Twelve Ordinary Men

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When I was a kid, one of our favorite things to play on in my parents’ backyard was an old oil drum, which sounds a lot worse than it is. If I remember the story correctly, my grandfather was in the oil business, or he serviced the oil business until the oil bust hit in the late 80s, and somehow he had come into possession of this old yellow oil drum, and they welded, I guess, ground it down where it wasn’t sharp. They took the ends off of it, so it’s not like we were being stored in this.

Like Mom said, make sure you don’t cause any trouble, just going to lock you in the oil drum or anything like that. They took the sides off of it and had welded a stand on one. .

. They’d taken the faces off of it and welded a stand. I really should have brought a picture of this to help you.

I’m not really good at describing it. So anyway, you could set it on this stand and you could crawl through it like an obstacle course thing or you could turn it up on its side and you could hide in it. And I just, I never realized it was an unusual toy until kids would come over from after school and they’d, what is that thing?

Well, it’s, I don’t even know what you call it. It’s just always been there. Do you not have one?

But they had taken this ordinary piece of garbage, really, and had turned it into a pretty neat toy that actually my parents still have, and I wouldn’t mind having for the kids, although it’s probably a little rusty or needs some TLC. But I love that when you take some kind of ordinary object and you make something, you give it a new use. You give it an extraordinary use in some cases.

There’s a little, we call it a junk store not too far from where we live, out there just east of Medicine Park, and it’s out on the highway, And they sell metal art that I know that they have just welded together out of, some of them are rusty scraps, like they have welded together giant Bigfoot sculptures that are really neat. I have a bison in my front yard that’s been riveted together out of old pieces of scrap metal. I love stuff like that. They’ll make wind chimes.

They’ll make things that spin in the wind. They’ll take these ordinary junky things that otherwise would be sitting around in a landfill And they’ll give them a new lease on life. They’ll give them this extraordinary use.

One of my favorite things that I’ve ever made in woodworking is I made Charla and me wedding rings out of dowel rods. Now, we have our metal wedding rings, but there was a time in my life I couldn’t fit in this metal wedding ring anymore. And I got tired of losing the silicone ones, and so I made one out of a dowel rod and ground it down and it’s just an ordinary dowel rod.

People would look at that and say, where did you find that ring? I made it. Out of what?

A dowel rod. And they couldn’t believe it. It’s just an ordinary object, but it became something special. And the Bible describes over and over how God does that with us.

God takes ordinary people, just like these artisans take these ordinary objects, and God repurposes ordinary people for extraordinary, to accomplish extraordinary things. And Mark describes a time when Jesus did this as well. We’re going to pick up where we left off last week in Mark chapter 3.

We’re going to be in verse 13, if you would turn there in your Bibles or find it in your phone. There’s a link there in our bulletin. If that’s what you’re using, it’ll be on the screen.

But if you would stand with me, if you’re able to, as we read from God’s Word together about a time that Jesus took ordinary people and put them to extraordinary use and how he did it. Mark chapter 3, starting in verse 13, it says, And he went up on the mountain and called to him those he himself wanted, and they came to him. And he appointed twelve that they might be with him, and that he might send them out to preach, and to have power to heal sicknesses and to cast out demons.

Simon, to whom he gave the name Peter, James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James, to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, sons of thunder, Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James, the son of Alphaeus, Thaddeus, Simon the Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him. And they went into a house. And you may be seated.

Now, this is probably not a text I would ever just pick to preach on if we weren’t going section by section through the book of Mark, because on first glance, it doesn’t seem like there’s a whole lot here. But I spent some time in this over the last week or so digging into, okay, why is this included here other than just the list? I mean, God’s purpose here is partly to give us the list of the disciples, but surely there’s something that we’re supposed to glean from this.

And I struggled with this. My goodness, did I struggle with this section. I rewrote this message three or four times.

And you may be saying at the end of this, wait, you rewrote it three or four times and that’s the one you ended up with. But I rewrote it three or four times because I kept going, surely there’s more to it than that. And so I’d pull in the next section or parts of the next section and try to say, what are they saying together?

But really, I just kept coming back to this section needs to stand on its own. And as simple as it is, I think there’s something that we can learn from this section and what God’s doing here. And it leads me to the very simple truth that God uses ordinary people.

after all of that after all that digging and after all that trying to make it deeper than that I kept coming back to this this realization in this text that god uses ordinary people if you’ve been paying attention as we’ve been studying through here what what’s going on here there was this crowd that was following jesus around everywhere he went they still wanted a show as a matter of fact verse 13 we looked at last week at the the end of this that they were Following Jesus, he went to get away from the crowd, and what he did was he went away with these 12 men that he had chosen. They still wanted a show, but Jesus had already made it clear to the people that he was not there for the purpose of putting on a show. I don’t think for a minute that Jesus minded healing people.

Jesus loved people too much to be bothered by that sort of thing. I don’t think for a minute that Jesus had a problem demonstrating his power when it furthered his mission. But as far as the expectation that so many people had that he was going to put on a show, that he was going to perform on command kind of like a trained monkey, that’s how the Pharisees treated him sometimes.

Oh yeah, all the signs you’ve done, but we want to see a really big sign this time to prove who you are. And Jesus would say later on, you’re not going to get a sign except the sign of the prophet Jonah, which is the resurrection we’ve talked about before. The crowd was still following him.

They still wanted a show, but Jesus had already made it clear, that’s not what he was doing. That’s not what he was about. And so instead, he left the crowd, he left the multitude, he left the limelight, and he went off into the mountains with a group of 12 men.

And the first thing that I notice as I read this list of names, which takes up most of the passage that we’re looking at tonight, as I read this list of 12 names, I’m struck by the fact that these were all seemingly ordinary, unimpressive men from a variety of backgrounds. Now, we might look at them and be impressed by some things about them, but if we were trying to start a worldwide movement, if we were trying to sweep the world with a message, these are not necessarily, when I say unimpressive, these are not necessarily the 12 people that any of us would have picked. These were not the most likely candidates, at least on paper and from a human standpoint, these were not the most candidates for the work they were about to be assigned.

But it says in verse 14, he appointed 12 that they might be with him. And it further drives home the point how ordinary these men are that most of them, we know almost nothing about them. Some of these men are mentioned fairly prominently in the gospel accounts, but they’re mentioned nowhere else in history, at least in their day.

Now, I don’t think that that means they didn’t exist. The Bible’s a myth, all that. How much would you expect the historians of that time to write about Peter, a fisherman from some backwater of the Roman Empire? How much would you expect that they would write about John?

It’s not like today where we can go on Instagram and Facebook and every moment of our lives is cataloged there for better or worse, and our grandchildren will see it one day, or some of you that already have grandchildren. Many generations from now, they will see it one day. Teenagers, remember that.

Your grandkids will see the things you did online, right? Not every move that they made was recorded. These were not military leaders.

These were not Roman governors. These were not rich men. Most of them he pulled out of fishing boats.

There were some that are only prominent in the gospels, and there are some of these that even in the gospels, we really don’t hear anything about them other than their name being mentioned in a list of the 12. Some of these guys, I look at the names and I couldn’t tell you. I could not tell you a fact about them other than that they were disciples.

And there are some things that later on church tradition tells us we think happened about them. Thank goodness for that or we wouldn’t have a living Lord’s Supper to put on. We wouldn’t have stories at all to tell about these guys.

But they’re not written up in history. These were just ordinary men and yet these were the ones he used. These are the people that he chose to work through.

And so when Jesus was really getting in the swing of things in his mission to preach and to teach and ultimately to go to the cross to redeem Israel and all of mankind, and as he’s doing that, he’s also training these to come behind him and spread that message after he’s gone. As he’s setting out to do that, he didn’t focus on the things that we think a person would use, the people that a person would use if he was trying to do that. Jesus didn’t focus on drawing massive crowds of people.

They were there. And to an extent we’ve seen, he already shunned the crowds. He didn’t focus on drawing massive crowds.

He didn’t enlist the wisdom of the Pharisees and scribes. He didn’t try to work through the charisma of the priests and the Levites. He didn’t say, you know what, if I just got the wealth of the merchants on my side, the really rich people, if I just got them behind me.

He didn’t do that. He didn’t work through the power of the government. There were all these options that seemed much more logical if he was going to try to get this message out there and start this movement and start the church.

There are all these other options that seem much more logical, and yet Jesus chose to work through ordinary people. Friends, the only thing that made them extraordinary was Jesus. We look at some of these guys, the ones we know a little bit about.

Peter, for example, John, James, Thomas a little bit. We look at these guys like they’re super spiritual. We almost put them on a pedestal. But I think they’d be the first to tell us that the only thing that made them extraordinary was Jesus. There were some things that made them extraordinary about their walk with Jesus.

There was the pull of Jesus. Pulling, calling out to them and their response to that call. They were called by Jesus, but each of them believed him and they were willing to follow him.

There were lots of people around who believed Jesus. Like from what little they knew of Jesus, they believed that he was the things that he claimed to be. They believed he was a teacher.

They believed he was a miracle worker. They might have even believed that he was sent by God. But there was a difference between believing that up here and believing it so strongly that they were willing to follow him.

And these 12 men, whatever else they had going on in their lives, whatever else they had going for or against them, these men, when they heard the call of Jesus, when Jesus drew them to himself, they were willing to go and follow him. Jesus did not march anybody up the mountain at bayonet point. There was this pull that Jesus had on them.

And if Jesus had never called them, or if they had never responded to the call of Jesus, then their lives pretty well would have gone on the way they had before in an unremarkable way. They would have continued to go and collect taxes like Matthew. They would have continued to go out and catch fish like Peter.

And they probably would have been fairly decent men, but they wouldn’t have done anything truly remarkable. But it was the fact that Jesus called them. It was the fact that Jesus drew them to himself and that they were willing to respond to that call.

And there was also the presence of Jesus that made a difference in their lives. They spent time in his presence being led by him and being taught by him, being shaped and molded into something else by him. It says in verse 14, he appointed 12 that they might be with him.

You know, it’s pointed out in the book of Acts that when some of these men went and did extraordinary things, things that the authorities could not explain in any other way, their teaching, sometimes their miraculous deeds that they did, sometimes just the change in their personality, what made them so bold to be able to go and preach the message of Jesus. The only way that the authorities could explain this in some circumstances in the book of Acts was to say it was clear these men had been with Jesus. Sometimes just spending that time in the presence of Jesus empowers us to go out and do what he’s called us to do when nothing else could.

The presence of Jesus in somebody’s life makes up for a whole lot of lack of talent and aptitude in other places. A whole lot of lack of qualifications. These men weren’t qualified, but the presence of Jesus made a huge difference.

And then there was also the primacy of Jesus. The primacy, I was trying like Adrian Rogers to fit these all with the same letter. Primacy just means putting Jesus first. Making every other consideration, every other concern, every other priority subservient to Jesus.

And I was struck as I was rereading this several times this week. I was struck by, and if I’d taken more time, I might have run across more of these. But I was struck by something in this list of names.

Matthew. What do we know about Matthew? Tax collector.

Which means he worked for who? The government. Which government?

The Romans. Good. Y’all are awake tonight.

All right. Matthew. Matthew was a Jewish man who worked for the Roman government.

He was a collaborator. He was a collaborator. Not necessarily someone who was viewed by all segments of Jewish society as being loyal to the Jewish people.

you’ll mention also in this list is a man named Simon the Canaanite another word another name or title used for him in the gospels is Simon the zealot the zealots were a radical nationalist movement okay they were determined to kick the Romans out set up a an independent kingdom in Israel I keep wanting to say make Israel great again but I don’t want to make anybody mad but that was kind of their attitude, right? But they were just, they hated the Romans and they had no use for anybody who collaborated with the Romans. I’m trying to think of what two people I could use in our current environment and put them together.

Well, I’ll tell you what, some people get, you may not have noticed this, but some people get a little worked up about their politics. I’ve been at party conventions, and notice I’m saying, within the same party, I’m not even talking about Republicans versus Democrats, I’m talking about within the same party. I’ve been at party conventions where people have gotten so worked up over some issue or another where I thought, we’re just going to have to put these two in a steel cage and let them fight it out.

Two men enter and one man leaves, kind of thing. People get a little worked up about their politics, and here you have mortal enemies. You have the Roman collaborator, Matthew, and the sworn enemy of Rome, Simon the Zealot.

And yet something has brought them together. I wonder who could it be? What was important enough to them that they were willing to put even those deeply held beliefs and principles aside and come together around something else?

It was Jesus. It’s because they were willing to put Jesus ahead of everything else that suddenly those those things didn’t matter as much anymore. And I’ve used this phrase before, I don’t know if I’ve used it here, that it’s not as though Jesus erases our differences, but Jesus eclipses our differences.

In this church, we have people and watching, we have people that don’t all think the same way. We have people from different backgrounds, we have people from different ethnic groups, we have people from different political parties, and all of those things do matter, but Jesus matters more. So part of what was extraordinary is that their relationship and their ability to work together in the same group, and we don’t know, it may have been rocky at times, but they were able to do it, tells us that one thing that was extraordinary about these men is that they were willing to put Jesus ahead of everything else.

Folks, I think all of these principles apply to us today. The response to the pull of Jesus as we’re being drawn closer and closer to him will be more suitable for some extraordinary purpose that God has. If we spend time in His presence, it’ll make us more suitable for any extraordinary purpose that God has.

If we’re willing to put Jesus first, not to say nothing else in life matters, it’s just that Jesus matters more than any of it or all of it. God can use us in extraordinary ways. And what we learn from this, the fact that He used ordinary people and He used them in extraordinary ways, just, Jesus transforms ordinary people so we can serve him in extraordinary ways.

See, there’s a parallel that he draws here. As Jesus is, we see the opposition of the religious and political system to Jesus. The Pharisees were against Jesus.

The Sadducees were against Jesus. The Romans were against Jesus. The collaborator, we see all of these, the priests, the scribes, everybody.

Everybody And we see Jesus withdrawing from that and starting something new here with his disciples. And I think it’s interesting that God established Israel with the twelve sons of Jacob, the twelve tribes of Israel, and then Jesus established his church through the twelve apostles and the ministry that they carried forward. God used Israel to do incredible things in his redemptive plan, and now he was going to use his church to spread the news about those redemptive plans.

And so it tells us in verse 14 that he appointed 12. And it was his power. It was his power working through them that enabled them to carry out ministries that were impossible to them.

There is no way, there is no way that they were going to be able to heal sickness and cast out demons on their own. That’s not something we normally can just do, right? I don’t know anybody who, I don’t know any human who just has that sort of inherent power.

If they do, we have some complaints we’d like to talk about getting those things healed because the doctor visits get expensive after a while. We don’t just have the inherent ability to heal the sick. And if I go to demons and say, get out in the name of Jared, they’re going to laugh at me, right?

At the very least. These men didn’t go and do the things that they were able to do just because they were so impressive. These were ministries. What he was calling them to do was impossible.

for them. But His power worked through them. That’s why it says in verses 14 and 15, He sent them out to preach and to have power to heal sickness and to cast out demons, do these things that were impossible to them.

And God may from time to time call us to serve Him in ways that are impossible for us, or at least really improbable for us. And I’ve given the example before. When God called me into ministry, it was not really my career goal. Now, I came eventually to love what I get to do, but it was not my career goal. And looking at where I started out, I’m kind of surprised that he would call me to preach.

I had a really bad speech impediment that required therapy until I was in the sixth grade. On top of that, I am very much an introvert. I like people, but I have to force myself to be social. Doesn’t mean I don’t like you.

I like you a lot. I was telling a story in the office the other day about something, and somebody, one of the church members was in there and said, you really do like us, don’t you? Yes, I do.

I really do. We are thrilled to be here. We love you and we like you.

Those are both important. But just understand, I’m naturally an introvert. So I kind of feel like Moses at times.

I’m not the guy I would have called on to speak or to have to do all the outgoing things that one has to do in ministry. Let me tell you what, it’s the power of God. And if he can equip me to do those things, he can equip you to do whatever he’s calling you to do.

He’s in the business of doing things that seem to be impossible. He called these men to heal the sick and cast out demons. He wasn’t just going to send them out there and say, you figure it out.

That was the power of God working through them. Because God can do extraordinary things through ordinary people. Today, He can transform us.

As far as I know, we’re all pretty ordinary people. Now, the more I get to know you, there are some cool things about you. Especially when I find out, I find out different things about people’s backgrounds or their hobbies.

There’s some interesting things there. But none of us that I know of are going to be written about in the history books. If we are, don’t tell me anything that I’ll have to testify about in court, okay?

I don’t know of any of us that are going to be written about in history books. We’re ordinary people. And when God calls us to do something, we may look at it.

We have a really bad tendency to look at those things and say, I can’t do that. That would be impossible. I can’t teach that class.

I can’t go talk to that person about the Lord. I can’t sing. I can’t, you name it, I can’t feed the hungry.

I can’t start that ministry. none of us can do any of it. And honestly, if we’re doing it in our own power, if he had started with a really impressive group of people, we’d be saying, look at what Peter did.

Isn’t Peter something? But instead we get to look at it and say, look at what Jesus did in the life of Peter. And I think that’s why God uses ordinary people.

So if you think you’re too ordinary, you’re too unqualified, you’re too ill-equipped to do what you know God’s calling you to do, remember the 12 men that he called, they were so ordinary, we know almost nothing about them, even with all the stuff that they did. But God has a plan to use ordinary people, and he has the power to transform us for that purpose. We just need to be like these men who were willing to go into the mountains with Jesus and be willing to say yes, be willing to be available when he calls us to come and do something extraordinary.