We’ve been taking an in-depth look at ideas for devotions over the past couple weeks. So far, we’ve covered great prayers of the Bible and how to start a word study. This week, let’s look at studying who the twelve disciples were.
It just hit me a couple months ago: I . Don’t. Know. About. The. Disciples. You’d think that, considering how close they were to Jesus, I’d know more than I do. But as I was reading over their names in Mark, there were some I felt I’d never even heard. Bartholomew? Thaddeus? Two Jameses?!
Over this next week on our Instagram story, I’ll be sharing what I learned in my own personal study on these men (make sure to follow us @oh.beloved.one). But here’s the steps I took and some tips for you as you start your own study!
How to do your own twelve disciples study
First off, I think it’s important to understand what a disciple/apostle was, especially in contrast with an evangelist or a pastor.
Second, this information is great to write down and keep handy for future reference. I used a 6×9 mini binder and gave each man a new page and wrote his name at the top.
Then open up to one of the lists of disciples collected in the Gospels and go through them, one by one. I used sources like GotQuestions to get an overview and make sure my thinking was correct (make sure you get your information from reliable sources; I like GotQuestions because they link to the verse they got the information from).
For each disciple, I wrote down:
- His other names (nicknames, name given by Jesus, family name, etc.)
- Information about his character
- Information about his background (birthplace, occupation, family)
- Other things in bullet list format, including records of him speaking in the Gospels
- How he died (there’s a lot of speculation on these things, many from the apocryphal Scriptures so be careful!)
I also marked which ones were brothers or related.
This study really opened my eyes to a couple things. Mainly, I was originally surprised that there’s actually so little information about these men. The most I got was for Peter, which is perhaps the most famous disciple anyway.
But after a lot of thought, I’m really not suprised. The emphasis of Scripture, the emphasis of Gospels, is Jesus. Who His men were, where they came from, what they did—all these things do not matter necessarily.
What matters is what we were told about a group of men, not amazing by any stretch of the imagination. A group of men who came from lowly or darkened backgrounds, overly zealous for things that did not matter, but taken under Jesus’ wing. By the time He ascended to Heaven, He had changed their hearts and who they were as people, enabling them to represent Him to the nations and overcome persecution and cruelty for His name’s sake.
Just like us, right? We don’t do what we do to get into history books or even have a biography published about our epic pursuits one day. We die to ourselves daily so that people only see Jesus through us.
