James the Less, Thaddaeus & Simon the Zealot

Moore's Corner Church

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The apostles we're going to be looking at this week, three of them, are James the Less, Simon the

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Zealot, and Thaddeus, who is also known as Labeus. So I'm doing these three apostles together because we just don't know that much about them, so what do you say?

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Really, what we know is their names, and it can get really confusing since there are already more significant apostles with these same names.

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Peter is also named Simon. There is another James, and Thaddeus, his real name is

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Judas, but not that Judas, because in the early church, obviously

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Judas is not a name you wanted to go by, so sometimes he's called Jude or Thaddeus or Labeus.

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Now here's the thing about these apostles. When they are listed in each gospel, sometimes their name is used, other times their nickname is used.

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So the lists are not identical. Also, when the apostles are listed, they seem to be put in groups of four.

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So Peter, James, John, and Andrew, that is one grouping of four. Peter always mentioned first.

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Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, and Thomas is the next group of four. Philip is always mentioned first in that grouping.

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And the apostles seem to get less significant as you go, because by the final group of four,

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James, Thaddeus, Simon, and then Judas, James is mentioned first in that grouping every time, but we just don't know much about these men.

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So like I said, all we have basically is their name.

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James is called the son of Alphaeus, but usually he gets referred to as James the

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Less, because the other apostle of James, the brother of John, he was either older, taller, more significant, or all of the above.

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Thaddeus is sometimes called the apostle with three names, since he is also referred to as Labeus and Judas, not

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Iscariot. Then Simon the Zealot stands in the shadow of the other

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Simon, Simon Peter, so he's distinguished as Simon the Zealot. The Zealots wanted to overthrow

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Rome, or he is called Simon the Canaanite, which likely means he was brought up, came from the city of Cana, where Jesus performed his first miracle.

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So I know this is a lot of information to take in, but in conclusion, not a lot else we can say about these men.

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There are traditions about them, which may or may not be accurate, but rarely, if ever, do they speak in Scripture.

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And I'll have more to say about the apostles in my sermon later on, which I've titled

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Twelve Ordinary Men. And if you want more on this subject, I've recommended the book a few times by John MacArthur, which is called

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Twelve Ordinary Men. Who knows what the book about the women are called? There's another book, Twelve Ordinary Men, and then there's

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Twelve Extraordinary Women. So the apostles were ordinary, the women were extraordinary, so make of that what you will.