Thomas the Faithful Servant

Sermon: Thomas the Faithful Servant                                                  6-4-2007

INTRO ON THE APOSTLES:

Acts 4:13 When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.

Entonces viendo el denuedo de Pedro y de Juan,  y sabiendo que eran hombres sin letras [sin estudios] y del vulgo [ignorantes,  sin preparación] se maravillaban;  y les reconocían que habían estado con Jesús.

Matt 19:28 Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

Rev 21:14 ….9 "Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb."  10  And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.  11  It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.  12  It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel.  13  There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south and three on the west. 14 The wall of the city had 12 foundations, and on them were the names of the 12 apostles of the Lamb

Eph.4:11-12  It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers,  12  to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up  13  until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

Eph 2:20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.

The Twelve are then arranged in three groups of four. The three names at the head of each group seem to have been the group leaders. The three groups always appear in the same order: first Peter’s group, then the group led by Philip, then the group headed by James.

The Process Of Choosing And Calling Them Happened In Distinct Stages.

Phase 1 - a calling to conversion. (John 1:35–51)       Phase 2 - a calling to ministry. Luke 5

Phase 3 – a calling to apostleship (Matthew 10:1–4; Luke 6:12–16)

Phase 4 - a calling to martyrdom (after Jesus’ death & resurrection)

there are no intrinsically qualified people. God Himself must save sinners, sanctify them, and then transform them from unqualified into instruments He can use.

Many Christians become discouraged and disheartened when their spiritual life and witness suffer because of sin or failure.

We tend to think we’re worthless nobodies—and left to ourselves, that would be true!

But worthless nobodies are just the kind of people God uses, cause that is all He has to work with

They became great spiritual leaders and great preachers under the power of the Holy Spirit, but it was not because of any innate oratorical skill, leadership abilities, or academic qualifications these men had.

Their influence is owing to 1 thing: the power of the message they preached.

God’s favorite instruments are nobodies

It was not a job for which applicants or volunteers were sought. Christ chose them sovereignly and appointed them, in the presence of the larger group. This was a remarkable moment for those twelve.

Up to this point, Peter, James, John, Andrew, Nathanael, Matthew, and the others were just part of the crowd. They were learners like everyone else in the group.

We’re inclined to look at this group with all their weaknesses and wonder why Jesus did not simply pick a different group of men.

Why would He single out men with no understanding, no humility, no faith, no commitment, and no power?

Simply this: His strength is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor 12:9).

There is no human explanation for the influence of the apostles. The glory goes to God alone.

Are you beginning to get the idea of what kind of people God uses? He can use anyone. Personality, status, and family background are all immaterial.

 “CHOSEN” THOMAS

Mark 3:13-18 Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him. 14 He appointed twelve--designating them apostles--that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach 15 and to have authority to drive out demons. 16 These are the twelve he appointed: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter); 17 James son of Zebedee and his brother John (to them he gave the name Boanerges, which means Sons of Thunder); 18 Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon the Zealot                      cf Mt 10:3 Thomas and Matthew;  Lk 6:15 Matthew, Thomas

3:13-18  Después subió al monte,  y llamó a sí a los que él quiso;  y vinieron a él. 14  Y estableció a doce,  para que estuviesen con él,  y para enviarlos a predicar, 15  y que tuviesen autoridad para sanar enfermedades y para echar fuera demonios: 16  a Simón,  a quien puso por sobrenombre Pedro; 17  a Jacobo hijo de Zebedeo,  y a Juan hermano de Jacobo,  a quienes apellidó Boanerges,  esto es,  Hijos del trueno; 18  a Andrés,  Felipe,  Bartolomé,  Mateo,  Tomás,  Jacobo hijo de Alfeo,  Tadeo,  Simón el cananista, 19  y Judas Iscariote,  el que le entregó.  Y vinieron a casa.

John 15:16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit--fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.

Rom 11:5 So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. 6 And if by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace. 

1 Cor 1:20–29 Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?  21  For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22  Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom,  23  but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,  24  but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.  25  For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.  26  Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things--and the things that are not--to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him.

* The Reason for the Choice: God’s grace

Remember: we are chosen “in spite of” not “because of”

Chosen not because they were better, but because they were just like the others!

* The Timing of the Choice: Last ½ of His ministry….when things were going to get rough!

            Only about 18 months left to train them and leave them in charge!

 “COURAGOUS” THOMAS

John 11:16 Then Thomas (called Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him." (RV60)  Dijo entonces Tomás,  llamado Dídimo [que se llamaba el Gemelo],  a sus condiscípulos:  Vamos también nosotros,  para que muramos con él.

Mark 14:31 But Peter insisted emphatically, "Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you." And all the others said the same.

His courage was motived by love

Cf John 14:1-6

John 21:15…"Yes, Lord," he said, "you know that I love you." 

16…."Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."

17 "Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you."

John 13:23 ….the disciple whom Jesus loved

John 19:26 ….the disciple whom he loved

John 20:2 …...the one Jesus loved  

John 21:7,20...the disciple whom Jesus loved

John 21:20 Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved

Didymus: Twin brother or sister? ….same physical appearance?…….same faith?

Speak Up…..Step Out…… for Jesus (take a stand for message & his values)

“UNFINISHED”  THOMAS

John 14:5 Thomas said to him, "Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?" (RV60)  Le dijo Tomás:  Señor,  no sabemos a dónde vas;  ¿cómo,  pues,  podemos saber el camino?                                                (remember this happened at the end of His ministry!)

Matt 6:30  If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

Matt 8:26 He replied, "You of little faith, why are you so afraid?" Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm.

Matt 14:31 Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. "You of little faith," he said, "why did you doubt?"

Matt 15:16  "Are you still so dull?" Jesus asked them. 17  "Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? 18  But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man `unclean.'

Matt.16:8 Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked, "You of little faith, why are you talking among yourselves about having no bread? 9 Do you still not understand? Don't you remember the 5 loaves for the 5000, and how many basketfuls you gathered?

Mark 4:40 He asked them, “How is it that you have no faith?”

Mark 16:14 Later Jesus appeared to the 11 as they were eating; he rebuked them for their lack of faith & their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen

Luke 24:25 He said to them, "How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!).  

Eph 2:10 For we are GOD'S WORKMANSHIP, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

2Cor 3:18 And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

THANK GOD THAT HE IS NOT DONE WITH YOU!

            Al taller del maestro vengo, pues El me curará

me tomará entre sus brazos y cada herida sanará

las herramientas del maestro, mi alma El remendará

martillo en mano y mucho fuego, aunque me duela ayudará...

Al taller del maestro vengo / ahí, ay el sol se pondrá

al taller del maestro vengo / carpintero mi alma aquí está

Al taller del maestro vengo / no importa el tiempo que allí he de estar

            Al taller del maestro vengo...

“DOUBTING” THOMAS

John 20:24 Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!"  But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it." 26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" 27 Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe." 28 Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!" 29 Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

RVR  Pero Tomás,  uno de los doce,  llamado Dídimo,  no estaba con ellos cuando Jesús vino. 25 Le

dijeron,  pues,  los otros discípulos:  Al Señor hemos visto.  El les dijo:  Si no viere en sus manos la señal

de los clavos,  y metiere mi dedo en el lugar de los clavos,  y metiere mi mano en su costado,  no creeré.

26  Ocho días después,  estaban otra vez sus discípulos dentro,  y con ellos Tomás.  Llegó Jesús,  estando

las puertas cerradas,  y se puso en medio y les dijo:  Paz a vosotros. 27  Luego dijo a Tomás:  Pon aquí tu

dedo,  y mira mis manos;  y acerca tu mano,  y métela en mi costado;  y no seas incrédulo,  sino creyente.

28  Entonces Tomás respondió y le dijo:  ¡Señor mío,  y Dios mío! 29  Jesús le dijo:  Porque me has visto, 

Tomás,  creíste;  bienaventurados los que no vieron,  y creyeron.

20:19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

We doubt Ourselves …………….We doubt Others

We Doubt What He has Said (His Word)

Ps 119:140 Your promises have been thoroughly tested, and your servant loves them.

He had repeatedly said he was going to resurrect after 3 days…..& now he kept his Word

We Doubt Who He is (His Character - his love, wisdom, power, forgiveness, timing, etc)

Matt 16:16 Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."

Mt 21:10 When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred & asked, Who is this?

Luke 5:21 The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, "Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy?.....

Luke 7:49 The other guests began to say among themselves, "Who is this who even forgives sins?"

Luke 8:25 "Where is your faith?" he asked his disciples. In fear & amazement they asked one another, "Who is this? He commands even the winds & the water & they obey him."

Matt 14:31 Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. "You of little faith," he said, "why did you doubt?"

Matt 21:21 Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, `Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and it will be done.

Matt 28:17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.

Mark 11:23 "I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, `Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.

Luke 24:38 He said to them, "Why are you troubled & why do doubts rise in your minds?

Rom 14:23 But the man who has doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.

Jame 1:6 But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.

Jude 1:22 Be merciful to those who doubt

“OBEDIENT” THOMAS

John 21:1-2  Afterward Jesus appeared again to his disciples, by the Sea of Tiberias (Galilee). It happened this way: Simon Peter, Thomas (called Didymus), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples were together. RVR Después de esto,  Jesús se manifestó otra vez a sus discípulos junto al mar de Tiberias;  y se manifestó de esta manera: 2 Estaban juntos Simón Pedro,  Tomás llamado el Dídimo,  Natanael el de Caná de Galilea,  los hijos de Zebedeo,  y otros dos de sus discípulos.

Obedience #1

Matt 28:10 Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me."

Mark 16:7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter, `He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.'"

Obedience #2

John 21:6 He said, "Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some." When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish.

            Cf Luke 5 similar incident 2 yrs earlier

Obedience in the little things paves the way for Obedience in the big things

Matt.28:19-20 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

Mark 16:15  [in Galilee] He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. 16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. ….19  After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God. 20 Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it.

Matt 4:19 "Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men."

A fisherman catches living fish, but when he gets them, they die. A Christian witness seeks to catch “dead fish” (dead in their sins), and when he or she “catches” them, they are made alive in Christ!

“PRAYING” THOMAS

Acts 1:13 When they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. Those present were Peter, John, James and Andrew; Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew & Matthew; James son of Alphaeus & Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. 14 They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.

RVR Y entrados,  subieron al aposento alto,  donde moraban Pedro y Jacobo,  Juan,  Andrés,  Felipe, 

Tomás,  Bartolomé,  Mateo,  Jacobo hijo de Alfeo,  Simón el Zelote y Judas hermano de Jacobo. 14 

Todos éstos perseveraban unánimes en oración y ruego,  con las mujeres,  y con María la madre de

Jesús,  y con sus hermanos.

Acts 1:3-14 After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. 4 On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: "Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. 5 For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit." 6 So when they met together, they asked him, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" 7 He said to them: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." 9 After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. 10  They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them.  11  "Men of Galilee," they said, "why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven." 12 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount of Olives, a Sabbath day's walk from the city. Cf Lk.24:46-51

* first time we see Thomas he is called by Jesus “to be with him”

* the last time we see Thomas he is with Jesus, but through prayer

“joined together” = He prayed in a group: Learn to Pray in a small group

Acts 2:1 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.

Acts 2:46   Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,

Acts 4:24 When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. "Sovereign Lord," they said, "you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them.

Acts 5:12 The apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders among the people. And all the believers used to meet together in Solomon's Colonnade.

Roma 15:6 so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

“constantly in prayer” = He was a prayer warrior

Acts 2:42 They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

Acts 2:46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,

Acts 6:4   and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word."

Rom 12:12  Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.

Col 4:2 Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.

“constantly” = 4342 προσκαρτερέω proskartereo from 4314 and 2594; TDNT - 3:618,417; v

AV - continue 4, continue instant 1, continue steadfastly 1,attend continually 1, give (one's) self continually 1, wait on 1, wait on continually 1; 10xs

1) to adhere to one, be his adherent, to be devoted or constant to one

2) to be steadfastly attentive unto, to give unremitting care to a thing

3) to continue all the time in a place

4) to persevere and not to faint

5) to show one's self courageous for

6) to be in constant readiness for one, wait on constantly

4342. προσκαρτερέω proskarteréō; contracted proskarteró̄, fut. proskarteré̄sō, from prós (4314), to, and karteréō (2594), to endure. To tarry, remain somewhere (Mark 3:9); to continue steadfastly with someone (Acts 8:13); to cleave faithfully to someone (Acts 10:7); referring to those who continually insist on something or stay close to someone (Acts 2:46; Rom. 13:6); used metaphorically of steadfastness and faithfulness in the outgoings of the Christian life, especially in prayer (Acts 1:14; 2:42; 6:4; Rom. 12:12; Col. 4:2)

PROSKARTEREŌ (προσκαρτερέω , (4342)), to be stedfast, a strengthened form of kartereō (pros, towards, intensive, karteros, strong), denotes to continue stedfastly in a thing and give unremitting care to it, e.g., Rom. 13:6, of rulers in the discharge of their functions

“joined together” = 3661 homothumadon, from a compound of the base of 3674 and 2372; TDNT - 5:185,684; adv; AV - with one accord 11, with one mind 1; 12xs

1) with one mind, with one accord, with one passion

A unique Greek word, used 10 of its 12 New Testament occurrences in the Book of Acts, helps us understand the uniqueness of the Christian community. Homothumadon is a compound of two words meaning to "rush along" and "in unison". The image is almost musical; a number of

notes are sounded which, while different, harmonise in pitch and tone. As the instruments of a great concert under the direction of a concert master, so the Holy Spirit blends together the lives of members of Christ's church.

3661 ὁμοθυμαδόν [homothumadon /hom·oth·oo·mad·on/] adv. From a compound of the base of 3674 and 2372; TDNT 5:185; TDNTA 684; GK 3924; 12 occurrences; AV translates as “with one accord” 11 times, and “with one mind” once. 1 with one mind, with one accord, with one passion

3661. ὁμοθυμαδόν homothumadón; adv. from homóthumos (n.f.), unanimous, of one mind, which is from homós (n.f.), one and the same, and thumós (2372), temperament, mind. With one mind, with unanimous consent, in one accord, all together (Acts 1:14; 2:1, 46; 4:24; 5:12; 7:57; 8:6; 12:20; 15:25; 18:12; 19:29; Rom. 15:6; Sept.: Ex. 19:8; Jer. 26:21)

John 21:1–23 is a record of one of Christ’s post-resurrection appearances, this is #7 in the list

1. To Mary Magdalene (Mark 16:9; John 20:11–18).

2. To the women (Matt. 28:9, 10).

3. To Cleopas and his companion (Luke 24:13–35).

4. To Simon (Luke 24:34; I Cor. 15:15).

5. To the disciples except Thomas (John 20:19–23).

6. To the disciples, Thomas being present (John 20:24–29).

All of these occurred in Jerusalem. After the disciples have gone to Galilee, in obedience to

the instructions which they had received from the Lord, Jesus appears again:

7. To the seven at the Sea of Tiberias (21:1–14).

8. To the disciples on a “mountain” in Galilee, where Jesus made a great claim, gave the great commission, and proclaimed the great presence (Matt. 28:16–20). [possible same as #9]

9. To the five hundred (I Cor. 15:6).

10. To James, the Lord’s brother (I Cor. 15:7). in Galilee or in Judea is not stated.

The disciples having returned to Jerusalem:

11. To the eleven on Olivet, near Jerusalem (Acts 1:4–11; Luke 24:50, 51).

The next appearance that is specifically recorded is by the Lord from heaven:

12. To Paul, on his way to Damascus (Acts 9:3–7; 22:6–10; 26:12–18; I Cor. 9:1; 15:8

Wiersbe - The average reader would conclude that John completed his book with the dramatic testimony of Thomas (John 20:28–31), and the reader would wonder why John added another chapter. The main reason is the Apostle Peter, John’s close associate in ministry (Acts 3:1). John did not want to end his Gospel without telling his readers that Peter was restored to his apostleship. Apart from the information in this chapter, we would wonder why Peter was so prominent in the first twelve chapters of the Book of Acts. John had another purpose in mind: he wanted to refute the foolish rumor that had spread among the believers that John would live until the return of the Lord (John 21:23). John made it clear that our Lord’s words had been greatly misunderstood. I think John may have had another purpose in mind: he wanted to teach us how to relate to the risen Christ. During the forty days between His resurrection and ascension, our Lord appeared and disappeared at will, visiting with the disciples and preparing them for the coming of the Spirit and their future ministries (Acts 1:1–9). They never knew when He would appear, so they had to stay alert! (The fact that He may return for His people today ought to keep us on our toes!) It was an important time for the disciples because they were about to take His place in the world and begin to carry the message to others.  I see in this chapter three pictures of the believer and a responsibility attached to each picture. We Are Fishers of Men—Obey Him (John 21:1–8) The Lord had instructed His disciples to meet Him in Galilee, which helps to explain why they were at the Sea of Galilee, or Sea of Tiberias (Matt. 26:32; 28:7–10; Mark 16:7). But John did not explain why Peter decided to go fishing, and Bible students are not in agreement in their suggestions. Some claim that he was perfectly within his rights, that he needed to pay his bills and the best way to get money was to go fishing. Why sit around idle? Get busy! Others believe that Peter had been called from that kind of life (Luke 5:1–11) and that it was wrong for him to return. Furthermore, when he went fishing, Peter took six other men with him! If he was wrong, they were wrong too; and it is a sad thing when a believer leads others astray. By the way, it is interesting that at least seven of the twelve disciples were probably fishermen. Why did Jesus call so many fishermen to follow Him? For one thing, fishermen are courageous, and Jesus needs brave people to follow Him. They are also dedicated to one thing and cannot easily be distracted. Fishermen do not quit! (We are thinking, of course, of professional fishermen, not idle people on vacation!) They know how to take orders, and they know how to work together. Whether Peter and his friends were right or wrong we cannot prove—though I personally think that they were wrong—but we do know this: their efforts were in vain. Had they forgotten the Lord’s words, “For without Me, ye can do nothing”? (John 15:5) They toiled all night and caught nothing. Certainly, Peter must have remembered what happened two years before, when Jesus called him into full-time discipleship (Luke 5:1–11). On that occasion, Peter had fished all night and caught nothing, but Jesus had turned his failure into success.  Perhaps Peter’s impulsiveness and self-confidence were revealing themselves again. He was sincere, and he worked hard, but there were no results. How like some believers in the service of the Lord! They sincerely believe that they are doing God’s will, but their labors are in vain. They are serving without direction from the Lord, so they cannot expect blessing from the Lord. After His resurrection, our Lord was sometimes not recognized (Luke 24:16; John 20:14); so it was that His disciples did not recognize Him when, at dawning, He appeared on the shore. His question expected a negative reply: “You have not caught anything to eat, have you?” Their reply was brief and perhaps a bit embarrassed: “No.” It was time for Jesus to take over the situation, just as He did when He called Peter into discipleship. He told them where to cast the net; they obeyed, and they caught 153 fish! The difference between success and failure was the width of the ship! We are never far from success when we permit Jesus to give the orders, and we are usually closer to success than we realize. It was John who first realized that the stranger on the shore was their own Lord and Master. It was John who leaned on the Lord’s breast at the table (John 13:23) and who stood by the cross when his Lord suffered and died (John 19:26). It is love that recognizes the Lord and shares that good news with others: “It is the Lord!” With characteristic impulsiveness, Peter quickly put on his outer garment (“naked” simply means “stripped for work”) and dove into the water! He wanted to get to Jesus! This is in contrast to Luke 5:8 where Peter told the Lord to depart from him. The other six men followed in the boat, bringing the net full of fish. In the experience recorded in Luke 5, the nets began to break; but in this experience, the net held fast. Perhaps we can see in these two “fishing miracles” an illustration of how the Lord helps His people fish for lost souls. All of our efforts are useless apart from His direction and blessing. During this present age, we do not know how many fish we have caught, and it often appears that the nets are breaking! But at the end of the age, when we see the Lord, not one fish will be lost and we will discover how many there are. Jesus called the disciples and us to be “fishers of men.” This phrase was not invented by Jesus; it had been used for years by Greek and Roman teachers. To be a “fisher of men” in that day meant to seek to persuade men and “catch” them with the truth. A fisherman catches living fish, but when he gets them, they die. A Christian witness seeks to catch “dead fish” (dead in their sins), and when he or she “catches” them, they are made alive in Christ! Now we can understand why Jesus had so many fishermen in the disciple band. Fishermen know how to work. They have courage and faith to go out “into the deep.” They have much patience and persistence, and they will not quit. They know how to cooperate with one another, and they are skilled in using the equipment and the boat. What examples for us to follow as we seek to “catch fish” for Jesus Christ! We are indeed “fishers of men,” and there are “fish” all around us. If we obey His directions, we will catch the fish.

21:1. In John’s account we are not told why the disciples return to Galilee. It seems quite a natural thing to do, since they are all Galileans. John sets the scene by placing the group on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias (the Sea of Galilee, see 6:1). The word translated appeared is a significant theological term. It is the Greek verb φανερόω (phaneroō) and means to “reveal” or “show.” It is often used in a context of divine revelation (see comments at 17:6). In this verse John is saying, “Jesus revealed himself.” This is language usually reserved for God and marks the high Christology John maintains, particularly after the resurrection. The verb phaneroō is used in a similar way again in 21:14 to serve as an inclusio and bracket this section. 21:2. The cast of characters numbers seven: Peter, Thomas, Nathanael (not mentioned since 1:49), the sons of Zebedee (James and John), and two other disciples. These other two may be Andrew (Peter’s fisherman brother) and Philip (Nathanael’s good friend). This is merely speculation on our part, but makes even more sense if we remember that Philip and Andrew are linked elsewhere in John (see 6:7–9; 12:22). The listing of these seven is a good way for John, the author, to be included as an eyewitness without drawing attention to himself. 21:3–4. Perhaps after the disciples have a round of “What do you want to do?” “I don’t know, what do you want to do?” the restless Peter announces that he will do something familiar and reliable: go fishing. This is not the casting of line and hook from the shore, but boat fishing with a net. A boat is found and the seven go out onto the lake. Fishing on the Sea of Galilee was often done at night (see Luke 5:5), perhaps because it was usually a more successful time, but more likely because the fresh fish would then be ready for sale in the early morning. The fishing expedition may have supplied a diversion and companionship, but little else because no fish are caught. At first light the fishers see a person watching them from the shore. It is Jesus, but a hidden Jesus (cf. 20:14). 21:5–6. The boat is near enough to the shore that the man on the shore is able to converse with the boat crew (v. 8 indicates 100 yards). The Greek word he uses to address them is παιδία (paidia, a plural form of παιδίον, paidion). The NIV misses the meaning of this word rather widely by translating it as friends. Paidion is a diminutive of the word παι̂ς (pais), which is used for a minor household member, usually a child but sometimes a slave. The diminutive paidion, then, means “little child.” Jesus’ call to the boat has the sense of “Hey kids! Did you catch anything?” The fishermen admit their failure without embellishment. They are directed to cast the net one more time, this time to starboard (the right side). This is the opposite side from where they had been casting, and probably the side of the boat facing away from shore. Ancient fishing on this lake was not done with huge drag nets used by modern fishing boats to scoop up every living thing even hundreds of feet deep. Their nets were relatively small and useful only in comparatively shallow water. Standard practice would have been to cast the net between the boat and the shore. But when they follow the “stranger’s” directions, the catch of fish is so enormous and heavy that it cannot be landed in the boat. 21:7–8. John, the author mildly disguised as the beloved disciple, quickly puts this all together. He interprets the size of the catch as more than fisherman’s good fortune; it is miraculous. The man on the shore who directed this miracle can be none other than Jesus. He quickly relays this conclusion to the more slow thinking Peter, “It is the Lord.” This is a confession of faith, “It is the Risen Lord!” The one who multiplied fish and bread in chapter 6 is still working miracles for the disciples. Peter, the career fisherman, is so startled by Jesus’ presence that he forgets what is undoubtedly one of the greatest catches of fish he has ever seen. He cinches up his clothes and dives into the water in order to swim to the Lord. This would be something like a real estate agent hopping in her car and driving away the minute before closing the sale on a million dollar house. John adds several eyewitness details to give authenticity to the narrative. He says that Peter is “naked” (KJV, NRSV). The Greek word used to describe Peter’s state of dress is γυμνός (gymnos), which literally means “naked,” but not necessarily “completely naked.” It could be used to describe someone who was inadequately clothed. The NASB translation, “stripped for work,” gives an accurate version of John’s intended meaning here. The author also gives a good word picture of the process of getting the marvelous catch to the shore. The narrator’s perspective remains in the boat, again pointing to the eyewitness author. Despite Peter’s desertion, the remaining six fishermen maintain the presence of mind to tow the net to the shore. In this way they avoid breaking their net or swamping the boat. 21:9–13. When they arrive on shore, Jesus again proves to be in control of the situation. A fire is ready for cooking, having burned down to coals. Already upon the fire are some ὀψάριον (opsarion), probably fish fillets (see notes at 6:9). Fish fillets can be quickly cooked if laid directly on a bed of coals, skin side down. Combined with the bread (ἄρτος, artos) Jesus has provided, we have the same two ingredients found at the multiplication of loaves in chapter 6, with the author even using the same terms. The parallel between these two incidents becomes even more marked in verse 13, where Jesus takes the bread and the fish fillets and distributes them (cf. 6:11). But this time something new is added. The disciples are able to provide an abundance of fish through their own miraculous catch. Obviously Jesus has provided a hot breakfast for these men who have worked all night, but there is more going on in this story. It has the sense of “passing the baton” to the disciples. Before they were dependent upon Jesus to multiply fish. Now, through the miraculous grace of God, they multiply the fish themselves. The expansion of the ministry of Jesus will be dependent upon them, although empowered by God. In his ministry Jesus multiplied believers. Through the apostles’ future ministry, believers will continue to be multiplied. This story provides another way of saying, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (20:21). There are a couple of eyewitness details in this section that deserve special notice. First, John carefully records the number of large fish in the net as 153. These are Sea of Galilee fish, perhaps the perch-like tilapia that inhabit this freshwater lake today. Tilapia easily grow to 2 lbs. in weight, so John’s description may imply fish that are 3–5 pounds. If so, one can understand why the net was so heavy, perhaps 500–700 lbs. of fish. This would have been a small fortune for these fishermen, for whom a few dozen fish would have been a good catch. Is there any significance to the number 153? Christian authors have found symbolic meaning in this number for centuries. Cyril of Alexandria, writing in the fifth century, imagined that 100 represented the Gentiles saved, 50 the remnant of the Jews saved (2:1 ratio), and 3 was the Trinity. Augustine, also writing in the fifth century, supposed that 153 represented the law and grace. This was because the sum of all the numbers between 1 and 17 is 153 (1 + 2 + 3 + … 17=153). The number 17 could be broken down to 10 (Ten Commandments = Law) and to 7 (the number for grace). Jerome, another fifth century writer, claimed that 153 was the number of known species of fish (in his day), so the story symbolized that someday persons from all nations would come to Christ. While these explanations are imaginative and entertaining, it is more likely that John includes this detail because he was there. Someone took the time to count the exact number of fish, and the remarkable number was burned in his memory forever. This is a great fish story that involves an exact number, not the hands spread to indicate the size of a whopper and spreading further as the years go by. Another detail that should be noted is the continuing inability of the disciples to recognize Jesus by sight. In verse 12 the author indicates that they all knew it was the Lord, yet there is still a lingering question of identity. Some still feel an impulse to ask, “Who are you?” This may be intended to tell the readers that Jesus’ appearance is somehow different, although we are not given a hint as to what the difference might be. 21:14. The author finishes this section by summarizing what has happened since the resurrection. The miraculous catch of fish and breakfast fellowship are the third time the Risen Lord has appeared to a group of disciples, and it will be the last time in the Fourth Gospel. This is the only time after the resurrection that John refers to Jesus’ having been raised from the dead (but see 2:22). On the expression Jesus appeared, see comments on 21:1.

21:2. There were together Simon Peter, and Thomas, the one called the Twin, and Nathaniel, the one from Cana in Galilee, and the (sons) of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples.

To find these men together here in Galilee is not surprising. The Lord had promised to meet his disciples there (Matt. 28:7, 10; Mark 16:7). Besides, four of the five here indicated were also together at the very beginning of Christ’s ministry. We refer to Simon Peter, Nathaniel, and the sons of Zebedee (John and James). See on 1:35–51. At that time Andrew and Philip were also among those mentioned. Were these the “two others of his disciples” who now reappear at the close of the Gospel? But we just do not know who these two others may have been. That they belonged to the Twelve is well-nigh certain (see 21:1, “to the disciples”). That here in 21:2 the reason why the two are not mentioned by name is “because they had not yet been introduced in the main body of the book (chapters 1–20),” is rather improbable and would limit the possibilities to two out of the following three men: Matthew, James the Less, and Simon the Zealot. For the inference to be derived from the mention of “the sons of Zebedee,” see p. 474, 475. 3. Simon Peter said to them, I am going fishing. They said to him, We will go with you. Peter is the man of action. He generally acts before John does. John generally understands before Peter does. So Peter says, “I’m off to fish” (literally). Does this mean that Peter turns his back (or: has already turned his back) upon preaching, considering it to be no longer worth-while, saying (or: having said) farewell to it, and returning (or having returned) to his former occupation? Some of the best commentators (including F. W. Grosheide) are of this opinion, while others (e.g., R. C. H. Lenski) seem to ridicule the very idea. Compelling proof in either direction is lacking. It is true that these men had to gain a livelihood, and at least some of those mentioned were (or had been) fishermen by trade (Matt. 4:18, 21). On the other hand, it is also true that by and by Jesus is going to emphasize and re-emphasize that Peter must be a shepherd of men. See, moreover, what was said on p. 475 above, under item 2. Besides, even though Jesus after his resurrection had already manifested himself to Peter, it may not have been entirely clear to the mind of the latter that he, who had basely denied his Master three times, had the right to resume his spiritual activities whether as a missionary or as a minister. Accordingly, the idea that Peter, for the time being at least, had given up his kingdom-activities and had returned to his former occupation cannot be entirely dismissed. And does not 16:32 imply that in this decision to resume the former occupations on a full-time basis, and to give up the idea of vigorous Kingdom-endeavor, he had been joined by the others? See on that verse. The other six disciples are ready to follow where Peter leads. In fact, when he said, “I am off to fish,” he may have implied “Who will go with me?” They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing. Though these men, having gone on board “the” vessel (probably Peter’s), chose the most appropriate time to fish, and though at least some of them were experienced fishermen, they toiled and struggled all night long but caught nothing. History was repeating itself. Did they recall their former experience, the one recorded in Luke 5? And was their night-long failure a revelation of God’s displeasure with them for having neglected Kingdom-work? But God still loved them! Hence, in his loving providence their complete failure must serve the purpose of bringing into sharp relief the greatness of the gift which he was going to provide.

4. Now when day was already breaking, Jesus stood on the beach, but the disciples were unaware that it was Jesus. The expression, “Early morning already arriving” stresses the frustration which these men had experienced through the long, the seemingly endless, night. At last, it was already dawn, and still they had caught nothing. Looking toward the beach they see a man. It was Jesus, but they did not recognize him. Why not? Because unbelief had closed their eyes? Because supernaturally their eyes were being prevented from recognizing him (cf. Luke 24:16)? Because of the nature and appearance of his body? The reason is not given. It can hardly have been that they were too far away from the shore. After all, they were only about a hundred yards off (21:8), within shouting distance (21:5). Perhaps in this case, where nothing is mentioned that would indicate any supernatural factor, the most natural explanation is the best, namely, that a mist or morning-haze made it impossible for them to identify the person on the beach. Certainty is, however, lacking. 5. Jesus then said to them, Lads, you haven’t anything to eat, have you? Very lovingly the Lord of glory addresses these men as, “Lads,” or “Boys.” See Vol. I, p. 181. See also I John 2:13, 18, where the aged John uses the same expression. When Jesus added, “You haven’t anything to eat, have you?,” expecting a negative answer, he did not mean, “Have you something for me to eat? I would like to buy some fish.” Rather, he asks this question in order to rivet their attention on the fact that their return to the former occupation has been a complete failure. They had failed to reckon sufficiently with God’s plan for their lives. It is as if he were saying, “You have caught nothing at all, now have you? Without me you can do nothing. Please learn that lesson once and for all. And now I will show you where you should cast the net in order to catch fish (cf. verse 6). You haven’t anything to eat, have you? So I have prepared breakfast for you” (cf. verse 9). This explanation, as has been indicated, has the advantage of being in harmony with the context. 6. They answered, No. So he said to them, Cast your net on the right side of the boat, and you will catch. The tired disciples answer the stranger’s question (“Lads, you haven’t anything to eat, have you?”) with a single word, “No.” — “Cast your net on the right side (literally, “on the right parts,” but that is simply an idiom) of the boat, and you will find (in the sense of catch),” says the man on the beach. Was it this command which first opened John’s eyes, sothat he began to surmise who the stranger might be? Did he recall a somewhat similar instruction earlier in Christ’s ministry (cf. Luke 5:4)? Was there something about this stranger’s voice — calmness, majesty, certainty, authority — which impressed these weary fishermen? At any rate, they immediately obeyed: Then they cast (it), and now they were no longer able to haul it in because of the great number of fishes. Experienced fishermen usually do not permit a perfect stranger to give them directions. Conceivably they might have said, “Do you, standing there upon the shore, a hundred yards away from us, mean to tell us where to cast the net? It is surely far easier for us to observe what is happening in the water on both sides of the boat than it is for you to see this from such a distance! Besides, we are fishermen. We know what we are doing. So, stranger, do not give us any unsolicited advice.” But they did nothing of the kind. They do not even begin to offer an objection and then change over to the course of obedience. They do not even say, “We toiled all night and caught nothing … but at thy word we will lower the nets” (cf. Luke 5:5). None of this! Instead — so deeply impressed were they by the compelling tone of the stranger’s voice — they obey with soldierly promptness. They cast the net on the right side, and at once it enclosed so many fishes that though these fishermen kept on exerting themselves (note force of the imperfect), they were unable to pull the net up into the boat. It was a miracle. Jesus did not suddenly create all these fishes, but he had seen to it that at the proper moment this shoal was at the right spot to be caught. And the purpose of the miracle was to open the eyes of these men, to make them see that by themselves they could accomplish nothing, and to strengthen their faith in him! 7. Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, It is the Lord. What we said in connection with 21:3 — “Peter generally acts before John does. John generally understands before Peter does” — is illustrated also in this case. He who had been the first to grasp the significance of the linen bandages and of the sweat-band (20:8) was also the first to discern that the stranger on the beach was the Lord. He immediately acquainted Peter with his startling discovery. John and Peter are here together again, as so often (see on 1:35–41 — where John’s presence is implied —; 13:23, 24; 18:15, 16; 20:1–10; after 21:2, 7 also verses 20–22 of this chapter; then Acts 3:1–4; 22; 8:14–17; and Gal. 2:9). In the kingdom of God the man of action and the man of vision complement each other. For the meaning of “the disciple whom Jesus loved” see on 13:23. For the verb (loved) see footnote . Then Simon when he heard that it was the Lord, belted his fisherman’s jacket about him, for he was stripped, and flung himself into the sea. Characteristically Peter acts at once. The idea that he was already wearing his fisherman’s jacket and that he now merely fastens a belt around it (R. C. H. Lenski, op. cit., p. 1381) is in conflict with the clause which follows immediately, namely, “for he was stripped.” By putting on his jacket and fastening the belt Peter prepared himself for stepping ashore and meeting his Lord! Before this, in order to facilitate his movements during the busy but fruitless night, he (and perhaps the others also) was working stripped to his undergarment (or perhaps loin-cloth). Impetuously Peter flings himself into the sea, which, however, at this distance from the shore was probably not very deep. He is on his way to welcome his Lord. We do not meet him again until he steps off the beach again and into the boat (21:11). 8. But the other disciples came with the boat — for they were not far from the land, only about a hundred yards away — dragging the net full of fish. The other disciples, being less impulsive than Peter, were somewhat slower in arriving, for they had remained in the boat. So by means of the boat, which must have landed very soon after Peter stepped on the beach — for the distance was only about “two hundred cubits” or a hundred yards — they got on land. The net full of fishes had been dragged along behind the boat. 9. Then when they stepped ashore, they saw a charcoal fire all made and a fish lying on it, also a bread-cake. It was a wonderful scene which greeted the eyes of these disciples upon reaching the beach. In sharp contrast with their inability to provide food for themselves there was here a charcoal fire on which the One on the shore had prepared a simple meal of bread and fish (ὀψάριον, here as in 6:9, 11, a relish to go with the bread; see also footnote  above). A good argument can be presented for the idea that here in verse 9 we should translate a fish and a bread-cake instead of the indefinite “fish and bread,” which rendering — it must be admitted — is also possible. Verse 13 seems to indicate that there was only one bread-cake (note the definite article) and only one fish. Besides, the striking similarity between 21:13 and 6:11 seems to imply that in both cases we are dealing with a miracle of multiplication. 10. Jesus said to them, Bring some of the fish which you have just caught. Jesus did not mean, “Bring some of your fishes because otherwise there will not be enough to eat.” On the contrary, he simply wanted them to dispose of the small fry and to save the big fishes, taking those out of the net and feasting their eyes on them, sothat they could meditate on the greatness of the miracle and its spiritual implications. 11. Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three; and although there were so many, the net was not torn. From the edge of the boat Peter loosens the top of the net and through the water he drags it toward the beach, where, in all probability with the help of the others (for it was very heavy; see on verse 6 above), it was lugged ashore. When the large fish were taken out of the net, they were counted. They totaled one hundred fifty-three! Surely, a most remarkable catch! Such a heavy load of fishes might easily have caused the net to tear (as in Luke 5:6), but in the present case the Lord had seen to it that this did not happen. 12. Jesus said to them, Come, have breakfast. From one miracle the account now proceeds to the next one, though in purpose the two are essentially one. As the men were tired and hungry, Jesus now invited them to have breakfast.

None of the disciples was venturing (note the force of the imperfect here: they never arrived at the point of doing this) to ask him, Who art thou? for they knew that it was the Lord. They were too filled with reverence in his presence and also too thoroughly convinced in their minds with reference to the identity of the man on the beach to make any attempt by means of questioning to extract information from him regarding this subject. They knew that it was the Lord, the risen and glorious Master. 13. Jesus came and took the bread-cake and gave to them, and the fish similarly. The significance of this statement has been suggested above on pp. 480. It is important to bear in mind that what the Lord gives to these men does not come from the fish which they had caught! He himself has prepared a breakfast for them, which mysteriously is multiplied sothat the one bread-cake and the one fish (in both cases the original has the definite article) becomes a breakfast for all these men. That it is the intention of the author to convey this fact is easy to see when one compares 6:11 (the miracle of the five bread-cakes and the two fishes) with the present passage (21:13):

Much has been written about the fact that here in 21:13 we do not read, “And when he had given thanks.” But was it necessary for the evangelist to write down everything that transpired?

14. This was now the third time that Jesus was manifested to the disciples after having risen from the dead. For the meaning of the verb was manifested see on 21:1 and also footnote . Jesus did not manifest himself to his enemies (Acts 10:41), but to his friends. Although the present appearance is mentioned as Number 7 on the list given in connection with verse 1, nevertheless, if we exclude from our count those in which the Lord revealed himself to the women and to individuals, and count only those in which he appeared to the inner circle of his disciples considered as a group (though not necessarily with every member present), we arrive at the conclusion that this was the third manifestation. That John has this in mind is clear from the phrase “to the disciples.” The first is recorded in 20:19–23; the second in 20:24–29.

Twelve ORDINARY MEN – COMMON MEN, UNCOMMON CALLING

I have always been fascinated with the lives of the twelve apostles. Who isn’t? The personality types of these men are familiar to us. They are just like us, and they are like other people we know. They are approachable. They are real and living characters we can identify with. Their faults and foibles, as well as their triumphs and endearing features, are chronicled in some of the most fascinating accounts of the Bible. These are men we want to know. That’s because they were perfectly ordinary men in every way. Not one of them was renowned for scholarship or great erudition. They had no track record as orators or theologians. In fact, they were outsiders as far as the religious establishment of Jesus’ day was concerned. They were not outstanding because of any natural talents or intellectual abilities. On the contrary, they were all too prone to mistakes, misstatements, wrong attitudes, lapses of faith, and bitter failure—no one more so than the leader of the group, Peter. Even Jesus remarked that they were slow learners and somewhat spiritually dense (Luke 24:25 He said to them, "How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!). Acts 4:13 When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. They spanned the political spectrum. One was a former Zealot—a radical, determined to overthrow Roman rule. But another had been a tax collector—virtually a traitor to the Jewish nation and in collusion with Rome. At least four, and possibly seven, were fishermen and close friends from Capernaum, probably having known one another from childhood. The others must have been tradesmen or craftsmen, but we are not told what they did before becoming followers of Christ. Most of them were from Galilee, an agricultural region at the intersection of trade routes. And Galilee remained their home base for most of Jesus’ ministry—not (as some might think) Jerusalem in Judea, which was the political and religious capital of Israel. Yet with all their faults and character flaws—as remarkably ordinary as they were—these men carried on a ministry after Jesus’ ascension that left an indelible impact on the world. Their ministry continues to influence us even today. God graciously empowered and used these men to inaugurate the spread of the gospel message and to turn the world upside down (Acts 17:6 ). Ordinary men—people like you and me—became the instruments by which Christ’s message was carried to the ends of the earth. No wonder they are such fascinating characters. The Twelve were personally selected and called by Christ. He knew them as only their Creator could know them (John 1:47). In other words, He knew all their faults long before He chose them. He even knew Judas would betray Him (John 6:70; 13:21–27), and yet He chose the traitor anyway and gave him all the same privileges and blessings He gave to the others. Think about the ramifications of this: From our human perspective, the propagation of the gospel and the founding of the church hinged entirely on twelve men whose most outstanding characteristic was their ordinariness. They were chosen by Christ and trained for a time that is best measured in months, not years. He taught them the Scriptures and theology. He discipled them in the ways of godly living (teaching them and showing them how to pray, how to forgive, and how to serve one another with humility). He gave them moral instruction. He spoke to them of things to come. And He employed them as His instruments to heal the sick, cast out demons, and do other miraculous works. Three of them—Peter, James, and John—even got a brief glimpse of Him in His glory on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1–9). It was a brief but intensive schedule of discipleship. And when it was over, on the night of Jesus’ betrayal, “all the disciples forsook Him and fled” (Matthew 26:56). From an earthly point of view, the training program looked like a monumental failure. It seemed the disciples had forgotten or ignored everything Christ had ever taught them about taking up the cross and following Him. In fact, their own sense of failure was so profound that they went back to their old vocations for a time. And even at that, it appeared they would fail (John 21:3–4). But encouraged by the risen Lord, they returned to their apostolic calling. Empowered by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, they valiantly undertook the task to which Jesus had called them. The work they subsequently began continues today, two thousand years later. They are living proof that God’s strength is made perfect in weakness. In and of themselves they were clearly not sufficient for the task (2 Cor 2:14-16  But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him.  15  For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.  16  To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task?). But God led them in triumph in Christ, and through them He diffused “the fragrance of His knowledge in every place” (v. 14). To get an appreciation for the brevity of their earthly time with Christ, consider the fact that Jesus’ entire ministry from baptism to resurrection lasted only about three years. And the intensive training time with the disciples was only about half that long. In A. B. Bruce’s classic work, The Training of the Twelve, he points out that by the time Jesus identified and called the Twelve from the larger group of His followers (Matt 10:1–4; Lk 6:12–16), half of his earthly ministry was already over: The selection by Jesus of the twelve … is an important landmark in the Gospel history. It divides the ministry of our Lord into two portions, nearly equal, probably, as to duration, but unequal as to the extent and importance of the work done in each respectively. In the earlier period Jesus labored single-handed; His miraculous deeds were confined for the most part to a limited area, and His teaching was in the main of an elementary character. But by the time when the twelve were chosen, the work of the kingdom had assumed such dimensions as to require organization and division of labor; and the teaching of Jesus was beginning to be of a deeper and more elaborate nature, and His gracious activities were taking on ever-widening range. It is probable that the selection of a limited number to be His close and constant companions had become a necessity to Christ, in consequence of His very success in gaining disciples. His followers, we imagine, had grown so numerous as to be an incumbrance and an impediment to his movements, especially in the long journeys which mark the later part of His ministry. It was impossible that all who believed could continue henceforth to follow Him, in the literal sense, whithersoever He might go: the greater number could now only be occasional followers. But it was His wish that certain selected men should be with Him at all times and in all places,—His traveling companions in all His wanderings, witnessing all His work, and ministering to His daily needs. And so, in the quaint words of Mark, “Jesus calleth unto Him whom He would, and they came unto Him, and He [ordained] twelve, that they should be with Him.” (Mark 3:13–14) That means these few men, whose backgrounds were in mundane trades and earthly occupations, had little more than eighteen months’ training for the monumental task to which they were called. There was no second string, no backup players, no plan B if the Twelve should fail. The strategy sounds risky in the extreme. In earthly terms, the founding of the church and the spread of the gospel message depended entirely on those twelve ordinary men with their many obvious weaknesses—and one of them so devilish as to betray the Lord of the universe. And the entirety of their training for the task took less than half as long as it typically takes to get a degree from a seminary today. But Christ knew what He was doing. From His divine perspective, the ultimate success of the strategy actually depended on the Holy Spirit working in those men to accomplish His sovereign will. It was a mission that could not be thwarted. That’s why it was a work for which God alone deserves praise and glory. Those men were merely instruments in His hands—just as you and I can be God’s instruments today. God delights to use such ordinary means—“the foolish things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence” (1 Cor 1:27–29). The two-thousand-year triumph of the apostolic endeavor is a testimony to the wisdom and power of the divine strategy. Sometimes in Scripture the Twelve are called “disciples”—mathetes in the Greek text (Matthew 10:1; 11:1; 20:17; Luke 9:1). The word means “learners, students.” That is what they were during those months they spent under the direct and personal tutelage of the Lord. He had multitudes of disciples, but these twelve were specifically called and chosen to a unique apostolic office. Therefore they are also designated “apostles”—apostoloi in the Greek. The word simply means “messengers, sent ones.” They were given a unique ambassadorial office of authority and spokesmanship for Christ. Luke especially uses this term in his gospel and throughout the Book of Acts, and he reserves the term almost exclusively for the Twelve. Matthew speaks of “apostles” only once (Matthew 10:2); elsewhere, he refers to “twelve disciples” (11:1; 20:17) or “the twelve” (26:14, 20, 47). Likewise, Mark uses the term “apostles” only once (Mark 6:30). Other than that, he always refers to the apostles as “the twelve” (3:14; 4:10; 6:7; 9:35; 10:32; 11:11; 14:10, 17, 20, 43). John, too, uses the word apostolos just once, in a nontechnical sense (John 13:16—where most English versions render the expression, “he who is sent”). Like Mark, John a lways refers to the apostolic band as “the twelve” (John 6:67, 70–71; 20:24). Luke 10 describes an incident where seventy of Jesus’ followers were chosen and sent out two by two. They were obviously “sent ones” and some commentators therefore refer to them as “apostles,” but Luke does not employ that term to describe them. The Twelve were called to a specific office. And in the Gospels and Acts, the term apostoloi almost always refers to that office and the twelve men who were specifically called and ordained to the office. Acts 14:14 and the Pauline epistles make it clear that the apostle Paul was likewise called to fill a special apostolic office—that of “apostle to the Gentiles” (Rom 11:13; 1 Tim 2:7; 2 Tim 1:11). Paul’s apostleship was a unique calling. He obviously had the same authority and privileges as that of the Twelve (2 Cor 11:5). But Paul’s apostleship is not subject matter for this book, because our focus here is on the twelve men who shared Jesus’ public ministry with Him as His closest friends and companions. Paul wasn’t converted until after Christ’s ascension (Acts 9). He was an apostle “born out of due time” (1 Cor 15:8). He spoke with the same authority and manifested the same miraculous ability as the Twelve—and the Twelve embraced him and recognized his authority (2 Peter 3:15–16)—but he was not one of them. The number twelve was significant, because Luke describes how, after Jesus’ ascension, the apostles chose Matthias to fill the office vacated by Judas (Acts 1:23–26). The role of an apostle (including the special office to which the apostle Paul was called) involved a position of leadership and exclusive teaching authority in the early church. The NT Scriptures were all written by the apostles or their close associates. And before the NT was written, the apostles’ teaching was the rule in the early church. Beginning with the very first converts at Pentecost, all true believers looked to the apostles’ leadership (Acts 2:37). And as the church grew, its faithfulness to the truth was described in these terms: “They continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine” (Acts 2:42). The apostles were given a supernatural power to work signs and wonders (Matthew 10:1; Mark 6:7, 13; Luke 9:1–2; Acts 2:3–4; 5:12). Those signs bore witness to the truth of the gospel, which the apostles had received from Christ, and which they introduced on His behalf to the world (2 Cor 12:12; Heb 2:3–4). In other words, their role was a pivotal, foundational role. They are in a true sense, the very foundation of the Christian church, “Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone” (Ephesians 2:20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.).

COMMON MEN, UNCOMMON CALLING: For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence.—1 Cor 1:26–29

From the time jesus began His public ministry in His hometown of Nazareth, He was enormously controversial. The people from His own community literally tried to kill Him immediately after His first public message in the local synagogue. “All those in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, and rose up and thrust Him out of the city; and they led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might throw Him down over the cliff. Then passing through the midst of them, He went His way” (Luke 4:28–30).

Ironically, Jesus became tremendously popular among the people of the larger Galilee region. As word of His miracles began to circulate throughout the district, massive hordes of people came out to see Him and hear Him speak. Luke 5:1 records how “the multitude pressed about Him to hear the word of God.” One day, the crowds were so thick and so aggressive that He got into a boat, pushed it offshore far enough to get away from the press of people, and taught the multitudes from there. Not by mere happenstance, the boat Jesus chose belonged to Simon. Jesus would rename him Peter, and he would become the dominant person in Jesus’ closest inner circle of disciples.Some might imagine that if Christ had wanted His message to have maximum impact, He could have played off His popularity more effectively. Modern conventional wisdom would suggest that Jesus ought to have done everything possible to exploit His fame, tone down the controversies that arose out of His teaching, and employ whatever strategies He could use to maximize the crowds around Him. But He did not do that. In fact, He did precisely the opposite. Instead of taking the populist route and exploiting His fame, He began to emphasize the very things that made His message so controversial. At about the time the crowds reached their peak, He preached a message so boldly confrontive and so offensive in its content that the multitude melted away, leaving only the most devoted few (John 6:66–67). Among those who stayed with Christ were the Twelve, whom He had personally selected and appointed to represent Him. They were twelve perfectly ordinary, unexceptional men. But Christ’s strategy for advancing His kingdom hinged on those twelve men rather than on the clamoring multitudes. He chose to work through the instrumentality of those few fallible individuals rather than advance His agenda through mob force, military might, personal popularity, or a public-relations campaign. From a human perspective, the future of the church and the long-term success of the gospel depended entirely on the faithfulness of that handful of disciples. There was no plan B if they failed.The strategy Jesus chose typified the character of the kingdom itself. “The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, ‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’ For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:20–21). The kingdom advances “‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the Lord of hosts” (Zechariah 4:6). A dozen men under the power of the Holy Spirit are a more potent force than the teeming masses whose initial enthusiasm for Jesus was apparently provoked by little more than sheer curiosity. Christ personally chose the Twelve and invested most of His energies in them. He chose them before they chose Him (John 15:16). THE PROCESS OF CHOOSING AND CALLING THEM HAPPENED IN DISTINCT STAGES. Careless readers of Scripture sometimes imagine that John 1:35–51, Luke 5:3–11, and the formal calling of the Twelve in Luke 6:12–16 are contradictory accounts of how Christ called His apostles. But there is no contradiction. The passages are simply describing different stages of the apostles’ calling. In John 1:35–51, for example, Andrew, John, Peter, Philip, and Nathaniel encounter Jesus for the first time. This event occurs near the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, in the wilderness near the Jordan River, where John the Baptist was ministering. Andrew, John, and the others were there because they were already disciples of John the Baptist. But when they heard their teacher single out Jesus and say, “Behold the Lamb of God!” they followed Jesus. That was phase one of their calling: a calling to conversion. It illustrates how every disciple is called first to salvation. We must recognize Jesus as the true Lamb of God and Lord of all, and embrace Him by faith. That stage of the disciples’ call did not involve full-time discipleship. The Gospel narratives suggest that although they followed Jesus in the sense that they gladly heard His teaching and submitted to Him as their Teacher, they remained at their full-time jobs, earning a living through regular employment. That is why from this point until Jesus called them to full-time ministry, we often see them fishing and mending their nets. Phase 2 of their calling was a call to ministry. Luke 5 describes the event in detail. This was the occasion when Jesus pushed out from shore to escape the press of the multitudes and taught from Peter’s boat. After He finished teaching, He instructed Peter to launch out to the deep water and put in his nets. Peter did so, even though the timing was wrong (fish were easier to catch at night when the water was cooler and the fish surfaced to feed), the place was wrong (fish normally fed in shallower waters and were easier to catch there), and Peter was exhausted (having fished all night without any success). He told Jesus, “Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing; nevertheless at Your word I will let down the net” (Luke 5:5). The resulting catch of fish overwhelmed their nets and nearly sank two of their fishing boats! (vv. 6–7). It was on the heels of that miracle that Jesus said, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19). Scripture says it was at this point that “they forsook all and followed Him” (Luke 5:11). According to Matthew, Andrew and Peter “immediately left their nets and followed Him” (Matthew 4:20). And James and John “immediately … left the boat and their father, and followed Him” (v. 22). From that point on, they were inseparable from the Lord. Matthew 10:1–4 and Luke 6:12–16 describe a third phase of their calling: their calling to apostleship. It was at this point that Christ selected and appointed twelve men in particular and made them His apostles. Here is Luke’s account of the incident: Now it came to pass in those days that He went out to the mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God. And when it was day, He called His disciples to Himself; and from them He chose twelve whom He also named apostles: Simon, whom He also named Peter, and Andrew his brother; James and John; Philip and Bartholomew; Matthew and Thomas; James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon called the Zealot; Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot who also became a traitor. Their apostleship began with a kind of internship. Christ sends them out. Mark 6:7 says they were sent out two by two. At this stage they were not quite ready to go out alone, so Christ teamed them in pairs, so that they would offer one another mutual support. Throughout this phase of their training, the Lord Himself stuck closely with them. He was like a mother eagle, watching the eaglets as they began to fly. They were always checking back with Him, reporting on how things were going (Luke 9:10; 10:17). And after a couple of seasons of evangelistic labor, they returned to the Lord and remained with Him for an extended time of teaching, ministry, fellowship, and rest (Mark 6:30–34). There was a fourth phase of their calling: a calling to martyrdom (discipleship), which occurred after Jesus’ resurrection. Judas was now missing from the group, having hanged himself after his betrayal of Christ. Jesus appeared to the remaining eleven in His resurrection body and sent them into all the world, commanding them to disciple the nations. This was, in effect, a call to martyrdom. Each of them ultimately gave his life for the sake of the gospel. History records that all but one of them were killed for their testimony. Only John is said to have lived to old age, and he was severely persecuted for Christ’s sake, then exiled to the tiny island of Patmos. Despite the obstacles they faced, they triumphed. In the midst of great persecution and even martyrdom, they fulfilled their task. Against all odds, they entered victorious into glory. And the continuing witness of the gospel—spanning two thousand years’ time and reaching into virtually every corner of the world—is a testimony to the wisdom of the divine strategy. No wonder we are fascinated by these men. Let’s begin our study of the Twelve by looking carefully at phase three of their calling—their selection and appointment to apostleship. Notice the details as Luke gives them to us.

The Timing. of this event is significant. Luke notes this with his opening phrase in Luke 6:12: “Now it came to pass in those days.” The New American Standard Bible renders the phrase this way: “And it was at this time.” Luke is not talking about clock time, or the specific days of a specific month. “At this time” and “in those days” refers to a period of time, a season, a distinct phase in Jesus’ ministry. It was an interval in His ministry when the opposition to Him peaked. “In those days” refers back to the immediately preceding account. This section of Luke’s Gospel records the vicious opposition Christ was beginning to receive from the scribes and Pharisees. Luke 5:17 is Luke’s first mention of the Pharisees, and verse 21 is his first use of the word “scribes.” (The scribes are mentioned alongside the Pharisees as “teachers of the law” in v 17.) So we are first introduced to Jesus’ chief adversaries in Luke 5:17, and Luke’s account of their opposition fills the text through the end of chapter 5 and well into chapter 6. Luke describes the escalating conflict between Jesus and the religious leaders of Judaism. They opposed Him when He healed a paralytic and forgave his sins (5:17–26). They opposed Him for eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners (5:27–39). They opposed Him when He permitted His disciples to pluck heads of grain and eat them on the Sabbath (6:1–5). And they opposed him for healing a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath (6:6–11). One after another, Luke recounts those incidents and highlights the growing opposition of the religious leaders. The conflict reaches a high point in Luke 6:11. The scribes and Pharisees “were filled with rage, and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.” Both Mark and Matthew are even more graphic. They report that the religious leaders wanted to destroy Jesus (Matthew 12:14; Mark 3:6). Mark says the religious leaders even got the Herodians involved in their plot. The Herodians were a political faction that supported the dynasty of the Herods. They were not normally allied with the Pharisees, but the two groups joined together in collusion against Jesus. They were already hatching plans to murder Him. It is at this precise point that Luke interjects his account of how the Twelve were chosen and appointed to be apostles. “It came to pass in those days”—when the hostility against Christ had escalated to a murderous fever pitch. Hatred for Him among the religious elite had reached its apex. Jesus could already feel the heat of His coming death. The crucifixion was now less than two years away. He already knew that He would suffer death on the cross, that He would rise from the dead, and that after forty days He would ascend to His Father. He therefore also knew that His earthly work would have to be handed off to someone else. It was now time to select and prepare His official representatives. Jesus—knowing the hatred of the religious leaders, fully aware of the hostility against Him, seeing the inevitability of His execution—therefore chose twelve key men to carry on the proclamation of His gospel for the salvation of Israel and the establishment of the church. Time was of the essence. There weren’t many days left (about eighteen months, by most estimates) before His earthly ministry would end. Now was the time to choose His apostles. Their most intensive training would begin immediately and be complete within a matter of months. The focus of Christ’s ministry therefore turned at this point from the multitudes to the few. Clearly, it was the looming reality of His death at the hands of His adversaries that signaled the turning point. There’s another striking reality in this. When Jesus chose the Twelve to be His official representatives—preachers of the gospel who would carry both His message and His authority—He didn’t choose a single rabbi. He didn’t choose a scribe. He didn’t choose a Pharisee. He didn’t choose a Sadducee. He didn’t choose a priest. Not one of the men He chose came from the religious establishment. The choosing of the twelve apostles was a judgment against institutionalized Judaism. It was a renunciation of those men and their organizations, which had become totally corrupt. That is why the Lord didn’t choose one recognized religious leader. He chose instead men who were not theologically trained—fishermen, a tax collector, and other common men. Jesus had long been at war with those who saw themselves as the religious nobility of Israel. They resented Him. They rejected Him and His message. They hated Him. The Gospel of John puts it this way: “He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him” (John 1:11). The religious leaders of Judaism constituted the core of those who rejected Him. Nearly a year and a half before this, in one of the first official acts of Jesus’ ministry, He had challenged Israel’s religious establishment on their own turf in Jerusalem during the Passover—the one time of year when the city was most populated with pilgrims coming to offer sacrifices. Jesus went to the temple mount, made a whip of small cords, drove the thieving money-changers out of the temple, poured out their money, overturned their tables, and chased their animals away (John 2:13–16). In doing that, He struck a devastating blow at institutionalized Judaism. He unmasked the religious nobility as thieves and hypocrites. He condemned their spiritual bankruptcy. He exposed their apostasy. He publicly rebuked their sin. He indicted them for gross corruption. He denounced their deception. That is how He began His ministry. It was an all-out assault on the religion of the Jewish establishment. Now, many months later, at the height of His Galilean ministry, far removed from Jerusalem, the resentment that must have been inaugurated at that first event had reached a fever pitch. The religious leaders were now bloodthirsty. And they began to devise a scheme to execute Him. Their rejection of Him was complete. They were hostile to the gospel He preached. They despised the doctrines of grace He stood for, spurned the repentance He demanded, looked with disdain upon the forgiveness He offered, and repudiated the faith He epitomized. In spite of the many miracles that proved His messianic credentials—despite actually seeing Him cast out demons, heal every conceivable sickness, and raise dead people to life—they would not accept the fact that He was God in human flesh. They hated Him. They hated His message. He was a threat to their power. And they desperately wanted to see Him dead. So when it was time for Jesus to select twelve apostles, He naturally did not choose people from the establishment that was so determined to destroy Him. He turned instead to His own humble followers and selected twelve simple, ordinary, working-class men.

The Twelve If you’ve ever visited the great cathedrals in Europe, you might assume that the apostles were larger-than-life stained-glass saints with shining halos who represented an exalted degree of spirituality. The fact of the matter is that they were very, very common men.

It’s a shame they have so often been put on pedestals as magnificent marble figures or portrayed in paintings like some kind of Roman gods. That dehumanizes them. They were just twelve completely ordinary men—perfectly human in every way. We mustn’t lose touch with who they really were. I recently read a biography of William Tyndale, who pioneered the translation of Scripture into English. He thought it wrong that common people heard the Bible only in Latin and not in their own language. The church leaders of his day, incredibly, did not want the Bible in the language of the people because (like the Pharisees of Jesus’ day) they feared losing their ecclesiastical power. But against their opposition, Tyndale translated the New Testament into English and had it published. For his efforts he was rewarded with exile, poverty, and persecution. Finally, in 1536, he was strangled and burned at the stake. One of the main things that motivated Tyndale to translate Scripture into the common language was a survey of English clergy that revealed that most of them did not even know who the twelve apostles were. Only a few of them could name more than four or five of the apostles. Church leaders and Christians of today might fare just as poorly on the test. The way the institutional church has canonized these men has actually dehumanized them and made them seem remote and otherworldly. It is a strange irony, because when Jesus chose them, He selected them not for any extraordinary abilities or spiritual superiority. He seems to have deliberately chosen men who were notable only for their ordinariness. What qualified these men to be apostles? Obviously it was not any intrinsic ability or outstanding talent of their own. They were Galileans. They were not the elite. Galileans were deemed low-class, rural, uneducated people. They were commoners—nobodies. But again, they were not selected because they were any more distinguished or more talented than others in Israel at the time. Certainly, there are some rather clear moral and spiritual qualifications that have to be met by men who would fill this or any other kind of leadership role in the church. In fact, the standard for spiritual leadership in the church is extremely high. Consider, for example, the qualifications for being an elder or a pastor, listed in 1 Tim 3:2–7: [He] must be blameless, the husband of one wife, temperate, sober-minded, of good behavior, hospitable, able to teach; not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not covetous; one who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence (for if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the church of God?); not a novice, lest being puffed up with pride he fall into the same condemnation as the devil. Moreover he must have a good testimony among those who are outside, lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil. Titus 1:6–9 gives a similar list. Heb 13:7 also suggests that church leaders must be exemplary moral and spiritual examples, because their faith must be the kind others can follow, and they will be required to give an account to God for how they conduct themselves. These are very, very high standards. By the way, the standard is no lower for people in the congregation. Leaders are examples for everyone else. There’s no acceptable “lower” standard for rank-and-file church members. In fact, in Matthew 5:48, Jesus said to all believers, “Be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Frankly, no one meets such a standard. Humanly speaking, no one “qualifies” when the standard is utter perfection. No one is fit to be in God’s kingdom, and no one is inherently worthy to be in God’s service. All have sinned and fall short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23). There is none righteous, no not one (Romans 3:10). Remember, it was the mature apostle Paul who confessed, “I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells” (Romans 7:18). In 1 Timothy 1:15 he called himself the chief of sinners. So there are no intrinsically qualified people. God Himself must save sinners, sanctify them, and then transform them from unqualified into instruments He can use. The Twelve were like the rest of us; they were selected from the unworthy and the unqualified. They were, like Elijah, men “with a nature like ours” (James 5:17). They did not rise to the highest usefulness because they were somehow different from us. Their transformation into vessels of honor was solely the work of the Potter. Many Christians become discouraged and disheartened when their spiritual life and witness suffer because of sin or failure. We tend to think we’re worthless nobodies—and left to ourselves, that would be true! But worthless nobodies are just the kind of people God uses, because that is all He has to work with. Satan may even attempt to convince us that our shortcomings render us useless to God and to His church. But Christ’s choice of the apostles testifies to the fact that God can use the unworthy and the unqualified. He can use nobodies. They turned the world upside down, these twelve (Acts 17:6 But when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some other brothers before the city officials, shouting: "These men who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here). It was not because they had extraordinary talents, unusual intellectual abilities, powerful political influence, or some special social status. They turned the world upside down because God worked in them to do it. God chooses the humble, the lowly, the meek, and the weak so that there’s never any question about the source of power when their lives change the world. It’s not the man; it’s the truth of God and the power of God in the man. (We need to remind some preachers today of this. It’s not their cleverness or their personality. The power is in the Word—the truth that we preach—not in us.) And apart from one Person—one extraordinary human being who was God incarnate, the Lord Jesus Christ—the history of God’s work on earth is the story of His using the unworthy and molding them for His use the same careful way a potter fashions clay. The Twelve were no exception to that. The apostles properly hold an exalted place in redemptive history, of course. They are certainly worthy of being regarded as heroes of the faith. The book of Revelation describes how their names will adorn the twelve gates of the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem. So heaven itself features an eternal tribute to them. But that doesn’t diminish the truth that they were as ordinary as you and I. We need to remember them not from their stained-glass images, but from the down-to-earth way the Bible presents them to us. We need to lift them out of their otherworldly obscurity and get to know them as real people. We need to think of them as actual men, and not as some kind of exalted figures from the pantheon of religious ritualism. Let’s not, however, underestimate the importance of their office. Upon their selection, the twelve apostles in effect became the true spiritual leaders of Israel. The religious elite of apostate Israel were symbolically set aside when Jesus chose them. The apostles became the first preachers of the new covenant. They were the ones to whom the Christian gospel was first entrusted. They represented the true Israel of God—a genuinely repentant and believing Israel. They also became the foundation stones of the church, with Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone (Eph 2:20). Those truths are heightened, not diminished, by the fact that these men were so ordinary. Again, that is perfectly consistent with the way the Lord always works. In 1 Cor 1:20–21 we read, “Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.” That is the very reason there were no philosophers, no brilliant writers, no famous debaters, no eminent teachers, and no men who had ever distinguished themselves as great orators among the twelve men Christ chose. They became great spiritual leaders and great preachers under the power of the Holy Spirit, but it was not because of any innate oratorical skill, leadership abilities, or academic qualifications these men had. Their influence is owing to one thing and one thing only: the power of the message they preached. On a human level, the gospel was thought a foolish message and the apostles were deemed unsophisticated preachers. Their teaching was beneath the elite. They were mere fishermen and working-class nobodies. Peons. Rabble. That was the assessment of their contemporaries. (The same thing has been true of the genuine church of Christ throughout history. It is true in the evangelical world today. Where are the impressive intellects, the great writers, and the great orators esteemed by the world? They’re not found, for the most part, in the church.) “For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called” (v. 26). “But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence” (vv. 27–29). God’s favorite instruments are nobodies, so that no man can boast before God. In other words, God chooses whom He chooses in order that He might receive the glory. He chooses weak instruments so that no one will attribute the power to human instruments rather than to God, who wields those instruments. Such a strategy is unacceptable to those whose whole pursuit in life is aimed toward the goal of human glory.

With the notable exception of Judas Iscariot, these men were not like that. They certainly struggled with pride and arrogance like every fallen human being. But the driving passion of their lives became the glory of Christ. And it was that passion, subjected to the influence of the Holy Spirit—not any innate skill or human talent—that explains why they left such an indelible impact on the world.

The Teacher Bear in mind, then, that the selection of the Twelve took place at a time when Jesus was faced with the reality of His impending death. He had experienced the rising hostility of the religious leaders. He knew His earthly mission would soon culminate in His death, resurrection, and ascension. And so from this point on, the whole character of His ministry changed. It became his top priority to train the men who would be the chief spokesmen for the gospel after He was gone. How did He choose them? He first went off to commune with His Father. “He went out to the mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God” (Luke 6:12). Throughout the first five chapters of his Gospel, Luke has already made clear that prayer was a pattern in the life of Jesus. Luke 5:16 says, “He Himself often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed.” It was His habit to slip away in solitude to talk to His Father. He was always under pressure from the massive multitudes when He was in the towns and villages of Galilee. The wilderness and the mountain regions afforded solitude where He could pray.We don’t know which mountain this was. If it mattered, Scripture would tell us. There are lots of hills and mountains around the northern Galilee area. This one was probably in close walking distance to Capernaum, which was a sort of home base for Jesus’ ministry. He went there and spent the entire night in prayer. We often see Him praying in anticipation of crucial events in His ministry. (Remember, that is what He was doing on the night of His betrayal—praying in a garden where he found some solitude from the hectic atmosphere in Jerusalem. Judas knew he would find Jesus there because according to Luke 22:39 it was His habit to go there and pray.)

Here is Jesus in His true humanity. He was standing in a very volatile situation. The brewing hostility against Him was already threatening to bring about His death. He had a very brief amount of time remaining to train the men who would carry the gospel to the world after His departure. And the chilling reality of those matters drove Him to the top of a mountain so He could pray to God in total solitude. He had made Himself of no reputation and had taken the form of a bondservant, coming to earth as a man. The time was now approaching when He would further humble Himself unto death—even the death of the cross. And thus He goes to God as a man would go, to seek God’s face in prayer and to commune with the Father about the men whom He would choose for this vital office. Notice that He spent the entire night in prayer. If He went to the mountain before dark, that was probably around seven or eight o’clock in the evening. If He came back down after dawn, that would have been around six in the morning. In other words, He prayed for at least ten hours straight. To say He spent the whole night requires several words in English. It’s only one word in the Greek: dianuktereuo. The word is significant. It speaks of enduring at a task through the night. The word could not be used of sleeping all night. It’s not an expression you would use if you wanted to say it was dark all night. It has the sense of toiling through the night, staying at a task all night. It suggests that He remained awake through the darkness until morning and that He was persevering all that time in prayer with an immense weight of duty upon Him. Another interesting note comes through in the Greek language although we don’t see it in the English. Our English version says that He “continued all night in prayer to God.” Actually, the Greek expression means that He spent the whole night in the prayer of God. Whenever He prayed, it was quite literally the prayer of God. He was engaged in inter-Trinitarian communion. The prayer being offered was the very prayer of God. The Members of the Trinity were communing with one another. His prayers were all perfectly consistent with the mind and the will of God—for He Himself is God. And therein do we see the incredible mystery of His humanity and His deity brought together. Jesus in His humanity needed to pray all night, and Jesus in His deity was praying the very prayer of God. Don’t miss the point: The choice Christ would soon make was of such monumental importance that it required ten to twelve hours of prayer in preparation. What was He praying for? Clarity in the matter of whom to choose? I don’t think so. As omniscient God incarnate, the divine will was no mystery to Him. He was no doubt praying for the men He would soon appoint, communing with the Father about the absolute wisdom of His choice, and acting in His capacity as Mediator on their behalf. When the night of prayer was over, He returned to where His disciples were and summoned them. (“And when it was day, He called His disciples to Himself”—Luke 6:13.) It was not only the Twelve whom He summoned. The word disciple in this context speaks of His followers in a broad sense. The word itself means “student, learner.” There must have been numerous disciples, and from them, He would choose twelve to fill the office of an apostle.

It was common, both in the Greek culture and the Jewish culture of Jesus’ day, for a prominent rabbi or philosopher to attract students. Their teaching venue was not necessarily a classroom or an auditorium. Most were peripatetic instructors whose disciples simply followed them through the normal course of everyday life. That is the kind of ministry Jesus maintained with His followers. He was an itinerant teacher. He simply went from place to place, and as He taught, He attracted people who followed His movements and listened to His teaching. We get a picture of this back in verse 1: “Now it happened on the second Sabbath after the first that He went through the grainfields. And His disciples plucked the heads of grain and ate them, rubbing them in their hands.” They were walking with Him, following Him from place to place as He taught, gleaning grain for food as they walked. We don’t know how many disciples Jesus had. At one point, he sent seventy out in pairs to evangelize in communities where He was preparing to visit (Luke 10:1). But the total number of His followers was undoubtedly far more than seventy. Scripture indicates that multitudes followed Him. And why not? His teaching was absolutely unlike anything anyone had ever heard in its clarity and obvious, inherent authority; He had the ability to heal diseases, cast out demons, and raise the dead; He was full of grace and truth. It’s not amazing that He drew so many disciples. What is amazing is that anyone rejected Him. But reject Him they did, because His message was more than they could bear. We see something of the dynamics of this in John 6. At the beginning of the chapter, He feeds more than 5000 people who had come out to see Him. (John 6:10 says the men alone numbered 5000. Counting women and children, the crowd might have easily been double that number or more.) It was an amazing day. Many of those people were already following Him as disciples; many others were no doubt prepared to do so. John writes, “Then those men, when they had seen the sign that Jesus did, said, ‘This is truly the Prophet who is to come into the world’” (v. 14). Who was this man who could produce food out of nothing? They spent most of their lives farming, harvesting, raising animals, and preparing meals. Jesus could just create food! That would change their lives. They must have had visions of leisure and free food, already prepared. This was the kind of Messiah they had hoped for! According to John, “They were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king” (v. 15). He escaped by a series of supernatural events that culminated in His walking on the water. The next day the people found Him in Capernaum, on the other side of the lake. Crowds of them had come looking for Him, obviously hoping He would give them more food. He chided them for following Him out of wrong motives: “You seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled” (v. 26). When they continued to ask for more food, He told them, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world” (v. 51). The saying was so hard for them to understand that they pressed Him to explain. He continued: “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down from heaven; not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever.” These things He said in the synagogue as He taught in Capernaum. (vv. 53–59) This was so offensive that even many of His disciples began to have second thoughts about following Him. John writes, “From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more” (v. 66). So disciples were coming and going. People were attracted, then disillusioned. And on that particular occasion described in John 6, Jesus even said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to go away?” (v. 67). Peter spoke for the group when he answered, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (vv. 68–69). Those who stayed were people whom God had sovereignly drawn to His own Son (v. 44). Jesus had also drawn them to Himself in particular. He told them, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain” (John 15:16). He sovereignly selected them and (with the exception of Judas Iscariot, whom Christ knew would betray Him) He sovereignly worked in them and through them to guarantee that they would persevere with Him, that they would bear fruit, and that their fruit would remain. Here we see the principle of God’s electing grace at work. The sovereignty of His choice is seen in an extraordinary way by the selection of the Twelve. Out of the larger group of disciples, perhaps hundreds of them, He chose twelve men in particular and appointed them to the apostolic office. It was not a job for which applicants or volunteers were sought. Christ chose them sovereignly and appointed them, in the presence of the larger group. This was a remarkable moment for those twelve. Up to this point, Peter, James, John, Andrew, Nathanael, Matthew, and the others were just part of the crowd. They were learners like everyone else in the group. They had been following and listening and observing and absorbing His teaching. But they didn’t yet have any official role of leadership. They had not yet been appointed to any role that set them apart from the others. They were faces in the crowd until Christ selected them and made twelve of them apostles. Why twelve? Why not eight? Why not twenty-four? The number twelve was filled with symbolic importance. There were twelve tribes in Israel. But Israel was apostate. The Judaism of Jesus’ time represented a corruption of the faith of the Old Testament. Israel had abandoned divine grace in favor of works-religion. Their religion was legalistic. It was shot through with hypocrisy, self-righteous works, man-made regulations, and meaningless ceremonies. It was heretical. It was based on physical descent from Abraham rather than the faith of Abraham. In choosing twelve apostles, Christ was in effect appointing new leadership for the new covenant. And the apostles represented the new leaders of the true Israel of God—consisting of people who believed the gospel and were following the faith of Abraham (Rom 4:16). In other words, the twelve apostles symbolized judgment against the twelve tribes of Old Testament Israel. Jesus Himself made the connection plainly. In Luke 22:29–30, He told the apostles, “I bestow upon you a kingdom, just as My Father bestowed one upon Me, that you may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” The significance of the number twelve would have been immediately obvious to almost every Israelite. Jesus’ messianic claims were clear to all who listened to His teaching. He constantly spoke of His coming kingdom. Meanwhile, throughout Israel, expectation was running high that the Messiah would very soon appear and establish His kingdom. Some had thought John the Baptist would be that Messiah, but John pointed them to Christ (John 1:19–27). They knew very well that Christ had all the messianic credentials (John 10:41–42). He wasn’t the kind of political leader they expected, so they were slow to believe (John 10:24–25). But they surely understood the claims He was making, and they were filled with anticipation. So when He publicly appointed twelve men to be His apostles, the significance of that number was loud and clear. The apostles represented a whole new Israel, under the new covenant. And their appointment—bypassing the religious establishment of official Judaism—signified a message of judgment against national Israel. Clearly, these twelve ordinary men were not destined for an ordinary role. They stood in the place of the heads of twelve tribes. They were living proof that the kingdom Jesus was about to establish was al-together different from the kingdom most Israelites anticipated. Luke 6:13 says, “He chose twelve whom He also named apostles.” The title alone was significant. The Greek verb apostello means “to send out.” The noun form, apostolos, means “one who is sent.” The English word apostle is a transliteration, rather than a translation, of the Greek word. The apostles were “sent ones.” But they were not mere messengers. The Greek word for “messenger” was angelos, from which we get our word “angel.” An apostolos was something more significant than a courier or a herald; apostolos conveyed the idea of an ambassador, a delegate, an official representative. The word has an exact parallel in Aramaic—shaliah. (Remember that the common language in Israel in Jesus’ time—the language Jesus Himself spoke—was not Hebrew, but Aramaic.) In that first-century Jewish culture, the shaliah was an official representative of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council of Israel. A shaliah exercised the full rights of the Sanhedrin. He spoke for them, and when he spoke, he spoke with their authority. He was owed the same respect and deference as the council itself. But he never delivered his own message; his task was to deliver the message of the group whom he represented. The office of a shaliah was well known. shaliah were sent out to settle legal or religious disputes, and they acted with the full authority of the whole council. Some prominent rabbis also had their shaliah “sent ones” who taught their message and represented them with their full authority. Even the Jewish Mishnah (a collection of oral traditions originally conceived as a commentary on the Law) recognized the role of the shaliah It says, “The one sent by the man is as the man himself.” So the nature of the office was well known to the Jewish people. Thus when Jesus appointed apostles, He was saying something very familiar to people in that culture. These were His delegates. They were His trusted shaliah. They spoke with His authority, delivered His message, and exercised His authority.

The Task The familiar role of the shaliah in that culture virtually defined the task of the apostles. Obviously, Christ would delegate His authority to these twelve and send them out with His message. They would represent Him as official delegates. Virtually everyone in that culture would have instantly understood the nature of the office. These twelve men, commissioned as Jesus’ apostles, would speak and act with the same authority as the One who sent them. Apostle” was therefore a title of great respect and privilege. Mark 3:14 records this same event: “Then He appointed twelve, that they might be with Him and that He might send them out to preach.” Notice the two-step process. Before they could be sent out to preach, they had to be pulled in. It was absolutely critical that they be with Jesus before they be sent out. In fact, it isn’t until Luke 9:1 that Jesus calls the Twelve together and gives them authority over the demons and power to heal diseases. At that point, He literally delegates to them His miracle power. So in Luke 6, He identifies and appoints them and brings them under His direct and personal tutelage (“that they might be with Him”). In Luke 9, several months later, He gives them power to work miracles and cast out demons. Not until then did He “send them out to preach.” Up to this point, Jesus was speaking to huge crowds most of the time. With the calling of the Twelve in Luke 6, His teaching ministry becomes more intimate, focused primarily on them. He would still draw large crowds and teach them, but His focus was on the disciples and their training. Notice the natural progression in their training program. At first, they simply followed Jesus, gleaning from His sermons to the multitudes and listening to His instructions along with a larger group of disciples. They apparently did not do this full-time, but as opportunity allowed in the course of their regular lives. Next He called them to leave everything and follow Him exclusively. (as recorded in Matthew 4),  Now He selects twelve men out of that group of full-time disciples, identifies them as apostles, and begins to focus most of His energies on their personal instruction.(in the incident recorded in Luke 6 and Matthew 10),  Later, He will gift them with authority and miracle power. Finally, He will send them out. At first, they go on short-term mission assignments, but they keep coming back. But when He leaves to return to the Father, they will go out for good on their own. There’s a clear progression in their training and entry into full-time ministry. No longer just disciples, they are now apostles—shaliah. They occupy an important office. Luke uses the word “apostles” six times in his Gospel and about thirty times in the book of Acts. Their role in the Gospels pertains primarily to taking the kingdom message to Israel. In Acts, they are engaged in the founding of the church. Although they were common men, theirs was an uncommon calling. In other words, the task they were called to, and not anything about the men per se, is what makes them so important. Consider how unique their role was to be. Not only would they found the church and play a pivotal leadership role as the early church grew and branched out, but they also became the channels through which most of the NT would be given. They received truth from God by divine revelation. Eph 3:5 is very explicit. Paul says that the mystery of Christ, which in earlier ages was not made known, “has now been revealed by the Spirit to His holy apostles and prophets.” They did not preach a human message. The truth was given to them by direct revelation.  They were therefore the source of all true church doctrine. Acts 2:42 describes the activities of the early church in these terms: “They continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers.” Before the New Testament was complete, the apostles’ teaching was the only source of truth about Christ and church doctrine. And their teaching was received with the same authority as the written Word. In fact, the written New Testament is nothing other than the Spirit-inspired, inscripturated record of the apostles’ teaching. In short, the apostles were given to edify the church. Ephesians 4:11–12 says Christ gave the apostles “for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.” They were the original Christian teachers and preachers. Their teaching, as recorded in the New Testament, is the only rule by which sound doctrine can be tested, even today. They were also examples of virtue. Ephesians 3:5 calls them “holy apostles.” They set a standard for godliness and true spirituality. They were the first examples for believers to emulate. They were men of character and integrity, and they set the standard for all who would subsequently become leaders in the church. They had unique power to perform miracles that confirmed their message. Heb 2:3–4 says that the gospel “first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him, God also bearing witness both with signs and wonders, with various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit.” In other words, God confirmed His Word through the apostles by the miracles that they were able to do. The New Testament indicates that only the apostles and those who were closely associated with them had the power to do miracles. That is why 2 Cor 12:12 speaks of such miracles as “the signs of an apostle.”As a result of all this, the disciples were greatly blessed and held in high esteem by the people of God. Jesus’ expectations for them were met through their faithful perseverance. And His promise to them was fulfilled in the growth and expansion of the church. You may recall that in Luke 18:28, Peter said to Jesus, “See, we have left all and followed You.” The disciples were apparently concerned about the way things were going and what might happen to them. Peter’s words were actually a plea. It is as if he was saying, on behalf of the others, “What’s going to happen to us?” Jesus replied, “Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or parents or brothers or wife or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who shall not receive many times more in this present time, and in the age to come eternal life.” They had not left anything that He would not more than make up to them. And God did bless them in this life (even though, as we shall see when we examine each life, most of them were martyred). God blessed them in this life through the founding and growth of the church. They not only gained influence, respect, and honor among the people of God; but as for their homes and families, they gained multitudes of spiritual children and brethren as the church grew and believers multiplied. And they will be greatly honored in the age to come as well.

The Training All of that might have seemed remote and uncertain on the morning Jesus summoned His disciples and appointed the Twelve. They still needed to be taught. All their shortcomings and human failings seemed to overshadow their potential. Time was short. They had already left whatever vocations they were expert in. They had abandoned their nets, forsaken their fields, and left the tax tables behind. They had relinquished everything they knew, in order to be trained for something for which they had no natural aptitude. But when they forsook their jobs, they by no means became idle. They became full-time students, learners—disciples. Now the next eighteen months of their lives would be filled with even more intensive training—the best seminary education ever. They had the example of Christ perpetually before them. They could listen to His teaching, ask Him questions, watch how He dealt with people, and enjoy intimate fellowship with Him in every kind of setting. He gave them ministry opportunities, instructing them and sending them out on special assignments. He graciously encouraged them, lovingly corrected them, and patiently instructed them. That is how the best learning always occurs. It isn’t just information passed on; it’s one life invested in another. But it was not an easy process. The Twelve could be amazingly thick headed. There was a reason they weren’t the academic elite. Jesus Himself often said things like, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not yet understand?” (Matthew 15:16–17; 16:9). “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe” (Luke 24:25). It is significant that Scripture doesn’t cover their defects. The point is not to portray them as superholy luminaries or to elevate them above mere mortals. If that were the aim, there would be no reason to record their character flaws. But instead of whitewashing the blemishes, Scripture seems to make a great deal of their human weaknesses. It’s a reminder that “our faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” (1Cor 2:5). Why was the learning process so difficult for the apostles? First of all, they lacked spiritual understanding. They were slow to hear and slow to understand. They were at various times thick, dull, stupid, and blind. All those terms or their equivalents are used to describe them in the New Testament. So how did Jesus remedy their lack of spiritual understanding? He just kept teaching. Even after His resurrection, He stayed forty days on earth. Acts 1:3 says that during that time He was “speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.” He was still persistently teaching them until the moment He ascended into heaven.  A second problem that made the learning process difficult for the disciples is that they lacked humility. They were self-absorbed, self-centered, self-promoting, and proud. They spent an enormous amount of time arguing about who would be the greatest among them (Matthew 20:20–28; Mark 9:33–37; Luke 9:46). How did Jesus overcome their lack of humility? By being an example of humility to them. He washed their feet. He modeled servanthood. He humbled Himself, even unto the death of the cross. Not only did they lack understanding and humility, but Third, they also lacked faith. Four times in the Gospel of Matthew alone Jesus says to them, “O you of little faith” (6:30; 8:26; 14:31; 16:8). In Mark 4:40, He asked them, “How is it that you have no faith?” At the end of Mark’s Gospel, after they had spent months in intensive training with Jesus—even after He had risen from the dead—Mark writes, “He rebuked their unbelief and hardness of heart” (Mark 16:14). What remedy did Jesus have for their lack of faith? He kept doing miracles and wonderful works. The miracles were not primarily for the benefit of unbelievers; most of His miracles were deliberately done “in the presence of His disciples” so that their faith could be strengthened (John 20:30). Fourth, they lacked commitment. While the crowds were cheering and the miracles were being multiplied, they were thrilled. But as soon as the soldiers came into the garden to arrest Jesus, they all forsook Him and fled (Mark 14:50). Their leader ended up denying Jesus and swearing he didn’t even know the man. How did Jesus remedy their proneness to defection? By interceding for them in prayer. John 17 records how Jesus prayed that they would remain ultimately faithful and that the Father would bring them to heaven (vv. 11–26). Fifth, they lacked power. On their own, they were weak and helpless, especially when confronted with the enemy. There were times when they tried but could not cast out demons. Their faithlessness left them unable to harness the power that was available to them. What did Jesus do to remedy their weakness? On the day of Pentecost He sent the Holy Spirit to indwell and empower them. This was His promise to them: “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). That promise was mightily fulfilled. We’re inclined to look at this group with all their weaknesses and wonder why Jesus did not simply pick a different group of men. Why would He single out men with no understanding, no humility, no faith, no commitment, and no power? Simply this: His strength is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor 12:9). Again we see how He chooses the weak things of this world to confound the mighty. No one could ever examine this group of men and conclude that they did what they did because of their own innate abilities. There is no human explanation for the influence of the apostles. The glory goes to God alone. Acts 4:13 says this about how the people of Jerusalem perceived the apostles: “Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus.” The Greek text says people perceived that they were “aggramatoi … idiotai”—literally, “illiterate ignoramuses.” And that was true from a worldly viewpoint. But it was obvious that they had been with Jesus. The same thing should be said of every true disciple. Luke 6:40 says, “A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher.” The apostles’ relatively brief time of training with Jesus bore eternal fruit. At first, it might have seemed that everything would be for naught. The night Jesus was betrayed, they were scattered like sheep whose shepherd had been smitten (Matthew 26:31). Even after the resurrection, they seemed timid, full of remorse over their failure, and too aware of their own weaknesses to minister with confidence.

We have 4 lists of the 12 apostles in the NT: Matt 10:2–4, Mk 3:16–19, Lk 6:13–16, Acts 1:13. Here’s how the list appears in Luke’s Gospel: “He chose twelve whom He also named apostles: Simon, whom He also named Peter, and Andrew his brother; James and John; Philip and Bartholomew; Matthew and Thomas; James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon called the Zealot; Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot who also became a traitor.” In all four biblical lists, the same twelve men are named, and the order in which they are given is strikingly similar. The first name in all four lists is Peter. He thus stands out as the leader and spokesman for the whole company of twelve. The Twelve are then arranged in three groups of four. Group one always has Peter at the head of the list, and that group always includes Andrew, James, and John. Group two always features Philip first and includes Bartholomew, Matthew, and Thomas. Group three is always led by James the son of Alphaeus, and it includes Simon the Zealot; Judas son of James (called “Thaddeaus” in Mark and “Lebbaeus, whose surname was Thaddeaus” in Matthew); and finally, Judas Iscariot. (Judas Iscariot is omitted from the list in Acts 1 because he was already dead by then. In the three lists where Judas’s name is included, it always appears last, along with a remark identifying him as the traitor.) The three names at the head of each group seem to have been the group leaders. The three groups always appear in the same order: first Peter’s group, then the group led by Philip, then the group headed by James.

The groups appear to be listed in descending order based on their level of intimacy with Christ. The members of group one were in all likelihood the first disciples Jesus called to Himself (John 1:35–42). Therefore they had been with Him the longest and occupied the most trusted position in His inner circle. They are often seen together in the presence of Christ at key times. Of the four in the first group, three—Peter, James, and John—form an even closer inner circle. Those three are with Jesus at major events in His ministry when the other apostles are either not present or not as close. The three in the inner circle were together, for example, on the Mount of Transfiguration and in the heart of the Garden of Gethsemane (cf. Matthew 17:1; Mark 5:37; 13:3; 14:33). Group two does not have such a high profile, but they are still significant figures in the Gospel accounts. Group three is more distant, and they are rarely mentioned in the narrative accounts of Jesus’ ministry. The only member of group three we know much about is Judas Iscariot—and we know him only because of his treachery at the very end. So although there were twelve apostles, only three seem to have had the most intimate relationship with Christ. The others seemed to enjoy somewhat lesser degrees of personal familiarity with Him. This suggests that even a relatively small group of twelve is too large for one person to maintain the closest intimacy with each group member. Jesus kept three men very close to Him—Peter, James, and John. Next came Andrew, and then the others, obviously in declining degrees of close friendship. If Christ in His perfect humanity could not pour equal amounts of time and energy into everyone He drew around Him, no leader should expect to be able to do that. The Twelve were an amazingly varied group. Their personalities and interests swept the spectrum. The four in group one seem to be the only ones tied together by common denominators. They were all four fishermen, they were two sets of brothers, they came from the same community, and they had apparently all been friends for a long time. By contrast, Matthew was a tax collector and a loner. Simon was a Zealot—a political activist—and a different kind of loner. The others all came from unknown occupations. They all had vastly differing personalities. Peter was eager, aggressive, bold, and outspoken—with a habit of revving his mouth while his brain was in neutral. I have often referred to him as the apostle with the foot-shaped mouth. John, on the other hand, spoke very little. In the first twelve chapters of Acts, he and Peter are constant companions, but no words of John are ever recorded. Bartholomew (also known sometimes as Nathanael), was a true believer, openly confessing his faith in Christ and quick to have faith (John 1:47–50). Significantly, he is in the same group as (and sometimes paired with) Thomas, who was an outspoken skeptic and doubter and wanted to have proof for everything. Their political backgrounds were different, too. Matthew, the former tax collector (who was sometimes called Levi), was considered one of the most despicable people in Israel before Jesus called him. He had taken a job with the Roman government to extort taxes from his own people—and that tax money went to pay for the Roman occupation army. The lesser-known of the two Simons, on the other hand, is called “the Zealot” in Luke 6:15 and Acts 1:13. Zealots were an outlaw political party who took their hatred of Rome to an extreme and conspired to overthrow Roman rule. Many of them were violent outlaws. Since they did not have an army, they used sabotage and assassination to advance their political agenda. They were, in effect, terrorists. One faction of the Zealots was known as sicarii (literally, “dagger-men”) because of the small, curved blades they carried. They concealed those weapons beneath their robes and used them to dispatch people they perceived as political enemies—people like tax collectors. Roman soldiers were also favorite targets for their assassinations. The sicarii usually staged these acts of execution at public functions in order to heighten fear. That Matthew, a former tax collector, and Simon, a former Zealot, could be part of the same company of twelve apostles is a testimony to the life-changing power and grace of Christ. It is interesting that the key men in the first and second groups of apostles were originally called at the very outset of Christ’s ministry. John 1:35–42 describes how Jesus called John and Andrew. They, in turn, on that very same day, brought Peter, who was Andrew’s brother. James, the remaining member of that group, was John’s brother, so it was undoubtedly Andrew and John who brought him to Christ, too. In other words, the first group’s association with Jesus went back to the very start of His public ministry. John 1:43–55 likewise describes the calling of Philip and Nathanael (also known as Bartholomew). They were called “the following day” (v. 43). So that group also had a history that went back to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. These were men who had known Jesus well and followed Him closely for a long time. The first person in the first group—the man who became the spokesman and the overall leader of the group—was “Simon, whom He also named Peter” (Luke 6:14).

Thomas, The Pessimist The final apostle in the second group of four is also a familiar name: Thomas. He is usually nicknamed “Doubting Thomas,” but that may not be the most fitting label for him. He was a better man than the popular lore would indicate. It probably is fair, however, to say that Thomas was a somewhat negative person. He was a worrywart. He was a brooder. He tended to be anxious and angst-ridden. He was like Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh. He anticipated the worst all the time. Pessimism, rather than doubt, seems to have been his besetting sin. Thomas, according to John 11:16, was also called “Didymus,” which means “the twin.” Apparently he had a twin brother or a twin sister, but his twin is never identified in Scriptures.

Like Nathanael, Thomas is mentioned only once each in the three synoptic Gospels. In each case, he is simply named with the other eleven apostles in a list. No details about him are given by Matthew, Mark, or Luke. We learn everything we know about his character from John’s Gospel. It becomes obvious from John’s record that Thomas had a tendency to look only into the darkest corners of life. He seemed always to anticipate the worst of everything. Yet despite his pessimism, some wonderfully redeeming elements of his character come through in John’s account of him. John’s first mention of Thomas is found in John 11:16. It is a single verse, but it speaks volumes about Thomas’s real character. In this context, John is describing the prelude to the raising of Lazarus. Jesus had left Jerusalem because His life was in jeopardy there, and “He went away again beyond the Jordan to the place where John was baptizing at first, and there He stayed” (John 10:40). Great crowds of people came out to hear Jesus preach. John says, “And many believed in Him there” (v. 42). This may have been the most fruitful time of ministry the disciples had witnessed in all the time since they had begun to follow Christ. People were responsive. Souls were being converted. And Jesus was able to minister freely without the opposition of the religious rulers of Jerusalem. But something happened to interrupt their time in the wilderness. John writes, “Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. It was that Mary who anointed the Lord with fragrant oil and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick” (John 11:1–2). Bethany was on the outskirts of Jerusalem. And Jesus had formed a close and loving relationship with this little family who lived there. He loved them with a special affection. He had stayed with them, and they had provided for His needs. Now His dear friend Lazarus was sick, and Mary and Martha sent word to Jesus saying, “Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick” (v. 3). They knew if Jesus came to see Lazarus, He would be able to heal him. This presented a quandary. If Jesus went that close to Jerusalem, he was walking into the very teeth of the worst kind of hostility. John 10:39 says the Jewish leaders were seeking to seize Him. They were already determined to kill Him. He had eluded their grasp once already, but if He returned to Bethany, they were certain to find out, and they would try again to seize Him. The disciples must have breathed a sigh of relief when Jesus answered, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it” (John 11:4). What He meant, of course, was that Lazarus’s death would not be the ultimate result of his sickness. The Son of God would glorify Himself by raising Lazarus from the dead. Jesus knew, of course, that Lazarus would die. In fact, He knew the very hour of his death. John writes, “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when He heard that he was sick, He stayed two more days in the place where He was” (vv. 5–6). At first glance, that seems a strange juxtaposition of statements: Jesus loved Lazarus and his family, so He stayed put while Lazarus was dying. He deliberately tarried to give Lazarus time to die. But this was an act of love, because ultimately, the blessing they received when Lazarus was raised from the dead was a greater blessing than if he had merely been healed of his sickness. It glorified Jesus in a greater way. It strengthened their faith in Him immeasurably more. Therefore Jesus waited a couple of extra days so that Lazarus was already dead four days by the time He arrived (v. 39). Of course, Jesus, with His supernatural knowledge, knew exactly when Lazarus died. That is why He waited. “Then after this He said to the disciples, ‘Let us go to Judea again’ ” (v. 7). The disciples thought this was crazy. They said, “Rabbi, lately the Jews sought to stone You, and are You going there again?” (v. 8). They frankly did not want to go back to Jerusalem. The ministry in the wilderness was phenomenal. In Jerusalem they all risked being stoned. Now was not a good time for a visit to Bethany, which was virtually within sight of the temple, where Jesus’ bitterest enemies had their headquarters. Jesus’ answer is interesting. He gives them an illustration. “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if one walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him” (vv. 9–10). In other words, there was no need for Him to skulk around like a common criminal. He was determined to do His work in the bright light of day, because that’s what you do in order not to stumble. Those who were walking in darkness are the ones in danger of stumbling—particularly the religious leaders who were secretly looking for a way to kill Him. He said that to the disciples to calm them down. They obviously did not want to go back and die. But Jesus reassured them they had nothing to fear. And of course, He knew His time to die was in God’s timing, not His enemies’. Our Lord made His purpose clear when He said, “Our friend Lazarus sleeps, but I go that I may wake him up” (v. 11). The disciples missed His meaning. They said, “Lord, if he sleeps he will get well” (v. 12). If he’s only asleep, why not let him rest? After all, Jesus had already said his sickness was not unto death. The disciples couldn’t see the urgency of the situation. It sounded to them like Lazarus was already on the road to recovery. “However, Jesus spoke of his death, but they thought that He was speaking about taking rest in sleep. Then Jesus said to them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead. And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, that you may believe. Nevertheless let us go to him’ ” (vv. 13–15).

Now they understood. Jesus had to go back. He was determined to do so. There would be no talking Him out of it. To them, it must have seemed like the worst possible disaster. They were floundering in fear. They were convinced that if Jesus returned to Bethany, He would be killed. But He had made up His mind. It was at this point that Thomas spoke up. Here is where we meet him for the first time in all the Gospel records. “Then Thomas, who is called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with Him’ ” (v. 16). Now that is pessimistic, and that’s typical for Thomas. But it is a heroic pessimism. He could see nothing but disaster ahead. He was convinced Jesus was heading straight for a stoning. But if that is what the Lord was determined to do, Thomas was grimly determined to go and die with Him. You have to admire his courage. It is not easy to be a pessimist. It is a miserable way to live. An optimist might have said, “Let’s go; everything will work out. The Lord knows what He is doing. He says we won’t stumble. We will be fine.” But the pessimist says, “He’s going to die, and we’re going to die with Him.” Thomas at least had the courage to be loyal, even in the face of his pessimism. It is much easier for an optimist to be loyal. He always expects the best. It is hard for a pessimist to be loyal, because he is convinced the worst is going to happen. This is heroic pessimism. This is real courage. Thomas was devoted to Christ. He may have been the equal to John in this regard. When we think about someone who loved Jesus and was intimate with Him, we usually think of John, because he was always near Jesus. But it is clear from this account that Thomas did not want to live without Jesus. If Jesus was going to die, Thomas was prepared to die with Him. In essence he says, “Guys, suck it up; let’s go and die. Better to die and be with Christ than to be left behind.” Thomas was an example of strength to the rest of the apostles. It appears they collectively followed his lead at this point and said, “OK, let’s go and die”—because they did go with Him to Bethany. Thomas obviously had a deep devotion to Christ that could not be dampened even by his own pessimism. He had no illusion that following Jesus would be easy. All he could see were the jaws of death opening to swallow him. But he followed Jesus with an undaunted courage. He was resolved to die if necessary with his Lord rather than forsake Him. He would rather die than be left behind and separated from Christ.

Thomas’s profound love for the Lord shows up again in John 14. You’ll recall from our study of Philip that Jesus was telling them of His imminent departure. “I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2). “And where I go you know, and the way you know” (v. 4). In verse 5 Thomas speaks: “Thomas said to Him, ‘Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?’” Again we see his pessimism. In essence, he was saying, “You’re leaving. We’ll never get where you are going. We don’t even know how to get there. How are we supposed to get there? It was a better plan for us to die with You, because then there’s no separation. If we died together, we would all be together. But if You just go, how are we ever going to find You? We don’t even know how to get there.” Here is a man with deep love. He is a man whose relationship with Christ was so strong that he never wanted to be severed from Him. His heart was broken as he heard Jesus speak of leaving them. He was shattered. The thought of losing Christ paralyzed him. He had become so attached to Jesus in those years that he would have been glad to die with Christ, but he could not think of living without Him. You have to admire his devotion to Christ. This was overwhelming for Thomas. And his worst fears came to pass. Jesus died and he didn’t.

We pick up the next picture of Thomas in John 20. After Jesus’ death, all the disciples were in deep sorrow. But they all got together to comfort one another. Except for Thomas. John 20:24 says, “Thomas, called the Twin, one of the twelve, was not with them.”It is too bad he wasn’t there, because Jesus came and appeared to them. They had locked themselves in a room somewhere (most likely the Upper Room in Jerusalem). John writes, “The doors were shut where the disciples were assembled, for fear of the Jews” (v. 19). Suddenly, although the doors and windows were sealed shut, “Jesus came and stood in the midst, and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord” (vv. 19–20). Thomas missed the whole thing. Why wasn’t he there? It is possible that he was so negative, so pessimistic, such a melancholy person, that he was absolutely destroyed, and he was probably off somewhere wallowing in his own misery. He could see only the worst of everything. Now his worst fear had been realized. Jesus was gone, and Thomas was sure he would never see Him again. He may have still been thinking he would never find the way to get where Jesus was. He was no doubt regretting the fact that he did not die with Jesus, as he had been so determined to do in the first place. Thomas may well have felt alone, betrayed, rejected, forsaken. It was over. The One he loved so deeply was gone, and it tore his heart out. He was not in a mood to socialize. He was brokenhearted, shattered, devastated, crushed. He just wanted to be alone. He simply couldn’t take the banter. He wasn’t in a mood to be in a crowd, even with his friends. “The other disciples therefore said to him, ‘We have seen the Lord’ ” (v. 25). They were exuberant. They were ecstatic. They were eager to share the good news with Thomas. But someone in the kind of mood Thomas was in was not going to be cheered up so easily. He was still being a hopeless pessimist. All he could see was the bad side of things, and this was just too good to be true. “So he said to them, ‘Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe’ ” (v. 25). It is because of that statement that he has been nicknamed “Doubting Thomas.” But don’t be too hard on Thomas. Remember, the other disciples did not believe in the resurrection until they saw Jesus, either. Mark 16:10–11 says after Mary Magdalene saw Him, “She went and told those who had been with Him, as they mourned and wept. And when they heard that He was alive and had been seen by her, they did not believe.” The two disciples on the road to Emmaus walked with Him a long distance before they even realized who He was. And then “they went and told it to the rest, but they did not believe them either” (v. 13). When Jesus showed up in the room where the disciples are gathered, “He showed them His hands and side” (John 20:20). Then they believed. So they were all slow to believe. What set Thomas apart from the other ten was not that his doubt was greater, but that his sorrow was greater.

John 20:26 says that eight days passed after Jesus appeared to the disciples again. Finally Thomas’s ragged grief had eased a bit, apparently. Because when the apostles were returned to the room where Jesus appeared to them, this time Thomas was with them. Once again, “Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, ‘Peace to you!’ ” (v. 26). No one needed to tell Jesus what Thomas had said, of course. He looked right at Thomas and said, “Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing” (v. 27). The Lord was amazingly gentle with him. Thomas had erred because he was more or less wired to be a pessimist. But it was the error of a profound love. It was provoked by grief, brokenheartedness, uncertainty, and the pain of loneliness. No one could feel the way Thomas felt unless he loved Jesus the way Thomas loved Him. So Jesus was tender with him. He understands our weaknesses (Hebrews 4:15). So He understands our doubt. He sympathizes with our uncertainty. He is patient with our pessimism. And while recognizing these as weaknesses, we must also acknowledge Thomas’s heroic devotion to Christ, which made him understand that it would be better to die than to be separated from his Lord. The proof of his love was the profoundness of his despair. Then Thomas made what was probably the greatest statement ever to come from the lips of the apostles: “My Lord and my God!” (v. 28). Let those who question the deity of Christ meet Thomas. Suddenly, Thomas’s melancholy, comfortless, negative, moody tendencies were forever banished by the appearance of Jesus Christ. And in that moment he was transformed into a great evangelist. A short time later, at Pentecost, along with the other apostles, he was filled with the Holy Spirit and empowered for ministry. He, like his comrades, took the gospel to the ends of the earth. There is a considerable amount of ancient testimony that suggests Thomas carried the gospel as far as India. There is to this day a small hill near the airport in Chennai (Madras), India, where Thomas is said to have been buried. There are churches in south India whose roots are traceable to the beginning of the church age, and tradition says they were founded under the ministry of Thomas. The strongest traditions say he was martyred for his faith by being run through with a spear—a fitting form of martyrdom for one whose faith came of age when he saw the spear mark in his Master’s side and for one who longed to be reunited with his Lord.

Transformed. It’s interesting that God used a publican like Matthew and a pessimist like Thomas. Matthew was once the vilest of sinners—a wretched, despicable outcast. Thomas was a tender-hearted, moody, melancholy individual. But both of them were transformed by Christ in the same way He transformed the others. Are you beginning to get the idea of what kind of people God uses? He can use anyone. Personality, status, and family background are all immaterial. The one thing all these men except Judas had in common was a willingness to acknowledge their own sinfulness and look to Christ for grace. He met them with grace, mercy, and forgiveness and transformed their lives into lives that would glorify Him. He does that for all who truly trust Him.

THE DOUBT OF THOMAS John xx. 24-29. ”Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came” on that first Christian Sabbath evening, and showed Himself to His disciples. One hopes he had a good reason for his absence; but it is at least possible that he had not. In his melancholy humor he may simply have been indulging himself in the luxury of solitary sadness, just as some whose Christ is dead do now spend their Sabbaths at home or in rural solitudes, shunning the offensive cheerfulness or the drowsy dullness of social worship. Be that as it may, in any case he missed a good sermon; the only one, so far as we know, in the whole course of our Lord’s ministry, in which He addressed Himself formally to the task of expounding the Messianic doctrine of the Old Testament. Had he but known that such a discourse was to be delivered that night! But one never knows when the good things will come, and the only way to make sure of getting them is to be always at our post. The same melancholy humor which probably caused Thomas to be an absentee on the occasion of Christ’s first meeting with His disciples after He rose from the dead, made him also skeptical above all the rest concerning the tidings of the resurrection. When the other disciples told him on his return that they had just seen the Lord, he replied with vehemence: “Except I shall see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my fingers into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” He was not to be satisfied with the testimony of his brethren: he must have palpable evidence for himself. Not that he doubted their veracity; but he could not get rid of the suspicion that what they said they had seen was but a mere ghostly appearance by which their eyes had been deceived. The skepticism of Thomas was, we think, mainly a matter of temperament, and had little in common with the doubt of men of rationalistic proclivities, who are inveterately incredulous respecting the supernatural, and stumble at every thing savoring of the miraculous. It has been customary to call Thomas the Rationalist among the twelve, and it has even been supposed that he had belonged to the sect of the Sadducees before he joined the society of Jesus. On mature consideration, we are constrained to say that we see very little foundation for such a view of this disciple’s character, while we certainly do not grudge modern doubters any comfort they may derive from it. We are quite well aware that among the sincere, and even the spiritually–minded, there are men whose minds are so constituted that they find it very difficult to believe in the supernatural and the miraculous: so difficult, that it is a question whether, if they had been in Thomas’s place, the freest handling and the minutest inspection of the wounds in the risen Saviour’s body would have availed to draw forth from them an expression of unhesitating faith in the reality of His resurrection. Nor do we see any reason àpriori for asserting that no disciple of Jesus could have been a person of such a cast of mind. All we say is, there is no evidence that Thomas, as a matter of fact, was a man of this stamp. Nowhere in the Gospel history do we discover any unreadiness on his part to believe in the supernatural or the miraculous as such. We do not find, e.g. that he was skeptical about the raising of Lazarus: we are only told that, when Jesus proposed to visit the afflicted family in Bethany, he regarded the journey as fraught with danger to his beloved Master and to them all, and said, “Let us also go, that we may die with Him.” Then, as now, he showed Himself not so much the Rationalist as the man of gloomy temperament, prone to look upon the dark side of things, living in the pensive moonlight rather than in the cheerful sunlight. His doubt did not spring out of his system of thought, but out of the state of his feelings. Another thing we must say here concerning the doubt of this disciple. It did not proceed from unwillingness to believe. It was the doubt of a sad man, whose sadness was due to this, that the event whereof he doubted was one of which he would most gladly be assured. Nothing could give Thomas greater delight than to be certified that his Master was indeed risen. This is evident from the joy he manifested when he was at length satisfied. “My Lord and my God!” that is not the exclamation of one who is forced reluctantly to admit a fact he would rather deny. It is common for men who never had any doubts themselves to trace all doubt to bad motives, and denounce it indiscriminately as a crime. Now, unquestionably, too many doubt from bad motives, because they do not wish and cannot afford to believe. Many deny the resurrection of the dead, because it would be to them a resurrection to shame and everlasting contempt. But this is by no means true of all. Some doubt who desire to believe; nay, their doubt is due to their excessive anxiety to believe. They are so eager to know the very truth, and feel so keenly the immense importance of the interests at stake, that they cannot take things for granted, and for a time their hand so trembles that they cannot seize firm hold of the great objects of faith—a living God; an incarnate, crucified, risen Saviour; a glorious eternal future. Theirs is the doubt peculiar to earnest, thoughtful, pure–hearted men, wide as the poles asunder from the doubt of the frivolous, the worldly, the vicious: a holy, noble doubt, not a base and unholy; if not to be praised as positively meritorious, still less to be harshly condemned and excluded from the pale of Christian sympathy—a doubt which at worst is but an infirmity, and which ever ends in strong, unwavering faith. That Jesus regarding the doubt of the heavy–hearted disciple as of this sort, we infer from His way of dealing with it. Thomas having been absent on the occasion of His first appearing to the disciples, the risen Lord makes a second appearance for the absent one’s special benefit, and offers him the proof desiderated. The introductory salutation being over, He turns Himself at once to the doubter, and addresses him in terms fitted to remind him of his own statement to his brethren, saying: “Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.” There may be somewhat of reproach here, but there is far more of most considerate sympathy. Jesus speaks as to a sincere disciple, whose faith is weak, not as to one who hath an evil heart of unbelief. When demands for evidence were made by men who merely wanted an excuse for unbelief, He met them in a very different manner. “A wicked and adulterous generation,” He was wont to say in such a case, “seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be given unto it but the sign of the Prophet Jonas.”Having ascertained the character of Thomas’s doubt, let us now look at his faith. The melancholy disciple’s doubts were soon removed. But how? Did Thomas avail himself of the offered facilities for ascertaining the reality of his Lord’s resurrection? Did he actually put his fingers and hand into the nail and spear wounds? Opinions differ on this point, but we think the probability is on the side of those who maintain the negative. Several things incline us to this view. First, the narrative seems to leave no room for the process of investigation. Thomas answers the proposal of Jesus by what appears to be an immediate profession of faith. Then the form in which that profession is made is not such as we should expect the result of a deliberate inquiry to assume. “My Lord and my God!” is the warm, passionate language of a man who has undergone some sudden change of feeling, rather than of one who has just concluded a scientific experiment. Further, we observe there is no allusion to such a process in the remark made by Jesus concerning the faith of Thomas. The disciple is represented as believing because he has seen the wounds shown, not because he has handled them. Finally, the idea of the process proposed being actually gone through is inconsistent with the character of the man to whom the proposal was made. Thomas was not one of your calm, cold-blooded men, who conduct inquiries into truth with the passionless inpartiality of a judge, and who would have examined the wounds in the risen Saviour’s body with all the coolness with which anatomists dissect dead carcasses. He was a man of passionate, poetic temperament, vehement alike in his belief and in his unbelief, and moved to faith or doubt by the feelings of his heart rather than by the reasonings of his intellect. The truth, we imagine, about Thomas was something like this. When, eight days before, he made that threat to his brother disciples, he did not deliberately mean all he said. It was the whimsical utterance of a melancholy man, who was in the humor to be as disconsolate and miserable as possible. “Jesus risen! the thing is impossible, and there’s an end of it. I won’t believe except I do so and so. I don’t know if I shall believe when all’s done.” But eight days have gone by, and, lo, there is Jesus in the midst of them, visible to the disciple who was absent on the former occasion as well as to the rest. Will Thomas still insist on applying his rigorous test? No, no! His doubts vanish at the very sight of Jesus, like morning mists at sunrise. Even before the Risen One has laid bare His wounds, and uttered those half–reproachful, yet kind, sympathetic words, which evince intimate knowledge of all that has been passing through His doubting disciple’s mind, Thomas is virtually a believer; and after he has seen the ugly wounds and heard the generous words, he is ashamed of his rash, reckless speech to his brethren, and, overcome with joy and with tears, exclaims, “My Lord and my God!” It was a noble confession of faith,—the most advanced, in fact, ever made by any of the twelve during the time they were with Jesus. The last is first; the greatest doubter attains to the fullest and firmest belief. So has it often happened in the history of the Church. Baxter records it as his experience, that nothing is so firmly believed as that which hath once been doubted. Many Thomases have said, or could say, the same thing of themselves. The doubters have eventually become the soundest and even the warmest believers. Doubt in itself is a cold thing, and, as in the case of Thomas, it often utters harsh and heartless sayings. Nor need this surprise us; for when the mind is in doubt the soul is in darkness, and during the chilly night the heart becomes frozen. But when the daylight of faith comes, the frost melts, and hearts which once seemed hard and stony show themselves capable of generous enthusiasm and ardent devotion. Socinians, whose system is utterly overthrown by Thomas’s confession naturally interpreted, tell us that the words “My Lord and my God” do not refer to Jesus at all, but to the Deity in heaven. They are merely an expression of astonishment on the part of the disciple, on finding that what he had doubted was really come to pass. He lifts up his eyes and his hands to heaven, as it were, and exclaims, My Lord and my God! it is a fact: The crucified Jesus is restored to life again. This interpretation is utterly desperate. It disregards the statement of the text, that Thomas, in uttering these words, was answering and speaking to Jesus, and it makes a man bursting with emotion speak frigidly; for while the one expression “My God” might have been an appropriate utterance of astonishment, the two phrases, “My Lord and my God,” are for that purpose weak and unnatural. We have here, therefore, no mere expression of surprise, but a profession of faith most appropriate to the man and the circumstances; as pregnant with meaning as it is pithy and forcible. Thomas declares at once his acceptance of a miraculous fact, and his belief in a momentous doctrine. In the first part of his address to Jesus he recognizes that He who was dead is alive: My Lord, my beloved Master! it is even He,—the very same person with whom we enjoyed such blessed fellowship before He was crucified. In the second part of his address he acknowledges Christ’s divinity, if not for the first time, at least with an intelligence and an emphasis altogether new. From the fact he rises to the doctrine: My Lord risen, yea, and therefore my God; for He is divine over whom death hath no power. And the doctrine in turn helps to give to the fact of the resurrection additional certainty; for if Christ be God, death could have no power over Him, and His resurrection was a matter of course. Thomas having reached the sublime affirmation, “My God,” has made the transition from the low platform of faith on which he stood when he demanded sensible evidence, to the higher, on which it is felt that such evidence is superfluous. We have now to notice, in the last place, the remark made by the Lord concerning the faith just professed by His disciple. “Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” This reflection on the blessedness of those who believe without seeing, though expressed in the past tense, really concerned the future. The case supposed by Jesus was to be the case of all believers after the apostolic age. Since then no one has seen, and no one can believe because he has seen, as the apostles saw. They saw, that we might be able to do without seeing, believing on their testimony. But what does Jesus mean by pronouncing a beatitude on those who see not, yet believe? He does not mean to commend those who believe without any inquiry. It is one thing to believe without seeing, another thing to believe without consideration. To believe without seeing is to be capable of being satisfied with something less than absolute demonstration, or to have such an inward illumination as renders us to a certain extent independent of external evidence. Such a faculty of faith is most needful; for if faith were possible only to those who see, belief in Christianity could not extend beyond the apostolic age. But to believe without consideration is a different matter altogether. It is simply not to care whether the thing believed be true or false. There is no merit in doing that. Such faith has its origin in what is base in men,—in their ignorance, sloth, and spiritual indifference; and it can bring no blessing to its possessors. Be the truths credited ever so high, holy, blessed, what good can a faith do which receives them as matters of course without inquiry, or without even so much as knowing what the truths believed mean? The Lord Jesus, then, does not here bestow a benediction on credulity. As little does He mean to say that all the felicity falls to the lot of those who have never, like Thomas, doubted. The fact is not so. Those who believe with facility do certainly enjoy a blessedness all their own. They escape the torment of uncertainty, and the current of their spiritual life flows on very smoothly. But the men who have doubted, and now at length believe, have also their peculiar joys, with which no stranger can intermeddle. Theirs is the joy experienced when that which was dead is alive again, and that which was lost is found. Theirs is the rapture of Thomas when he exclaimed, with reference to a Saviour thought to be gone for ever, “My Lord and my God.” Theirs is the bliss of the man who, having dived into a deep sea, brings up a pearl of very great price. Theirs is the comfort of having their very bygone doubts made available for the furtherance of their faith, every doubt becoming a stone in the hidden foundation on which the superstructure of their creed is built, the perturbations of faith being converted into confirmations, just as the perturbations in the planetary motions, at first supposed to throw doubt on Newton’s theory of gravitation, were converted by more searching inquiry into the strongest proof of its truth. What, then, does the Lord Jesus mean by these words? Simply this: He would have those who must believe without seeing, understand that they have no cause to envy those who had an opportunity of seeing, and who believed only after they saw. We who live so far from the events, are very apt to imagine that we are placed at a great disadvantage as compared with the disciples of Jesus. So in some respects we are, and especially in this, that faith is more difficult for us than for them. But then we must not forget that, in proportion as faith is difficult, it is meritorious, and precious to the heart. It is a higher attainment to be able to believe without seeing, than to believe because we have seen; and if it cost an effort, the trial of faith but enhances its value. We must remember, further, that we never reach the full blessedness of faith till what we believe shines in the light of its own self–evidence. Think you the disciples were happy men because they had seen their risen Lord and believed? They were far happier when they had attained to such clear insight into the whole mystery of redemption, that proof of this or that particular fact or doctrine was felt to be quite unnecessary. To that felicity Jesus wished His doubting disciple to aspire; and by contrasting his case with that of those who believe without seeing, He gives us to know that it is attainable for us also. We, too, may attain the blessedness of a faith raised above all doubt by its own clear insight into divine truth. If we are faithful, we may rise to this from very humble things. We may begin, in our weakness, with being Thomases, clinging eagerly to every spar of external evidence to save ourselves from drowning, and end with a faith amounting almost to sight, rejoicing in Jesus as our Lord and God, with a joy unspeakable and full of glory

Sermon: Thomas the Faithful Servant                                                  6-4-2007

INTRO ON THE APOSTLES:

Acts 4:13 When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.

“CHOSEN” THOMAS

Mark 3:13-18 Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him. 14 He appointed twelve--designating them apostles--that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach 15 and to have authority to drive out demons. 16 These are the twelve he appointed: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter); 17 James son of Zebedee and his brother John (to them he gave the name Boanerges, which means Sons of Thunder); 18 Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon the Zealot 

John 15:16 You did not choose me, but I chose you

Romans 11:5 So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace.

1 Corinthians 1:27-29 so that no one may boast before him.

Remember: we are chosen “in spite of”  not  “because of”

“COURAGOUS” THOMAS

John 11:16 Then Thomas (called Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him."

Mark 14:31 But Peter insisted emphatically, "Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you." And all the others said the same.

Speak Up…..Step Out…… for Jesus’ sake!

“UNFINISHED”  THOMAS

John 14:5 Thomas said to him, "Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?"

See: Mathew 6:30; 8:26; 14:31; 15:16; 16:8; Mark 4:40; 16:14; Luke 24:25

Ephesians 2:10 For we are God’s workmanship (masterpiece)…..

Thank God he is not done with you yet!

“DOUBTING” THOMAS

John 20:27 Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe." 28 Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!"

John 20:20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

Four things we doubt: Others…..Ourselves…..God’s Word (Ps.119:40)…..God’s Character

“OBEDIENT” THOMAS

John 21:1-2  Afterward Jesus appeared again to his disciples, by the Sea of Tiberias (Galilee). It happened this way: Simon Peter, Thomas (called Didymus), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples were together.

Matt 28:10 Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me." (see also Mark 16:7)

John 21:6 He said, "Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some." When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish.

Obedience in the little things paves the way for obedience in the BIG things

“PRAYING” THOMAS

Acts 1:13 When they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. Those present were Peter, John, James and Andrew; Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew; James son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. 14 They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.

Learn to Pray in a group

Sermón: Tomás el Siervo Fiel

LOS APOSTOLES

Hechos 4:13 Entonces viendo el denuedo de Pedro y de Juan,  y sabiendo que eran hombres sin letras [sin estudios] y del vulgo [ignorantes,  sin preparación] se maravillaban;  y les reconocían que habían estado con Jesús.

TOMAS el ESCOGIDO (Marcos 3:13-18)

ve Juan 15:16; Romanos 11:5; 1 Corintios 1:27-29

TOMAS el VALIENTE (Juan 11:16)

ve Marcos 14:31

TOMAS el INCOMPLETO (Juan 14:5)

ve: Mateo 6:30; 8:26; 14:31; 15:16; 16:8; Marcos 4:40; 16:14; Lucas 24:25

TOMAS DUDA (Juan 20:27)

ve Juan 20:20

TOMAS el OBEDIENTE  (Juan 21:1-2)

ve Mateo 28:10; Juan 21:6

TOMAS el “ORADOR” (Hechos 1:13-14)