verses 1 through 4. His brother Vern comes to give a public reading of the Word of God. Matthew chapter 10 verses 1 through 4. Thank God for His Word. Jesus summoned his 12 disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. Now the names of the 12 apostles are these, the first Simon, who was called Peter, and Andrew his brother, and James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the tax collector, James the son of Alphaeus and Thaddeus, Simon the zealot, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him. Father, it is breathtaking to read and studied the biographies of these apostles. It is amazing to see how very normal and common they were as human beings, how sinful they were, how ungodly they were. And then God, you chose them, and you washed them, and you saved them, and you changed them, and you taught them. And Lord, you used them mightily, and they changed the world. And we are the recipients of their ministry even this morning. And so God, I pray that I do justice to these men's lives by revealing as much as I know to do about who they were and what they struggled with and how you used them and even how they died in the hope that it will cause us to have the courage that if God can use these very common men, God can use us. If God can forgive them, God can forgive us. And Lord, I pray God that you will give me unction and anointing this morning that I will preach this rightly and fully. And I pray God that those that you have gathered here this morning, those that are watching by means of the internet, and those who will be watching this at some later time, that you will give them eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to believe. And we'll give you the praise and the glory for we ask these things in Jesus's most precious, wonderful name. Amen. You may be seated. To the glory of God, the Father, God, the Son, and God, the Holy Spirit, amen. That's very fitting that we take time to examine the biographies of these 12 men that Jesus chose to be his own personal Shalia, that are called apostles. Because even though these men were very ordinary and common men, they were used by God to truly change the world. For example, through God's sovereign predestination, by God's grace and to God's glory, you and I have been chosen in these days to make up part of the worldwide body of Jesus Christ, the church in the 21st century. But there wouldn't be a church for us to be a part of had it not been for these men. Because of who they were, what they did, what they taught, what they either wrote down personally or had written down by scribes, these men, along with the Old Testament prophets, became part of the very foundation of the Church of the Lord Christ. Ephesians 2, 19 through 22 says, so then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and are of God's household. having been built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole body being fitted together is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit. So the office of apostle, the age of the apostles, was a one-time, non-repeatable movement in history when a few chosen men were used by God to radically and eternally transform not only individual people's lives, but also the way in which every human being on Earth could have a relationship with the one true and living God. Now it is commonly taught that the word apostle means a sent one, but that's like saying that the word space means up, It may be true in some sense, but it is woefully lacking in both the meaning and purpose of why Jesus chose those men. And because of such shallow and incomplete definitions, there are many, far too many, within the modern church today who genuinely think that this office and ministry of the apostles is ongoing. So please allow me to give you a short rundown of what the ministry of the apostles was. And hopefully, as you begin to understand this, you will agree that the office and ministry of apostles has ceased. Jesus chose the apostles to accomplish several very important things, like bring the old covenant to a decisive end, like bring the new covenant into full existence, receive the final full and completed revelation of God to man directly, explain it, and then write it down. bring divine credibility to this new revelation through breathtaking signs and wonders and miracles and various gifts of the Holy Spirit, and then to correctly interpret the Old Testament. And no other church leader from the resurrection of Jesus to this very day has been called to do these things except the apostles. The apostles were the only ones chosen to accomplish these things. But what is often overlooked in this discussion is the seal of apostleship that these men brought forth that no one before or since accomplished. And that is the amazing level of suffering that these men went through. And of course, this issue, the issue of intense and ongoing suffering that none of the so-called apostles of our day want to touch with a 50-foot pole. Let me just give you a brief summary of how great these men suffered for the cause of Jesus Christ. From 2 Corinthians 11, 22 through 28, it says, are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I. Are they servants of Christ? I speak as if insane. I'm more so. In far more labors, in far more imprisonments, beaten times without number, often in danger of death. Five times I received from the Jew 39 lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day I have spent in the deep. I have been on frequent journeys in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren. I have been in labor and hardship through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches. Now, for the sake of explanation, let me just zero in on verse 24 that says five times, I received from the Jews 39 lashes. Physical beatings were common back in the first century. Most all people arrested were beaten, even those who were later found to be innocent. But why was Paul specific about how many times he received the lash from the Jews? To find out, we need to go back to the Law of Moses that taught this from Deuteronomy 25, one through three. If there is a dispute between men and they go to court and the judges decide their case and they justify the righteous and condemn the wicked, then it shall be if the wicked man deserves to be beaten, the judge shall then make him lie down and be beaten in the presence with a number of stripes according to his guilt. He may beat him 40 times, but no more. so that he does not beat him with many more stripes than these, and your brother is not degraded in your eyes." Wow. Now it seems like 40 lashes is pretty extreme to me, but back then a man being beaten with 40 lashes was considered both humane and dignified. And this had to do with the fact that all men are made in the image of God, and so they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, even criminals. So it was established by God that a man, even a guilty criminal, could never be beaten more than 40 times. To beat a man more than 40 times was a sin before God. So what happened if the man doing the beating lost count? If he beat the criminal more than 40 times, he was sinning. So this caused those doing the beating to develop a custom to never beat a man more than 39 times, just in case he lost count. The original biblical goal in beating the criminal in the first place was to humiliate him, to facilitate his repentance, not to kill him. And so beating a man 39 times became common over time with the Jews. When the Romans took over from the Greeks in dominating Israel, they picked up on this strange way to hand out justice. So the Romans began beating Jewish criminals 39 times, but they had an alternative reason for doing so. The Roman lash, the flagrum, had been developed and evolved over time to be an amazing tool of both torture and death. It was a long strand of leather with bits of bone, lead balls, as well as sharp rocks tied to the end that was designed to inflict the most damage as well as the most bleeding. Contrary to several legends, Roman law did not limit the number of lashes that could be meted out to the criminal. And as a result, many, if not most, who were beaten died. It is also commonly thought that Jesus received 39 stripes before his crucifixion. That is not true. The Roman authorities felt no compulsion to adhere to Jewish law about this. So the Roman soldiers beat Jesus until they got tired. And it is nothing short of a miracle that he lived through it, because it was God's will that he die by crucifixion rather than a beating. The reason Paul received 39 lashes is because the Jewish authorities were in charge of his beating, and he was accused of preaching blasphemies because of the gospel. But Paul was beaten by the Jews on five separate occasions. So he would have been arrested first, tried, found guilty, and then sentenced to be beaten. So the apostle would have been tied to a short post that forced him to bend over, and then the beatings would commence. There would actually be a member of the Sanhedrin court or one of the ranking high priests in attendance at his beating, similar to the way that Paul was in attendance at the stoning of Stephen. And that religious leader would read the charges against Paul and then give the okay signal, which was either a nod of the head or a thumbs down sign for the beating to begin. The sharp rocks as well as the bits of bone tied to the phlegm would have torn the skin on his back open very quickly, causing massive bleeding. But the lead balls would deliver deep-seated bruises down to actually bruising and even breaking the bones in Paul's body. As each lash was delivered, someone would count so as to not go past 40, because they wouldn't want to do anything to displease the Lord. Paul may have well passed out or been close to being unconscious once the count of 39 came, but that wasn't the end of his sufferings, not by a long shot. Because of the seriousness of the charges against him, even after he was beaten, the Jews would not have let Paul go free, at least not immediately. Instead, he would have been drugged to the jail, which back in the first century was in worse shape than what animals had to endure. Normally, the city sewage ran right through the jail, and criminals had little more than a single bucket to use both the bathroom in as well as receive their food. Disease was rampant, and as many criminals died from disease as from the punishments. Normally, the criminal would be forced to sit down on the dirt floor, usually in his own waist. His arms would be chained above him on the wall, while his feet would be chained to the ground. This caused him to be helpless to defend himself from the legion of rats, some as large as cats, that would come out at night and literally eat the face, fingers, and toes of the criminals. But in Paul's case, his back was in shreds from the beatings, his own blood and body serum running down his back against the filthy wall. And this would have been a delicacy for the rats at night. And as he lay in his own filth, the wounds would become infected and his fever would rise, probably causing him to become delirious. Until many days or weeks later, they would scab over if he could live that long. Broken bones were never set, and so they would heal wrongly or not at all. And the scars left from the beating would last him the rest of his life. But once Paul survived and regained his health from that beating, They took him out and beat him again, and again, and again, and again the fifth time. Five separate times this apostle endured this barbaric and inhuman treatment, all because he had the audacity to herald the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ. Now more than any of the other apostles, now I have no idea if they beat him five times, I mean, yeah, beat him five times in a row or if they beat him and later on he got free and then they caught him again and they got him in prison, beat him again and then they let him go. It could have been that. I don't have any way of knowing. I don't know anybody who does know. I tried to find out. I don't know. Now more than any of the other apostles, Paul used the Old Testament to prove that Christianity was the fulfillment of the old covenant and was the promised new covenant. So the fact that the Jewish authorities continued to arrest, try, condemn, and punish Paul proved that their treatment of this man had infinitely more to do with the fact that through his preaching and teaching, he exposed their lost condition and their religious hypocrisy more than that they were simply punishing a man who had supposedly committed blasphemy. But as we have gone through the biographies of the apostles, I have been faithful to show you one common thread with them all. Not only was God using them greatly, but God also allowed these men to suffer above and beyond the normal suffering that was common with all the first century believers. And they all suffered for the same reason. They heralded the gospel. Now contrast that level of unspeakable suffering with the cushioned lives of the pillow prophets of our day who call themselves apostles. From flying on their own private jets, to eating in the finest restaurants, to wearing the best clothing, to living in the most luxurious condominiums on earth, these modern-day Pied Pipers demonstrate the greatest contrast between themselves and the true apostles. as they set in chains after being beaten within an inch of their lives, with rats eating their eyes. No, not only are those men of our day not apostles of Jesus Christ, many of them, probably the vast majority of them, are not even Christians. I told you last week that Nathanael Bartholomew's name was actually Mataniel Bar-Tolmai, or Mataniel the son of Tolmai. which has been transliterated over the centuries to be Nathanael Bartholomew, or simply Bartholomew, or simply Nathanael. So let's meet Metanael Bartholomew by looking at John 1, verse 43. And this is the only place where he's identified in the entire New Testament. Verse 43 picks up the story of Jesus in the time in which he was calling his disciples. John the Baptist had pointed to Christ as being the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and the ministry of Jesus then officially began. And so Jesus called Simon and Andrew in the prior passage to be his disciples. And later on, those two men would become apostles. But at this point, Jesus just called them to be his disciples. Methodes is the Greek word. They're students. They're learners. There's a vast number of these people. There's a huge crowd of 10,000 or more people that follow Jesus everywhere he goes. Out of that larger crowd was a smaller crowd of disciples, or students, who some were saved, some were lost. And then out of that smaller group came an even smaller group of Jesus's own personal Shalia, or what is called as apostles. And so it's a group out of a group out of a group. But at this point, Jesus just called them to be disciples. And then on the very next day after he had done that, Jesus purposed to go into Galilee and he found Philip. And he said to Philip, follow me. Now Philip was identified as being from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter, and he probably knew them very well and probably attended the same synagogue with them and knew them to be followers of the one true living God and lovers of God with a messianic hope they all had very much in common. So all of these guys were genuine believers of the one true God, and they were all looking for the coming Messiah. Now I just want to say this. because they were looking for the Messiah showed what kind of work God had already done in their lives. So these were men who loved God and men who would be truly saved. But just let me say this to you. Almost everything they believed about the Messiah did not come to pass. Almost everything they expected the Messiah to do when he got here was not done by Jesus. because they were wrong about what they believed. Their eschatology was wrong. And they were completely bewildered half the time that Jesus was doing what he was doing. I don't know that I'd have been any better. I don't know you would have been any better. They despised the Romans. They looked at the Romans as being Gentile pagan dogs who were putting their boot on the neck of the Jews, and they despised them. They prayed that God would kill them, and they hated them. You read some of the old priestly prayers against the Roman soldiers. It's awful. No mercy at all. They never prayed for mercy for the Roman soldiers. And Jesus never said a single bad word about the Roman soldiers the whole time he was in ministry that I can find. Not one. And he routinely condemned what appeared to be the most religious, godly men on earth at the time, which was the Pharisees. And Jesus never said anything good about them. So it's understandable that people didn't know this was God in human flesh. Now the thing that would have won the day, you think, is every time Jesus turned around, boom, boom, bang, bang, bang, bang, he was doing stuff only God can do. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons, open blind eyes, forgive sin. And he did it openly and publicly in front of everybody. So you got that. And then they'd look over here and there's Joseph and Mary and his other brothers and sisters who didn't believe in him. And they're going, there's his mom and daddy right over there. What are you talking about? He's God. It had been a hard sell. Now truly he's of God, truly he's from God, that's obvious, Nicodemus was willing to say that, but God, that's just, that's a stretch. And I try to put myself in these guys shoes And the whole time they were with Jesus until the resurrection, they didn't have a clue what he was talking about. They didn't have a clue what he was doing. They didn't understand it. They were constantly just fumbling around. And again, I don't think I'd have done as good as they did. So I'm not condemning them. I'm just saying for them to become the mighty men of God that they became is a work of the spirit that's just astounding. because these were the most motley group of people, the most unqualified group of men that's ever been assembled. I mean, these men were as embarrassing to Jesus as Jesus riding down Main Street on the back of a baby donkey with his feet dragging the ground in the most ridiculous sight instead of triumphant with a white stallion in perfect order, like everybody thought was gonna happen. And here he comes walking with his donkey, and people are taking their clothes off and throwing them, and the Pharisees are over there going, bless their hearts? I mean, it's amazing when you stop and think about it. So truly, the Holy Spirit was at work where Jesus walked up to these guys and said, follow me, and immediately they followed him. It is amazing when you stop and think about it. You talk to people today. Well, let me think about it. Well, I'll pray about it. They didn't pray about whether they need to get saved or not. Maybe God didn't want you to get saved, so you need to pray and God will tell you, no, don't go through this. Don't repent. Don't get saved. Really? I had a guy tell me, well, I'm going to come to prayer meeting that the Lord tells me to. I said, he's already told you to come to prayer meeting. He said, well, he needs to speak to me personally. I said, he's not going to do that. I promise you he won't do that. And he didn't. So all of these guys were genuine believers of the true God. They were all looking for the coming of the Messiah. They followed Jesus, trusting him to be that Messiah for whom they had waited. Now, after all of this, Philip says in verse 45 that he found Nathanael or Bartholomew. So by this, we know that these two men were acquaintances. And we don't know what that acquaintance was all about. We don't even know whether it was a professional one or a family one or whether it was just social or maybe even spiritual. But whatever their association was, Philip found Bartholomew. the implication here is that Philip and Bartholomew knew each other because as soon as Philip met Jesus he immediately went and pursued Bartholomew because he wanted to tell him what he himself had discovered concerning the Messiah. And Philip's conversation with Nathanael Bartholomew gives us some indication as to what kind of a guy he was. Look at the last part of verse 45. Here's what Philip tells Nathanael Bartholomew. We have found him of whom Moses and the law and the prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. He's right over there. Come on. We found him. We've been looking for him for hundreds and hundreds of years, the Jewish people have. Now he's right over there. So this is the first bit of information that we have about the Apostle Bartholomew. Philip knows that what mattered to him the most is what the scripture said. And this indicates to us that both Bartholomew and Philip were students of the Old Testament. If it is true that Bartholomew is Bartholomai, son of Ptolema. There was a group called the Ptolemians in the first century who were like the Bereans who were students of the Old Testament. And so it's very possible that this guy was one of them or his daddy was one of them or he was raised in it or something. So he was familiar with the Old Testament. And so in that sense, they were very different from the religious establishment, which was dominated by the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. These two men were the real deal. And so Philip finds his close friend, Bartholomew, and he tells him, we have found the one about whom we have studied in the scriptures for so long. And what we have to understand, my friends, is that Bartholomew was able to recognize Jesus so clearly and so quickly and so easily because he had such a clear understanding of what the scripture said about him. He knew what the promises about the Messiah were. And so he knew what the fulfillment would look like. He knew him of whom Moses and the prophets had written. And when he showed up, not immediately upon the first introduction of Philip, but immediately upon the first introduction of Jesus, Bartholomew recognized Jesus as being the Messiah. And as I told you last week in verse 46, we get some insight into Bartholomew's frail week and sinful character, and even though Bartholomew was a great student of scripture, he was just flat out biased and bigoted against people who came from the wrong side of the tracks, because he responds to Philip's excited statement by saying, can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? And this is just a general statement that manifests a deep-seated prejudice inside this man. The statement is not rational, it's just pure emotional. And what demonstrates Bartholomew's hypocrisy is that he didn't live in such a hot town either. He was from the city of Cana, and unless you were looking for the house where Jesus turned water into wine, you'd never go there. And so from the religious leaders on down to the hoi polloi, the people sitting in the synagogue, it was their prideful and self-righteous prejudice that caused them to reject Jesus, even in his own town, as we learned back in Luke 4. You remember that in that chapter, Jesus had gone into the synagogue, his own synagogue, where he grew up in his own town of Nazareth. And he went there and he preached one and a half verses out of the prophecy of Isaiah and the extended family of Jesus. He read one and a half verses and then sat down and said, this day, this has been fulfilled in your ears. In other words, I'm the fulfillment of what Isaiah was just talking about. And everybody ran to Jesus and embraced him and bowed before him and became Christian. Wait a minute. No, they didn't. They were so filled with prejudice and hatred against the only perfect preacher who has ever lived that after he preached that one sermon they tried to take him off to a cliff at the edge of town and throw him off and kill him. That's after one and a half verses. So it was really the same blind and evil prejudice that skewed their ability to view the Messiah correctly. It was their deep-seated prejudice against Jesus as a Galilean, against him as an uneducated person outside the religious elite, their prejudice against his message that literally shut them off from the gospel. They refused to hear Jesus because they were prejudiced against him. And so rather than humble themselves to a man that they knew at least was from God, Their deep-seated biases caused them to be willing to burn in hell rather than believe. Wow. The great Puritan John Bunyan understood this prejudice, and when he wrote his famous allegory, The Holy War, which pictures God coming down to conquer a soul, he tells about Emmanuel, that's God, and the forces of Emmanuel coming to a town called Mansoul. And the forces of Emmanuel coming to the town of Mansoul are coming to bring the gospel to Mansoul. And they direct their assault against Mansoul at the Ear Gate, because faith comes by hearing. But Diabolos, who was the enemy of Emmanuel and his forces, wants to hold Mansoul captive to hell, decides to meet the attack by stationing at the Ear Gate, which is the gate to which Emmanuel's forces come. Now, this is just a, oh, by the way, when you read Bunyan, you understand how Bunyan understood Jesus's view of the church. He said, he said, upon this rock, I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. That is a offensive maneuver, not a defensive maneuver. That does not mean that the gates around the church are going to be strong and that when Satan attacks, the gates are going to hold and keep the devil out. That's not what Jesus said. That's not what he meant. He means that the church is going to attack the gates of Hades. and beat those gates down and go right into the devil's territory and steal the souls of men away from Satan, right in front of him, and bring them into God's kingdom. That's what that means. Now, you say, well, Brother Blair, you're just a moron. Okay, right. John Bunyan wasn't, and that's what he said, not me. So Bunyan wrote this, old Mr. Prejudice, an angry and ill-conditioned fellow. And then Bunyan wrote, and Diabolos put under his power 60 men called deaf men. And so the gospel was stopped by this prejudice. So we need to know that men's ears are often closed to the gospel by deep-seated prejudice, racial prejudice, social prejudice, religious prejudice, whatever. And this effectively caused the Jewish nation to remain deaf to the Messiah. Diabolos, or Satan, is stationed at the ear gate of Israel to keep them deaf. And that is why when Jesus came into his own synagogue and spoke the truth, they were deaf to it, and they tried to kill him by throwing him off a cliff. And it's still that way today, moving from deafness You could borrow the vivid imagery of Paul in 2 Corinthians 4, verse 4, where he said, in whom the God of this world has done what? Has blinded the minds of them which believe not. Why so? Lest the light of the glorious gospel, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. So there's the battle right there. Satan has blinded the minds of the lost so they won't see the light of the glory of the gospel of God. So our job is to go to those blind people who have been blinded by Satan and do what? Preach the gospel. Y'all didn't hear that, okay. We're supposed to do for them what they don't want. And we're to continue to do it until they get mad and kill us or until they're saved. But we never stop. There's no stopping of the preaching of the gospel ever. The day Jesus comes back, the gospel will be preached. There will never be another day till Jesus comes back that the gospel will not be preached, ever. So, we need to get busy. And we need to quit wringing our hands and talking about how terrible everything's getting and how dark everything's getting. Like we don't have the hope of the gospel in our hearts. We've got the greatest news in all the world that transcends any country, or any government, or any law, or any persecution, or any suffering that anybody on earth could ever give us. And so we are to be absolutely fearless in the face of ungodliness, and we are to herald the gospel to our lives end. regardless of what that may cost us. That's what Christianity's all about. Deaf and blind by their own human prejudice against the truth and against righteousness, they missed the message and they remained lost. So was Bartholomew influenced by all of this? Sure he was. He lived in a society that was prejudicial by temperament and nature because all lost and sinful people are blinded by Satan, every one of them. But Philip didn't just let this statement be the last word and he said to Bartholomew at the end of verse 46, come and see. I hear you. Yack, yack, yack, yack, yack, Bartholomew is talking off at the mouth. Quit talking and just come on and let's look. Either he is or he isn't. He's the Messiah or he's not. Come on. You don't have to argue with me about it. And that's the best way you deal with prejudice and ignorance because they are not objective. They're always subjective. Ignorance and pride and prejudice are not based on facts. They're based on feelings. They're not based in reality. They're based on a sense of superiority. And Philip knew that the solution to his friend's prejudice was simply come and see. Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? Well, I don't know. I don't know, Bart. Why don't you come and see for yourself? And so he went. an ignorant and prejudiced mind, but a heart that had been prepared in advance by the sovereign regeneration of the Holy Spirit to receive salvation. So Methanael, the son of Ptolemy, walked up to Jesus with Philip, sort of doubting and wondering, his mind on full alert, and yet his heart had already been touched by God, the Holy Spirit. And now please read verse 47 of John 1. Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him and said of him, behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit. He didn't even say hi. Now, I don't know if Jesus said this to him, he didn't say this to Peter, he didn't say this to Paul, he didn't say this, he called Paul, he said it's hard for you to kick against the pricks, isn't it, Bubba? I mean, you knock yourself out, you're trying to defeat the church, how's that working out for you? And here this guy walks up and Jesus goes to town with this thing, right? That's the most important thing we could ever hear. The most wonderful thing that any of us could ever hear is Jesus telling us that we have no deceit. What a statement. That would be one thing that at the end of your life, somebody says something like this at your funeral. But here Jesus is telling this sinful, prejudiced man, this man who was full of rancor and self-righteousness, that he had no deceit. So how could Jesus say that? Was he lying? Bartholomew was not pure. He was a wicked sinner. He had just made one of the most prejudiced statements found anywhere in the Bible, and yet Jesus said here he had no deceit. So what is this all about? This shows you the sovereign work of God in salvation. The statement by Jesus shows you clearly that salvation is not about the elimination of sin from our lives. That salvation is not about us keeping the law of God, or about being baptized, or about speaking in tongues, or about partaking of communion. Salvation is not about praying certain prayers, or going down front, or raising your hand. Because salvation is not based on anything that we do for ourselves. It is clear to those of us who know and understand the Bible that at this point, Bartholomew had already experienced the miracle of the new birth, and had already been given new spiritual life by sovereign work of God before he ever physically came to Jesus. So like all of us, Bartholomew was born again before he was forgiven and made righteous. And this is one of the most important theological truths that anyone could ever get from the Bible. It is a very simple statement, but it has very powerful ramifications. Here it is. And you might want to write it down because it's going to change your life. Regeneration, being born again, precedes, comes before, justification, being forgiven and made righteous. Regeneration, the sovereign miracle of the new birth, precedes. It comes before being forgiven and made righteous in justification. In other words, in order to be forgiven and made righteous, you must repent and you must believe. But because of the blindness of your heart and because the fall of Adam was so radical and so great, unless and until God the Holy Spirit comes inside of us first and gives us eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to believe, nobody will ever repent and nobody will ever believe. And they cannot, they will not believe because they cannot. And they cannot believe because they don't want to. So when you boil it all down, really and truly what's wrong with lost people is their want to. They need a new want to. They need a new nature, in other words, right? Now way back in 1971 when I was first saved, I was taught that being born again was the same thing as being forgiven. But the Bible teaches that these are two completely separate events. I was also taught that I must believe in order to be born again. But the Bible doesn't teach that either. The truth is unless I am first born again, I will have neither the desire nor the power to repent and trust in Jesus. So the truth is that I must first be born again in order to have the faith to believe, and I must be born again in order to have the desire to repent. So even though Bartholomew was not yet forgiven and made righteous, he had been chosen by God for the foundation of the world for salvation. And because of that, God had already birthed him the second time. And Bartholomew had been sovereignly and graciously given eyes to see. And he had been sovereignly and mercifully given ears to hear. And he had been sovereignly and miraculously transformed by the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit down to the base element of his own nature. And with that new nature, Bartholomew, like all of us, would respond to what God had already done, and he would repent and trust in Jesus Christ as Lord, and he would be forgiven and made righteous. So it is in that sense that he had no deceit. This does not mean that he was sinless or that he never said anything wrong. We just heard him exercise his ignorant prejudice just a minute ago. All of this statement by Jesus means is that Bartholomew was chosen by God for salvation. Now Jesus also said that Mataniel Bartolomei was an Israelite indeed. So what does that mean? Here Jesus uses the word alathos, which means genuine or truly. So Jesus was saying that Bartholomew was genuinely and truly an Israelite. And this is an area of theology that many find hard to accept. But what I'm about to say is just as true and right and biblical as John 3.16. So just what was Jesus talking about? Was Jesus referring to Bartholomew's physical descent from Father Abraham? No, not in the physical sense. He's not talking about Bartholomew's bloodline or his ethnicity or his genetics. What did Jesus mean by this statement? It means that Bartholomew was a true spiritual Israelite and not merely an Israelite in the flesh or in name only. You see, the reality is that many who say they are or who lay claim to be Israelites or Jews are not. Romans 9, 6b and 7a clearly says, they are not all Israel who are descendant from Israel, nor are they all children because they are Abraham's descendants. And then in verse eight, it also gives us the answer to this mystery when he said this, that is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants. In other words, human flesh and everything associated with human flesh like ethnicity, nationality, and bloodline means nothing to God as far as salvation is concerned, and it never has. All that matters is whether a person has been sovereignly chosen by God, and if he has, he will be saved, and that alone makes him a child of God. But if an individual, even a Jew, does not come to Jesus for salvation, then that person is not chosen by God, he is not a son of Abraham, nor is he a child of God, nor is he part of the people of God. And that is why the apostle wrote this in Romans 2, 28 and 29. For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the spirit, not by the letter, and his praise is not from men, but from God. And this is the way it has always been. And this explains why God had to personally kill so many Jews in the wilderness, and why so many Jews refused to believe in Jesus. They were not chosen. Because all who have been chosen will come. Please look at Romans 8, 29 and 30. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brethren. And these whom he predestined, he also called, and these whom he called, he also justified, and these whom he justified, he also glorified. So once again, Jesus was talking about the fact that God the Father had already chosen Bartholomew for salvation from before the foundation of the world. And because he was chosen, and because he had already been born again, Bartholomew was on his way to become a spiritual Jew, an inward Jew, a true Jew. But Bartholomew was not yet justified. He was not yet forgiven. And he had not yet become righteous before God by faith alone. Yet he was a chosen vessel. He was a man who was on his way to become a true Israelite. And a true Israelite is one who is an Israelite or a believer on the inside. So this was a born-again man. This was a man who had experienced the new birth and was ready for both forgiveness and righteousness. This was a man whose eyes and ears had been opened, whose heart had been softened, ready to meet Jesus, and yet at the same time he was sinful, he was as sinful and flawed as everybody is. Now please look again at the first part of John 1.48. Nathanael said to him, how do you know me? Mathanael the son of Ptolemy said, how do you know me? I don't know you, so how do you know me? In other words, Bartholomew was asking Jesus, I don't know you, so what is the basis of your knowledge about me? What a question to ask the omniscient God of the universe. Now, remember the context of this meeting. Bartholomew is doubting whether this man could be the true Messiah that Philip said that he was. Not that he questioned Philip, because Philip is his friend. And it's not that Bartholomew questions or doubts the scriptures. He doesn't. He believes the scriptures. It's just that this particular man from Nazareth that he doubts doesn't seem to fit the image of what the long-awaited Messiah ought to look like. This man was the son of a carpenter, a no-name, nondescript guy named Joseph who comes from a scraggly town that had no connection to prophecy and that didn't even exist in the Old Testament scriptures were being written. So how could this be connected to the Messiah? It's just hard for this man to buy into all this. So he approached Jesus and Jesus said to them, ah, an Israelite indeed in whom there is no deceit. And I think Bartholomew understood it this way. He said, how do you know me? with this kind of incredulous thought, are you just flattering me? How do you know me? Are you just trying to earn points with me? Are you just trying to add me to your followers by using this flattery on me? How can you possibly say that about me? You don't even know me. That's a pretty straightforward statement. So how in the world could you say that about me? Now read the last part of verse 48. Jesus answered and said to him, before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you. And by saying this, Jesus was saying, no, Mataniel, the son of Ptolemy, as a matter of fact, I'm not using human flattery on you at all. I'm not trying to butter you up or deceive you into following me at all, I'm God. And I am using my own unlimited divine omniscience and I saw you when you were underneath that fig tree. Now I think there may be a little more to this than what most people think. Now it could have been that he was committing adultery under a fig tree. It could have been that he was cursing God under the fig tree. It could have been that he was praying under the fig tree. It could have been that he was crying out to God in the deepest part of his heart that he wanted to love God and he wanted to, whatever it was, sin or righteousness, whatever it was, good or bad, Jesus saw him. Back then, the poor people, which were the most people in Israel, lived in a one-room house. And you did everything in the house, and the house could get full of smoke, and it could get stuffy, and was also very hot. And one of the ways you cooled off was to plant trees around the house, close to the house. And one of the favorite trees to plant back then was a fig tree, because it provided wonderful fruit. And over there, a fig tree would grow to a height of about 15 feet. So you could get under it because it would have a diameter of maybe 30 feet wide. And so this would make a wonderful shade tree and a way to leave the house and the heat of the house where they did all the cooking and everything. So getting under the shade of a fig tree would be a wonderful place to go. And they also had a little patio on the roofs of many houses back then. But in the heat of the day, the people would go up there. And so getting under the shade of a fig tree was a typical place to go. And under the trees, became a kind of a private room for poor people to go and sit and meditate and pray and talk to God. And I think Jesus was not just saying, I knew your geography or I knew your physical location. Jesus was saying, I know the state of your heart because I saw you under the fig tree and I know what you were doing there and I saw you and I heard you in your private room. That's where you would go and study the scriptures. That's where you would go and pray. That's where you would go and meditate. Bartholomew, when I was first saved, I roomed with two other Christians and our place was this wall that we had built, this brick wall we had built around the water pump. And we would spend hours sitting on that wall, talking with each other about what it might be like to marry a godly Christian woman and what it might be like to have godly children and to raise them as Christians, and what it might be like to have that kind of experience in life, to have both a wife and children, to bring to the house of God and to see them grow in the fear and the admonition of the Lord. And we talk about it. We plan. Many of the things that I did when I first got married and with both my wife and my children were because I met with with Stanley and Eddie on that brick wall. And that's how we would spend Friday nights. When I was alone, I spent Friday nights sitting on my front porch reading the Bible. And when those guys came, we read the Bible too, but we talked about, you know, golly, you reckon we could ever find a godly woman? You reckon we could ever get married? And just talking like that, it meant a lot to us. And that's kind of what I'm thinking that Bartholomew was doing under the fig tree. So Jesus was telling Bartholomew, I saw you in your secret place. I saw you in the private place. I saw you in that place of meditation and I heard your cry to me. So Jesus not only knew Bartholomew's location, he knew the man's spiritual condition. And because God had already prepared Bartholomew's mind and heart, that's all it took. Look at verse 49. Nathanael answered and said to him, Rabbi, you are the son of God. You are the king of Israel. Hallelujah. He's in. He's in. Nope, nope, nope. He did not see him raise the dead. He did not see him cast out devils. It was enough. Now keep in mind that back then the phrase son of God always is used to refer to Jesus sharing the same nature of God the father. So Nathanael was saying here, you're God. that Jesus is God, that Jesus is Lord. And according to Romans 10 and nine, that's one of the things it takes to be saved. You must confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, that he is full deity. So Bartholomew understood that Jesus knew everything about him. He not only knew his physical location, but he knew Bartholomew's spiritual condition. And so he said, that's enough for me because only God knows that. Therefore, you are the son of God. That is to say, you have the same nature as God. You are one with God. Now look at verses 50 and 51. Jesus answered and said to him, because I said to you that I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? You will see greater things than these. And he said to him, truly, truly, I say to you, you will see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man. So as Jesus was saying to him, from here on out, everything you see is just going to enrich and enlarge your faith. The other disciples, the things that they see, they're gonna struggle with it. They're not gonna understand it all. And even Philip, Lord, show us the Father. They're all going to be struggling, but not you. Everything you see is going to enrich in what you already know to be true. And of all the apostles, Bartholomew seems to me to be the one who gained the most from his time with Jesus. Because at the outset, he knew exactly who he was. And everything after that was an enrichment. The first church historian, a man named Eusebius of Caesarea, wrote an account called Ecclesiastical History or the History of the Church. In that book, Eusebius wrote that after Jesus ascended into heaven, Bartholomew went into India and left behind a copy of the Gospel of Matthew. There's supposedly a church in India that has that copy. Jerome of Striden wrote that Bartholomew did most of his work in India around Bombay region near the Konkan coast. The modern Christians of Azerbaijan consider Bartholomew to be the one that God used to bring the gospel to them. History also records that Bartholomew knotted with the apostle Jude Thaddeus and went into what is called today Armenia to begin a church there that has been having uninterrupted worship services since Bartholomew first preached there. The tradition is that after preaching the gospel to the local king, the king was converted. But the magistrates of the region feared both the Jews and the Romans, and so they arrested Bartholomew and condemned him to die by the slow and intentional flaying of his flesh, like they would clean a fish are skin and animal. You know, I'm thankful as I read a lot of material on the apostles, as I read about the people that God has used. I've been reading a lot of Christian biographies, and I'm constantly amazed at how God has always used weak and sinful people, how he can go into the gutter and into the horrible pits of the world and find the worst, the lowest, the most degraded person and save them and then make them the means of somebody else's salvation. The Savior made an apostle out of an evil publican. He has made godless godly women out of great virtue, out of a prostitute. All through history, God has used flawed and sinful people, and we've seen it in these men. But what about your own life? I'm sure in this congregation this morning, there is some man or some woman, some young person, who feels like their life is broken and disreputable, maybe even scandalous. They think their heart is dirty and their mind is full of corruption. Maybe you feel a little bit intimidated being here if the truth were known, but I want you to know you're just the kind of person the Lord can use mightily because God is glorified the most when he picks up the lowly, the base, the common, the humble, and he transforms them. As long as you can cry, Lord, have mercy on me. That's all he asks. like the publican who beat on his chest, and of that man Jesus said he went home justified. If you are available and willing, the Lord can change you and use you to change the world. That's what he's been doing, and he's still doing that. One of the stories I heard many years ago was about one of the greatest preachers in America after the turn of the 19th century. He was a man who was a drunken alcoholic who spent all of his family's money on just booze. He didn't feed his family. He eventually had a little baby girl who died, and she died because of malnutrition. He was drinking so much, he forgot to feed his daughter. This man went in a drunken stupor to the daughter's funeral, and after the service was over, he stole the clothes off of her dead body to exchange for another drink. But on his way to the bar, he stumbled into a mission, heard the gospel, was converted, stopped drinking, and was used to bring many others to Jesus Christ. And that's just one among millions of other stories of what God can do and will do for those who have been made humble by the grace of God. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this. We thank you for Bartholomew. We thank you for the call of God on his life, how you turned his face around and how you used him. And Lord, as we go through each of these men in this series, I pray, God, that you will stimulate our faith or that you can and you will use us for your glory if we'll just be willing to humble ourselves before you. Help us, oh God, I pray in Jesus' holy name. Amen.