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By John MacArthur
Turn in your Bible with me to the 10th chapter of Matthew, Matthew
chapter 10. In the wonderful ongoing experience of studying the
Gospel of Matthew we have come to chapter 10. The chapter begins
with an introduction of the twelve disciples, and follows from there
to discuss their initial sending ministry. Before we get into how
the Lord equipped and sent them we’ve been looking at who they are.
And just as a setting let me read verses 1 through the first part of
verse 5. Speaking of the Lord it says, “And when he had called unto
him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean
spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and
all manner of disease. Now the names of the twelve apostles are
these: the first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew, his
brother; James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother; Philip
and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew, the tax collector; James, the
son of Alphaeus, and Lebbaeus, whose surname was Thaddaeus; Simon,
the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him. These twelve
Jesus sent forth.”
Now this is part 4 in our series on the Master’s Men, and we’ve been
looking at these individuals whom our Lord chose and sent to preach
the kingdom, to heal, to cast out demons. We’ve found, I think that
it’s fascinating to note that in spite of what is traditionally
believed about them they were very common men, very much like we
are. Very opposite the saintliness that we may assume belonged to
them in an almost other worldly manner.
Just in introducing our thoughts for this morning, I was reading a
quote this week by Henry Drummond who was an author, preacher, who
wrote the little book, The Greatest Thing in the World on
First Corinthians 13. On one occassion when he was in England he was
invited to speak at a very uppity, snobbish, high—class west end
London club. Upon his arrival he found all of the members present
and everything was arranged for his message. And he began his speech
with this very provocative truth, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the
entrance fee into the kingdom of heaven is nothing, however the
annual subscription is everything.” Now those men in that club knew
about annual subscriptions and entrance fees, that’s how they got
in. It was a well stated introduction. And that’s how it is in the
kingdom of God, the entrance fee is nothing, free gift, the annual
subscription is everything.
Now in this series from Matthew 10 we’re examining men who were
willing to pay everything. They were willing to go to the ultimate
sacrifice, they were willing to turn their back on their profession,
their lifestyle, their homes, their own choices in life to follow
Jesus Christ. These twelve gave everything. They walked away from
their nets, their tax tables, their political involvements, their
enterprises totally committed to following Jesus Christ wherever He
led them. And may I suggest to you that they were a few among many
who were not so willing. Look with me for a moment at John chapter
6, and I want to give you a contrast out of which the message this
morning I think will flow with deeper meaning. Now Jesus had many
who followed Him, in fact unnumbered multitudes followed Him. They
attracted by His personal magnetism, they were attracted by the
power of what He said and it’s ring of truth and conviction in their
hearts. They were attracted by His ability to do miracles and signs
and wonders. They were fascinated by Him, and by the things He said
and did. And so wherever you see Jesus you see this mass of people
following. Now all of these people in one sense or another could be
classified as disciples, for the word mathetes in the Greek
simply means a learner. They were there taking it in, learning about
Him. The word doesn’t really say anything about their commitment.
That’s why chapter 10 of Matthew starts out with twelve disciples
and then a verse later it says apostles. First they were learners
then they were sent when they had shown that they had learned their
lessons. But not all were sent because not all were willing to learn
all the lessons. For illustration sake look at verse 26 of John 6.
It is morning, it is the morning after. The morning after Jesus had
fed the five thousand men plus women plus children. As morning
breaks He sees the same crowd back again, I mean why not? They got a
free dinner, why not go for a free breakfast? And so they’re all
back, and Jesus says to them in verse 26, “Verily, verily, I say
unto you, You seek me, not because you saw the miracles, but because
you did eat of the loaves, and were filled.” In other words He says
to them, your interest in Me is not supernatural, it is not because
you saw the divine hand of God, it is not because you saw miracles
which spoke of the divine dimension. It’s because you ate and got
filled up. In other words you are living on a totally physical
level, and your attraction to Me has to do with free food and
physical healing. Verse 27, stop working is what He says, “for the
food that perishes, you better begin to work for food that endures
to everlasting life.” In other words you better get off the physical
onto the spiritual. You need to, to leave the natural dimension for
the supernatural. You need to be more concerned with eternity than
you are with time, with heaven than you are with earth. They were
attracted to Him because of what they could see that applied to
their physical living, not really thinking about the spiritual at
all. And so He will not accept them at that level and pushes them
past that dropping down to verse 53, same day, same crowd, same
setting. And again He says to them, “Verily, verily, I say unto you,
unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood,
you have no life in you.” In other words when you’re thinking about
life don’t think about it on the physical level think about it on
the spiritual level and recognize that unless you eat My flesh and
drink My blood you have no life on the spiritual plane. Verse 54
says, “He who eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, has eternal life;
and I’ll raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed,”
the real food, alethos, for real, “and my blood is real
drink.” The truest kind, which is the spiritual. “He that eateth my
flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.”
Now this is a, an amazing statement. What is He saying? Simple,
really. He’s not talking about physically eating His flesh and
drinking His blood, that would be cannibalism, anybody knows that.
He’s making an analogy, and He is saying, you cannot come to Me
simply to grant physical desires, you must take in all of Me. You
will take Me on this basis, all or nothing. He is simply saying you
have to take Me all in as if you were consuming Me. Everything I am,
everything I say, everything I do. They wanted free food and
miracles but they weren’t interested in really taking Jesus Christ
for all that He was. Look at verse 60, “Many, therefore, of his
disciples,” learners, “when they heard him say this,” in the
synagogue there at Capernaum, “they said, “This is an hard saying.
Who can hear this?” Now some people say this means they didn’t
understand it, I don’t agree with that, I think they understood it
perfectly. The word hard is skleros, stiff, un bending, and
they’re saying this is an objectionable, offensive, impossible to
accept statement. They’re not saying it’s hard to understand. It’s
stiff, it’s uncompromising, it’s unbending, it’s, it’s absolute,
it’s resolute. Jesus is saying, I alone and only I am able to give
you life, and you have to take Me in, all of Me to have that life.
And they’re saying, we can’t handle that, we cannot accept that. You
see, false disciples, and you see if this isn’t true, just think it
through, false disciples reject Christ’s words, they take only what
fits their lifestyle. That’s why there are so many people today who
want to jump on the bandwagon and they want to identify with Jesus
and they want to claim to be born again and wear a cross around
their neck or a fish sign on their car, they want to talk about
Jesus but when you start to point them in the direction of explicit
commands in the Bible they’re not interested. False disciples
ultimately will accept only what fits their desires and their life
style, and they’ll bail out of the rest. They didn’t like what He
said, and they did understand it. And as a result of that, Jesus
said in verse 61, “Does this offend you?” He doesn’t say, are you
confused? He says, does this offend you? And He uses skandalizo,
the word skandalizo basically had to do with a stick that was
in a trap and they put the bait on the stick and the animal would
come and the stick would kill them, because as soon as they grabbed
the bait, pulled the stick the trap would fall and they’d be dead.
What is He saying? He’s saying, when I fed you it was okay, and when
I healed you it was okay, we had something going. But when I said
you take all of Me or none, did that kill off our relationship? Did
that end anything we had going? Was that a trap for you that snuffed
out the hope of any relationship for us? Did that end it? And indeed
it did, go down to verse 66, “From that time many of his disciples
went back,” back where? Just back, back to their former life, “and
walked no more with him.” Why? Too much, too much was expected, too
much was required. They weren’t interested in total commitment. They
bailed out. Free food, that’s great, healing, super, commitment, not
interested. Verse 67, “Jesus said to the twelve.” Listen, after
everybody leaves, guess who’s still there? Twelve guys. What I’m
trying to show you is these are not just sort of tag alongs, these
twelve are the ones who counted the cost, stuck it out, paid the
price when the rest bailed out. And He said to them, “Will you also
go away?” And you don’t understand that in English you have to see
the Greek, the Greek is a class of condition that should expect a no
answer. In other words Jesus said this and... in... if you were
looking at it in the Greek, you won’t also go away, will you? Peter
speaks for the group and says, “where would we go? You have the
words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that you are the
Christ, the Son of the living God.” Then Jesus points out that even
among them one of them’s a devil. But the point was this, the crowd
was on the surface in the physical, Peter says, we’ve gone past
that, we’re looking at a spiritual truth, we see You as the Messiah,
the Son of the living God. You got it Peter. Now why did I take you
to that passage? Turn back to Matthew 10, because beloved I want you
to understand that these men that we’re dealing with in this chapter
are men who have made the decision. They’ve crossed the line,
they’ve made the total commitment, they will follow Jesus Christ,
eating His flesh and drinking His blood and paying whatever price
there has to be paid. Commitment. Do you remember the disciple who
went away because he wanted to bury his father? Remember the
disciple who went away because he wanted to say good-bye to his
relatives? The disciple who went away because he wanted comfort?
That’s not these men. These have made the commitment and paid the
price. This is the cream of the crop. Why do I say that? Because I’m
about to introduce to you three men that we don’t know anything
about. And at least if we don’t know anything else we ought to know
that they made the commitment, right? Because when you take obscure
names, and we’re going to be looking today at James, the son of
Alphaeus, Lebbaeus, surnamed Thaddeaus, and Simon, the Zealot. At
least if we don’t know anything about them the tendency is to sort
of figure them as second class sort of out of the way stragglers,
when the fact is they had made the same commitment that Peter and
everybody else made, they crossed the line in utter, total obedience
to Christ.
Now we’ve been asking a question, and the question we’ve been asking
is what kind of people does God use in His special service? When the
Lord went out to pick people what kind did He pick? And we’ve found
some interesting answers, haven’t we? He picked all kinds, all kinds
of people. I mean we have seen that the Lord can basically take any
kind of raw material at all, and use it for the advance of His
glorious eternal kingdom. Longfellow could take a worthless piece of
paper and write a poem on it and make it instantly worth thousands
of dollars. That’s genius. Rockefeller could sign his name to a
piece of paper and make it worth millions of dollars, that’s riches.
Uncle Sam can take a gold stamp or a gold stamp ah, put an eagle on
a coin, make it worth twenty dollars. A mechanic can take material
worth five dollars and instantly make it worth five hundred, and
they say it’s skill. An artist can take a fifty cent piece of canvas
and paint on it and make it worth thousands of dollars. And Jesus
Christ can take a worthless, sinful life, wash it in the blood, put
His Spirit in it and make it a blessing, and that’s called
sanctification, and that’s what the Lord is in the business of
doing, taking rough, raw material and using it. There’s a church in
Strasbourg, in the Second World War it was bombed along with alot of
other churches. The people who went to that church came in after the
bombing to see what was left of their beloved church and they found
that the entire roof had fallen in. In the middle of the church they
had a very beautiful statue of Christ with His hands outstretched
that had been carved some centuries before by a great artist. It was
a very important piece of art to the church and when they came back
and found that the church had fallen down, to their surprise they
found that the statue still stood remaining however one of the beams
had fallen across the hands and sheared both the hands off. The
townspeople hurried to a sculptor who lived in the town and said,
would you be kind enough to replace the hands on our statue and he
was willing to do it for nothing. He proposed that to the church
leaders and they had a board meeting. After the meeting they came
out to announce to the artist that they had rejected his offer.
Thereason being they felt that the statue without the hands would be
the greatest illustration possible for the fact that God does His
work through His people, and the only hands He has are their hands.
So the statue remained without hands.
In a very real sense that’s true. Jesus Christ chooses human hands,
and sometimes they seem to be the most infirm hands, the least
potentially successful. And as we have been looking at the apostles
we have been amazed I think, at their lack of qualification. In fact
there is not of executive search organization in the country who
would have picked up any one of these guys. They just didn’t cut it,
by the world’s standards.
Group one had some pretty strong leaders, James and Peter, some
pretty solid lovers of men, Andrew and John. And group two, there’s
some pretty good men there, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew,
but James, the son of Alphaeus, Lebbaeus, and Simon the Zealot,
whoever heard of them? Do you want to know the Bible doesn’t say
anything about them? Some of you are saying, does that mean we can
go? No. Because even though the Bible doesn’t say anything about
them I have some things to say about them. Now this is the least
intimate group. You remember I told you they always appear in the
same groups, four, four and four whenever the list of twelve is
given, and it’s given four times in the Scripture and all the names
always appear in the same group of four, and they move away in
intimacy from Christ. But they are all wonderfully chosen by the
Lord, they all preached the kingdom, they all taught the truths of
the kingdom, they all healed the sick and they all cast out demons
ah, they were the first order of kingdom preachers after Christ
Himself. And they will reign on thrones ruling the twelve tribes of
Israel in the millennium. I mean they are remarkable for what the
Lord transformed them into.
What have we learned about them in terms of the kind of people the
Lord uses? Well He uses strong, dynamic, bold leaders like Peter who
take charge, initiate, strategize, confront. He uses humble, gentle,
inconspicuous souls like Andrew, quietly seek no prominence but
bring people to Christ behind the scenes. He uses zealous,
passionate, ambitious, uncompromising task oriented insensitive men
like James who wind up being early martyrs. He uses loving,
sensitive people oriented, believing, trusting, intimate, truth
seekers like John. He uses skeptical, analytical, mechanical slow to
believe, slow witted, visionless, pessimistic, unsure men like
Philip. And He’ll use even a man with prejudice in his heart, who is
a seeker of truth and honest and open and clear minded and deeply
surrendered like Nathanael. And He’ll use an outcast, extortionist,
tax collector, a traitor and the most hated man in his entire
society like Matthew, who knows he is a sinner and seeks forgiveness
and He’ll turn him into a meek and quiet humble man who loves the
riff-raff of society and who has a great faith in Christ.
And now the last group, and for this morning we’ll look at these
three, James, Lebbaeus and Simon. First, James, the son of Alphaeus.
There’s a famous line in the Apocrypha which might fit at this
point, it says, “Let us now praise famous men.” Well if we were to
do that James the son of Alphaeus would not be in our list. He would
never make Who’s Who. He would never be a guest on a t.v. talk show.
He would never be asked to write a preface for a book or to pray at
a convention, and he would never be interviewed by Christianity
Today. James, the son of Alphaeus, who is that? Do you know what
the Bible says about him? Absolutely nothing. That’s right, nothing.
Just his name. And he had a famous name, I guess he probably
suffered because there was James, the son of Zebedee who was a
ramrod of a guy. A son of thunder, the Bible calls him. And then
there was James, the brother of our Lord, and then there was James,
the son of Alphaeus. Never wrote anything, never said anything,
never asked anything, never did anything recorded in the Bible. In
fact in Mark 15:40 he is called James the mikros, the little,
little James, guess who big James was? Big James, son of thunder.
Little James, he was just little James.
The word mikros basically means small in stature, it could
indicate that he was little. It also can mean young in age, it could
mean that he was little and young. It also could mean that he was
least in influence. So he was little and young and not very
influential. I kind of think he probably was all three of those
things, and that’s why they sort of gave him that nickname, little
James. James the less, as he’s called by Mark. If he was older than
James the son of Zebedee they probably wouldn’t have called him
mikros because it would have confused people, they probably would
have called him the elder James or the older James. So it probably
indicates that he was younger. And if he was big in stature they
probably wouldn’t have called him little James. And if he had alot
of influence they probably never would have nicknamed him little
James, they probably would have nicknamed him something according to
his influence, like bold James or something. So it may well be that
he was just a small, little, young fella who wasn’t a particularly
powerful personality. You know it’s just encouraging to me the Lord
doesn’t depend on superstars, isn’t it? People say, oh you know if
only so and so would become a Christian, just think what would
happen. You’d be amazed what people say to me, I’m praying for Bob
Hope to become a Christian, because if Bob Hope ever became a
Christian, can you imagine what would happen? You want to know
something? That’s a great thing to pray. I, I’d like to see him
become a Christian, but the kingdom of God will not advance any
faster with him leading the parade than anybody else. Because God
does not depend on that. James, the son of Alphaeus will sit on a
throne reigning over one of the tribes of Israel in the millennium,
and what do you know about him? You don’t know anything about him.
Well, what’s the point? That God is the power, right? Not James. The
Bible doesn’t say a thing about him. His work, his
personality,nothing, his mark is obscurity and I think it’s kind of
neat that the Lord put one guy in here, who is utterly obscure. He’s
the most obscure of all of them. He didn’t ask any questions, he
didn’t say anything, we don’t know anything about him. It may be
that he just was obedient all the time and there wasn’t alot to say
about that. I mean Peter’s appears alot, but it’s usually negative.
James never appears, maybe he was just on target all the time. Oh,
there is one faint tradition about him. The early church fathers say
he preached in Persia. Persia is ancient Iran, and that he took the
Gospel of Jesus Christ to that land, and they refused to hear him
preach and they crucified him. I wonder what the world would be like
today if Iran had heard the Gospel, preached by James, the son of
Alphaeus. Maybe they wouldn’t had a.. .have had a legacy of the
Moslem religion. The Lord uses ordinary people to do extraordinary
things. Silent unknown soldiers. I thought to myself as I was
thinking about this individual of Hebrews chapter 11, where it says,
“What shall I say more?” Verse 32, “Time would fail me to tell of
Gideon, and Barak, and Samson, and Jephthah; and David, and Samuel,
and the prophets.” We know those names. And then “Who, through
faith, subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promise,
stopped the mouths of lions, Quenched the violence of fire, escaped
the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, “ and then
he goes on, “Women received their dead to life, others had trial of
cruel mockings and scourging, of bonds and imprisonment; were
stoned, and sawn asunder, and tested, and slain with the sword,” and
on and on and on, nameless, nameless, nameless people who died for
their faith and then he says, “Of whom the world was not (what?)
worthy.” I don’t know their names even.
Could I add
just an interesting note on James? Alphaeus is a common name, so is
James. But there’s one other disciple who had the.. .who had a
father named Alphaeus, and that is Matthew. According to Mark 2:14
Matthew’s called Levi, Levi or Matthew, same one, and it says,
“Levi,” Mark 2:14, “son of Alphaeus.” There is a remote possibility
that James was Matthew’s brother. There’s even another interesting
possibility, more fascinating than that one. When our Lord was dying
on the cross in John 19:25 it says, “There stood by the cross Jesus’
mother,” that’s Mary, “and his mother’s sister.” And it probably
means sister—in—law, named “Mary.” Since we assume that no mother
would name both her daughters Mary. So there’s Mary, Jesus’ mother
and next to her is Mary her sister—in-law whose husband’s name is
Clopas, and another form of that word is Alphaeus. And it is
possible that Alphaeus, if it’s the same Alphaeus was the brother of
Joseph, the husband of Mary. Which would make Jesus and James, what?
Cousins. And by the way it tells us that Mary, the wife of Clopas or
Alphaeus, it tells us in Mark 15:40 was “the mother of little
James.” James the less. So there is the possibility that he was the
brother of Matthew, there’s the possibility that he was the cousin
of Jesus. There’s also the possibility that he was both, which is
interesting to think about. Now if it’s true that he was the cousin
of Jesus he, he might have been throwing his weight around a little,
but you don’t see him doing that. He’s just obscure. That’s all.
May I speak to you from my heart for just a minute? The apostles
.and you see this and - it’s just coming clear to me as I’m going
through this series, the apostles demonstrate to us that it is never
really the worker who is the issue in the kingdom work, it’s never
the worker. I don’t think I ever really understood before what Paul
meant when he said, So what is Apollos and what is Paul? “It is God
that gives the increase.” First Corinthians 3. The worker is
nothing. So that the New Testament never even focuses on these guys.
I mean it doesn’t say, now you, you people uhm, the important thing
is to study these twelve men, now ah, we want you to understand
their career, their style, their method, their means, ah, the Bible
doesn’t pick out the best preacher and give you his homiletic
method. The Bible doesn’t pick out the one who was the best healer
or the most effective at some thing or another, it, it, it doesn’t
even deal with them. The only time the apostles are ever mentioned
in the Scripture is when they intersect with Christ for a specific
purpose. He is the focus. There’s never a diversion. You don’t have
any record of the career of any disciple, you don’t have the record
of any career of any apostle, because they are not the issue. The
human instrument is immaterial to God. He can use Balaam’s ass if He
has to. He can make the rocks cry out if He has to. The, the human
instrument is not the issue. You don’t have to be way up here
intellectually or — in the gifted category, that is not the issue.
The Bible never deals with that. The focus is always on Jesus
Christ, and these people just go in and out of the picture, and
usually they ask dumb questions.
You maybe have read the story of the man who painted the great
painting of the Last Supper, he called in his friend and he said I
want you to look at it, I’m finished, evaluate it. He looked it over
and he said to him I, I want to tell you, those cups that you have
painted on the table are the most magnificent things I’ve ever seen.
His friend was dumbfounded instantly as the artist picked up a brush
and some paint and just painted over every cup, and said I failed
because I wanted you to see Christ. You saw cups. It’s a wonderful
thing to be a vessel, fit for the Master’s use but that’s not where
the focus is. I think one of the great tragedies of Christianity in
our time and place is that we see the cups, we don’t see Christ. We
are personality oriented. Studying the methods and means of men,
rather than experiencing the power of God and I think part of the
impotence in the church is because of this Christian superstar
mentality. That isn’t the issue, Christ is the issue.
So the Lord uses an obscure little fella, unknown, unsung. Could
have claimed to been a Matthew, ah, brother to Matthew or even a
cousin to Jesus, but goes quietly unnoticed through the Gospel
narrative. And yet was no doubt a powerful preacher with a deep,
deep commitment, used by God. And someday you can read the heavenly
record for yourself, and find out all that the Bible doesn’t say.
What about the second one? Verse 3, “Lebbaeus, whose surname was
Thaddaeus.” And if you look in Luke 6:16 and Acts 1:13, you don’t
have to look it up, you’ll find he had a third name, Judas, son of
James. And he’s one place called Judas, not Iscariot. Judas also was
a common name, it means Jehovah leads, and many people in that time
named their son, Jehovah leads, God leads. This is Judas, that’s
probably his given name, and then he probably received the names
Lebbaeus and Thaddaeus as people add names, almost like nicknames.
Thaddaeus is a fascinating word, it comes from a Hebrew root shad
which has to do with a female breast. And basically Thaddaeus means
breast child, and it likely reflects the fact that Thaddaeus was the
baby of his family. It was common to have large families. Thaddaeus
was the baby, he was Thaddaeus. You’ve seen a mother, she comes up
and says, I want you to meet my baby, and she looks up and the guy’s
6’ 5”, you know? This is my baby. Well it’s.. .that’s the baby of
the family, that’s the last one, right? That’s the breast child,
that’s just a little colloquialism perhaps, for the baby. And so to
his family he was the baby, he was breast child. Specially cherished
by his mother probably. And then he was called also Lebbaeus, now
that may be a nickname too and it comes from the Hebrew root leb
which means heart, and it means a heart child. And a heart child was
someone with a great heart, and usually that was related to courage.
So his family saw him as their baby and it may well be that the
disciples kind of nicknamed him or other men who knew him nicknamed
him Lebbaeus because that reflected his courage. He may have been a
man of courage. Now we can’t be sure about these things, but it may
well be that from his mother’s perspective he was the tender baby
but from his friend’s perspective he was a man of hard courage. He
too is wrapped in obscurity. He would never make the Who’s Who
either. But he did ask one very important question, and it’s the
only time we meet him in the Scripture. John 14, look with me
quickly and we’ll just look at this rather briefly. Jesus speaking,
the night before His trial, and He says in verse 21, “He that hath
my commandments, and keepth them, he it is that loveth me; he that
loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I’ll love him, and
manifest myself to him.” That is an incredible statement. You could
sit and look at that and think about it and dwell on it for hours.
You keep your commandments, you show you love Me. That’s all it says
basically. I can tell who loves Me, they obey Me. You may claim to
love God and love Christ, you don’t obey that claim is a lie. He
that keeps My commandments is the one that loves Me. “And the one
who loves me will be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and
manifest myself to him.” That is a incredibly important statement.
God can only be manifest to a heart that loves Him. That, that’s
the, that’s the reason people in the world don’t know God, that’s
the reason they can’t perceive the truth because they don’t love
God. There has to be a love toward God, a willingness to obey and
then God is manifest. The point being, here’s the sum of it, God is
only manifest to a loving heart, did you get that? That’s all. Only
to those who love Him is He manifest.
Now, the word manifest triggers this thought, and Judas, Lebbaeus,
Thaddaeus responds in verse 22, “Judas said unto him, not Iscariot,”
a different Judas, Judas, son of James, “Lord, how is it that thou
wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world?” You’re
saying that only those who love You are going to see You and know
You, and You will be manifest only to those who love You, how can
You manifest Yourself to us and not unto the world? What does he
mean? Well he’s thinking of the manifestation as an outward one. You
see he came into the apostolate like so many others did, thinking of
an earthly kingdom, an earthly rule, an overthrow of Rome, great
expectation of - establishing the earthly kingdom. And he’s saying
to Him, how could You possibly fulfill the Messianic hope, how could
You possibly set up the kingdom on earth, how could you possibly
reign on the throne of David, how could You possibly demonstrate who
You are, and the world not see it? I mean how could You do that? How
could it be done in such a way that they wouldn’t see? And there may
be another allusion in his statement. He may be also saying, why
would You think of manifesting Yourself only to us? I mean this
motley group of nobodies. I mean if You’re the Messiah and this is
the moment, why would You only show Yourself to us? I mean it is the
world that the Messiah is to rule. It’s a good question. Why won’t
everybody see You? I mean if it’s the time for the kingdom let’s get
it on, and you might see a little of that courage that he perhaps
was known for. Let’s go for it Lord! The whole world needs to know.
Why You just want to show us? But you see he didn’t understand, and
so the Lord says again, “If a man love me, he’ll keep my words; and
my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our abode
with him.” And He repeats the same principle, the point is this
Judas, Lebbaeus, Thaddaeus, the only people who will perceive Me are
the ones who love Me, that’s all. And verse 24, “He that loves me
not keeps not my sayings; and the word which you hear is not mine,
but the Father’s, who sent me.” In other words the one who doesn’t
love Me doesn’t know what I’m talking about and doesn’t know it came
from God. He says, manifestation is limited to reception. It’s like
a radio station, you can send the signal out but until you turn on
the set you can’t receive it.
Robert Louis Stevenson one time quoted Thoreau ah, in an interesting
quote, he said Thoreau said on one occasion, “It takes two people to
speak the truth, the one who says it and the one who hears it.” It’s
true. “Christ came unto his own, but his own (what?) received him
not.” “He was in the world, the world was made by him, but the world
knew him not.” The God of this world had blinded their minds, light
has come into the world but men love darkness. You see the receivers
aren’t on, and Jesus is saying, I can only manifest Myself to people
who receive. I’m so glad that he asked that question because that’s
a tremendous truth to know, isn’t it? I’m so glad Jesus got to
answer that. That was an insightful question, this guy really
thought through. He reflects a typical Jewish view of the kingdom,
that it was an earthly, literal real kingdom, that’s exactly what
the Jews believed, and he couldn’t figure out how you could bring it
without everybody knowing it. He also reflects I think humility. Why
would You tell it to us and not the whole world, why would You limit
Yourself to just us? So you see some things in him that are
admirable.
One writer said you could take a, a Charles Wesley hymn, pull it out
of a hymnal, throw it out in the street, just let it set there, dog
would come by and sniff it, wouldn’t mean anything to that dog. And
maybe the garbage guy will come along and pick it up and throw it in
the trash. Or some enthusiastic person who’s worried about the
tidiness of the street would come along and say, ohw, this litter,
delicately remove it. Or somebody in the world might come along who
was very materialistic and think, I’d better pick that up it might
be the title deed to some property or something. A literary man
might pick it up and say, ah-ha, Charles Wesley, my he was a
literary fellow, wonderful poetic expression here. Then there might
be a spiritually minded person pick it up and get his soul blessed.
The paper was one thing but it was how you received it that was the
issue. That’s how it is in the world too. Only those whose heart...
whose hearts are purified by love and walk in obedience will know
the manifestation of God. I think that’s the kind of person
Thaddaeus was. So we see the Lord uses obscure people like James,
the son of Alphaeus and Thaddaeus, Lebbaeus, Judas. They wouldn’t
make the Who’s Who but they’ll reign in the millennium.
By the way, early church tradition tells us about Thaddaeus, that he
was tremendously gifted with the power of God to heal the sick. And
a certain king in Syria by the name of Abgar heard about it, and was
ill, and he called for Thaddaeus to come and heal him. And on the
way he healed multiple hundreds of people throughout Syria, and when
he finally reached the king he healed the king and presented the
Gospel to the king and the legend says, the king became a Christian.
This threw the country into such chaos that an apostate nephew of
the king seized Thaddaeus, made him a prisoner and martyred him, and
he was killed in Syria. If you ever pick up an old church history
book on Thaddaeus you will see that each of the disciples have a
symbol and the symbol for Thaddaeus is a big club, because the
legend says they beat him to death with a club. Faithful to his
Lord.
Finally, the last name for this morning, “Simon, the Zealot.” Now
listen closely because I’m going to run this by real fast. You have
in your Bible perhaps the word Canaanite, that is an unfortunate
transliteration of the word Canaan.. .Kananaos really, and the
assumption that it referred to Canaan geographically, that is not
true, it comes from a root qana which means to be jealous, or to be
zealous for the law. In Luke he is called Simon the Zealot, zelotes,
and this is just another word meaning the same thing, Simon the man
full of zeal, Simon the Zealot. And it may mean that he was actually
identified with a party in Judaism known as the Zealots. And that
when he became a disciple they didn’t change that name, he must have
continued to manifest the same kind of fiery, passionate zeal, that
he had when he was a Zealot. There were four basically dominant
groups within Judaism, Pharisees, they were the.. .they were the
rightest, they were the fundamentalists, legalists. Then there was
the Sadducees and they were the liberals. Then there was the Essenes
and they were the, the mystics, the ascetics, the monastics out in
the caves. And then there were the Zealots, they were the political
oriented group, they were the terrorists, they were the guerrillas,
they were the brigands, they went around looting and burning and
murdering. A group of them within the Zealots were known as Sicarii
from sicae, sword, they were the assassins. And they had revolted
against the Roman domination, in fact they really were born out of
the Maccabean period. Ah, whether by name or not we can’t be sure
but out of the Maccabean period when the Jews were led by Judas
Maccabeus to revolt against the Greek power, there were statements
made about being a revolutionary and standing to defend the covenant
of God, particularly in First Maccabees there’s some stuff about
that. And it seems as out of that came a sort of a, of a politically
oriented kind of terrorist approach that became later known as the
Zealots. They found a leader in New Testament times by the name of
Judas, another as I say very common name, and under this Judas of
Galilee they, they began seditious acts and all over the land these
things were going on. In fact if you could see the rest of history,
as you read the New Testament there would be little interludes going
on all over the place led by the Zealots that the Romans are putting
out like little fires. They would murder here, murder there,
plunder, burn, anything they could do, much like you see in the
Middle East today with guerrilla type engagements.
Now for many years the land had been ruled by an Idumaean king, not
a Jew, by the name of Herod the Great, and when Herod the Great died
he gave the division of his territory to three of his sons, Philip
who took the Northeast regions and then there was ah, Antipas who
took Galilee, and then there was Archelaus who took the Judaea
Samaria part. Archelaus proved to be a loser so he was replaced by a
Roman governor and that’s how Pilate got into the picture. But in
all of this sort of political unrest and the shifting and moving and
struggling of powers the flame from the Zealots began to burn under
the leadership of Judas. Finally the Romans murdered Judas but they
couldn’t stamp out the Zealots, and so they continued doing what
they did. They, they led what they called a holy war. Josephus says
they believed it was a holy war. And they would just loot and burn
and plunder and kill and all of that. It’s very possible that Simon
was a member of the Zealots, he is called Simon the Zealot. He was a
terrorist engaged in guerrilla warfare. It might be interesting for
you to know that they were so anti-Roman that they wouldn’t even
give a thought about murdering a Roman, but they were so anti-Roman
that anybody of their own countrymen, even a Jew of their own
countrymen who would in any way side with Rome they would also
assassinate. Finally in 70 A.D. the Romans had to put a stop to all
of it, and so they came and destroyed Jerusalem. And Josephus says
writing in his ah, antiquities that the key reason for the
destruction of Jerusalem was the activity of the Zealots, the Romans
got so tired of fighting these little seditious things all over the
place they decided to come in and just destroy the whole operation.
And if they could just destroy Jerusalem they would then move from
there, and they did, they — destroyed Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and they
moved out, they slaughtered people in nine hundred and eighty-five
towns in Galilee. They just obliterated the nation. And the Zealots
were the thorn in their side that finally brought this about.
Now, there was a leader after 70 A.D. of the Zealots by the name of
Eleazar, and he led the Zealots in continuing plunder, there were
just a few left but they were going everywhere doing what they’d
always done. They finally found a retreat where they could hide, the
place was Masada, and the Zealots were located in Masada, from there
they would move out to do their guerrilla type activity. And this of
course is later than the time of Simon. Do you remember how it all
finally ended? The Romans finally took Masada, and the Zealots not
wanting to lose their life to their despised and hated Roman enemy
committed suicide. And Josephus writes in The War of the Jews that
Eleazar summoned the people together and made a flaming speech in
which he urged them to slaughter their own wives and children and
then commit suicide, they took him at his word, they tenderly
embraced their wives, kissed their children and then began the
bloody work, nine hundred and sixty perished only two women and five
children escaped by hiding in a cave. Now recently a move sort of
glamorized Masada, those were not the normal Jewish people, those
were the political terrorists, and they would kill themselves before
they would let a Roman take their life. That’s how deep their hatred
was.
Now a man like Simon to attach himself to them must have been a man
with a tremendous passion, a tremendous capacity for zeal. And you
can imagine that he must have been a fireball when it got to the
work of the Lord. He found a better leader and a greater cause. He
is listed, will you notice? He is listed right before what name?
Judas Iscariot. It’s interesting to me but they probably went
together. Maybe there were two by...when they went out two by two it
was he and Judas, because Judas had the same kind of political
orientation, didn’t he? And it may well have been that they came in
on the same ground, on the same level - figuring, boy this Jesus
could really aid our cause. And Simon could have been the betrayer,
and you would have named your children Judas, not Simon. But Simon
believed and was transformed, Judas did not, and so no one names
anything Judas. Simon became Christ’s man. Think of how wonderful it
must have been for him to get along with Matthew who collected taxes
for the Roman government. I wonder if he ever had just little
anxieties about Matthew.
Well, the Lord uses all kinds of unqualified people, doesn’t He? He
can use you and me. I’m going to close with this illustration. There
was a concert violinist who wanted to demonstrate, a very important
point he felt, so he hired a great hall in a city and announced that
he would play a concert on a twenty thousand dollar violin. He had
the place packed with violin lovers, came out and he played
exquisitely and they applauded just gloriously. He bowed and took
their applause, threw the violin to the ground and stomped it into
bits. The people were horrified. And then he walked off the stage.
The stage manager came out and said uhm, Ladies and Gentlemen, to
put you at ease that was a twenty dollar violin, he will now return
to play the twenty thousand, or whatever it was, violin. And you
know what? They couldn’t tell the difference, and he made his point.
It isn’t the instrument, it’s the artist, right?
Now folks let’s face it, most of us are twenty dollar violins, at
best, right? At best. But oh what music can the Master make with us.
Let’s pray.
Thank You Father for Your Word to us through the lives of these
obscure people, thank You that they have a special place forever.
That we’ll see them reigning in Your kingdom, that we’ll spend
eternity with them and learn all of the unspoken truths about their
marvelous and powerful ministries.
Lord help us to know that the focus is never on the human tool but
only on You, and oh how that stresses the fact that we should
function in the power of God, not in our own strength. Save us from
the foolishness of seeing the cups instead of the Christ.
Father bring us back tonight again as we open up Your Book and look
at spiritual service and what You have called us to do. Put these
truths deep in our hearts, may we see what You can do with a simple
life for Your glory. Thank You for this time together, in Christ’s
name. Amen.
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