Apostles – Luke 6:12-19

Crestcomleadership.com speaks to the need in businesses to have a succession plan:  “Follow these six steps to develop a succession planning strategy. Step 1: Identify key roles. Step 2: Plan the successors. Step 3: Share the strategy. Step 4: Cross Train and promote lateral moves. Step 5: Provide feedback. Step 6: Convert the succession plan into a recruiting strategy.”  Jesus had a succession plan.

In these days he went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God. And when day came, he called his disciples and chose from them twelve, whom he named apostles: Simon, whom he named Peter, and Andrew his brother, and James and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon who was called the Zealot, and Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

And he came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, who came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. And those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all the crowd sought to touch him, for power came out from him and healed them all.  (Luke 6:12-19 ESV)

With the wrath of the spiritual leaders of Israel spurring them on to dispose of Jesus, it is evident that Jesus is going to need a succession plan.  Who will carry on his work when he is gone?  He spends all night in prayer seeking God’s choices from among his disciples for apostleship, and chooses 12, one of whom will betray him.  It was God’s will, discerned through prayer, to choose one to be his apostle who would betray Jesus. 

The apostle was responsible for accurately continuing the message and ministry of the Lord Jesus.  He became an authoritative representative sent by the Lord to vouchsafe the gospel of the kingdom.  We have this authoritative representation of Jesus’ message and ministry in the New Testament writings of the apostles.

After he selects his chosen representatives Jesus then comes down from the mountain and teaches a vast crowd from Judea and the regions of Tyre and Sidon, far in the north above Israel, which may indicate he was near that area.  As usual, the power of the Holy Spirit was flowing out of him, even at times when people merely touched him.  Everyone who wanted healing was healed.

For the apostles a new intensity of training begins.