Chapter 30—“He Ordained Twelve”
This chapter is based on
Mark 3:13-19
;
Mark 6:12-16
.
“And He goeth up into a mountain, and calleth unto Him whom He
would: and they came unto Him. And He ordained twelve, that they
should be with Him, and that He might send them forth to preach.”
It was beneath the sheltering trees of the mountainside, but a little
distance from the Sea of Galilee, that the twelve were called to the
apostolate, and the Sermon on the Mount was given. The fields and
hills were the favorite resorts of Jesus, and much of His teaching was
given under the open sky, rather than in the temple or the synagogues.
No synagogue could have received the throngs that followed Him;
but not for this reason only did He choose to teach in the fields and
groves. Jesus loved the scenes of nature. To Him each quiet retreat
was a sacred temple.
It was under the trees of Eden that the first dwellers on earth had
chosen their sanctuary. There Christ had communed with the father
of mankind. When banished from Paradise, our first parents still
worshiped in the fields and groves, and there Christ met them with the
gospel of His grace. It was Christ who spoke with Abraham under
the oaks at Mamre; with Isaac as he went out to pray in the fields at
[291]
the eventide; with Jacob on the hillside at Bethel; with Moses among
the mountains of Midian; and with the boy David as he watched his
flocks. It was at Christ’s direction that for fifteen centuries the Hebrew
people had left their homes for one week every year, and had dwelt in
booths formed from the green branches “of goodly trees, branches of
palm trees, and the boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook.”
Leviticus 23:40
.
In training His disciples, Jesus chose to withdraw from the confu-
sion of the city to the quiet of the fields and hills, as more in harmony
with the lessons of self-abnegation He desired to teach them. And
during His ministry He loved to gather the people about Him under
the blue heavens, on some grassy hillside, or on the beach beside the
239