SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/15/2021 11:11 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “Chosen To Be Prepared”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
10:1a
Message of the
verse: “Jesus
summoned His twelve disciples and gave them authority”
The third is that the twelve were
chosen to be prepared. This section will
take us a few days to get through. We
have seen earlier that the twelve were converted and also called for the
ministry Jesus called them into, however they were far from ready to serve the
Lord. I think it goes without saying
that training is an essential part of any work, and that includes the Lord’s
work, and I suppose it takes some to get prepared longer than others. We have seen that the disciples left their
nets, their crops, their tax collecting booths, and some left other business;
and for three years they walked with the Lord Jesus, and while doing this they
were watching, listening, observing, learning, and often they were
misunderstanding exactly what was going on, but they were there with Him.
John MacArthur states that one
writer says of these men:
“They have no occupation;
they have given up the pursuits in which they were engaged: their fishing, their tax gathering, and their
agriculture. They carry on no business;
they simply walk around and behind their leader, talking to each other or to
Him, and when He speaks to the people who begin to gather, they listen just
like everybody else. The only thing they
do is go with Him from place to place.
They are idle, and it begins to be a question of whether it is not doing
harm and giving rise to reproach that twelve grown men are being kept idle for
no apparent purpose and neglecting oblivious duties in order to do so. (Herbert
Lockyer, All the Apostles of the Bible [Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 1972], 13).”
This
is what it must have looked like to many of those who came to Jesus. It was very easy to see what He was doing;
but why were the Twelve with Him? These
men did very little to help Him, and on more than one occasion, they disagreed
with and even tried to interfere with the exact thing that He was doing.
I
think that we all can realize that these twelve men were with Jesus for a
purpose, and not a moment’s time with Him was wasted. I do have to admit that perhaps the time that
Judas spent with him was wasted, but then that was also a fulfillment of
prophecy so perhaps it was not wasted.
It is evident that Jesus knew they needed to be taught and to be
trained. These men had to be trained
before they were sent out. They had to
learn as disciples before they could minister as apostles. I remember after the Lord was resurrected and
that the Holy Spirit had come upon these men that they were arrested and one of
the things that their captives said was “these men were with Jesus,” and so all
that training that they received certainly was fulfilled in these twelve
men. The training these men received
from Jesus was an unimaginable and unparallel privilege. The following is what Jesus said to every
believer “Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me” (Matthew 11:29). No believer can grow in Christ apart from
learning from Him, and that has to come from His Word. However the training of the twelve disciples
was absolutely unique. In all of
history, they alone were taught directly by the incarnate God, and that is a
statement we need to dwell upon, and this happened as they lived with Him
inseparably for those three years.
7/15/2021 11:35 PM
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