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Are You An Apostle?
A sermon preached by Dr. James Flamming
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Richmond, VA
Sunday, March 13, 2005
If I were to ask you to name the twelve apostles, how many
of them could you come up with? The easy ones are Peter, James, and John,
right? If you’ve been to church at all you can know those. Andrew comes fairly
easy, as does Phillip. Have you ever heard of Andronicus and Junias? Look at
Romans the 16th chapter, the 7th verse. It is a passage
where Paul, as was his practice, is sharing greetings with the people at Rome.
Some of them he knew personally; even though he had never been to Rome yet…he
would get there, but not yet when he was writing this letter and 29 names, some
of whom he had just heard about, but he wanted to send them greetings anyway
because they were well-known as followers of Christ in Rome.
In the seventh verse, a fascinating little episode, a
glimpse, a snapshot, a sketch of how the early church worked…Paul writes, “Greet
Andronicus and Junias, my relatives who have been in prison with me. They are
outstanding among the Apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.”
The word ‘Apostle,’ is one of those flow-through words.
Flow-through is a principle of God. God created all things and He gave us
flowed through to us creativity. God is love. He expresses that love as a
flow-through into Jesus Christ our Lord, our Savior and our Savior says to us,
love one another as I have loved you; the flow-through principle, you see. An
Apostle is a flow-through principle. Now, there were the original twelve; a
chosen-ness about that. You will find those listings four places in the New
Testament which we will not take time to turn to, but if you want to turn to
them later you have Mark, well it’s first Matthew, Matthew 10 has the listing,
Mark 3, Luke 6, and Acts 1. And if you read through, you will discover that
they were apparently broken down into groups of four. Twelve Apostles, three
groups, each with four; Jesus was a small group person. And each one of those
four, the leader of the group is mentioned first. The members of that group,
the names may be a little jumbled from one gospel to the next, but in every
place, all four, the leader is the same. Verse one was Peter; in his group were
James, John, and Andrew. The second one was Phillip and in Phillip’s group were
Nathaniel, Thomas, and Matthew. The lesser-known James son of Alphaeus was the
leader of the fourth group. There were twelve that Christ chose.
A disciple is a learner. Look at it like this – we’re not
far from baseball season. I mean they’re down south right now getting ready,
right? Okay and the colleges of course and the high schools are already
playing…in baseball you have a first base, second base, third base…first base is
always a commitment to Christ, the commitment to follow Christ; to receive Him
as Savior and Lord – that gets you starts. Second base is to become a disciple
– a disciple is a learner; one who is willing to be taught. If you’re on second
base, you’re not really complete yet. Let me tell you why. You can stay a
disciple your whole life – just a learner; taking it all in like a sponge, but
never squeezing it out. Third base is Apostle. Am I saying to you that you
could be an Apostle? Absolutely! You see, an Apostle is one who is sent
forth. In the Ancient Greek World, an Apostle, and that’s the word they used, a
long time before ever Christ came; an Apostle was like, we would say an
ambassador – one to represent a King, to arrange a truce, to have a conversation
with another King. An Apostle of Jesus Christ is one who represents Jesus
Christ in a specific setting and you can do that. Jesus said, “You are the
light of the world, you are the salt of the earth…”
In the New Testament, you see, there are two meanings for
Apostle, or let’s put it a better way, two groupings. The first was the
original twelve, but very soon after that, the flow-through principle was at
work and what flowed through the twelve, flowed out to the other disciples and
said, hey don’t just sit there and listen! Get up and go!
Suppose you went to school all of your life and never got a
job? You would be somebody who enrolled and learned, but never did anything
with it. Wouldn’t that be weird? Sure. In Christianity it’s possible to
become a Christian, move on to second base, and spend the rest of your life
right there. You built a temple there – this is my place, I’m going to learn
all I can learn. If you go to third base, all of the sudden, it has dawned on
you and the Lord has spoken to you and you are sent forth into your little world
as light, salt, love…you’re a carrier of hope, of good news!
We send out missionaries because we believe in this
principle – the flow-through principle and the missionaries take those that
they’re working with and it flows through them to them and then to the ones they
reach – the flow-through principle. Have you ever caught it?
Junias, bless him or her (could be a male name, could be a
female name) They have put everything on a database from the ancient…who in the
world does that sort of thing? They have taken all of the manuscripts, some of
them preserved, a whole lot of them found in the last hundred years…they’ve
taken all of those names, proper names and put them on a database. It must be a
graduate student who needed an A who put all those names on the database. I
know one thing; whoever did it hadn’t had cataract surgery (Laughter), and they
put all of these names on a database so that for example, if you wanted to find
how many times the word ‘Peter,’ is used, type in ‘Peter,’ hit the proper
command and there it is on the screen. All of the different manuscripts that
have the word, the proper name ‘Peter,’ there. Well, if you were to type
‘Junias,’ 250 instances it is used. Every one of them it’s a woman’s name,
which probably means that Andronicus and Junias were either brother or sister
or, my judgment is, husband and wife just like Priscilla and Aquilla in verse 3
of Romans 16.
Now Paul says three things about them just fascinate me…the first one is they
were Christians before he was. We think of Paul was being right at the
start…not so! I wonder how they became Christians before he became a
Christian? You remember Paul’s experience on the Damascus road, perhaps Acts 9,
if you want to read it, also in Acts 22 and 26, three times it’s told…but what
about Andronicus and Junias. Ah! Here’s the way I picture it! I’d be fun some
day to check it with them. Won’t that be neat? To sit down with people from
all over everywhere who you’ve never heard of and you’re in heaven with them
listening to their stories? In my mind’s eye, Andronicus and Junias were there
for Pentecost; that outreaching of the Spirit, that birthing of the church that
is recorded in Acts 2.
You see, at the Feast of Pentecost or the Celebration of
Pentecost people came from all over the world. I mean it was a happy time, a
celebrative time. It was Whoop-pee time! And so, if they were given the chance
of coming, for example, to Passover, which is a sad time, or a happy time like
Pentecost, a lot of them came for the happy time. All over the world there for
Pentecost…obviously they were religious or they wouldn’t have made the trek!
Obviously they were Biblical or they wouldn’t have made the trip! Obviously
they are committed to God or they wouldn’t ever have made that journey.
But on that day, everything breaks loose. Simon Peter who
they’ve heard about but never seen and even scratch their heads and wonder about
that guy is up there preaching. He’s preaching in his language and yet,
everybody understands. God, in that instance, does something miraculous. He
takes the language spoken and spreads it abroad until everybody can understand
it and they understand it. And they understand that God is doing something
right then, at that time like Joel had prophesied in the Old Testament and they
knew that prophecy and they grabbed it and they grasped it and the Holy Spirit
came over like a wind and just swept through the place and entered their hearts
and just glowed like a fire. They were alive! They had been religious, but now
all of the sudden life, love, grace…and they left that place changed. They
didn’t know what to do with it. They had no instruction particularly, so they
sought it out, found other believers like they were, formed a little church
right where they were.
They have a relative…his name is Saul of Tarsus. He hates
Christians like a poison, but they come in contact. In my mind’s eye,
Andronicus and Junias, they began to influence who we know as the Apostle Paul.
Softens his up. He looks at these two he’s known through most of his life and
he says to himself, what has changed them? What has made them come alive? Why
is it that suddenly it’s as if they’ve found the answer? And then comes that
light on the Damascus Road and the Apostle Paul hears, the Apostle word. I’m
appearing to you, Saul of Tarsus for a purpose. You are going to be my Apostle,
the one sent forth, to the Gentiles. Me? And the Apostle Paul is born –
spiritually and I would just guess that when Andronicus and Junias heard the
news they wept, they cried, they celebrated, they whoop-peed and when Paul and
Andronicus and Junias first got together after his conversion, oh! I’d love to
have been a fly on a wall! That must have been a glorious and wonderful time.
No wonder writing to the Roman people he goes to all the details – my relatives,
they knew Christ before I did. They’ve even been in prison with me! They are
outstanding among the Apostles!
I want to ask you a question – have you ever considered
leaving second base? From being just a learner and considering God is perhaps
sending you into your little world as an Apostle? One sent forth…
Louis Evans, pastor at large at a Presbyterian Church in
another decade once visiting in Africa…his church, First Presbyterian Church in
Hollywood had made possible a little mission hospital in Africa and he was
visiting it and there the dedicated missionary surgeon was going to be doing
some very delicate surgery the next day and he said to Louis Evans, would you
like to watch? I mean that’s a big thing if you’ve never seen it before and
besides that, do you let anybody in to search? And the surgeon said, remember
this is a primitive setting and we even let primitive folks like you in. They
gowned him up, they put a mask around him, they scrubbed him up and everything
else and for the next several hours he watched that surgeon in a delicate,
delicate operation give that individual a chance for new life. When it was all
over and they had wheeled the surgical patient to the little room made possible
by gifts from the States, Evans said to the surgeon, how much would you have
gotten financially for that surgery if you’d been in the States? And he said,
oh, several thousands of dollars. How much will you get here? Oh, a penny or
two. But then the surgeon looked at him full-faced and said, but I believe
today I made God smile and that’s what motivates my life.
The smile of God when somebody leaves simply being a
learner and catches their purpose doesn’t have to be like anybody else, but it’s
you, in your world. Would you be willing to be an Apostle? Pray with me, will
you? Lord Jesus, thank you for including us in your great work. We sometimes
stumble and often fall and as you know better than we do, we are flawed, but the
flow-through principle of your love and your grace has worked through Jesus
Christ our Lord and through the Apostles that were originally chosen and here we
are 2,000 years later with the same call, the same possibility upon our lives.
Thank you Lord Jesus. Thank you for including us.
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