[Morning Sermon] Jesus Builds His Church (Luke 6:12-16)

The Church is messy. Her leaders are imperfect and members can be downright ridiculous. But this is the body that Jesus has crafted for Himself, and He doesn't make mistakes. In today's passage, we'll see Jesus' intentionality in pouring the foundation upon which He'd build His church and learn how His sovereign choice applies to church life today.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Alright, if you would, please open your Bibles to Luke chapter 6, verse 12. So I have four children under the age of 11. And like all siblings, my children sometimes struggle to get along. Surprise. One day, as two of my children were fighting, I had a brilliant idea. I was going to take one t-shirt and put the two of the children in that one t-shirt. The idea wasn't original to me. I heard it somewhere, but I was going to take this shirt and I was going to call it the get along shirt. And in my mind, they were both going to enter into this church this shirt and figure it out. They did not figure it out. The get along shirt did not help them get along, and all I ended up was with was a ruined shirt and more tears. So, like a home, a church can be a messy place where people struggle to get along. We are, we're all mixed together into this very different, this very diverse family, and sometimes brothers and sisters squabble. In today's sermon passage, we're going to see something like the beginning of the institutional church. Really, the the church's historical beginning is in the Garden of Eden, but that's another sermon for another time. In this passage, we are going to see Jesus gather his disciples together, and he's going to call out twelve of them to be his inner circle, to be his apostles, to be the foundation of the church. And they'll all have their differences. One of them will even be a traitor, but none of that is a surprise to God. What we're going to see today is that when it comes to his church, God puts every person into place intentionally, according to his own divine perfect wisdom. So what we experience as a mess in the church when we don't get along the way we should, what we experience as a mess is actually a product of divine intention. It is the jumbling together of rocks in a tumbler, so that even though we might rub up against one another in all kinds of uncomfortable ways, the outcome of God's grace working in our rubbing against each other is a perfectly smooth and sanctified stone. That's what God is doing. That's how God has designed his church, and we see it here even at the beginning. So with that said, I'll invite you to rise as we read this sermon text this morning. Verses 12 through 16. In these days Jesus went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God. And when day came, he called his disciples and chose from them twelve, whom he named apostles. Simon, whom he named Peter, and Andrew his brother, and James and John, and Philip and Bartholomew, and Matthew and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon, who was called the zealot, and Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. Father, we do need your Holy Spirit now to help us understand what you have revealed and apply it rightly to our lives. Please send your Spirit now to give us this help. In Jesus' name. Amen. So in the past several chapters of Luke, we've seen something of a conflict brewing between Jesus and the Jewish leaders, the scribes and the Pharisees. They've had it out for Jesus ever since he called himself the Son of Man in chapter 5. And he demonstrated both his power and authority to heal and to forgive. So this conflict has been brewing, it's been simmering. And last week we saw Jesus not just heal a man, but do it on the Sabbath of all days. And so that was the proverbial strogue that broke the camel's back. Because at the end of the story, it says the Pharisees were filled with fury. Not awe, not wonder, not praise, not relief, but fury. And they discussed with one another what they needed to do. In other words, they discussed with one another what to do about Jesus and how to get rid of him. Now, we didn't talk about this so much last week, but that rejection signaled the Pharisees' impending doom as leaders in Israel. What they should have done was welcome the Messiah with open arms and lead all the people of God to them. Like, guys, he's here. Check it out, it's great. But because they didn't, it became evidence that Israel was in need of a changing of the guard. And that's precisely what today's passage gives us is Jesus calls together his disciples and he picks out from among them twelve apostles. Now that number twelve, it's not incidental. That number twelve is significant because it hooks directly into the history of Israel, the twelve tribes of Israel. What Jesus is doing throughout the gospel, but also intentionally here, Jesus is reconstituting his holy nation. He's not replacing it as though he's creating a whole new people, but at the same time, he's not repeating it as if the church is merely a retread of the past. No, Jesus is doing a new thing in Israel. Jesus is fulfilling the old promises, yet he's doing it in a greater and more glorious way than anyone had ever seen before. That's why in Revelation 4.4, we see not twelve thrones gathered around God's heavenly throne, but 24 thrones, and seated upon them 24 elders to represent the 12 sons of Israel and the 12 apostles of Jesus. Now, that's all very interesting. But what does it have to do with any of us? Well, because Jesus is laying the organizational groundwork for the institutional church here, this passage actually has a lot to tell us about where the church comes from, how it's built, and why we shouldn't be surprised when we experience friction in church life. So as we dive into that and as we consider those things, we're going to look at three specific things this morning. The church's divine initiation, its human foundation in our messy situation. So divine initiation, human foundation, messy situation. So let's start with that divine initiation piece. Our passage begins with Jesus on a mountain. In Old Testament and in Jewish literature, mountains were very much associated with God, appearing to his people. And not just appearing to them to kind of do tricks or whatever, but appearing to reveal himself. Just think about Moses on Mount Sinai with all the smoke and all the thunder and the lightning and the fire and all of that. Here, Jesus is on the mountain in order to receive direction from his heavenly father. And we see that in the unique way that it describes his prayer. It says that all night he continued in prayer to God. This is actually the only time these words show up in quite this way in the New Testament. And what they describe is an all-night prayer vigil, where the emphasis is much less on Jesus speaking and much more on him hearing. The Son did not come to the Father in prayer with a wish list so much as a blank legal pad, ready to receive what God had for him. Now you've heard me say a couple times now that Luke is the gospel of prayer. Luke gives us more of a glimpse into Jesus' prayer life than any other of the gospels. It shows us just how essential Jesus' communion with his heavenly Father is to his work of ministry. And this scene here is a brilliant example of that. And it's exceptionally important because it emphasizes that the choice that Jesus is about to make for the twelve apostles is actually a divine choice. It's a choice that has its origin in heaven. When Jesus chooses the twelve, it's not as though he just picks twelve guys at random. No, he spends the entire night, the entire night in prayer. So that when the morning comes, when the dawn breaks, when daytime comes, he will be so in tune with the Father's will that he can choose exactly who needs to be chosen. Now there's something in there, right? There's something in there about the fact that God chooses and gathers every individual who makes their way into the church. And we'll see that more fully as we kind of make our way through the passage and look at the list of apostles in a minute. But for now, it's really important that we just notice that Jesus is setting one heck of an example for his people, isn't he? This is how church leaders ought to approach every decision, especially those that involve the calling of men into church leadership. And if we look ahead to Acts, we see that the church does follow Jesus' example in this. In Acts 6, they pray and lay hands on the first deacons to ordain them to the office. In Acts 13, they fast and pray before commissioning Saul and Barnabas. In Acts 14, they fast and pray before installing elders in the churches. This is what the church does. This is what the church should do. Everything, everything we do in the church, especially when it comes to those who lead, but not only, everything should be seasoned in prayer. Otherwise, we make bad decisions. We call people into leadership who don't have the character or the competence. We drift away from our mission. But this principle here, Jesus praying all through the night before he makes an important decision, doesn't just apply to church life, to people like me who lead in the church. It applies to all of us. Here we have Jesus praying over this hugely consequential decision. I ask you, when is the last time, or when was the last big decision you made? Think about that. Did you pray? And I don't just mean a quick, dear Lord, show me what to do. I mean, did you wrestle with God in prayer about what you were supposed to do? Did you spend the whole night on a mountain or on your knees, whatever that looks like, listening for the still small voice to reveal the way forward? Because that's the example that Jesus sets for us here. And it's a spiritual habit that he promises to bless. James 1, 5 says, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. God has promised to give us the wisdom we need to walk in step with his will for our lives. The question is, will we slow down and focus our hearts and minds long enough to receive that wisdom? That's exactly what Jesus did. Which is why we can say that what he is about to do in this passage comes by divine initiation. Now let's move on to our second heading. The church's human foundation. In verse 13, dawn breaks and Jesus calls together his disciples. The disciples, that's the large group of people who had seen and heard enough of Jesus to decide that they wanted to come and follow him to learn more. And from that broad group, that big group of disciples, it says he chose twelve that he would come to call apostles. Now, just what is an apostle? An apostle or apostolos in the Greek is the noun form of the verb apostelo. And it means to send. So basically, an apostle is a sent one, someone who is sent on a mission with a message. And at times the word apostle is used in the New Testament in that general kind of way. Like in 2 Corinthians 8.23, when Paul refers to a group of brothers who are messengers in the churches. The ESV uses that word messenger when the Greek word is really apostoloid, apostle. Why? Because they don't want to confuse us. Confuse us how? Confuse us by making us think that these generic messengers are the same as the twelve, the twelve apostles, Jesus' inner circle. See, there's this general use of the term apostle, but then there's a special use of the term, a technical use to refer to particular office that particular people held. And so you've got apostles, but you've also got the apostles, the capital A apostles, the twelve. Now we do this kind of thing in ordinary language all the time. We just don't really think too much about it. If you were to go to a restaurant and you go back in the kitchen, you'll probably find seven chefs in there if it's a big enough restaurant. But only one is the chef, the capital C chef. And so there were apostles, generally speaking, in the early church, but there were only twelve capital A apostles chosen by Jesus to be the human foundation upon which he would base or build his church. Don't worry about Judas right now. We'll talk about Judas in a little while. But we see that in Matthew 16, where Peter confesses Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God, and then Jesus responds in verse 18, You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Jesus is talking about Peter as the first among the apostles. Ephesians 2.20 goes on to unpack that by saying that the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. Jesus is the cornerstone. Jesus is the initiator. And yet by the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus uses people to build his church. And in our passage, he chooses the apostles to be those people who serve as the foundation upon which the church is built. That's what we mean when we confess in the Nicene Creed that the church is one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic. Now those words might make you nervous, at least some of you. Maybe those of you who are raised in the Catholic Church, like I was. Because the Catholic Church holds that for the church to be apostolic, it must be headed by someone from an unbroken line of successors that traces its roots all the way back to Peter. In a word, the Pope. But the simple fact here is that there is no provision in the New Testament for a crop of apostles or apostolic successors to lead each generation of the church. The apostles were the church's foundation. And now Christ leads his church, not by sending us new apostles to continue working on the foundation, but by giving us elders to build upon the foundation that's already been laid. And we do that. We build on that foundation by focusing our attention not on the apostles themselves, but on their words. In John 14 through 16, before Jesus is betrayed and arrested, he gathers his twelve together for one last meal in the upper room, and you have this long upper room discourse about a bunch of things. But during that meal, Jesus promises that after he goes, he will send the Holy Spirit. He will send the Holy Spirit not just to comfort them in his absence, but to actually empower them to bear witness to his words and to his works. This is what he says in John 15, 26 through 27. When the helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning. Now, this isn't a word. Sometimes we read it this way, but it actually isn't. This isn't a word about the Holy Spirit helping us to bear witness to people. Although the Spirit totally does that. This is actually Jesus promising to send the Spirit to help those who had specifically been with him from the beginning. He will send the Spirit, he says, to equip them for their apostolic ministry. And more specifically, to inspire them as they infallibly write down the words and works of Jesus in the books and letters that we have and we call the New Testament. So this is our foundation. This is our apostolic foundation. Not the men so much as the words that God the Holy Spirit inspired them to write down infallibly, inerrantly, authoritatively. That is the human foundation that's been divinely initiated by Jesus. And if we labor to stand upon that foundation as individuals and as a church, then the Spirit, what will the Spirit do? The Spirit will build us up to be a holy temple in the Lord. That's the promise that Ephesians 2 makes. And he will do it by bringing together the most unlikely and unexpected materials. Which brings us to our third heading the church's messy situation. My son is really into Minecraft. Caesar, you into Minecraft? Oh my goodness, he's into Minecraft. We spend so much time thinking and talking about Minecraft. Boys, girls, do you like Minecraft? Do you guys like Minecraft? Alright. Okay, let's let's uh let's help out the more um chronologically advanced folks in the crowd. Do we like Lego? Or at least at least know what Lego is? Yeah. Everybody, even us old people like Lego. Growing up, we didn't have, in my family, we didn't have a ton of money for Lego. And even now I am very reluctant to drop hundreds of dollars on fancy Lego sets. The things are ridiculously expensive. So we've got a big bin that I bought on Facebook Marketplace for like 20 bucks, and it's filled with thousands of random Lego pieces. And we just like to build with what we got. You know, sometimes they get sets and they do the sets, but a lot of time we just like to build what we got. And what you end up with is this really cool multicolored structure. Like Caesar built some sort of spaceship plane, it's massive. Colors all over the place, right? And it's awesome. Well, the church is like that. We might be, we might expect this building founded upon the apostles and prophets to grow up into this highly polished, uh, uniformly colored and textured structure. But really, the the body of Christ is a temple whose structure outstrips all our imaginations and whose individuals' blocks represent all the many colored personalities and proclivities that belong to its people. This is a beautiful thing. In principle, it's an amazing thing. In practice, it is an incredibly messy thing. But as we'll see, the mess is not a mistake. It is still the product of divine intention. And that's what we see here Jesus deliberately brings together a very diverse group of men. Just to briefly run through the list here. Simon Peter, he was a fisherman and a bit of a hothead. His brother Andrew was a gatherer of people. James and John were sons of thunder, which sounds really cool, like they were part of a biker gang. But Jesus probably gave them that nickname because of their bold and sometimes explosive and imprudent personalities. Bartholomew, or probably Nathaniel, as he's called elsewhere, he was a straight shooter with ecclesiastical middle management written all over him. Thomas famously had his issues with doubt. James, the son of Alphaeus, was pretty much a nobody. Simon the zealot was an anti-Roman revolutionary. Matthew or Levi was a tax collector for the Romans. So he and Simon probably had some really interesting conversations by the fire. Judas, the son of James, his own literally his only claim to fame is that he wasn't the other Judas. The scary. By and large, these were ordinary men. There was nothing particularly special about them. Different. Ordinary. He'll sometimes read in books on leadership in the style of Jesus that during that night in prayer, when he was wrestling with this in his mind, he was mulling over their resumes so that he could handpick the right set of men with the perfect combination of ministry skills to join his team. And it's supposed to be a lesson about how people in leadership really need to pay attention to the people they're elevating. Which is true enough, but the text here says nothing about that. According to Jesus' own wisdom, not according to the wisdom of the world, not according to what you look for in a leader, according to Jesus'. Own wisdom, not based on what was already in them, but on what he intended to give them, Jesus chose his twelve. And in the chapters to come, we'll see them fade somewhat into the background as Jesus leads by example, trains them by example in the kind of work that he intends for them to do. Now, all this talk about divine intention and calling and equipping the twelve leads us to the question that's been looming over us this whole time. What about Judas? Why did Jesus pick him? If this human foundation of the church comes by way of divine initiation, then how do we explain what appears to be a colossal mistake in judgment on Jesus' part? Well, we can start by banishing the word mistake from our vocabulary. At least as far as this goes. Because Acts 2.23 tells us that when the Jews delivered over Jesus to be crucified by the Romans' lawless hands, they did it according to the definite plan and forecuns or foreknowledge of God. So there is nothing in Jesus' ministry, nothing in Jesus' life, up to and including his death on a cross that was not meticulously planned from all eternity. Judas' betrayal was a part of the plan. Jesus' choice to include this traitor in his inner circle of disciples was no mistake. It was not a lapse in judgment. It was the means by which Jesus would actually allow himself to be taken, to be tried, to be crucified. Okay, but the question still lingers, doesn't it? Jesus could have gone another way. Jesus had no trouble getting himself in trouble. He could have gotten himself arrested without taking this traitor into his internal, his inner circle, and investing himself in him for three years. He could have done that. So why? Again, why did he choose Judas? There's some things we can say about a prophecy in Jeremiah and how that was fulfilled in Judas betraying Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. Matthew talks about that. But I think the fundamental answer to that question lies in something Paul says in Romans 9. Romans 9, if you're not familiar, is a very challenging chapter in the book. It's where Paul wrestles with the sovereign choice of God. Why does God harden some sinners in his judgment, yet he softens other sinners in grace? And when it comes to those who God hardens, Paul says this in verses 21 through 24. Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? In order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory. Even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles. I think Jesus numbered Judas among the twelve, so that he might endure him with patience. I think he chose Judas so that he could give him a front row seat to his mercy and grace. And in so doing, render Judas fully culpable for his rejection of Christ. And he also did it so that through Judas, he could warn us. He could warn us. Judas' story reminds us. It reminds us of this awful circumstance in which someone can be raised in the church and externally enjoy all of its privileges and benefits, yet fall away. They can taste the heavenly gift, they can share in the Holy Spirit, they can taste the goodness of the Word of God and the power of the age to come. They can have all of that yet ultimately fall away. Not because Jesus has making a mistake, but because their hearts were hard. And the overtures of God's love only made their hearts harder and harder and harder until it was all over. And what does all this tell us? What does it tell us about the church? What can we do with it? It tells us what Jesus told us in Matthew 13. That the church is a field sown both with wheat and with tares. The church is messy by divine design, but the church is also messy by devilish deceit. There are good differences between us that we can celebrate, languages, cultural heritage, tradition, those kind of things. And there are bad differences that we lament. There are differences that we can rejoice in, and there are some that threaten to destroy us or to divide us. Yet none of that is a surprise to God. It's a part of his plan for his people. The church, this church, is a mixed bag in all kinds of ways. We've got people who work with their hands, and we've got people who work with keyboards. We've got natural-born Southerners, and we have Yankees like me who are Southerners by grace. We've got conservatives, we've got progressives. We've got introverts and extroverts, close talkers and curmudgeons, people with advanced degrees and people who barely got out of high school. Professing believers who will walk the walk all the way to glory, and others who, like Judas, will turn their backs and betray the Lord for a pile of silver. On and on we can go down the line. There is a ton of diversity in this room. And the truth is that if we were left to our own sinful devices, our differences would tear us apart. But if we're in Christ, if we are in Christ by grace through faith, then the truth is that the Holy Spirit has united us to one another in one body, where our differences no longer tear us apart. Our differences can be sanctified by the word and spirit, and our diversity can be made into a strength. In Christ, we can become what the apostles became as individuals and as a church, bold witnesses who bring the gospel to the ends of the earth, even in the face of opposition, even in the face of persecution, even in the face of death. So, yeah, the church is a messy place. Surprise. But why wouldn't it be? Of course it is. The church is a hospital for people who are spiritually bleeding out in the hallways and desperately need the great physician to come and bind our wounds. The church is a home filled with parents who don't exactly know what they're doing, and children who fight and flip over spaghetti bowls and write on the walls. The church is a battlefield where sin is put to death, where saints contend for one another's souls. The saints, the church is all these things and more. And it could be the kind of place where everybody dresses their best and everybody behaves, where everything is clean, where nobody raises their voice. It could be that kind of place, but it would be much less like a home or a hospital, and more like a funeral parlor. Neat, clean, quiet, dead. The church is the living body of Christ. From the top to the bottom, inside out, in every way, the church is a product of divine initiation. And though our situation may be messy, the church is what Martin Luther called a creatura vivi divini, a creature of divine word. So when we bring all our differences, when we bring all our diversity, when we bring all our mess under the tutelage of Scripture, when we stand upon the firm foundation laid by the prophets and apostles, with Christ as the cornerstone, God will teach us what to do with our differences. God will sanctify the mess. He will knit us together as one body in Christ, and the world will know his love by the way we love one another, even in the midst of our difference and unloveliness. We are living in a deeply divided culture. And sadly, those divisions press in on the church and threaten to divide us. Brothers and sisters, that is not the way it is supposed to be. The triune God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, the one who is both one and many at the same time, made his church to be a radiant display of unity in diversity. The oneness of Christ's body ought not to be compromised from without. The many colored bricks of the temple should stand as a witness to our friends and neighbors. And so my parting word of encouragement for this morning is to simply underline one of our core values here at Hickory Grove. That we as a people rooted in the gospel, growing in grace and being renewed by the power of the Holy Spirit, would connect in community with one another. That we would reach out across our differences and that we would get to know each other. That we would spend time together in our homes, in restaurants, at the park. That we would not pull away from each other when we start to experience relational friction, but instead we would draw near, we would figure it out, we would work it out because we love one another in Christ. Because of what Jesus has done for us, this is our reality, because of what Jesus has done for us, we are all brothers and sisters living inside the same shirt. But the good news is our heavenly Father is much stronger and much wiser than this earthly dad. And he gives us the word to guide and the spirit to bind so that we actually will get along together in Christ. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for the spirit that binds, for the word that guides. Thank you, Lord, that we are a creature of your divine word, that you bring us together by your own divine intentionality. That though you use human beings as instruments in that endeavor, you do not give up your control. And you do not deviate from your perfect plan. Help us, Father, when we find ourselves in the church and our feathers are ruffled, or our personalities are clashing, or we just don't feel like it. Help us to remember, Lord, that we are a family brought together not by the will of man or the flesh, but by the blood of Jesus. Lord, we pray that by your spirit you would continue to knit us together. And that because of your great love to us, the watching world would know that love. And they would want what we have. Lord, we thank you for these gifts because on our own we could not conjure them for ourselves. We give you all the praise in Jesus' name. Amen. I'm going to invite our ruling elders forward now to prepare the Lord's table for us. This table is both a demonstration and anticipation of the unity we have in Christ. Scripture tells us that Jesus gave this meal to his people in order to remind us that when his body was broken, when his blood was shed, that happens so that we could be one with him. And when we become one with Christ, hey, we become one with one another. So if you have put your trust in Jesus, then Jesus Himself, the risen Lord, invites you to this table to partake of his grace, to be reminded of the union and communion you have with him and one another. So if that's your story, if your faith is in Jesus, if you have been baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, if you have joined yourself to the body of Christ where you can know and be known within the context of a body of believers, then come to this table. Whether that's this church or another church, come to this table. It's Jesus' table. But if that's not your story, if you haven't done that yet, if you don't quite understand what all this is about, you are in the right place. And you are welcome to be here. And I or any of these guys up here would love to talk to you more about what this looks like. But Scripture would say, hey, take a minute. Don't come to the table yet until you first come to Jesus. And again, we'd love to help you know more of what that's about. For now, I'm going to pray. I'm going to ask God to bless this time, and then we'll come forward and receive the elements, and after everybody's been served, we'll partake together. Father, thank you for this meal. I pray that it would be a great boon to our souls. I pray that it would nourish us both physically and spiritually. Pray that you would remind us of what it means to be one in Christ, even in the midst of all the differences that you have placed within us and in our stories. And Father, for those who pass today, I pray that you, by your Spirit, would continue to work in their hearts and minds, that you would create in them a deep desire to come to this table and to know this oneness with God and with their fellow man. Lord, bless this meal, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.