Today we are going to begin Matthew chapter 10 in our ongoing study of the account of Christ’s life and ministry. This chapter marks a major turning point in the ministry of Jesus on the earth. A refocusing away from the crowds and toward the training of His 12 apostles. Matthew makes this change quite clear in the way that he references them in verses 1 and 2, calling them disciples in verse 1 and apostles in verse 2. If you remember back 2 weeks ago, as we concluded our look at chapter 9, Jesus remarked on the plentiful harvest before Him as He looked out over the multitudes and the scant workforce to bring in the harvest. From this point forward, He begins to build up that labor force that would become the foundation of the church for the next 2000 years.
Jesus had seen the crowds coming to Him, the multitudes that were coming. Within them He saw a harvest, a harvest of righteous judgment that would come at the hand of God. An inevitable judgment, that would either burn or barn all who were in the field. In His love and in His mercy Jesus, moved with compassion as we saw in verse 36, Jesus told His disciples to pray for laborers who would be sent out into the field to harvest those who had been transformed into imperishable seed. And so the training of the 12 begins.
Not to say that Jesus does not speak to the crowds after this point, but we will see in chapter 13 Jesus beginning to teach in parables in order to confuse and annoy the people who were just there for the show. We see Him beginning to pose His questions directly to His disciples and teach to them. They had completed their lecture hall classes and now they were moving into their internship. Directed and intentional training in what their lives would look like as Apostles of Jesus Christ after He ascended into heaven. That major thrust begins in verse 5 until the end of the chapter as Jesus sends out the 12 in order to begin performing miracles and preaching the kingdom.
But before we get to that, were going to spend some time looking at these first four verses as Jesus commissions the 12. Let us begin this morning reading these verses. Matthew 10:1-4.
“Jesus summoned His 12 disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. Now the names of the 12 apostles are these: the first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; and James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James the son of Alpheus, and Thaddeus; Simon the zealot, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed Him.”
Today we are going to look at the commissioning of these 12 men as the apostles of Jesus Christ. And were going to spend a little bit of time looking at the men themselves to get an idea of who it is that Jesus chose to be His arbiters in the world after He would ascend into heaven. As we look at these men, we will see something amazing about God in the way He chose very unexceptional, ordinary men to do the greatest work any human beings would be tasked with.
But before we do that, I want to look at what it is Jesus did here in verse 1 when He picked these 12 men. Jesus was pulling 12 men out from among the crowd, singling them out and investing them with a special authority. We need to understand the context of that commissioning in the broader view of the ministry of Jesus. The Lord’s ministry only lasted for about three years according to most estimates. From the time of His baptism until His resurrection and ascension is about the same amount of time it takes for someone to go through seminary. And what is even more amazing is that the 12 were not even with Jesus for all three of these years. We tend to think about them following His footsteps the whole time because their calling in each of the Gospels seems to come right at the beginning. As we understand the ministry of Jesus, piecing it together through a harmony of the Gospels, we see that this calling happened about halfway through Christ’s active earthly ministry.
There were basically four phases of Christ’s training of the 12. The first was there initial conversion. Some of the disciples as we saw in our time back in Matthew chapter 3 were followers of John the Baptist. In the Gospel of John, we learn in chapter 1 that Andrew, the brother of Peter, was one of these initial disciples. When John the Baptist points to Jesus as the Lamb of God he grabs his brother and they begin to follow Jesus. Philip and Nathaniel also followed him from the beginning. But this was not the same as what we see in Matthew chapter 10. They were called to believe in Christ, and they did, but after that, they went back to their jobs.
The second phase of their training begins in Matthew chapter 4, in verses 18-22, this is where and Jesus saw Andrew and Peter casting their nets into the sea, and He told them to follow Him and become fishers of men. They had already been converted, they already recognize that Jesus was the Christ, the Lamb of God, but now He is calling them to leave their nets, to leave their secular employment to follow Him exclusively and completely. This was there calling to ministry and their lecture hall training would begin. During this time, they were part of the crowd. There were large numbers of disciples, of followers of Jesus that would come to hear Him teach on the hillsides and seashore. There were crowds of people who wanted to hear Jesus, to see the miracles, to know what He was teaching. They are all called disciples, but not in the sense of the 12 that we see here in Matthew chapter 10.
This part of their training lasted about a year and a half. Jesus spent the first 18 months of His ministry in the area of Galilee moving from town to town preaching and teaching and in this time He gathered many disciples.
The third phase of their training begins with their appointment as the 12 apostles. It is their internship, the practical field experience that they would be gaining as Jesus gives them authority over unclean spirits and to heal every kind of disease and then sends them out to preach the gospel of the kingdom. But He does not send them out unsupervised. We see at the end of chapter 10 them returning to Jesus to report back and to continue their instruction. They were getting a feel for the ministry well still receiving that intense training and that is what we are going to spend a little bit more time talking about here.
The fourth phase came after the resurrection and ascension of Christ. When Jesus went back to heaven and sent the Holy Spirit. When Jesus gave them the great commission, the command to go into all the world and make disciples of every nation, teaching everything that he had commanded and then at Pentecost giving them the power to do that by pouring out His Spirit upon them.
We are going to look at the beginning of this third phase. The inducting them into the ministry internship program. Making them into His apostles. It is noteworthy here the change in terms. In verse one, Jesus summoned His 12 “disciples.” There were more than just 12 to choose from initially. In Luke chapter 6 we read that when the time came for Him to select His 12 apostles, Jesus went off to the mountain to pray and He spent the whole night in prayer to God. Before announcing His choice, Jesus spent all night, a good 10 to 12 hours of intense agonizing prayer over who would become His apostles. Now I do not believe that He was deciding who to choose, that choice had been sovereignly made before the foundation of the world, but I believe He was praying for the 12 that He would choose.
In the morning, Jesus called all of his disciples to Him and chose the 12 that He would name as His apostles. The word “apostle” simply means “one who is sent” but there is far more to it than simply being a messenger. In the time of Jesus, it was common for the rules of Israel and for prominent rabbis to have “shaliah.” This is the Hebrew equivalent of the Greek word “Apostle.” These were men spoke for on behalf of their rabbit when he was unavailable. When they spoke, they spoke with all the authority of the one whom they represented. When they taught, they taught with the full authority of the Rabbi. So, Jesus investing these 12 men with His authority, setting them apart as His chosen apostles and this was not uncommon for the time, everyone would have understood what it was that He was doing.
What was uncommon was the authority that Jesus had the right to invest in them. Jesus did not just give them authority to teach His message, to represent Him in preaching the kingdom of heaven. He gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out and to heal every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. Jesus invested in them His own divine authority over the natural world and the supernatural hold. We do not share in that authority. It is not all disciples of Jesus who can claim that. Many today try; we see it all the time in the charismatic and in the health and wealth movements. But this authority was delegated only to the twelve and to their close associates after the resurrection.
These 12 men were given special privileges that would not be common and would never be given to anyone else in church history. As the Apostles of Jesus, they would be the foundation of the church centered on Jesus as the chief cornerstone. They would be the channels through which the New Testament would be given. They received truth from God by divine revelation. We see in Acts 2:42 that they became the source of all true church doctrine, “they continued steadfastly in the apostle’s doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in prayer.” In fact, we see that before the New Testament was completed, the apostles teaching was the only source for truth about Christ and church doctrine. Their teaching was received the same authority as the written word of God. Really, the New Testament is nothing more than the Holy Spirit inspired record of the apostle’s teachings.
We see in Hebrews 2:3-4 that their unique power to perform miracles confirmed this message. We read that the gospel, “first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him, God also bearing witness both with signs and wonders, with various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit.” In other words, God confirmed his word through the apostles by the miracles they were able to perform. Authority that was given to them here in Matthew chapter 10. The New Testament indicates that only the apostles and those who were closely associated with them had this ability and why we see in 2 Corinthians 12:12 that miracles were recognized as the signs of the apostles.
They would also function in the Church age as the examples of virtue, setting the standard for godliness and true spirituality after Christ had ascended in to heaven. They were men of character and integrity, setting the standard for all who would become leaders in the church after them and for all who called themselves Christians after. But that is not how they started. They did not begin as paragons of godliness.
We are not going to take the time right now to look at each of these men in turn. They were perfectly ordinary, unexceptional men when Jesus called them. They were fishermen and craftsmen and a tax collector. Scripture does not give us much detail about several of them. We know Peter, Andrew, James, and John because there is a little bit more written about them. We know Matthew as a tax collector, Thomas the doubter, and Judas the betrayer. But without looking at the list, you probably could not name the other five. Do not worry, most people cannot, I do not hold it against you.
I was considering doing a series of sermons on the 12 apostles but have decided instead to hold off for Sunday school series once we complete our time studying the person and work of Jesus comes to an end. There is a wonderful book by John MacArthur called Twelve Ordinary Men that highlights each of these men in turn. Describing both who they were when Jesus called them as well as what church history tells us they went on to accomplish. It is both humbling and inspiring because it presents these men as they were, not as they are so often pictured in medieval art and in the stained-glass windows of the massive cathedrals of Europe that are named after them.
But that is not to these men were, they were not larger-than-life figures or brilliant minds. They were ordinary men with mundane jobs before Jesus appointed them His apostles. Some people would have gone a very different route I am sure. Jesus could have used His popularity from His early ministry, performing miracles in the big cities throughout the world. Dazzling crowds of people, performing miracles in the halls of kings and emperors. But He did the exact opposite. He began to emphasize the very things that made His message controversial when the crowds were at their largest. He began driving away the spectators and thrill seekers by teaching things that didn’t seem to make sense at first glance and some that were downright weird. Among those who stayed where the 12 that He appointed to represent Him on the earth.
Christ strategy for advancing his kingdom hinged on those men rather than the great crowds or great people of the world. Jesus worked through a few very fallible individuals.
Something else to think about is this. When Jesus chose the 12 to be His official representatives to perform miracles and to carry His message to the world, He did not choose a single Rabbi or scribe, the religious scholars of the Jewish world. He did not choose a Pharisee or priest, the height of righteousness and piety within the Jewish world. He did not choose a Sadducee, the head of the religious establishment, the rulers of the temple. The 12 men that He chose to be His apostles were a judgment against the established religion of the now largely apostate Israelites. It was a very open renunciation of those men and their organizations, pointing to their corruption. Instead, Jesus chose men who were not theologically trained, fishermen, craftsmen, and a tax collector. Ordinary working-class, blue-collar guys.
There was no cleverness or wisdom of the apostles to come up with a religion that shaped world history, it was the power of the Word of God. There was no strength of personality that drew massive crowds, that could convert 4000 people in one sermon like we see in the book of Acts. It was the convicting of the Holy Spirit and the work of God in the lives of those who came to hear the simple men relay the message that had been entrusted to them. Throughout the history of God’s work on earth we see Him using the unworthy and molding them into powerful tools in His hands.
They became great spiritual leaders and great preachers under the power of the Holy Spirit, not because of innate skill or ability or academic qualifications. Their influences owing only to the power of the message that they preached.
Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1:26-29, “for you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence.”
The gospel will always stand contrary to human wisdom, earthly wisdom. The world does not recognize believers as being men and women of reason and logic, Christians are unsophisticated, foolish. God’s favorite tools are just these nobodies, so that no one can boast about their accomplishments. God chooses the lowly in order that He might receive all the glory. He chooses the weak so that no one can attribute power to the tool over the one who wields it.
In thinking about the apostles of Jesus we need to see that, as James says of Elijah in 5:17, that they were men “with a nature like ours.” They were not chosen by God because they were somehow different from us. Their transformation into the extraordinary men that form the foundation of the church can only be attributed to the work of the one who chose them.
Many believers are discouraged and disheartened when their spiritual life and witness to the gospel suffer because of their sin or their failure. “How can God use somebody like me that messes up so often?” But that is exactly the kind of people Jesus chose to work with. God chose the humble, the lowly, the meek, and the spiritually weak so that there was never any question about the source of the world changing power of their lives. It was not those 12 men who changed the world, it was the truth of God and the power of God in the message that they were entrusted with.
Their transformation looks just like our own should. It is significant that Scripture does not cover over there defects and failures. The point is not to portray them as the holiest of men elevated above the rest of us mere mortals. Instead what we see is Scripture making great deal of their human weaknesses and failures. If you read through the Old Testament and the men and women that God used throughout the history of His redemption plan, you see sin and failure everywhere you look. The first thing Noah did after getting off the Ark was get drunk. Abraham lied over and over again because he did not trust God. The Israelites are a train wreck of sin and rebellion no matter how man times God calls them back. Even the great David was an adulterous and murderer.
The 12 were men who the Gospels record as being amazingly thickheaded. It is quite clear why they were not the academic elite. In fact, we see them described at different times throughout the Gospels as being thick, dull, stupid, and blind. In order to overcome their lack of spiritual understanding, Jesus just kept teaching the truth. Going over the same lessons over and over again until they finally started to sink in.
We see in the 12 an utter lack of humility. They are portrayed as being self-absorbed, self-promoting, proud, jostling over the prime seats. At the Last Supper and just before the institution of the Lord’s Supper, communion, they were arguing about who would be the greatest among them. To overcome their utter lack of humility, Jesus lead by example, washing their feet, modeling servanthood. We see in Philippians 2 the ultimate act of humility as Jesus humbled Himself to the point of death on the cross.
Not only were they proud blockheads, they also lacked faith. We have already seen to times in the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus says to them, “you will little faith,” and we will see two more. Even after He had risen from the dead Jesus still had to rebuke them for their unbelief and hardness of heart. How did Jesus overcome their lack of faith? By doing miracles and wondrous works. By putting them in scenarios where they were forced to trust in Him.
This group of men was so unremarkable that it makes us wonder why Jesus would put up with their weaknesses and not simply pick a different group. Why would he single out 12 apostles who had no understanding, no humility, no faith, no commitment, no power? Because His strength is made perfect in weakness. Because he chooses the weak things of the world to shame the mighty. Because no one could ever see these 12 men and conclude that they changed the world because of their own abilities. There is simply no earthly explanation for what they were able to accomplish, the glory can only go to God alone.
In acts 4:13 we read, “Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were on educated and untrained men, they were amazed, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus.” The same must be true for all of those who wish to serve God in this world. The process of discipleship can take the most ordinary and un-extraordinary person and turn them into amazing tools in the hands of God. And that happens when we spend time with Jesus, when we learn at the feet of Jesus, when we are challenged in our faith and in our lack of understanding by Jesus. Now we cannot physically walk alongside him as his apostles did, but He is sent His Holy Spirit to live within us, to guide and to grow us and He is left behind His inspired Word as our textbook.
As we look at the to preach the gospel in a world of darkness over the next couple of weeks, as we look at Christ’s warning about being sent out as sheep in the midst of wolves, when you feel ordinary at the best of times or like a failure in the worst; remember that that is exactly the kind of person that Jesus chose to be one of His 12 apostles. If He could turn those 12 men into world changing preachers and evangelists, imagine what He could do with you.