The temptation of Christ
Wow…there are so many great things to ponder here! I’m going to concentrate first on trying to figure out how the disciples began to follow Jesus…I’ve never been able to get this quite right in my thoughts.
John and Andrew were disciples of John the Baptist. They saw Jesus when he visited John, and left John the Baptist to follow Jesus. Andrew brought his brother Peter to see Jesus that same day, but everyone went their separate ways at the end of the day. The following day, both Andrew and Peter were fishing, just like James and John were. In fact, the two sets of brothers were partners, fishing nearby each other. Jesus showed up in the late morning, after they were finished fishing and had cleaned their nets. Philip may have accepted an invitation from Jesus earlier that morning…and since Philip was the one who invited Nathaniel, they both could have been sitting there, listening to Him speak. Of the 12, they would have been the first disciples. Philip and Andrew were both from Bethsaida, the same small town that Peter and Andrew were from. Bethsaida is a fishing village, about a mile from Galilee. It’s also very near to where the feeding of the 5,000 took place. Anyway… After speaking to the crowd, Jesus took Peter and Andrew fishing and they brought in a huge haul. James and John were nearby. They either saw the haul, or heard everyone cheering about it. Jesus invited them to join Him (in ministry) as well. So now there were 6 of them.
It has been one complete day, and 6 of the 12 are now disciples. But nowhere does it say that they were the only ones following Jesus, there were probably many more. In fact, no one walking with Jesus this early in him ministry knows anything about how there will eventually be “12 disciples”
So far, each person has brought one other person with them, except for Matthew. Each one brought one. (I think there may be a point to that)
They traveled together for a day or maybe two, and as they left a small village one day Jesus saw Matthew the tax collector sitting there and invited him along. That night, they all ate together at Matthew’s house. We don’t know the name of the village, but that same day 4 friends tore a hole in the roof of a house in that village and lowered their friend in front of Jesus. I’ll bet that came up in discussion at dinner.
I notice that Jesus was rejected by the two groups that should have embraced Him: his hometown and the church leaders. I’m not drawing any conclusions from that, it’s just interesting.
The person who was least likely to be a disciple would be Matthew (Levi). He was close to being an outcast among his people. It’s interesting that Jesus chose him. Clearly, Jesus wasn’t looking at what we look at when we “choose a team”. Matthew’s heart was more receptive than those of the religious leaders. But I’ll bet you never would have known it from looking at them.
Faithfully,
PR
Further notes: “come and see”. Jesus told the two disciples of John the Baptist to “Come and see”. “come and be with us” was the way that the Celtics did evangelism. John the Baptist pointed out Christ, so he must have been on the lookout for Him. John simply pointed to Jesus, and that’s exactly what we should do. Many of the disciples “came and saw” and then after impacted by what they saw while they were “hanging out” they went and invited a relative. It must have had an impact, because when Nathaniel is invited, the one who invites him says “come and see”
Maybe this is a picture of the church in embryonic form.