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Why Not Us?

by on February 10, 2016

”Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.” – Matthew 28:16

Sometimes, some of the most beautiful and wonderful truths of Scripture are just waiting to be found. Often, these nuggets of goodness come from texts that you and I have read a hundred times before, but have somehow missed an element of truth that God is patiently waiting to reveal to us when the time is right. Today, that happened to me, as I was sitting in a class, listening to my professor speak about something I have never thought about before.

Why were there only eleven disciples in Matthew 28???

Now at first, this seems like a pretty simple question with an even more obvious answer. I wanted to raise my hand and say: “Well professor, there are only eleven because Judas Iscariot betrayed his Lord and then killed himself out of guilt”. I also wanted to add that such simple questions were not fitting for an academic environment and that we needed to move along to more pressing matters. But, as my professor continued pressing into this question, I realized that there must be something much more than meets the eye.

Why were there only eleven???

To answer that, he noted how eleven is a very unexpected number. This is especially true when considering that Jesus was giving His greatest command (Go and make disciples), not to a completed group of twelve men, but to an incomplete group of eleven.

Huh?

Let me explain. In the Old Testament, the number twelve represented something that was complete or full. For instance, there were twelve elders representing the complete and total leadership over the people of Israel. There were twelve tribes in Israel representing the entire Old Testament people of God. There were even 144,000 (12,000 X 12,000) people gathered around the throne of God in Revelation to demonstrate the entire body of believers that will gather at the end of the age. Apparently twelve was a big deal.

So, why eleven???

Why would Jesus give His greatest command to an incomplete group of people? Why would Jesus task His most important mission to a group of guys who no one would have expected? I mean, He had called twelve guys for a reason (His complete group of disciples), but now He was allowing them to be commissioned with one less than would have been expected!

WHY?

Because in that incomplete group of men, there is a beautiful picture of how God feels about us. You see, in our society, there is this myth going around that you cannot talk about Jesus unless you are an expert. You cannot serve in your local church if you are not a “professional” Christian. You cannot even share your faith with someone else, unless your life is all together and you are consistently living like Christ. Why? Because we all secretly believe the lie, that we need to be complete before we can be used by God.

But, if that were the case NO ONE would be used!

You see, this text shows us in the most beautiful way that Jesus is not going wait for us to clean up our mess. Instead, He is inviting us to make disciples wherever we are at today. It tells us that He is not waiting for us to learn all of the answers to all the questions. Instead, He is commanding us to go and tell others with what information we currently have. He is not waiting on us to become perfect in order that we can be used! He is ready, willing and utterly delighted to use you and me, in all of our imperfections, today!

Why eleven? Because we always need to be reminded that God does never uses complete and perfect people, He uses us! And, perhaps the only question we must wrestle with is not “why are there eleven”. Instead, we must answer:

“Why not us?”