2 Corinthians 4:7 - KJV 7. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.

God doesn't put His power into golden vessels but into earthen vessels. If we were to modernize this - God doesn't serve His treasures on fine china, but He puts them on your old plastic plates so that it is Him and not us that shines.

So, listen, don't minimize what God can do through you. If you think "I could never do something for God", congratulations, you just met the first criteria.

author: Ryan Hayden

Ok, let's look at our summary one more time:

Jesus had the authority to choose His apostles, the men who would become the pillars of His new kingdom. We need to learn lessons from how He chose them, from who He chose and from where His choices were going.

We've talked about what we can learn from who Jesus chose and how Jesus chose them. The last thing I want to show you today is what we can learn from where His choices were going.

Look at our text again. Look at verse 16

[!bible] Luke 6:16 - KJV 16. And Judas the brother of James, and Judas Iscariot, which also was the traitor.

There is one name on this list that stands out: Judas Iscariot. In every one of these lists, and there is one in each gospel, Judas Iscariot is called out as the one who would betray Jesus.

And Jesus knew that Judas would betray Him. Several times Jesus pointed out to His disciples that one of them would betray Him. Jesus knew.

And so the last point today is what we can learn from where Jesus' choices were going:

5. Where this was going: Jesus chose Judas, knowing Judas would betray Him and lead to the cross.

Judas is an interesting case. I don't believe that there was anything about Judas that stuck out. He was trusted. He was loved. He was one of them. It wasn't like when Jesus talked about someone betraying Him, all the disciples were like "yep, it's that guy."

I believe that, to a man, the disciples were shocked that it was Judas who betrayed Jesus.

When Jesus was betrayed by Judas in the garden, He called him "friend" and said "wherefore art thou come?". He asked Do you betray me with a kiss?

Make no mistake about it - Judas' betrayal hurt and his betrayal led to the cross.

And think of this: Jesus chose Judas and loved Judas - knowing what Judas would do. Knowing that Judas would hurt Him.

If you have ever felt the sting of betrayal - its a pain that just about trumps everything else in life. And yet Jesus chose to be betrayed - Jesus chose the cross.

In a sense, everyone has betrayed God. We are all sinners. Think back to Adam and Eve - was that not a betrayal? God made man and gave Him this perfect garden, God walked with man every day in the cool of the day - and man rejected God.

Every one of us has rejected God in our sin - and yet Jesus died for us. On the cross He said "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

I think even in this section, where Jesus is choosing His apostles, we see that Jesus planned to die for sinful men, knowing full well their sinfulness.

Conclusion

And so, as I wrap up this message today I want to ask two questions:

First, are you a part of Jesus' new kingdom?

Have you believed the gospel? Have you trusted Christ? Have you become one of His disciples? If you haven't, why not believe the gospel and follow Jesus today?

Second, are you willing to let God use you?

God saves us to serve Him. He calls us to service. Are you willing to let God shine in your life, despite your imperfections?

Let's stand for a song of invitation. I'd like to close today by singing number 286 in the hymnal - Hallalujah, What a Savior.