Luke chapter 6 and we're reading
from verse 12. And it came to pass in those
days that he went out into a mountain to pray, that's the Lord Jesus,
and continued all night in prayer to God. And when it was day,
he called unto him his disciples, and of them he chose twelve,
whom also 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 Alphaeus, and Simon called
Zolotes, and Judas the brother of James, and Judas Iscariot,
which also was the traitor. And he came down with them and
stood in the plain and the company of his disciples and a great
multitude of people out of all Judea and Jerusalem and from
the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon which came to hear him and to
be healed of their diseases. and they that were vexed with
unclean spirits, and they that were vexed with unclean spirits,
and they were healed. And the whole multitude sought
to touch him, for there went virtue out of him and healed
them all. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. It's notable how often the evangelists
make reference to Jesus' prayers and I'm sure that there's something
exemplary in this. The Lord led by example and it
is encouraging to his people to follow him by themselves maintaining
a personal and intimate communion with God the Father through prayer. And that's part of why we're
gathered here today. We come to fellowship, we come
to study the word together, and we come to pray together. speaking
to him, speaking to the Lord, bringing our concerns and our
requests and our difficulties to the throne of grace, just
as the Lord himself has taught us. And it really is a beautiful
little phrase, the throne of grace. I suspect we use it a
lot. and rightly so, but I suspect
we also use it sometimes rather thoughtlessly. It just trips
off our tongue with the ease of familiarity. But what a beautiful
little phrase it is. The throne of grace. May we never become so familiar
with scripture that we stop noticing what it actually says. The throne
of grace is the place where God dwells in his majesty and in
his authority and from which a plenitude of grace, an abundance
of goodness and mercy is dispensed. The writer to the Hebrews says,
let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace that
we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. I'm sure that the Lord was setting
an example to his disciples with these solitary occasions of prayer
and worship. when they knew that he had gone
alone to pray. But I think too that there was
also a felt need by the Lord himself in his humanity for fellowship
with his Father and the opportunity to ask for help for himself and
for his disciples. And no doubt this night of prayer
that we have here in our passage is connected with the imminent
choosing and sending out of the apostles that would occur the
following morning. And thereafter, Christ's powerful
Sermon on the Mount both matters that would lie heavy on the Lord's
heart and mind during his time of prayer. And if that is indeed
the case, we have here a delightful example of the Lord interceding
for his church, soliciting care and protection to enable the
apostles to fulfil their role and accomplish their tasks. And
we also see the Lord communing with his Father as he prepared
to preach and to declare the many things that are recorded
in this significant sermon that the Lord Jesus Christ and God
the Holy Spirit has committed to the Church of all ages. We know that the Lord went alone
to this task. and that he continued in it all
night. He desired, he required no audience. The Pharisees liked to pray on
street corners so that all could see them and admire their religious
dedication. By praying for hours on end in
the night season, The Lord showed true dedication to his friends
and to his obligations and to his office and to his desire
for unity with his Father. As the day broke, the Lord called
his disciples or his followers to himself. A large number waited
for him to reappear and he commissioned on this occasion the 12 whom
he specially calls as apostles or messengers. And Luke now gives
us a list of their names. It's interesting that for all
the importance given to these men, in Scripture and the formative
role that they fulfilled in the expansion of the Church and its
Gospel ministry. There's no definitive list of
their names and identity, nor any record of their respective
ministries. Many of them appear to have had
several names, and several of them have names in common so
that we find ourselves confronted by different lists in the Acts
of the Apostles and in each of the Synoptic Gospels. And sometimes
we have to make assumptions about who is meant. We know a bit about
a few of these men, but mostly we neither know how they lived
or where they ministered or how they died. The principal meaning, however,
is that these men were specifically called by the Lord, authorised
and sent as messengers and missionaries of his cause. They are the men
to whom Christ gave authority to act in his name by preaching
the kingdom, by performing miracles, and by casting out devils. Their
names are generally taken as Peter and Andrew, James and John,
Philip and Bartholomew, who also seems to have been called Nathaniel,
Thomas, who's sometimes called Didymus, he was the doubter when
the Lord Jesus Christ had died and rose again. There's Matthew,
who's also called Levi. There's Simon the Canaanite,
who is also called Zelotes. There's James the Less, who goes
by the son of Alphaeus, or the brother of the Lord. There's
Jude, the brother of James. And finally, there's Judas Iscariot,
or as Luke calls him here, Judas the traitor. After the Lord's death, Matthias
was elected in the place of this Judas, Judas the traitor. And collectively, this group
is called the Twelve. The apostle Paul, though an apostle,
was not numbered amongst the 12. And in Acts, the Acts of
the Apostles, there are others, for example, Silas and Barnabas
and Apollos, who are called apostles in the sense that they had a
similar role as messengers and missionaries of the gospel. In
verse 17, we read that the Lord, still in this mountain, came
and stood on a plain or a large flat area that was suitable for
speaking to a large crowd. And he called around him the
Twelve and addition a large group of his followers and also we
are told many others who came to hear him preach and to be
healed at his hand of their illnesses and spiritual troubles or their
vexations. Now it is Christ Now it is that Christ preaches
what has come to be known as the Sermon on the Mount. This
is the moment in which that sermon is now preached. So he had spent
the night before the Sermon on the Mount praying alone in the
mountaintop to his father. Now it's recorded, this sermon
is recorded more fully in Matthew chapter five through to seven. Here, Luke calls what follows
in the rest of this chapter, the Lord's sayings. And the rest
of the chapter contains the Lord's words as he preached the gospel
to this gathered multitude on the mountainside. It was a large
and it was a diverse congregation. We're told that it came from
Judea and Jerusalem and from the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon. So it's clear that the fame of
the Lord had spread widely and there was great interest in his
ministry and great hope for his help. We might wish that there
was such enthusiasm for the gospel today, but we may be sure that
the Lord is continuing to gather and convert such as should be
saved and bringing them into his kingdom. In Luke, in verse
19, Luke tells us that as well as hearing the Lord's doctrine,
There was a great clamour to touch the Lord's person because
the people had learned by experience how if one touched the Lord or
touched his garment, then healing could be expected. Luke says
that the whole multitude sought to touch him. for there went
virtue out of him and he healed them all. What extraordinary
days those were. A mix of fervour and wonder and
excitement at the healing and the freedom from demonic bondage
that was being experienced by so very many people at this time. And at the same time, a lively
doctrine being preached of heavenly truth. A gospel by which the
sins of men and women were confronted and forgiven and their lives
transformed through Christ's ministry. It's no wonder that
the Lord addressed these people as blessed. And it's just with
that thought that I want to close our study today. We are, you and I and the Lord's people in
general, we are indeed a blessed people who have been called by
grace to know the soul healing and spiritual life that is in
Jesus Christ. There are in this world countless
millions of people, it would appear, who know nothing of Christ's
saving grace. And yet, amongst them all, a
few have been brought to trust in the Saviour for forgiveness
of sin and righteousness with God through the Lord Jesus Christ's
death. And well might we wonder and
inquire, why me, Lord? And yet here it is. We've seen
how according to The Lord's own will, he chose 12, whom he also
named apostles. So too, by free grace and sovereign
mercy, he has chosen a people to call his own, whom he has
brought to a knowledge of the truth and given it to them to
believe. And yet, we note this as well. Virtue went out of him to the
whole multitude who sought to touch him. What a lovely thought
that is. This is the blessedness of our
message to men and women in the world today. This is our gospel
to the world. There is hope for the hopeless,
there's healing for the sick of soul, there's enduring riches
for the poor in spirit, there is bread from heaven for the
hungry, living water for all who thirst after righteousness,
there is spiritual life for those dead in trespasses and sin. Christ said in John chapter six,
all that the Father giveth me shall come to me and him that
cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. I started by remarking
how Christ taught us by example to come boldly to the throne
of grace. And we're going to finish by
realising that Christ himself is that throne of grace. He is
the mercy seat whence all God's riches flow to sinners, called
to new life by the Holy Spirit in the Gospel. We are blessed
to be partakers of God's grace and mercy. We are blessed to
have touched Christ and been touched by him. to be healed
at his hand from the terminal disease of sin and quickened
together with him. May we understand the privilege
and the blessedness of our condition and our state and give thanks
as the Lord enables us. Amen. Amen.