My exegesis on the Gospel for the Second Sunday after Trinity, Year A, Matthew 9:35-10:23 continues.

Part 1 has the full reading and exposition for Matthew 9:35-9:38. Part 2 discusses Matthew 10:1-2, especially the Apostles Peter and Andrew, who were brothers as well as James and John, the sons of Zebedee.

Today’s post is about those Apostles named in Matthew 10:3:

10:3 Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus;

In 2015, I wrote an exegesis based on Matthew Henry’s commentary for Matthew 10: parts 1 and 2, which may also be of interest.

Commentary comes from Matthew Henry and John MacArthur (as specified below).

Matthew includes himself with Philip, Bartholomew and Thomas (verse 3).

Matthew Henry’s commentary points out that Gospel accounts differ in the Apostles’ grouping from greater to less (emphases mine):

Matthew, the penman of this gospel, is here joined with Thomas (v. 3), but in two things there is a variation from the accounts of Mark and Luke, Mark 3 18; Luke 6 15. There, Matthew is put first; in that order it appears he was ordained before Thomas; but here, in his own catalogue, Thomas is put first. Note, It well becomes the disciples of Christ in honour to prefer one another. There, he is only called Matthew, here Matthew the publican, the toll-gatherer or collector of the customs, who was called from that infamous employment to be an apostle. Note, It is good for those who are advanced to honour with Christ, to look unto the rock whence they were hewn; often to remember what they were before Christ called them, that thereby they may be kept humble, and divine grace may be the more glorified. Matthew the apostle was Matthew the publican.

John MacArthur tells us more about these men, whom Christ called to serve Him to the utmost, beginning with Philip:

Now, let’s go on and look at group two …

… let’s look, first of all, at Philip.  This is not to be confused with Philip, the deacon in Acts 6 who later became an evangelist, this is Philip the disciple.  His name is a Greek name.  Now, all 12 were Jews so he must have had a Jewish name, but we don’t know his Jewish name.  For some reason he goes always by his Greek name.  And by the way, his Greek name means lover of horses.  We don’t know whether his parents were big on that and so they just gave him that Greek name or what.  But he’s always gone by the name of Philip.  We don’t know his Jewish name, which is kind of interesting because when the Greeks later on want to see Jesus, they go to Philip so he kind of became the Greek connection.  He was the place where you sort of plugged in from the Greek level, and maybe they felt comfortable because his name was the Greek name.  He is always in the second list and he is always at the head of the second list, which means that he seems to have been the sort of the leader of the second group.  It’s hard to imagine that, because he doesn’t really have those kinds of gifts, but he may have led more than they followed, we’re not sure. 

Philip would have known Peter and Andrew already:

Now, for a while he was a fellow townsman at Bethsaida, and you remember that Bethsaida up in Galilee was the town where Peter and Andrew came from, so Philip knew Peter and Andrew.  He had perhaps grown up knowing them, perhaps was a close friend of theirs.  Since they were all God-fearing Jews, Peter, Andrew, Philip and Nathanael or Bartholomew, we’ll get to him later, they probably all knew each other.  They were close friends.  And there is in the 12 the very obvious fact that there’s a lot of friendship interwoven there.  There was some one-by-one callings of these individuals, one to another, to another, to another.  And so, Philip was kind of in the group.

He may well have been a fisherman.  He appears later on with Andrew, and with Peter, and with James, and with John, in John 21 fishing.  The three gospels say nothing about him, just his name, nothing else.  But John’s gospel mentions him four times.  And we really get to know him in these four passages.  Let’s look together at John 1:43, and let’s meet Philip.  And let’s ask the question again, “What kind of people can God use?”

Philip will come off as anything but a stained glass saint.  Verse 43: “The day following,” and that means the day following Peter and Andrew having an encounter with Christ, the day following the time when John the Baptist pointed to Christ and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God,” and Peter and Andrew followed Him.  “The day following that Jesus would go forth into Galilee and findeth Philip and saith unto him, ‘Follow Me.’” Now, that is the first direct call of a disciple.  Peter and Andrew had already met Christ but they had sort of found Him, they had sort of come along.  But Philip is the first individual to whom the Lord expressly said, “Follow Me.”  He walked up and found him and said “Follow Me.” 

But may I hasten to add that Philip also had a seeking heart.  God doesn’t find people against their will.  He had a seeking heart.  And if you look at verse 45, after verse 44 where it says he was from Bethsaida where Andrew and Peter lived, it says Philip then went to find Nathanael, or Bartholomew same person, and said to him, “We have found Him.”  Now, from the Lord’s viewpoint, He found Philip; from Philip’s viewpoint, he found the Lord.  And isn’t that the way your testimony goes?  The sovereign side is that God found you; the human side is that you found Christ.  And in order for it to happen both of you had to be seeking.  “The Son of Man has come into the world to seek and save that which is lost, if you seek with Me with all your heart you shall surely,” what?  “Find Me.”  It is God seeking, it is man seeking.  God seeks that true heart that seeks Him.  And so, Philip was seeking the truth.  Philip was seeking that reality.  In verse 45 he says, “We found Him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write.”  In other words, he must have been studying the law and the prophets, he must have been exposing himself to that, and now he says we found Him, and His name is Jesus, He comes from Nazareth and He is Jesus bar Joseph, the son of Joseph.  We found Him.

But in a real sense there was no human agency, Jesus just came right up and said, “Follow Me.”  There was no human voice directed to him.  Philip’s eyes and ears were open, his heart was open.  And when he heard the divine voice say, “Follow Me,” he ran to tell Nathanael that he had found Him.  That the Messiah was here.  And you can imagine the excitement and the thrill and the joy and the ecstasy.  In fact, he even wanted to bring Nathaniel, at the end of verse 46, he says, “Come and see.  Come and see.  Find out for yourself.”

Now, what do we learn about Philip?  First thing we learn about him is he was seeking the Messiah.  He was a God-fearing Jew.  He was religious and he was truly religious.  He had an honest heart.  We also learn that his response when being found was to find somebody else.  And I’m convinced that the greatest source for evangelism is friendship.  I think friendship provides the most fertile soil for evangelism.  Don’t you?  Because there’s already a relationship of love.  And into that relationship of love you can introduce the reality of Christ.  Invariably, and I say this through years of experience, invariably when somebody becomes a Christian, their first reaction in the warmth and the joy of that new found life is to find a friend and tell that person what has happened.  And by the way, if you’ve lost that, then that’s only a sad commentary on one of two things: one, you don’t have any unchristian friends; or two, you don’t care anymore.  Both are tragic.  But Philip immediately went to Nathaniel.  The immediate response to salvation is evangelism: find somebody else and tell them the good news.

However, Philip was, like the other Apostles, far from perfect. His pragmatism sometimes got in the way:

Jesus has already made wine at the marriage feast at Cana so He has demonstrated His supernatural power.  That for sure has happened, and there may have been other miracles and mighty deeds that he had seen.  But we come to [John] chapter 6 and a big crowd has gathered at the north end of the Sea of Galilee, and Jesus has been teaching them all day and healing them all day of all their diseases.  And it’s been a tremendous day but it’s coming to the evening now and the crowd is hungry and there were 5,000 men, which means there were probably at least 5,000 women and 20,000 kids.  So, it’s a big crowd.  And they’re all there and you go to chapter 6 verse 5: “When Jesus then lifted up His eyes, saw a great company come to Him, He said to Philip,” and here we meet Philip again.  “Where shall we buy bread that these may eat?”  Philip, how are we going to get bread?  Why did He single Philip out?  You know what I believe?  I believe Philip was in charge of the food.  Somebody had to be in charge of the food.  We know Judas was in charge of the what?  The money.  And somebody had to be in charge of the food.  Figure out how much they needed and how to get it and buy it and have it, because they had to eat as they travelled around and ministered …

Hmmm, why did He ask him that?  Verse 6, “He said this to test him, for He Himself knew what He would do.”  He knew He was going to feed them miraculously and create in His own hand bread and fish but He was testing Philip.  Now Philip, you’ve seen Me make wine at the marriage supper, now we don’t have any food for this multitude, how are we going to get some food?  You know what he said?  Verse 7: “Philip answered Him, ‘Two hundred denariis’ worth of bread is not sufficient for them that every one of them may take a little.’” He gives Him an instant answer which, you know what that proves?  That’s another thing that proves to me that he was in charge of the food: he had already analyzed it.  He had it figured out.  He calculated that they could pull an offering out of that bunch of about 200 pennyworth, or else that’s how much they had in the kitty.  And by the way, one of those denarii or one of those pennies is one day’s wages.  So, they could get about 200 days’ wages out, and let’s assume that they bought barley biscuits.  You could get 36 barley biscuits for one denarii and each biscuit was the size of your hand and an inch and a half thick.  It’s like a big French roll, kind of.  And he had calculated the whole deal ...  It cannot be done.

You know what you learn about Philip?  It never entered into his mind that the Lord was supernatural.  It utterly eluded him that Christ could do a creative miracle.  The supernatural resources of Jesus Christ totally escaped his thinking.  He just calculated the whole deal.  You know what he is?  He is analytical.  He is pragmatic.  I’m sure he would sit in a board meeting today with one of those little things, and just punch it.  Can’t do it.  We don’t have the money.  It cannot be done.  He had too much arithmetic to be adventurous.  He was so stuck on facts and figures he missed faith all together …

He was a facts and figures guy, always going by what appeared on the human level.

Now, let’s see if he has any improvement in six chapters.  Go to chapter 12 verse 20: “There were certain Greeks who had come down to Jerusalem for the feast.”  They were God-fearing Greeks, come for the Passover, and they had come because they had been devotees of Judaism, and they heard about Christ.  “And they came to Philip,” because he was the Greek connection, he had a Greek name probably that’s the reason they came to him.  “And they desired him saying, ‘Sir, we would see Jesus.’” Well, Philip may have been approachable, he may have been a warm-hearted fellow, but he didn’t take them to Jesus.  He said, in effect, “Now, you guys wait here, I don’t know if this is kosher, I don’t know if this can happen.  I’ve got to go check.”  So, he goes and tells Andrew.  And together they go to Jesus.  You know what we learn about Philip?  He was not decisive.  He was not forceful.  Peter would have grabbed those Gentiles and dragged them into the presence of Jesus and said, “Lord, look at these guys, they want to see you.”  But not Philip … He was still living in chapter 10 of Matthew, at the way at the beginning when the Lord had said, “I am come but for the lost sheep of the house of,” what?  “Of Israel.”  So, he’s saying, “These are Gentiles.  You know, it’s not in the minutes to bring the Gentiles.  I don’t think the constitution allows it.  The bylaws, you know.  The Lord said He has not come for the lost but for the lost sheep.”  You see, he had no sense of the bigger vision.  He didn’t get the message of grace … I mean, he said we’ve found the Messiah but beyond that he didn’t really have a clue of what was going on. 

Well, finally we see him in chapter 14 and it isn’t better; it’s worse, if you can believe this.  Three years later, verse 8, Philip says to Jesus, here they are the night before His, this is the Passover, this is the communion, you know, this is the time He’s unfolding His heart to His disciples.  He’s going to be arrested, and crucified, and so forth right after this.  It’s all coming to an end, and Philip says to Him, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be sufficient.”  Jesus said to him, “How long do I have to be with you before you know Me, Philip?”  Boy, this guy is really a klutz.  I mean, his spiritual vision is nil.  Everything is superficial with him.  “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.”  And how can you possibly be saying three years later, “Show us the Father.”  “Believest thou not that I am in the Father and the Father in Me.”  Don’t you believe that, Philip?  “And the words that I speak unto you I speak not of Myself but the Father that dwells in Me, He doeth the works.  Believe Me, I am in the Father and the Father in Me or else believe Me for the very works’ sake.”  I mean, My words and My works, haven’t they told you something, Philip?  Oh, what puny faith, what a dull character.  Show us the Father.  He is the leader of the ignorant and slow of heart.  Three years Philip gazed into the only face of God men ever saw, and he still didn’t know who it was.  He’s not Phi Beta Kappa.

However, his view after receiving the Holy Spirit at the first Pentecost changed Philip, who died a martyr:

You know what tradition tells us about this dear fellow?  He got his act together, and he wound up dying as a martyr for a Christ he wouldn’t deny.  And he said he only had one request, and that is that when he was dead they not wrap his body in linen like his Lord because he wasn’t worthy of that.  Aren’t you glad God uses the slow, and the faithless, and the analytical skeptics?  Because some of us find ourselves there, don’t we?

Next we come to Bartholomew, also known as Nathanael:

His first name was Nathanael.  Bartholomew, by the way, means bartholomaios, son of Tolmai.  Nathanael, son of Tolmai, two names, his first and his last.  Nathanael means gift of God, son of Tolmai.  And he was so different than his friend Philip.  He was full of faith, and he was so contemplative, and so meditative, and so in awe of the supernatural.  And he perceived everything as clear as crystal from the very beginning. 

By the way, among the Hebrews there was a sect known as the Tolmaians who gave great attention to the Scripture and it may well be that Nathanael was somehow connected to them, though that may be a remote possibility.

He came from Cana of Galilee, again from a little village in Galilee.  He was brought to Jesus by Philip, so he was acquainted with the rest of the gang.  And only one passage in the Bible tells us about him and it’s John 1.  Let’s go back.  Verse 43.  I think you’re going to find him fascinating.  It says in verse 43 that “Jesus went forth to Galilee and found Philip and told Philip to follow Him.”  And verse 45 then says: “Philip finds Nathanael, or Bartholomew, and said to him, ‘We have found Him, of whom Moses and the law and the prophets did write, and His name is Jesus of Nazareth and He is bar Joseph, the son of Joseph.’” Now, what does this tell us?  Well, it implies that Nathanael was a searcher of Scripture and a seeker after divine truth.  It tells us that Nathanael would have known Messianic prophecy and studied it because the way that Philip approaches him is, “Here’s the One the Scripture told us about.”  The implication being that Nathanael was a student of Scripture.  A further implication, I believe, being that Philip and Nathanael had probably spent hours and hours and hours studying together the Old Testament as they together were looking for the Messiah.  We found Him, the One that Moses wrote about.

So, the first thing we learn about Nathanael is that he was a studier of the Scripture, a searcher for truth, a seeker for God.  And that’s the good part about him, like it was about Philip.  He wanted to know God’s truth.  He hungered to know God’s truth.  He looked for the Messiah.  But verse 46 tells us he had a sin too.  He had a weakness.  “Nathanael said to Philip, ‘Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?’” You’ve got to be kidding.  Now, he didn’t live in anyplace that was that hot, frankly, Cana.  I mean, that is a dinky place.  But they had a little class in Cana.  Nazareth was a, was a despised, Nazareth was unrefined, you know, no class, rowdy place, wild place, uneducated.  It was the last stop before the Gentile world, you know?  I mean, it was out on the fringe.  I mean, nothing ever came out of Nazareth but trouble.

Well, I don’t know whether they had competition between the towns or not, but some kind of thing had built up in Nathanael’s heart and he showed an ugly sin and that sin is the sin of prejudice.  He shows prejudice toward a town.  You know what prejudice is?  It is an uncalled for generalization based on feelings of superiority.  It’s an uncalled for generalization based on feelings of superiority.  He just blanketed the whole town of Nazareth and said nothing good’s ever going to come out of there.  Prejudice is ugly.

… Well, Philip offered him a solution at the end of verse 46, he says, “Come and see.  Now, we’re going to find out how deep his prejudice is.”  If he’s really, really prejudice he’s going to say, “Not on your life.  I wouldn’t go near.”  But if he’s got the kind of prejudice that can be overcome he’s going to respond, and he did respond.  Verse 47, he went and: “Jesus saw Nathanael coming and He said of him,” here he is, and he’s walking up ready to see this supposed Messiah from Nazareth and up walks the Lord and says, “Behold, an Israelite for real, in whom there is no hypocrisy.” 

… And to show you how really sincere he was, he said unto Him, verse 48: “How do You know me?”  How do You know this?  How do You know my heart?  And He knew he was a true Jew.  And He knew he was a God-seeker.  And He knew he was sincere.  How do You know that?  You just walk up and You know that.  How do You know that?  Jesus answered him, “Oh, before Philip ever went to get you I saw you under the fig tree.”  Oh, that blew his mind.  How do You know I was under a fig tree?  That’s where he was. 

… It became a place to be alone.  It became a place of prayer, and a place of meditation, and a place of contemplation, a place of communing with God, a place of searching the Scripture, a place of quietness.  And it may well be that Nathanael was out under the fig tree, as so many Jews did, and he was meditating and he was praying, in the quietness and the solitude, away from the activity of the house.  He was seeking God in the privacy of the shade of the fig tree.

And Jesus is saying to him: I saw you.  I saw you meditating, I saw you seeking, I saw your open heart.  I saw you in the secret place, the private place.  I saw your true desire.  I saw what was there and what you wanted to know, and I’m here.  Pretty exciting.

… Okay.  His desire overwhelmed his prejudice and off he went.  Well, that’s enough for him.  Nathanael verse 49: “Answered and said to Him, Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel.”

You want to know something?  Three years later Philip wasn’t sure about that, whether He was God.  Nathanael knew it immediately.  He saw deity in His presence.  Philip’s concept was that the one who Moses spoke about is come but he wasn’t too sure who He was.  But Nathanael knew instantly: this is the Son of God.  Oh, what commitment.  Oh, what a heart.

… And look at verse 51 … just quickly, “He said unto him, ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, from here on you’re going to see heaven open and you’re going to see angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’”

What is this?  In specific, He’s saying this: Nathanael, You think you saw heaven, you think you saw divine power in that omniscience?  From here on you’re going to see stuff going on all the time between heaven and earth.  You’re going to see heaven open, and angels going up and down, and the Son of Man working in response to heavenly power.  You’re going to be exposed to heaven come down, is what He’s saying.  And he was.  Miracle, after miracle, after miracle.  And it may well be that Nathanael understood the glory of Christ better than anybody else.  He never asked another question.  He never frames another query.  He never even appears the rest of the time in the whole account.  He was in, solid like a rock, at the start.

So, we meet Nathanael Bartholomew, the seeker of truth, prejudice but not bound by it, honest, open, a man of prayer, a man of meditation, a man who made a complete surrender to Christ, a man with a keen mind and a heart of faith.  He saw.  He understood.  And Jesus promised to him the most wonderful revelations, and everything he saw from then on he knew was heaven open, heaven open.  Philip was never sure what it was …

… Do you qualify among the unqualified?  Because if you do, the Lord wants to use you …

MacArthur chooses to cover Matthew before Thomas in this list:

Let’s take Matthew first, because we have already examined something of Matthew’s life in looking at chapter 9.

Yes, he did in full, which I wrote about several days ago because Matthew mentions his own calling in that chapter, half of which was read on the First Sunday after Trinity (Year A). In that exegesis, I quoted heavily from MacArthur’s description of the various types of tax collectors. Matthew was the lowest of the low, one of the ones who could make up taxes in order to feather his own nest. He was an extortioner, taking above and beyond what he should. He was an outcast of outcasts.

MacArthur explains why the evangelist wrote very little about himself in his own Gospel:

Matthew is mentioned in every list, always in the same group, but nothing is ever said about Matthew, and nothing is ever said by Matthew except one tiny little thing.  And look in Matthew 9:9, and that’s where you find it.  Mark and Luke both allude to the same thing in just the same few words, and that is the extent of everything we know about Matthew.  “And as Jesus passed forth from there He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office, and He saith unto him, ‘Follow Me.’ And he arose and followed Him.”  And when Matthew puts his name in the list in chapter 10 verse 3 he says: “Matthew the tax collector.”  And may I hasten to add that no other disciple in the list is ever associated with his job.  Why does Matthew say, Matthew the tax collector?  I mean, that’s not something you’re proud of.  No.  A tax collector was the most hated, despised, despicable human being in the society of Israel.  And Matthew is showing us his genuine humility, and sense of sinful unworthiness.

Why does Matthew even comment about himself in [Chapter 9] verse 9?  “As Jesus passed forth from there He saw a man named Matthew and He said, ‘Follow Me.’“ What is the point of putting that there?  The point is: in verses 1 to 8, Matthew is giving a demonstration that Jesus came to forgive sin.  Verse 5: “Thy sins be forgiven thee.”  Verse 6: “The Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins.”  And Matthew slips himself in there in one verse to show that indeed Jesus can forgive sin, for he sees himself as the vilest sinner.  It may be a reason, that may be a reason why Matthew never speaks.  He never asks a question.  He never makes a comment.  He never appears in an incident.  He just is absolutely faceless and voiceless through the entire narrative of the gospels.  And it may be that his humility was born out of his overwhelming sense of sinfulness, that he was so overwrought by the sin of his life, that once forgiven, grace was so superabundant in his case that he felt himself unworthy to even speak a word.  And so, he is the silent man, until the Spirit of God asks him to pick up his pen.  And then, he is given the privilege of writing the opening of the New Testament: 28 chapters on the majesty of the King of Kings Himself …

I think what makes it so fascinating to me also: he also had a name Levi, which indicates that he really was in the flow of Jewish tradition. And what also is interesting is that in the gospel of Matthew, you might be interested to note, there are more quotes of the Old Testament than in Mark, Luke and John combined. So, Matthew knew the Old Testament. In fact, he quotes out of the three sections of the Old Testament that a Jew knew: the law, the prophets, and the Hagiographa, the Holy Writings. Matthew knew the law of God in the Old Testament. And yet, we have no idea of him at all being interested in spiritual things. But when Jesus comes along, verse 9, He says to him, “Follow Me,” and he arose and followed Him. Instantly.

Now, what is involved in this? First of all, he just walked away from his career. I mean, it wasn’t like the earlier guys who were fishermen. If they didn’t like what went on with Jesus there were always fish. Right? And there were always nets. And there were always boats. And they could go back. And in fact, they did in John 21, they all went back fishing. And the Lord showed them they couldn’t catch anything. But when Matthew walked away from that table, believe me, the Roman government would have somebody there the next day. And somebody was in line to buy into that, and he was cutting off his career for good. No lingering. Also, he was identifying with somebody who was equally rejected by the establishment, for the Pharisees and the scribes hated Jesus as much or more as they hated him as a publican. So, he was really going from the frying pan into the fire. It’s a high price he paid.

You say, well, why did he do that? Well, I’ll tell you why he did it. There is only one reason. This little section in chapter 9, the thread that keeps weaving its way through here, is the forgiveness of sin. In verse 10, Matthew calls a feast after Jesus calls him. And he gets together tax collectors and sinners. And Jesus is the guest of honor at the feast. You’ll remember when we studied that. And the Pharisees say, “Well, why does He hang around with tax collectors and sinners?” And Jesus says, “They that are well need not a physician but they that are sick. You better go and relearn your lesson that I am come not to call the righteous but,” what? “Sinners to repentance.” The point of the banquet then, was for Jesus to call sinners to repentance. So, the whole thread here is confession of sin, repentance and forgiveness, and Matthew plops himself in there because I think that’s the issue with him. Nobody in the world knew better his sin than Matthew knew. He knew he was a sinner. He knew his graft, his abuse, his extortion, his greed. He knew that he had betrayed his people. He knew that he could be bought for money. He knew that. And I believe he despised it. I believe he wanted out. I believe he wanted a way to get away from it, and he had heard about Jesus, and he had heard Him preach because he was in that little town of Capernaum. And I believe when Jesus came to him and said, “Follow Me,” he knew that inherent in that was the forgiveness of sin, and he ran to get that. And he was willing to say goodbye to his career and everything else because he wanted forgiveness.

What kind of people does God use? Stained glass saints? No. Vile, wretched, rotten sinners, the most despicable people in society who are willing to be forgiven. You say, yeah, but He can’t use them for much. Oh? How about writing the gospel that introduces the New Testament? You see, God is in the restoration business. He takes the unqualified and transforms them. That’s His business …

And so, we learn about his humility. I think we learn another thing. He had a heart for the lost. There are some people in this world who just kind of gravitate to the down and outers, you know? That must have been Matthew. I mean, if ever there was a discussion about whether the disciples ought to get involved with some riffraff, I’m sure Matthew would have led the parade toward the riffraff, having been one. I’m glad that when the Lord puts together a team of men, He takes some from out of the deepest pit, or some of us might never be willing to go back into that pit not knowing that something can really happen there, and that was Matthew.

… One writer calls it “The glorious unconventionality of the Lord Jesus Christ: he chooses the most unlikely people.”

Wikipedia says that Church tradition holds that Matthew preached in Ethiopia, where he was martyred:

… while preaching in Ethiopia, Matthew converted and then consecrated to God, Ephigenia of Ethiopia, the virgin daughter of the Aethiopian King Egippus.^[13] When King Hirtacus succeeded Egippus, he asked the apostle if he could persuade Ephigenia to marry him. Matthew thus invited King Hirtacus to Mass the following Sunday where he rebuked him for lusting after the girl, as she was a nun and therefore was the bride of Christ. The enraged King thus ordered his bodyguard to kill Matthew who stood at the altar, making him a martyr.^[14]

We next come to Thomas, also called Didymus, which means ‘twin’.

MacArthur says:

Thomas is a better man than you think. In fact, I’m convinced that most people really don’t understand Thomas. We just say Thomas the doubter. I think you’re going to learn some things about Thomas you didn’t know …

MacArthur presents John 11, which has the story of our Lord’s dear friend Lazarus, whom He raised from the dead. This took place just before Passion Week — Holy Week. Jesus and His disciples knew that the atmosphere in Jerusalem at that point was hot. The Jewish hierarchy wanted to kill our Lord. Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha lived in Bethany, just two miles outside the city.

Naturally, almost all of the Apostles were reluctant to go to Bethany, however, Thomas was ready to take that risk:

And Thomas apparently moves into this situation with some leadership, verse 16: “Then,” said Thomas, who is called Didymus, which means the twin, he had a twin brother or sister likely. “And he says to the fellow disciples, ‘Let’s also go that we may die with Him.’“

Now, I see several things in that. First of all I see a certain amount of initiative. Don’t you see that? He kind of takes over doesn’t he? He kind of rises to the top and says, “Wait a minute, guys, let’s go with Him and die with Him.” I also see pessimism, don’t you? I see some pessimism. Now, he was convinced Jesus was going to be killed. And if they went, they would die. I mean, it was all very clear to him.

You know, the greatest courage in the world is not the courage of an optimist. An optimist is couraged, has courage because he believes the best will happen. The greatest courage in the world is the courage of a pessimist because he knows the worse is going to happen and is willing to go anyway. You see? Thomas says, “We’ll die, so let’s go.” That’s a lot of courage. I think it was cut and dry with him; he had already figured out his epitaph and everything. He could only see disaster but he was grimly determined to die with Christ. Much tougher for a pessimist than an optimist.

… I believe this: I believe that Thomas, perhaps only equaled by John, had such a deep and intense love for Jesus that he could not endure existence without Him. Do you understand that? And I believe what he’s reflecting here is: if Jesus is going to die, then let’s go die with Him, because the alternative is to be without Him. You see? Let’s go with Him. Let’s go with Him. These are the words of love. These are the words of faith. He believed he could die and be with Jesus …

… Go to chapter 14 and we see him again, and the same attitudes come out again. Jesus gives this little message about letting not your heart be troubled, and believing in God, and He’s going to prepare a place for you, and I’ll come again and receive you unto Myself and where I am there you may be also, and whither I go you know, and the way you know. He says, “You know where I am going and you know how to get there.” Verse 5: “Thomas saith unto Him, ‘Lord, we know not where Thou goest and how can we know the way?’“ This is the same heart that’s saying, “Lord, don’t You go somewhere where we can’t come.” It’s the same thing. The thought of separation was the issue with Thomas. I don’t like what I hear. You’re going to go, and we’re not going to know where You are or how to get there. His heart, I think, is nearly broken as he speaks. And he’s a pessimistic, and he says, “We’ll never find the place.” It’s a bleak, negative, bewildered heart.

Jesus tells him, “Thomas, I am the way, the truth and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by Me.” What He’s saying is, “I’ll take you, Thomas. I’ll take you there. I’m the way, you don’t have to fear. I’m not going to go someplace and leave you.” You see the same pessimism again, don’t you? And you see the same love again.

MacArthur thinks that Thomas did not show up with the Eleven post-Resurrection to see Jesus the first time because he was depressed:

Let’s go to a third and last look at Thomas. John 20. Jesus died. You know what happened to Thomas when Jesus died? He said, “I knew it. He died, and I didn’t die, and He went somewhere, and I don’t know where He is. I knew it.” And all of his fears came true, all of the worst things that he had ever thought. He felt betrayed. He felt rejected. He felt forsaken. And it was out of love, that he was shattered. He was like a wounded animal. And he didn’t want to be around people, and so he just split. That’s what he did. And when all the rest of the disciples came together he just wasn’t there, he was out, and he was depressed because he loved so deeply. He would have died with Jesus, but Jesus died without him. He wanted to go with Jesus but Jesus went without him. And no