Luke 6:12-26
Warm-up: What’s one of your favorite stories of God answering prayer? Either in your life or somebody else’s.
Luke 6
The Twelve Apostles
12One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. 13When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles: 14Simon (whom he named Peter), his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, 15Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called the Zealot, 16Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.
Blessings and Woes
17He went down with them and stood on a level place. A large crowd of his disciples was there and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coast of Tyre and Sidon, 18who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by evil spirits were cured, 19and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all.
20Looking at his disciples, he said: "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 21Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. 22Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. 23"Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets. 24"But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. 25Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. 26Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets.
What things stand out to you from verses 12-16?
The first thing I notice from this passage is the prayer life of Jesus.
This is the Almighty Son of God. John 1 says 1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning.
3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
If all things were made through Him how come he had to pray to find out which disciples He should pick as Apostles?
In His earthly ministry Jesus had to be dependant on God for everything so that he could be a perfect example in all things to us. He modeled to us how to live. He led the way for us to follow. Jesus was dependant on the Father to do the works of God. Everything He did came as an outflow of relationship and connectedness to the Father.
Jesus said in John 15:5:
"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
To the degree that we become empty of self is the same degree that we become full of Christ. To be full of the Spirit is to be empty of self. Hence John the Baptist could say:
“He must become greater; I must become less.” (John 3:30)
Why do you think he took so long to pray? How do you think the bulk of the time was spent?
I think that there was a choice amount of time taken to consider all the disciples and to see from the Father which ones were chosen by him. Then I think there was much time spent asking the Father as to how to shape them and mold them into a team that would touch the world.
What do you think about the place Jesus went to for this all night prayer time? What does that teach us?
In a parallel passage in Mark there are some additional info that is given to us.
13Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him. 14He appointed twelve--designating them apostles --that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach 15and to have authority to drive out demons (Mark 3:13-15).
Here we see the reasons for Jesus’ appointment, to be with Him and to be sent out in ministry. We can impress people from a distance but to impact them and see them changed into the image of Christ it has to be up close and personal. They saw the real Jesus as they ate, slept, and lived together for approximately 3 years. As a Zone Pastor I have seen Christ changing lives only as I get up close and spend time with them. One can only help people to change as you have relationship with them. Relationship and friendship gives you the right to speak into their lives things that they have not seen about themselves.
Why did Jesus choose these twelve? What stands out about them?
Not a lot when you read through the gospels.
Robert Coleman in his book The Master Plan of Evangelism says:
“For the most part they were common laboring men, probably having no professional training beyond the rudiments of knowledge necessary for their vocation. Perhaps a few of them came from families of some considerable means, such as the sons of Zebedee, but none of them could have been considered wealthy. They had no academic degrees in the arts and philosophies of their day….. By any standard of sophisticated culture then and now they would surely be considered as a rather ragged aggregation of souls. One might wonder how Jesus could ever use them. They were impulsive, temperamental, easily offended, and had all the prejudices of their environment… not the kind of group one would expect to win the world for Christ.”
Yet, from the perspective of the One who sees the very heart of each of us, He saw their availability, that they were flexible, easily taught and dependable.
Does he find those qualities in you and me?
Why did he just call twelve and not 20 or 30?
Pastor Cesar Castellanos received Christ at home in his room as he read the Bible and understood that he was a sinner. He experienced God's cleansing power and was freed of drug and alcohol addiction. Eager to share his faith, he experienced God challenging him to witness and pray for a leprous man. Nothing appeared to happen, but Castellanos was totally convinced that God had touched this diseased man. A few months later, he met this leprous man who had been completely healed.
After several years working as pastor in different churches without seeing much growth, Castellanos quit. For four months he sought God intently. One day as he stood on the beach, God spoke to him and asked what kind of church he wanted. His previous church had less than 120 members, so Castellanos could not imagine a larger church. Then God showed him a vision in which each grain of sand became a person, and suddenly thousands stood before him. God said, "This, and much more, is what I will give you if you follow my perfect will."
In March 1983, he started the church Misión Carismática Internacional - in his living room - with just eight people. Today, 19 years later, the church consists of 30,000 cell groups.
The church is well known for the so-called G12 model, which is a cell group system that God gave Castellanos. The model focuses primarily on cell group growth, the training of new leaders and the maintenance of unity in the church.
Since 1983 news of this church and its model for growth has spread all over the world and contributed to the development of organisations and the raising up of pastors and leaders who have adopted the G12 vision and seen awesome results.[1]
To help people change their lives it must be done through close up ministry. Jesus called the disciples into close up relationship with Himself. He chose them to be His friends. He walked with them in a modeling relationship. People can say what you say but they do what they see you do. We see that in our kids all the time, you who have kids.
What do you get from Luke 6:13?
I notice that he did not go to bed but immediately set the 12 apart from the others calling them apostles, literally it means “sent ones.”
With a night of prayer and communion with God behind him then he went to work.
Verses 17-19 tells us the fruit of his evening of prayer.
What things stand out to you from these verses?
Notice the distances that people had come to hear him and be healed. We are presuming that Jesus here was in the Galilee area, people had come from present day Beirut and from Jerusalem. We are talking about 80 miles of walking. Three days journey. The expectation was high. There had to be a great amount of faith in people that would come that kind of distance to see Jesus. It says “a large crowd” and a “great number,”
How many would that be, do you think?
Verse 19 says that “the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all”
Try to imagine on top of the people clamoring to touch him was the additional problem of demons manifesting in the midst and being cast out.
Ministry can often be messy and draining. The word that is translated “power” in verse 19 is the Greek word “Dunamis” from where we get our English word dynamite and dynamo. Jesus ministered in power and desires that we too do the same. Acts 1:8 tells us “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you” We need the power of God to do the works of God, but it flows out of relationship with Christ, “without me you can do nothing”
Let’s look now at verses 20-26.
These verses take the accepted standards of the world and turn them upside down. The people whom Jesus called happy the world would call wretched; and the people Jesus called wretched the world would call happy.
Just imagine anyone saying, “Happy are the poor, and Woe to the rich!” To talk like that is to put an end to the world’s values altogether. Where then is the key to all of this? It comes in verse 24. There Jesus says, “woe to you who are rich because you have all the comfort you are going to get.” The word Jesus uses for have is the word used for receiving payment in full of an account. What Jesus is saying is this, “if you set your hear and bend your whole energies to obtain the things which this world values, you will get them—but that is all you will ever get.” But if on the other hand you set your heart and bend all your energies to be utterly loyal to God and true to Christ, you will run into all kinds of trouble; you may by the world’s standards look unhappy, but much of your payment is still to come; and it will be joy eternal. William Barclay.
What things stand out to you from these verses?
I see here in this passage an offer to us as to what we want from life. If we choose to focus on pleasing self and what this world offers we will grow up spiritually bankrupt and be found wanting when He returns. Life is not about pleasing self. Happiness and joy are found in pleasing God and focusing our energies on eternal values and cultivating our spiritual lives. If you take the world’s way, you must abandon the values of Christ. If you take Christ’s way, you must abandon the values of the world.
In our passage today we have seen Jesus from three different angles. We saw him praying on the mountaintop, selecting his chosen Apostles, and teaching the vast crowds of people hungering for Him across long distances. Jesus has chosen you and I to take this message to hungry people wherever they will listen.
We can learn three things from these three viewpoints of Christ.
1) When making important decisions, look up, take time out to get alone with God and ask him what to do. Stay there in a place of dependence.
2) When you are looking to build a team of people in whatever endeavor you are entering into, look within. Don’t focus so much on talents and abilities and knowledge, focus on their character. Keep an eye open for inner qualities.
3) When you decide to follow Christ, lay it all on the altar. Matthew 13 says:
44"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
45"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.”
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[1] http://www.ulfekman.org/europe_conference/speakers/cesar_castellanos.htm