Transcript
So we're going to be in the book of Matthew. We're in Matthew chapter 9 35 through 10 15. This is a section that we're spending three weeks on, and so you can open up your Bibles there. I'm going to put the text on the screen as well. So the book of what is the book of Matthew? The book of Matthew is about Jesus. So if you've heard about the person who's Jesus and you're like, wonder who that guy is, Matthew's a good place to start. Matthew, mark, Luke, and John all tell us the story of Jesus and so we've been studying this book together and learning about Jesus is a lot of fun.
We've covered a lot of ground and we happen to be in this point in the story of Jesus where he's preaching and teaching and doing miracles in the region of Galilee. Galilee is a, it's still there in Israel. You could go there today. There's a bunch of little fishing towns around this body of water and that's kind of where Jesus is from. It's just one place in Israel out of many, and it happens to be where Jesus did a lot of his ministry. And so let me read to you this section I'm going to read to you through this section. We already looked at the first few verses last week out of chapter nine. We're going to focus on 10 this week, a few verses out of 10, but I want to give you the context. Okay, are you ready? Here is starting in verse 9 35.
It says, Jesus continued going around to all the towns and the villages teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and every sickness. When he saw the crowds, he felt compassion on them because they were distressed and dejected like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, the harvest is abundant, but the workers are few. Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into the harvest. Summoning his 12 disciples, he gave them authority over unclean spirits to drive them out and to heal every disease and sickness. These are the names of the 12 apostles, one Simon, who is called Peter and Andrew, his brother James, the son of Zee and John, his brother, Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew, the tax collector James, the son of Alpheus and Thaddeus, Simeon or Simon, the zealot, and Judas Iscariot who also betrayed him.
Jesus sent out these 12 after giving them instructions. Don't take the road that leads to the Gentiles and don't enter any Samaritan town. Instead, go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel as you go. Proclaim the kingdom of heaven has come near. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those with leprosy and drive out demons freely you received freely give. Don't acquire gold, silver, or copper for your money belts. Don't take a traveling bag for the road or an extra shirt, sandals, or a staff for the worker is worthy of his food. When you enter any town or village, find out who is worthy and stay there until you leave. Greet a household when you enter it and if the household is worthy, let your peace be on it. But if it is unworthy, let your peace return to you. If anyone does not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave the house or town, truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable in the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town.
Let's pray together. God, we are going to study a few of these verses now and we ask that you would teach us specifically about your plan in regards to our lives. We want to be followers of you. We want to be connected in with what you're doing in the world. For many of us, there are others of us here that are just kind of like listening and questioning and evaluating. And God, we thank you that your spirit comes and opens. The eyes of our understanding turns on the spiritual light in our lives, and so we just invite you to come and be in our midst and to be our teacher. We want to submit under the authority of scripture this morning and we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. So this morning we're going to just look at verses one through six of chapter 10.
The central part of this text is this whole discussion about and this list of the 12 apostles. There are a few questions that I think are important that will lead us into being able to apply this text to our lives. Who were these 12 apostles? Why did Jesus pick these 12 men? Why were there no women? Why weren't they supposed to go to the Gentiles or the Samaritan towns? Those are some good starting questions. And again, I've been doing this every week as I'm preaching and just kind of trying to teach you how to study the Bible. And one of the things that we've been saying is that God's not afraid of your questions. In fact, one of the best ways to study the Bible is to just write out your questions. There's a famous Bible professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, Howard Hendricks, and he would have his students come in to the class and on the first class he would give them assignment.
He would say, I want you to take I to take Acts one, one, just one verse, and I want you to go and I want you to write 50 questions on that one verse. And these students would go out and they would be pulling their hair out. How in the world are you going to come up with 50 questions about one verse? And so they'd come back in and they report back and they really felt accomplished about all of these questions that they had managed to come up with. And then Howard Hendricks would say, great, I want you to go find 50 more this next week. What he was trying to do was he was trying to teach them to be curious to come into the scriptures and be curious, ask questions, try to figure out what's going on. And so we're going to ask just a couple of questions this morning and we're going to work through those questions.
And then I think that those questions are going to lead to some things that are kind of clear and exciting to me in my head, and I'm praying that I can kind of pull the pieces together for us this morning. Yesterday we were at the pool and I was watching kids kind of jump into the deep end and I kind of feel like some of the stuff that's in my heart and in my head is a bit of the deep end theologically and man, I'm just praying that I can convey those things and at least maybe I can bring you along in my own wrestling and considering and give you a good push in the right direction with this text. A little bit of context, a little bit of context. Last week we saw that Jesus said to his disciples about this crowd, he observed the crowd and he had compassion on them because they were distressed and dejected.
That's why he felt compassion for them. And then he said this, the harvest, speaking of this crowd, the harvest is abundant, but the workers are few. Therefore pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest. So we get emotion, or actually we get observation. Here's this crowd, and we get the emotion of Jesus literally in his guts feeling compassion. Then he gives instructions to his disciples and says, I want you to pray with me that the Lord of the harvest would send out laborers into the harvest. And then what happens? Well, then Jesus sends them in. He commissions them, right? We're going to get there. In fact, that's the last verse we'll look at this morning, but I want to spend a minute just looking over the framework of this text. We see first that he commissions and he empowers his apostles.
So he's just observed here this whole crowd that's not in a good place. Humanity itself is not in a good place, and he empowers them to do not something new, not like a circus act, but he says he empowers them to do what he has been doing to heal, to preach, to deliver. Then he gives them instructions or we're given the names of these apostles, but then he gives them instructions in verse five and he sends them out. Now we'll focus on that. There's some really awesome stuff next week that we're going to look at. There's kind of some underlying principles about in verses five through 15 about the guidance of God. I can't wait to preach that sermon. Lord willing, I'm here and I can preach that because it's going to be fun. I've been thinking about it for a few weeks now, but this is kind of the framework and what we're going to do is we're going to kind of pause on just this long list of apostles, the 12.
So we're given the 12 apostles, and I want to ask this question, who were the 12? And let's just run through these very quickly. Okay, here we have Peter who's listed. His background is that he's a fisherman from Beth Theta, the brother of Andrew. His significance is that he's often considered the leader of the apostles because he was so outspoken. He's prominent in the gospels and acts outspoken, impulsive, and became a pillar of the early church. That's what Paul says of him in Galatians chapter one and in Acts 1, 11, 12 chapters, we see that as well. Then we see Andrew, who's his brother, that's his background. He's also a fisherman. His significance is known for bringing people to Jesus, including his brother, Peter James, who's the son of Zey. His background is that he's a fisherman, the brother of John, and his significance is that he's a part of Jesus' inner circle.
So Jesus had his 12, but then he had this circle of Peter, James and John, and so he's in this inner circle known for his zeal and fervor, and he was martyred according to early church history. John, his brother was a fisherman, also a part of the inner circle, referred to as the beloved disciple traditionally credited with writing the gospel of John and three epistles, first, second, third, John, and the book of Revelation. Then you have Philip, who's from Beth Sada, possibly a follower of John the Baptist, and his significance, he's known for his practical and questioning nature. He asks a really, really important question in John 14. I love that. It's one of my favorite questions that's posed to Jesus. Bartholomew Little is known about his background. He's known for his initial skepticism about Jesus, which turned into a firm belief upon meeting him.
This is also Nathaniel, that's his other name. So Matthew, he's also known as Levi. He's a tax collector. And his significance, his calling is notable because of tax collectors were despised, traditionally credited with writing the gospel of Matthew Thomas, also known as Dims. And so Matthew, in Matthew, we have particular names, and then when we get over to Luke, we have a different set of names. They had different, you have like Peter, his name Simon, he's also known as Peter Thomas, was also known as Demis. He's known as doubting Thomas. He's famous for his doubts about Jesus's resurrection, which turned into a profound declaration of faith when he saw the risen Christ James son of Alius. His background was, he's often identified with James. He's identified as James the Less, or James the younger, not the brother of John. And little is known about him, which underscores the diverse background and personality of the apostles.
Thaddeus also known as LABAs, Judas, son of James also called Jude. His significance is he's traditionally credited with writing the epistle of Jude and Simon the zealot, a member of the zealots, which was a political, he was a political zealot, Jewish revolutionary group. His significance is his inclusion signifies the diversity again of those who followed Jesus. And then Judas Scat, the one who would betray Jesus and his significance is the betrayal was foretold and played a crucial role in the passion narrative. So these are the 12 that are listed here in the gospel of Matthew. I have a question. Okay, you can ask a question. Yes,
I know why there were 12 apostles. I know that
Because
Israel had 12 sons. I already know that. But why did they pick this average people and not Pharisees and people that were into religion? Why pick the average Joe to do the job?
I don't think we are necessarily told, and that's a really good question. I don't think we know necessarily, so it would all be conjecture, but it seems like the people that are most responsive are these blue collar, not elites. So Jesus says in terms of it's for the wealthy, it's harder for them to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. We see that there are so Nicodemus in John three apostles, I dunno, I have no idea. I don't know, but I know this in Luke, that Jesus. So there's a crowd of people following Jesus bigger than these 12. Another time we see that they're 72, these 12 here are called apostles, and in Luke, I think it's Luke 11, it says that Jesus spent a night in prayer, and these are the ones that God guides him to pick these 12. Why they are who they are. I don't know, but I think it is significant that it isn't the elites. A
Lot of it ties into the Old Testament.
It does.
It all ties into the Old
Testament. That's what we were talking about, and
It all clicked.
One, Jesus
Was brought in the world.
Yeah, yeah. Our discussion on Tuesday got me so excited about this. That's what we're going to look at next. I'm going to give a little bit of Old Testament, and that was the question. And Felicia, you asked that question last week specifically about why were there no women in this group, which we will look at next. So why did Jesus pick 12 men? Why did he pick 12 men? And I think that we've got to go back into the Old Testament, and here my slides start with Genesis 12. But listen, it goes before that. It goes back to Genesis one and two. When God made humanity, what did he make? He made male and female in his image. He created them in his image, and he commissioned them for a work. What was the work? Sub the garden, multiply, be fruitful and multiply the garden, tend the garden. Subdue, subdue rule, right? Be fruitful and multiply. Subdue rule. And there's, what's one other word that I'm missing?
What rule? Subdue, fruitful, multiply. I'm missing one of the words there in Genesis, but essentially this is the command given to them. Do they obey? They do not obey. So we get Genesis three. Humanity decides I'm not going to obey God. So we have Adam and Eve, they decide I'm going to rebel. We're going to take the fruit, we're going to eat. And from that point, we have, what is it called? The fall, right? So humanity falls from God's purposes. And imagine, I was trying to find my board to write on, imagine this giant cavity like this hole or an empty swimming pool, like the side view. Basically humanity does not continue on the trajectory where how God's designed it. But instead, humanity falls and there's all this fallout. There's physical death, there's psychological death. We see immediately there's shame. We see that the husband and wife are blaming each other.
They become almost enemies in a sense. They're not taking ownership of what they did. They're like it was him. It was his fault. And it just becomes, and from there we have chapter four is the first murder, and we go right into 6, 7, 8, and all of humanity is wicked, and God's like, I'm going to wipe out humanity except for Noah and his family. We're going to start all over again. And so from Genesis chapter three, we have this chasm. All of humanity is broken and the systems are broken. So there's still a resemblance of the garden. So you still bear the image of God, you bear the image of God. You're designed to be a friend of God, just like Adam and Eve were designed. You have an identity, but there's broken parts about you. There's broken parts about your psychology, your relationships, some of your bodies, you know it better than anyone else.
Your bodies are breaking down. It's like, yeah, I'm living in that cavity of humanity now. God did not leave us in that place. He loves you. He has a plan for you. He wants to rescue humanity. So the rescue mission of God begins as soon as before even Genesis three is over, God comes to Adam and Eve and he says, I'm going to cover your nakedness. He gives them animal skins as clothing. He makes promises to them that he's going to crush the head of the serpent, that the seed of the woman is going to crush the head of the serpent. There's this promise that God is going to intervene. And so at Genesis three, the story of God's redemption begins, but it is a long, slow story of God's redemption unfolding in the world. He keeps sending people to save the day, but they fail.
So he sends, he's like, let's start over with Noah. But by the time you get to the end of Noah's story and Noah's kind of like a new Adam, by the time you get to the end of Noah's story, he's failed and there's shame and there's nakedness, and there's covering of nakedness, and there's broken relationships, and there's offspring that are cursed, then we go to Abraham. So I want you to see the 12 apostles understanding. The 12 apostles really goes back to understanding this guy Abraham. So in Genesis 12, Abraham has this account. So his name's Abraham. He's not even Abraham yet. God hasn't changed his name yet. So God says to Abram, go from your land, your relatives, and your father's house to the land that I'm going to show you. So God says, Hey, go to this new place. I'm going to make you into a great nation.
In other words, your offspring are going to become a nation. I'm going to bless you, and presumably I'm going to bless this nation. I will make your name great and look at you will be a blessing. Now, he's speaking to not just Abraham, but to his offspring. He says, I will bless those who bless you, Abraham. In other words, the rest of the nations that bless your offspring, I'm going to bless them and I'm going to curse anyone who treats you with contempt and all the peoples of the earth will be blessed through you. This is really, really important. So God picks one guy, Abraham, and he says, I'm about to bless you, but is it just so that he can be an elite? No, it's so he can be a conduit, right? Do you see that? So God picks Abraham and he says, you're special, but you're special because humanity is special and through you begins a redemptive process, and all the peoples on the earth will be blessed through you.
Abraham's like, great, alright, there's a famine. I'm going to go to Egypt and I'm going to lie. I'm going to lie. I'm going to cheat. I'm going to take a Egyptian slave. There's going to be abuse of that slave that occurs. Abraham fails within the first chapter. I mean the story of failure repeats. Here's the thing. God picks broken people to carry out his purpose, and by the time you're done and you get to Jesus, you're kind of done with humanity. Anybody do life where you kind of get old enough with life and you're like, wow, people are deeply flawed. Even some of the people closest to me are able to hurt me. You get, it's kind of like that's how reading the Bible is good. People have good days, but then ultimately they fail to be God's full redemptive purpose leading up to Jesus.
So that's Genesis one through three then or Genesis 12. Then if we fast forward a couple of generations. So Abraham has a son named Isaac. Isaac has a son named Jacob. Jacob has 12 sons. So the 12 sons, Jacob was, had his name changed to Israel. Yeah, his name was changed to Israel. Okay? So that's Genesis 32. Go back and read that. That's when he gets his name changed. So here's the 12 sons. This is the 12 sons of Jacob. These are the names of the sons of Israel. Now this is interesting. So remember we're reading Matthew, we're reading Matthew Matthew's Jewish. He's helping Jewish people understand their Messiah. Jesus, over and over again, we've seen that. He talks about Jesus and he says, this is what to fulfill what was written, but then he's telling the Jesus story and it maps on to the life of, so Jesus was in the wilderness for 40 days.
Oh wait, I know somebody that was in the wilderness 40 days, Israel was in the wilderness for 40 days tempted, right? So Jesus is the embodiment of Israel. So it just so happens in the Hebrew scriptures, you have this list that looks exactly like our list in Matthew chapter 10. These are the names of the sons of Israel that came who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his family, Ruben, Simeon, Levi, anybody named Levi here? Yeah, that's right. I told you you were going to be in the sermon today. And Judah, Issachar, Zein and Benjamin, Dan and Naftali, GAD and Asher, the total number of Jacob's descendants were 70. Joseph was already in Egypt, so he's Joseph's the 12th, okay? Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation eventually died, but the Israelites were fruitful, increased, rapidly, multiplied, and became numerous so that the land was filled with them. Now, we just talked about Genesis one and two.
What was Adam and Eve commanded to do? Be fruitful, multiply the Bible's using the same language. Here we're talking about Israel. They're being fruitful, they're multiplying, they're extremely numerous. The Bible is written. God's story is not accidental, right? The fact that God is picking flawed people does not reflect upon his nature in a negative way. It tells a good story that you should this morning feel like I feel welcomed into this story that God tells. So we have these characters. We have these 12 sons. Now were these 12, these shining bright, exemplary men. No, go read like they're murderers. Two of the brothers go and murder an entire tribe in vengeance because that one of the guys in the tribe violent violated one of the sisters. You have one of the other brothers sells his brother into slavery, Joseph into slavery. This is a ragtag kind of bad group of people that are the 12 sons, but nonetheless, they're the 12 sons.
Those 12 sons become the 12 tribes of Israel. Okay? Are you tracking? So Israel is down in Egypt, and then Moses delivers them, sends them out. So we jump four, 400 years, and we have Moses in the wilderness with 2 million, maybe one to 2 million people who have left Egypt as the nation of Israel, and you have the 12 tribes now, and God makes a covenant with these people. Here's the covenant. Now, if you'll carefully listen to me and keep my covenant, you'll be my own possession out of all the people. So God's still saying, Israel, you are mine. You are my people. You are my people's, although the whole earth is mine and you'll be my kingdom of priests and my holy nation. These are the words that you are to say to Israel. So he makes a covenant with this baby nation that's being established in the wilderness.
He says, you are a special nation for me, and you are going to be an entire nation of priests and you're going to be a kingdom of priests. What do priests do? They mediate people's relationship with God. They stand in the gap, mediating the relationship with God. Their full-time job is to help other people be closer to God. That's Israel's calling. Do they fulfill that? No, they don't really fulfill that, but that's what God calls them to. Then we go further in the story. We go to Isaiah, which is a thousand years later in Jewish history. They're now in the land. They've rebelled against God again, which is typical for humanity. We're good at rebelling. They rebel against God. And so God sends prophets. So Isaiah is one of those prophets. Here's what he says. A child will be born for us. A son will be given to us, and the government will be on his shoulders.
He will be named a wonderful counselor, mighty God, eternal father and prince of peace. The dominion will be vast. So this is the dominion of his reign. His dominion will be vast and its prosperity will never end. So this kingdom that he's talking about, he will reign on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish and sustain it with justice and righteousness. From now on and forever, the zeal of the Lord of armies will accomplish this. So this prophecy is hinting that God's still not done. You've failed as a nation, but God's still going to send this individual to accomplish. So if you were Jewish and you take all your history, you take the Psalms, you take the prophets, you have been primed, like you prime a pump, you've been primed for this person, this prophet, this messiah that's going to come on the scene and he's going to reign as a king, but he's also going to be a priest that mediates man's relationship with God and he's going to fix the problems.
Who's he going to be? So then we fast forward and we get to the 12 apostles. So Jesus comes on the scene and he chooses. He chooses these 12. They symbolically, here's the thing, these men symbolically represent these 12 tribes of Israel. That's all they do. Now, I grew up thinking that the 12 apostles were basically the vice presidents of the organization for the church. You have Jesus as the CEO, and then the apostles are, they're the vice presidents to kind of get the church started. Actually, they play more of a symbolic role pointing backwards at God's faithfulness to Israel than they do in regards to a forward mission. Only a couple of them write scripture, John and Matthew. Maybe Jude is the one that's spoken of, maybe that Jude is another brother of Jesus. So they don't all write scripture. They do go carry the message out according to church history, but they don't act like vice presidents. In fact, after the death and the resurrection of Christ, they're there together. They're formative, but some of them die early on within a couple of years, they're dying off. They're getting martyred.
This is the thing that is mind blowing, and I've only been understanding this recently, is they represent God's faithfulness to the nation of Israel. They're partnered with Jesus. They are commissioned, but they are a part of this. What we see here go and carry out this mission to the nation of Israel. So when you look at the instructions that Jesus gives them, before we look at the instructions, look at the fact that they, in verse one, chapter 10, so go back to Matthew 10, one, Jesus takes these 12 and he says, now I'm empowering you as my 12 to preach about what the kingdom. That's not some foreign concept that Jesus introduced. No, this is language of thousands of years of Judaism. Come now. Now the kingdom is come near and I'm going to empower you to do this redemptive work to literally heal and to overthrow the demonic powers like Jesus in his ministry is pulling back this curtain on more than just physical, but there's these spiritual powers that have been at play in the world, and he's like, no, we're going to cast out demons. And then he sends them out and what's the instructions? He sends them out after giving them instructions. He says, don't take the road to the Gentiles. Don't enter any Samaritan town. Instead go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Do you see that? That it's like it is this faithfulness, God is being faithful to Abraham's covenant thousands of years earlier.
That doesn't mean that you and I, as I'm assuming that we're Gentiles, that doesn't mean that God is like, well, you're a second class citizen. What you and I should read into this is that thousands and thousands of years later, God is faithful to this man, Abraham. God's faithful to this, and even before Abraham, he's like, know the redemptive purpose of rescuing humanity out of the pit is going to continue. And so here he's zoomed in specifically on Israel. The Israel's been primed. They're waiting and they are given the gift of having the Messiah sent to them. So all throughout the gospels, we see Jesus focused in on Israel saying, Hey, I'm here. He doesn't openly claim to be the Messiah, but he does the works of the Messiah, and then when he's asked, he doesn't deny it. So then you continue just a little bit further in the story and we get to Revelation.
I got to just show you Revelation 21. So this is not yet happened. This is a scene in heaven. The city had a massive high wall with 12 gates, so this is the new heavens and new earth. 12 angels were at the gates. The names of the 12 tribes of Israel's sons were inscribed on the gates. So Israel is still included. Do you see this? Israel's sons were inscribed on the gates. So the people of God that were included in this story that failed, they're included in this future reign and rule of Christ. The plan of God is still being carried out. There were three gates on the east and three gates on the north and three gates on the south, and these three gates on the west. The city wall had 12 foundations, and the 12 names of the 12 apostles of the lamb were on the foundations.
The point is this, it's not that, and I'm skipping ahead here because of for the sake of time, oh my gosh, there's so much good stuff here. Don't leave out anything. This is the point. If we're going to go like Jesus, that's not fair that you picked 12 men as your apostles. We could say like, well, where's the white guy? Where's the Chinese guy with the freckle on his forehead? Where's the women in this mix? No, these were Jewish men from the region of Galilee pretty much all around the same age. Jesus was highly selective in this process, and it fulfilled this beautiful plan of God. How does that transpose onto our life? Let's jump over to Isaiah 49, 6. In Isaiah 49, 6, he says, it's not enough for you to be my servant raising up tribes of Jacob and restoring and protecting ones of Israel.
I'll make you a light for the nations over and over again. Even as God's talking to Israel, he's saying, I'm doing this work through you so that the nations can be saved. Look at revelation Romans 11. This is Paul explaining the guts of this in Romans 11, 11 through 13. Paul says, I ask then have they being the Jews? Have the Jews stumbled so as to fall and to be completely lost, Paul's question, are the Jews cast away from God's plan? Now, this is being written by Paul the Apostle, after Jesus is up in heaven. So this is being written in the first century. This is in the Bible, and Paul says, no, the Jews are not. They've not fallen on the contrary by their transgression, by their rejection of the Messiah, salvation has come to the Gentiles. Why? So that Israel will be jealous. So the attention turns. Once Israel transgresses and rejects the Messiah, it opens up the gate. So God turns and opens up what we call the age of the Gentiles.
Now, if their transgressions, if the Jews transgressions brings riches for the world, in other words, the message of the gospel, their failure, the riches for Gentiles, how much more will their fullness bring? In other words, when the Jews are brought back in, when the story, because God's not done with Israel. When God works on behalf of Israel again, how awesome is that story going to be? He says, now, I'm speaking to you Gentiles, insofar as I'm an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry. So you got to go and read Romans 9, 10, 11, where he kind of surgically explains the whole thing. But this is the point, right? And this is where we kind of got to land the plane. I know you always love when I get to that slide conclusion, what is the conclusion?
This is the point When we ask why were there no women that were chosen? We could ask, why were there no black women? Why were there no white men? Why was there no Chinese or Latinos? The point is not diversity or representation from broad categories. That's not how God is carrying out his plan. The point is the redemption of humanity through a faithful mission that began with one husband and wife, Abraham and Sarah. These 12 apostles were Jewish men, primarily around Galilee, having been born within 10 to 15 years of each other. It's highly selective. The God of redemption is faithful over thousands of years to bring about this plan, I just want to show you again, Matthew 10, one, he summons his 12 disciples. He gives these 12 guys authority over unclean spirits to drive them out and to heal every disease and sickness.
This is what God has been doing be even before Abraham. He's been picking people, he's been commissioning people, and he's been saying, Hey, go. Go and be fruitful, multiply, bring the kingdom. When we get to next week, he's going to say, the message you're supposed to preach is the kingdom has come near. I had you write on your card your name. When we went through the different apostles names, the formatting was the same. It was like their name, their background, and their significance. As we look at the New Testament and we carry on the story of Jesus, you could have one of those cards you should be looking at. Put your name on there, what's your background, and then what's your significance? If you join in with the story that God is carrying out, you have significance. You have identity. The background that you have is not by accident.
When we look at these 12 guys who are picked, who seem so random, what it screams at us in our faces is that God is faithful. That God can take what seems like minutia and incidental people and people that seem cast away, and he weaves them in to his plan. The wisdom of God unfolds over millennia. Do you think that your gender or your ethnicity or your nationality or your generation that you were born in or your socioeconomic status are outside of God's redemptive plan? No. It is our job to come. It is not our job to come up with the grand plan. Being a human and being reconciled to God means that our ways come from him. He is the source of our wisdom. He is the one that directs our steps. So fundamental to being a follower of Jesus is that you are willing to join God in his plan, and you're not trying to recruit him to yours.
God has a good plan. Heaven doesn't have a DEI department. I hate to break to you, but he has a good plan. He has a good plan, and it's better than the human plan. And what we see as you follow this trajectory of, remember that pool, the empty swimming pool that God goes into, and he starts the redemptive purpose. This is written into that pool, and he's bringing about this redemptive purpose for you and I, so you and I are still living in that cavity. The people around us are still living in that cavity, but what we're beginning to see, what the word redemption means is not that you're fully delivered, you're not fully delivered out of that cavity, but the trajectory of your life. There's like this foreshadowing, there's this evidence of rescue. Salvation pieces start to come together. It's like, oh, that's why God did that there. Oh, that's what God did there, and he's putting the pieces back together, and then we already He, not only that, but he comes along and he says, here's what the end will look like. Jesus is going to be the king. He's going to be faithful to you. He's going to be faithful to Israel. He's going to be faithful to humanity, and you're invited in to be a part of that story. There is, yeah, that's good enough for this sermon.
There's a lot of pieces there that come together. There's a lot of pieces that come together, but it is easy to feel like, how is God going to use me? How does my, and sometimes in the church that I grew up in, it's like, well, God can use you when you volunteer for the welcome team, and he can. But God's plan, the people that God uses is like, God's going to use you tomorrow in the normal boring relationships that you have. He's going to use you in the job that maybe you think, I don't see how this connects. No, it does connect. God is at work. He's working through humanity in very normal ways to accomplish his purposes, and it's good. It is good. He invites you. He asks you to not only accept him as your redemption, but he asks you to accept him as your source of wisdom, as the one who's rescuing you and has a good plan for your life. Let's pray together. Lord, thank you for your faithfulness over a long period of time.
Thank you for these patterns that you're faithful in the template. That rescue is not a foreign idea to you. You've rescued in the past, but today, rescue is still just as real, giving life, resurrection from the dead, healing, giving, victory. All of those things are just as real today as they have ever been. God, we ask that you would work in our life and continue that good work. Thank you that like you say in one Corinthians seven, to the slave that was saved in their slavery, remain where you're at. But if you can be free, take your freedom. You put those saved slaves on this trajectory of go for it as much as you can. Go for it. Go for it. But even if you're not, then you are the Lord's free man. God, I pray that you would teach us. I pray for each person here that they would experience your freedom, your identity. They would be grafted in, have a sense of direction, your purpose in their life. Lord, continue to unfold your plan in our lives. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.