I want to let you know, if you're a grade 12 student,
Pastor Kirk is doing something in the prayer room right now for
grade 12 students, just helping them get prepped for what the
next season of life brings. And so if you want to join him
there, we'd love to have you join.
I'm happy to have you stay here too.
That's great. But if you want to go over and
join Pastor Kirk in the prayer room, he'd love to see you.
It seems like like a recurring theme over the last few months
is that I have been compelled to share some of my nerdy
tendencies. And I'm going to give another
nerd confession this morning. For 25 years I have pretended
that I am the GM of a make believe baseball team.
I play fantasy baseball and football and basketball, and if
you don't know what fantasy sports really is, here's how
nerdy it is. It's a bunch of guys who usually
are well past their own peak of playing any type of sport,
picking groups of Major League players that are going to form
their team, and it's all based on the stats that they acquire.
Playing a real game for your fantasy game and if you acquire
the most stats and the most categories, then Long story
short is you win. There is no way to make that
sound cool. There just is no way.
And you're probably wondering, why am I eating up your time
with this unbelievably useless bit of information?
What is anything that you just said have to do with the message
this morning? Well, let's see.
Turn with me to Luke chapter 6 verse 12.
You're using some of the Bibles that are found under the chairs
here in the auditorium. It's on page 914 as you flip
over there. I'm going to recap where we've
been because this is the last message in this section of Luke
that we've called follow. And so you go back and you
remember the very first week we saw Jesus calling Peter and a
bunch of his fisherman friends to become fishers of men.
That's not fisherman's friend. That's not what I said.
Don't pull out a lozenge. He called a bunch of fishermen
to follow him. And then a little bit farther
on, we get this call of a guy by the name of Levi, who we also
known as Matthew, who is a tax collector.
And he invites him to begin to follow him.
And this whole kind of section is really about an invitation to
follow Jesus. It's a look at the way that he
lives life and an invitation to enter into the rhythms of life
that he calls us into. And this morning it brings this
section to a conclusion where we have Jesus calling out amongst
all of these people who have begin begun to follow him.
And there's not just those group, but there's hundreds of
people now following Jesus around and thousands often when
he speaks. And out of this, he's going to
call 12 guys to become what we know as the 12 apostles and he's
going to have a specific mission for them.
Jesus is choosing his roster, his team, and it's not exactly a
fantasy group of players is what we're going to see as we go in
this morning. And I want to look at three
things as we examine this passage.
The 1st is this. What is Jesus doing as he
selects these 12 apostles? Why is he doing this?
The second thing is, how does he go about making his choice,
choosing his draft picks? And the third, who is it that he
chooses? Who are these guys?
What do we know about them? What can we learn from them?
And so let's read this passage together.
During those days he went out to the mountain to pray, and he
spent all night in prayer to God.
When daylight came, he summoned his disciples and he chose 12 of
them, whom he also named apostles.
Simon, whom he also named Peter and Andrew, his brother James
and John, Philip and Bartholomew, Matthew and Thomas.
James, the son of Alpheus and Simon called the Zealot Judas,
the son of James and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.
What I need to understand is this moment that's happening
right here. This is a big moment, and I'm
talking like a historically big, huge moment.
Jesus has come for a purpose. He's come to live and die so
that we might live, it says during those days.
What's he talking about? During what days?
Well, remember, we've been tracking through and there's
been this growing tension with this group called the Pharisees.
And so this is during those days where the tension and the
animosity has built to a peak. During those days where it is
becoming clear that the days that Jesus haves left are going
to be coming to an end. Jesus has come to teach people
about God. He show.
He's come to show them God because he's come to show them
himself and he is God. He's come to show them that He's
at the center of this entire reality.
This entire story of redemption is about Him in Luke 2425 to 27.
We see this as He walks with the disciples after He's risen from
the dead. It says he said to them, how
foolish you are, how slow to believe all that the prophets
have spoken. Wasn't it necessary for the
Messiah to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?
And then listen to this. Then beginning with Moses and
all the prophets, He interpreted for them the things concerning
himself in all the scriptures. What Jesus is fundamentally
saying there is the Bible. It was all about me, This whole
thing, the way of redemption. I'm it.
He has come so that God could once again be in right
relationship with human beings now and forever.
And Jesus in this moment has to select the group who are going
to carry forward his mission and message after his death.
See the the word apostle, it literally means sent with a
mission and message. These are going to be the guys
who make sure that the world hears about who Jesus is, what
he taught, and most importantly, what he did on the cross to
rescue and redeem us. These are the guys who, when we
come to Matthew 28 and we get the Great Commission, go into
all the world and make disciples.
It's the, it's eleven of these 12.
So all of them minus Judas, who are there as the direct
recipients of this mission and commandment.
They're the guys who formed the foundation of the church.
If they're not there, we're not here.
And and you may say, well, what does that have to do?
I'm, I mean, I mean, I'm not even really a Christian.
I'll tell you that even if you're not a Christian, no
matter what your personal belief in Jesus is, these men have
played a critical role in shaping your life.
Love this quote from Tom Holland.
He wrote a book called Dominion that explored the impact of
Christianity and how it's ultimately radically transformed
and created the Western world and Western culture as we know
it. He says people in the West, even
those who may imagine they have emancipated themselves from
Christian belief, in fact are shot through with Christian
assumptions about almost everything.
All of us in the West are a goldfish.
The water that we swim in is Christianity.
See, today, if you believe that human beings have innate value
and worth just because they're humans, you believe that because
these men carried forward the mission, mission and message of
Jesus. If you believe that human rights
matter, if you believe in the ideal of equality, it's because
of this moment and these men who were chosen.
If you believe that there's a need for the strong to care for
the weak, that comes out of Christian teaching and only
Christian teaching. The value of humility, of
service, of sacrifice, of charity.
Those are innately Christian ideals.
If you believe that leaders should serve the people they
lead, not just dominate them, you owe that to the men that
Jesus will choose in this moment.
If you think that forgiveness is a virtue, if you believe in a
justice system that isn't just about retribution but is also
about rehabilitation, that's a Christian understanding and
belief. You believe this because these
men were faithful in the mission that God will grant them through
Jesus to carry forward his mission and message.
And most fundamentally because the power of new life through
Christ was made known and people from all the days from the
beginning of the church to now have been transformed by the
Holy Spirit to carry that power forward into the world.
At the heart of Christianity is this truth.
God became man. He suffered a terrible death,
more terrible than you and I can imagine, in order to redeem and
restore humanity, whom he created into a right
relationship with him. That message, that's the message
that has transformed my life. That's the message that has.
It's the reason why I'm here this morning.
It's the reason I do what I do. It's the the reason why so many
of you are here this morning. It's the message that's
transformed your life, this message, its implications, the
power that has been unleashed through the mission and message
that would go forward. It transforms individuals, it
transforms families, it transforms societies, it
transforms cities and cultures, and it can transform the world.
And Jesus is selecting the individuals that are going to
carry forward that mission and message into the world when he
departs from this world. That's what Jesus is doing as he
selects these. So you see why this is a big
deal. Your life is different because
of this moment. So back to fantasy baseball.
How do you decide? How do you pick a team?
Right when I, when I'm choosing the players that I, I'm going to
pick, I do a lot of research. I used to buy magazines because
that's how old I am. Now I do it on the Internet and
it's way easier. And someday I'll just ask
ChatGPT to pick my team for me. I'm sure you, you figure out
what you need on the team. You, you look and you prioritize
and, and for most of the decisions that we make, that's
what we do. We, we think and we, we put our
best efforts into it and we prioritize.
We try to use our wisdom and our smarts, whether that's choosing
a school that you're going to go to a college or university, or
whether it's weighing different job opportunities and career
paths or picking the home or the neighborhood that you're going
to live in. If you're like me, when you're
selecting any type of big purchase, you just, we watch all
the YouTube videos and the shorts and you read the stuff so
you can make the best purchase possible.
And some of you just ask your buddy who who doesn't know
anything about anything and ask him what you should do.
We base our decisions on our priorities and that's what Jesus
does here. Jesus bases his decision on
prayer because pleasing the Father was his first priority.
It says during those days, he went out to the mountain to pray
and he spent all night in prayer to God.
And this is not the first time that we're encountering Jesus
praying in the book of Luke, right?
I mean, if you remember back, Jesus's entire ministry starts
with 40 days of prayer and fasting.
This is the foundation on which Jesus builds his life and
ministry. In Luke 516 we read that he
often withdrew to pray. One of the constant markers of
Jesus life and ministry is a posture of prayer, a devotion to
hearing the will of the Father in all times, but particularly
in pivotal moments. I want to ask you, where does
prayer fit into your decision making matrix?
Is prayer an anchor or an afterthought?
Is prayer your foundation or is it a nice finishing touch when
you've kind of worked everything out and then you can ask God to
bless the thing you've already decided upon?
I'm going to confess myself. There have been a way too many
times, including some really big things, where instead of going
to prayer to figure out the Father's will, I've gone to
prayer in order to ask the Father to bless my will.
The story of church planting and how Amanda and I started into
the process of what ultimately became Forward Kitchener here.
When God laid on our hearts that He was calling us to plant to
church, I started to think as I do, OK, let me just begin to
reason this out. What would this look like when,
you know, we're in Oakville right now?
We know a lot of people here. You know, I think we've we've
got people who have some resources who could help us in
this city's growing like crazy. And so I sit down to meet with
the guy who's the head of our regional church planting.
And he says, have you thought about where you are going to
plant a church? And we said, yeah, you know
what? We just thought it would make
sense to do it here in Oakville. And then he said, have you
prayed about where you would go plant to church?
And I said, right, that's something that I should do.
You know, we entered into a season of prayer.
And the long story that leads to that moment is that we ended up
here and planting forward Kitchener.
But that was never going to be my plan.
So easy to fall into the reality of not having prayer is our
priority, and prayer or our lack of it does reveal priorities.
And Jesus starts with prayer because what is most important
to him is the will of the Father.
We'll see this later on in the garden as he's about to go to
the cross and He knows what's coming in Luke 2242.
He prays this Father, if you're willing, would you take this cup
from me? Nevertheless, not my will, but
yours be done. There's a big, big difference
between praying prayers that say, Father, bless my will and
Father, your will be done. And it's so easy to fall into
prayer as an afterthought because what we're really most
interested in is accomplishing our goals, our agenda, our
priorities. But do we ask God, what do you
want? As you consider maybe you're in
a spot where you're single or you're dating somebody you
consider who God would have you marry is is your hearts cry
consistently. Lord, show me who you have for
me. Lord, show me if you have
someone for me as you, as you consider where to live and where
to work and where to go to school, is that a foundation of
prayer when you're on your knees asking the Lord to reveal these
things? Or is it a finishing touch where
after you've made all your decisions and plotted out all
your strategies, you ask God to bless what you've already
decided? As you think about your
calendar, how you invest your time, as you think about your
bank account, how you invest your money, as you think about
your retirement, is prayer. The priority is at the
foundation. It doesn't just reveal our
priorities, though. Prayer, or our lack of it,
reveals where we believe the power lies.
Jesus is not spending all night in prayer at this point because
he's uncertain. He's spending all night in
prayer because he's dependent. He knows where the power lies.
See, if I were Jesus and I was making a big decision, the last
thing I'm doing is staying up all night if I can avoid it,
because I'm, I'm a prioritize a good sleep because I think the
best thing that I could have going into a big decision is a
clear mind. But knowing the mind of God is a
lot more powerful than having a clear mind.
And the more critical a decision is, the less you can afford not
to be praying about it. When when critical decisions
drive you to work harder, to try harder, to think harder, and to
pray less, you're not going to make the right decisions.
Don't get me wrong, we ought to give our best to God.
So I, I, I'm all for those of you who love a good pros and
cons list, go for it. Do it, sort it out, research,
use all the giftings that God has given to you, But always
remember the best that you've got will never end up as the
best that God's got unless you give it to God.
John Bunyan said this. You can do more than pray after
you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have
prayed. Yes, God wants you to do more
than pray, but you can't do that till you prayed first.
Prayer is not a substitute for work, or for thinking, or for
watching, or for suffering or giving.
Prayer is a support for all of that.
So Jesus first selects A-Team that's going to carry forward
the most important mission and message in the world.
Then he goes about praying and making prayer the cornerstone of
this decision as he chooses, because the Father's will is his
priority. Now, who does he end up
choosing? Simon, whom he also named Peter
and Andrew, his brother James and John, Philip and
Bartholomew, Matthew and Thomas. James the son of Alpheus, and
Simon called the Zealot Judas, the son of James and Judas
Iscariot, who became a traitor. So other than a couple different
James's and a couple different Judas's, what do we know about
this? First, just notice the fact that
Jesus chooses names. They could have just wrote,
Jesus chose 12 individuals, but we get their names because they
are individuals. I mean, we live in this world
that reduces people to numbers and statistics and metrics all
the time. This is such a refreshing
reminder that God knows people by name, that he cares about
individuals. He cares about you as an
individual. We know a little bit about the
employment background of some of these characters.
So we know that Peter, Andrew, James and John were fishermen
who Jesus called to be fishers of men.
We know that Matthew, as we saw a few weeks ago, he's a tax
collector. We find out here that Simon is
called the Zealot, and we happen to know that Zealots at the
time, they were a group of people who were political
activists and they were active against Rome.
They, they, they were doing all in their power to get Rome out
of the promised land. And so do you see the contrast
there is that you have, on one hand, Matthew, who was in line
and in league with the Roman government, working on their
behest and behalf, and you have Simon, who is vehemently against
the Roman government. The others, we don't really get
a record of what they did beforehand.
In the Bible. You get a picture as you meet
some of these characters of very different personalities.
So you got a guy like Peter, very outspoken, impulsive.
He's the guy who's always leaping before he looks,
sticking his foot in his mouth. Then you got a guy like Thomas
who's a skeptic, right? I won't believe that it's Jesus
and that he's risen from the dead until I can touch the
wounds myself. You have John, who as we go
through his reading, it's apparent he's a thoughtful guy.
He's a deep thinker. He's, he's got a he's got a deep
well of emotion in his soul. We can tell that Matthew is a
guy who apparently had a ton of contacts and was a great
networker, had lots of people around him.
Some of these guys, they are well known.
Others, this is all we hear about them like this is it.
I'm, I'm telling you, these are some of the most important men
in the world in human history. And yet the only thing we know
about some of these individuals is their name.
What they have on common is that on their own, there was nothing
notable about them. There was nothing that would
make you or I want to choose them for our team.
Like, we got pick of the litter. Yeah, first round picks.
None of these guys are first round picks.
At best, they're like round 25, I got to pick somebody and I'm
going to throw a dart. None of them were part of the
religious elite, hadn't had the religious training and
upbringing that the Creme de la Creme would have had.
None of none of them are people of reputation or or stature in
the world. One of them isn't even really
one of them. He's going to be a betrayer, and
ultimately he gets replaced by another apostle when we come to
Acts one. But guess what, these men
excluding Judas because of their faithfulness to the calling that
God gives them, the message that they were to take out.
Do you know that these guys get this?
They have an eternal tribute in glory for all time.
Because if you flip to Revelation 2114, you go to the
end of the story. It says that this new Jerusalem,
this new city where God comes down and heaven meets earth, the
city wall had 12 foundations, and the 12 names of the 12
apostles of the Lamb were on the foundations.
You may not know who they are today, but if you're going to
spend eternity in heaven, you're going to see their name every
day. That's what they got.
This also is not an exception to how God makes his calling, that
he chooses a bunch of guys that we wouldn't choose.
Look at First Corinthians one, we were just there and you know,
in the last year or so, we covered this passage.
Paul says, where's the one who's wise?
Where's the teacher of the law? Where's the debater of this age?
And he's looking around. He's saying they're not in the
church. He didn't pick those guys.
Brothers and sisters, consider your calling.
Not many of you were wise from a human perspective.
Not many powerful, not many of noble birth.
Instead, God has chosen what is foolish in the world to shame
the wise. God's chosen what is weak in the
world to shame the strong. God's chosen what is
insignificant and despised in the world, what's viewed as
nothing, to bring to nothing what is viewed as something so
that no one may boast in his presence.
Title. This morning's message was who
Jesus calls. The answer is this.
And Jesus calls the unqualified, the unexpected, the
undereducated, the unlikely and the overlooked.
That's what Jesus calls the ones who may never have been at the
top of any headhunters list or recruiting list.
The ones who assume they'd be the last ones to be picked.
And if you and I are choosing the team to change the world,
this isn't it. But Jesus chooses them not based
on their resume, but based on their readiness to follow.
Because that's how Jesus chooses.
That's still how he chooses. If you're out there today you
think just can never use me, my resume, it would go in the
circular file as soon as Jesus saw it.
If that's where you're at, I would suggest you you may be in
the best spot to be picked and used by Jesus if I'm reading my
Bible right? Because it's not about you, it's
about him. Did you see what Paul said there
at the end of that section in First Corinthians?
Why does he choose this way? So that no one may boast in his
presence. Because it's not about our
glory, it's about His glory. Jesus doesn't call the
qualified, He qualifies the called.
The church wasn't built on perfection, it was built on
obedience, wasn't built by professionals, it was built by
followers. And if he could use them, then
the great news is he can use us. He wants to call you to what
those first 12 were called to. Listen to Mark's version of
this. In the Gospel of Mark, he
records this moment. He says he appointed 12, whom he
also named apostles, to be with him to send them out to preach.
Why don't you notice that first word He calls them to be with
him. The first calling of Jesus is to
be with him. These are individuals not just
that Jesus was going to teach, but that he was going to be
with. They were going to live life on
life with him. He was going to be in front of
them. They were going to see how He
lived, not just how He taught. He was going to invest in them.
Jesus, first of all, he's calling us to be with Him.
He's calling you personally, specifically by name, because He
doesn't just call types, He calls names.
What do you need to know in order to direct other people to
Jesus? One thing, Jesus, that's all you
need. What?
What do you need in order for the world to be changed?
Well, if I look at the qualifications and gifting of
this group, not much. You just need Jesus.
Jesus is calling you and he's calling you to be with him and
then to take his message to the world.
If you've been around here at Forward, you better know this,
that we as a church, our mission, we exist to make
disciples of Jesus who love God, love others, and serve the
world. That's why we do what we do.
All of it, every bit of it is about that Jesus is calling you
to be a part of that, Of calling others to know Jesus, of calling
others to be transformed by Jesus, to grow in loving God and
loving others and serving the world.
To give your whole life to it, To find life in Him and find
what truly matters. And He doesn't need you to be
impressive. He needs you to be available.
And when you fail, and you and I will fail, remember this when
Jesus disciples failed, Jesus remains faithful.
Look at the guys that he chose. Jesus chooses guys like Peter
who denied, Thomas who doubted, Judas who betrayed.
But Jesus still went to the cross for them.
He goes to the cross for us. Bunch of misfits, bunch of
people whose resumes don't measure up, bunch of people who
will fail even after he chooses us.
Because the gospel isn't about what we do for him.
The gospel is about what Jesus did for us.
Who does Jesus call? He's calling you.
He's calling me. We going to pick up the phone?
Heed the call. That's the question.
Let's pray. Father, thank you for choosing
these guys, for giving us hope that you could use us.
God, thanks for extending an invitation for us to be with
you. Lord, I pray that if there's any
here today who have not yet received that initial invitation
to be with you, to be with you through what Jesus has done on
the cross, to trust in his atoning sacrifice, His blood
poured out for the forgiveness of our sins on the cross, that
he did what we couldn't do, that today would be the day they
would receive that invitation to be with you.
And I'm praying for all of us. Maybe some of us have wandered a
little bit away. I started to think that after
the things that we've done, Jesus wouldn't really want to be
with us. I pray that if there's anyone
here who's in that space today, they'd hear fresh and anew again
that Jesus wants to be with them.
He's still waiting, their arms wide open.
Father, thank you for the invitation into the the mission
of World Change that you've invited us into a world change
that starts with having our world, our lives change in such
a way that it radiates out in our families, to our friends, in
our neighborhoods. And as Jesus works on us and he
works out through us and the world is transformed such a
different pattern than the way that we understand power in this
world. It is a inside out, up from the
bottom to the top type of change.
God help us to be changed and be transformed so we can be world
Transformers. And thank you that even when we
fail and even when we fall, and we will, you'll remain faithful.
You are sufficient. God, we love you, we trust you.
Help us to follow you in all our ways and in all our days.
Amen.