WWUTT 2311 Jesus Choose Twelve Apostles (Luke 6:12-16)

The Gospels tell us that Jesus actually had a multitude of disciples that followed him, but from those disciples, he would select twelve men who would become the foundation of the church and would be appointed or sent out to preach the gospel, when we understand.

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Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Jesus Prays Before Appointing the Twelve

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Gospel of Luke, we are still in chapter 6 and coming up on what is commonly referred to as the Sermon on the Plain. But first, Jesus will appoint twelve apostles.

Let me begin reading here in verse 12. Hear the word of the Lord. In these days he went out to a mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God. And when day came, he called his disciples and chose from them twelve, whom he named apostles, Simon whom he named Peter, and Andrew his brother, and James and John, and Philip and Bartholomew, and Matthew and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon who was called the Zealot, and Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

And he came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people, from all Judea and Jerusalem and the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon, who came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases.

And those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured, and all the crowd sought to touch him, for power came out from him and healed them all. And this is kind of a prelude leading up to the Sermon on the Plain, which then begins with the Beatitudes in verse 20, just like the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7 begins with the Beatitudes.

You'll have sermon points here in the rest of Luke chapter 6 that look very familiar to the Sermon on the Mount. Are we seeing a contradiction here though, given that there's a difference in topography?

In Matthew chapter 5, Jesus goes up on a mountain and sits down and his disciples come to him. And here in verse 17, it says he came down with them and stood on a level place. That's why it's called the Sermon on the Plain.

Well, there's no contradiction here. And I'll explain that later when we look at some of the sermon points tomorrow. But first, let's kind of go through this prelude a little bit with Jesus appointing his 12 apostles.

Now, as I've said to you before, some of the things that we have in Luke aren't necessarily given to us in a chronological order. Luke rather will group certain things together that fit a particular theme.

Here we don't have a specific point of time that is given, only that these events happen sometime around Jesus' ministry that he's been doing around the Sea of Gennesaret, which is what it was called in chapter 5.

It's really the Sea of Galilee. It also goes by Gennesaret. In John's gospel, it's called the Sea of Tiberias, but they're all the same lake. But anyway, as Jesus has been ministering in those towns surrounding the Sea of Gennesaret, it seems like here that it's in that same period of time.

In these days, he went out to a mountain to pray. Now, the Sea of Gennesaret is kind of low-lying, but there's mountains all around it. So it's not that he has to travel real far. He goes up on a mountain, he comes down to a level place, and it's there that he appoints his 12 apostles.

So let's look at this again. At least in this section today, we'll be just looking at that prelude leading up to the Sermon on the Plain. In verse 12, in these days, he went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God.

And when day came, he called his disciples and chose from them 12. Now, you would think that the prayer there might be relevant to Jesus choosing whom he was going to call to be apostles, and that might be the case.

That could be what Luke is implying there, that Jesus goes to pray so that he may know in the Spirit of God exactly who it is that he's going to appoint as his apostles. It could be that. It could simply be that Jesus already knows whom he is going to choose.

He probably knew the moment that he met them. And I'm kind of taking my cues from John 1, for example, when there are disciples that come up to Jesus, and he already says that he knows them before they have even introduced themselves.

Nathanael in particular, when Nathanael comes up to him and Jesus says, ah, a true Israelite in whom there is no guile. And Nathanael's like, how do you even know who I am? And Jesus says, before Philip even called you, I saw you under the tree.

So Jesus knows when he meets these men whom he is going to appoint to apostles. So it's not like he goes up on the mountain to pray, God, show me, Father, show me who it is that's going to be my apostles.

But he could very well have been praying for them. Maybe not asking the Father to reveal to him who's going to be the 12, but he's definitely praying for them and the work that he is going to appoint to them.

So the work they will do with Jesus in their earthly ministry, and then even the work that he will appoint for them to do after he is gone, which he tells them that they are going to do after he rises from the dead and ascends to heaven from them.

Remember when Jesus tells Peter that Peter is going to deny him. This is the account that we have in Luke's gospel. Peter refuses, says, no, I will go with you to death. And Jesus says to him, the devil has asked to sift you like wheat.

But I will pray for you so that after this has happened, you may be strengthened and restored and you will also strengthen your brothers. So Jesus says that to Peter. That's kind of a window into what Jesus may have been praying up there on the mountain.

He's praying for his apostles and knowing some of those things that they are going to go through, praying for them in that sense. Some of you are probably aware of a recent scene that came out from The Chosen.

I talked about it on the podcast this past Friday in the Q &A. It is a sneak peek of season five, which will debut in theaters seasons or episodes one and two of season five will debut in theaters this coming March.

Creator and director Dallas Jenkins gave a sneak a sneak peek of I think it was like episode four of season five, a conversation that Jesus has with Judas and several things that Jesus says to Judas in that conversation.

There's no way Jesus would have said that. And we can know that because of other things that Jesus said about Judas from the gospels. We're basing this entirely on scripture. The Chosen is only loosely based on scripture.

It's kind of like they're inspired from scripture, but they go their own way. And this whole scene with Jesus and Judas is completely fabricated. The things that Jesus says to Judas, he never would have said, for example, one of the things he says to Judas is, I used to have your heart and I want it again.

And then also says to Judas, I will pray for you. Neither of those things would Jesus have said to Judas and the implication there being that Jesus says to Judas, I'm going to pray that I get your heart again.

Dallas Jenkins actually did a follow up to that particular scene with all the pushback that folks like myself have been giving to that scene. And he said nowhere in the scene does it say that Jesus is praying for Judas to change his mind.

But that's exactly what's implied there. Dallas insists that's not implied. Oh, that's exactly what he said. I used to have your heart. I want to have it again. I'm going to pray for you. Pray for what?

That Judas would change his mind, that he would come back to believe in Jesus. See, this is this is just gaslighting that Dallas Jenkins is doing here, like accusing everybody else. I never said that in my clip.

You're putting words in my mouth. It was it was readily implied that Jesus was going to pray for Judas to change his mind. That's what the scene implies. But it does it does not say anywhere in the text that Jesus prays for Judas.

In fact, when you see the high priestly prayer in John chapter 17, Jesus deliberately does not pray for Judas. He even says that he's not praying for Judas, where he says, I have kept all these whom you have given to me, talking about the 11 apostles who are still there with him in the upper room.

And I've lost none of them, Jesus says, except the son of destruction. So in other words, I'm not praying for him that the scripture may be fulfilled, but he's praying for his disciples there in that high priestly prayer.

So there's an example of where Jesus explicitly doesn't pray for Judas. But did Jesus love Judas? I believe that he did, because as Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter five, I believe this is verse forty four.

You have heard that it was said you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. And Jesus did demonstrate that love for Judas.

In fact, in John chapter 13, Judas was with the disciples when Jesus washed their feet. He washed Judas's feet. And we understand as well that Judas was at the table when Jesus administered the Lord's supper.

And so Judas was even there in that way, ate and drank in an unworthy manner and ate and drank condemnation on himself. He goes out to fulfill his plot to betray Jesus. Satan enters into him and Judas fulfills or it is fulfilled in Judas, rather those things that had been prophesied about him in the Old Testament in multiple chapters, several Psalms and the book of Zechariah that Judas would betray Jesus and specifically would betray him for 30 pieces of silver.

And so Judas, in doing this wicked and evil thing, the worst sin probably committed by a man in the history of mankind. The betrayal of the son of God. And yet it's that betrayal that turns Jesus over to his enemies so that he may be crucified so that we may be saved.

Jesus doesn't pray for Judas to change his mind because then Jesus doesn't go to the cross and we don't get saved. Oh, and furthermore, the scriptures would be wrong. Because the scriptures that had said that this would be fulfilled with Judas would have been wrong, they never would have come to pass, and that would have made God a liar.

So Jesus is not praying for something that would that would upset the father's will in that way. He prays for his disciples, but Judas, he knows, is going to betray him. And as said in John six, Jesus said of Judas that he was a devil.

It was always in his heart that he would be the one to betray him. And that's in John six, 64. Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe and who it was who would betray him. We don't know a lot of the backstories behind all of these disciples.

There's only a few of them that we know about, even among the 12. And so I understand wanting to do a little bit of speculation there in a show like The Chosen, for example, wanting to reflect upon or even kind of take some creative liberties with the backstories, with all these different disciples.

I get that. But it still has to be consistent with scripture. I'm not I'm not 100 percent opposed to speculating in that way. I've done that in sermons before, but I will say that I'm speculating. I won't take my speculation and mash it into the text and say, you know, here's here's the way that this would have happened if I can't prove that.

What you what you create as far as drama goes, if you're going to imagine some sort of backstory with one of these disciples, it still has to be consistent with what we have. And this conversation with Jesus and Judas that recently came out is not consistent with what scripture says.

And it's just more Bible twisting, which The Chosen, this TV show and other cinematic depictions of Jesus and his disciples have been have been famous for. There are depictions that have been faithful to the text that has been done.

The Chosen is absolutely not one of them. So anyway, let's come back to verse 12. Once again, once again, Jesus goes up on the mountain to pray all night. He continues in prayer to God. And this and Jesus earthly ministry was marked by prayer.

We don't even have to know exactly what it is that he was praying for. He could just simply be praying about this next leg of his ministry that he is going to do, the appointing of his apostles, the multitude that's going to come to him and then the sermon that he is going to preach or these truths that he will give to this audience made up of the apostles and a multitude of disciples and crowds from a crowd of people from other places as well.

So Jesus is simply spending time with the father. And then when day comes, he calls his disciples and chooses from them 12. Now, what's being implied here is that there's a lot of disciples, for it said in verse 17, he came down with them and stood on a level place with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the seacoast of Tyre inside it.

I referenced John six a moment ago. It's in John six that even there was a crowd of disciples that was following Jesus coming up later on in Luke. It's in chapter nine where Jesus will send out the 12 same way that we've seen him do that in Matthew and in Mark.

But then in chapter 10, Jesus sends out the 72. So there's a lot of disciples that have been following Jesus. It's from this crowd of disciples that he selects 12. Now, as I said, he already knew who those 12 were going to be.

But this is the moment where he appoints 12 apostles and then they are going to have a closeness to Jesus that the rest of the disciples don't have. When Jesus is with his disciples in the upper room for the last supper, it was only the 12.

It wasn't any more than that. Though, when they went out to the garden, they may have been joined by many others of those crowd of that crowd of disciples. I kind of talked about that a little bit. Some of the hints that we saw in Mark's gospel related to that.

And then and then when Jesus ascends into heaven, it wasn't just 11 guys standing out there on the hill with Jesus and watching him ascend into heaven. It was likely the whole 120 that end up in the upper room waiting for the Holy Spirit that we we see depicted in Acts chapter one.

So there was more than just the 12. But Jesus singles out 12 who are going to be closer to him in ministry than the rest. And then there were also there was also a closer group among the 12. It was the three, Peter, James and John, who would have the blessing of being able to see and hear things that the other 12 or the other nine didn't didn't have the opportunity to be able to see and hear.

And, you know, I'm thinking in particular of the Mount of Transfiguration. Only Peter, James and John went up there with Jesus. And in the Olivet discourse, which we saw, according to Mark's gospel, it was only Peter, James, John and Andrew who came and asked Jesus about the signs concerning the destruction of Jerusalem in the temple and the signs of his coming.

It was only those four. Whereas Matthew makes it sound like it was all the disciples that were asking him that anyway. So all that to say that there's the 12. And then there's a group that's even closer to the 12, the three being Peter, James and John.

And those are the first disciples, the first apostles that Luke mentions here. So then verse 14, Simon, whom he named Peter, Andrew, his brother, Andrew gets listed right there because he's he's with Peter and James and John and then Philip and Bartholomew, Matthew and Thomas and James, the son of Alphaeus.

The Twelve Apostles and the Meaning of Their Number

OK, on and on it goes. But Jesus chooses 12. Why 12? Well, because 12 represents the 12 tribes of Israel. You had of those sons of Jacob who would become the fathers of the 12 tribes of Israel and then Israel is marked by those 12 tribes throughout the Old Testament.

Well, here Jesus is doing something new. He is going to be building his church, remember, and he's going to do that on a foundation of the apostles and he's choosing from them 12. So you have 12 that represents the people of God in the Old Testament and you have 12 that represents the people of God in the New Testament and in the church that Jesus is building.

I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. So the first of them is Peter and Peter is the most prominent apostle, but he's not head over the rest of them. That's, of course, what Roman Catholicism teaches, Eastern Orthodoxy, that that Peter had some kind of primacy.

But the text never says that. We know from Galatians that the apostle Paul confronted and opposed Peter. We know that Paul's ministry went out probably further than what Peter did. And so there's there's nothing about Peter that that indicates a primacy, though he does have a prominence.

It's not primacy, but it's it's prominence. It is, after all, Peter who preaches the sermon at Pentecost in Acts chapter two. And we see his assertiveness and the appointment that Jesus gives to him that that does seem to have a greater placement than the rest of the apostles.

But in saying that, it doesn't mean that he ranks higher than them. Doesn't mean that he's in charge of them. You know, in short, I'm saying that he's not the pope the way that the Roman Catholics believe.

Peter was appointed to this particular popish position. And then all the rest. And then there's this succession of men that come after him that fill that role in the chair of St. Peter. And that's just simply not true.

There's nothing in the text that indicates that at all. But he does have a prominent a prominence. It's not a primacy, but it's a prominence over the rest of the disciples, Simon, whom he named Peter.

Andrew is his brother. Andrew is the one who introduces him to Jesus. Then you have the two brothers, James and John, who are referred to as the sons of Thunder. They are the sons of Zebedee. When we read of Jesus calling his first disciples at the start of chapter five, it was specifically the boats of Peter and Andrew and James and John that Jesus was in.

So they become the first that Jesus calls to himself. And they're the first ones listed among the twelve apostles. And then you also have Philip. We know a little bit about Philip based on what we have in John chapter one.

Bartholomew, we know nothing about Bartholomew, nothing beyond his name in the text. We don't even have any dialogue from Bartholomew. He never speaks anywhere in the New Testament. Then Matthew and of course, Matthew being Levi, whom we read about in the previous chapter, the tax collector that was called to follow Jesus.

And then he throws a feast for them and invites other tax collectors to come and be a part of this banquet. And and so he's the, of course, the writer of the Gospel of Matthew. He gets to open up the entire New Testament.

We never get any dialogue from Matthew, even though we have these gospel accounts of Jesus calling Matthew to follow him. There's never any words from Matthew, like a quotation from Matthew in any way, though he is the one that gets to pen the opening book of the New Testament by the blessing of the Holy Spirit.

We have Thomas Thomas, of course, who is known as Doubting Thomas, which is not really the best descriptor of Thomas. He's more pessimistic. Thomas, if you look at all the things that Thomas says over the courses, over the course of the Gospels, he's just very negative in the things that he says.

He gets called Doubting Thomas because he's not with the rest of the disciples when they see the risen Jesus. And so Thomas says, I've got to see him myself. I need to put my hands in the nail scars in his hands.

I need to feel the hole in his side if I'm going to believe that he is actually risen from the dead. And then Jesus, when Thomas does get to see him, Jesus reveals himself to him. Then Thomas worships and Jesus says to him, stop doubting Thomas.

So for that reason, Thomas gets called Doubting Thomas. But really, all things considered, he's negative. Thomas, he's pessimistic. Thomas, he's downer. Thomas, more than he is doubting Thomas. Then you have James, the son of Alphaeus, who also is called James the Lesser or Little James, as he sometimes nicknamed.

And then there is Simon, who was called the Zealot. So he was from among the zealots, those who were rebelling against the Romans. And yet Jesus called him to follow him. And then Judas, the son of James, being his father, and in other accounts, he's called Thaddeus.

So there's another name that he is known by. And then last of all, of course, though he is numbered among the twelve, he will be removed from his office after he betrays Jesus and commits suicide. And his office will be filled by Matthias in Acts chapter one.

But the last one mentioned, of course, is Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. And you'll notice in all four gospels, it is assumed in all four gospels that you already know that the reader already knows that Judas is the one who betrayed Jesus.

It's kind of interesting about that. So none of the none of the gospels speak of Judas in such a way that's like, OK, just wait and see. Watch what's going to happen with this Judas guy from the from from the start.

Whenever these disciples, these apostles are introduced, the gospel writers say Judas Iscariot is the one who betrayed him and most likely to distinguish him from Judas, the son of James. So when, you know, Judas, the son of Iscariot over the household of Iscariot, you know, he's the one that had betrayed Jesus.

People already know that before they even read the gospel accounts, the gospel, the message of Jesus has gone out so far and wide that it is now widely known there was one of these apostles who had betrayed Jesus.

And that was Judas. So here's the 12 that we read about in Luke chapter six, verses 12 to 16. And then tomorrow we're going to see Jesus ministering to a great multitude and dive in a little bit into the Beatitudes as we get to the sermon on the plane.

And I'll also talk about how the difference in topography between Matthew chapter five and Luke chapter six is not a contradiction. So hang tight. Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we've read here.

We've read about these 12 ordinary men, as John MacArthur put it, that Jesus called to himself to follow him. One of those men in particular was going to fulfill prophecy in betraying the son of man so that he would go to the cross and die for our sins.

The rest of them would be the beginning of the church. The foundation of the church is said in Ephesians 2 20. And we still rely upon their testimony and their preaching of the gospel from the very beginning.

Whenever we open up the New Testament and read it, we're reading the words that had been taught by Jesus apostles. And I pray that we would continue to submit ourselves to that office of these apostles that that Christ had appointed and the words that they spoke and wrote down, inspired by the Holy Spirit.

For it is these words that lead to eternal life and even to our sanctification. And may we continue to be in submission to this, that we may be conformed to the image of Christ. It is in Jesus' name that we pray.

Amen.

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