Thoughts on the Twelve Disciples

We all know that Jesus came to earth for the worst of sinners. That's been drilled into some of your

heads since you were born. Jesus came for all around bad people. But something came up in my Writing of John class today that made my imagination start spinning.

Think on this for a moment. Jesus very specifically chose each of His 12 disciples. Something my professor pointed out that I wasn't aware of was that Jesus prayed an entire night before choosing his disciples (Luke 6:12). An entire night! I always have the image in my mind of Jesus walking down the street and randomly pointing to people.

"Hey you! Wanna come follow me? And how about you, Peter? Wanna come?" and so on. Now, initially people followed Jesus just because they wanted to. That's another thing I forget. Jesus, at least at the beginning, didn't just have 12 disciples. He had a ton of them. It isn't until think point in Luke that Jesus choosing twelve from the many to be His true disciples. Side note, eventually most the other followers left because following Jesus because he claimed to be the only way (John 6:66-67).

So Jesus picks 12 specific men to follow him. Now, I want to look at a couple different aspects of that.

First, I think it's interesting that Jesus chose 12. Not because of the specific number. Eleven or 13 would surprise me just as much. The thing that surprises me is how many he chose. Now maybe that was the normal number of disciples for a rabbi in those days, but I think it's safe to say that Jesus wasn't a "normal" man. So why did he choose 12?

  

I'm the kind of guy who doesn't need a lot of friends. A couple really close friends does me just fine. I'm not saying 12 is a lot of disciples, or even a lot of friends. But these weren't just any disciples. Not just any friends. Jesus was going to spend three straight years with these men. 1,095 straight days. Eating. Sleeping. Talking. Laughing. Crying. Except when Jesus left to pray, he was generally with these men. Not a whole lot of privacy.

Now who were these men? Tax collectors. Fisherman. Some say that two of the disciples were zealots trying to overthrow Romans. So, there may be more. But you basically have three kinds of people.

1. People in boats covered in fish and worm slime.

2. A guy who was hated by the Jews for working for the Romans.

3. People trying to overthrow the Romans with violence.

This brings me back to where Jesus spent an entire night praying (most likely for wisdom to pick the right disciples). Was this really the Father's answer to His prayers? Remember, not only were these the men that Jesus was going to poor out His heart to, the men he would be spending day and night with, the men who would become His best friends, but these were also the men who would be writing the Bible, preaching the Gospel, and building the Church (except for Judas Iscariot).

So why did Jesus pick so many men, and more importantly, why these men? I don't think we need to look far to find out why he chose so many. Jesus did not have small expectations of His disciples. The last instructions to the twelve was to make disciples of "all nations" (Matthew 28:19, Mark 16:15).

So Jesus had high expectations for His disciples. It's funny. The same men who constantly didn't understand what Jesus was talking about. The same men who bickered about who was the best disciple. The same men who fell asleep when Jesus needed comfort. The same men who abandoned Jesus in his moment of greatest need. The same men who didn't believe Jesus would raise from the dead.

Don't just read the Gospels to find out what Jesus said. Look at his life. Jesus was human. Like me. Like you. Jesus had friends. Like me. Like you. Some of us make friends easy. One afternoon and you are friends with someone for life. For others of us, it takes time. Either way, as I said before, Jesus spent 1,095 straight days with these men. 26,280 hours. Jesus loved these men. They were his best friends.

It's so easy to think of Jesus as Mr. God who had no feelings. I don't think it's by any accident that the shortest verse in the Bible states that Jesus cried (John 11:35). "Jesus wept." That's it. I think that may be one of the most convincing verses for Jesus' humanity. But that wasn't the only time Jesus wept. Jesus also wept over the city of Jerusalem shortly before his arrest (Luke 19:41). Jesus didn't just cry when people died. He sobbed over a people who had waited thousands of years for a Rescuer. A people who were about to kill their own Rescuer.

All that to say that Jesus' relationship with His disciples wasn't strictly professional. These men were close. Very very close. My best friend Sam and I have been best friends since around 7th or 8th grade. We have shaped each other so much. I would not be the same person today without him. Sam is only up in the summer's though. At most, Sam and I have been in the same state 21 months. 147 days. At most we've hung out half of that. 74 days. That's 1,021 days short of what Jesus spent with His disciples.

I've beat this point to the ground, but maybe we understand how close Jesus and His disciples must have been. And after all that, they abandoned Jesus in His greatest moment of need. Not only that. But one of them (Judas Iscariot) was the very reason the Pharisees were able to arrest Him.

Being abandoned by one person is unbearable. Jesus was abandoned by 12, one of whom claimed to not even know Him three times. Jesus was not just tortured to death. He was not just hung naked for the world to laugh at. That day, Jesus was abandoned by every friend he had ever had.

Application:

So what can we learn from this? I get three things from this. I know what you're thinking. "I read all this for just THREE points." Well, I'll tell you what. Maybe now you can find the other thousand nuggets of gold in that mine. But here are my three thoughts.

1. Jesus is all about second chances. How do I know this? Eleven of the twelve disciples went on spread the Gospel across the nations, reaching untold numbers of people for the cause of Christ. One of the twelve was banished to an island. Ten of the 12 died martyrs' deaths, refusing to deny their best friend. Their Savior. Their Jesus.

2. Jesus was the perfect friend. Jesus was all about relationships. All about friendships. He described a best friend as the kind who gives his life for the other (John 15:13). Jesus did just that. So what does giving your life mean for me? Taking a bullet for Sam? Maybe. But I doubt it. That means giving every part of my life. Not just my death. My LIFE. The living part. The part where I put his needs above mine. Where I be the best example of Christ I can be. The kind where I get laughed at on his behalf. The kind where I put his desires above my own. His dreams. I support him. I pray for him. I don't know if you've ever read the passage where Jesus prays for His disciples but it gave me a whole new idea of who Jesus was (John 17:6-19). It's beautiful. Jesus cared so much for those men. And ultimately he died for them.

3. Jesus is interested in people who aren't qualified. If there is nothing else we know about the disciples, we know that they were not qualified. Read the Gospels. They never had a clue what Jesus was talking about, even to a comical point. In John 6:60 his disciples say (paraphrased) "This is really hard to understand." They. Were. Not. Qualified. Some of us have desires and goals, but don't feel qualified. We look at other people with the same ambitions and the same dreams and we think, "God must not want me to do this or He would have made me smarter, more brave, more patient, a better writer, more compassionate," and the list goes on and on. The blunt answer to that is no. God is not interested in your qualifications. If God only used "qualified" people, this world would be in a sad place. Abraham Lincoln barely had any schooling whatsoever. I think it was one or two years. You don't get voted president with a Associates Degree. The man who saved our nation did. Never let anyone tell you God doesn't want you to pursue your dreams because you aren't qualified. Please.

God is so much bigger than your qualifications.