Getting to Know Jesus#13

In our survey of getting to know Jesus, we have seen Him become more and more popular with people, and at the same time becoming more of a problem for the religious leaders. In the middle of Luke 6 we find Him doing what Luke points out often: getting away to pray:
12 In these days he went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God. 13 And when day came, he called his disciples and chose from them twelve, whom he named apostles: 14 Simon, whom he named Peter, and Andrew his brother, and James and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew, 15 and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon who was called the Zealot, 16 and Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

How did Jesus narrow down the crowd of people to a strange assortment of twelve men? He and the Father talked about it. It was not a matter of Him choosing followers; it was a matter of choosing apostles: those He would send out as His ambassadors of the Kingdom of God. We have gotten glimpses of how some of them became followers, like Simon's experiences with his mother-in-law being healed, Jesus using his boat to preach from, and the big catch of fish, or Jesus just walking up to Levi's tax table. But as to why these twelve - that's something only the Father and Son knew.  The important thing for Luke, and Theophilus to whom he was writing, is that these were real men, with real lives, whom Jesus used to get the world asking questions and turning the world upside down.