Twelve Ordinary Men (Mark 3:13-19)

TWELVE ORDINARY MEN

(Mark 3:13-19)

13 ¶  And He *went up on the mountain and *summoned those whom He Himself wanted, and they came to Him. 14  And He appointed twelve, so that they would be with Him and that He could send them out to preach, 15  and to have authority to cast out the demons. 16  And He appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom He gave the name Peter), 17  and James, the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James (to them He gave the name Boanerges, which means, "Sons of Thunder"); 18  and Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Zealot; 19  and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Him.”

            In today’s lesson on the Gospel of Mark we will be looking at the twelve men that Jesus chose to be His disciples of which eleven of them would also become His apostles. 

            I have mentioned in earlier lessons on the Gospel of Mark that I listen to messages by John MacArthur and also look at the commentary by Warren Wiersbe to help me to understand the passages better.  As I listened to the message on these verses by John MacArthur I learned many new things, things that I would have never seen in these verses, but things that make a lot of sense to me and I hope will to you to.  With that said I will also say that there will be quotes from the message by John MacArthur that I will use in this lesson, quotes that will help enable us to better understand who these twelve men were, where they came from, how they ministered, how they were chosen, and a look into how it is believed that these men died for the cause of Christ. 

            Warren Wiersbe speaks of Mark’s Gospel saying, “Marks Gospel is on what Jesus did rather than what Jesus said.”  He said this in reference of between Mark 3:19 & 20 in the life of Jesus He preached the “Sermon on the Mount and also participated in the events described in Luke 7:1-8:3 which Mark leaves out of his writing.

            As Warren Wiersbe begins his commentary on this section of Scripture he begins a new chapter in his book “Be Diligent” he writes “No matter where He went, God’s Servant was thronged by excited crowds (Mark 3:7-9, 20, 32; 4:1).  Had Jesus been a ‘celebrity’ and not a servant, He would have catered to the crowds and tried to please them (See Matt. 11:7-15).  Instead, He withdrew from the crowds and began to minister especially to His disciples.  Jesus knew that most of the people who pushed to get near Him were shallow and insecure, but His disciples did not know this.  Lest they take all this ‘success’ seriously, Jesus had to teach these men the truth about the crowds and the kingdom.  In this section, we see our Lord’s three responses to the pressure of the crowd.”  The responses that Dr. Wiersbe is talking about are from Marks Gospel 3:13-4:34, and in this lesson we will only be looking at chapter 3:13-19.  He entitles this section “He Founded a New Nation.”  This title falls right into the things that I want to bring up in this lesson, things that may be new and different to some but not to all.

            What is it that most people think of when they think of the disciples of Jesus Christ?  Perhaps they think of modern churches where they will see pictures of the Lord Jesus and under Him His disciples, high and lifted up.  What did Jesus see when He first looked at these men?  Well Jesus gave some of them nick names so that we get a glimpse of what they looked like when He first meet them.  We think of Peter as Peter, but his name was Simon and Jesus gave him the name Peter, which means rock.  What do we think of when we think about John?  Perhaps the disciple that Jesus loved, but he and his brother’s nickname was “sons of thunder,” or we might say hot heads.  “Lu 9:54  And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did?”

 One of His disciples is “Simon the Zealot” and a zealot was a person who wanted to destroy Rome and when they got the chance they would even kill a Roman soldier, and then you had Levi who Jesus named Matthew who worked for the Romans collecting taxes.  You wonder how Simon and Levi first got along. 

Now when we get to the place where Jesus is about to name His Apostles, which is partly described in our passage in Mark we see from Luke’s description of this event that Jesus stayed up all night, from sundown until sunrise praying to His Father.  This was a big decision to be make, for Jesus would take special care in these twelve men for they were the ones that would turn the world upside down with the good news of the gospel.  Some may wonder why Jesus had to pray all night in order to make this decision and yet we see many times in the Gospels Jesus praying to His Father, and what I take out of this is that if the Son of God prayed before making big decisions then I should too for this was a great example for all believers to follow.  Another example that I see here is that Jesus was so close to His Father that He desired to talk to Him at length and I think the better we know God the more we desire to talk to Him.

In the sermon that I listened to by John MacArthur and the commentary I read from Warren Wiersbe there is a question that they ask and answer, and that question is why twelve apostles? The answer to this question is something that I knew partly, but the part that I did not know was very interesting to me.  My answer to this question would come from “Re 21:14  And the wall of the city had twelve foundation stones, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.”  In Luke 22 we read these words, “28  "You are those who have stood by Me in My trials; 29  and just as My Father has granted Me a kingdom, I grant you 30  that you may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom, and you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”

From John MacArthur’s sermon we read these words, “Twelve Apostles...why twelve? Because they constitute the new spiritual leadership of Israel. An unmistakable message is sent them to the leaders of Israel that they are unqualified, that they are exempted. An unmistakable message is sent to the nation that the corrupt leadership to which they have been subjected is rejected by God, judged and condemned. And this, as I said, escalates to its highest point of condemnation in the final week of our Lord's life in Jerusalem when He pronounces these fierce judgments on the leaders of Israel, recorded in Matthew 23 and when He says He's going to bring the whole system down. Later on even in the gospel of Mark chapter 13, you have the same thing, where He's going to bring the temple down, smash it to the ground, not one stone left on another.”

When we study about the Church we must remember that there is nothing said about it or prophesied about it in the OT.  This is one of the reasons that many people did not recognize Jesus as Messiah, especially one who kept telling His disciples that He was going to die, for they were looking for a conquering King who would defeat the Romans and then reign over Israel.  The OT did foretell of the Messiah who would suffer and die as seen in Psalm 22, and Isaiah 52-53, but nothing about the Church.  I have heard the coming of Jesus Christ the first time and the second time is like looking at two mountains in the distance not knowing that there is a large valley between the two mountains.  When one understands the prophecy in Daniel 9:24-27 they will see that the Messiah would come 483 years after King Artaxerxes give a proclamation to Nehemiah that is found in Nehemiah 2, to go to Jerusalem and rebuild the city, the walls, and finish the temple.  The total length of Daniel’s prophecy is 490 years, but from the time of Nehemiah two until the time that Jesus offered Himself as King and was rejected is 483 years, and after that the prophecy says that the Messiah would be killed.  Why is this important?  Because the prophecy stops with seven years left on it and then Daniel explains that when it will begin again.  It begins when the “antichrist” will make a pack with the nation of Israel and will end at the second coming of Jesus Christ to the earth.  This is seen in Revelations 6-19.  In this gap or valley between the two mountains is what we call the Church age, and these twelve men (minus Judas) will head up this new age. 

These men are not called apostles.  John MacArthur writes:  “By the way, the word “apostle” is a good word. It's a word that everybody would have understood in Israel. It was an Aramaic word that was common in the vernacular language they used the word, it simply mean...it's the word shalea, and what it basically meant was an official representative...an

official representative. And if you were a shalea, you came with all the authority and all the rights and all the privileges of the person who had delegated his authority to you. So it traces back to an old Jewish institution of shaleawhere somebody like the Sanhedrin had its shalea, the rabbis had their shalea, delegated authority to them and they would act in their behalf in matters regarding legal issues and religious issues both.

“Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God, has all authority over truth. He has all authority over life. And He delegates that authority to these Twelve men as His official representatives. And in Jewish thinking, the shaleaor the commissioned Apostle acted in the same authority as the one who gave them the commission. So they understood. These men were given serious authority.”

In the last lesson on Mark we talked about a change that was coming in the ministry of Jesus because the Pharisees said that Jesus gets His power to do miracles from Satan, and it was at this point that Jesus began to teach in parables, and it is also at this time that He begins to teach these twelve men more intensely than before.  Since Jesus was going to turn over the message of the Gospel and the Church age to these twelve men He began to spend more time with them and less time with the crowds. 

I want to quote again from MacArthur’s sermon here to explain more about the training of these apostles.  “Now let me just give you the sequence so you can kind of get it in mind. Sometimes people get confused about how this calling worked. There are five phases to it. Simple, first of all, phase number one, they were following Jesus. They came and they followed Jesus, drawn by the Father, of course, no man comes after Me less the Father draws him. So they were drawn by the Father to follow Jesus. They were disciples then, learners, students.

“There's a second step and we saw this already in chapter 1 with Peter and Andrew, James and John and in chapter 2 of Mark, with Matthew, they left everything to follow Him. So first they were some time followers, part time followers, interested students. The second step was when they left everything. Remember, drop your nets, follow Me. They're still learners but they've now taken a

second step, full-time followers.

“This is step three, they are called to become Apostles. They're now called in to training, to be with Him intimately 24/7, the intimate group of Twelve for the purpose of sending them out to preach.

“Fourthly, later on, they will be sent for the first time to do some preaching. They'll have their sort of inauguration, initiation ministry opportunity. That will be the fourth step when they're finally ready to go and give it a shot.

“The fifth step is when they receive the great commission, repeated in Acts 1:8, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel...Judea...Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the uttermost part of the world.

“So there really are those five steps. And this is step three, this is right in the middle where they are now having forsaken all students of Jesus and He tells them, “You Twelve are going to be the ones I'm going to train to be My preachers. Down the road I'm going to send you. And finally when I'm gone, you're going to go to the world.” So this is pretty strategic, isn't it? I mean, this is the future and there is no plan B. Let's look at the text, the calling...just briefly...the calling. “They went up on the mountain,” indefinite mountain, there are a lot to choose from in Galilee around Capernaum, plenty. “And He summoned those whom He Himself wanted and they came to Him.’”

There is one more quote from MacArthur’s message that I think is important to look at and that will tell what happened to these twelve men (minus Judas for we know what happened to him).

“What happened to these guys? According to tradition handed down from the early church, the same fate fell all the Apostles except John who was exiled to the isle of Patmos. Peter was crucified upside down at his request according to Eusebius. His brother Andrew reportedly was also crucified, tied instead of nailed to a cross to prolong his suffering. James the brother of John is the only Apostle whose death is recorded in Scripture. He was executed by Herod Agrippa. Philip was said to have been stoned to death in Asia Minor but not before multitudes came to faith in Christ through his preaching.

“The traditions vary concerning how Philip's close companion Nathanael, Bartholomew, died. Some say he was bound and thrown into the sea. Others said he was crucified. Matthew may have been burned at the stake. Thomas likely reached India where some traditions say he was killed with a spear. According to the Apocryphal martyrdom of James, James the son of Alphaeus was stoned to death by the Jews for preaching Christ. Simon the Zealot according to some traditions preached the gospel in Egypt, North Africa and Persia where he was martyred by being sawn in half like Isaiah. Other traditions say he was eventually crucified by the Romans. Thaddaeus, mamma's boy, was a preacher of the gospel in modern Turkey and he was clubbed to death.

“No backup plan, and no backup crew and a risky strategy, wouldn't you say? But these men are not the explanation for the advance of the gospel. They were available and they were empowered and the gospel went over the whole world and continues to do so as a legacy to their faithfulness. Our Lord uses ordinary, weak, failing, ignorant saints...guess why? The only kind there are. Welcome to the group.”

I have mentioned in other lessons and SD’s that my favorite character in the OT is Balaam’s donkey and the reason is that she was available to do the Lord’s work when He asked her to do it.  She did not argue, but just did what He wanted her to do.  As believers in Jesus Christ we need to do the same thing and that seems to me that this is what these men did.  Jesus called them and they came to serve Him and as we look back at the work that they did the only way that we can understand how they did it is found in “Ac 4:13  Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus.”  I hope that others will say that about us to.