Do As I Do



Matthew 9:35-10:4
35And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction.
36When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
37Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few;
38therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
4:1And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction.
2The names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother;
3Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus;
4Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

Jesus has gathered around Him twelve men who would become the voice of the new Church. He will spend three years training them and equipping them to spread the Gospel. But this isn’t quite like the way we do things today. We train our children in the things that we know so that they can go out, learn even more and come up with yet a better way to do things. This is not the case with the 12 Disciples. These men are being trained by Jesus to things exactly the way that Jesus did them. They are an extension of HIM, not an opportunity to improve upon the original.

We just spent the last several days looking at the authority that Jesus had over everything. He displays His power over nature, sickness, the demonic, and death. In a surprising move He shows that He even had the power to forgive sins which clearly places upon Him the position of God. Now He hands some of His authority over to His disciples. In His name they will be able to cast out demons and heal the sick. It is interesting that as they are beginners, they are only given the power to do two of the things that Jesus had done as an example to them. The full authority of God still resides only with Jesus.

As the contemporary disciples of Jesus, are we empowered the same way? Theologians are divided about that topic and I won’t pretend to have knowledge about that. Miraculous events happen every day and we are to always give God alone the glory for those things. He can do whatever He wants whenever He wants. The instruments He uses for those purposes are up to Him and we will but praise Him.

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