As well as certain women!

Luke 8:1-3

After that, Jesus travelled through the country, town by town, and village by village, preaching the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him, as well as certain women, who had been cured from evil spirits and from illnesses. There was Mary, who is called Mary Magdalene, out of whom there went seven devils, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, who was Herod's agent, and Susanna and many others. It was their habit to minister to their needs out of their resources.

Food for thought!

Jesus is on the road. The synagogues were not now open to him, as once they had been. He had begun, as it were, in the church, where any man with a message from God might expect to find a responsive and receptive audience. Instead of a welcome he had found opposition; instead of eager listeners he had found the scribes and Pharisees bleakly waiting to catch him out; so now he took to the open road and the hillside and the lake shore.

And Jesus is not alone. Besides men, this passage lists a little group of women who served him out of their resources. But, as with the disciples, so with these women, we cannot fail to see how mixed a company they were. There was Mary Magdalene, that is Mary from the town of Magdala, out of whom he had cast seven devils. Clearly she had a past that was a dark and terrible thing. There was Joanna. She was the wife of Chuza, the official who looked after the king's financial interests. It is an amazing thing to find Mary Magdalene, with the dark past, and Joanna, the lady of the court, in the one company.

It is one of the supreme achievements of Jesus that he can enable the most diverse people to live together without in the least losing their own personalities or qualities. Only Jesus can make the lion lie down with the lamb, as Isaiah prophesied:

Isa 11:6-8

6 The wolf will romp with the lamb, the leopard sleep with the kid. Calf and lion will eat from the same trough, and a little child will tend them.

7 Cow and bear will graze the same pasture, their calves and cubs grow up together, and the lion eat straw like the ox. 8 The nursing child will crawl over rattlesnake dens, the toddler stick his hand down the hole of a serpent.

This text is too lightly interpreted. It is constantly assumed ... that when the lion lies down with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like. But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb. That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the lamb. The real problem is --Can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal ferocity? That is the issue; that is the miracle Jesus achieved and achieves. He can make different people live in harmony together. Jesus is our peace.

In this list of women we have a group whose help was practical. Being women, at that time as like today, they would not be allowed to preach; but they gave the gifts they had. They helped Jesus in his ministry. Yes, in the company of every great man, there is a great woman. Even in the company of Jesus there were great women. It is not always the person in the foreground who is doing the greatest work. Many a man could hardly survive one week without the help of a woman in his company! Many women today are in the background, unseen but essential to us men.  GOD said, "It's not good for the Man to be alone; I'll make him a helper, a companion." (Gen. 2:18)