The Call of the Disciples

You'll notice in this list of apostles that are given to us here that about half of them you know a lot about because they appear frequently in the record of the New Testament, but the other half you hardly recognize. Their activities as apostles in the early church remain, for the most part, obscure. And yet these twelve men, to whom the Lord Jesus delegates this authority, turned the world upside down.

I think that we could extract from Winston Churchill an evaluation of the importance of these twelve men that never have so many owed so much to so few. All believers are called by God, but the calling of the disciples and the commissioning of the twelve apostles was unique, and it came with authority that resulted in, as you just heard R.C. Sproul say, the world being turned upside down. Welcome to the Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind, where each week we feature the preaching ministry of R.C.

Sproul. Today marks the beginning of a new series in the Gospel of Matthew. We'll be in this Gospel for several weeks, but if you'd like to study it in greater detail, you can request Dr. Sproul's commentary on Matthew when you give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org before midnight tonight. So what can we learn from the calling of the apostles, and what authority did they have?

Here's Dr. Sproul in Matthew chapter 10. And when He had called His twelve disciples to Him, He gave them power over unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease. Now the names of the twelve apostles are these. 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 Levias, whose surname was Thaddeus, Simon the Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed Him. We look at a list of names like this, and it's hard to get excited about the revelatory import of it, but beloved, this incident in the life of Jesus by which He commissioned these twelve to be His apostles is one of the most important and lasting significant things that our Lord did during His earthly ministry.

So let's receive this record as it comes to us from God Himself. At the end of chapter 9, we heard Jesus admonish His disciples to pray that the Lord of the harvest would send out laborers to bring in the harvest because the harvest was great but the laborers were few. And immediately following that mandate to pray, Jesus Himself takes action to send out laborers into the fields. And we read in chapter 10 that He called His twelve disciples to Him. The function of a disciple, Amathathas, is that of a student.

He is a learner. He is enrolled in the rabbinic school of Jesus. There were many disciples that followed after Jesus, many more than the twelve. But there were twelve who had a certain significance in the entourage of Jesus, and He called these twelve to Himself and now commissioned them for an extremely important task and changed their status from that of student to that of apostle. And let's never, ever miss the significance of that moment because there is a huge difference between being a disciple and being an apostle. An apostle by definition is one who is sent, one who is commissioned by someone in authority who then delegates his authority to those whom he sends, so that the ones who are commissioned bear the same authority of the one who sent them by delegation and are to be obeyed as much as the one who commissioned them.

The first apostle that we have to do with in the New Testament and indeed the supreme apostle of the Christian church is Christ Himself because our Lord was sent by the Father into the world. And Jesus would say from time to time, I speak nothing on My own authority, but rather I speak on the authority that the Father has given to Me. I only say what the Father wants Me to say, and all authority on heaven and earth has been given to Me. Now let me just pause here for a little theological excursion on the question of authority. We deal with problems of authority every day of our lives. Those of you who have children know exactly what I'm talking about. You tell your little girl or your little boy to do something, and they don't want to do it, and they want to debate the point, and they want to argue, and as soon as you say you must or you should or you ought, they're ready to stand up and say, says who?

Or why should I? And sometimes you'll be patient enough to give them a lengthy explanation for the reason why you've told them to do what you've told them to do, and sometimes when that doesn't work, at last ditch you say, you do it because I said so. You fool rank. Well, that happens not only in the family, it happens in the office where we have hierarchical structures of authority. It happens in the military where the first two words of recruit is taught to say are the words, yes sir. And this has to do with obedience to a directive that is given by someone. Now what we have to understand is that no one in any position of authority in this world, whether it's the president of the United States or the local dog catcher in your community, the principal in the high school, the foreman on the job, nobody in this world possesses inherent authority. Any authority that we ever encounter in this world, any authority that we ever assume ourselves in this world is not rooted and grounded in us. All authority in this world is delegated because the only one who possesses inherent intrinsic absolute authority is God is God Himself. It's not by accident that the word authority contains within it the word author, and God is the author of all that is. It is He who has made us and not we ourselves, and by virtue of His position as Creator and sovereign over all things God inherently, eternally, intrinsically has the authority to command from His creatures whatsoever He pleases. God alone in the final analysis has the authority to bind your conscience and to bind My conscience. And all other authority, as I've said, derives from Him. Now we've already seen that the first major delegation of authority that we encounter in the New Testament is that delegating of authority that the Father gives to the incarnate Son. All authority on heaven and earth has been given to Me. I speak nothing on My own authority, but on the authority of the Father so that Jesus could say, the Father says, and that settles it. You've heard me say before about my distress over this bumper sticker that you see all through Christendom, and God said it, I believe it, that settles it.

You've seen that? I want to get a big magic marker and black out the middle clause. God said it, that settles it. It's settled as soon as He says it.

It doesn't depend upon my accepting it. His Word is law, His Word is truth, and whatsoever the Lord God says is law. So let it be said.

So let it be done. And the Father delegates to His Apostle, Jesus, all authority on heaven and on earth. But the record that we have here this morning that I've read to you takes us to the next level of authority where Jesus now calls these twelve disciples who are named in this short text. And now let me just say before I comment further on the actual commissioning to apostleship that you'll notice in this list of disciples or apostles that are given to us here that about half of them you know a lot about because they appear frequently in the record of the New Testament, but the other half you hardly recognize. They appear in lists here and there, but we know next to nothing about them because their activities as apostles in the early church remain for the most part obscure. And yet these twelve men to whom the Lord Jesus delegates this authority turn the world upside down.

I think that we could extract from Winston Churchill an evaluation of the importance of these twelve men that would say something like this, never have so many owed so much to so few. But these few that Jesus entrusted with His mission and gave to them His authority are the ones who have turned the world upside down. Now we read here that He gave them power He gave them power over unclean spirits to cast them out to heal all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease. If you're reading along now in your Bibles, which I assume you all are, is there anybody in this room right now who has a different translation from what I just read?

I just read that He gave them power over unclean spirits. Does anybody have something that says something different? Let me see your hand. What do you have? Authority.

Is that what you have? You have… Oh, okay. Against rather than over. Anybody else have authority? Right. See, several of you have authority. Several of you have power.

What's up with that? Well, we mentioned this already back when the people were amazed at the teaching of Jesus, and the remark was made, the observation was given that Jesus taught as one having authority, not like the scribes. And so they were amazed at the authoritative manner in which Jesus preached and in which He taught.

Now people were also astonished and in a state of marvel at the power exhibited by Jesus. And there are different words for power in the New Testament, but one of the words that is translated by the English word power is the one I just read here, which is also frequently translated by the word authority. It's the word exousia, which etymologically if you tear the word apart, it means literally out of substance, out of being. You know, a lot of people give directives that have no substance behind it whatsoever.

The directives are frivolous and are based on nothing substantial. But the word exousia, out of being, out of substance, is the word that became used here in the Greek to refer to that which possessed both authority and power. And so maybe we could translate that word this way by saying exousia means not just any kind of authority but a powerful authority, or we could also turn it around and say that it's not any kind of, just any kind of power, but it is an authoritative power. Now that's what Jesus bestows upon the twelve.

He gave them exousia. And I prefer the translation authority rather than power, and I'm supposing that the reason why my translator here selected the word power over authority is because of the context. The context here in my text says He gave them power over unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease. In order to heal every sickness and disease imaginable like we've seen Jesus do already in His ministry requires a power that you and I do not possess. It's a supernal power. It is a heavenly power, and it's a power that belongs ultimately to God again alone. But now this power that Jesus had manifested to raise people from the dead, to cure lepers, to heal people of all kinds of diseases and infirmities, He's now bestowing that power on the twelve. But then, so then why do I prefer authority?

Well, for this reason, two reasons. One, because in this passage it tells us that Jesus gave them power over unclean spirits, but the power that He gave them over unclean spirits was the authority to require them to leave the hosts that they were tormenting. They could drive out demons because they had the authority. That was what was the necessary power to get rid of the demons. It had to have divine authority to do it. And so since Jesus here is, since we're talking here not only about healing diseases, but also about casting out demons, I prefer the use of the term authority over power, but there's a second reason.

It's an even more compelling one for me. And that is though this text tells us that in the commissioning of the apostles, Jesus delegated authority and power over demons and over disease. That was by no means the extent of authority that Jesus gave them, nor in my judgment is that the most important authority that He gave to them.

I believe the most important authority that He bestowed upon His apostles was the authority of His Word. If you have a bulletin in front of you and you look at the cover that you see every Sunday morning, you see the name of our chapel, you see the cross, the Celtic cross there, which is adorned by several Latin phrases in white. On the left bottom you have the words sola scriptura. These sayings embodied on the cross are the solas of the solas of the Protestant Reformation. And at the time of the Reformation, the two most significant issues that confronted the church in the sixteenth century was what some historians call first of all the material cause of the Reformation, the chief matter about which the dispute was carried on, and that was the issue over how a person can be justified before a holy God. And so that whole debate that Luther carried on with Rome over justification by faith alone was captured in that little phrase sola fide, by faith alone. But if you look at what happened in the sixteenth century and all the debates that took place between Luther and the church at Leipzig, for example, Augsburg, and other places there at Worms, always lurking in the background was what the scholars call the formal issue of the Reformation.

And that was the question of authority. When Luther challenged the church, the immediate question came to him, who do you think you are? You're speaking against church councils. You're speaking against the pope. And Luther is saying, I know.

But that's not the issue. The question is, am I speaking against the Word of God when he was dragged to the tribunal if the diet of Worms was called upon to recant? You know what he said. Unless I'm convinced by sacred Scripture or by evident reason, I cannot recant because my conscience is held captive by the Word of God, and to act against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand. You see, that issue was the same issue that Adam faced in the garden when that serpent came up to him and said, did God say? Luther said, I respect the pope. I respect the church councils. I respect the theologians of the church.

I take them very, very seriously, but not one of them individually or all of them together can bind the conscience. Only the Word of God can do that. And what Luther was calling attention to was the authority of the Bible, which authority rested, beloved, on apostolic authority. In the early centuries of the church, the great theologian Irenaeus had to defend the Scripture from heretics who were undermining the authority of the Bible, and what they basically argued was this. Well, we respect God, and we even have great admiration for Jesus. It's Paul we can't stomach, and it's Peter that we disagree with, and it's that fellow John that was exiled on Patmos who had these vivid dreams of imagination, and we don't have to be bound by his insights, do we? And Irenaeus gave a very simple argument. He said, when Jesus was debating with the Pharisees, here's what the Pharisees said, we obey God. It's you we have trouble with.

And what was the response? We believe in Moses. We believe in Abraham. It's Jesus of Nazareth we can't stomach. And Jesus said, wait a minute, Moses wrote of me.

Just a second here, Abraham rejoiced to see my day. And the principle that Jesus was saying is if you reject Me, you reject the one who sent Me. Jesus was claiming to be the Father's Apostle, and if you reject the authority of Christ, you reject the authority of God.

It's that simple. But then it goes to the next step, and that's what Irenaeus said to the heretics. He said if you reject the apostles, you reject Christ, because Christ is the one who delegated His authority to the apostles. And if you reject Christ, you reject the Father.

So the line was drawn to the next level by Irenaeus, and I think absolutely right, and I think Luther was absolutely right in the sixteenth century. You reject the Bible. You reject apostolic authority. You reject apostolic authority. You reject the authority of Christ. You reject the authority of Christ. You reject the authority of God. QED, you reject this book. You reject the authority of God. Now I know I'm saying that at a time in history where there has been wholesale rejection of the authority of sacred Scripture, but there's a reason why we have it on the front of our bulletin every Sunday morning, because in this church we believe that the truth of God stands or falls with the integrity of the apostolic Word that comes to us in the Bible. Amen.

That was R.C. Sproul beginning a short series in the Gospel of Matthew. This is the Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind.

I'm your host, Nathan W. Bingham. As you interact with people outside of the church, you quickly discover that unlike other topics, many people have opinions about Jesus, even though they've never read about Him or even read His words. So being familiar with the Gospels yourself and being able to encourage a non-Christian to read one of the Gospels can be so helpful in evangelism.

So today's your opportunity to get one study help to aid you in navigating your way around the Gospel of Matthew. When you give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org, we'll send you this hardcover volume, which is based on all of Dr. Sproul's sermons through Matthew. Your generosity helps keep Renewing Your Mind freely available to countless Christians around the world. Plus, you'll receive a resource designed to help you in your spiritual growth. So please give your donation at renewingyourmind.org or by using the link in the podcast show notes before midnight tonight. Thank you.