The Twelve Disciples: Sevants and Zealots
The Twelve Disciples • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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We have been going through the 12 disciples of Jesus
The names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.
Peter and Andrew - the fishers of Men, the foundations stone of the church, and all of us are living stones building up God’s church
JAmes and John the sons of Thunder - Eager to fight and to use God’s power, but learned the imporatance of loving others.
Philip and Bartholomew - Who spent their lives simply inviting people to meet Jesus.
Thomas and Matthew - who were concerned with Evidence and Details, which helped them become sucessful evangelists to other parts of the world.
Today i am going to break the pattern and talk about 3 disciples.
James the less the son of alpheaus
Thaddeus - also called Judas son of James
and Simon the Zealot.
We do not know very much about any of these three.
James the less is called the less becuse we don’t know much about him.
THere are 3 Jameses in the New Testament
James the Son of Zebedee - the First disciple to be martyred
James the brother of Jesus - who became the leader of the church in Jerusalem
and James the son of Alpheaus.
which means he might be related to Matthew the tax collector.
That’s about all we know of him from the Bible.
Thaddeus has three different names:
Thaddeus (a greek name)
In Luke he is called Judas son of James
Which means theres anoother James we have to keep track of
Except the greek in Luke doesn;t include the word for son of and could be interperted as “Brother of”
In which case he might be the Judas/Jude who wrote the Epistle of Jude the second to last book of the Bible
Though that is often associated with Jesus’s brother Jude/Judas
So we have a couple disciples and all we really know about them is that they have popular names for the time James, and Judas
Which i think i understand why Thaddeus chose to be called Thaddeus rather than Judas, especially after the actions of the other Judas.
I rememeber going to youth group as a teenager, and the Youth Pastor wanted to illustrate how the Disciples got along
the Gospels note that they sometimes argued over who was the greatest.
so he called 12 of us up gave us each a disciple’s name and we had to order ourselves from worst to best.
I got Judas iscariot
so I went to the end of the line
Some one else got thaddeus and went and stood on the opposite side of me from everyone else, just because no one really knows anything about thaddeus.
And of Course we have Simon the Zealot
which is one of 5 Simons in the Bible.
so there another really common name
And we don’t really know that much about any of them
Of the three of them, Thaddeus is the only one recorded as saying anything in the gospels
At the last supper
“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me. “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.
Judas (not Iscariot) so Thaddeus wants to know what Jesus means when He says that will manifest himself to those who love him, but not to all the world
and Jesus says that if you love him the Holy Spirit will bring to memory everything Jesus had told them.
That Jesus and the Father - through the Holy Spirit will come and live with those who love him and keep his commands.
See the disciples time and time again we see the disciple were waiting for Jesus to Manifest his Power and take back the kingdom of Israel and fix everything wrong with the world, and Believe me church at some point he will come back to set everything right, but not yet. He is slowly manifesting his kingdom in each and every one of us - as we learn to love him and follow his commandments, and as we are filled with the Holy Spirit who helps us rememeber the things we heard Jesus say - or the words we read.
Perhaps none of the Disciples was more eager to see JEsus take the throne than Simon the Zealot.
Now zealot is a loaded term at this point in time,
There were a group of Jews called Zealots - a sort of secret society that decided that politics and prayer was not enough when dealing with the romans
See the Saducees tried to deal politically with rome, so that they could help the jews maintain a sense of freedom of worship, even while being opressed.
THe Pharisees tried to live extra - holy lives so that God would answer their prayers adding tons of extra rules to the law of God to make sure they didn’t break his law, so that God would take the romans away
The Essenes - who are not really mentioned in the Bible - decided to seperate from the rest of the world an go live in the desert until the Messiah came
John the baptist might have been an essene.
and then there were the Zealots, who decided to start fighting rome and then hopefully the messiah would arise from among their ranks.
Simon was one of these.
They built tunnels under jerusalem and other major cities
THey had special daggers that they hid in their sleeves
Sicarius
I have friends who’s last name is sicree
From sicarus
they are descended from zealots
They would assassinate roman officials, tax collectors etc.
Matthew and Simon must of had interesting moments.
But heres an interesting thing:
The Zealots were still a relatively new Group by the time of Jesus
They would reach thier hight 40 years later
when they picked a fight with rome and ROme destroyed Jerusalem in the process
Jesus mentioned this very thing:
And as he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” And Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”
He is referencing the temple being destroyed,
Which happed in 70 AD after the Zealots picked a fight they could not win.
But in Jesus’s time the Zealots had only been around for about 20 years. enough time for the leader of the Zealots - Judas the Galilean, would of had 3 full gown sons, one of who was named Simon.
So when we talk about Simon the Zealot, apsotle of Jesus, we need to recognize that he might of been the son of the leader of the Zealots, who were essentially terrorists.
What could possible sway such a man from a world of Murder and warfare to following a guy who preached things such as “love your enemies,” “turn the other cheek,” “go the extra mile”?
Well that might come from another name given to Simon the Zealot
Mark’s gospel in greek calls him Simon the Canaanite
or Simon from Cana.
Cana where Jesus did his frist mircale.
On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” So they took it. When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.
His disciples believed in Him.
Perhaps Simon was at that wedding, perhaps he was a guest or a servant.
He might have even been getting ready to do some sort of job for the zealots,
And here he sees a miracle, and he learns about Jesus, and puts his faith in the true messiah,
not the messiah that the Zealots were looking for.
The True messiah
So Simons Zealousness was then pointed toward a better goal.
The Apostle Paul often noted that he was zealous
In the past that Zeal for God led to him persecuting the church, until God got ahold of him
then his zeal turned toward spreading the gosepel
And his prayer is that more like him will be saved
Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
The jews of Pauls day were Zealous for God, but were missing out on salvation because their own zeal got in the way.
Simon the Zealot, the Apostle Paul, and many more were able to look past their Zeal to See Jesus, and then put their zeal in what is right.
Galatians 4:18 says in the NIV
It is always good to be made much of for a good purpose, and not only when I am present with you,
Church we need to have Zeal for Christ, and we need to help those who have Zeal for good things not miss out because their zeal is misplaced, either in politics, or in cultural movements, or even in God, but is a misunderstood way.
Some of the most Zealous people for God are going to miss out on heaven because they have missed the Gospel.
And instead they bring destruction upon themselves, like the Sicarii zealots did to Jerusalem.
Church, threse three disciples had zeal.
James the Less - Remined in jerusalem, and was thrown from the pinaccle of the temple,
when that failed to kill him he was beaten to death with a club.
Judas/Thaddeus - Preached the Gosepl throughout the middle east. In Judea Samaria and Mesopotamia and eventually persia
Simon the Zealot went west through norther Africa, as far as sapin or maybe even Britian and then came back through africa and ended up in Persia
In Persia Simon and Thaddeus were martyed alongside each other
Simon was sawn in two
and Thaddeus was beaten to death.
All of these men gave the ultimate sacrifice for what they knew to be true, that Jesus Christ was the way the truth and the life.
He had minifested himslef to them not just at his ressurection, but through the Holy Spirit who guided them and empowered them to preach to all nations.
Church when we go out to reach other for Jesus we need a few things:
1. We need to Love Jesus, and obey his commandments, so that the Spirit can come and work in us, and guide us.
2. We need the same Zeal for the gospel, for Jesus that the disciples had, being willing to face anything because we know the truth about JEsus.
3. We need a heart for those who are lost, who might be so zealous for their own reasons that they fail to recognized the Gospel.