"Delegated Authority" Matthew 10:1-4 Sunday Morning Worship Service

The church is the only institution in the world that only accepts unqualified people.

In job interviews, you want to present yourself as qualified.

In this club or that club, you have to present your credentials.

You have a transcript to get into college, but not the church.

The church only allows people who are not qualified to be here.

The church is a hospital for sinners, not the ivory tower for saints.

And for that reason, nobody initially adjoins a church who is acceptable to the people who are there.

We recognize that with conversion, you go from darkness to light, blindness to sight, death to life.

And so when somebody presents themselves to church as a new believer in Jesus Christ, they're obviously immature.

They're obviously new believers, and they're not qualified in that sense to be part of the church.

Those are the only kind of people the church allows.

And to prove that, I can give you a converse.

Imagine a membership interview, the two elders are interviewing somebody from membership, and the membership interview goes along the lines of, you know something?

I am going to be an amazing Christian at your church.

You guys are so lucky to have me there.

I'm going to serve your socks off.

You know, you're not you're not going to believe this.

I am more than qualified to be part of this church.

And we would say, Yeah, there's a lot of other churches in the greater Springfield metropolitan area that would be excited to have you.

Good luck there.

That doesn't mean that the church doesn't grow people.

Of course, when anyone joins the church, they come as immature and a new believer.

They would be expected to grow.

You'd be expected to have spiritual growth.

And because of that, churches grow in their maturity.

You see this even in the uh seven letters to the churches in Revelation.

You've got churches at varying degrees of maturity.

Churches grow in maturity, grow in godliness, and when they grow, it's very easy to lose sight of the fact that the nexus of it or the start of the church was made up of unqualified, immature people.

And that is the way it has always been.

This is what we find in Matthew chapter 10, where Jesus summons his twelve disciples to himself.

Matthew 10 · chapter mention

These are the people that he's going to use to turn the world upside down.

The gospel is going to go into the world through them.

They're going to upset social orders, they're going to overthrow kingdoms, they're going to launch the most powerful institution the world has ever known.

And it's so easy for us for us to take that for granted.

Because we are 2,000 plus years later.

The gospel has gone around the world.

There are churches in every language group, in every nation.

So it's very easy to lose sight or to forget the fact that when this whole thing started, it was a ragtag bag of misfits that Jesus summoned to himself to change the world.

That's what I want to look at this morning because I hope it'll be encouraging to you.

Chapter 10, verse 1, he called to him, or it's reflexive, he called to himself his twelve disciples.

Notice right away that Jesus is the one who is issuing the summons.

Jesus is the one who calls people to himself.

He issues the summons and then he draws people.

This is the kind of calling of God that is irresistible.

His call supersedes our will.

The other gospels let you know that Jesus stayed up all night praying before he chose these twelve people.

He did not receive applications.

People didn't apply, and he sort through and checked their references.

No, he went on his own to a quiet place, he prayed, and then he chose whom he would call.

This was entirely his initiative.

It is often noted that the rabbis chose their disciples in a similar way that American universities choose their students.

In the Jewish world, it was very common for rabbis to have disciples.

And when a child was the age that he was going to make himself a disciple of a rabbi, he might apply to six or ten rabbis and send them letters and ask to be their disciple, and he might get accepted by four or five of them.

And then he would choose which one whom he would follow.

American high school students function the same way.

You know, the start of their freshman year, they have 12 colleges they'll apply to.

At the application headline, they've maybe applied to four of them.

And they get accepted to two and they choose which one.

This is not the way Jesus chose his disciples.

He didn't accept applications from people.

People didn't apply to him as one of the other rabbis.

No, Jesus set his eyes and called the people to himself whom he wanted to.

His call superseded their will, his call changed their will, and his call was irresistible.

I'll give you three points as we go through this.

It won't be on the screen because they're easy enough to follow along.

The first is discipleship.

Jesus calls people to be his disciple.

That's the word in chapter 10, verse 1.

He called his twelve disciples.

Again, that was a very common term in the Jewish world.

All the rabbis had disciples.

There were people who followed the rabbis to be conformed to their teaching.

Jesus is gathering his disciples to himself.

And this is something that transfers over to our day and age as well.

It's one of those nouns that becomes a verb.

They're a disciple because they are being discipled.

You are discipled when you're conformed into the image of somebody.

We are all called disciples of Jesus Christ.

We're supposed to be conformed into his image.

He initially begins with 12 here, but it carries on throughout all of church history.

If you're a Christian, you should be a disciple of Jesus Christ.

That means they're synonymous.

Every Christian is a disciple of Christ, which means you're spending time with Jesus in his word and in prayer, and you're being conformed to his image.

That's discipleship.

There's a qualitative aspect to it.

You have the quality of a disciple.

You're spending time with Jesus and your life is transformed.

And I would say this: this is something that should also be evident in every Christian's life.

I wish every Christian was discipled by an older, godlier person, and I wish every Christian was discipling a younger, less godly person.

That's a healthy church dynamic.

And by the way, the best way to approach that is not for you to ask somebody less mature than you if you can be their discipler.

That gets awkward fast.

Hey, I've noticed you're less godly than me.

No.

But the right way to approach this is to have ask somebody who's older than you and godlier than you, whom you respect to disciple you, somebody who can pour into your life and can help you follow Jesus better.

That's a basic component of Christian discipleship, is having somebody minister to you in that way.

Well, we don't have Jesus on earth, and so we turn to other people.

But even other people are so-called under-shepherds, even other people help conform us to the image of Christ.

Disciples don't make students in their own image.

In the church, we make students into Jesus' image.

But Jesus himself said in Luke 6, verse 40, a disciple is not above his teacher, and everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.

Luke 6:40

Discipleship conforms you to the image of Jesus.

And this is what Jesus is doing here.

So first stop is to be a disciple.

The second stop is delegation or to delegate.

So Jesus calls his disciples and then he delegates authority to them.

That's in the rest of verse 1.

He gave them authority over unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal every disease and every affliction.

Jesus has this authority in himself, and he is dispensing it or dispersing it to others.

In fact, in Mark's gospel, the calling of the twelve, is that uh Mark structures his gospel a little differently.

It's after Jesus preaches in the synagogue and demonstrates his authority over unclean spirits.

He heals the man with a withered hand, the demon-possessed man in the synagogue shrieks out, you know, who are you?

Jesus of Nazareth.

All that has already happened, and Jesus has demonstrated his authority over demons and over disease and affliction, and then gives that authority to his disciples to preach the gospel and to have authority over demons.

It comes from Jesus.

Mark's gospel ties the two together: gospel preaching with demon casting.

In Matthew's gospel, it's located differently, and that's not to say one is it, you know, there's two different callings of the twelve, just the way the gospels are structured.

In Matthew's gospel, this happens after the Sermon on the Mount, and then Jesus goes back to Capernaum and heals all kinds of people.

This the leper in Matthew chapter 8, the centurion's servant in Matthew chapter 8, Peter's mother-in-law in Matthew chapter 8.

Matthew 8 · chapter mention Matthew 8 · chapter mention Matthew 8 · chapter mention

And then in Matthew 9, Jesus calls himself to a party with sinners and tax collectors.

Remember, the Pharisees show up and say, Why are you parting with sinners and tax collectors?

Rawr.

And Jesus rebukes them.

And then he turns to his disciples who are at this party with the sinners and tax collectors, and he tells them, the harvest is plenty, the workers are few.

He just shoes away the Pharisees, and then he laments how much work there is to do in this world with gospel preaching and how few workers there are.

And that's where the calling of the 12 is the next verse.

Where we are now is right after that, and at the end of Matthew 9, right after that is Jesus saying, I'm choosing you 12.

And he's then giving his authority to them.

The authority that he demonstrated in Matthew 5, 6, and 7 to preach, the authority he demonstrated in Matthew 8 to heal, the authority he demonstrated in Matthew 9 to change the lives of sinners and tax collectors.

He's giving to these disciples.

You could say it this way: Jesus has a unique authority that is diffused through himself to us.

It goes from God the Father to the Son, and then from the Son diffused to us, to the Spirit, by the way, the Holy Spirit indwells us and makes us gospel ministers.

Well, Mark 10, verse 1 doesn't mention preaching the gospel, but it does mention authority over unclean spirits.

Mark 10:1

With these apostles, those two are connected.

Remember the man lowered to the roof, where you know Jesus says, Your sins are forgiven, and they say, How dare you say that?

And Jesus says, which is it easier to do?

Your sins are forgiven, or pick up your mountain walk.

But so that you know the Son of Man has authority over sin to forgive sin, pick up your mountain walk.

So the two are connected.

When he gives his disciples the authority over unclean spirits and over diseases and affliction, he's demonstrating that they have the authority to preach the gospel.

Now part of that comes to us and part of that doesn't.

You don't have authority over demons to bind them and cast them out.

That was unique to the apostles, but you do have the same authority they have in that what does transfer to you or what does convey to you is the authority to forgive sins through the gospel.

God has made one way to have your sins forgiven, that's placing your faith in Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection for you.

He dies bearing the punishment for your sin.

All of God's wrath and anger towards your sin is poured out on Jesus.

He dies bearing that penalty, is buried in the grave, rises again on the third day, and when you place your faith in that, your sins can be forgiven.

You have sinned because of the work of the devil.

The devil brought sins into the world.

The devil corrupted Adam and Eve by getting them to sin.

Death comes into the world through their sin.

It was through one man that death entered the world, and on account of that one man all have sinned, therefore all die.

The wages of sin is death.

And so when Jesus comes preaching the gospel, he's breaking the power of the devil.

When somebody comes to faith in Christ, they're freed from the clutches of the devil.

You don't want to make too strong of a separation between gospel preaching and demon casting, because if the gospel is preached and a person is converted, the demons are cast.

Often we try to confuse that and we focus on the casting out of demons, as just the order of Matthew 10.

But the truth is, when the book of Acts kicks in and the gospel goes in the world and the disciples fade from the scene, our authority is not over binding demons and casting them out.

Our authority comes in the form of preaching the gospel and making disciples.

And when someone is a disciple of Christ, the power of the devil is broken in their life.

You know this from Matthew 28, don't you?

Jesus says, All authority in heaven and earth is given to me, he says.

Therefore, go into all the nations, not casting out demons, but therefore go into all the nations, preaching the gospel, making disciples of all people, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and lo, I'm with you even to the end of the age.

So the authority of Jesus Christ comes to us.

It's an authority that is higher than the devil's authority, because when a person converts and places their faith in Christ, they're freed from the grip of the devil.

Well, in his incarnation, that authority looks like casting demons out.

It's verified by their ability to heal every disease.

So Jesus appoints his twelve as disciples and trains them.

In his training, he delegates authority to them.

And then thirdly, he deploys them.

He sends them into the world.

So he disciples, delegates, deploys.

Notice even the effect.

Disciple, drawing to himself, delegate, comes from being with Jesus, deploys, he sends them into the world.

So it's a drawing, equipping, and sending.

He sends them in the world in chapter 10, verse 2, as apostles.

Apostle is just the word that means sent.

So he disciples them, he gives them his authority, and then he sends them into the world with the authority to speak for him, to act in his behalf, to act in his place.

Now they don't know this yet.

The mission they're going to go on, they don't go on it until uh later on in chapter 11 is when they head out.

So they don't go in there anytime immediately on their mission, but they go on a short mission and come back and receive comfort from Jesus, and John is beheaded, and all this goes down later on in Matthew's gospel.

They don't know this, but their most significant work, their most significant apostolic work, is going to be years from now.

After Jesus dies, buries, resurrects, and ascends into heaven, that's when they are truly sent out as apostles.

The stuff in Matthew's gospel is almost just training wheels.

It's go and cast out demons while I'm sitting on top of the mountain watching you kind of thing.

But soon he'll go to heaven and they'll be sent out on their own.

So before we look at this list of 12 people, which we will look at, by the way, in verses 2, 3, and 4, before we look at this, you do want to marvel at the fact that Jesus has the most precious, most powerful, most potent news ever given to the world.

The gospel, the ability to free people from the clutches of the devil.

That's the authority he has.

And he gives it to these twelve people.

These twelve people are not spectacular people.

If they did apply for discipleship, they would have been rejected.

These are not the kind of people that would have been taken in by even the flunked-out rabbi.

These dudes are fishermen for the most part from Galilee.

One of there's exceptions in all this, like one of them is from Jerusalem, Judas, but the other 11 are from Galilee.

Nothing good comes from Galilee.

You know how I know that because one of them says that.

Like this is the they're from the boonies.

They didn't go to college, except for one of them.

They weren't religiously educated, except for one of them.

They weren't wealthy, except for one of them.

They weren't from Jerusalem, except for one of them.

This is just, it's a hodgepodge group of misfits.

And that's really who they are.

And those are the people Jesus calls to himself.

You wouldn't trust these people with a loaded gun.

But Jesus gives them the most potent news the world has ever received.

And loads it, cocks it, and pushes them out the front door.

And what happens with that, eventually, by the ministry of the Holy Spirit and some prodding by angels, is the world is going to get turned upside down.

Like I mentioned, we're so far removed from them that we take for granted what happened.

Like for us, if you're born into a Christian family and you're raised, going to church, and there's, hey, look, we got a big building on the corner of Braddock and Backlick, and the six-story cross on the roof.

Like, you almost take for granted that the gospel is going to go around the world.

Isn't it so easy to take it for granted?

You can buy Bibles at Barnes and Noble, for goodness sake.

Walmart has a Christian book section.

Your currency says, in God we trust.

Like it's so easy to take for granted the gospel will be triumphant around the world.

So it's worth reminding yourself that at the at the nexus of this, at the very beginning of this, there was twelve people up in Galilee, not even in Jerusalem, out in nowhereville, with this news.

They had no idea what was before them.

This is a year and a half into Jesus' ministry when he calls these twelve.

This wasn't day one.

You know, he's called Peter a few times already, but if you know Peter, you know he needs a few calls.

He's called them individually.

And they've been following him for a year and a half.

But now a year and a half or so into his ministry is when he says, Listen, I'm identifying you twelve as disciples.

I'm going to train you, give the authority you've watched for the last year and a half.

They've seen him do all these miracles, they've seen all the healings, they've seen the man healed the Lord through the roof.

They've seen all of this.

Jesus says, that you've been watching as a spectator for for 18 months.

You've had a front row seat, but as a spectator, now I'm giving you your uniform, I'm putting you on the field.

Go and change the world.

That's the conversation he has with them.

It's big boy time.

It's grown-up talk.

You've been watching this for a year and a half.

Now it's time to man up and do something with it.

That's what he tells them.

Well, these people are going to go out, much like Jesus, and heal people and deliver people and just be amazed at the authority God has given them.

Again, there's ways in which this is similar to us.

We are disciples.

We have the delegated authority of God through the preaching of the gospel, and we also are sent into the world.

That's confirmed to us by the Great Commission at the end of Matthew 28.

So, in a sense, we are like them.

We aren't qualified for this.

Paul tells the Corinthians God doesn't choose the qualified, he doesn't choose the equipped.

He equips those that he chooses.

He doesn't call those who would make good evangelists, rather, he calls those who aren't evangelists and makes them into good evangelists.

So it comes down to spending time with Jesus.

And they said this about the apostles too.

Remember, when Peter and John keep getting arrested for preaching the gospel, they marvel at them because they said, these guys are fishermen.

They don't have any education.

And then it occurs to them, oh, they had spent time with Jesus.

That's what makes somebody into a disciple.

Well, with that out of the way, I want to go through this list of twelve, and we are going to go through all 12, and I think it will be interesting to you.

There's a method to my madness.

Don't get overwhelmed by the screen.

Here's all 12 apostles in for the lists Mark's list, Matthew list, Luke's, and then again in the book of Acts that are listed again.

I want you to just big picture take in a few things.

Uh, and this is gonna be on the screen for a while here.

Big picture, take in a few things.

The lists aren't identical.

It's the same 12 people in all the lists, of course, but they're not identical.

They have the order is different, so they weren't numbered off.

Uh sometimes leading a short-term mission trip.

My first short-term mission trip I led, I had all the kids number themselves off one to like 36 or whatever.

Took forever to do roll call on every bus or every metro train, one to 36.

So you divide them into groups.

You know, it's much easier.

Group one, group two, group three, group four.

That's what Jesus does.

Didn't want to wait to count one through twelve, so he's divided them into three groups.

One through four.

And each of these groups is the same on every list.

So all of the lists of the 12 apostles, they're always presented in groups of four.

It's the same three groups every time.

Also, you'll notice it's the same person listed as the leader of every group every time.

So, in other words, the content, the order of the groups might change, but the leader of the group doesn't.

And as I mentioned earlier, as you look at these 12 names, you are reminded that these were paper people.

Like these were not, they did not have good resumes, they did not have good training, they were normal people from Galilee, husbands, fathers, fishermen from a rural and isolated part of the world.

They were absolutely and perfectly ordinary, and those are the people whom he chose.

Um, he makes a profound point in choosing twelve, by the way.

Twelve is gonna represent the twelve tribes of Israel.

Uh that's whom he chooses.

It's almost launching a new Israel, so to speak.

The Jewish leaders are gonna be sidelined.

At the end of Matthew's gospel, he makes that so clear to them.

He says the kingdom's being taken from you and given to those who will bear fruit in keeping with its purpose.

You get to heaven, and there's the twelve tribes represented with the pillars in heaven, along with the twelve apostles.

So that's Jesus' strategy here to take twelve and make them people with earthly trades and mundane occupations that will change the world.

Let's go through them one at a time.

Peter is the first on every list of the apostles.

He's the first.

There's no doubt that he is the leader of the apostles.

Simon, also known as Peter Petros, which means rock.

He is the, in that sense, the foundation of the church.

Of course, the gospel is the foundation of the church, but Jesus gives that authority to Peter through his gospel preaching to launch the church in the book of Acts.

It is a stereotype that Peter is uh, you know, speaks first and thinks later.

Of course, that's a stereotype, but it's a stereotype that Peter deserves, doesn't he?

Every gospel has numerous illustrations of Peter's propensity to run his mouth and And regret it.

Peter wouldn't stop talking.

And yet he's always paired with John.

In Acts chapter, well, really 1 through 15 until you meet Paul and the narrative switches to him.

In the first half of the book of Acts, it's Peter and John are the leaders of the church.

They're the ones going around preaching.

But what's so fascinating is always Peter and John.

Zero words of John are recorded in that that I can think of.

It's always Peter.

Everywhere they go, they get an opportunity to preach, it's Peter who's preaching, and John who sits in the front row going, Amen.

What he said.

By the way, faster than you.

I picture John thinking to himself, but Peter is the one who does the talking.

He's the one who walks on water.

One step more than all the other disciples, one step less than Jesus wanted.

That is classic Peter.

And there's so many examples of Peter's hard-headedness and yet his insight.

He's the first one to confess that Jesus is the Christ and then forbids him to go to the cross.

Like bang bang.

Like the most incredible thing ever said about Jesus comes from Peter's lips, followed by the craziest thing ever said about Jesus.

Yes, you're the Messiah.

I forbid you to go to the cross.

That's Peter.

But he is most certainly the leader and in many cases a model for us.

Peter is followed by Andrew.

Andrew was Peter's brother.

He had a close relationship with Jesus, and he's often seen bringing other people to meet Jesus.

He's the one that brought John to meet Jesus, for example.

And he's always in Peter's shadow.

Whenever you see him, it's almost always followed by Andrew, Peter's brother.

If you have an older brother, perhaps you can relate to that.

Of all the disciples in this first group of four, he is the quietest, he's the most thoughtful, he didn't angle for the limelight.

You never see Andrew putting himself forward.

He was content to be in Peter's shadow because he was content to be in Jesus' shadow.

That's Andrew.

Yet the one thing that's true about him is that he pointed other people to Jesus.

Andrew gives way to James.

James is John's older brother, John the disciple, who you probably know, John's probably the best-known disciple.

James is his older brother, and they were inseparable.

They're often simply described in the Gospels as the sons of Zebedee.

James is the one who saw the transfiguration.

Remember, when Jesus went to the mountain to be transfigured, he chose four disciples to bring with him.

It wasn't a random choice, it was this first group.

It was the four that were closest to Jesus.

He's the one who privately took Jesus aside and questioned him about the rapture, the end times.

When is the kingdom going to come to Israel?

He was nicknamed as Son of Thunder.

And that's likely a good nickname because one of the phrases that is recorded from him, he's the one that asked Jesus to call fire down from heaven on the Samaritans.

Come on, Jesus, let's put an end to this Samaritan nonsense.

Just smoke him out.

And Jesus says, Oh, you are such a son of thunder.

Spoiler alert, Jesus does not call fire from heaven on the Samaritans.

He, in a lower moment of his life, James, was the one who put his mother up to asking Jesus if James and John can be at his right and left hand in the kingdom.

Mom, why don't you go ask Jesus this question for me?

Probably trying to nudge Peter out of place, I think, was the agenda of that.

Jesus ironically tells him, Do you even know what you're asking?

Do you want to be gracious in the kingdom?

And he says, Are you able to be baptized with the fire that I'm going to be baptized with?

Do you remember what James says?

Of course.

Why not?

And Jesus kind of just shakes his head.

You have no idea what's in your future.

Well, he was the first of the twelve to be martyred for their faith.

So, in a sense, he was able to drink the cup of wrath that Jesus himself took.

He is followed by John, who closes out the first group of four.

He is probably, for American evangelicals, John's probably the most well-known of all the apostles.

In contrast with his thunderous brother, John is the disciple of love.

He was the one that was in all the debates about who the greatest in heaven would be.

And he was often next to James there having that debate.

He was with James, getting his mom to ask Jesus if he could be the greatest in the heaven.

He is also the one who rebuked the man who casted out a demon but wasn't part of the twelve.

Remember?

They come back down, and there's this guy, and a demon had been cast out, and John's like, he's not one of us.

How dare you cast out a demon without my approval?

That was John, also called a son of thunder.

But what's interesting with John is he has another nickname.

He's also called the son of love, or the disciple of love, or the disciple that Jesus loved the most.

Now that's worth pausing for a second and asking some little questions.

Like, why is John called the disciple of love?

Was he the most loving of the disciples?

Probably not.

But he was the disciple whom Jesus loved the most.

And that's a little insight into the nature of our relationship with Jesus.

We don't define the nature of our relationship with Jesus, he defines it to us.

John is a disciple of love, not because he was lovely, but because Jesus set his love on him.

Any seminary student will tell you the first Greek books you learn to read are John's writings.

You learn to read 1 John before anything else.

In fact, in just about every seminary in the world, you can't graduate Greek 101 until you can translate the 1 John, the epistle, the first epistle to John.

Why is that?

Because it's such clear, simple, basic language.

For John, everything is black and white.

You are in the light or you are in the darkness.

You are telling the truth or you are lying.

That's simple John.

He does not have the gradation for, you know, it all comes down to heart motives.

That's not John.

John's like, yes or no, man.

Light or darkness, choose.

And it's encouraging to me that that is the disciple of love.

I think often in Christianity, the most loving thing you can do to someone is to be clear with them.

To simply say, light or darkness.

We sometimes think it's loving to obfuscate or to be less than clear, but not John.

John is black and white, he's dogmatic, and he is the disciple of love.

For John and for Jesus, love is being filled with grace and truth.

And if that sounds familiar, it's because John writes it in John chapter 1.

John 1 · chapter mention

The next group, Philip.

Philip is always the leader of the second group.

He was also a fisherman, but he is the only of the disciples that had religious training.

We learn in the Gospel of John that he had studied the Old Testament law and he was looking for the Messiah.

He was steered to Jesus by John the Baptist.

He apparently was tasked with organizing food for the twelve because he's the one that Jesus singled out at the feeding of the 5,000 and asked Philip, where are we going to get food?

He was the one the Greeks sought out when they wanted to know more about Jesus.

Back in Jerusalem, the Greeks were like, What's going on with all the Jews?

This Messiah guy is here, everybody's following him, the Pharisees aren't having it.

The Greeks had questions.

They went and pulled Philip aside and asked him.

As a result of that, it's in fact it's one of my favorite verses.

It's actually written on my pulpit.

There's a plaque with it ingrained on my pulpit, John 12, verse 21.

John 12:21

Sir, we wish to see Jesus.

That was said to Philip.

Sir, would you show us Jesus?

And do you remember how Philip responded?

He went and got his older brother.

He didn't know how to respond.

Once went and got a friend.

Philip eventually didn't have to go get a friend anymore.

He uh was stoned to death in Asia, becoming the second of the apostles to die for Christ.

In the second group is Bartholomew.

He's also called Nathaniel.

He has two names, as many of the disciples do.

Most of the Jews themselves had two names.

You can see that with Peter and Simon, Bartholomew and Nathanael.

He was Philip's closest friend.

He was also a fisherman, and he came to Christ when his friend Philip brought him.

And do you remember this is a very funny scene when Philip brought Bartholomew to Jesus and says, you know, I found the Messiah.

Here he is.

He's from Nazareth.

Bartholomew says, Can anything good come from Nazareth?

I just always find that funny.

And he's introduced by Philip to Jesus, and Jesus says, I know you.

You're Nathaniel, Bartholomew.

And he says, How do you know my name?

And Jesus says, Before Philip came to you, I saw you sitting under that tree over there.

You wonder what went through his head.

Can anyone omniscient come from Nazareth?

Maybe there's more to this guy than I believed.

He died bringing the gospel to Armenia.

Next is Thomas, often called doubting Thomas and not for nothing.

He's the one that said, I'll believe you.

Show me your nail holes, Jesus.

Like he saw Jesus die and was buried, and is, you know, everybody says he's resurrected.

He's like, show me the holes, prove it.

That's Thomas.

He's also the one that said, You're going to heaven and you want me to follow you?

How?

I don't have a map.

I put it in Google Maps.

I'm not f heaven.

No, not nothing.

That's Thomas.

How is it even possible?

You'd have to respect that he voiced what others were thinking but wouldn't say.

Like with the death of Lazarus, Jesus says, I'm gonna go to Bethany, and Thomas is the one that says, Great, I'll go die with you there.

I don't know if he was being serious or sarcastic.

You can really read it either way, and uh commentaries are split.

I don't know if he was rolling his eyes, like, yeah, let's all go die, or if he sincerely meant it.

Alright, Jesus, you're going?

I'm with you.

Let's go die.

Either way, it confirms his doubting nature that he did not have a happy ending to the story.

Um, by the way, being speared to death in modern Madras, India.

Some of the oldest churches in the world trace their roots back to his gospel preaching in India.

I find it ironic that the person who said, I'll believe when you show me the nail holes, ended up being pierced to death himself.

The final disciple in this group is Matthew, also called Levi, is his other name.

He is the oddest of the disciples, and that's not just because I have seen two episodes of The Chosen.

You know, the chosen gives him Asperger's or whatever, which, okay, that might be a stretch, but not really that much of a stretch.

I mean, you have to ask yourself, what kind of person is going to be a Jew named Levi, for goodness sakes, who's going to be a tax collector in Capernaum, which is on, you know, a Greek highway, but it's a Jewish town at the Sea of Galilee.

You're dealing, you're in the outpost with fishermen, like they're scraping the bottom of the barrel, and you'll get rich doing it.

This is gonna be a guy with little to no social awareness.

That's for sure.

That would be a prerequisite for his uh job description.

And yet that's that's who he is.

And Jesus doesn't hide his identity either.

He doesn't call him.

At the party with sinners and tax collectors is not where Jesus called him.

Do you remember?

Jesus goes to his tax collecting booth and yanks him out of that to be a disciple.

And he doesn't even get to take off his apron, he just hauled right in to follow Jesus.

You don't get more dramatic of a conversion than going from tax collector to disciple.

His conversion, by the way, is what led the Pharisees to try to decide to put Jesus to death.

I mean, they were tolerating Jesus when it was just fishermen who were following him.

But once Matthew walked away from tax collecting, the Pharisees said, This man must be stopped.

He would have spent the rest of his life with such a sense of awe and gratitude that Jesus chose him, and he is the one, of course, that wrote the book of the Bible that we're reading right now.

On to the final group of four.

James always starts, and every group he starts the last group of four.

So that's a bit of an enigma.

I mean, he's the last group of group of the four, he's the JV team, but he's the captain of the JV team?

Would you rather be captain of the JV team or a bench warmer on varsity?

That's an age-old question.

And if you think I'm reading in too much into this, I did an experiment.

Uh I asked people what their favorite NFL team is, and then I asked them, can you name the offensive linemen on the team?

Okay?

And then they'll they'll rattle off, like I'm talking like football guys, and they'll rattle off like three or four of the linemen, and I'll go to somebody else with the same team, and they'll say the same players, but in a different order.

Everybody always gets them in a different order, except for the first player.

Everybody always has the first name on their list of offensive linemen, and the other players get jarbled in different orders.

But when you think of the offensive line in your first team, you always think of the same guy first.

That's James.

He's the offensive lineman that you think of first.

He's on the JV team, but he's the leader of the JV team.

And you can do that own experiment if you want on your own.

The analogy of a lineman doesn't end here because James always wanted the glory on Jesus, not on himself.

He is called James the Lesser.

James the Lesser.

I don't know what that means.

It's probably a sign of humility or of youngerness.

Um he was content to put the focus on Jesus.

I had a coach the high school soccer team last year, and we had two Jameses on the soccer team, and so I called the shorter of the two James the Lesser all season long.

His dad is like, what?

He's smaller, okay?

But by the end of the season, he'd grown bigger than James the Greater, and so no, it just was awkward.

It's like, oh, and the Bible it's a sign of humility.

Embrace it.

Jikes.

Uh James the Lesser died in Nero's reign.

A governor took control of Jerusalem, a new governor.

This is like 68 AD, so only a few years before the temple was destroyed.

Uh took control of Jerusalem.

James was one of the last of the twelve apostles who was there, had him arrested.

Several different historians tell the story that he was led to the crowded temple, told to denounce Christ in front of everybody.

Uh keep in mind, this is like 35 years after the ascension, by the way.

So we're dealing decades later.

He was told to renounce Christ or be killed.

Instead, he preached the gospel to the crowded courtyard of the temple.

The Romans dragged him into the top of the temple, threw him off the temple mount, obliterated his body with clubs and rocks.

That's how he met his demise.

This gives way to Thaddeus.

Thaddeus is the disciple with three names.

His given name, his birth name was Judas, and you understand how in retrospect why they would rename him.

His second name was Thaddeus, which literally means uh, well, idiomatically it means mother's boy, like mama's boy.

It literally means like child of my breast, and it was a common name to give to the youngest kid in the family, or like an effeminate kind of kid, a mama's boy kind of kid, is what it could be rendered as mama's boy.

So if your name was Judas and Mama's boy, you too would want a third name.

And the other name that's given to him in the King James anyway is Labius.

Uh turn a phrase off of Thaddeus.

Um, this is why, also, by the way, in Matthew's list he's listed as uh just Thaddeus, but in the other gospels he's listed as Judas, but not Iscariot, or something along those lines.

The only recorded words of Mama's Boy in the New Testament is when he asked Jesus a very good question.

This is the only recorded words.

He asked Jesus, why do you reveal yourself to some people, but not everyone?

So if you've ever wondered about the doctrine of election, Mama's boy is your boy too.

He brought the gospel to modern-day Turkey.

Uh secular historians tell the story of how the king there was converted, but then the temple court uh put him to death, clubbed him to death, which has to churn your stomach.

Someone so tender that he's called Mama's Boy, clubbed to death for his faith in Christ.

Thaddeus gives away to Simon.

Simon, the second to last on the list.

He is a zealot, a zealot.

Some people render that as a terrorist, but he was a political party.

He's the only of the twelve with a political affiliation.

He wanted to overthrow Rome.

The zealots were known for booby traps, for ambushing Roman soldiers.

They would murder people all the time.

They were trying, it was guerrilla warfare.

They were trying to sow discord in Jerusalem to get the Roman Empire overthrown.

That's who he was.

Now you contrast that with Levi.

Levi was a tax collector loyal to Rome.

I love that Jesus chose one person from Occupy Wall Street and one person from the Maga camp and bought them together.

I like to picture that he made them partners as he sent them out two by two.

I don't know that, but could be true.

Zealots wanted not only to overthrow Rome, but they wanted the Messiah to do the overthrowing.

And so it's ironic as well that Simon goes up to modern-day Britain, England, where he was martyred for his faith.

The one who used to be willing to kill for politics ended up laying down his life for Jesus.

We will save Judas for some other time.

He's not worth mentioning here, and Matthew himself skips over him to get back to the twelve.

Why did I go through that list of twelve people?

Because I want you to appreciate as Jesus calls his disciples to himself, these are every kind of ordinary person, aren't they?

A person with a political bent, a person with a religious interest, a fisherman, a person who's just known by the identity of his older brother, a person whom Jesus loves, a person who runs his mouth all the time, a person who's a mama's boy.

You get the whole mix of people.

And that's who Jesus gives the gospel to and tells him, take my name into all the world and turn it upside down.

Lord, we're thankful that you have given us your name as well.

You sent us in the world with the good news of the gospel.

Turn it upside down.

Pray that you'd use this congregation this week to bring the gospel to the nations.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.