SPROUL: Well, let’s come now and stand and hear the Word of God
from Luke chapter 6 verses 12 through 16.
“Now it came to pass in those days that He went out to the mountain to pray
and continued all night in prayer to God. And when it was day, He called His disciples to Himself;
and from them He chose twelve 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 Alphaeus, and Simon called the Zealot;
Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot who also became a traitor.”
SPROUL: Again, this small passage describes a momentous event in the ministry of Jesus,
when He selected these men who were described later as those who turned
the world upside down. You’ve heard the Word of God. Receive it with the fullness of the authority
that attends it. Let us pray.
“Again, our Father and our God, we beseech You for Your help this morning that as we prepare our
hearts for coming to the holy table of our Lord, we pray that through the Word You will prepare
us for that moment. We ask that You would give us understanding of the text that we have heard
and that the text may find its home within our hearts. For we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.”
Last week, we looked at Simon Peter and Andrew his brother and at James and John. This morning,
we’re going to look first of all at Philip. Now the New Testament doesn’t give us a lot
of information about Philip, but he is introduced very early in the Gospel of John when we’re told
that he comes to Nathaniel, who is also called Bartholomew, and testifies to Nathaniel that he
said, “We have found the one of whom Moses and the prophets spoke.” And so, Philip, in bearing
witness to Jesus, made his confession of faith in his conviction that Jesus was the one who had been
prophesied through the Old Testament law and the prophets, indeed the one who was the Messiah.
Later on, we see Philip again approaching Jesus on the occasion of the feeding of the five thousand,
and he is the one who calculated the expense that would be involved in buying provisions to feed
that vast multitude on that occasion. And because of that incident, some people have unfairly,
I believe, and unjustly dismissed Philip as just another calculating person, because he should’ve
realized that Jesus had the power and the ability to feed all of those five thousand people without
having to go and buy an enormous amount of food. Well, as I said, that’s tremendously unfair. It’s
just a statement made in passing and certainly is not characteristic of Philip and his whole life.
Now another thing we need to know is that Philip the apostle is not to be confused
with Philip the deacon and evangelist, who is found throughout the book of Acts and who
meets the Ethiopian and explains Isaiah 53. That’s a different person altogether. But one of the most
important moments in the life of Jesus comes in the upper room when Philip says to Jesus,
“Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us.” Did you hear that, Vesta? I mean
how many of you could stand up in front of all these people and say “sufficeth”?
And that takes some skill. So, in any case, Philip was saying, “We’ve seen all these wonderful things
that You’ve done. We’ve witnessed the turning of the water into wine, the walking on the water, the
calming of the sea, the raising of Lazarus and all the rest of these wonderful miracles,
but there’s one thing that we want, give us the big one, Jesus. Show us the Father, and then
we’ll be completely satisfied.”
Now if there was ever a time when Jesus seems to be exasperated
with one of his apostles or disciples, it was on this occasion, because he said to Philip, “Philip,
how long have I been with you, and you still don’t know Me?
You just don’t get it. Don’t you understand Philip that he who has seen Me has seen the Father?”
What a powerful statement that Jesus makes regarding the significance of His incarnation,
“He who has seen me has seen the Father.” Well, like many of the other disciples after the
resurrection of Jesus and the day of Pentecost came, many of the apostles became missionaries
to other lands. And tradition tells us that the missionary outreach of Philip
carried all the way to ancient Gaul, that is to France. That he is the first to bring
the Gospel of Jesus Christ to France, and then he spent much time in Turkey where in confrontation
with pagan priests there, he was despised and as a result was martyred in the year 54 AD.
He was doubly martyred if that’s possible. First, he was stoned almost to the point of death,
and then they finished the job by crucifying him.
Now the second apostle that we want to look at briefly this morning is Bartholomew,
who is called Nathaniel in the Gospel according to John. And as I mentioned a moment ago,
it was Nathaniel or Bartholomew to whom Philip came and said, “We have found the one of whom is
prophesied by the Law of Moses and the Prophets.” And Nathaniel was intrigued by that announcement,
and he said, “Really? Where is he? Where’d he come from?” And Philip said, “He came from Nazareth.”
Nathaniel laughed at that answer, and he said, “Nazareth? Are you kidding? Can any good thing
come out of Nazareth?” That’s like saying, “He came from Bithlo,” or someplace like
that in Central Florida. But Jesus saw Nathaniel approaching, and He made this
strange announcement as he saw him coming, saying, “Behold, an Israelite in whom there is no guile.”
Now again, the Gospels do not tell us a lot about Nathaniel, but Jesus’ pronouncement at that point
is profound. What a description of a person’s character! “Behold, an Israelite in whom
there is no deceit.” He’s a guileless person. Wouldn’t you love to have that on your tombstone,
that this person was a person without any deception, without any dishonesty,
without any manipulation, but utterly guileless? And when Nathaniel hears this pronouncement,
he’s shocked and he’s saying, “How in the world did You know that? You don’t even know me.”
Jesus said, “I saw you under the tree over there, and I knew you even before
then.” And Nathaniel was so impressed by Jesus’ display of supernatural knowledge
that he immediately exclaimed “You’re the Son of God,
you’re the king of Israel.” So, you see, it wasn’t just Peter who made a great confession
of faith among the disciples and among the apostles. But here we first hear it,
“You’re the Son of God” from Philip, now it’s Nathaniel saying,
“You are the Son of God and the king of Israel.”
Well again, the Scriptures don’t speak much more of this
guileless Israelite, but from the testimony of church history and of tradition,
we’re told that he also became a missionary and went to Armenia
and started the first Christian church in Armenia. But his ministry there got him in conflict
with the local priests of pagan religion, and they didn’t like what he
taught. You know he would teach such things as the sanctity of life and the sanctity of
marriage, long before Chick-fil-A faced the same kind of negative reaction.
Isn’t it interesting, in our culture and in our day that if you believe
in the sanctity of life and in the sanctity of marriage,
two things instituted by God in creation, you are now risking being accused of a hate crime,
and that’s how far we have come? But we understand the heart of men and how desperately wicked we are
in our fallen humanity, and this is the kind of problem that Nathaniel ran into in Armenia. So,
he too was martyred in the year 70 AD And he was killed, first of all, by having his skin
flayed with whips — that is being whipped so severely that most of his skin came off of
his body and when they were finished with the flying, they led him out and crucified him.
Well Matthew, we’ve already examined because we met him earlier in the Gospel of Luke. We
know that he was Levi, the tax collector whom Jesus called from his tax collecting business,
and how Matthew then threw this wonderful party for Jesus and the rest of his tax
collector friends that created such hostility from the Pharisees that they began to seek ways
to do away with Jesus. And of course, the greatest claim to fame of St. Matthew
is that he wrote the Gospel bearing his name. And of all the four Gospels, the one with the most
references to the Old Testament is his Gospel. It is a Gospel clearly written for a Jewish audience.
Well, he too became a missionary and, according to ancient tradition, took the gospel to Ethiopia
and was one of the first to visit and established a church there
in Africa. But in 60 AD, he also got into problems with the local
pagan priests and as a result, he was beheaded as a martyr to the faith.
And that leaves us this morning with Thomas. Thomas, who is known in infamy
as being the skeptic of the resurrection.
He’s called doubting Thomas. In fact, he’s also called Thomas, one of the twins.
But if we look at the other references to Thomas in the New Testament, we see that Thomas was not,
it’s unfair to consider him simply as a skeptic. When things got really bad during the last days
of Jesus’ life and Jesus told his disciples that He was going to be arrested and suffer and die,
most of the rest of the disciples wanted no part of that.
But it was Thomas who said, “We will go with you, and we will die with you.”
He stepped up and was willing to accompany Jesus to the point of death. Now of course that didn’t
happen, but of all of the disciples, perhaps at this point he was the most zealous for Jesus.
And when in his zeal, he saw his Savior executed, taken down from the cross
and buried, and the rest of his friends came and told him that Jesus had been raised from the dead,
Thomas would not believe it. And I think it was to protect his own faith, he was so hurt by the
loss of Jesus, so devastated by his execution that he wouldn’t allow himself to believe anymore.
His faith had hit the wall, and there was no more room for hope
in this man. And so, he gave the challenge to the rest of those who were giddy in their
excitement about the resurrection. He said, “You guys can believe that stuff,
but unless I put my finger in the wounds in his hands
and my hand in the side where the spear had pierced him, I will not believe.”
And you know the story, how when the disciples were gathered in the upper room
and Jesus appeared in their midst and Jesus looked at Thomas and He said, “Here Thomas, come here.
Put your finger in My hand. Put your hand in My side.”
That was the offer that Jesus made to Thomas, and the Scriptures don’t tell us if he took Jesus up
on the offer and actually touched the risen Christ. I doubt very much if he did, though he
said that it would take that to convince him. The presence of Jesus now with his outspread hands was
more than enough to convince him. You talk about confessions of faith, now Thomas is on his knees,
and he gives perhaps the highest, not perhaps, the highest profession of faith
of any of the disciples of Jesus when he looked at him and he said, “My Lord and my God.”
Now notice, there are other occasions where human beings bow down before angels or even have people
bow down before them, as Paul had experienced on his missionary journeys, and in every case
where one who was not God was treated as God, they were rebuked. The angels would not receive worship
from human beings. Paul refused and Silas refused to accept worship from people in their adulation.
But when Thomas said, “My Lord
and my God,” Jesus didn’t say to him, “Thomas, don’t get carried away.
I’m not God, I’m God’s representative. I’m the firstborn of all creation,
but I’m not the eternal, self-existent, second Person of the Trinity.”
No, no. Jesus received worship from Thomas. Thomas, who then later became a missionary to
India, and in the year 70 AD suffered martyrdom being killed with a spear.
But his confession rings down through the ages even to this day, “My Lord and my God.”