Chosen, Not Qualified

Luke 6:12 – 16

 

I think it’s safe to say about the adults here today that we’ve all been a part of the hiring process in some capacity before. For certain we’ve all been on the side of being a prospective employee being considered for a job.

 

But some of us have also been on the other side of the hiring process, we’ve been the ones to review applications, interview candidates, and hire and train the ones we’ve chosen. In the later years of my dad’s dairy business he used to complain that there just weren’t any good workers looking for work anymore.

 

When I went on to manage a dairy farm for someone else, I had to agree with that sentiment. It got harder and harder to find good, reliable, skilled employees to do the necessary work on the dairy. We’d have job openings for months at a time because we’d either not get any applicants, or the ones we did get weren’t good candidates.

 

I’ve hired guys with literally ZERO dairy experience and taught them to milk cows because pickin’s were slim. I’m sure those of you who have led teams and departments at your work can relate. Building a team is hard. Finding folks who are qualified to do the work you need them to do, is hard.

 

When we choose people for important responsibilities, we naturally look for the most qualified people available. We look for experience, talent, skills, reliability, intelligence, personality, and leadership ability. We choose people who make us confident that they will succeed at getting the job done, and done well.

 

That’s part of what makes today’s passage in Luke so amazing. When you look at the men Jesus chose to build His church, it raises the question, why these men? Because on the surface, these guys had their issues.

 

But Jesus did build His church through them. These guys turned the whole world upside down carrying on what Jesus began. So, let’s read God’s Word together, Luke 6:12 – 16.

Our passage begins with Jesus going up on a mountainside to pray. Prayer was a key part to Jesus’ ministry and life on earth, and only Luke mentions that before Jesus chose the Twelve, He prayed. In fact, in both Luke and Acts, prayer preceded every major decision or crisis in the life of Jesus and the early church.

 

Prayer is one of the major points of emphasis in Luke’s writing. Just look at the difference between Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Mark uses the terms “prayer” and “pray” 13 times, Matthew 17 times, and Luke uses them 21 times in his Gospel and 25 times in Acts.

 

The importance of prayer in the life of a believer cannot be understated when you look at the importance placed on it in the Bible. Both the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts begin in prayer, and that emphasis is carried through.

 

In Luke we see Jesus praying at His baptism when the Holy Spirit descends upon Him. We see Jesus pray here before choosing the Twelve, He prays before asking His disciples, “Who do the crowds say that I am?”, and again, at His transfiguration, Jesus had gone up the mountain to pray.

 

Jesus taught His disciples how to pray through the Lord’s Prayer, and He taught through the parable of the persistent widow that believers should always be praying to persevere and not lose heart.

 

He taught that we should pray to keep from falling into temptation, and we see in Luke that Jesus prayed for Peter by name, and that because of His prayer, Peter’s denial of knowing Jesus didn’t turn into a complete falling away, into apostasy. Clearly, in Luke prayer is seen as a vital and necessary part of the Christian life, both individually and as a church.

 

The fact that God incarnate, Jesus Christ, God the Son has this deep need to pray and connect with God the Father should already draw your attention to how important it is to pray, to pray daily, often, to pray without ceasing as Paul puts it in 1 Thess. 5:17.

 

Let me tell you about myself and prayer. I have a complicated relationship with prayer. Growing up Roman Catholic, prayer was something we did, prayer was a ritual, a mark of religion. We were taught canned prayers, specific prayers to recite for different situations we could find ourselves in, etc.

Not once was I taught that prayer was about talking to God, about listening to God. Not once was I taught that prayer was all about connecting with God.

 

By the time my family started regularly attending Hilmar FBC and sitting under Pastor Rodney’s preaching and teaching, prayer and I didn’t get along. It just felt so awkward and forced to me. But God chooses when and how He works on things within us, and prayer was one of those things.

 

After I quit squashing the spark God had placed inside me and He set my soul on fire, I couldn’t get enough of studying His Word. I had dived into the MasterLife discipleship class we were taking from Rodney and Teri, and one of the things we had to do near the end of the 3^rd book was spend a dedicated hour praying alone.

 

Yeah, Jesus prayed often and here He prayed all night, and back then I felt that praying for even an hour straight was too hard! Sure, I struggled to keep my eyes open for part of it, but let me tell you what came from that dedicated hour of prayer.

 

The four of us spread out to different areas of my house to pray for that hour, and we came back together to the family room to talk about our experiences. When it was my turn to speak, there was only one thing to say. I finally admitted what I had been avoiding, that God had been calling me to be a pastor, and I surrendered to that call.

 

I had already preached my first sermon. I was already teaching a Sunday morning Bible study class. God had gifted me to teach and talk, and in that hour of prayer He made it crystal clear that I couldn’t hide from His calling any longer. It was time to be obedient, so I asked what’s next?

 

A few months later I was enrolled in seminary, and a few months after that I began taking classes online at Gateway. Less than a year after that God brought me here to be your pastor.

 

God had decided exactly how all of this was going to work out, but look at how He used that dedicated prayer time to make it happen, to get me on the same page as Him. Because prayer is how we align ourselves with God’s will, His plan not just for our lives, but for His children, His church, and His creation.

 

We often wonder, of all people why does Jesus need to set aside time to withdraw and pray? Why does God the Son need to connect with God the Father? Wasn’t He already one with God because He is God?

 

I want you to underline this part of v.12, all night he continued in prayer to God. In this instance He didn’t just pray, Jesus prayed all night before He chose these twelve guys. Why did He have to pray all night?

 

Because there’s something else here, something else deeper and more intimate going on here. Because Jesus does nothing apart from the Father.

 

When you look closely you see that the kingdom of God is far too weighty for self-dependence. Jesus praying all night highlights the gravity of the decision that He’s going to make and demonstrates His perfect and complete dependence upon the Father.

 

This is a beautiful picture of the Trinity. Jesus is not uncertain about what to do, rather the incarnate Son walks in perfect dependence upon the Father through the Spirit.

 

Jesus was fully and wholly dependent upon God, and the time He spent in prayer with the Father was evidence of that dependence. If the sinless Son of God lived in dependence upon the Father, what does that say about our tendency toward self-sufficiency?

 

A lack of prayer in your life is often a sign that you depend on yourself way more than you depend on God. The fact that God is completely sovereign over everything doesn’t eliminate the need to depend on prayer, the way God has established for us to connect with Him. Prayer demonstrates dependence on God.

 

We cannot do anything well, especially kingdom work, through our own human capability. We need an absolute, total, and complete dependence upon God and His power to persevere in our Christian life and to continue the work of building His kingdom.

 

The programs we do as a church, the strategies we implement, VBS, anything we try to do as a church is meaningless if we don’t first seek God’s will and rely on Him in complete dependence. We don’t build the church alone; God builds it through us in our obedience to His will.

 

Jesus isn’t scrambling for wisdom here; He is God’s wisdom. Rather, Jesus is showing us that kingdom work, building the church, spreading the gospel, and living out the Christian life begins with dependence upon God because prayer is our lifeline to God.

 

So when day came, Jesus called His disciples to him and from them He chose twelve that He named apostles. So often when we talk about the twelve, we just call them disciples to the extent that we often fall into the trap of picturing the twelve when we talk about Jesus’ disciples.

 

The truth is Jesus had more than the twelve who followed Him and were called disciples. We’ll see later in the Gospel of Luke Jesus sending out 70 disciples in pairs, after He first sent out the twelve in pairs. It’s out of this larger group of disciples that Jesus sets these twelve men apart.

 

The emphasis here falls entirely on Christ’s sovereign initiative. He calls His disciples to Himself, and from them, He chooses the twelve how are to lead, and He names them. Throughout Scripture, choosing covenant leadership, those called to lead God’s people, is a divine prerogative.

 

God chose Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, His prophets, and now God the Son chooses the apostolic foundation of the church. And this means that the emphasis in our passage is not on the greatness of these men, but on the authority of the One choosing them.

 

Nothing in our passage suggests that these men earned this role. They are chosen before they’re even fully mature as disciples, as Christians. Peter, the eventual leader of the apostles still has failures, many failures ahead.

 

James and John struggle with pride. Thomas will doubt. Matthew carries with him the stigma of his former life. Simon the Zealot brings with him political baggage. And if that’s not enough, Judas Iscariot will betray Christ.

 

The emphasis is entirely on Christ’s sovereign initiative. And Luke adds that Jesus named them apostles. Apostle means “sent one.” And apostle is sent out to speak in the name of the one who sent them. They are ambassadors if you will.

And naming carries with it authority. Throughout Scripture, naming often signifies rightful authority. Adam named animals, parents name their children, God renamed Abram to Abraham and Sarai and Sarah, God renamed Jacob to Israel, and Jesus renames Simon to Peter.

 

Jesus isn’t recognizing talent and hiring guys for the job, He is authoritatively commissioning men to work with Him in building His church. These men will become witnesses of Christ and foundational witnesses of the gospel.

 

Look at what Paul wrote in Ephesians 2, the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Himself as the cornerstone. Even the authority of the apostles, and the authority of the church is derived from Christ. Christ remains central as head of His church.

 

The church is Christ’s doing, not man’s invention. The church isn’t the result of human strategy or institutional genius. No, Christ builds His church, Christ chooses, Christ names, and Christ commissions His church.

 

The church is not sustained by personalities, or branding, but by Christ’s sovereign authority. The church survives and grows because Christ builds it. So the question that emerges from reading this passage is, if Christ is building His church intentionally, why choose these men?

 

And here we get to the list of the twelve. It’s another list of names in the Bible, though these we can pronounce. When you look closely at the men on this list, you can see that this isn’t a dream team by any means.

 

You have four fishermen, Peter, his brother Andrew, and James and John the sons of Zebedee. You have a tax collector Matthew, a nationalist extremist Simon, obscure men that history barely remembers, and a greedy accountant Judas Iscariot who becomes a traitor.

 

Peter becomes the leader because he does have a natural gift, the gift of speaking up and putting his foot in his mouth. Peter is impulsive, he declares deep and great truths like proclaiming that Christ is the Messiah, and he also gets called Satan because he focuses on his earthly ideas rather than God’s will for Christ’s mission. And tragically Peter eventually denies Christ, not once, but three times.

James and John burn with pride, they’re called the sons of thunder because of the uncontrolled fire in them, so much so they wanted Jesus to call down fire from heaven on a village that rejected them. They seek glory, so much so they even sent their momma to go ask Jesus for glory.

 

Matthew/Levi as a tax collector was a collaborator with Rome and stole from his own people. Simon the Zealot came from a nationalistic movement that sought revolution and the overthrow of Rome.

 

These two being not only disciples of Jesus, but called and named apostles is probably the most shocking of all of it. Matthew used to represent Rome and Simon used to support revolting against Rome.

 

These two would have hated each other, and yet because of Christ they walked together, worked together, ate together, lived together, and advanced the kingdom of God together. Let that be a demonstration of how Christ brings people together for God’s glory.

 

Thomas stubbornly refuses to believe that Christ had indeed risen from the dead when the other disciples and apostles told him He had. It took Jesus taking Thomas by the hand and placing it in His wounds for Thomas to believe, and call Jesus, “My Lord and my God.”

 

And don’t think for a second that Jesus didn’t know that Judas would eventually betray Him. Jesus knew from the beginning because it had already been predestined by God and attested to in Scripture.

 

How could these men possibly carry Christ’s mission into the world?

 

But they all ended up having one thing in common. When Julie and I went to watch Rogue One in theaters, a guy came out and pointed out everyone on the movie poster that dies. The same holds true for the Twelve. They all suffered for Christ and His church, and all of them, except John but not for lack of trying, died.

 

The issue isn’t just that these men are imperfect and have their issues, the issue is that they are exactly the kind of people we would never choose to change the world. And that’s just what they did. These twelve men, Judas Iscariot included, were integral in turning the world upside down.

 

The source of God’s kingdom has never depended upon the impressiveness of His servants. God uses weak men and women to advance His kingdom.

 

God delights in displaying His glory through weak vessels so that no one can mistake where the power comes from. As Paul writes Jesus’ words to him in 2 Corinthians, my grace is sufficient for my power is made perfect in weakness. Christ is sufficient.

 

The truth is that Jesus Christ sovereignly establishes and advances His kingdom, His church, through His gracious and intentional choice of imperfect people. Nobody who is chosen, nobody who is called a child of God, nobody who is saved is saved by accident.

 

God through Christ chooses imperfect people to call His children, to build His church, and from those He chooses imperfect people to lead His church.

 

Because Christ works through imperfect people, you must depend on His power and not your own qualifications.

 

One of my favorite and most humbling verses from the book Acts comes from chapter 4 when Peter and John get arrested and then stand before the Sanhedrin, the religious rulers of the Jews. Acts 4:13.

 

The most educated and pious Jews in Judea recognized that what enabled and empowered these men had no earthly qualifications whatsoever to speak as they did, to know what they know. The astonished rulers recognized what set them apart was that they had been with Jesus.

 

Walking with Jesus is what enables and empowers us to not only live the Christian life, and to persevere in the face of trials and temptations, struggles and hardship, but to serve Christ in His kingdom, and to serve one another and build and be His church. So, this begs the question; how do you walk with Jesus?

 

First, you must depend on Christ through prayer. If Jesus lived in dependence upon the Father, how much more do we need to? Most of us say we depend on Jesus, but if someone looked at your prayer life, would they actually see dependence on Christ?

 

We plan, organize, strategize, schedule, and move forward in our own wisdom, and then wonder why things don’t work out the way we hoped or we feel spiritually dry and powerless.

 

So this week, before decisions, before you have that difficult conversation, before you walk into that meeting with your boss, before you teach, serve, parent, or lead – stop, hit your knees, and pray first.

 

Prayer is not weakness. Prayer is the confession that you are not enough, but Christ is. Bring your weakness to Christ in prayer, depend on Christ instead of depending on yourself.

 

Next, you need to listen to Christ by sitting under His Word. It is possible to read Scripture just to check a box, gather info, prep a lesson, or even to ease your conscience without actually sitting at the feet of Jesus in humble dependence.

 

Before they were apostles, the twelve were disciples. They were learners before they were leaders. The kingdom of God is not advanced by naturally impressive and gifted people, but rather by people who are shaped by Christ.

 

If you want to hear God’s voice, then read God’s Word. So this week, don’t just read your Bible to finish your reading plan. Slow down, sit with it, and Ask, “Lord, what are You revealing to me here? Where do I need to repent? Where do I need to trust You more?”

 

Learn to intentionally sit at the feet of Jesus in His Word, letting Christ shape you through His Word, and listen to Christ instead of listening to yourself.

 

And lastly, you are to walk with Christ among His people. Jesus forms a people, Christ calls people to Himself. And not an easy, have it all together kind of people, but a very imperfect people.

 

That means the church has been filled with imperfect people from the very beginning. Look at the men Jesus chose. Fishermen, tax collector, a zealot, a greedy traitor. Men with different backgrounds, different personalities, different failures, yet Jesus built His church through them.

 

 

We’re a messy bunch, Christians, were a wildly different kind people. We have messy lives, and yet we trust in a perfect savior who calls us to Himself and calls us to love and serve one another like He loves us.

 

So this week, don’t just attend church, don’t just watch online. Get to know one another well so that you can come alongside someone and encourage them. Kneel beside them and pray with them. Bear someone’s burden with them. Reconcile where it’s needed. And serve.

 

Don’t let disappointment with imperfect Christians or fear of the mess cause you to distrust or avoid Christ’s church. You can’t walk with Christ and remain disconnected His people. Commit yourself to His people, to His church, and walk with Jesus among His people.

 

The hope of the church has never been in the greatness of its people. Not then, and not now. The hope of the church is Jesus Christ. And that should humble you if you think you’re strong enough without Him.

 

But it should also encourage you if you feel weak, inadequate, ordinary, or unqualified. Because Christ has always worked through imperfect people.

 

So, depend on Christ through prayer, listen to His voice as He shapes you with His Word, and walk with Jesus as you walk out your faith with His people, His church.