Luke 6:12-16

Luke chapter 6, beginning with verse 12, I’m reading through verse 16. And it came to pass in those days that he, in Jesus, went out into a mountain to pray and continued all night and prayer to God. And when it was day, he called unto him his disciples, and of them he was, he called unto him his disciples, chose 12, whom he named Apostles. Simon, whom he also named Peter, and Andrew his brother, James and John, Philip, and Bartholomew, Matthew and Thomas, James the son of Elfias, and Simon called Zeolatus, and Judas, and Judas, the brother of James, and Judas Ascariot, which also was the traitor. May God bless to us his sacred and holy word. This morning, many years ago, there was a person who regularly attended a church. It was pastored by Pastor Bromwell. And he asked an interesting question, how is it that the pastor always seemed to have something new to tell us when he preaches. And the person to whom he asked the question responded in this way. Why, you see Brother Bromwell live so near the gates of heaven that he hears a great many things that we don’t get near enough to hear anything about. Would to God that he would raise up men that would live near the gates of heaven and in close communion with the Savior and could benefit and edify the people of God. We have before us here the account of the choosing of the 12 apostles. Now, the Lord has been engaged in a considerable ministry for some time, the public ministry of advancing the kingdom of God, and his teaching and his miracles have attracted a lot of attention throughout all the land of Israel. He has been fully immersed in the work. We see how busy he has been from these chapters that we have studied. There were opportunities to proclaim the gospel in every direction. Now, Christ had the highest qualifications for this work of the ministry, because he was the anointed one. as Isaiah 11 tells us, the Lord’s anointed, and he pursued it with great wisdom and great energy. Who could do the work better than Christ? However, it was impossible for Christ to be bodily present in more than one place at a time, as that limit is efforts, as He is God in the flesh, the moment as far as his human body he could only be in one place and soon he’s going to be withdrawn from the scene he’s going to a few years here he’s going to be gone completely he’s going to die on the cross he’s going to be resurrected but he’s going to be exalted and sit upon the throne in heaven so he is resolved here to appoint qualified men that carry on the work of the ministry when he is gone. And somewhat while he’s still here, but in preparation for the time, certainly when he will be gone and up to heaven, and they can carry it on. So we have here the choosing of the 12 apostles. Now there are two parts to this. And we’re going to get the first part done this morning. And that is Christ’s preparatory prayer before choosing the 12 apostles. It’s found in verses 12 and 13. Now notice it came to pass in those days that he went out into a mountain to pray and continued all night in prayer. And when it was day he called unto him his disciples and of them he chose 12, whom he also named apostles. Now we see here that Christ engaged in private prayer. He went out into a mountain to pray. In those days, certainly during the time of his ministry, but in particular we see here those days when his enemies were opposing him with the madness that verse 11 talks about, how can we put him to death? How can we stop him? When divine preservation was necessary, so that he might complete his mission, he prays. Luke frequently mentions, if you go through his gospel, how Christ would retire from public eye, in order to get alone, with the Lord, with God, with his father, and pray to him. And so he would engage in this secret, private prayer. It was a common habit with the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus sought, on this occasion, a mountain in order to be in solitude when he pray. The exact mountain is not mentioned here, it must be of little importance, but the idea of what he did and how he did, it is important because it is recording for us. So our Lord was so popular that he could not find a place in a village or the city where he was staying in order he could get alone with the Lord and not be interrupted. Someone was sure to knock at the door with some urgent business and disrupt his prayer. So he goes off out into the wilderness, so to speak, out on top of a mountain, away from everyone that he might pray. He escapes the frenzy of the multitudes and the demand for him and the noise and the distraction of the city so he can be alone. Now, in his case, the mountain here is actually better than the prayer class. In our case, you know, not too many people are going to break down our doors, you know, press us in the manner that he was being pressed. So we can go to our prayer closet, but he needed a more remote prayer closet. So he goes up to the mountain to pray. And in Christ doing this, he provides an example about the importance here of solitude for ourselves when it comes to prayer. We know that Christ was accustomed, according to Scripture, to use strong crying and tears. This wasn’t meant for other human beings to hear. This is a good reason to seek solitude for prayer so that you may pray with utmost fervency that you can cry out to the Lord. about your circumstances. Besides, your goal is not to be seen of men and be held in admiration by them, but to gain the ear of God. And that’s what we would be seeking, so that we can wrestle with God. We could plead our case before him. Jesus taught you to pray in secret in the sermon of the Mount, and he has furnished many examples of doing so. in his own life. Charles Head and Spurgeon have a habit of shutting himself in his study to make ready for the Sabbath on Saturday evenings. It is strict rule that no one was to disturb him under any circumstances that he might commune with God. Well, one Saturday night, someone came to his house and desired to see him despite being informed of Spurgeon’s rule. So the maid came to Spurgeon’s study door, knocked, and informed the pastor that someone wished to see him. Spurgeon said, I bade her to say that it was my rule that no one will see me at that particular time. Then the visitor claimed to be even more important and special and said, tell Mr. Spursion that a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ desires his immediate presence. The frightened servant brought that message to Spurgeon. Spurgeon’s reply was, well, tell him, I’m busy with the master, and I can’t see servants right now. I’m alone, you know, with the master. Now, since you are prone to be interrupted, that’s the way life is, phone calls and children and everything else, we need to find some time where we can get a little bit of life is. alone and pray to the Lord. So he engaged in private prayer. Now we’re also told that he engaged in protracted prayer. Verse 12, the second part tells us, and he continued all night and prayer to God. I’m sure that you and I perhaps find a half an hour or an hour more common for our prayer time. But this is a lot of you and I perhaps find a half an hour or an hour more common more common more common more common more common. This was a special occasion, as we’re going to see in a moment. So Christ continued all night in prayer because an important decision was going to be made. He was going to select disciples to be apostles. I don’t think that we’re bound to pray long as a general rule. Ecclesiastes 5, 2 says, be not rash with thy mouth. let not thine heart be hasty to honor anything before God, for God is in heaven and thou upon earth, therefore let thy words be few. But there are occasions when there are compelling reasons to engage in protracted prayer. By the aid of the Holy Spirit, it is actually possible to pray for a long time moved by sacred zeal. And when your soul is groaning under trials or sufferings or hardships or hardships, when you have an important decision to make, your prayers will automatically be lengthened. You’ll find that to be the case. Do you remember David, after he had committed his great sin with Vashe? and tried to cover it up and killed her husband, and he was rebuked by Nathan the prophet. One aspect of the divine judgment on his household was that the child also that is born unto thee shall die. And sadly, when Bashiba gave birth, you read that child was very sick. And we read that David immediately engaged in protracted prayer, seeking the child. life to be spared and how we’re told that he besought God for the child and he fasted and lay all night upon the earth. As he later revealed while the child was yet alive, he said, I fasted and wept for I said, who can tell whether God will be gracious to me that the child may live? Who could tell? I don’t know. Maybe God will relent and have mercy. So such trials and hardships. cause you to engage in protracted prayer. So there are times when we might have to wrestle a long time with God in prayer or when we’re seeking direction for a situation that we’re in. I wish you and I had as much delight in communing with God the Father as Christ, seems to have in the scriptures. This is an area that certainly needs, I think, more development by ourselves. You might say to me this morning, well, Pastor, I don’t think I could ever pray that long. Well, let me say this. Your prayers may be extended by, first, the adoration of your God. If you begin to think and meditate upon the attributes of God, and perhaps thank the Lord for some of the attributes in how they have been used to your benefit, you know, and how he is taking care of you, or whatever the case may be. That’s one way we think about who God is. We adore him for the God that He is. Another way is we recapitulate through our mind all the precious promises of the Word of God that God has given us. Thank him for those promises. Ask him to be. fulfill those promises. Consider the state of God’s kingdom in the world. When we think about not just ourselves, we go beyond ourselves, we think about, well, what about China? What about Indonesia? What about Brazil? Ecuador? Where the missionaries are. You know, what about what’s happening there? other places around the world. We think about the kingdom of God and other states and so forth. Remembering the needs of your brothers and sisters. Instead of being narrowly focused on what my needs are, we also begin to think, well, what about the other members of the church? What are their needs? I think if you had a lot more people in the church, it’d be a lot more prayers. We’ve already had it. Look at the extensive list that we have now in our prayer. I can’t even get through them all at one time without even. just briefly mentioning them. There’s so many. You know, at home, I have to break them into sections, so that I can cover them better. And so when you think about all, these are all areas of prayer for us. You can confess your sin in more detail. If you look at Psalm 51, David not only confesses his sin, but he goes to the origin of his sin. boy, I was born depraved. And sin did my mother conceive me and so forth. And then he talks about the evilness of what he’s done. And how it has affected others. You think about, you know, he’s hoping at the end there, he talks about that I may be a testimony to other people. But look at the disgrace he brought on the kingdom of God, how it affected his family because of his sin. It’s all these things we think about. our sin and what we need to confess about it. Being thankful for God’s goodness to you. Count your blessings. Name them one by one. Pleading to be strengthened spiritually. Our inner man needs strengthened every day with regard to all the attacks of the world, the flesh, the devil upon it, we need some type of fortification. And only God. can provide that. Lifting up those who are lost around you. Think about your neighbors. Think about your relatives. Think about people that you know who need Christ. There’s a whole field of people to pray about. Seeking God’s enablement to pray better. We don’t know how to pray as we ought to. We should pray that God would enable us to pray better. To have a maybe to meditate a little bit more on how we see people in Scripture. praying. Desiring God’s providential protection from sin and Satan and the world as we go through this life. So if you went through a lot of these things and you incorporated them into your prayer, you could pray a long time and uncover all these things. But let me simplify this down to this point. Knowledge of the scripture always bears fruit when it comes to your prayer. our life. Because if you have knowledge of what Paul would pray for, let’s say, for the church in Corinth or the church in Ephesus, well, those are the kinds of things we want to pray for. So it’s not wise to be ignorant of Scripture. If you want to pray well, you need to have knowledge of what to pray for. And it’s impossible. I don’t think you can pray well unless you know the scriptures and what we ought to pray for because we don’t always know what we should pray for. Prayer can be extended also by repeating your petition several times. Now, I’m not speaking here of vain repetition where we sort of chant or we go through, mindlessly go through the same type of prayer, well-rehearsed phrases over and over again like the rosary or something of this nature. But you remember on this. the night of Christ’s betrayal. When he was in the Garden of Gassimony, he took Peter, James, and John off along with him sort of separately. And then he left those three to pray as he went alone to pray. Father, if thou be willing remove this cup from me, nevertheless, not my will, but thy will be done. As he earnestly prays here, and the sweat pours off of him by great drops of blood falling to the ground because he’s so earnest in his prayers. It’s an intense prayer. He stops. He goes and checks on the disciples where they fall asleep. Watch and pray that you enter into temptation. He goes off again, he prays. And the Bible tells us he prays the same prayer. Or a similar, similar type of prayer. Using some of the same words. it’s all about his upcoming death and in his preparation for that. He felt the need to keep going back to the throne of grace several times. Three times, it seems. Now there are occasions when perhaps when we’ve prayed, we’ve not obtained peace yet. Maybe we don’t feel like we’ve got the year of God yet about our prayer, you know, what we’re praying about. We may go back and go over the ground again. See, you feel compelled to seek the Lord’s face like Christ maybe a second or third time until you’re satisfied that you’ve prevailed enough. So, he engaged in protracted prayer and there are times we will have to engage in protracted prayer. And certainly we could all pray longer and better than we do. The third thing, is that he engaged in purposeful prayer. In verse 13, we read this, and when it was day he called unto him as disciples, and of them he chose 12, whom also he named apostles. We have the choosing of the 12 apostles. Now we’re not specifically told what the subjects were of Christ’s prayer here. We’re not told what he was actually praying about, and all the details. We’re just not privy to that. Yet considering the context, considering the great importance of choosing these men for the work of the ministry, to be his apostles here, I think we have a good idea of why he spent this time in prayer. You have sufficient grounds to believe, I think, that the subject of the calling in the ordination of the of the apostles occupied an important place in Christ’s prayers throughout the night. Jesus had once said to his disciples, pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that he would send forth laborers into his harvest. Matthew 558, or Matthew 958, or 38, 938. What he told them to do, he does himself. And our text, I think, is a case in point. Before he chooses these 12 men, he sought powers and gifts from on high for them. Who can tell what blessings were vouchs safe for the apostles at this time while Christ was pleading on their behalf, this all-night intercession? He was a to extend his ministry. He was about to expand beyond his one tongue, and he wouldn’t take such a step without long, continued prayer. You can imagine Christ pleading for them to be kept honest in heart, and wholly in life, and so forth. Now, he knows that one of them, of course, is the traitor, but for the others, he certainly is engaged that they would be preserved in faith and doctrine and not be turned aside to error in false ways. That success might attend their preaching. They may be guided on their way and so forth. The choosing of the 12 apostles. Now when we look at this, I hope perhaps we can look at this with a light to the choosing here of church officers. There is no doubt that there is a deep significance to what Christ did on this occasion. It was intended to be a personal lesson and certainly a perpetual lesson for the Church of Christ in all ages. Ernest prayer should always proceed the appointment of an officer, an elder, even a deacon, to the church. The church must be careful. Not to lay hands suddenly on any man. On any man. We have to pray that the Lord would grant the gifts that are necessary for the work. First, the church should continuously pray that the Lord would raise up men for the ministry. Secondly, unless the Lord calls in gifts men for the work, they’re going to be unfit for the ministry. So we need to be gifted and that God would grant men gifts that we may see those gifts, recognize these gifts, and say, well, yes, this person is someone that God has gifted to teach and preach his word. Unless we do this, it’s going to be disastrous for the church. So we need men move by the Holy Spirit to do this work and be granted the qualifications to do it. If the church is to have good ministers, we have to remember Christ’s example and we need to pray for them. Now when God gifted men are raised up, they need to be set apart in a special way for the work. You know, Scripture says in Acts 1423 and when they had ordained elders in every city and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord on whom they believed. So the work of the ministry is not an easy task, and these men need to be upheld in prayer. Great wisdom and discernment is necessary for the work of the ministry. This study and the proclamation of God’s word requires a spiritual mindset, a divine illumination. The burden of the work of the ministry can be heavy, and there is, I think, a great responsibility to it because we have to give an account of the Chief Shepherd of the state of the floor. the minister is a special target of Satan. He’s going to be buffeted by Satan. He’s going to be attacked by Satan. We need prayer to be kept from the evil one. Do you preserve from harm from the devil and from his agents? The minister’s strength is small. He always needs to be strengthened. We’re human beings. And if we’re not strengthened with might and or inner man, how can we fulfill the work of the ministry? There is a tremendous, this need for faith, for love, for patience, and humility in doing this task. Nothing is easy about the work of the ministry. So when we think about this, and look at the book of Acts Chapter 13, you think about Paul and Barnabas being called to do the ministry abroad here from the land of Samaria, we read here in chapter 13 in verses 1 to 3 3. Now there were in the church that was in Antioch certain prophets and teachers as Barnabas and Simon that is called Niger and Lucius of Cyrene and Manian which had been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch and Saul. And they ministered to the Lord and fasted. And the Holy Ghost said, Separate me, Barnabas and Saul, for the work where unto I have called them. And when they had fasted and prayed and laid hands on them, they sent them away. So here they are. They’re praying about it. God says, these are the two I want. And then they’re appointed to the task, and sort of they’re ordained. It was we see. here. And then they’re sent away after prayer. If you look at Acts Chapter 6, when we read about the deacons being chosen. Verse 3, we read, Wherefore, brother, look ye out among you, seven men of honest report full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business that’s caring for the widows, and so forth. And then verse 5 and and the saying pleased the whole multitude and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Procorius, and Nicanor, and Tyman, and Parmenius, and Nicholas, a proselyte of Antioch, whom they set before the apostles, and when they had prayed, they laid hands on. Again, prayer is an important part, the setting apart of these men for this work. And so we have the example here with regard to choosing, I think, church officers. We also could draw the idea of the general need of prayer in the church. You desire to help forward the kingdom of God in this world, then you have to pray especially for the elders. Let’s remember what our Savior said, without me, you can do nothing. John 15. That’s a good thing to remember. Nothing gets done without the power of God’s Spirit. Christ gisses church with pastors and teachers so that the people of God may be edified. When you come to hear the Word of God preached on the Sabbath day, you know what your best preparation for that is prayer. Not only that your heart would be receptive, to the preaching, but that God would grant wisdom and understanding of the pastor that he may preach something of use and edification for your benefit. Do you pray for God’s blessing upon the one that’s proclaiming the word? Do you pray that you would have ears to hear? Do you pray for those who may be lost who sit under the word? That they might be saved, that their eyes may be opened. Every Christian endeavor needs to be commenced by prayer continued by, prayer and we might even say crown by prayer. Everything involves prayer. Let’s remember the warning of James. You have not because you ask not. James 4.2. If we want God’s blessing, we have to ask for it and seek it continuously. And so here is the fact that Christ engaged in purposeful prayer. So we have the third part here of the message. Well, how is it that Pastor Bromwell seemed to have something new to say? Well, as one of his members said, well, he lives so near the gates of heaven that he hears things that he can relate to us. Well, would to God that he would raise up men who lived near the gates of heaven we were in communion with Christ and therefore can give us both new and old things from the Word of God. To that end, the church must pray. So it would be qualified, that would have qualified ministers to lead it and supplied with those ministers on a regular basis. For men come and go. They live and they die. There’s always a new generation and always a need for new men to be raised up to preach the word. Well, let us close.