EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/11/2026
8:41 PM
My Worship
Time Focus:
“Introduction
to Common Men, Uncommon Calling”
Bible
Reading & Meditation Reference:
Luke 6:12-13
Message of the verses: “It was at this time that He went off to
the mountain to pray, and He spent the whole night in prayer to God. And when day came, He called His disciples to
Him and chose twelve of them, whom He also named as apostles.
“Throughout redemptive history, God has chosen
ordinary people to do extraordinary things, a truth that the apostle Paul
emphasized in 1 Corinthians 1:20-29:
20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the
scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom
of the world? 21 For since, in the
wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God
through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom,
23 but we preach Christ crucified, a
stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and
Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men,
and the weakness of God is stronger than men. 26 For consider your calling, brothers: not many
of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not
many were of noble birth. 27 But God
chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in
the world to shame the strong; 28 God
chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring
to nothing things that are, 29 so that
no human being might boast in the presence of God.
God chose
Abraham, an idolater (Josh. 24:2), to be His friend (Isa. 41:8) and the father
physically of Israel (Isa. 51:2; Luke 1:73; John 8:56) and spiritually of
believing Gentiles (Rom. 4:16; Gal. 3:7).
Joseph entered Egypt as a slave, rose in God’s providence to be the
prime minister (Gen. 41:39-44; 45:9, 26), and was used by God to preserve His
people (Gen. 45:5; 50:20). After
spending forty years in exile in the land of Midian (Acts 7:23, 30), Moses, the
murderer, was used by God to deliver Israel from bondage in Egypt. A harlot named Rahab from the destroyed Canaanite
city of Jericho became an ancestor of the Lord Jesus Christ (Matt. 1:5) and an
example of a faithful believer (Heb. 11:31).
David went from being a lowly shepherd to delivering Israel from the
Philistines by killing Goliath, and eventually became Israel’s greatest king. And despite living in the wilderness (Luke
1:80), wearing rough clothing, and eating a wile diet (Matt. 3:4), John the
Baptist was declared by our Lord the greatest man who ever lived (Matt. 11:11).
“Consistent with that pattern, when
Jesus chose twelve men to be His official representatives, He chose common,
ordinary men. The Twelve were not from
the established religious elite; none were Pharisees, Sadducees, priests,
Levites, rabbis, or scribes. None were exceptionally
wealthy (with the possible exception of Matthew, who gained what he had by
extorting his fellow Israelites). Nor
were the apostles chosen from the
intellectual elite—the Old Testament scholars; the literate; highly educated;
the theologically astute. Instead, they
were ‘uneducated and untrained men,’ noteworthy only for ‘having been with
Jesus’ (Acts 4:13). Several were
fishermen, one was a tax collector and hence a traitor to his people, another
was a political revolutionary. All
except for Judas Iscariot were Galileans, scorned as unsophisticated and
uncouth by the more cultured Judeans.
Yet the lives and ministries of these men (Minus Judas Iscariot and
including Paul) would change the course of history.
“Before examining each of these men
in detail in the next few chapter, some general background information is in
order. This introductory chapter will
therefore discuss the setting for the Lord’s choosing of the Twelve, His
selecting them, His sending of them as His official representatives, and
conclude by looking at their significance.”
6/11/2026
9:16 PM
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