Mark 6:6-13 – Jesus Sends Out the Twelve Apostles

Mark 6:6

1. Even though Jesus worked hard and taught everywhere, he could only be in one place at a time. Now Jesus thinks it’s time for the twelve apostles to join in Jesus’ ministry and thus extend Jesus’ teaching.

Mark 6:7

1. The word “apostle” means “sent out”.
2. According to the Pentateuch, every case was to be decided by “the testimony of two or three witnesses” (Deuteronomy 19:15). Jesus sends out his twelve apostles two by two, thus confirming the truthfulness of their testimony. 
3. As Jesus’ special apostles, the apostles represent Jesus himself (Matt 10:40). The same mission and authority that Jesus himself had he passes on to his disciples, which is still true today.

Mark 6:8

1. These instructions are partly different from the other instructions Jesus gives to his disciples (Matt 10:9-10, Luke 9:3).
2. When the apostles were not allowed to take more than the bare essentials, their trust in God was tested. They were challenged to trust God to provide for those who put the kingdom of God first (Matthew 6:31-34). As they preached about the kingdom of God, they learned about the kingdom of God.

Mark 6:11

1. It was not uncommon in Bible times for a Jew to shake off the dust when they left a pagan area. When Jesus tells his disciples to do so when they leave a Jewish village, this signaled that the village was behaving like pagans when they did not listen to the message of the kingdom of God.

Mark 6:12-13

1. What Jesus has begun, the apostles now continue: they preach repentance, cast out evil spirits and heal the sick.
   1. This shows that Jesus’ power and authority is also with his disciples.
      1. Even today, a disciple of Jesus should preach repentance, cast out evil spirits and heal the sick.
   1. The apostles did not preach a message of their own but preached what they had heard Jesus preach.
      1. Even today, a disciple of Jesus should preach the message written in the Bible, and avoid preaching his own made-up message.
2. Anointing the sick with oil was a common way of caring for the sick in biblical times (Isaiah 1:6, Luke 10:34).
   1. Anointing someone with oil was used to install someone as a priest (Ex 28:41) and king (1 Sam 10:1).
   1. The Hebrew word “Messiah” means “the anointed one”, so it is not impossible that Jesus’ disciples anointed people with oil as a symbolic act signaling that they belonged to the Messiah, the anointed one.
   1. James urges those who are sick in the church to call the elders of the church so that they can “pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord” (James 5:14).