Training the Kingdom’s Messengers

138:0.1Af­ter preach­ing the ser­mon on “The King­dom,” Je­sus called the six apos­tles to­gether that af­ter­noon and be­gan to dis­close his plans for vis­it­ing the cities around and about the Sea of Gal­i­lee. His broth­ers James and Jude were very much hurt be­cause they were not called to this con­fer­ence. Up to this time they had re­garded them­selves as be­long­ing to Je­sus’ in­ner cir­cle of as­so­ciates. But Je­sus planned to have no close rel­a­tives as mem­bers of this corps of apos­tolic di­rec­tors of the king­dom. This fail­ure to in­clude James and Jude among the cho­sen few, to­gether with his ap­par­ent aloof­ness from his mother ever since the ex­pe­ri­ence at Cana, was the start­ing point of an ever-widen­ing gulf be­tween Je­sus and his fam­ily. This sit­u­a­tion con­tin­ued through­out his pub­lic min­istry—they very nearly re­jected him—and these dif­fer­ences were not fully re­moved un­til af­ter his death and res­ur­rec­tion. His mother con­stantly wa­vered be­tween at­ti­tudes of fluc­tu­at­ing faith and hope, and in­creas­ing emo­tions of dis­ap­point­ment, hu­mil­i­a­tion, and de­spair. Only Ruth, the young­est, re­mained unswerv­ingly loyal to her fa­ther-brother.

138:0.2Un­til af­ter the res­ur­rec­tion, Je­sus’ en­tire fam­ily had very lit­tle to do with his min­istry. If a prophet is not with­out honor save in his own coun­try, he is not with­out un­der­stand­ing ap­pre­ci­a­tion save in his own fam­ily.