Common Men, Uncommon Calling: John
Luke 6:14
Let's open our Bibles again to the sixth chapter of Luke. We are continuing through the gospel of Luke. In verses 12 through 16 we have come to a section in which Luke introduces us to the Twelve Apostles. Verse 12 tells us that Jesus went off to the mountain to pray, spent the whole night in prayer to God, certainly discerning out of that prayer what it was that God wanted in terms of the Twelve, or who it was. Came down the next day, called His disciples to Him, all of them, there would have been perhaps several hundred of them, and out of those disciples chose twelve of them whom He also named as Apostles. He had many learners, He chose twelve to be the preachers, the miracle workers, those who cast out demons to authenticate the gospel they preached, they were the Apostles.
And what we've been doing here is just stopping long enough to get to know them. They are named here, Simon, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, Judas the son of James and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. We can't just pass by these names because they're not just names, they are people, not just people, Apostles. Apostles with a unique calling, in the ninth chapter we'll find out that they are there granted the ability to cast out demons and to do miracles and healings. We know then that they had a very unique ministry of preaching the gospel and authenticating the validity of that gospel by miracles and signs and wonders, as Paul says.
We also know that they will rule over the twelve tribes of Israel in the Millennial Kingdom. And when we get to heaven we will find their names on the twelve foundation stones under the twelve gates that give entrance to the New Jerusalem, the capital city of heaven. They are unique men called by the Lord to carry on the ministry after He was gone, to establish the church in the world, to write the scriptures and oversee the writings of the scriptures that we call the New Testament, critical men.
The remarkable part about it is that they were so common. None of them was among the religious elite, none of them was among the nobility, the only one apparently who had any money was a tax collector who earned it by graft and corruption. Tax collectors were Jews, as you remember, who bought tax franchises from the Romans, the occupying army hated by the Jews, they were therefore traitors to their own people. They extorted taxes from them by means of intimidation and they were surrounded by criminals, con-men and thugs who strong-armed the money out of the hands of their people who gave it very reluctantly. They were the most hated and despised of all Jews. Matthew was one of them, perhaps the only one with any money...ill gotten.
None of them were taken from the priests. None of them were taken from the scribes. None of them were taken form the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the religious nobility, the religious elite. None of them that we know of had any thing to do with Jerusalem which was the center of religion. The only one who wasn't a Galilean was Judas the traitor who was from Kerioth. And so they were the commonest of the common men.
Coming from Galilee they would have been looked down upon by the leaders of Israel as the riff-raff, the common folk, the hoi polloi. But it is just like the Lord to choose the common, as Paul said, "Not many noble, not many mighty, He has chosen the base and the common and the weak and the insignificant that in the end all the credit may be His. The only explanation for the church in the world, the only explanation for the power of the gospel through human history is the power of God, not the power of these men.
In the words of the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 4, "We have this treasure in earthen vessels," Paul wrote in verse 7 of that chapter, and what he was saying was, we have this glorious gospel, that is the glory of God shining in the face of Jesus Christ, this amazing gospel and we, Paul being an Apostle come lately, have this treasure in earthen vessels, earthen vessels, clay pots. At best, Paul said, we are clay pots and the Apostle Paul writing to Timothy said, "Clay pots are vessels unto dishonor." I told you some weeks ago that in a house they had utensils that were used for honorable things, such as serving food. And there were utensils in a house, vessels in a house used for dishonorable things, such as taking out the refuge of the family. Clay pots were used for that. They were used for the commonest, basest of uses. They were replaceable, they were breakable, they were ugly, they were used for the unspeakable things in the house and Paul says we are, at best, clay pots that the excellency may not be of us but of God.
God in His marvelous power and wisdom can take a clay pot and fit it for the Master's use, as Paul said in 2 Timothy 2:21. And so we are now going to enter in to the fitting stage of these twelve clay pots. One of them ultimately rejected, being Judas, replaced by a man named Matthias, another one added later, the Apostle Paul. But the clay pots are here introduced to us and they remind us that God uses common men to do uncommon things. He uses common men who have no eternal capacities, who have no ability to do anything that is forever and transforms them into those who are capable of doing that which is eternal. In our own human flesh all that we do perishes, all that we do is temporal. But when the Lord gets a hold of us, what we do can become eternal.
And so, we're meeting the common man with the uncommon calling. We have already met Peter, the remarkable, unforgettable Peter, the leader, the one in Matthew 10:2 called protos, the first one, the primary one, the chief one, always the leader, always at the top of the four lists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and Acts have lists of the Apostles, always Peter is first. Peter is the spokesman speaking not just for himself but for the others many times in the gospels. The most verbal of all, the most overt, the most flamboyant, the leader.
We have met his brother who was just the opposite behind the scenes, quiet, Andrew, the missionary who was always bringing people to Jesus, self-effacing, meek, unassuming, non-assertive.
Then we have met James. James, son of thunder, Boanerges, bold, ambitious, zealous, passionate. And now we meet John, the brother of James.
He takes our attention and John is familiar to us because of the gospel of John, because of the three epistles of John and because he is the recipient of the apocalypse, the Revelation that ends the New Testament. So we have a lot of information that John has provided for us, revelation would be a better way to term it. He has given us the story of Jesus in his gospel. He has given us three epistles in which the Holy Spirit inspired him to write important matters to the church. And he has given us the visions of Christ that dominate the apocalypse.
We can know much about John from how he views things in his gospel, much about John from how he views the church in his epistles, and much about John from how he views the revelations that he receives, the visions of Christ. And so John is known to us.
John also was a part of the inner circle, Peter, James and John being the most intimate followers of Christ. Andrew was always a part of group one. Every list of the Apostles has three groups and the people in the groups are always the same first four, second four, third four. They're always in the same group. And they are in decreasing intimacy with Christ. Peter, James, John, Andrew the closest to Christ, the next group a little further away, and the third group, not close to Christ at all. They don't appear in intimate association with Christ, although they were part of the Twelve and they were drawn near to Him, it says in Mark, for the purpose of training to be Apostles, yet they were a little bit further apart than group two and group one. But the groups are always the same and group one is always Peter, James, John and Andrew.
But of the four, the three were the most intimate, Peter, James and John. And probably John would be the one about whom we know the most next to Peter. And, of course, we have more writing from John than we do Peter, since Peter only wrote two epistles. So John takes up a huge part of the New Testament by his writings, and an important part of the gospels by his presence, and is there with Peter as a companion in the first twelve chapters of Acts.
I say all that to say, last week we talked about Andrew and James and all I could do was give you a silhouette because we don't have much about Andrew, and we don't have much about James. I'm going to try this morning to give you a full color portrait of John.
Now John, we know, is the brother of James. It doesn't say that here, it just says in verse 14, "James and John," but Luke doesn't need to repeat that because back in chapter 5 he made it very clear in verse 10 that James and John were sons of Zebedee, which makes them brothers. And they were partners with Simon. What you have with these four, Peter, James, John and Andrew, are two sets of brother, Peter and Andrew, and James and John who were in the fishing business together. They were partners in a fishing business. They came from the same area. They lived in the same area. They worked together every day. They were close friends and business partners. John is the brother then of James.
Now in order to get a grip on John without going through everything that we could in the New Testament, what I want to do is give you a frame. If you have two things in mind, you have a framework to understand John. And those two things can be summed up in two words that are primary words in Christian revelation and Christian vocabulary. Two things characterize John, truth and love. Just jot those two things down, you may not even need to write them down because by the time I'm through this morning, you won't forget them...truth and love. All the New Testament material on John, everything we could say about John in kind of giving you the picture of John is going to hang on a frame of truth and love. Those two realities, those two spiritual realities that are so critical to the Kingdom of God, they are irreplaceable, essential, and actually inseparable from each other are the characteristics of John. If you want to know how to describe John, you can describe John as a man of truth and a man of love...and that is the most desirable mix possible. If you could want anything, if you could wish for anything in your sanctification, wish for that. If you could pursue anything, pursue that. Pursue a perfect balance of spiritual mix of truth and love. Know the truth and hold it with love.
Let me see if I can't illustrate that for you with a passage from the Apostle Paul in the fourth chapter of Ephesians. Ephesians chapter 4 gives to us a magnificent insight into God's design for the church, both as to its mystery and its goal. The ministry of the church begins because in verses 11 of Ephesians 4 the Lord has given the church Apostles, prophets, evangelists, teaching pastors. So the Lord gives gifted men to His church, gifted men that He has redeemed. They are those who have leadership in the church. Their responsibility is, verse 12, the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry. So the Lord gives to the church leaders to equip the saints, equipping the saints with a view of building up the body of Christ. This is edification, this is sanctification. This is the maturing process. This is spiritual growth. And the goal of that, in verse 13, is to attain to the unity of the faith. We're all headed to the same place, we're all headed to one singular place, THE faith takes us to one end. It is the knowledge of the Son of God that produces a mature man to the measure of a stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.
Without taking all that language apart totally, let me just say, the point is this, the Lord has given to the church teachers, Apostles, prophets, evangelists, teaching pastors for the purpose of building up the saints with the goal that their edification or their maturing brings them to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. The goal of sanctification, the goal of all ministry, the goal of the church, the goal of spiritual growth then is Christ's likeness. Everything the Lord is doing in the church through the gifted men, everything His Spirit is working in the process of sanctification, spiritual development is to bring us to a mature man. And maturity is defined as Christ...to make us like Christ s that we are no longer, verse 14, here's the negative side, so we are no longer children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming. Children are vulnerable, they make a good metaphor for spiritually immature people.
The Lord is moving us to a place where we no longer lack discernment, where we no longer lack discretion, or discrimination or wisdom, or understanding. But rather we have moved out of the vulnerability of childhood into the wisdom of maturity. We come to this point of the measure of the stature of fullness of Christ, speaking the truth in love. We are to grow up in all aspects unto Him who is the head, even Christ.
What does it mean to be spiritually mature? It means to speak the truth in love. That's where we're going, folks. We're going in our spiritual progress to a point where we know the truth, but we speak it with love. There is that balance of those two pinnacles of Christian virtue. It may seem easy in terms of articulation, but it takes a life time and it takes a constant scrutiny and the constant mighty work of the Spirit of God and the work of the Word in the life to produce that balance. It means knowing sound doctrine, but it means also bearing the fruit of the Spirit which is love. It is an elusive balance, this spiritual maturity, but it is Christ's likeness. Christ was the perfect expression of truth and the perfect expression of love. He is the model. This balance belongs to those who know sound doctrine and those who walk in the Spirit and manifest the fruit of the Spirit, which is love.
This balance, by the way, is, as I said, very hard to come by. First of all, there are people in the church, most of them, I would assume, who don't even understand that it is the priority, it is the goal. Everything ultimately should be defined in our lives by the goal, where are we going? And where we're going is toward Christ's likeness, and what is that? It is coming to the place where we speak the truth in love, where everything that comes out of our mouths is a right representation of divine revelation spoken in love. That's where we're headed. That was Christ who spoke the truth and only the truth. He said, "I only speak what the Father shows Me to speak." He never spoke a word that was not an accurate reflection of the mind of God and He spoke in love. No one could question the love of Christ demonstrated not only by His weeping over the very people that God would judge, but demonstrated by His willingness to go to the cross to give up His own life for those He loved. This is the balance.
There are plenty of people today who are heavy on the love side. They are ignorant, very often, they are deceived, the truth is missing. And what they're left with is an error or shallowness often closed in tolerant sentimentality. That's a poor substitute for genuine love.
On the other hand, there are the orthodox who have all of their theological ducks in a row and who know doctrine, but are unloving and self-exalting. They are left with truth as cold facts, stifling and unattractive.
Manifesting both truth and love is only possible to the mature believer who has grown into the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. And the only way that you can define spiritual maturity is with these two, one who knows the truth and speaks it in love...to know the truth as God has revealed it and to love as Christ loves. And that's the framework that defines John. If you're looking for a mature example, John will do you very well. Christ is the perfection of that, John is the human example of that.
And it seems to me that there is always, as I read history, there is always a struggle in every age of the church for this balance. I was reading just yesterday, in fact I was reading to Patricia a section of a book that I wrote some years ago called The Love of God. There's an interesting little section in there on D.L. Moody who was a preacher of hell, fire and damnation only. And somehow there showed up at the church where Moody was in Chicago a little Englishman by the name of Harry, and Moody attests to the fact that Harry preached from John 3:16, "For God so loved the world," and it was the first time Moody had ever understood the love of God. And he was so taken by what this man said that he announced to the people that he was preaching on the same subject every night that week, bring your friends. It was a new discovery. And so, this little Englishman took the same text every night for a week and Moody at the end of the week said, "For the first time in his life he understood the love of God."
That could be said for almost every era of the church. It's certainly true today. There's a real struggle to find the balance between these two. There was a time when preachers were just firing out hell fire and wrath and damnation and they needed a dose of balancing love. It seems as though we live in a day when it's all love, love, love and who cares about the truth? One way or another we could assume the enemy would attack this because this is the objective of true spiritual maturity. Shallow teaching abounds. Tolerance of error abounds. So does cold orthodoxy. Sentiment and superficiality on the one side, and prideful indifference on the other. The critical mix of these two things is visible to us in this beloved Apostle John.
Now, let's sort of hang some canvas on that frame and see what kind of portrait we can paint of John. It will be a sort of simple one. I'm not a very good artist and we don't have enough time for delicate nuances. But we'll get a general look at John.
Because of John's treatment of himself, because of the way he refers to himself in his gospel, we tend to think of John, and rightly so, as humble. And he became humble. He was eventually humble. He didn't start out that way. But because he's so self-effacing in his gospel, it is assumed by most people that he was always that way, sort of a meek, mild, whimpy, pale-skinned, ashen, effeminate guy...that's the way he shows up in Medieval art. You know, he appears frequently leaning on Jesus' shoulder looking up with a blank dove-eyed stare into space, sort of the passive type. Not even close, folks, not even close.
John did become to some degree humble. John did respond to the shaping ministry of Jesus in his life and learn to love. But he didn't start out that way. He started out, along with his brother James, as a son of thunder. In Mark 3:17 it was Jesus who called them both Boanerges, sons of thunder. John was volatile. John was brash. John was aggressive. John was passionate. John was zealous. John was personally ambitious.
When James was calling down fire from heaven to burn up the Samaritans, John was echoing. It was James and John, there was Andrew, you know, who was quietly bringing people to Jesus and it was James and John who was telling God to burn up all the unbelievers. And when the mother, the wife of Zebedee came to Jesus and said, "I want my boys on the right and the left hand," it wasn't just James there, it was John. John was driven. John was ambitious. John wanted prominence. Believe me, John was in the middle of all the arguments among the Apostles about who was going to be the greatest in the Kingdom. So don't assume that when it says "James and John," even though James is named first and may have been the stronger of the two and may have been the older of the two, still John was Boanerges just as well.
Interestingly enough, if you study Matthew, Mark and Luke you always see John with Jesus, with Peter, with James. Only one time, isn't that interesting?, only one time does John appear and speak alone. And so if we want to know what he's like, that's a good place to go. So turn in your Bible to Mark chapter 9. Here we get John without James, John without Peter, this is pure John. This is the only singular glimpse of John in the synoptics, the first three gospels are called the synoptics because they give a synopsis of the life of Christ, whereas John deals more with His deity being expressed through a series of miracles and self-proclaimed statements of His own identity.
But in Mark 9 we get this one picture of John. The rest of the things about John we have to construct from his gospel and from his epistles and the book of Revelation, but here is historical narrative on John. Now let's go to the beginning of Mark 9 so we get the picture. Jesus makes this incredible statement that some of you are standing here will not taste death until you see the Kingdom of God after it is come with power. This is an amazing statement. Some of you people here aren't going to die until you see Kingdom power.
Well the Millennial Kingdom hasn't come yet, what's He talking about? He was talking about previews of coming attractions is what He was talking about. He was talking about, as a hymn writer put it, "A foretaste of glory divine," which happened immediately after that, six days later. Verse 2, six days after Jesus said some of you are going to see the glory of the Kingdom before you die, Jesus took with Him Peter and James and John, the inner circle who were often with Him, apart from Andrew, brought them to a high mountain by themselves and He was transfigured before them.
What happened there, we remember, is He pulled back the veil of His human flesh and the Shekinah glory, the very essence of the nature of the eternal God was shining out in blazing brilliance. The record of Matthew 17 is that it was so shocking the disciples were literally terrified into a coma. They fell over like dead people. This is something they had never experienced. This was a transcendental experience, the likes of which they had never even imagined. The garments of the Savior became radiant, exceedingly white as no launderer on earth could whiten them. There isn't any product that can get them as white as they were white. It's a leukon, blazing, shining, glowing white like light. And then Elijah showed up and then Moses showed up in some kind of glorified manifestation.
And they became terrified, verse 6 says, terrifying experience. A cloud formed overshadowing them, a voice, the voice of the Father, "This is My beloved Son, listen to Him. And all at once they looked around and saw no one with Him anymore except Jesus alone." This is an incredible thing Peter, James and John to experience, unique privilege.
Then to make things worse, verse 9, "As they were coming down from the mountain He gave them orders not to relate to anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man should rise from the dead." That's hard to do. I mean, you've just seen the most incredible thing that could ever be seen by anybody and you can't tell anybody about it. This is a great restraint to put upon them.
And remember, the disciples were always arguing about who was going to be the greatest. And I'm sure it was very, very difficult for them not to use this as ammunition for their own case. Come down the mountain and say to the rest of the disciples..."Guys, we have the inside track, where were you when we were up there in the mountain and guess who showed up? Elijah, and Moses." And they heard about Him talk about rising from the dead and they seized on that statement in verse 10 and began to talk about that.
Lots to talk about. Talk about Moses, talk about Elijah, talk about the glory of God shining through the veil of Jesus' flesh, talk about resurrection...wow, they had a glimpse of the Kingdom. They must have been excited. They saw things that never could be seen or known by anybody and this is what's going to happen. This is where we're headed, guys, this is some foretaste of the glory to come.
Go a little further in the chapter down to verse 33. They came to Capernaum. "And when He was in the house they began to question them, 'What were you discussing on the way?'" It wasn't that He needed the information, He just needed the confession. He knew exactly what they were talking about. Verse 34, "They kept silent." Why? "They were embarrassed." Why were they embarrassed? "Because on the way they had discussed with one another which of them was the greatest."
I can imagine Peter and John saying, "Well, when Jesus was transfigured, I was closer to Him than you were. I looked around, you were two feet to the right and two feet..." This is their ambition. I mean, they were in this thing to go as far as they could go, as high as they could go. And the Lord had to do a lot of work with that ambition. They were so embarrassed they didn't even say anything...shamed.
"And sitting down He called the Twelve and said to them, 'You've got to learn something, fellas, if anyone wants to be first he shall be...what?...last and servant of all.'" You've got this thing backwards. You want to be first in the Kingdom, then be a servant. Taking a child he said before them, taking him in His arms He said, "Whoever receives one child like this in My name receives Me, and whoever receives Me doesn't receive Me but Him who sent Me." Don't you get the picture? Instead of arguing and fighting with each other, instead of putting each other down, instead of rejecting each other, why don't you learn that receiving each other as a child is what I require because when you receive one another you receive Me cause I live in that person. Instead of fighting each other, instead of conflict with each other, you need to embrace each other as if I were coming to you. And instead of desiring to be first, you need to take the role of last.
And this cut to the heart. This was a serious rebuke, particularly John got the message and here we have the only time John speaks in these three opening gospels. Verse 38, "John said to Him," and now we get insight into John. I think John spoke because he was convicted. I think he felt the sting of this rebuke. It was really getting old with the Lord, this ambition. And John said, "Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in Your name and we tried to hinder him because he was not following us." This is sectarianism. He didn't belong to our group. This is the intolerance of John. This is the son of thunder. This is Boanerges. This is that sectarianism, that narrowness, that ambition, that desire to have it all for you and not share it with anybody else, especially somebody outside the group. This is John.
But something's changing in John because now John begins to see that as something undesirable, and this is the confession. John is saying in response to what Jesus said, "Teacher, we saw this guy casting out demons in Your name and we tried to stop him." That was John, that was the old John...Stop, you're not in our group. John was not passive. He's aggressive. He was competitive. He was condemning a man who was trying to minister in the name of Jesus. It doesn't tell us anything about the nature of that ministry, but at least he was trying to cast out demons in the name of Jesus and they had shut him down. And John is saying, "I confess, we did that." Because he now is beginning to feel that that's wrong because of what Jesus had just said. Jesus is confronting them and saying...You've got to get rid of this sectarian narrow spirit. And John is the one who verbalizes that I had that and I exhibited that and I did that, but the fact that he's making the confession is indicative of the transformation. His conscience is bothering him. He's being tenderized. He's always been strong for the truth, he's always been zealous and passionate, but the Lord has been teaching him love. And here we see John the past and John in the present beginning to change.
So John, the one time he speaks, confesses his narrowness, confesses his sectarianism, confesses his prejudice. And you say, "Why would a man be chosen like this to be an Apostle? Passionate, zealous, bombastic, volatile, explosive person like John or James or Peter? Why would the Lord chose a man like that?" Because that redeemed and shaped is useful to God, that kind of courage and strength belongs to the history of the Christian church, doesn't it? The movers and the shakers, the people who literally are the fulcrums that literally turn the earth. You go back and it's the strength of those men, it's the indefatigability of them, it's the relentlessness of them, it's the courage of them, it's the boldness of them that have really written the history of the church. And, of course, they've sealed it with their blood, uncompromising to the very death.
The Lord needs men who have great courage, great am