The Foundation of Christ’s Church (12 Apostles)

Grace Fellowship Church

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

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So as I mentioned, we're back in the Gospel of Mark. We've got a lot of people that were here last week who aren't here and a lot of people here this week who weren't last.

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And so what we'll do is I'm going to take us through just a very brief review of what we heard last week before we dive into our text.

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You'll remember that last week our brother Matt Rhodes preached his first sermon on Mark chapter 3 and verse 13.

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And what we essentially looked at as we covered that was the man with the withered hand. Children, you'll remember a little bit of that imagery, this withered hand, the hard hearts of the

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Pharisees, and really the hastiness, you could say, of the crowds that pressed upon Christ.

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In many ways, if you were here, you caught it that it was a passage about the helplessness and the wretchedness of man, the callousness of the human heart, the very real need for each and every one of us to have hearts transformed, our own hearts transformed by the only one who can, the one who made our hearts, the

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God -man, Jesus Christ. And so if we were to summarize all that Matt preached, no offense, brother, but if we were to summarize everything that you preached in two words, maybe two loaded and yet,

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I think, theologically helpful words, it would be these two words, total depravity.

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In Christ's day and culture, whether in the Pharisees, in the hearts of the crowds or others, we saw totally depraved hearts.

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And up until this point, if you've been paying attention, we've seen Christ interacting with the people in the world around him, and as we've seen this, we're seeing an increasingly sharp contrast that's beginning to become plain.

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And so on one side, as we read this text in Mark, we've seen that we have

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Christ, and he's shown us by his works, by his acts of divine authority, that he is sovereign, he is righteous, that he is powerful and authoritative.

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And in Jesus Christ, up until this point, what he has shown us is that he is the visible image of the invisible

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God. He is the living God in the flesh. And on the other side, on the other side of this growing chasm, we find humanity.

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We see it in the Pharisees, we see it in the scribes, we see it in the Herodians, we see it in the crowds, that humanity is fallen, needy and sinful.

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As we continue to read this gospel, what we're going to find in sharp contrast to Christ is that we still are the sons and daughters of Adam.

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And a lot of these people that we've looked at and studied in these texts are still dead in their trespasses and sins, depraved and totally unable to recognize or to rightly respond to Christ.

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And this week now, as we look in Mark chapter 3 and verse 13, we're going to continue to see

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Christ's life and ministry. We're going to once again find him. And I'm sorry that you hear us repeat this word over and over again almost every introduction, but we're going to find

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Christ skillfully wielding his divine authority. This time now on a mountain in Galilee, where he's going to choose and call his apostles to himself.

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But as he does this, what we're going to begin to see, at least in our passage today, is a new category of people starting to take shape.

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Up until this point, we've seen largely a binary group. You've got the righteous, authoritative

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Christ on one side, and you've got the fallen and helpless humanity on the other side.

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But today what we're going to see is Christ is going to begin to establish a third group, not just the righteous

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Christ and the evil people, but a new category of people. Some commentators have called them

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Christ's insiders. And this is what we're going to see. This is the main point that I hope to draw out of the text today, to mine for, is that today as we see

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Christ calling his apostles to himself, we will see him lay a foundation, his foundation for his church.

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Christ's church, a chosen people, a people called out of the world by God himself to carry out

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God's purposes and to live for his glory. And so I hope to show you this.

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I hope to convince you that this is true and accurate. It's a faithful interpretation of the text, that Christ is going to call his apostles, and these apostles form the foundation, the germ of the church.

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And so there are many truths that we can glean from this text. So we're going to get right into it, beginning in Mark 3, verse 13.

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It reads, Now what could we possibly preach just on that one sentence?

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He called those whom he desired, and they came to him. What I want to show us is this.

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The very first truth that we find in our text that's applicable to the apostles, and now applicable to us is this.

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The church, and the Christian, but the church is called to God, to Christ, according to Christ's will.

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The church is called according to Christ's will. We're going to get into it.

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So here we see that Christ is up on a mountain. Now children, if you're reading your

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Bibles and you ever find Jesus on the top of a mountain, you need to pay attention, because something very important is about to happen.

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Every time Christ ends up on the top of a mountain, or proceeds to the top of the mountain, and we end up there reading our

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Bibles with him, what we find is this, that something, either a special revelation is going to be coming as a result of this narrative, or some type of special event in Christ's life.

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And so, even if we were to just trace through this in the Gospel of Mark, we'd find

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Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration, if anyone remembers that, in Mark 9, verse 2.

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We read about Christ on the Mount of Olives, when he sent his disciples ahead of him into Jerusalem to prepare for his triumphant entry.

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He was on the same mountain that Christ later delivered the Olivet Discourse, one of these great eschatological discourses that you can read about in Matthew and in Mark.

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Again on the mountain, we saw that's where Christ went, the same mount of Olivet.

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He went before he was betrayed. All of this led up to Christ's crucifixion on the sacred mount, that hill at Calvary.

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And mountains are an important landmark, not only in Christ's ministry. So when we're reading the life of Christ, and we see him on a mountain, we ought to pay attention.

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But any time we read, even in the Old Testament, we find someone on a mountain. Pay attention.

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It's likely that God is going to be there. And so, we see it, for instance, during the flood of Noah, when

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Noah ended up landing on the mountains of Ararat, and God confirmed his covenant, made a new covenant, the

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Noahic covenant. It was on Mount Sinai that Moses, that God established the

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Mosaic covenant, that he delivered the Ten Commandments. There are countless other examples.

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We can look at many of the lives of the prophets and others. But when God designs to do something new, it would seem, when he designs to do something new in the world, look for it, people are often meeting him on the mountains.

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And this mountaintop experience is no exception. Because Christ is again going to do something new in this passage.

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Because here he's going to appoint his apostles, and as he appoints his apostles, he's going to establish the foundation stones, the groundwork of the church.

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Now children, have you ever seen a house being built? Yes. What's the first thing that they do when they build a house?

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They make it smooth and a good surface?

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Does anyone have even a step before they do that? They build a foundation. They dig a deep hole.

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And then they lay up forms. I'm not a construction worker, so forgive me if I get it wrong, but they lay up forms, and they pour thousands of pounds of cement into those forms, and they lay a thick foundation.

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What Christ is doing, what we're going to find him doing is this. Christ is on the mountain, and he's going to lay a foundation, and it's going to be the foundation of his church.

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So Luke's Gospel, if we went to Luke 6 and verse 12, you don't have to go there, but we're told that Christ went up onto the mountain, and then throughout the night he was pleading with God in prayer, spent the whole night praying to God.

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And when the morning came, we're told that Christ, our passage says, called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him.

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So the very first thing we see is that Christ is calling his apostles to himself.

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Now what could we possibly say? We could write a systematic theology on this one verse, but here

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Mark uses the word called. It's the Greek word proskaleo, and it sometimes means summoned.

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And by my accounting, there are ten verbs within the Greek language that Mark could have used for this particular passage, but he used one that had particular emphasis, particular force and authority.

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It means to summon one to yourself. And where am

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I? I'm always losing myself. It means to summon an individual to oneself. And in the Gospel accounts, it's very often used of either a person in authority, an authority figure, or even a master to call a subservient or a servant to themselves.

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And so if we were reading the Gospel of Mark, and we were reading it in the original language in Mark chapter 15 and verse 44, when

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Pilate summons, when he calls the centurion into the court, one of the political leaders, to one who is under his authority, he proskaleos, he summons him.

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Christ uses that same word. And this call, what we need to understand right away, is more than a mere invitation.

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This call is more, I think you've heard me use it before, but when John Piper talks about effectual calling,

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I think he has used his dog Blackie as an example. Hear Blackie, hear

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Blackie. This idea of a, I'm going to call, I hope you come.

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This is not the kind of call that Christ is using in this passage. Theologians have called it an effectual call.

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It is a call that effects a response. It is an authoritative summons.

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It is a sovereign summons that effects our allegiance.

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It guarantees our allegiance. And it was not the disciples, I want us to notice this, it was not the disciples who chose

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Christ because of something excellent that they saw in him, but it was Christ who chose his disciples based on his own will.

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We're told that he called those whom he desired. To put it another way, he called those in whom he delighted to choose.

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Now, some of us might very well say this is a high view of God's sovereignty and some people might very well say that this could not be the case.

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This could never be the case because this violates a law that God has bound himself to, that he will never, ever disrupt or interfere with a person's free will.

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That if there's one thing under heaven and earth that God cannot touch, it is a man's free will.

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Instead, they might suggest that Christ called his disciples based on something that he saw in them, some worthiness.

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Maybe it was their character. Maybe it was a profession or faith or because they followed him when he initially called, earlier, as we've already read and studied.

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And they might say that Christ's call is predicated, predicated on the exercise of human free will.

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The disciples chose him and therefore Christ chose them.

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And it sounds reasonable, doesn't it? It sounds very natural, at least to my mind, that Christ would see something in his disciples and choose to call them based on something that he has seen.

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But I want us to see this, that Christ will have none of that.

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In fact, not only do we see this authoritative language, this call that affects a response,

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Christ's call, Christ's desire, and then man's immediate response, but Christ made it crystal clear, even when he taught his apostles, his disciples later, in John 15 and verse 16, there he was teaching about dependence upon God.

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He says, if you do not abide in me, you cannot bear fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing. In John 15 and 16 he said to his apostles, to these men whom he just called, he says, you did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should bear fruit, that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide.

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I'm not reading into the text. All of the conservative or almost all of the conservative commentators that I've looked at on this particular passage agree.

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Here we see Christ in his sovereignty, unconditionally electing and calling his apostles.

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One commentator writes, discipleship is not to decide to follow Jesus and to do him a favor in so doing, rather his call supersedes their wills, summoning one who does not intend to follow and debarring one who would.

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That's in reference to this text. In reference to this text as well, John MacArthur, he says this verb that Mark uses, translated here as called, stresses that Jesus acted in his own sovereign interest when he chose the 12 disciples.

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Now, some people might say, I look around this room and I think there are many people that probably have a similar mindset or similar theological view, doctrinal view as I have when it comes to the sovereignty of God, but some people might say that I'm painting with too broad a brush strokes.

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Okay, so Christ used this authoritative language. Christ told his apostles in John 15 that he chose them and that they didn't choose him, but perhaps that is only true of the apostles.

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Maybe Christ only calls the apostles and then everyone else must choose him.

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But if we examine the scriptures, what we find is that this is hardly the case. And I want to make a case here for unconditional election and the effectual calling of Christ.

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When Paul later spoke to the Ephesian church, he wrote to them in Ephesians 2, verses 19 and 20, he said, so then you are no longer strangers and aliens, speaking to the church, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets,

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Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. You could say that the apostles, they are unique.

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There are not apostles today. And if anyone claims to be an apostle today, we would gently, humbly, forcefully disagree with them.

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But what Paul is saying is this, that if there are, you know, we talk about patient number one with COVID.

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If we've got church member number one, it's Peter and then James and then John. These apostles formed the nucleus, the germ.

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They were the first church members in Christ's church. And then this is not only true of the apostles, but of all who come to Christ by faith and repentance.

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Now, some people think of Christ as being so meek and lowly that he would never teach a doctrine like the doctrines of grace.

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But in John chapter six and verse 44, he said, Christ said, no one can come to me unless the father who sent him draws him and I will raise him up on the last day.

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When Paul was writing to the Roman church, he brought along something that we would call perhaps the golden chain of redemption.

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This idea that it is God. God is the active and the solitary party in our calling, in our coming to him.

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He says, for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son.

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In order that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. And those whom he predestined, he also called.

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And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified.

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Paul wrote to Timothy in 2 Timothy 1 verses eight to nine. I'm going to list just a few.

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This is my last. He says, therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me, his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God.

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I remember memorizing this verse with my children, who saved us and called us to a holy calling.

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Now he's referring to the whole church. He's talking about himself. He's talking about Timothy. He's talking about the

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Ephesian church where Timothy was ministering to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began.

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So here we have Christ calling his apostles. And one of the things that we can draw out of this text is not only did

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Christ call his apostles, which he does, and his apostles formed the foundation of the church, but he has called us.

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If any of us in this room are Christians, it is because we have been effectually called.

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It's because we've been unconditionally elected and brought to him. Now what do we do with this?

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How long can we preach on one verse? I promise my points get shorter as we go along.

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Brothers and sisters, we need to humbly embrace this truth that just as Christ has called his apostles and he has called us, we need to embrace this for ourselves.

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And if you were here a number of months ago when we did our first membership class, you'll remember we all had a good chuckle at that quote from Charles Spurgeon.

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And he was speaking from a quote that George Whitefield had said. He said, we are all born

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Armenians. We are all naturally inclined to view ourselves as sovereign.

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We're all naturally inclined to think that we have complete free moral agency.

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But what Spurgeon writes in, I guess, as a commentary to Whitefield's words, he says,

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Whitefield said we are all born Armenians. It is grace that turns us into Calvinists.

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Grace that makes Christians of us. Grace that makes us free and makes us know our standing in Christ Jesus.

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One of the best ways to humbly submit to this idea that it is

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God, it is Christ who is responsible for our salvation and not ours is simply to see the grace of God and to submit to it.

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To see that this is what the word of God teaches. To come from a God -centered perspective and not a man -centered perspective.

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Now someone in this room might say, but how could it be that God would call one person and not another?

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What a travesty. What an injustice. I love what Martin Lloyd -Jones says. He said, the real mystery is not that everybody is not saved, but that anybody is saved.

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That is the mystery. God owes nothing to anybody, but if he chooses to do something with what is his own, should our eye be evil because he is good?

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God has a right to show mercy to whom he will. He has a right to have compassion upon whom he will and there is no ground of complaint whatsoever.

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So as believers, we ought to see, not that God is unjust and cruel or capricious because he calls some and not others, but that he is gracious and that he is faithful.

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And I say we should humbly embrace this because it seems that there is a trend today and maybe this is more relevant application because I'm looking at you guys and you guys are all looking at me like you know this and I should move on.

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But there's a great need for us to hold to this doctrine with humility.

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There's absolutely no room in all the world for someone who holds to the doctrines of grace and are proud that they do it.

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That is antithetical to the idea that God takes a sinful man or woman that is totally unable to come to him, that he ransoms them, brings them to himself and they are somehow proud that they now have the knowledge that he did that.

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But it ought to move us to deep humility. I know that there are people in this church, even people in this room, perhaps people behind the

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Zoom lens who hold to a different view. But what I would encourage you to do is look into the text, see it for yourself if you submit to God's word rather than human philosophy.

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I have a laundry list of other passages I can bring you. But for those of us who do believe this view, we ought to approach this humbly.

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We'll get to a little bit of why that is in a moment. But I love an exchange that Charles Simeon had when he first met

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Charles Wesley. Charles Simeon was a believer in the doctrines of grace.

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He was what we might call a Calvinist. I typically avoid that language because I don't want to be of Paul or of Calvin or of anyone else,

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I want to be of Christ. But he was a Calvinist. And Charles Wesley, or John Wesley, excuse me,

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John Wesley was a very fierce Arminian, very, very fierce, to the point that there was quite a lot of squabbling that happened between John Wesley and George Whitefield.

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And oftentimes, and I say this graciously towards John Wesley, it was John Wesley's doing.

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But Charles Simeon once met John Wesley and he said to John Wesley, he said,

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I understand that you are an Arminian and I have sometimes been called a Calvinist.

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And there I suppose we are to draw daggers. But before I consent to begin the combat, with your permission,

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I will ask you a few questions. He said, Sir, do you feel yourself a depraved creature?

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So depraved that you would never have thought of turning unto God if God had not first put it into your heart.

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Yes, answered Wesley, I do indeed. He said, and do you utterly despair of recommending yourself to God by anything that you can do?

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Simeon continued, and look for salvation solely through the blood and righteousness of Christ.

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Yes, solely through Christ, Wesley replied. But Sir, Simeon said, supposing you were at first saved by Christ, are you not somehow or other to save yourself afterward by your own works?

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No, I must be saved by Christ from first to last, John Wesley answered, allowing then that you were first turned by the grace of God and you are not in some way or other to keep yourself by your own power?

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No. He continued to ask the questions, getting all the answers that he might expect from a

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Calvinist. And then he said to him, he said, then Sir, with your leave, I will put up my dagger again, for this is all my

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Calvinism. This is all my election, my justification by faith, my final perseverance.

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It is in substance all that I hold and as I hold it. And therefore, if you please, instead of searching out terms and phrases to be a ground of contention between us, we will cordially unite with those things wherein we agree.

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That's the heart of Charles Simeon towards John Wesley, a Calvinist toward an

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Arminian saying, let's put away our daggers. If we can agree on these important terms, let us do so.

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The next thing that this doctrine of effectual calling should bring about in us is thankful praise unto

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God. If you think about this, in this room, even if you don't hold to the doctrines of grace, if you are a

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Christian, it is because God set his affections on you before the foundation of the world.

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It's because he elected you before the world began. It's because he called you to himself.

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And when he was on that cross, he died in your place. And it wasn't just a general, a vague redemption that he accomplished on the cross, but it was specific, it was particular, it was for not your sins hypothetically, but for your sins actually.

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And so if you're here in this room and Christ has called you to himself, that should move us to thankful praise.

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But how often it doesn't move us. Maybe when we were in our cage stage, it moved us, but it doesn't move us anymore, that while I was still a sinner,

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Christ died for me. We were singing this song, Grace and Peace, earlier today.

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He says, Grace and Peace, verse 3, How can this be that songs of gratefulness ever rise, never cease?

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Loved by God and called as a saint, my heart is satisfied in the riches of Christ.

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Oh, what an amazing mystery that your grace has come to me.

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What a wonderful doctrine. There was, in the mid -1600s, there was a Puritan minister by the name of Thomas Doolittle.

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He was a godly man. And if you know anything about church history, in 1662, there was an event that was called the

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Great Ejection. That was where the royal monarchy in Britain put out all of the non -conforming ministers out of their churches.

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And if they tried to establish their own churches or tried to keep their churches, the monarchy would burn them down.

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And so there's this man, Thomas Doolittle, who went about constructing these preaching places, they called them, places where people could meet and he could preach the gospel to him.

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And as he often did on his Sundays, he would catechize his members, asking questions and receiving answers.

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And on one particular Lord's Day, an especially young person in his, or sorry, he was questioning his people on this idea of effectual calling from the

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Westminster Shorter Catechism. And so he was asking, what is effectual calling? And people would say, effectual calling is the work of God's spirit, whereby convincing of our sin and misery and lightening our mind, and they just kind of droned along and gave the answer.

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And he thought these people, he was not satisfied with their answer. And so he said, instead of saying us and our and we, say

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I and me and mine. And upon proposing this, the room fell silent, but there was one young man, who knows, maybe he was your age,

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Darrell, who eventually after a short period of time, he tried it out.

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And so he asked, what is effectual calling? And this young man rose up in his seat and he said, effectual calling is the work of God's spirit, whereby convincing me of my sin and misery, enlightening my mind in the knowledge of Christ and renewing my will, he doth persuade and enable me to embrace

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Jesus Christ freely offered to me in the gospel.

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And this young man's response, God accompanied with unusual power.

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And one biographer writes, the scene was truly affecting, the congregation was bathed in tears.

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And God used this truth of effectual calling to call that young boy right then and there, that he died for me, that he called me, that he renewed me, that he persuaded me to embrace

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Jesus Christ. Doolittle later wrote of that young man that he went from being an ignorant and wicked youth to becoming a true believer in God's glory.

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I gotta speed up big time, my apologies. Verse 14, Mark writes this, and he appointed 12, whom he also named apostles, so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons.

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So he called these 12 disciples, we'll get to the significance of that number 12 in a little bit, but here we see, the second point

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I wanna make, the church is called to accomplish Christ's purposes. These people weren't just called to exist, but they were called to fulfill a purpose, or in this case, we can see that that purpose was threefold.

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He said, first, the church is called, what amazing words this is, so that they might be with him.

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If you are a Christian and you've been called by God, you've been called, firstly, that you might be with him, to be in a relationship with Jesus Christ, to be in a relationship with the living

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God, to be in a discipleship relationship with Christ. And this is the ministry of the church, in a sense, is to bless the people, to strengthen the people, to nurture the people, so that they might be with him.

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Now, you guys know that I really like ecclesiology. I like to look at different churches, the way different churches do things, the language that is used.

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In some ways, I'm a student of the language concerning the church in our modern day.

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And it's amazing when I hear people talk about the church today as the church exists to transform the culture, or the church exists,

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I know of one particular man I've listened to regularly, where he says the church exists to be life -giving.

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I'm not even sure what that means. But this is what Christ is saying, as Christians and as the church, we are called, firstly, to be with him, to be a disciple of his, to be in fellowship with him, to learn at his feet.

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Discipleship under Christ is not primarily a list of do's and don'ts. It's not distance education either.

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But at the most fundamental level, it's an intimate relationship with the Son of God. And anyone who claims to be a disciple, but does not personally know him, does not walk with him, does not have an abiding relationship with him, looks more like an imposter than a real

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Christian. To be a Christian, first and foremost, to be part of the church, to be

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Christ's church, is to be in relationship with Christ. Now we often think of this verse in reference to people outside of the church, or outside of Christianity, but let's read

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Matthew 7, 21 for a moment together. Matthew 7, 21, Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my

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Father, who is in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out many demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name?

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And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of iniquity.

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When Christ says there, I never knew you, he uses, or at least Matthew uses the word, which means not merely to learn about a person or to be acquainted with a person, but to know a person through direct personal experience, implying a continuity of relationship.

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There are many professing Christians in this room today, or today, and perhaps in this room, who know about Christ.

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You've read about him. You've heard about him. Children, you might have heard your parents talk about Jesus, but the question is, do you know him?

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Is it true that you are, to use Christ's words, that you are with him, that you walk with him?

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When Christ was praying his high priestly prayer in John 17, he says at one point, he says in verse three, and this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true

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God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. Fundamental to being a

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Christian, fundamental to having eternal life, is to know God. It's to walk with him.

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And primarily, brothers and sisters, we do that through prayer, through communion with him in prayer, through communion with him in his word.

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Charles Spurgeon has a feisty quote that I often come back to. He says, a prayerless soul is a

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Christless soul. Prayer is the lisping of the believing infant, the shout of the fighting believer, the requiem of the dying saint falling asleep in Jesus.

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It is the breath, the watchword, the comfort, the strength, the honour of a

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Christian. In our institute classes, for a period of time, we were taking a course on prayer, and the lecturer gave us three different categories that we could use to describe our prayer lives.

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Brothers, do you remember what they were? Great in prayer, prayer is not a high priority, or prayerless.

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What was interesting about that question was there was no category like, prayer is important to me, and I just don't get around to doing it as much as I'd like.

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But it's great in prayer, prayer is not a high priority, I do not make time for it.

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It is not something that I value enough to implement in my life, to walk with God, or I am a prayerless soul.

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We are to pray without ceasing. That's what the word of God commands us to do.

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And I think a lot of us, because we are so weak in prayer in the church, a lot of us make excuses for why we don't pray, and we say, well, praying without ceasing, that's not really what he means.

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It just means kind of going about the day in a spirit of prayer. And there's some truthfulness to that, but I love one example

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I had read about. There was a confederate general named Stonewall Jackson, and interestingly about this man

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Stonewall Jackson, someone writes of him, God found a true man who would stand in the gap.

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He was both strong and tender. The motto of his life was, Lord, what will thou have me to do?

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And as fervent in the battlefield was he on his knees in prayer. And what's interesting is that God used this man, this general

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Stonewall Jackson, to bring about a revival, even amongst the confederate troops, as they were fighting in the war.

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And one person suggested that there were over 150 ,000 people who came to Christ in that army as a result of General Stonewall Jackson's witness.

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And one day he was in conversation with someone, and they were telling him how they had difficulty obeying the scriptural injunction to pray without ceasing.

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And Jackson insisted that we could so accustom ourselves, in his words, to it that it could be easily obeyed.

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He said, when we take our meals, there is grace. When I take a draft of water,

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I always pause. As my palate receives refreshment to lift up my heart to God in thanks and prayer for the water of life.

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When I drop a letter in the box at the post office, I send a petition along with it for God's blessing upon its mission.

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And upon the person to whom it is sent, when I break the seal of a letter just received, I stop to pray to God that he might prepare me for its contents and make it a message of good, a messenger of good.

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When I go to my classroom and await the arrangement of cadets in their places, that is my time to intercede with God for them.

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And so of every other family act of the day, familiar act of the day, it has become commonplace for Christians to be prayerless.

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It has become commonplace for us to have a shallow and a

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Christless spirituality. As I've said before, we set the bar far too low.

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And I just think of this brother's example, Stonewall Jackson. How often are we content to go the whole day without praying, never mind even trying to pray without ceasing?

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Christ has called us to be in a relationship with him. And are we taking that?

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Are we taking hold of what Christ has purchased for us with his own blood? When Calvin comments on Christ being on the mountain in prayer, even before he called his disciples, he said, our

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Lord prayed, not so much on his own account, but to lay down a rule for us.

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Brothers and sisters, how is your prayer life? Are you being discipled?

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Are you with him? Is it true of you as it says in Isaiah 66 too, but this is the one to whom

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I will look. He who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.

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The second purpose that he calls them for is to preach Christ. He says that they may be with him and might send them out to preach.

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That's what the word apostle means, is sent one. And here we see the word kerusene, which means to herald or to proclaim.

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It's the same word that we read about when Christ said that it was his mission to preach the gospel, kerusene.

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It became the apostle's mission when he called the apostles to himself and eventually it becomes all of our mission as members of the church.

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Now as often as I try to bring in passages, I try to bring in ones that reinforce the last point

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I made, so you'll see here I'm making two points with one text. But 1 Peter 2 .9, Peter writes to the church, he says, but you are a chosen race, called, elected, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession.

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For what purpose? That you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light.

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Paul, in his zeal, his commitment to preaching

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Christ, we see him write to his protege Timothy in 2 Timothy 2 .10, therefore

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I endure everything for the sake of the elect. This is interesting.

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He endures everything for the sake of the elect. Now are these Christians already? He says, no.

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I endure everything for the sake of the elect that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.

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I endure everything. Evangelism is hard.

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Preaching Christ is hard. If you've been out on White Avenue with us, now that we're going every second week, you become acquainted at least in a minute way with the endurance of looking at someone as they curse you, and as they curse your

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God, and as they curse the gospel of Jesus Christ and blaspheme his name.

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Dear saints, how much are you enduring to preach Christ? Or is there no endurance because you're not preaching

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Christ? I try not to talk about my trip to Indonesia too long.

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It seems like I was there for a month, but I have enough stories to give me a lifetime worth of illustrations.

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But at one time, we went up a hill, up this big mountain. It was in the center of North Sumatra, and we drove up a long ways and then climbed up another ways, and we came to the top of this big hill where there's a massive cross, probably 100 feet or more tall.

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This is in the middle of Indonesia, 330 million people, the largest Muslim country in the world.

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And at the top of this valley is this massive cross.

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And the reason why the Indonesians put that cross there is because there was a man named

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Ludwig Nommensen who traveled to them in the 1800s. And the

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Batak people at that time were cannibals for sport. A lot of people think that people are cannibals because they're just hungry.

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Cannibalism is an ungodly thing, and in this case, it was true that it wasn't because they were hungry, but it was a dominance thing.

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And so people were literally trying to eat him in order that they might dominate him.

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And so he would bring the gospel, and they would run him out of town. He would bring the gospel. They would take other people captive and threaten him with it.

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And at one point, he climbed up to the top of that hill, and he looked down at the valley of Batak villages and just said,

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God, I don't know if I can do it anymore. Every day they're trying to eat me.

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It feels like a lost cause. And there, standing on top of the hill, as he looked down at the

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Batak villages, he was convicted. Someone needs to bring the gospel to these people.

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Someone needs to endure all of this, that these people would be saved.

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And so he went back into the village, and he endured these hostile villagers, these savages in Indonesia.

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And as a result of that, the Lord saved tens of thousands of people in that Batak village, so that when there were enough

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Christians in that village for them to recognize now that we are Christians, the

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Batak people are Christians, they went and they built that giant cross exactly where he stood, trying to endure what it was that they were giving him.

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Are we prepared to endure to bring people to Christ?

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I was talking with Amy last week about the importance of application in my sermons, and so I'm going to give you a point of application.

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This Thursday, five days from now, we're going to be out on White Avenue. If you've never been, please come.

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If you have come before, come again, and you'll get a chance to endure for the sake of preaching the gospel.

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And then we see here that they were called to serve with Christ's delegated authority.

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Up until now, Christ has been making a demonstration of his authority, but now Christ delegates some measures of this authority, that exousia that we read about earlier, to his apostles.

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Now our authority is not the same as these apostles'. We don't have the authority of the apostles', but what we do have still is the power from God to accomplish the mission to which he has sent.

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We read about that in places like Luke 24, 49, when Christ said, just before he commissioned them to preach him, and behold,

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I am sending the promise of my Father upon you, but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.

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When Christ gave his great commission, he said, all authority on heaven and on earth has been given to me.

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Now what then is the imperative? Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the

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Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. We don't have a lot of time for this third verse, so if you have questions afterwards,

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I'd love to answer them. I'm not going to preach everything that I have here. But here we see the church is called to live as Christ's distinct people.

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What I think is amazing is that Christ calls 12 disciples. One commentator writes, the number 12, of course, recalls the 12 tribes of Jacob.

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Jesus' summons to the 12 in fellowship and service to himself signifies a reconstituting of Israel.

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According to Matthew 19 and Luke 22, the 12 are not only an extension of Jesus' earthly ministry, but their function extends beyond time when they will sit in judgment over Israel.

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And so for the Gentiles, it's a reminder that salvation is from the Jews, and for Jews, the 12 is a reminder that Israel fulfills its destiny only in the fellowship and the service of Jesus Christ.

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Now I had a long list of information on every single one of these apostles. I had no idea how

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I was planning to do all this. But Simon Peter, the prince of the apostles, the first among the apostles.

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We often think of him as the apostle that denied Christ three times and the foot -in -the -mouth kind of apostle, but he was the apostle that when

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Christ said, who do you say that I am? He said, you are the Christ, the son of the living

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God. And Christ said, and you are Peter, and upon this rock,

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I will build my church. It does not mean what the Catholics say it means, but it's okay to say that Christ was first among the apostles.

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He's always first in these lists, and he was part of this foundation that we read about in Ephesians 2 .20,

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the foundation of the church. James and John were fishermen.

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We read about them, the sons of Zebedee called Boanerges, the sons of thunder because of their quick temper.

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You might remember an exchange in a Samaritan village. When Christ was offended, they became even more offended for him.

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They said, Lord, should we call down fire from heaven to consume this village? That's why they were called the sons of thunder.

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John was probably younger than James. That's why he's always listed after him. And John lived well into the 90s, if not 100

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AD. We read Andrew. He was Simon Peter's brother.

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He introduced Peter to Christ. Philip and Bartholomew.

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Philip we read about mostly in the book of John. Bartholomew often, or we think, also went by the name

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Nathaniel. We read about him in the Gospel of John as well. Sorry if you're trying to write notes.

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Matthew was a tax collector, a traitor of Israel, despised tax collector, but Christ called him to himself.

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Thomas. We call him Doubting Thomas, but it was his question that incited Christ's response.

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I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father but through me.

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James, the son of Alphaeus, is always the ninth apostle. Also went by James the lesser.

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He might have also been Matthew's brother. We know very little about Thaddeus, except that he probably went by the name

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Judas, the son of James. Now this is interesting. I'll highlight this really quickly. You have

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Matthew, the tax collector, and then we have Simon, the zealot, and he was likely called a zealot because he belonged to a violent revolutionary party known as the

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Zealot Party. They were a fringe political group that resisted Roman occupation by whatever means necessary.

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When you think about political leaders trying to talk about extremism or these groups that are trying to overthrow the government,

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January 6th or whatever else, they probably have the zealots in mind.

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Their modus operandi was to arm themselves to violently resist Rome whenever possible and to overthrow

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Roman rule over the Jews. Within this church, within this apostleship, you've got

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Matthew, the tax collector, the Roman sympathizer and trader, and then you've got

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Simon, the zealot, who at least in that time would be after him with his own dagger, and then you've got

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Judas Iscariot, who's always listed last, the treasurer of the Jews, who held the money bag, who betrayed

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Christ for three pieces of silver. And here we have the germ of Christ's church, people from different places, different worldviews, all called by Christ to live together in unity.

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In this case, if we've read the Gospels, we know imperfect unity, but unity nonetheless.

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And for this purpose, to give their lives to God's service, to give their lives to Christ, to pour all of themselves into Christ and his mission, his purpose.

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And the reason why we know this, even though all of these apostles came from all these different walks of life, all these different manners of life and background, one thing is the same about every single one of these apostles save one, and that's that they all died in their service for Christ.

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Just to recount those apostles again in that same order, Peter was crucified upside down at Rome by the cruel

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Emperor Nero for preaching the Gospel. James, the son of Zebedee, was beheaded at Jerusalem under orders from Herod.

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Andrew was tied to a cross, not nailed, but tied to a cross where he preached even then to his persecutors as he died.

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And he stayed on that cross for days until he eventually suffocated.

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Philip was hanged. Bartholomew was flayed alive. Matthew was slain by a sword or with a sword in Ethiopia.

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Thomas made it as far as India with the Gospel and he was run through with a spear.

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James was beaten and stoned and then beaten further with a fuller's club. I'm not going to even give the description that Fox's Book of Martyrs gives.

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You can look up James, the son of Alphaeus and how it describes his death. There are children in the room.

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Simon the Zealot took the Gospel to West Africa and then even perhaps as far as Britain where he was crucified.

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Thaddeus was crucified. Only John survived. And that was after he was boiled in oil and then later exiled to Patmos by the ruthless

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Emperor Domitian. Eventually he made it back to Ephesus where he died after writing his

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Gospels and his letters in the Book of Revelation. This is what it means to be called of God.

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This is what it means to be called of Christ. That he ransoms us. He rescues us.

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He delivers us. On that cross as he died, he died in our place.

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He died in your place. He died by God's grace in my place. And the only reason why we are in this room even if we disagree with this doctrine is because he called us to himself by his glorious grace.

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That's why we call it the doctrines of grace because it's apart from us. Why did he save us, brothers and sisters?

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I don't know. Why did he choose you? Why did he choose me? But if he has, dear saints, let us live for him.

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Let us be with him. Let us preach him. Let us give our all to him.

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Let us be willing. As we were talking just before the service, if he calls us to die for his cause, in his service, then, dear saints, let us do that with joy because he has brought us.