Calvary Chapel St. Cloud

After calling the 12 disciples who were called to be Apostles, Jesus sent them on their first mission. And in the remainder of Matthew 10, we read of the way that Jesus prepared them for this special task. He gives them a series of principles to put into practice. It’s a somewhat rapid-fire list of important truths to consider as they encounter much of ministry for the very first time.

As we continue our study of the Apostles, we turn our attention to a group of lesser-known Apostles. Though they aren’t mentioned much in Scripture, Jesus chose these three young men from His disciples to be His apostles: James the son of Alphaeus; Judas (not Iscariot), who was also called Lebbaeus and Thaddaeus; and Simon the Cananite, who was also called Simon the zealot.

For the past several Sundays, we’ve been looking at portraits of the people Jesus chose to be His followers. They were the unlikely ones—real people with failures and flaws who encountered Jesus and were impacted by His ministry. They were compelled to follow Him. Then, the cross happened. Their hopes and dreams of Jesus being their Messiah were dashed. Had they gotten it wrong? If He was the Messiah, why was He executed? But the cross was not the end of Jesus. He didn’t just lay His life down but had the power to take it up again. And yet, none of His disciples fully grasped what this meant initially—including one follower in the section of Scripture we studied on Sunday. Watch our study from Resurrection Sunday as we consider Mary Magdalene’s interaction with the risen Jesus.

Pontius Pilate would have been intrigued to hear that Jesus was calling Himself the King of the Jews—or at least that was what the Jewish religious rulers were counting on. They hoped the claim would cause Pilate to do what they wanted. Of course, they would have handled the matter by stoning Jesus, but only the Romans could carry out capital punishment. They perfected it through crucifixion—a brutal, agonizing, and excruciating slow death.  God knew what His people would do when they rejected His Son. And He knew exactly how the Romans would execute Him. In fact, this was all recorded hundreds of years before in Psalm 22, Zechariah 12, and Isaiah 53. Watch our Good Friday service as we reflect on Jesus—the Son of God.

Over 10 days in March of 2025, a small group of faithful servants traveled over 650 miles to 7 cities in 3 different countries to bring the hope of the Gospel to multitudes of refugees from Ukraine who have been displaced from the war. They had countless conversations, gave lots of hugs, shed many tears, and laughed many laughs. In the places they visited, they had dozens of opportunities to pray over people, serve others, and share Jesus as the Spirit led, provided for, protected, and spoke through them.

We are confronted daily with headlines about wars, famines, earthquakes, tsunamis, terrorists, disease, and death. If God existed, surely He would not allow these things to exist or to continue…or would He? And if so, why? Couldn’t He prevent some of these things? Couldn’t He have made a better world? Guest speaker Charlie Campbell answers these and several other tough theological questions related to evil and suffering. For those who have wrestled with these questions, this message is comforting and instructive; but it also equips Christians to be better prepared to answer atheists who think evil and suffering disprove the existence of a loving God.

All of us are called to glorify God in all that we do—no matter the specific call God has for our life. Whether you’re an artist, teacher, banker, plumber, or pastor, God’s call on your life is no less holy and no more sacred than anybody else’s call. The key to bringing God glory is seeing our calling as from Him and for Him. It’s for Him that we work and labor. No matter where or to what He has called you, the opportunity for pastoral ministry is plentiful. But those willing to actually do the work and labor are few. We know this because Jesus said it was so. And after He encouraged His disciples to pray for more workers, He sent them to do this work. Those that He sent weren’t the religious elites. They were ordinary people who had been with Him—the unlikely ones.

At the sight of the multitude, Jesus was moved with compassion because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd (Matthew 9:36). This was specific language God used in the Old Testament to describe His people. Jesus is the Good Shepherd that God promised to do the good word of feeding, tending, and seeking and saving the lost.

Have you ever had a situation where you’ve tried every option and exhausted every resource? And yet, there seems to be a two-year-old in all of us that still says, “I can do it myself!” Eventually, our self-sufficiency and pride disappear when circumstances deplete our strength and resources so that nothing is left but to cry out to Jesus. Though He would rather be our first choice, Jesus is willing to be our last resort. When our desperation overrules our hesitation, we finally come face to face with Jesus and might expect anger and frustration, but instead, Jesus shows us compassion, mercy, and grace.

God chose to pour new wine into new wineskins. He decided to pour the person and power of the Holy Spirit into the most unlikely of vessels. But why? So that no one could boast and God alone would get all the glory. In this way, the adventure of the Great Commission could be available to anyone that Jesus would call to follow Him—even if that person is considered lower than low, like a tax collector named Levi. Jesus came to introduce something new, not to patch up something old.

Jesus’ words & actions confounded the religious leaders around Him. After all, Jesus was eating with sinners, ministering to sinners, forgiving sinners, healing sinners, and (worst of all) calling sinners to be His followers. The religious leaders thought they were already righteous. They could not comprehend in their self-righteous hearts how the Messiah would come for sinners and not for them. So, the only conclusion they could make was that Jesus must not be the Messiah. But they had failed to see Jesus had come for them, too. It’s just that something needed to happen in their hearts first.

There are storms in life. Whether external or internal, there are moments where we feel hopeless to do anything about the circumstances we face. But Jesus has authority over the storms, whether from without or within. Sometimes He rebukes the storm, sometimes He calms the storm, and sometimes He does neither. Yet through it all, we learn that Jesus is Lord.