Sermon Illustrations on the disciples

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Background

The Courage of the Disciples

These disciples turned the world upside down because they saw a dead man come back to life by the power of God. And whatever that “knowing” and “seeing” did in them, it did it at a deep level because they spent their lives talking about Him and doing what He did. Further, they weren’t just fair-weather friends. They stuck it out. Even when it got tough.

Peter was crucified upside down.
Andrew—the brother of Peter—was scourged, and then tied rather than nailed to a cross, so that he would suffer longer. Andrew lived for two days, during which he preached to passersby.
James (son of Zebedee, aka James the Greater) was arrested and led to a place of execution, whereby his unnamed accuser was moved by his courage. He not only repented and converted on the spot but asked to be executed alongside James. The Roman executioners obliged, and both men were beheaded simultaneously. John was boiled alive. When that didn’t work, they exiled him to Patmos where some say he died. Philip was scourged in Heliopolis (Egypt), thrown into prison, and crucified.
Bartholomew, by two accounts, was either beaten and then crucified or skinned alive and beheaded.
Thomas was run through with a spear.
Matthew was stabbed in the back in Ethiopia.
James (son of Alphaeus, aka James the Less) was head of the church in Jerusalem and one of the longest-living apostles, perhaps exceeded only by John. At the age of ninety-four, he was beaten and stoned by persecutors, who then killed him by hitting him in the head with a club.
Thaddaeus, aka Judas or Jude, was crucified at Edessa (the name of cities in both Turkey and Greece) in AD 72.
Simon the Canaanite was crucified in England.

What would do this in these men? …They believed something so deeply that they did not turn tail and run when the executioner appeared with blood dripping off his axe. Would you? Would I?

Charles Martin, They Turned the World Upside Down: A Storyteller’s Journey with Those Who Dared to Follow Jesus, Thomas Nelson, 2021.

The Disciples’ Time with Jesus

The act of “being with” someone requires patience and sacrifice. It means putting the other person’s wants and needs above our own and being willing to invest as much time as it takes to make the person feel valued and loved.

As best we can discern, the Bible indicates that the disciples were with Jesus for about three years. Let’s assume they were with him ten hours a day, and for the sake of argument, let’s say they had a couple of days off each month. That would give them about 340 discipleship days each year. Now let’s do the math:

10 hours/day × 340 days/year × 3 years = 10,200 hours of discipleship with Jesus

I’d Like You More If You Were More Like Me: Getting Real About Getting Close (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale, 2017), Kindle Electronic Version.

John Mark: The Comeback Kid

We all love a good comeback story. In such tales, the young upstart rises like a meteor, fails big, then fights back against the odds to win the victory. Tech whiz Steve Jobs was like that. After producing the wildly popular Apple Macintosh, he tried to stage a coup against his CEO and was fired. But when he found his way back to Apple, he presided over the rise of the ubiquitous iPod, iPhone, and iPad—products that revolutionized the world.

Or take Henry Ford. Despite a promising start working for Thomas Edison, when Ford struck out on his own, his new car companies fizzled. Only when the Model T came out did sales skyrocket and make Ford an automotive mogul. Today his name is plastered on millions of cars around the world.

In biblical times, John Mark was also something of a comeback kid like this. Everything looked positive for him at first. He was a Jew from Jerusalem, the son of a woman named Mary whose house had become the apostles’ base of operations in the city (Acts 12:12). Mary seems to have been one of Peter’s close associates because he rushed to her home as soon as he was released from prison. The household was large and wealthy enough to have a servant girl as a gatekeeper. In addition to this promising pedigree on his mother’s side, Mark was also the cousin of Barnabas, one of Paul’s primary coworkers. All of this would suggest that Mark had a bright future in Christian ministry.

Recognizing the youth’s potential, Paul and Barnabas brought Mark with them to Antioch. From there they initiated a mission to the island of Cyprus by the Spirit’s prompting, taking Mark along as their helper (Acts 12:25; 13:5). But when the group pressed ahead to the mainland of Pamphylia and arrived at the city of Perga, Mark’s zeal for evangelistic work hit a wall. Rather than face danger with his fellow travelers, he sailed back to his mother’s home in Jerusalem (Acts 13:13). Keep in mind that later on this trip, Paul was stoned and left for dead outside the city walls of Lystra (Acts 14:19). No wonder he resented the way Mark had chickened out! Paul wanted nothing more to do with such an unreliable partner. Yet Barnabas hoped to give his cousin a second chance. The book of Acts describes their dispute as follows:

Now Barnabas wanted to take with them John called Mark. But Paul thought best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work. And there arose a sharp disagreement, so that they separated from each other. Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas and departed, having been commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord. (15:37–40)

Don’t miss the seriousness of what has happened here. Mark’s lack of faith not only resulted in personal failure—it created a split between two major church leaders!

…We don’t know how Barnabas’s mission fared with Mark along, but what we do know is that Mark eventually found his way back into Paul’s good graces. The events surrounding their falling-out took place around AD 46. Fast-forwarding by a decade and a half, we find the picture has changed for the better. Mark is no longer an unreliable partner in Paul’s eyes.

It is now the early 60s, and Paul is under house arrest in Rome (Acts 28:16). He writes a letter to the Colossians in which he declares that Mark has been a true comfort to him (Col. 4:10–11). Around this same time Paul writes to Philemon and sends greetings from Mark, whom he describes as his “fellow worker” (Philem. 24). Then a few years after that, Paul writes to Timothy during a much more arduous imprisonment in Rome. Now he is desperate for Mark’s presence. “Get Mark and bring him with you,” he urges Timothy, “for he is very useful to me for ministry” (2 Tim. 4:11). This is truly remarkable. The man whom Paul had refused to take on a missionary journey is now so useful for Christian service that the greatest apostle can’t do without him!

So there it is: the wishy-washy Mark has pulled off a dramatic comeback. Though he failed at first, he seized the second chance God gave him and found a way to serve the church effectively. Even if he had accomplished nothing else, Paul’s ringing endorsement would be enough to cement Mark’s place in the annals of church history. Yet as we are about to see, the Lord had even greater things in store for this young man.

Bryan M. Litfin, After Acts: Exploring the Lives and Legends of the Apostles, Moody, 2015.

Stories

God the Father had Two Sons?

Some years ago I received a letter from a young man I knew slightly. ‘I have just made a great discovery,’ he wrote. ‘Almighty God had two sons. Jesus Christ was the first; I am the second.’ I glanced at the address at the top of his letter. He was writing from a well-known psychiatric hospital.

There have of course been many pretenders to greatness and to divinity. Psychiatric hospitals are full of deluded people who claim to be Julius Caesar, the prime minister, the president of the United States or Jesus Christ. But no-one believes them. No-one is deceived except themselves. They have no disciples, except perhaps their fellow patients. They fail to convince other people for the simple reason that they don’t actually seem to be what they claim to be. Their claims are not supported by their character.

Analogies

The First Diciples: Real Heroes

If ever mortal men found a real hero on this earth, those men were the disciples. They, indeed, were hero-worshippers. Then think of the horrid shock and shame which overwhelmed them at the Cross. It was no splendid martyrdom for a great cause, no glorious conquest won at the cost of life; no epic to be sung and celebrated.

No, the Cross was simply an utter overthrow, a speechless failure. It was all sordid, cruel, criminal, a gross injustice, an intolerable defeat of good by evil, of God by devils. . . . He their hero, their chosen leader, he was numbered with the transgressors.

He was cast out with a curse upon him. Think how loyalty would burn to right this wrong, to clear his memory, to save his reputation, to prove that gross outrage had been done him, to magnify the life so that the death might be forgotten. . . .

But nothing of the kind seems to have occurred to the Evangelists. They literally glory in the Cross. . . . They are clear, with an absolute conviction, that the best and most wonderful thing he ever did was . . . to die a felon’s death, between two robbers. It was their hero’s greatest heroism that he was executed as a common criminal.

Philip J. Rhinelander, The Faith of the Cross. Paddock Lectures, General Theological Seminary, 1914. New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1916.

God the Father had Two Sons?

Some years ago I received a letter from a young man I knew slightly. ‘I have just made a great discovery,’ he wrote. ‘Almighty God had two sons. Jesus Christ was the first; I am the second.’ I glanced at the address at the top of his letter. He was writing from a well-known psychiatric hospital.

There have of course been many pretenders to greatness and to divinity. Psychiatric hospitals are full of deluded people who claim to be Julius Caesar, the prime minister, the president of the United States or Jesus Christ. But no-one believes them. No-one is deceived except themselves. They have no disciples, except perhaps their fellow patients. They fail to convince other people for the simple reason that they don’t actually seem to be what they claim to be. Their claims are not supported by their character.