Mark 3:7-19

Jesus is popular, not just picked first on the soccer team popular, but ridiculously celebrity superstar popular.  Jesus is in Galilee yet people are travelling from adjoining cities and regions to see him, to hear from him.  The crowd becomes so great that the only way Jesus can address the crowds is from a boat.  Otherwise, those with illness, in desperation to be healed from his touch alone might crush him in their excitement.

And from this mighty crowd, Jesus chooses twelve.  He calls them his disciples.  Now we don’t use the term disciple a lot these days but essentially it means student.  The pinnacle of the Jewish education system was to be selected as a disciple by a Rabbi, only the best of the best were ever chosen.  Jewish boys won the favour of their family if they were selected because of their excellent dedication to their religious instruction to become a disciple.

Jesus, was popular, crazy popular, and at this point Jesus could choose any one to be his disciple.  But Jesus did not choose the sort of man that the rest of the Rabbi’s chose.  He chose tax collectors and fishermen.  Some of the men he chose were not known by positive reputations, in fact they were known as cheats and swindlers. Two of these apostles were called the ‘sons of thunder’, telling us something of their temper, and one of those of which he chose would one day, in the not too distant future betray him to his death.

Yet Jesus did indeed choose them not just to follow him, but to do his work, to go out in his name to preach and to cast out demons.  Immense power from the Son of God was poured out on this unlikely bunch.  But isn’t that God’s way. Instead of choosing the ones everyone else would choose, God so often chooses the runt, or the most unlikely candidate.  To become the father of a might nation, God chooses Abram and Sarai, a couple incapable of having children already late in years.  To lead Israel out of Egyptian captivity God chooses Moses, a murderer who at his own admission was never good with words, and to succeed Saul, Israel’s first King, God chooses David, only a young boy at the time, no one of any significance.  And here with the disciples, God does it again. He does not choose the ones the world would expect, but yet he chooses very specifically the ones he had called according to his purpose.

Have no doubt about it, God has an incredible plan for your life – not incredible because of any worldly standards, you may never be known by the world as famous, but incredible because it is precisely the purpose for which you were created.  Ephesians 2:10 promises us that each of us has been created for good works which God planned before we were born to be our way of life.

Now: Read Mark 3:7-19

Then: Go Swedish (what’s this?)