James the Son of Alphaeus
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2012 · 4 November 2012
We continue to study Matthew 10:2-4, “2 Now the names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; 3 Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James the son of Alphaeus, and Lebbaeus, whose surname was Thaddaeus; 4 Simon the Cananite, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed Him.
Now we've been looking at these individuals whom our Lord chose and sent to preach the good news, to heal, to cast out demons. We've found that they were very common men, very much like we are. Very opposite the saintliness that we may assume belonged to them beforehand.
Now in Matthew 10 we're examining men who were willing to go to the ultimate sacrifice, they were willing to leave their profession, their lifestyle, their homes to follow Jesus Christ. They left their nets, their tax tables, their enterprises totally committed to following Jesus Christ wherever He went.
Now all of these people could be classified as disciples, learning about Him. But it doesn't really say anything about their commitment. That's why Matthew 10 starts out with twelve disciples and then a verse later it says apostles. But not all were sent because not all were willing to learn all the lessons.
For illustration let us look at John 6:26. It is the morning after Jesus had fed the five thousand men plus women plus children. And He sees the same crowd back again, I mean why not? They got a free dinner, why not go for a free breakfast?
And Jesus says to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.” In other words He says to them, your interest in Me is not because you saw the divine hand of God. It's because you ate and got filled up.
Jesus says in verse 27, “Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.” In other words you better get off the physical onto the spiritual. Be more concerned with eternity than you are with time now, more with heaven than you are with this temporary earth.
And so Jesus will not accept them at a pure physical level. Listen to John 6:53, same day, same crowd, same setting. And again He says to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.” In other words when you're thinking about life don't think about it on the physical level think about it on the spiritual level and recognize that unless you eat My flesh and drink My blood you have no life on the spiritual plane.
John 6:54-56 says, "Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55 For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. 56 He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.”
What does Jesus mean? He's making an analogy, and He is saying, you cannot come to Me simply to satisfy physical desires, you must take in all of Me on a spiritual basis. He is saying that you have to take Me all in as if you were consuming Me, everything I am, everything I say and everything I do.
They wanted free food and miracles but they weren't interested in really taking Jesus Christ for all that He was. Look at John 6:60, "Many, therefore, of his disciples when they heard him say this," in the synagogue there at Capernaum, "they said, "This is an hard saying. Who can hear this?"
What they are saying is we cannot accept that. False disciples reject Christ's words; they take only what fits their lifestyle. That's why there are so many people today who want to tell people that they believe in Jesus and they claim to be born again and wear a cross around their neck or a fish sign on their car, but when you point them to explicit commands in the Bible they're not interested in obeying that.
And look to John 6: 66, "From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.” Why? They weren't interested in total commitment. 67 Then Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you also want to go away?” 68 But Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
Turn back to Matthew 10, you need to understand that these disciples that we're dealing with now are men who have made the total commitment. Do you remember the disciple who went away because he wanted to bury his father or because he wanted to say good- bye to his relatives? That's not these men.
Why? Because we are going to look at three disciples we know nothing about. All we know is that they made a commitment, right? Let us look tonight at James, the son of Alphaeus, Lebbaeus surnamed Thaddeaus, and Simon, the Zealot. And because we know nothing about them we might look at them as second class, when in fact they made the same commitment as Peter and everybody else, they were totally obedient to Christ.
Jesus Christ can take a worthless, sinful life, wash it in the blood, put His Spirit in it and make it a blessing. And that's called sanctification, and that's what the Lord is in the business of doing, taking rough, raw material and using it.
James, the son of Alphaeus, Lebbaeus, and Simon the Zealot, whoever heard of them? The Bible doesn't say anything about them, but there is something to say about them. Now remember they always appear in the same groups, four, four and four whenever the list of twelve is given, and they move away in intimacy from Christ.
James, the son of Alphaeus never wrote anything, never said anything, never asked anything, never did anything recorded in the Bible. In fact in Mark 15:40 he is called James the mikros, the little James, guess who big James was? Big James was the son of thunder.
The word micros basically means small in stature, it could indicate that he was little. So it may well be that he was just a small, young fellow who did not have a particularly powerful personality. You know the Lord doesn't depend on superstars, right? People say, oh you know if only so and so would become a Christian, just think what would happen.
But the kingdom of God will not advance any faster with a famous person leading the parade than anybody else, because God does not depend on that. James, the son of Alphaeus will sit on a throne reigning over one of the tribes of Israel in the millennium, and what do we know about him? Nothing. Well, the point is that God is the power, right? Not James.
Oh, there is one faint tradition about him. The early church fathers say he preached in Persia. Persia is ancient Iran, and that he took the Gospel of Jesus Christ to that land, and they refused to hear him preach and they crucified him.
What would the world look like today if Iran had accepted the Gospel, preached by James, the son of Alphaeus. Maybe the legacy of the Moslem religion would not be so powerful. The Lord always uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things. They are all silent unknown soldiers. How about you? Are you one of those silent soldiers?
It is interesting that Alphaeus and James are common names. But there's one other disciple who had a father named Alphaeus, and that is Matthew. According to Mark 2:14 Matthew's called Levi, and it says there, "Levi, the son of Alphaeus." There is a remote possibility that James was Matthew's brother.
There's another more fascinating possibility. When our Lord was dying on the cross in John 19:25 it says, "Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas.” So there's Mary, Jesus' mother and next to her is Mary her sister-in-law whose husband's name is Clopas, which is another form of Alphaeus.
And it is possible that Alphaeus was the brother of Joseph, the husband of Mary, which would make Jesus and James cousins. And it also tells us that Mary in Mark 15:40 was "the mother of little James." So there is the possibility that he was the brother of Matthew and it is possible that he was the cousin of Jesus. Now if that was true he might have acted important, but you don't see him doing that.
This should teach all of us that it is never really the worker who is the issue in the kingdom work. This is what Paul meant when he said in 1 Corinthians 3, “So what is Apollos and what is Paul? It is God that gives the increase." The worker is nothing, God is everything.
The only time the apostles are ever mentioned in the Scripture is when they intersect with Christ for a specific purpose. He is the focus. The human instrument is immaterial to God. He can use Balaam's donkey if need be. He can make the rocks cry out if He has to. You don't have to be gifted. The focus is always on Jesus Christ.
What about the second person? Matthew 10:3 says, "Lebbaeus, whose surname was Thaddaeus." And if you look in Luke 6:16 and Acts 1:13, there he had a third name, “Judas, son of James.” And he is in one place called Judas, not Iscariot. Judas also was a common name, it means Jehovah leads, and many people in that time named their son, Jehovah or God leads.
This is Judas, that's his given name, and then he received the nicknames Lebbaeus and Thaddaeus. Thaddaeus comes from a Hebrew root shad which means a female breast. And Thaddaeus means that he was the baby of the family. And then he was called also Lebbaeus, which comes from the Hebrew root leb which means heart, and it means someone with a great heart related to courage.
He too is wrapped in obscurity. But he did ask one very important question, and it's the only time we meet him in the Scripture. John 14:21, Jesus speaking, the night before His trial says, "He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.”
That is an incredible statement. If you keep My commandments, you show you love Me. Jesus says. I can tell who loves Me, they obey Me. God can only be manifest to a heart that loves Him. That's the reason people in the world don't know God, that's the reason they can't perceive the truth because they don't really love God.
Now, the word manifest triggers this thought in Judas Thaddaeus and so he responds in verse 22, "Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, “Lord, how is it that You will manifest Yourself to us, and not to the world?” What does he mean? Well he's thinking of the manifestation as an outward one.
And he's saying to Jesus, how could You possibly demonstrate who You are, and the world not see it? Why would You manifest Yourself only to us? I mean it is the world that the Messiah is to rule. It's a good question. Why won't everybody see You?
But he didn't understand, and so the Lord says again in John 14:23, "“If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.” And He repeats the same principle to Judas, Thaddaeus, the only people who will perceive Me are the ones who love Me, that's all.
And Jesus continues in verse 24, "He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father’s who sent Me.” It's like a radio or TV station, they can send the signal out but until you turn on your set you can't receive it, you cannot hear or see the message. Only those who love God will hear and see.
John 1:10 says about Jesus, “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.” The God of this world, Satan, had blinded their minds, light has come into the world but men love darkness. You see the receivers aren't on, and Jesus is saying, I can only manifest Myself to people who love Me.
Only those whose hearts are purified by love and walk in obedience will know the manifestation of God. That is who Thaddaeus was. Early church tradition tells us that he was gifted to heal the sick. And king Abgar in Syria heard about it, and he called for Thaddaeus to come and heal him. On the way he healed hundreds of people and when he reached the king he healed him too and presented the Gospel and he became a Christian.
This threw the country into such chaos that a nephew of the king seized Thaddaeus, imprisoned and martyred him in Syria. In old church history books on Thaddaeus you will find that each of the disciples have a symbol and the symbol for Thaddaeus is a big club, because the legend says they beat him to death with a club.
Finally, the last name for this evening, "Simon, the Zealot," the man full of zeal. And it may mean that he was identified with a party in Judaism known as the Zealots. And that when he became a disciple they didn't change that name, he must have continued to manifest the same kind of passionate zeal he had when he was a Zealot.
There were four basically dominant groups within Judaism. The Pharisees were the fundamentalists and legalists. Then there was the Sadducees the liberals. Then there were the Essenes, the mystics, the ascetics out in the caves. And then there were the Zealots, they were the political guerrillas, they went around looting, burning and murdering.
Now a man like Simon to attach himself to Jesus must have been a man with a tremendous passion. He is listed right before Judas Iscariot. It's interesting to me but they probably went together. But Simon believed and was transformed, but Judas did not, and no one now names their child Judas. Simon became Christ's man.
There was a concert violinist who wanted to demonstrate a very important point. He performed in a great hall in the city and announced that he would play with a twenty thousand dollar violin. All violin lovers came and he played exquisitely and they applauded gloriously. He bowed and then threw the violin to the ground and stomped it to bits. The people were horrified. And then he walked off the stage.
The stage manager came out and said Ladies and Gentlemen, to put you at ease that was just a twenty dollar violin, he will now return to play with the twenty thousand dollar violin. They couldn't tell the difference, and he made his point. It isn't the instrument that is important; it's the artist, right? It isn’t the person; it is God who does everything is the only important thing, right?