Services | 12 Appointed

Bulletin

Hymn # 67 “Praise Him, Praise Him”

SCRIPTURE READING – Psalm 150
Giving of Selves and Our Offerings
OFFERTORY PRAYER
OFFERTORY MUSIC – Pru Hungate

Praise and Worship
“Battle Belongs”
“Raise a Hallelujah”
“Endless Light”

Proclamation of the Word
Message by Pastor Joe
“12 Appointed ”


PRAYER TIME / Time of Reflection
“Who You Say I Am”

Sermon Notes
Mark 3:13 Jesus goes up a mountain and summons who He wants
Mark 3:14 & 15 12 appointed to 1. Be with Him; 2 preach & 3 cast out demons
Mark 3:16 11 are appointed and named
Mark 3:17 The 12th betrays Him

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Scritpures

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Transcript of Service

If you were going to start a new endeavor that would impact the entire world, who would you hire or recruit to start this organization? Probably you would hire those people who are successful and and had specific skills for what you were trying to accomplish. Or maybe you would take the tack of saying I'm gonna take the best and the brightest, but I'm gonna train them as what I need for them to do to change the world.

Jesus is going to recruit 12 people,

but he has an entirely different way of recruiting his people who are going to change the world. Come and see what
(Music)
your Bibles and you should, turn to the Gospel of Mark Chapter 3, we'll start with verse 13. Now up until this point, Jesus' ministry has been pretty much confined to himself in the sense of he's been preaching and teaching and performing miracles and casting out demons, and some people have come and gone, some people have come to receive healing and to watch miracles, and others have come to listen to teachings and be upset or whatever. There have been some who consistently followed him, but now there's going to be a transition in Jesus' ministry.

Mark Chapter 3, verse 13 says this, "And he being Jesus went up on the mountain, and some of those whom he himself wanted, and they came to him." It's interesting, Jesus frequently will go up on the mountain to either make decisions or to pray on himself or to be transfigured. There are certain great events that happens in Jesus' life on mountaintops. So he summons certain people at whom he wants to join him.

He appointed 12 so that they would be with him and that he could send them out, and he's going to give them in essence three jobs to do. So he's sending them out to preach.

So he's going to expand his preaching ministry by these 12.

So it's not just him alone preaching that the kingdom of God is at hand, but that he is appointing them to do so.

And to have authority to cast out the demons.

So we see that he's giving them jobs to do, functions to do, and among those are to preach and to teach and to have authority to cast out demons. It doesn't necessarily mean that they will at times, but they're given that authority. So he's making them distinct from the others who have been following him. He wants them to preach, teach, and to cast out demons.

It's an amazing thing that what Jesus is doing, he is, if you will,

entrusting these 12 to do his ministry.

Now, most of us who tend to be A-types or like to be in control,

we don't like to delegate.

We want to be in total control.

But Jesus, the Son of God, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, has determined that even he himself will delegate some of his ministry, not his authority, but his ministry.

So he says, "And he appointed the 12."

So he picks 12.

I don't think necessarily there's a magic formula to 12 other than that there are 12 tribes,

but it doesn't seem that he's picked one person from each of the 12 tribes and that there's only pretty much two tribes left, Judah and Benjamin.

But he's going to pick 12 of these men to preach, teach, and have authority to cast out demons.

So the first one we are told is Simon, whom he gave the name Peter.

Peter is the meaning of little rock, a little stone. So he changes it. And it's frequent that Jesus will change people's names. It's also common that God changed people's names. For instance, it used to be Jacob and it was Israel.

So it's not uncommon when God is going to use somebody special that he changes your name. So the first person mentioned is Simon, who is also called Peter.

And James, the son of Zebedee.

I want to stop there.

I want to mention a few of these 12.

I'm going to start with James.

James is the older brother of John.

It says that he's there were the sons of Zebedee, which probably means that they were a prosperous family because not only were this family fishermen, they owned a fishing company. They had hired people other than the family to be part of their business.

But also probably they were a prestigious family because when Jesus was being tried, John was able to enter into the residence of the high priest and he was able to get Peter into the courtyard. So the family probably had some connections. So the reason that they're probably named the sons of Zebedee is to give you this. So these two brothers are probably the most prestigious of the group. And so he James, Jesus also calls John and James sons of thunder, which means they were probably loud mouths. They were they just spoke loudly. They made a big to do about everything. And you probably we would say bulls in China shops. You know, it was they were sons of thunder.

They weren't mild manner men. They're also ambitious because they wanted Jesus to appoint James and John to sit on either side of Jesus throne in the kingdom, which made the other apostles upset, probably because they hadn't thought of it first. And so these these two men, especially, didn't weren't ashamed of seeking, if you will, higher office. James was a part of the inner circle with Jesus. It was always you'll see reference of Peter, James and John.

There is only one time and I'll mention this later that James is spoken of by himself. Whenever he's spoken of, it's always with Peter, James and John. He was, I said, a part of that inner circle. And so he was with Jesus at the transfiguration. He would Jesus closer with those three were closer and the Garden of Gethsemane and Jesus had appealed to them to pray for him specifically. So they he was a part of that inner circle.

He was also a pretty confident person because when Jesus was a part of that inner circle, when Jesus was heading back to Jerusalem for what would be that last supper and that crucifixion, the disciples tried to dissuade Jesus from going back to Jerusalem.

But James said, no, no, no, let's go and let's die with him. So he was all in. He was devoted. He was willing to die for Jesus. So he had a passion for who was.

He also, as they were going to Jerusalem, that a city in Samaria,

disrespected Jesus.

So he and John went to Jesus. Do you want us to call fire down from heaven and consume, you know, kind of like Elijah? You know, so he was had this religious zeal. Let's if you disrespect our Lord, let's let's burn you out. He said, you know, calm down. Okay.

The only time James is ever mentioned alone is in Acts chapter 12, where

he was beheaded by Herod.

He was the first apostle to be martyred. So here's this one. Let all these plans to be important in the kingdom of God dies first

and dies by beheading.

And in case you think that that's unusual, just this week in Africa, I think it was a Congo, but I don't want to mention 70 people in a church were sealed up in that church and all 70 were beheaded.

What happened in the beginning of Jesus's ministry still going on.

He's still calling for those to love him and be disciples enough

to lose their head.

And so he was the son of deputy and John,

the brother of James.

But then he had given the names boangerines, which means sons of thunder.

You need to move on.

If you can get me verse 18, I'd appreciate it. And so this is the first one that I want to mention then. We're going to talk about the other ones that were named.

I want you to see their names on the screen.

I need verses through 17.

Okay.

Nope.

Okay, here we go.

I keep getting into a loop. Okay, there we go. And Andrew, he appointed and Philip. I want to talk about Philip.

Philip is one who had a Greek name, even though he was Jewish,

which is probably why when the Greeks came to seek an audience with Jesus, that they went to Philip first because they thought that maybe there was a connection there because he did have a Greek name.

Jesus was the one who sought him out. Usually we see when Jesus called people to come, they were there and they had met him before. They were either disciples of John the baptizer or something, but had had some connection and he calls them.

He seems to seek out Philip.

And when he did, Philip went to this annual and said, we have found the Lord.

And then Daniel, you know, can anybody come from Nazareth and whatever? And Philip continues to say, no, you need to come see. So Philip is automatically with the understanding of who Jesus is and he wants others to come.

Jesus also asked Philip at the feeding of the 5,000, where are we going to get bread?

Perhaps Philip was the quartermaster.

Judas Iscariot was the treasurer, but maybe it was Philip who always made sure that whatever needed to be done got done. So Jesus says, well, where do we find bread? And Philip's response is, you can do it. It's 200 denarias, not enough to pay for the bread that we need for all these people.

He was also at the Last Supper, followed up on Thomas's question about Jesus saying, you know where I'm going and you know the way. And Thomas goes, we don't know where you're going. How do we know the way?

And after Jesus answers that question, Jesus says about the father. And then Philip goes, show us the father and it's enough for us.

You see, even though Philip kind of had an understanding who Jesus was, he didn't have a complete understanding because he thought that Jesus needed to show someone other than himself, the father, when they were looking at the father in Jesus.

It is believed that he was put to death by stoning in Asia Minor.

Therefore, in these two that I mentioned, they have not met the great ending. ending Bartholomew and Matthew. I'm just going to briefly say, it's interesting that he chooses Matthew. When you were going to pick people to help you change the world, you would probably not pick somebody that's hated. No one likes a tax collector, and especially the Jews in this instance, because he was a tax collector for Rome, but Matthew was one. And Thomas, let's talk about Thomas.

Thomas gets a good and bad rap in this sense, as he's always called doubting Thomas.

However, he was more than that. He was a twin, probably because he was called Didymus, which means twin. Although it's possible that he wasn't a twin, maybe he just looked like somebody. Maybe he was somebody's doppelganger.

And so maybe that was kind of a funny way of referring to Thomas as, you know, like a lot of people think that I look like certain charismatic and handsome movie stars. I say, no, no, I'm not that guy.

So Thomas could have been like that guy who he looked like somebody famous or important. And so they kind of ribbed him by saying, you're Didymus, or he actually could have been a twin. Most people think he was probably a twin, probably good enough.

Again, he also wanted to die with Jesus.

He was confident that he should go and make sure that his end met with Jesus.

At the last supper again, like I said, he was told that we don't know where you're going.

How do we know how to get there?

We don't know the way.

He said he would only believe after Jesus was crucified and raised from the dead, if he actually saw the hands and the feet and could place his hand in the side of Jesus.

That's where he gets the name Dowdy and Thomas.

Now I think that's probably too unfortunate because most of us, if we had seen Jesus crucified and seen the nails in his hands and the nails in his feet and saw the soldier take a spear and thrust it into the side of Jesus and seen water and blood pouring out, we would pretty be convinced that he was dead and not coming back because a lot of the religious leaders always said there's no resurrection.

He wanted and Jesus granted that to Thomas.

Thomas did more than just say, "I was wrong."

When Jesus made the offer, he said, "My Lord, my boss, and my God."

He went from a doubter to total faith in who Jesus was. He wasn't just the Messiah, he was God.

Thomas probably went to India to minister.

There are a lot of Christians in India and there's a lot of people for some reason named Thomas, which probably confirms that Thomas was there ministering. Legend has it that he died by a spear killing him. That could be legend in the sense of because of touching the hands and the side that

the nice story, but no one knows quite actually how Thomas died.

"And James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddeus, and Simon, the zealot."

I want to mention Simon, the zealot.

He was a member of the zealot party, which was a zealous, extreme political movement that hated the Romans and wanted them cast out. Oftentimes, their movement was not just, "We want to vote you out." They would assassinate Roman people.

They had this great zeal for Israel and they wanted to make sure that the Romans were cast out and they were taking action to do it. They're almost, if you will, like a cult. They were extremely zealous and we get zealous from that kind of concept.

"We don't know much about his ministry other than this.

It is believed that he went to the British Isles to minister, but we don't know. And we don't know how he died, which is going to bring me to something in a moment.

"And Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him."

And so we now see that he picked 12, but only 11 would make the final cut, if you will, and then they had to replace Judas. The 11 decided to replace him, but then ultimately God replaced Judas with Paul.

Peter and Paul get most of...

I now need 1 Corinthians chapter 1.

Peter and Paul and John get the primary information about who were those who were leaders

of those picked by Jesus.

We know a lot about Peter and Paul. We don't know much about the others.

Most people will never know who you are.

Most people will never know what you did for the Lord.

And most people won't know how you died.

Whether like John, you die many years in your bed, or like James with your head beheaded,

you will be a mystery.

But only to us. God knows what you do, and God knows how you minister, where you minister, and when the ending of your ministry is.

(Silence)

God called fishermen.

Jesus called expo-lectors.

Jesus called a political zealot.

Jesus called people that we didn't even know what their background was

and what their end of days were.

If you and I were going to choose a group of people to change the world,

we probably wouldn't choose these 11.

We would choose people who were successful doing things, maybe successful in marketing, or sales, or management.

Or we would seek young people who were bright, brilliant geniuses and train them in what they needed to do to accomplish changing the world.

Jesus chose, and this is putting it even more high than it is, 12 ordinary men.

They were not extraordinary. They were extraordinary.

They were just ordinary, and they were so ordinary, they were extraordinary.

And it says, for it is written in Corinthians, "For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside.

Where is the wise man, and where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

For since the wisdom of God, the world through His wisdom did not come to know God. God was well pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.

For indeed, Jews asked for a sign, and Greeks searched for wisdom.

We preach Christ crucified to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Gentiles foolishness. But to those who believe are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God stronger than men. For consider your calling."

Paul just talked about the world thinks of foolishness and wisdom. And God says, "Okay, let's not think about Peter and James and John and Andrew and Philip and

Matthew and the other Simon. Let's not consider those guys the extraordinary guy. Consider your calling. God has called you to be His disciple.

For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble." I'm saying, "I didn't choose you because you're wise, that you're a genius. I didn't call you because you were mighty. Did you have this great strength of character and physical prowess? And I didn't call you

because you had some noble heritage."

I like the fishermen, the tax collector, and the political extremists.

But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. And God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are. Why would God, to change the world, choose us?

Why would He choose those first 12, those extraordinary people? We who are, well, you may be one of the exceptions who might be wise or might be mighty or might be noble, but I know I'm not in that group. So why would God call me

to stand here and talk to you? Because it's not about me, about Him. And if He goes, "You know, if I can use Joe,

I'll get the authority and the glory and the honor because everybody knows who He is.

And so it's no longer about me, but it's about Him." And that's why it's so unfortunate that so many well-known pastors who have written all kinds of books and gotten very wealthy and whatever and are considered so wonderful. And isn't God really appreciative that they're part of His ministry? They're missing the point. They didn't call you for you to be famous.

They called you like that one who no one knows where He ministered and no one knows what happened to Him when He died. That's you and me. And thanks be to God that He called you and me. I would much rather be an insignificant part of His ministry than not a part at all.

And I know because His word says that if I am faithful to His calling, I will not only hear, "Well done, thou good and faithful slaves."

I will also hear, "Come and enter into my rest and receive my reward."

God Himself will reward me. You may think I'm wonderful. You may think I'm, you know, we need a new pastor or whatever. God will ultimately reward me or shame me by what I have done for Him. But not only that, He has also chosen the basestings of the world and the despised God has chosen the things that are not so that He may nullify the things that are. Again, wise, genius, powerful men and women will be put to shame by what people we don't know about

have done for Him so that no man may boast before God. Again, He gave them the ministry to preach and to teach and to cast out demons.

He has given you and me the ministry of preaching and teaching and changing this world for Him.

In his last meeting with his disciples, he said that we are to go starting with Jerusalem

and then Judea and Samaria and the othermost parts of the world proclaiming who He is. For those of us who are in this building, we are from Jerusalem the othermost part of the world.

You've got to cross a couple of continents and some oceans to get here.

So we're right where Jesus wanted us to be. And if you're listening or seeing this on a broadcast and wherever you are, unless you're in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria,

you're at a further part of the world and God has placed you there to preach and to teach for Him to change the world.

Twelve extraordinary men.

Consider your calling.

You might say, "Well, I can't speak publicly or I can't do this or I can't do that." Now you're focusing on what you can do.

Why would you call fishermen if you were convinced that you could change them to be what you need?

Why would you call a tax collector who people hate unless you knew that you could change them? Take a look at John. He was called the son of thunder. He wanted to sit on the right or the left-hand side of God. He wanted to do all these great things. And what does he end up doing? He writes the gospel and he writes three letters and the letters that he writes is "My Little Children."

This boisterous guy. Now all of a sudden, "My Little Children, do what's right. Love what enough."

Then he's revealed through Jesus the revelation what's going to happen in the future.

A son of thunder, the one who lives a long time and has an effective ministry. His older brother, first martyr. I don't know how long our ministries will last.

And I don't know what the ending will be. To suffer martyrdom or to die in your bed.

But it's not the end that counts. It's what you do in the middle.

Ministering for him, teaching and preaching. Yes, I am called a pastor and I am called a minister,

but I'm not the only one. You're all ministers. You've all been called to preach. Maybe not behind a pulpit, but you need to preach and teach in your community and with your friends and with your family. Not because you're worthy and not because you're equipped, but because he called us.

I am who he says I am. Not what I think I am. Not what I think my abilities are. But his Holy Spirit in me gives me all the need that I have to accomplish the task that he has called me.

To some, maybe he has called to speak to thousands and tens of thousands of people.

And to others, maybe he simply called you to speak to a friend.

And like Philip, who went and got Nathaniel. Or Andrew, who went and got Peter.

You do what God has called you to do and let God worry about the results.

Just simply be who he's called you to be. You know