Matthew 10:5

Matthew 10:5

The Obscure Apostles.

Half of these twelve are never heard of again as doing any work for Christ. Peter and James and John we know; the other James and Judas have possibly left us short letters; Matthew gives us a Gospel; and of all the rest no trace is left.

I. The first thought which this peculiar and unexpected silence suggests is of the true worker in the Church's progress. Men are nothing except as instruments and organs of God. He is all, and His whole fulness is in Jesus Christ. Christ is the sole Worker in the progress of His Church. That is the teaching of all the New Testament.

II. This same silence of Scripture, as to so many of the Apostles, may be taken as suggesting what the real work of these delegated workers was. Peter's words, on proposing the election of a new apostle, lay down the duty as simply to bear witness of the resurrection. Not supernatural channels of mysterious grace, not lords over God's heritage, not even leaders of the Church, but bearers of a testimony to the great historical fact on the acceptance of which all belief in an historical Christ depended then, and depends now. Christ is the true Worker, and all our work is but to proclaim Him, and what He has done and is doing for ourselves and for all men.

III. We may gather, too, the great lesson of how often faithful work is unrewarded and forgotten. The world has a short memory, and as the years go on the list that it has to remember grows so crowded that it is harder and harder to find room to write a new name on it, or to read the old. All that matters very little. The notoriety of our work is of no consequence. The earnestness and accuracy with which we strike our blow are all-important, but it matters nothing how far it echoes.

IV. Finally, we may add that forgotten work is remembered, and unrecorded names are recorded above. In that last vision of the great city which the seer beheld descending from God, we read that in its "foundations were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb." All were graven there the inconspicuous names carved on no record of earth, as well as the familiar ones cut deep in the rock, to be seen of all men for ever.

A. Maclaren, The Secret of Power,p. 265.

References: Matthew 10:5. Preacher's Monthly,vol. iv., p. 141.Matthew 10:5. Parker, Inner Life of Christ,vol. ii., p. 135.Matthew 10:5. A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve,p. 99. Matthew 10:6. A. Mursell, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xx., p. 356; H. W. Beecher, Sermons,2nd series, p. 179; W. Wilkinson, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. iii., p. 133.