The Twelve

Introduction

Much of what takes place in the Bible classes for our younger ones has to do with memorization. I can remember as a kid growing up and going to Bible class having either verses to memorize or sometimes lists. There’s a lot of lists in the Bible. And the Bible class teacher would either encourage or force us to memorize those lists or those verses. And by the way, that’s a good thing. But it also opens itself up to some humor, doesn’t it?

Young children, being what they are, sometimes mishear, misunderstand, or misremember, or mispronounce something in those memorization lists that are just golden nuggets of comedy. My good friend growing up memorized the books of the New Testament, but he had trouble pronouncing certain words. So he would finish his list, 1 John, 2nd John, 3 John, Jude, and Vanilla Wafers. And he wasn’t trying to be funny. He was too young for that. He just, that’s how in his mind the letters of Revelation got all mangled up. There was the young kid who was reciting the list of the ten plagues, one of which reminded him of a family member. And so when he recited the list, it was water to blood, balls, hells, locusts, darkness. And somewhere in the list there, he would say, Aunt Morane of cattle.

My favorite happened to my cousin. And it wasn’t really the same kind of mix up, but it was excitement. When my cousin was very young, he and his family had gone on vacation, and he went to Bible class at this visiting congregation. And after class, he was so excited, come running into the auditorium, yelling to everybody’s delight to his mother, Mama, Mama, they have the same apostles we do. I want to talk to you about those apostles this morning. Another funny one, by the way, the Bible class teacher asked the class, what are epistles? And the little girl says, those are the lady apostles. But they’re not.

But the statement is we do not lose heart. I think the apostles are good illustrations of that theme. They personified that theme, did they not? Of twelve men. We’re going to see twelve varied men struggling at times, but they did not lose heart. And so let’s talk about these twelve men and what lessons we can learn from them. But before we do that, before we start talking about the practical applications, let’s pretend that we’re in Bible class. Did you have to learn the list of the apostles? Maybe you learned the Psalm, the list of the apostles. But let’s pretend we’re in Bible class and let’s talk about the apostles, who they were, and then we’ll get into the practical applications of the letter. Here’s our list.

Now, your list may be in a different order than this, but this is the list that we have of the twelve original apostles. And every list got to start with Peter, doesn’t it? You remember Peter. Peter was known by some various names, wasn’t he? Simon, Cephas. Peter was one of the first who were called by Jesus. He was a fisherman by trade before he became a fisher of men. And he is the author of the books of first and second Peter. Then we have his brother Andrew. Andrew was a fisherman. Andrew seems to be maybe the first one who was called by Jesus. And it’s Andrew who goes and gets Peter and says, Come and see. And then there’s James. James the son of Zebedee, the son of thunder.

He’s nicknamed James the Greater, because we’ve got another James in the list. And so what that means, in what sense is he greater? Maybe he was just bigger than the other James. Big James and Little James, maybe, is all that that meant. James is the only apostle whose martyrdom is recorded in the scripture in Acts chapter 12. By the way, we don’t think this is the James who’s the author of the book of James. We think that’s a different James, the brother of Jesus. We can’t be sure. And then, of course, our list of the apostles can’t be complete without John, the other son of Zebedee, who is also a fisherman, again known by the nickname Son of Thunder. This is his self moniker was the disciple whom Jesus loved.

He’s the author of 1st and 2nd and 3 John and the book of Revelation as addition to the gospel of John. We have Philip. Philip’s only mentioned eight times in the New Testament, and four of those are just in the list of the apostles. He’s the one who encouraged Nathaniel to come and see the one that Moses and the prophets wrote about. And then we have Bartholomew. He may be listed as Nathaniel on some list. Bartholomew, also known as Nathaniel, he is one of our obscure apostles. We really know nothing about this man other than he was a follower of Jesus and an apostle. Thomas, Thomas, and on his Didymus, the twelve. Sometimes, I think maybe incorrectly labeled him doubting Thomas, because of his incident with wanting to see and to feel the scars and the wounds of Jesus.

But really, all he wanted to see was what the other apostles had already seen. So I don’t know that we need to call him the doubting apostle. We just called him out of the room apostle. He just wasn’t there when it happened. And then we, of course, have Matthew. He’s also known as Levi. He’s the son of Alphaeus, and Matthew was not a fisherman. Matthew’s the tax collector. And I’ll remind you how the Jews viewed a tax collector. We’re not real fond of them ourselves, are we? But the tax collectors in that day were doubly hated because they were viewed as being traitors. This would have been a Jew who was working for the Roman government. That made him a traitor in the eyes of many Jews.

And many, many, many of the tax collectors were thieves. They would skim money off the top. If the government wanted a dollar from you, I’m going to demand two dollars from you, put one in my pocket, send one to Rome. Rome doesn’t care as long as they get their dollar. Because I’m only mistreating the Israelites, and Rome didn’t feel any great affection for them. And so many times the tax collectors were hated because they were many times embezzling money. We have James, known by the unfortunate title of James the Less. He’s the son of Alpheus. He is only listed in the list of the apostles. We know virtually nothing about him. And again, most likely not the author of the book of James. We have Jude.

We call him Jude to do him a favor because his full name is Judas. And in fact, sometimes the Bible will do him a favor and say Judas, but not that Judas, not Iscariot. He is the son of James, or actually the text says of James. That the son of James, brother of James, we’re not sure. He’s known by a couple other names, Thaddeus. He may show up as Thaddeus in a list, Labaias. Sometimes he’s known by that name in some of the list of the apostles. Then we have Simon, not Simon Peter, who’s first in our list, but he’s known by the title Simon the Zealot. Now, is that describing his personality? Is he just a zealous person? Most likely, most scholars think it’s describing his political leanings.

There was a sect of the Jews known as the zealots, who wanted to overthrow, even if need be, violently overthrow the Roman government and set up their own form of rule. And we think that that’s probably what Simon was previously. We’re going to notice, you already notice some potential conflict. We have Matthew, the tax collector who’s working for the government, and Simon the zealot, who hates the government and wants to overthrow them. And then we have, of course, infamously Judas. Judas was the treasurer of the group, but also the thief of that treasury of the group. And of course, he’s most infamously remembered as the one who betrayed Jesus with a kiss for thirty pieces of silver. And also his ending is well known. He took his life.

James and Judas are the only ones whose deaths are recorded. James gave his life for the Lord. Judas Iscariot took his own life because of his betrayal of Jesus. Now, when Judas dies, the book of Acts begins with finding a replacement for him, and that replacement is known as Matthias. And so we could call Matthias the 13th apostle, but in a sense, he’s still number 12, isn’t he? Because he’s just filling up the number to 12. We don’t know much about Matthias. All really we know about Matthias are the qualifications that had to be met. That he had to be with Jesus, had to be a witness of the resurrection, and Matthias’ appointment is recorded there in the first chapter of the book of Acts. And then, of course, we said James is killed in Acts chapter 12 by Herod.

And we now have Paul. I’m not saying Paul is a replacement for James, but I find it interesting, and that’s all I’m saying it’s interesting, that we always just had twelve. We end up with 14 men who serve in this office, but in any given time we only had twelve, was the maximum number. Matthias, the 13th one, takes that 12th spot of Judas as carriot. Paul becomes an apostle after the death of James, and so he takes the twelfth slot again. And of all the apostles, although he’s not in the song, or it wasn’t in the song that I learned, at least, in the original list of the apostles, he’s the most famous and well known and probably well loved of all the apostles because he dominates the latter part of the book of Acts.

1. God Can Use All Types

He had dominates those epistles, which aren’t the lady apostles, they’re the letters written to the churches. You know that. He wrote most of those twelve, some would say even thirteen of those letters were written by the inspired pen of Paul. And so those of the 12, when we talk about the apostles, that’s the 12 that we’re talking about. But what lessons can we learn from these 12 men? And when I say lessons, I’m not saying lessons from their writings or the words that we have recorded in the gospels, but just by observing the behavior, the action, the work, and as we’re going to see, the commitment of these men, what can we learn? One thing that we can learn is God can use all types. There was no really uniformity in this list, was there?

Jesus didn’t go out seeking twelve men who all fit the same personality profile. We have some fishermen. We have a tax collector. We have a zealot, whose maybe his job or at least his almost full-time hobby would have been putting up posters railing against the Roman government. We have a former persecutor of these men who would be added to this list. But somehow they all work together. And consider their personalities. You have the boisterous Peter, whose foot-shaped mouth often got him into trouble, who would always barrel through first and you know, shoot first and ask questions later, kind of personality. And then you had the quieter Andrew, his brother, who seemed content to kind of sit in the second or the third row of the apostles.

He was never the first to raise his hand or to speak up or to act. You have the fiery brothers, James and John. They were nicknamed the sons of thunder. Most think that that was not referring to their parents, but referring to their personalities.

He says, How do you know me? And so Bartholomew wants some proof. He’s a bit skeptical. There’s the outsider, and there’s no doubt he would have been the outsider in this group, Matthew, that tax collector among all these Jews, and even that zealot Simon.

Knowing all along that he was fully reliant on the grace and the forgiveness of God. But God chose these men. And somehow this rag tag, varied bunch of men, worked. That kind of describes the New Testament church, doesn’t it? Kind of describes most local churches. Look with me in Romans chapter 12. We could turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 12 that says much the same thing. But look at what Paul says in Romans chapter 12. Let’s begin reading in verse 4. I want to encourage you to read the text in 1 Corinthians 12 that corresponds to this and really is more lengthy reading that talks about this. The idea that we’re going to be different. We’re going to have different talents and energies and personalities. But guess what?

That’s a good thing. Romans 12, verse 4 says, For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function. So we, being many, are one body in Christ and individually members of one another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us. Let us use them. And we’ll just pause there. We think of this list and we think of Peter and Paul. It couldn’t have happened without Peter and Paul, right?

That workaholic Apostle Paul. We couldn’t have done it without those two. But I’m going to tell you, we couldn’t have done it without the other ones as well. We needed quiet Andrew. We needed skeptical Bartholomew. We needed the outsider, Matthew. We needed the conspiracy theorist Simon the Zealot. We needed all of them to work together and bring what differing gifts they had to the work and accomplish those things. And so what’s the application for me? What about me? I need to see that there’s a place for me in the kingdom. I need to see that there’s a need for me in the kingdom. Be honest with yourself. Look at that list of 14 men. And please take Judas off the list before you do this exercise.

Who do I identify most with? Be honest. Are you the leader, the outspoken, the boisterous Peter? Are you the hardworking nose to the grindstone Paul? Are you the outsider? Matthew? You the skeptical Bartholomew? Are you the obscure? James the less. Find yourself. Be honest with the talents, the works, the energies, all of those things that you possess by the grace of God, not like the spiritual gifts of the first century, but they’re still gifts of God. The talents, the energies, the possessions that you have, and find your place. And recognize there’s a place for me. There’s a need for me and what I can bring to the kingdom. And to the local church. Use that. Find one of the shepherds, find one of the deacons and say, I can do this.

Where do I need to serve? And even beyond that, there’s many things that you can do that don’t need the direction of the shepherds or the deacons. That you can just say, I can do this. I can do that. Here’s my place. And so I need to see that there’s a place and there’s a need for me. And I also need to understand, and isn’t that the point of Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12? I need to recognize, humbly recognize, that there’s a place and there’s a need for you. Even though you’re much different than me. And your talents and your energies and your personality is much different than mine. I need to appreciate what you bring to the table. If I’m the Peter, I’m not going to be upset that Bartholomew and Jude and Simon the Less is not doing what I’m doing.

2. Real Growth Takes Time and Requires Patience

I’m not going to be too critical or judgmental just because your offerings differ than mine. God can use all types. Another lesson that jumps out at the pages of history to us from the apostles is that growth, real spiritual growth, takes time. And therefore requires patience. Think about these apostles. We read the gospels. We’re frustrated at the thickness of these men sometimes, aren’t we? Look at some examples here. Let’s look beginning in Mark chapter 4. We could go on and on, but we’ll limit our reading. Let’s look at Mark chapter 4 and verse 40. We read the gospel accounts and we just get so frustrated that they didn’t understand. Mark 4 and verse 40, and they ridiculed him, but when he put them all outside, he excuse me, I mean Mark 5.

Back up, back up. Mark 4, verse 40. But he said to them, to the apostles, why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith? Jesus was frustrated with these men and the slowness of their progress at times. Now turn over to chapter 6. Mark chapter 6, beginning in verse 51. Then he went up into the boat to them, and the wind ceased, and they were greatly amazed in themselves beyond measure and marveled, for they had not understood about the loaves. That’s the feeding of the multitude. They had not understand about the loaves because their hearts were hardened. They didn’t get the point of what had just happened. And we wonder why. Why couldn’t they see that? Look over in chapter 8. I’m still in Mark.

Mark chapter 8. And look beginning in verse 14. Now the disciples had forgotten to take bread. And they did not have more than one loaf with them in the boat. Then he charged them, saying, Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. He was imparting it to them a great spiritual warning. But look what their response in verse 16. And they reasoned among them, saying, Is it because we don’t have any bread? And you’re just not talking about bread, guys. He’s talking about the influence that these people can have against you. Bread just spurred the thought. He’s not talking about bread. And later on, when Peter would confront him, when Jesus talks about his suffering and his death, and Peter says, Oh no, that’s not going to happen.

And Peter has to be told, get behind me, Satan. And we’re just like, Peter. Peter. And when Jesus spells out, I’m going to die and go to Jerusalem and be mistreated and die and be nailed to a cross and raised the third day. And the text says, but they didn’t know what he was talking about until later. And we’re just like, really? Really?

And then we think about the hour of trial.

Where Peter would brazenly and openly deny him three times.

And the only reason, probably that the other eleven didn’t deny him is because they were too busy running away, scared. But these are the men that Jesus chose. These are the men that, according to their enemies in the book of Acts, would say, have turned the world upside down. And we’re like, really? Those guys? Those slow to understand? And so what’s the lesson? Growth, and underline the word real growth. Imagine temporary growth can happen like that. But real, sustainable growth takes time, doesn’t it? We’ve kind of been spoiled by our society. We’re the I want it now generation, aren’t we? All of us. You remember the time? Are you old enough to remember the time where sometimes you’d have to go to bed not knowing something?

What other movie was that guy in? Who was the prime minister of England during the Gulf War? If you didn’t have world books that were up to date, you just went to bed not knowing. Or maybe you made yourself a note. Next time you’re at the library, look this up. And you had to use Scotch tape because there were no post-it notes back then. And I’ll get that later. Not now. Any of those questions? What comes out? Our phone. Oh. He was in this movie, in that movie.

We have microwave oven. You don’t know the test that we’re spoiled. Have you ever gotten impatient with a microwave? Takes three minutes to make popcorn. They need a mega microwave. We have Amazon shipping. We can be here in two days or the next day or overnight or the same day or two hours. And we apply that thinking and that impatience to spiritual growth. And we get frustrated with ourselves and certainly with others. What’s wrong with you? Don’t you see that? But we have to remember the apostles. Now we think about growth, we need to understand there’s a balance. Growth is demanded. Read a Hebrews chapters 5 and 6, where they were chastised for their lack of growth. So we’re not saying growth shouldn’t take place and don’t worry about it.

There needs to be, there has to be growth. These apostles grew. They would not have turned the world upside down with the knowledge and the understanding that we read about in the gospels, would they? They had to grow. But we also need to understand that growth, real, sustained growth, takes time. And so we need to be patient. How do we respond to spiritual weakness? How do we respond to biblical misunderstanding?

3. Being a Disciple of Jesus Demands Commitment

Are we patient? Are we encouraging? Are we teaching? Do we have the patience of Jesus that he had with these twelve men? And then the last lesson I see in these twelve is that being a disciple of Jesus demands commitment. Say what you will about these ragtag, sometimes slow to understand, at times just downright disappointing men. But they had commitment. They spent their lives.

Take this with a grain of salt. But history and legend says all of them but one died a violent death. Because of their commitment to Christ. Aside from that, the scriptures record the imprisonments, the beatings, the stonings, the threat, the near death of these men. That took commitment. And a life-giving commitment from men, all of which at one time either denied him, ran away in shame from him, or like that last apostle, just outright put people in prison and death opposing him. What a lesson of grace these men are.

If you’ve denied him and opposed him, or just walked away or ran away, you like these twelve, can come back and come back with a level of commitment that can only be described as you turning the world upside down. You remember what Jesus said to Peter in the midst of him predicting that he would deny him? You’re going to deny me three times, Peter. Yes, you are, Peter, three times this very night you’re going to deny me. But he added these words. But when you return, strengthen the brethren. You can have that level of commitment, even if you’ve left him for a time. And that’s a lesson that we learn from these twelve. Messed up, mixed up, wonderful men. Would you join their ranks? Oh, you can’t be one of the twelve, one of the apostles, but you can join their ranks.

Conclusion

See your place in the kingdom. Recognize the gift that you have that you can offer. Understand that growth can take place, must take place, but it’ll take time and patience is required. And commit yourself to this cause. Spend your life for him. Can we encourage you to do that right now? To take up your ranks, to come back to him as Peter and all of these men did and commit your life to Christ. Would you do that right now as together we stand and as we sing?