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When they meet Jesus, they are raw and, to a certain extent, undisciplined. They were open to what Jesus offered, but they were not ready to be sent out. Just like us, they needed to learn.
One problem they needed to conquer was their own lack of SPIRITUAL UNDERSTANDING. They only knew what they knew - what they had learned in their own upbringing. They are among the followers when Jesus delivers the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6, and they hear repeatedly, “You have heard…but I say.” They still did not understand everything, even at the empty tomb, in John 20:9, where it says, “For as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead.” Jesus has to continue teaching them after the resurrection all the way until He ascends.
I guarantee that, if someone who walks with Jesus for three years, listens to His sermons and parables - someone who has direct access to the Teacher and can ask questions and get answers any time - if that person does not understand the whole Plan and has to keep learning to the end of life, then none of us, over 2000 years later, is going to understand without continual study in the Book either.
We can learn the Truth. We have the teachings of Jesus. We even have further inspired clarification through the teachings of these apostles. Just like the first-century Christians, in Acts 2, we should continually devote ourselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
Another need that some (probably all) of the apostles needed was HUMILITY. Some wanted the power to strike down people at will. Some wanted a special place in Heaven - right next to Jesus - meaning the others would not be as important as they were.
Among other times, Jesus talks about the humility of a woman who washes His feet with her tears and her hair. He even takes the time to teach them humility by washing their
feet Himself. His own humility is directly taught in Matthew 20:28 and Mark 10:45: For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”
And those are just two of the shortcomings of these 12 men. They have a lack of spiritual understanding. They have a lack of humility. Next week, we’ll talk about their lack of faith and their lack of power. For now, let’s just add one more item to the list - their lack of COMMITMENT. John 6:66 tells us that many of the disciples of Jesus “withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore”, to which Peter asks, “Lord, to whom shall we go?” and makes a strong statement, “You have words of eternal life. We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.” That’s all well and good, but these men, too, will leave Him for fear of their own lives.
At Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, only Peter and John follow, but from a distance. Peter says he will personally follow Jesus even to death, but we know how that works out for him. Luke 22:54ff relates the account of Peter fulfilling Jesus’ foretelling that he would deny knowing Jesus three times before the morning is announced by a rooster. “Woman, I do not know Him,” Peter says. “Man, I am not [one of them]!” he says. And when accused a third time of being a close follower of Jesus, Peter finally and clearly proclaims, “Man, I do not know what you are talking about.” That’s when Jesus looks at him and he remembers…and he goes away and weeps “bitterly”.
Jesus has to address all of these issues. He teaches them, He forgives them, and He prays for them. Read one of those prayers in John 17:6-19: Jesus says to the Father, “I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. Now they have come to know that everything You have given Me is from You; for the words which You gave Me I have given to them; and they received them and truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed that You sent Me. I ask on their behalf; I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom You have given Me; for they are Yours; and all things that are Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine; and I have been glorified in them. I am no longer in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as We are. While I was with them, I was keeping them in Your name which You have given Me; and I guarded them and not one of them perished but the son of perdition, so that the Scripture would be fulfilled.”
And He keeps praying: “But now I come to You; and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves. I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.”
How many times have we also felt our commitment fading or wavering? How many times have we doubted our own belief and commitment to Christ? In many ways we are like the apostles when our humility gets away from us or when we don’t seek answers to the things we don’t understand. That’s how a study of these 12 can be extremely relevant to us today, at this point in our lives when we might question the chaos in the world and wonder at the disorder of the systems we once thought were controlled. This study promises to show us all kinds of applications to our lives moving forward, and hopefully, we will be strengthened and encouraged through it.