It was around that time that Yeshua went out to the hill country to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God.When day came, he called his talmidim and chose from among them twelve to be known as emissaries:
Shim`on, whom he named Kefa; Andrew, his brother; Ya`akov; Yochanan; Philip; Bar-Talmai; Mattityahu; T’oma; Ya`akov Ben-Halfai:
Shim`on, the one called the Zealot; Y’hudah Ben-Ya`akov; and Y’hudah from K’riot, who turned traitor.
Then he came down with them and stood on a level place. A large crowd of his talmidim was there with great numbers of people from all Y’hudah, Yerushalayim and the coast around Tzor and Tzidon; they had come to hear him and be healed of their diseases.
Those who were troubled with unclean spirits were being healed; and the whole crowd was trying to touch him, because power kept going out from him, healing everyone.
(Luke 6:12-19)
In this besorah reading Yeshua chooses his talmidim, those who would be with him throughout his work on earth and then to be his emissaries to take his message out after Yeshua leaves to return to the Father. Yeshua chooses twelve men to fill these roles to be his students and companions, but also to be the ones that will have to take the message of Yeshua to future generations and to “the uttermost part of the Earth”.
Yeshua gives us an important lesson in leadership by like Moses before him, he as a leader knew that leadership involved sharing the responsibility and finding gifted individuals to assist, this can be seen in Moses’ appointing of the 70 elders to assist him in his role of leading the People of Israel in the desert. Yeshua shows us the importance of a leader in preparing future leaders. Yeshua knew that his time was short and a Roman stake soon awaited him, so for his message to continue he needed those prepared to take his message forward, hence he chose the twelve talmidim to mentor and then to send out to bring his message to future generations, of which we are beneficiaries of their faithful service.
What can we learn from this besorah reading for the future of Messianic Judaism? One thing is the importance of current leaders choosing future leaders and preparing them for their important task of building Messianic Judaism for the future. Secondly, like the talmidim those “young leaders” who are called to be mentored and prepared for future leadership must share Yeshua’s talmidim’s willingness to take up the task of being prepared to be a future leader and take forward the vision.
This can be seen by the analogy of passing a torch from one generation of leaders to the next. This passing of the torch involves the current leaders preparing future leaders to receive the torch and for them to pass it on to them and then for those future leaders to accept the torch and their responsibility to take their awesome role of being the ones in which the future of Messianic Judaism will rest and also the opportunity that they can play a role in changing our world for God like Yeshua’s first talmidim did in their world by their faithful service.
Beyond just our movement we can change the course of human history as we build a mature Messianic Judaism and reunite the breach of Jewish life from faith trust in Yeshua, the Messiah of Israel. This is both a joy and an overwhelming responsibility but it is our job and we must do it, if we are truly focused on living God honoring lives and playing our role in God’s plan of the ages.
So then the time has come for us to step up and follow the example of our righteous Messiah and play our role in the building up of the next generation of leaders. We must do what is needed for them to be prepared to take the torch and for those current leaders they need to do their part to train them and then to give them the torch and allow them to enter their role to play in the future of our movement.
This is a group project and we all must do our part!
So then let us begin doing what needs to be done so that we can magnify and sanctify the name of our God by building a mature Messianic Judaism for the future.
