Four Unlikelies: The Gospel According to Luke - Luke 6:12-19

Now our study today will be in Luke chapter 6.

Luke 6 · chapter mention

You see that up on the screen, don't you?

And I believe you can see the QR code if you would like the notes and quotes and the song titles and uh I believe the uh uh classic prayer is on there as well.

So if you know how to use QR codes on your phone, please do that.

Feel free to take advantage of that.

And uh want to say hello and and and thank you for joining us last week online to folks from Bangkok, Thailand, uh Ceilang Cavite, Philippines.

I hope I'm saying that right.

Uh Den Passar City, Bali, Indonesia.

Um these are next ones are pretty easy.

Springfield, Virginia, Orlando, Florida, Plano, Texas, and uh Mount Juliet.

Last hour, right here, I met somebody uh from Abilene, Texas, that that is, she was so excited to be able to visit here last hour and be with us in person for worship, but she's with us every single week from Abilene.

So shout out to Abilene as well.

So happy to have all of these folks joining us and so grateful to all of those that work in our online uh ministry here at the village chapel.

So I hope you're turning in your Bibles to Luke chapter 6.

Luke 6 · chapter mention

Uh, I was impressed this week, once again, and uh, it's happened to me many times how brutally honest the Bible can be.

There's no spin machine uh trying to hide anyone's moral or spiritual flaws as we read through the Bible.

God does not omit or conceal King David's indiscretions, uh, doesn't try to gloss over Elijah or Jeremiah's depression.

Uh and when it comes to the New Testament and the disciples, which is that's kind of what that passage we're gonna study today, what that's all about.

Jesus choosing the 12 disciples who would become his apostles.

Uh man, if Jesus' goal was to assemble a team of super holy influencers, um, this list, if you just know a tiny little bit about each of the names on it, which I'll give you a little bit of that today.

So for all of you that are kind of geeks and nerds about those kind of details in your Bible, um, get ready and have your pencil ready, because I'll give you some of that for those of you that are not.

I'm gonna give you the outline in advance because I know that some of you will nod off if I uh if I get too deep in into some of the details that you're not quite interested in.

But um, all of this will uh I think will uh sort of reiterate what we just sang, that God in his goodness has been running after us with his mercy, with his faithfulness, with his steadfast love.

And, you know, the only thing when you look at this list and you kind of see the people uh and and you know the truth about some of them as you've read through your Bible, um, the only thing more remarkable than those people right there is the fact that Jesus chose them.

Um, and the fact that Jesus chose us and continues to choose those that nobody else would choose.

And he used those that nobody else would use.

And uh I'm so grateful to be able to be uh one of the recipients of his kindness and his grace.

So before I read the text, uh allow me to pray our prayer for illumination.

Lord, we open our hearts and our minds to your word today.

Uh pray that your promises would become our inexhaustible hope and our proper confidence.

We pray that your purposes may become our meaning and mission, and that your presence among us would become our delight and joy today.

Grant to us a clearer vision of our of your truth, a greater faith in your power, and a more confident assurance of your love for us.

We pray this in the name of Jesus and for his sake, for his glory.

Amen and amen.

This is the word of the Lord.

It is unique in its source, timeless in its truth, broad in its reach, and transforming in its power.

So Luke chapter 6, uh let's take one, let's let's go one verse backwards.

Luke 6 · chapter mention

We're gonna take verses 12 to 19, focus on that, but look at verse 11 with me as the context for what we read in verses 12 through 19.

The context is, and Pastor Tommy walked us through this last week.

It was really, really well done.

And it ends with Luke's summary statement.

Uh he's talking about the religious leaders and how they respond to Jesus and what Luke says in one of his, he's he's just really well known, and we'll see him throughout the Gospel of Luke, his summary statements.

Verse 11, they, these religious leaders themselves, were filled with rage, and they discussed together what they might do to Jesus.

And that that's not what they might do to celebrate Jesus.

They're not fans.

As a matter of fact, if you read Matthew and Mark's accounts, it gets a little more pointed, a little more clear, actually.

They tell us that they've actually got murder on their minds now.

Okay, so these are the religious folks.

Supposed to be the good religious people of the day.

And here's Jesus, the Son of God, the Messiah, God's Messiah, and he's healing people and he's preaching, and he's bringing words of hope and life and the good news of the gospel.

And these religious leaders are upset and angry.

They're actually filled, it says, with rage here.

And this is Luke writing, as far as we know, the only Gentile writer of a New Testament book.

And he writes Luke's gospel and the book of Acts.

He actually is responsible for the greatest volume of any single author, if both of those books are indeed uh written by his hand.

That those two books together are the greatest, more than the Apostle Paul, more than the Apostle John.

God chose this unlikely Gentile to record this message of God's salvation coming through very unlikely means.

And uh it begins in this context here, where the religious folks are filled with rage and they discuss together what they might do to Jesus.

And so we're gonna call this message four unlikely, and unlikelies as a noun, a plural noun.

It's you're not gonna find it in your dictionary, sorry.

We sometimes make up words here, but we do it because all four of these unlikely things, uh, I think they're a thing.

And they they say something about God, they also say something about us along the way.

And so you're gonna see that as we go.

Here's this context of rising tension and conspiratorial uh violence that's starting to kind of creep in.

And Jesus knows about it.

They they've kind of confronted him when he they dropped the guy through the roof, he healed the man and and and said his sins could be forgiven, and these religious leaders got all upset about that.

And along, all along the way, we're just gonna see this tension mounting and building, and it ultimately leads to the cross.

And uh that leads to the resurrection, hallelujah.

So glad for that as well.

But that's what's happening right now as verse 12 comes into play because he Luke writes it this way, and it was at this time, that is not 2 o'clock p.m., but at this time of conflict, rising tension, mounting difficulty for Jesus.

So these people coming at him, uh looking to discredit him and to destroy him.

At that time, he went off to the mountain to pray, and he spent the whole night in prayer to God.

Um spent the whole night is in English, multiple words, and it's one word in the Greek, and what it means, it's more than just the passing of time.

That is, he prayed from 11 p.m.

until 6 a.m.

No, he struggled in prayer, he wrestled in prayer, he put effort into his prayer.

And I gotta tell you, I don't know about you, but I'm a short attention span prayer.

I I don't say that proudly at all.

I just I've got one of those kind of minds that's just always going in 10 different directions.

And I I'm pretty sure there are angels in heaven at high five, if I can pay attention in prayer for like 20 minutes or 30 minutes.

And if you need to look for another church next week because I said that, I apologize.

But I but if I say I'm praying for you, I'll pray for you.

I will do that.

It um it's true.

But but this is Jesus, the Son of God, and he's actually taking the time to labor in prayer all through the night one night.

Okay, and it's it's a beautiful display to me of both of two really important doctrines.

The incarnation, that is, that we have the Son of God approaching God the Father in prayer to align his choices he's about to make with the will of his father.

I think that's really a beautiful display of both the incarnation and the Trinity, two doctrines that are mind-blowing in the Christian faith.

Here's God the Father, God the Son praying to God the Father, and here's the the one who is fully divine and fully human praying to God and seeking to align his choices that are going to happen on the next day.

Verse 13 says, and when they came, he meaning Jesus called, circle the word called, his disciples to him, and chose, you can circle that word too, twelve of them, whom he also named as apostles.

Now he called his disciples to him.

They've already been following him, and some of them for different reasons.

It's true.

We're gonna see it all through the gospels.

Some people were following him because of the supernatural show of it all.

He's this guy, have you seen this guy?

He can open eyes of blind people, he can make lame people stand up and we gotta go see some of that.

But other people, for other people, it's become way more personal because they themselves need a healing touch of some kind.

The leper that we've already studied, who threw himself down at Jesus' feet and said, if you're willing, you can make me whole, clean.

And Jesus was indeed willing.

Jesus bear hugged him and cleansed that man.

And so people are following for a lot of different reasons, but there are disciples who are learners, they are students.

And out of a bunch of students who have come, he called his disciples, his learners, his students to him, or his apprentices to him.

He chose 12 of them.

In other words, there are more than 12 there.

But out of the, could be hundreds.

Could who knows, could be thousands at this particular moment.

Luke isn't telling us about the numbers.

He's gonna say something about it in a minute, but not a specific number.

He's just gonna use general terms, but it's a lot of people, all right?

And out of those, he chooses 12 of them to be apostles.

Now, where have we heard the number 12 before in our Bibles?

Yeah, 12 tribes of Israel.

And it's as if Jesus on purpose is basically saying, Hey, Israel and the 12 tribes of Israel that have sadly fallen into sort of an apostate condition spiritually speaking, we're gonna actually start with the new Israel.

And we're gonna start the church is basically gonna be built on the testimony of these 12 apostles.

So disciples have come to follow Jesus.

Apostles are, and the Greek word is apostolos, it means to be sent out.

It's a missionary.

So someone's on a mission, and the mission is great.

And in Matthew and Mark, you get a little more information about the mission itself, but I'll tie that together in just a moment.

So he called his disciples to him, he chose 12 of them symbolically saying, This is going to be the new Israel.

This is I'm God will have his people.

And even though those that were offered the covenant before failed miserably to live up to it, God has not abandoned them or anyone.

God is offering a new covenant.

And you can become a part of the new kingdom of the heavens in the person and work of Jesus, or through the person and work of Jesus.

And so he calls twelve, and here are their names.

Look at the names with me.

Set your eyes on the page.

Simon, who he also named Peter, Andrew, his brother, James and John, Philip and Bartholomew, Matthew and Thomas.

James, the son of Alpheus, Simon, who was called the zealot or the Canaanite, some of your translations will say.

And that doesn't mean the Gentile Canaanite.

That's just another way in Aramaic.

That's another way of saying the person who is a zealot, who is a politically charged human being.

Somebody who's just anxious, especially in first century Judaism, this would be a person who might be a Sakari.

It might be a person that would go into the marketplace with a dagger and literally seek to assassinate some of the Romans who are part of the oppressive Roman government at that time.

And so Simon, who's called the zealot, Judas, the son of James, and Judas Iscariot.

So you got two Judases, you got two Simons, and you got two Jameses as well, which is interesting.

You got a couple sets of brothers here as well.

So this list is just fascinating.

And then verse 17, I want to read through 19 today, and then I want to make a few comments.

Jesus descended with them to a, and he stood on a level place.

So they've been up a mountain in some way, and now they're down on a little plateau on the side of that hill or side of that mountain in some way.

And we're not exactly sure of all of this.

And some people are going to tie what's going to follow here to the sermon, what we call the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew's Gospel, chapter 5, 6, and 7.

I love the Sermon on the Mount.

Did a whole season of Timeless Truth, the podcast, going through the Sermon on the Mount verse by verse.

Encourage you to, if you'd love to study the Sermon on the Mount, to download those if you would like to.

But here, this is, some people call this the Sermon on the Plain.

And is it the same or not?

I don't know the answer to that question, and I'm okay not knowing.

I hope you are too.

He descended with him, stood on a level place, and there was a great multitude of his disciples, and a great throng of people.

So a great multitude, that's not a normal multitude, that's a great multitude.

And then he says, and a great throng.

That's not a normal throng, that's a great throng.

Do you get the idea that there's a lot of people there?

I do.

I don't know how many.

Luke isn't giving us a number.

He's just saying there's a whole lot of people there.

And they're from all over Judea and Jerusalem, verse 17 says, and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon.

So from the furthest point south all the way to outside of Israel, north on the coastline of the Mediterranean to Tyre and Sidon, which guess what?

Those aren't even Jewish cities.

Those are Gentile cities.

And here's Luke, the Gentile.

I bet he was really excited to be able to say.

And there were some, my people were there as well, from up in Tyre and Sidon.

And guess what?

Jesus' goodness was running after them as well.

The gospel was being preached, and they were flocking to hear him, bringing their sick to be healed.

And that that's the kind of crowd that is gathered together in verse 17.

And it's a massive crowd.

Verse 18, they had come to hear him.

One, you can put a one there.

So they came to hear him.

They wanted to hear his teaching.

They were astonished and in awe at his teaching, and then put a two beside and to be healed of their diseases.

So Jesus, his ministry was all about words and deeds, both.

And so Luke is summarizing that way, and that's what drew people to Jesus.

To hear him, to be healed of their diseases, and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were being cured.

And so Luke, the doctor, who would know the difference between a physical disease and a spiritual sort of possession, he distinguishes between them.

He says there are some who are sick, some who were possessed of demons and needed to be cured of these unclean spirits.

And Luke, again, would know that he would be a guy that would understand that difference.

And all the multitude were trying to touch Jesus, for power was coming from him and healing them all.

And you gotta get the you gotta get into verse 19 a little bit.

Don't let that pass by.

I mean, it is as if throngs of people are literally being thrown before him.

And he's literally touching them, or some of them are just touching him, and there's something miraculous going on here that has never happened before and probably hasn't happened since.

Because he's the son of God.

And his miracles aren't just a sideshow.

No, they're they display his power and authority, that's true, but they also affirm his identity as a son of God.

Anybody who claims to be the son of God could do those kinds of things.

They reveal his compassion as well.

He loved these people that he healed.

He wasn't just using them, he loved them.

He invaded all kinds of dark areas where dark people were trapped in their darkness, and he brought light to them and healing to them.

And so his miracles have all kinds of impact, like that.

They also, as I say, affirm his identity and inspire worship.

All right, well, let me give you the four unlikelies since we made that word up.

Here are the unlikely misfits, the unlikely group, the unlikely mission, and the unlikely savior.

All of that will be what we'll focus on here today.

As I said, verse 11 summarizes that context: the rising tension, the conflict, the hostility toward the plans and purposes of God through Jesus.

All that on display in these, quote, religious people, end quote.

Verse 12 shows us the necessity and the priority of prayer in the life of Jesus.

And if it was a priority and a necessity in his life, I gotta tell you, it needs to be a priority in our lives as well.

And I don't know about you, I'm just gonna be, again, honest about this.

For me, this is the spiritual discipline that I need to constantly be mindful of.

Because it's the one that's so easy to kind of let it slide.

And you know, we've pretty pretty soon you sound you find yourself just flippantly saying, Oh, I'll pray about that, and then you don't ever pray about it.

And um, and it and it's not just that you're sort of you should be guilted and shamed for that, but here's what you're missing: you're missing communion with God.

You see, that's that's way more than just doing a religious thing or a religious ritual.

Because of our union with Christ, we can have communion with the Lord Himself.

We've been united with Christ, and when when we trust in Jesus, we're baptized into the body of Christ, we're in union with him, and now we can actually commune with him.

And part of that, yes, it's it's coming forward for communion, but it's also communing with him in prayer, having an ongoing conversational relationship with the Lord.

And I think that's so important for us.

It was important for Jesus in verse 12.

It's important for us as well.

Let's start with the unlikely misfits.

Look at them right here in this text.

You see, don't you, that they're sovereignly called.

They're sovereignly chosen, they're sovereignly commissioned.

I don't know if you remember this ever happening to you when you were a kid, but when I was in school and I was a little kid, there were a lot of times I did not want to be chosen or called upon in a class.

I hadn't done the homework, I hadn't done the reading, or maybe I was too embarrassed to read in public or something like that.

And I just didn't want to be called on.

I don't know what it's like with these hundreds or these thousands of people standing on that level place with Jesus that day.

But they're the ones that he called, and maybe all of them, and maybe by extension all of us, can find ourselves understanding why we're unlikely choices, aren't we?

And so Jesus sovereignly calls his disciples to gather around him and from a Among his disciples, verse 12 tells us, he chose some to be his apostles.

They're following, they've come to him.

Now he's going to also have them sent out as missionaries, as messengers, if you will.

They're going to be commissioned, given a commission by the Lord Jesus.

Now, when I say they're unlikely, I want you to look at the list.

I put it up here.

I know I talked with our tech team and I said, look, I know no one's going to be able to see this, but maybe they might be able to, with the with a QR code, they could download these lists and just compare them because it's in Matthew chapter 10, Mark chapter 3, Luke chapter 6, and also again in Acts chapter 1.

Matthew 10 · chapter mention Mark 3 · chapter mention Luke 6 · chapter mention Acts 1 · chapter mention

In Acts chapter 1, of course, somebody's missing.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

Who's that?

Judas Iscariot.

Why?

He's gone.

He's already committed suicide.

They haven't replaced him just yet in Acts chapter 1.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

But this list is a list of highly unlikely.

Why would Jesus pick any of them?

And if you're standing there that day and you're one of them, would you be kind of hoping he doesn't pick you, or would you be hoping he does pick you?

I suspect there were both there.

What an honor to be chosen by this guy whose ministry is very quickly, you know, gaining steam and presence.

And not only that, but by this one who seems to be something very special and different.

Not just that he's popular, not just that there's thousands of people.

Some of the people are there just for just as tourists.

Some are there for the pilgrimage of it, but some are just tourists.

Looking for the sideshow.

But yeah, some of them are there because they have great need.

Or they're hearing something that's really ringing true.

So are some of them wanting to be chosen?

Maybe.

Some of them not wanting to be chosen?

Maybe.

But what's interesting is the ones that he chooses, they're just outside of likely, the list of the likely.

I would love to give you just a couple of sentences about each and every one of them.

The order does vary that you see it the way you see it on the screen.

So I know some of you might have a, if you're a total nerd like me, you might have a question about that.

The first four names in each list are two sets of brothers, even though the order varies.

Peter and Andrew, his brother, James and John, which are brothers also.

In Matthew, the list is grouped in twos if you read the text, which might be his accountant, Levi, the tax collector, his accountant's method of listing them.

Or more likely, it may correspond to the fact that in Mark, and we think Matthew may have borrowed from Mark, it's possible.

In Mark, we're told that Jesus sent them out two by two in and around that same list in chapter three of Mark's Gospel.

Well, in all four lists, Peter, aka Simon, is listed first.

And in all three of the Synoptic Gospels lists, who's listed last?

Judas Iscariot.

And what's said about Judas Iscariot?

He's the one who betrayed Jesus.

It's almost as if on bookends you got the one guy who we all know because we've read the Gospels.

He's the one.

He's going to be bold and brash, that's true, but he's also going to deny Christ three times.

He's got foot and mouth disease, and it's really bad.

He's not a perfect guy.

He's as human as you want to look at.

You also have at the end of the list, though, the guy that totally bailed.

The guy that betrayed Jesus.

And he had all of the privileges of being a disciple.

All of the privileges of having heard Jesus himself teach, watching Jesus perform miracles.

And yet this guy, Judas Iscariot, he's skimming off the top of the money bag.

I mean, everything about he wants Jesus to be a political figure.

And Jesus disappoints people that want him to be a political figure.

And he's still doing it today.

If you want him to be a political figure, he's not going to fit very neatly into your political scheme.

I mean, I think that's really important for us to keep in mind.

But look, when you look at these individuals, you just kind of see Peter.

He's this guy that's bold and brash, yes.

But Jesus will change his name from Simon, which is probably a sort of original name, Simeon, one of the sons of Jacob, one of the twelve tribes, you know, the namesake of one of the twelve tribes.

Jesus gave Simon the surname Cephas.

In Aramaic signifies a rock or a stone.

And then, as we all know, it later becomes Peter in Greek.

Latin is Petrus, English form Peter.

So that's that guy.

We know the most about him.

You know, six of these guys, though, we never hear another word about them.

And that's fascinating to me because of the, you know, the way that they're all sort of given a stained glass window in some churches.

And it's like, we've got to think of something to say about that guy, you know, because we really don't know much about them.

And what's really important is that it's Jesus that has called these guys.

And I would bet that when we all get home, we're going to find out that all of them came to the place where they went, you know what is really important?

It's not that my name gets remembered or that I get a stain blessed at all.

It's that Jesus was pointed to through our message that he gave to us to hand out.

Andrew appears four times outside of Luke.

He's important to us not only as the one that inspired, as one of the inspired apostles, but he's an example of a quiet evangelist.

I like that about him.

It was Andrew who brought Peter to Jesus first.

It was Andrew that brought the young boy with the five loaves and the two fish to Jesus.

Andrew is the one that brought some Greeks to Jesus at one point.

Andrew did what he did selflessly, optimistically, never caring about titles, never caring about whether or not the spotlight fell on him.

He just was a quiet evangelist.

James and John are listed in each of these, and usually in the top four of the names in each of the lists, the sons of Zebedee.

We learn a little bit about them, but of the two of them, James is probably the elder since he's mentioned first.

John his brother, the author of the fourth gospel, the three epistles at the end toward the end of the New Testament, and the book of Revelation, which so many of you studied with us back in 2020, I think it was.

James and John, along with Peter, make up sort of a closer trio of the disciples.

They're together with Jesus at the raising of Jarius' daughter from the dead.

James and John are well remembered for their the time that their stage mother came to Jesus and said, Allow one of my boys to sit on your right and one of my boys to sit on your left, and really, really wanted that.

It was quite an audacious move on her part to do that.

But James and John probably inherited some of her chutzpah, as evidenced by the fact that when they were traveling around with Jesus and they were in Samaria and Jesus wasn't quite as well received by the Samaritans.

James and John said to Jesus, Lord, you want us to call down fire and brimstone on this place?

I mean, they were like the bouncers in the disciples, and they were, you know, they were, they were sort of ready to go to town, fisticuffs for Jesus, you know, that kind of thing.

Then we have Philip up there as well.

I think his hometown was Betheda, perhaps.

Uh Peter and Andrew and Philip were childhood buddies.

I don't know that.

And Philip was also a disciple of John the Baptist.

We know that about him as well.

Um he was he was involved in the feeding of the 5,000 as well, because it was to Philip that Jesus asked that question: where are we to find bread that these may eat?

And he was testing him, the Gospels tell us.

Bartholomew is on that list.

Some associate him with Nathaniel in John chapter 1 and 2.

John 1 · chapter mention

And remember, that's quite possible.

Not all of the named disciples have only one name.

Some of them have two names.

Simon Peter would be a good example of that.

Bartholomew may indeed be Nathaniel, that we read about in John chapter 1 and John chapter 2.

John 1 · chapter mention John 2 · chapter mention

Matthew is also known as Levi, the tax collector, and we talked about him when we studied Luke chapter 5.

Luke 5 · chapter mention

So not much more to say there about him other than what you've already heard.

Thomas is listed there, also called Didymus, which means the twin.

You read that in John's gospel.

He's a man I can identify with because he had questions.

He's called Doubting Thomas all the time.

And I'm I'm a guy that's always asking questions.

Perhaps you are as well.

And Jesus is not intimidated by our questions.

Just like he wasn't with Thomas.

He said to Thomas, Look, put your hands here.

Because Thomas said, I'm not going to believe unless I'm not going to believe Jesus is risen from the dead unless I can see his hands and touch his side.

And when Jesus appeared to Thomas following that, Jesus actually said, Here's the proof you're looking for.

It's right here.

Put your hand right here.

He didn't call down lightning on him.

He he showed him, he gave him that personal experience of touching him and seeing that he indeed was alive.

James, the son of Alpheus, is listed there.

Some of you know that Matthew sometimes will be called Matthew the son of Alpheus as well.

Is it the same Alpheus?

Probably not.

It's one of those names like John, that you might find multiple people back named that same name back in that time.

Simon, who's called the Zealot or the Canaanean, as I said, and then the two Judases are on the list as well.

James, or Judas, rather, the son of James, don't really know anything about him.

But you can see why some people think that he's he might be known, his other name might be Thaddeus.

And you could see why he might want to go by Thaddeus if his first name was Judas.

You know, not very many people name their children.

This is what you name your Rottweiler, Judas, you know.

So then Judas Iscariot, and it's in all three of the Synoptic Gospels where it lists Judas Iscariot, like I said, it does say he's the one who betrayed him, and that's because that's part of the list.

That is this Jesus who set aside the comforts of heaven, he came for sinners.

He came for the worst of us.

He came to offer himself to the worst of us, including me, including us.

And Judas is a good example of that as well, given the privileges that he was given.

So, with all of that in mind, you look at these individuals, why would he choose them?

There's a lot of people who say, why is there only one way to heaven?

There's a whole lot of other whys I think are way more important than that.

Why would he choose these guys?

Why would he choose me?

Why would he choose you?

You know, I mean, you dress up nice, but why?

That's a great why, I think.

Um they would not have been on the the uh uh list of people that you want to start a new movement with or anything like that.

Bono said it this way, coolness might help you in your negotiation with people through the world, maybe.

But it is impossible to meet God with sunglasses on.

In other words, you know, and this is from the guy that, you know, I mean, he is cool, right?

He defines cool, right?

He's the sunglass guy, right?

But he's saying this there's no level of human coolness that is impressive to God.

And that's what this list reminds me of.

It's it's the same.

And it's the same today as well, before Bono Lewis said it this way: we're not merely imperfect creatures who must be improved.

We're rebels who must lay down our arms.

Do you understand that?

That day on the side of the hill, Jesus was looking for those that he could call, that he could choose to be his apostles, to send them out.

And he knew what it would take.

Not them being qualified, but people that he could qualify himself, that he could enable them, that he could empower them, that they would somehow or another find their way to surrendering to him, to believing in him, to hoping in him, and trusting in him and realizing that it isn't about them, it is about him.

Tim Keller says the Bible does not show us story after story of heroes of the faith who go from strength to strength.

Instead, we get a series of narratives containing figures who are usually not the people the world would expect to be spiritual paragons and leaders.

And that list is that way.

None of those guys had seminary degrees, none of those guys were cool, none of them had lots of followers on Instagram.

None of them, I mean, there's just nothing about them that was that impressive.

Keller goes on to say the Bible's not primarily a series of stories with a moral, though there are plenty of practical lessons, that's right.

Rather, it's a record of God's intervening grace in the lives of people who don't seek it, who don't deserve it, who continually resist it, and who don't appreciate it after they've been saved by it.

And that's those 12 guys.

And that's me too.

I'm constantly forgetting that it's Him.

It's about Him, not about me.

And we're constantly being programmed all day long.

It's about you.

Your screens are telling you that all the time.

The algorithms are designed to make sure you keep being reminded either you're not enough and you need more of what they got, or you really are enough and you're the center of the universe.

Far as I can tell from science, anyway, we discovered there is no center of the universe, so you can't be it.

The four unlikely also include the unlikely group.

You got all those individuals, that's true.

Couldn't Jesus have made some better choices?

Uh do you question Jesus' leadership skills for picking Simon the zealot and sitting him down with Levi the tax collector?

They would have wanted to kill each other.

You know?

Um it's an unlikely group, to be sure.

Um I'm I I wonder, you know, that day.

I mean, when you when you were a kid and you played a pickup game of soccer or football or basketball or something like that, and you, you know, two neighbors, you choose and I'll choose, you choose, and I'll choose.

And as the teams line up, you're kind of looking and you're just going, you know exactly how the game's gonna go based on who gets picked on each of the teams.

And these are all unlikely, but I'd say this: even as a group, they're really, really unlikely.

That's one of the reasons I believe Christianity to be true, though.

Because in Christ, really unlikely groups of people, individuals can get together and become an unlikely group that God can do something through.

That God can use for his glory.

And see, that's what's so great about all this unlikely stuff.

When it's not because we've been smart, not because we figured something out, but it's because of what God has done.

And God's the only one that can do it.

The story's been told that Billy Graham once wrote to the mayor of a large city where he was planning to do a crusade, and he asked the mayor if he knew of any people in that city that had acute spiritual problems and needs, to whom he, Billy Graham, should plan to minister to when he gets there and to be with him personally.

And the mayor of that town simply sent him the phone book.

Take your pick.

And the mayor was in the phone book too, so that particular time he said his office number was.

Bible's kind of history's phone book.

It's like that, isn't it?

The stories here are really not about King David, they're not about Samson, they're not about Adam and Eve, they're not about Abraham, they're not about Adam, and they're not about anybody in the New Testament other than one person.

Jesus.

That's he's the only one that's the hero of Scripture.

The church is an unusual, unusual, very unlikely group.

And because of that, we keep pointing to the one who chose us, who called us sovereignly, and who's commissioned us to be his emissaries, his ambassadors, if you will.

D.A.

Carson, great New Testament scholar.

Uh, church itself is not made up of natural friends.

What binds us together is not common education, common race, common income levels, common politics, common nationality, common accents, common jobs, or anything else of that sort.

Christians come together not because they form a natural co-location, but because they have all been saved by Jesus Christ and owe him a common allegiance.

In this light, we are a band of natural enemies who love one another for Jesus' sake.

You're sitting in arm's distance, you're right close to somebody that's gonna vote the other way.

I'm not gonna tell you who it is.

Some of you think I might vote with you.

Not gonna tell you that either.

Um we come here, it's about Jesus.

We want to focus on the gospel.

It doesn't mean those things aren't important.

We always tell you in election season, pray and vote.

And some of you may choose not to vote.

And I don't, I'm not saying that's an unbiblical perspective either.

But we are told to pray for our leaders, and let's keep doing that.

Um, let's pray for ourselves as well, that we might be his witnesses uh in this culture in which we live, that's so afraid, that's so angry.

And look at that little collection of people that meet in that hundred-year-old building that used to be a convent building.

Look how they love one another.

Look how God has moved among them.

And little portraits of grace are told about how the kind of stuff only God could do in somebody's life who is caught in the grip of addiction.

It's really important.

When we keep Jesus first, we keep the essentials first.

He is our unity.

As Rupertus Maldinius said, in the essentials unity, and the non-essentials liberty, and all things charity.

What are the non-essentials?

Oh, how much water do you use to baptize people with?

You know, there's so many non-essentials.

What color is the carpet in the church?

Well, in our case, we don't have to worry about that, do we?

There's so many things that people get upset about and get all tied up in knots about.

And uh, I actually love this old maxim, this old saying, in all things charity, that means let the love of God flow.

Thirdly, unlikely mission.

Um Stott said it this way.

Jesus' first command was come, his second was go.

That is, we're to go back into the world out of which we've come and go back as Christ's ambassadors.

That's exactly right.

In Matthew and Mark, you read a little bit more about how he sends them out.

He sends them out two by two.

He sends them out to preach the gospel, he sends them out to heal the sick, he sends them out to drive demons out of people who are demon-possessed at that time.

And so they're literally doing exactly what their master does.

They're following Jesus and doing what Jesus did to bring the gospel forward, to show the gospel, and to have a ministry that is in both word and indeed.

The evangelical manifesto goes back to 2008, I think it is.

Uh, and a and a and a friend of some of us here, a guy named Alice Guinness, wrote a bunch of it.

I don't know if he wrote this part or not, because it doesn't distinguish in the writing.

But this section of it was brilliant, I thought.

Being disciples of Jesus means serving him as Lord in every sphere of our lives, secular as well as spiritual, public as well as private, in deeds as well as words, in every moment of our days on earth, always reaching out as he did to those who are lost as well as to the poor, sick, the hungry, the oppressed, the socially despised, being faithful stewards of creation and our fellow creatures.

I think that's so very important for us to be reminded of.

We're ready to be about his business.

Jesus tells us that we will meet with some resistance, just like he did in verse 11.

We read about that.

It won't be easy.

And if it is, we might ask the tough questions about if we're really about being about his business.

If it becomes easy for us, maybe we're not doing what Jesus wants us to do.

It might be at least worth asking that question.

But Jesus does not leave us powerless or hopeless.

He's given us the Holy Spirit.

He doesn't leave us without inviting us to come back to him over and over again for refreshment, renewal, restoration ourselves.

He calls us to repentance, live a life of repentance so that that indeed can happen.

He is an unlikely Savior calling us to join him in an unlikely mission.

We are his unlikely group of unlikely misfits.

Turn in your Bibles if you have time, and because we're The second service, I can do this with you.

Look at 1 Corinthians chapter 1.

1 Corinthians 1 · chapter mention

Uh, this is such a great and powerful statement that the Apostle Paul makes here.

1 Corinthians chapter 1, verses 26 through 31.

1 Corinthians 1:26–31

Um, it goes like this for consider your calling, brethren, that were uh that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.

God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things that are strong.

He's chosen the base things of the world and the despised.

God has chosen the things that are not, that he might nullify the things that are.

And here it is, that no man should boast before God.

But by his doing, you are in Christ Jesus.

Do you understand?

Is it by your doing?

No, no.

By his doing, you are in Christ, sovereignly called, sovereignly chosen, sovereignly commissioned to go out and be his messengers.

By his doing, verse 30, you are in Christ Jesus to be who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption.

That just as it is written, let him who boasts boast in the Lord.

We've got nothing to boast about here except Jesus.

We know we're the unlikely individuals, part of an unlikely group, on an unlikely mission, to lay down our lives and to join Jesus in his mission.

Here's John Stott's last sermon, a quote from it before he went home to be with the Lord.

It's from uh uh, I think the writing is called the model.

Yeah, becoming more like Christ.

All authentic mission is incarnational.

That means it's embodied and fleshed, if you will.

We are to be like Christ in his mission.

These are the five main ways.

Take this to your home group and talk about it, in which we are to be Christ-like, in his incarnation.

That is, embody the gospel, enflesh the gospel wherever you are, whatever you're doing, however you're creative, whatever work you do, don't ever stop in fleshing the gospel.

Do that.

We're to be like Christ in his service.

When you look at the way Jesus served, what do you see?

You see somebody willing to lay down his life for others.

He gave his life for me and for you.

We're to do that as well.

In his love.

That actually, he wasn't just forced to do it.

It was his love that drove him to the cross.

If you've been to the cross and only gotten saved, go back to the cross and get loved.

Because it's the love of God that put Jesus on the cross.

The love of God for sinners like you and sinners like me, and sinners like the twelve as well.

Go back and get his love.

To be Christ like in his endurance, his perseverance, and also in his mission.

I think Stott nailed it right there.

Are you an unlikely choice for Jesus?

Yes.

So am I.

We all are.

It's awesome, isn't it?

It's really good.

It's really good to know that.

I don't bring anything to the table.

I've got nothing to boast about.

And now I'm set free.

See?

Because I'm not trying to prop up my image.

I'm not trying to make sure people think I'm the guy with the sunglasses on.

I'm simply trying to point to Jesus and show you how beautiful He is, not how cool I might be or we might be.

For unlikely, and that's what we pull from this particular text.

Let's pray.

Lord, may the good seed of your word find fertile soil in our hearts and our minds.

May the Holy Spirit use our study of the word today in such a way that it will take root and that it will bear fruit in our lives for the glory of King Jesus, for the good of our family, our friends, our coworkers, our neighbors.

And Lord, can it be that your the amazing love that you've shown to us as we sing about it here in a second, that that might not only be our experience, but that it might be the experience that is a good infection that spreads from this place through this unlikely group and these unlikely individuals.

Lord, use us in any way you see fit to bring glory to the name of Jesus and to share his love with the watching world.

We pray in his precious name.

Amen.

And amen.