One of the problems every Christian faces is to read the Bible and then feel a sense of personal obligation to take those words and make them part of life. It’s the same problem faced by a school teacher who tells her students, “Some time today we need to make sure that we clean this room and get all the scraps of paper off the floor.” The students look around, they see the trash and while they know what the teacher wants to be done, they simply get lost in the crowd. Perhaps unconsciously they think it will just happen.
How many sermons have you heard about specific actions the Lord wants to happen and you acknowledge that changes need to be made, but the urgency of feeling a personal obligation is lost because we think of the teaching in a much broader scope? Let me suggest something which might help change all of this.
When the apostles heard Jesus’ words about taking the gospel into all the world, think of how some might have reacted. Since Peter, James and John were closer to the Lord than Bartholomew or Thaddeus, these “lesser-know apostles” could have stepped back into the shadows of the “greater” apostles. They could have thought that those other men were far more talented and that they had heard Jesus say things to them when the other apostles were not around. The work needed to be done and it would have been so easy just to let those more qualified do the work. The truth is that the Great Commission was not just given to Peter, James and John!
How could 21st-century “Bartholomews” make this commission a personal one if we had lived in the first century? Here’s one way. Just imagine that all of the other apostles were not there and Jesus had said these words only to you, a Bartholomew. Do you think you would have felt a personal responsibility? The obligation would have been overwhelming. Had he/you ignored the Great Commission, the coming of Jesus would have been for naught! But if Bartholomew had the right to ignore it as part of the group, so did all the rest. Jesus’ final words were intended to be personal! The lack of talent or self-esteem of any individual did not remove that individual’s personal obligation.
So take time today to think about yourself and your personal responsibility to honor His last words. By the way, both of these apostles evidently took His words personally. Tradition tells us that Bartholomew preached in India, Arabia and Armenia. He died after being beaten with rods, scourged and beheaded. Thaddeus preached in Syria, Iran and Egypt and died by crucifixion. They took that commission personally. How seriously do you feel a personal obligation to tell others?