The Twelve

All right. Well, again, welcome to Opal Overtown. Glad you're able to be here. We are in week nine of the Gospel of Mark, and we had for a little while somehow misplaced those books of the Gospel of Mark. So if you want. If you want a copy of the Gospel of Mark with the notes, there's a bunch of them in the back wet by the coffee. So feel free to grab those. Those are free. You can grab one of those to take notes if you know that's something you want to do. Okay, week nine, we are in Mark. So let me just. Again, kind of. We've been doing this every week, nine weeks now. You probably have this verse memorized. Looking at verse one of Mark, the beginning of the good news about Jesus, the Messiah, the son of God, that this is the good news, the gospel about Jesus. It's Jesus's gospel, not Mark's gospel. Mark is an interpreter of Peter. And so you're going to. You'll kind of get some of that. You'll even hear that today that you're going to have Simon, whose name was later changed to Peter, that you're going to have a little bit of. You can kind of hear Peter's voice a little bit in the Gospel of Mark as Mark is writing things that Peter has been teaching him about Jesus. As he writes down that this is about Jesus, it's his. His good news that he is the Messiah, the anointed one, the Son of God. Today's sermon. And the reason why I had you ask that question to one another and talk about maybe getting picked or not is the idea of the 12. And you probably picked up with that with Zach reading this passage of Mark 3, 1321. But as we're going to see, Jesus doesn't choose the 12 based on skill or popularity, but he calls those whom he desires to be with him. So let's look at the 12, and we're going to look at their origin. The. Does Jesus just come up with this? Is this something that Jesus just is God? And so he's like, I'm gonna do something really cool and I'm gonna have 12 guys follow me around, right? This is gonna be my thing, you know, people will know me by having the 12. Or is there something else that maybe he is going back onto? What's the point of Jesus choosing the 12? Well, we gotta go all the way back to Genesis chapter 35. I'm not gonna read Genesis 35, 50. Don't worry about that. But we're gonna introduced to Jacob, so You have the kind of the fathers of the Hebrews. You have Abraham, who has Isaac, and Isaac who has Jacob, who God changes his name to Israel. So Israel or Jacob then has 12 sons, Reuben, Simeon, Levi. Levi is going to be the priestly line that we have a whole book in our Old Testament called Leviticus, Leviticus of laws for the Levites, for the priests. And then you have Judah. That's the kingly line. All the kings of Israel are going to come from the tribe of Judah. We have Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulum, Joseph, and Benjamin. Those are the 12 tribes. And Joseph, they're going to see that his son Manasseh is going to kind of become the leader of that group. But it's these 12 sons that are going to be the 12 tribes of Israel. So when you are reading through your Old Testament, specifically in Exodus, that they are wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, you're gonna hear different names of the leaders of the tribes of Israel. These are the patriarchs of those 12 tribes that we have in Israel. It's based on these 12 men. If you fast forward 450 years, we finally get the 12 tribes of Israel that go to the promised land. And this guy Joshua leads the twelve tribes of Israel into the land. This is from Joshua 4, verses 1 through 9 says, and the whole nation had finished crossing the Jordan. The Lord said to Joshua, choose 12 men from among the people, one from each tribe, okay? Because now the ancestors, the patriarchs are dead. Now there's these huge, huge nation now, over a million plus people now that it has turned into. And they are now entering into this land. And now Joshua's saying, chul yah. God is saying, joshua, choose one man from each tribe and tell them to take up 12 stones from the middle of the Jordan, go in into the Jordan, plunge yourself under the water, grab a stone, and then I want where the priest stood and they carried over with you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight. And so we're going to see now in our context in Mark, that now another couple centuries are going to go by from this time period. And another Joshua, Joshua is. This is the Hebrew name of Jesus, Yeshua. And so Jesus is his Greek name. And so now a new Yeshua, another Joshua, is going to demand that they plunge themselves into the Jordan, as we see in Mark, chapter one. And he's going to again select 12 men. Why would he select 12 men? Right? Because I think that's a valid question. Why not? How come he Didn't. Because we're gonna see women are disciples. We're gonna see gentiles are gonna be followers as well. Like, what's going on? How come he didn't choose six men and six women for the same reason he doesn't choose six Jewish men and six Roman men. That there's something incredibly symbolic in what he's doing. And it's not by accident. It is a deliberate prophetic sign, right? He's saying, I'm hitting the reset button on what we think of Israel. We're starting over with Israel. Do you remember those of you who are old like me? I had an nes, right, the original Nintendo Entertainment System. And you couldn't save it. There's no disc. You couldn't save your game. You just played and you'd play and fry your brain for hours. And then the game would just freeze, just freeze. All right, well, there goes two hours of my life. I guess we're just going to start it over, right? You hit the reset button. That's kind of what Jesus is symbolically doing. He's saying, it just doesn't. This isn't working. It wasn't even supposed to work. It was all supposed to be through this and through me. And so the disciples were known as, we'll see, as the 12. They're introduced in the Gospels, that these are the 12. And that would have been incredibly symbolic as a new Israel or as the new patriarchs. Jesus makes this very explicit in Mark, or, sorry, in Matthew and Luke. He says, truly, I tell you, at the renewal of all things. And the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne. You who have followed me will also sit on 12 Thrones, judging the 12 tribes of Israel. This new covenant that Jesus is doing is going to supersede that of the old. And he's saying, I'm going to physically demonstrate this by walking around with the 12. So let's look at their significance. We see there the 12's origin. And now let's look at their significance. I've mentioned this before, this idea of prophetic performance art or a prophetic sign. Jesus, as we've seen in Mark, Mark's point is not to highlight what Jesus says. It'll say, Jesus taught, but then he did this. Jesus taught. And the whole point of it isn't exactly the words he said. It's to say, I'm the guy. I am the gospel. I am the good news. And he's going to do that now, here, symbolically, that he's not going to necessarily be walking around and Teaching, he doesn't even need to open his mouth. The significance of walking around with the 12 is a prophetic sign. So just to kind of, you know, reiterate this point, if we go back to Hosea, chapter one, verses two through nine, it says, in the 8th century BC, the Prophet Hosea married an adulterous wife named Gomer, thinking something that was unthinkable under normal circumstances as a sign that Israel had betrayed her divine husband, as this guy physically married someone who's going to be unfaithful as a sign, Israel, this is how you are to Yahweh. Shortly after Hosea, the prophet Ezekiel built a miniature siege work. God says, I want you to make a toy that's going to be a siege work of this Roman army to signify Jerusalem's destruction. Then he also had to bake bread cooked over human excrement replaced by cow manure as a picture of the coming defilement in Ezekiel chapter four, which is the greatest possible analogy that we could possibly have as followers of Jesus and as students of the Bible to say context matters, because I have never in my life ever bought Ezekiel bread. All right, There's a reason for it, okay? Cause when you read just even the rest of verse nine, it's like, huh, what are we doing here? And so I was kind of curious though, and I put into chatgpt and I just said, is Ezekiel bread literally cooked the same way? And it said, no, store bought Ezekiel bread is not cooked over cow dung. This was symbolic prophetic command of the prophet Ezekiel, not a modern cooking method. Oh, thank God. The original instruction involved human excrement, which God changed to cow dung out of mercy. Oh, thanks. Thanks, God. Symbolizing the hardship and defilement Israel would face during the siege of Jerusalem. Modern Ezekiel bread based on biblical ingredients is baked in conventional ovens and is prized for its nutritional value and sprouted grains and legumes. Okay, thank you for that. All right, back on track here. Ed Sanders says the symbolic actions were part of the prophet's vocabulary. They simultaneously drew attention and conveyed information. And then Graham Stanton here says this. The importance of the call of the 12 can scarcely be exaggerated in this prophetic action. Jesus is calling for the renewal of Israel. He is also expressing the conviction that God is now beginning to establish anew his people and will bring this to fulfillment. What's interesting about looking at this, this is one of these kind of epiphanies I recently had, that it's Jesus and the 12, right? One of the tribes, as I mentioned, going all the way back to Genesis and the sons of Israel, of Jacob. One of the tribes is Judah. That's where the kings were from. Everyone knew that the Messiah someday was going to come from the tribe of Judah and be a descendant of King David. Everyone knew that. So why wasn't it then Jesus and the 11? Why wasn't it Jesus as representing the kingly tribe of Judah and the 11? Well, he's again symbolizing something here. He goes all over the region and all the 12 the tribes follow the Lord, the master, the boss, the chef, as they say in French. I don't know why I said that. Mark doesn't give us a lot again, of Jesus teaching, but it doesn't need to. This is again, an incredibly powerful symbol. All he had to do was walk around and people would have gotten it. A Jewish community and culture would have completely understood. You can imagine some woman going home and saying, hey, hey, Joseph, did you hear about Jesus? Yeah, I've heard about him. Yeah. He just picked some disciples to follow him and he calls them the 12. Right. And Joseph would have been there. Like, who does this guy think he is? What do you mean? He calls him the 12? Like he's gonna do. What's he doing here? This would have been incredibly symbolic among that community and that culture. So we looked at the 12's origin, their significance, and now let's look at their individuality. As Zach read here for Mark, and looking at verse 16, it says he appointed the 12 Simon, to whom he gave the name Peter. We're gonna get there eventually in Mark again. Cause we're gonna see Peter and sharing some of the stories with Mark and his. I shouldn't say stories. I don't like that this is real or these are real lives. I'm trying to get myself out of the habit of saying, oh, remember that story? No, I don't remember that. It sounds like a fairy tale. It sounds made up. This is real, this is historical. And we have historical proof of this stuff. So Peter is sharing things that he went through with Jesus. And Mark's writing this stuff down. And a lot of times Peter puts his foot in his mouth. I just recently heard a pastor, and he was talking about Peter, say, has there ever been a time where you can, like, see stupid coming out of your face? And as you're doing, you go, ah, I shouldn't have. He's like, that's Peter. That's who Peter was and who he is. And yet Jesus looks at Peter full well, knowing that he's a hothead. And says, I want you to follow me through. Follow me. As we look at. Then James and John are gonna be given this title of Sons of Thunder. How do you get the nickname Son of Thunder? Right? There's something about them again, hotheads. A lot of times you might even think, because you have the 12. And then Jesus seems to have these three of Peter, James and John. And it's like, oh, does he have favorites? And it's like, I don't know if that's necessarily the case. I think it was most often probably like, hey, the 12 of you, I want you to. I'm go up the mountain and pray. You stay down here. You guys pray amongst yourself. Talk amongst yourselves. And then he goes, actually, on second thought, Peter, James and John, you come with me, right? It's always not the teacher's pet that sits closest to the teacher, right? It's always the wild child, right, that sits closest to the teacher. I think that might have been a little bit of what was going on here. And what does he do? He gives him a nickname, Sons of Thunder. And he says, I want you to follow me. We get to Andrew. Andrew is the brother of Peter. He's going to be an apostle to the Greeks. And he says, follow me. Philip and Bartholomew are known for being skeptics and questioning Jesus. Are you really actually the Messiah? Like, is that really you? Jesus is still going to say to them, follow me. Matthew, as we've already looked at as a tax collector, a traitor to his people, like, unclean. If he walks into your house, Jesus looks at him and says, matthew, I want you to follow me. We get to Thomas, right, Known for maybe doubting Jesus, even the risen Jesus, I don't know, are you really Jesus? And Jesus says, no. Come see my hands. Touch my hands in my side. Thomas becomes an incredible follower of Jesus and actually is one of the first missionaries to go into India to share the good news of Jesus. And Jesus, including even with his doubting, looks at Thomas and says, follow me. You have James, the son of Alphaeus, who goes into Egypt and Persia as a missionary and says, follow me. Thaddeus goes to North Africa. He tells them to follow me. Simon the Zealot. If you remember, we looked at those five different sects of, you know, denominations of Judaism that the Zealots were the ones that were just trying to kick the Romans out. They were. They were doing. They were killing people, assassinating people in order that that Israel would be come back on the map as the leader of that region. They're trying to Kick them out from subterfuge. Is that the right word? Why did that burn? That word popped in my head. All right, we're gonna go with it. And so just trying to sneakily get them out, right? But by committing a crime and murder. He's a zealot. He believes that violence is the only answer to get Israel back into a position of power and authority. And Jesus comes along and says, no, violence is not the answer. Just looks at a zealot and says, I want you to follow me. I think one of the most powerful examples here is even Judas Iscariot who betrays him. Mark gives a little bit of a. Little bit of a spoiler alert, right? Come on, Mark. We're not there yet. We're only in chapter three. But Judas is going to betray him. Why doesn't Mark leave out Judas? What a stain on Jesus and his ministry. Well, because then it would have been quite confusing because it's the 12, but we only have 11 names. What happened to the one guy? You got to have the 12. And I know that there are some of you that might have a little bit of a. A negative view of organized religion or the church. And what's wild about Christianity is that Jesus. There have never been a group of followers of Jesus, right? Where there hasn't been problems and betrayal and untarnished individuals that are part of it, there is hypocrisy and sin because we're made up of regular human people who. Whom Jesus calls to himself. He's the only one who's good. And I think we see that with Judas. But yet still Jesus looks at him and says, follow me. I've mentioned this before, this phrase, but I think it's even prevalent here that no one, no name, that you can think of somebody or maybe even your own name, that no one anywhere at any point is beyond the reach of the gospel. Or in this context, the voice of Jesus crying out, follow me. No one's beyond that. Next, let's look at. And kind of change gears here and look at your significance when it comes to being called to follow. We see this in Mark, chapter three. In verse 13, it says, and he went up to the mountain, and he called to him those whom he desired. And they came to him, those whom he desired. And what's beautiful about the cross of Jesus is that he calls all people, I desire you all. Please follow me. We read this in Second Peter, chapter three, verse nine. It says, the Lord is not slow to fulfill his promises, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you not wishing, not wanting that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. We see this in Galatians, chapter 1, verse 15 and 16a. This is the Apostle Paul. He says, but when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his son to me. This is the apostle Paul. But before he became the apostle Paul, he was Saul. He was a persecutor of the church. He was dragging people out of the churches and. And having them thrown in prison and killed because of their religious extremism and blasphemy of worshiping this false God, Jesus of Nazareth. Paul here says, when I was in my womb, in my mother's womb, you called me, you set me apart full well, knowing I was gonna commit these atrocities. Jesus says, follow me. We see this from the words of Jesus in John, chapter 10, verses 1 through 4. Truly, truly, I say to you. He who does not enter the shepherd, the sheepfold door by the door, but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep to him. The gatekeeper opens, the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by their name and leads them out. He looks at you and he says, follow me. Calls you by your name. Jesus loves you so much. He died for you. And in a real place, in a point of history, a real historical Jesus died on a real Roman cross raised from a real empty tomb for a real you. The end of this passage says that. And he went home and the crowd gathered again. So you can imagine he's healing people. He's performing miracles. He's exercising full authority. Says when the family. Over demons and sickness and all these different things. When his family heard it, his friends, his family, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, he's out of his mind. Why would they say he's out of his mind? Because he's saying, it's me and the 12. We're doing this again. And we're gonna do it right through me. Whoa. Jesus. Calm down, man. You can't be doing that. Let's just briefly look at future significance of the 12 and beyond. Says this in Revelation, chapter 21. Go all the way to the back of the book. Revelation 21 says this. And then came one of the seven angels who had seven bulls full of the last plagues. And he spoke to me, saying, come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the lamb. A lot of times there's within the church that we say, oh, the church is the bride of Christ. This is the only place in the entirety of Bible that is explicitly stated the bride of Christ. This is the bride of Christ. This is the wife of the lamb. Listen to what he says. And he carried me away in the spirit to a great high mountain and showed me the holy city of Jerusalem. Coming down out of heaven from God, part of being a Christian, depending if you grew up in the church, that when I die, I go to heaven. It's all about, oh, and I die, I go to heaven. That's not the story of the Bible. The story of the Bible is that someday in a new body, resurrected from the dead, God will come here. We're not just gonna go float around in some clouds somewhere someday. No, no, God's gonna come here and he's gonna make all things new. And we will dwell with him and we will be his people and he will be our God. He shows his holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance, like a most rare jewel, like Jasper, like clear as crystal. And it had a great high wall with 12 gates. Oh, there's that keyword we've been looking at. And at the gates, the 12 angels. And on the gates, the names of the 12 tribes of the sons of Israel were inscribed. What's the bride of Christ? Well, it's the new city. It's new heavens, new earth. And in it are the twelve tribes of Israel inscribed. And on the east, three gates. On the north, three gates. On the south, three gates. And the west, three gates. And the wall of the city had twelve foundations. And on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. There's a future significance. And why were the 12 sons of Jacob chosen? Why was Jacob chosen? Why was Isaac and Abraham chosen? Why were these 12 disciples of Jesus chosen? What made them worthy as we see as we walk through? It's not because of them. It's not because of who they are. It's because of who Jesus is. You have seen, you are seen and you are heard by God. And so let's follow him. I just want to end with just this. Just a quote here says this. Jesus called to him those he wanted. The Greek is more emphatic. The sense is that he summoned those whom he willed. Jesus determines the call. The disciples do not decide to follow Jesus and, and do him a favor in doing so. You ever feel like that? You ever feel like that, man? God, you. Hey, you're welcome right I mean, I'm a pretty good guy. I'm kind of killing it, right? I got some things. But you let me. I'm doing you a favor. To the point when any kind of inconvenience happens in my life, it's like, well, God, what do you think you're doing here? Don't you know I've dedicated my life to following you? Why would you allow any of that in my life? I'm doing you a favor. That's not what's happening. This is the. This is the call of Jesus. Jesus determines the call. The society into which he calls them is determined not by their preferences, but by his summons. Its members have nothing in common except his sovereign call, apart from which the community cannot exist. As we noted in 1 1620, the embryo of the church is already signified in the call of appearance followers to form a new community around Jesus. This is the church. The church is a beautiful thing. I love all of you. The guys, we just had a men's retreat and we got together with the Columbia Heights men up there and it was very interesting. There was this moment where we had some free time and the lower tongue guys, you know what we did? We just played nerdy games together, right? We played some board games. Columbia Heights guys were out running around playing frisbee golf and doing ping pong tournaments and all this stuff. You know what we did? We hung out, we nerded out together. It was a lot of fun. We had a good time. But the thing about this community that I love so much and I love every single one of those guys and every single one of you, the reason why that we're friends and we have community is because of Jesus. We might have some commonality, we might have some, a little bit of overlap, but it's Jesus that ultimately brings us together that says, you're my brother, you're my friend in Christ, and genuinely love and care about you. That's the church. Real community happens when we bow the knee to the same king, when we worship the same Savior. And if you're not a follower of Jesus, you can enjoy some of the benefits of being part of a community like that, but you won't actually be able to fully comprehend the benefit until you have completely and fully surrendered to the one who calls you by name. So in gospel application, let me just end it with this. Are you a fully devoted follower of Jesus? That's a loaded word, right? That is our mission statement. It's part of it. Our mission statement at Hope is to honor God by helping as many people as possible become fully devoted followers of Jesus. This is not just. I just want to teach you Jesus. Now. Go ahead, have fun. A little catch and release thing going on. No, no, I want to catch you and I want to devour you. That's not the right. All analogies break down. That's not what I want to happen. Okay, okay. I want to put you in a. Nope, this isn't working. We're going to delete that one. Okay. I want you to be fishers of men. Okay, there we go. We're fully devoted followers of Jesus, not just partially. And so if you say, oh, man, I don't know if I am a fully devoted follower of Jesus. I don't know if I've ever bent the knee to King Jesus. Today is the day of repentance. You can do this today. You cannot just be kind of an adjunct or auditing Christianity or being part of the audit community of the church. You can really be part of it. And the only way to do that is to fully embrace Jesus, because he's called you and he's saying, follow me. Those of us who might say, yeah, no, I've done that. But we might say, but, ah, but not all the time. I'm a fully devoted follower of Jesus, but not in, like, every way. Well, that doesn't make any sense. And yet that's true. That's just part of being a human, that I'm a sinful being. And so I need to also repent. And we all need to. There's these, and we've all heard this, and I've probably used this phrase before, that a church might say, hey, go ahead. When you walk in these doors, I want you to come as you are. Right? You're okay. Just come as you are. But at Lowertown, at least, I don't want you to leave the way you were. Okay, now, yes, come as you are, but don't walk out of these doors the same person. That we need to be transformed. We need to confess sin to Jesus and to one another. We need to love. We need to care for each other. We need to see Jesus more fully and magnified and clearly. So when we walk out, we're more like Jesus than you are now. So, yes, come as you are, but don't leave as you were. We're going to have a time of communion, and we do this every week at Hope Lowertown. And I absolutely love doing this. I love being able to take the cracker that represents the body of Christ. It's broken for us. Love being able to take the juice that represents his blood that was shed for us for the forgiveness of our sins. That he is the propitiation. He's the payment that we could never pay. The same way that we're called, not based on our own merit. Jesus calls us to celebrate this table based on what he has done, not what we can do. It's all about Jesus. You don't need to be a member of this church or any church, but if you are a follower of Jesus and you say, yes, I'm a work in progress, but I love Jesus. Love to have you come and take these elements with us as we remember the finished work of Jesus. I can't add to it. Can't add to it. And so we take these elements. There's a gluten free option on my left, your right, if that's a dietary restriction and we can remember him until he returns. The phrase that I think is applicable here is that the real Jesus died and rose again for a real you, so that you might have real life. That's what this is about. This is about being fully human and worshiping the truly fully human one. We are a shadow of what it means to be fully human. But he shows us the way. Let me pray. The worship team's gonna come back up and they're gonna play two songs of worship. And so feel free to come forward and grab these elements as you see fit. Worship. Pray. Rejoice. What is it that is in your heart that would say, yeah, I walked in this way. What is it that I can repent or I can give to Jesus to make sure that when I walk out of these doors, I'm not the same person I was just an hour ago. What is it? We're going to take these elements again. They're going to sing two songs and just reflect and enjoy this meal together as a community of people who probably wouldn't have a whole lot in common if it wasn't for Jesus. Let me pray. Father, thank you for our time together. Thank you. That you have called us out of darkness and into marvelous light, called us from. From death to life. It's you who does that. And it's when you do that and you call us that we transform, that you have. You. You've transformed us from the inside out to be a people of all nations and tribes and tongues. It just is so foreign to so many things that we do as human beings that you want us to be more human, more like you. And so that we take these elements in remembrance of that finished work of Jesus to give you honor and praise and glory and power forever and ever. In the name of Jesus, amen.