Luke 6:12-26

In these trying times there’s an almost hostile opposition against the Bible. But, part of being a Christ follower is to learn to listen to the Lord’s voice, and to make ourselves available to Him, no matter what the world is telling us to do.

This morning, Father, we pray that you would work it in Lord God.
To us like father, you would rub salt, Lord into meat as in the days of all to, to preserve it and to cleanse it and to make it right.
We pray Lord God that your word. We would see the effects.
Lord as we get into it and as we live it out in our lives for, we ask it Lord in Jesus name and all God’s people said, amen.
Listen, let’s grab our bibles then and turn to Luke chapter six this morning.
And if you don’t have a bible, raise your hand and the ushers will give you a bible this morning.
It’s important that you follow along with us. Luke chapter six. And we are in a study entitled this morning.
The people God can use the people God can use.
And so as you’re getting ready for this message, we’ll go as far as we can this morning.
It is a large portion of scripture, but it is extremely important and for many reasons.
But perhaps, maybe this is the most important one for us to hear as we get started whenever we have a statement or a question or it’s put forth to us who or what are the kind of people that God can use?
We immediately, if you’re anything like me, we immediately excuse ourselves from being in the ranks of those who can be used by God.
We’ve got 1000 reasons why each of us cannot be used by God and all of those reasons, let me agree with you for our lives together.
All of those reasons are probably pretty good.
We can’t do this, we can’t do the other or we’ve never done this or we’ve never done that.
But it doesn’t take long in reading the Bible where you come to where God does not accept our excuses.
And I’m not saying that in a bad way or a heavy way.
It’s not that he says I don’t accept that excuse and you know boo on you, you know, he says I’m not going to accept that excuse, Jack, that you’re offering up to me because you see, I fully plan and I intend to do something about that.
I will take Jack all of your weaknesses and I’m going to use you anyway.
And that’s true for your life.
It would be wrong for you to walk around in your Christianity and to look at people who you deem to be those that are being used by God.
Oh, look, there’s a woman being used by God or there’s a man being used by God.
It would be wrong for you to think that they have somehow achieved to some status with God that they have in some way earned God’s usage.
That’s not the way it works.
This is something that we have to unlearn as Christians that God takes, in fact turn in your Bibles before we get going into this.
Look at first Corinthians chapter one verse 26.
It’s a great introduction to where we’re going in these studies before us.
First Corinthians chapter one verse 26 Paul, the apostle who was an extreme achiever, by the way, everything that Paul accomplished, he threw it away for Jesus first Corinthians 1 26 Paul says, for you see your calling brethren that not many wise according to the flesh that is not many wise have been called not many mighty, not many noble, but God has chosen the foolish things of this world to put, to shame.
The wise God has chosen the weak things in this world to put, to shame those things that are mighty and the base things of the world that the things which are despised.
God has chosen and the things which are not to bring to pass or to bring to nothing, those things that are steamed or looked at to be something.
The reason why verse 29 says that no flesh should glory in God’s presence.
As we look to this portion of scripture. We see Jesus now calling out of the group of disciples?
He calls 12 that become apostles. Did they go to Apostle training classes?
Did they take a correspondence course or did they somehow have some special insight? Who are these guys?
And how is it that they got selected to be apostles?
If we were back then in the crowd of disciples, would we have been picked?
Would 12 of us have been picked as apostles?
That answer is solely in the sovereign hand of God Almighty.
In fact, Jesus, we shall see in our study finds the answer as to who shall the 12 be while he’s in prayer to his father in heaven.
And so this morning, I want you to be encouraged as we look to the scripture that’s before us.
Verse 12 chapter six, it says now it came to pass in those days that he went out to the mountain to pray and he continued all night in prayer to God.
And when it was day, he Jesus called his disciples to himself and from them, he chose 12 whom he also named apostles verse 14, Simon whom he also named Peter Andrew, his brother James and John Philip and Bartholomew, Matthew and Thomas James, the son of Alpheus and Simon called the zealot or Zelotes Judas, the son of James and Judas Ascari, who also became a traitor verse 17.
And he came down with him and stood on a level plane or a smooth spot with a crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all of Judah and Jerusalem and from the sea coast of Tyre and si who came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases.
And as well as those who were tormented with unclean spirits and they were healed and the whole multitude sought to touch him for power, went out from him and healed them all.
Then he lifted up his eyes toward his disciples and said, blessed. Are you poor for yours?
Is the kingdom of God. Blessed. Are you who hunger now for? You shall be filled? Blessed.
Are you who weep for? You shall laugh.
Blessed are you when men hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and cast out your name as evil for the son of man’s sake, rejoice in that day and leap for joy for indeed your reward is great in heaven for in like manner their fathers did to the prophets but woe to you who are rich for you have received your consolation woe to you who are full for you shall hunger and woe to you who laugh now for you shall mourn and weep and woe when all men speak well of you for so did their fathers to the false prophets.
Strong words. It begins with an incredible season of prayer where Jesus spends all night before God.
Then there is the calling out of the apostles from the vast group of disciples.
And then there is the blessedness of following God.
And we’re gonna learn about that probably in the next couple of weeks, the blessedness of knowing Him and how God works his character in your life.
God does that. And then there’s the warning against those who reject by no means is Jesus in the negative saying that if you’re rich, you can’t get saved.
That if you’re a fool right now or you know that there’s no need, he’s going to be speaking to these things on a very, very high level.
And that high level is a spiritual level. He’s not talking about material things.
But before we ever get to that, we want to learn a few things this morning and who are the people?
And can I be the person that God uses because we have the list of these names and then we have the blessedness of following Christ.
And then we have the curses that we impose upon ourselves by not following him. My friend this morning.
There are invitations for you to follow all kinds of religious leaders. They’re growing.
It seems by the month around the world, there is all kinds of new age messiahs being born.
There are people being bowed down to and people being exalted and people with high lineage and mysterious backgrounds that are being heralded as mankind’s savior.
And most of these are taking place in third world countries where there’s strange demonic manifestations and events that are leading people astray.
Here, we have the Bible and Jesus gives one of the most pronounced and clear and often warned about teachings in the Bible, about the blessedness of God and about the dangers of not following God.
But it all comes together when Jesus begins to pray and I, I know that you are Bible students.
So I’m gonna want you to pay close attention.
Look at verses 12 to 16 with me this morning and who are the people that God can use? Well.
The first thing that we realize uh regarding the people that God uses is that number one, is this the people that Jesus calls to come, you cannot be used by God unless Jesus is calling you to come and follow Him.
That’s what we see here. Notice this Jesus is announcing to the crowd for the apostles.
They don’t even know they’re apostles yet they’re in the crowd.
He’s gonna call upon them to come out from the crowd of disciples.
Apparently you are first a disciple and then God graduates you to other things. And that’s normal.
A disciple is simply to be a follower of Jesus, a student of his one that uh actually listens to or sits at the feet of the master teaching.
That’s Jesus. He teaches you the word of God the Bible and you’re listening to Him and you follow Him.
You are a disciple if you are a student of Jesus.
But then from that moment, the Lord will take his disciples and grow them up.
And in this case, Jesus is bringing about the birth of a church.
But the people that Jesus calls are those to whom God can use.
So the question is for you and I is God calling me, is Jesus calling me? Am I listen?
Am I being curious at all? Am I interested in Jesus being my messiah?
Am I interested in following Jesus Christ? You can never be one whom God uses.
And I’m saying who God uses unless Jesus calls you. How is that true?
Look at verse 12, Jesus simply responds to his father’s voice. This is very fun.
It’s very beautiful and I hope we get something out of this. It says in verse 12.
Now it came to pass in those days. Can you mark that church in those days?
What came to pass in those days? And, and what’s with those days?
It’s a very important statement as you’ve been going through this study.
We have been learning that every time Jesus opens his mouth and speaks, teaches, does a miracle who is there to oppose him?
Remember we know by now describes in the Pharisees, the professional religionist will always attack a work of God because it threatens their domain.
It threatens their territory, it threatens their earthly or human power. And now Jesus is moving with dynamic.
He’s moving with the anointing of the spirit of God.
And God is going through him and the kingdom is being exposed to all those who will listen and those who will receive.
Jesus is growing up a church, but the religious scribes and Pharisees are fighting him.
And remember in our last study together, they now sought opportunity as to how they might kill him.
That’s why it says now it came to pass in those days at the height of persecution.
Thus far, Jesus does something. Church listen in those days when life becomes tough and people are attacking your Christianity.
When uh there’s all kinds of stuff out there that should be considered as ridiculous.
People are adhering to example the Da Vinci Code movie. Oh boy, people are coming out.
Oh, I didn’t know this about Jesus. It’s a movie made up by a nutcase.
It’s not real but people who don’t want to receive Christ or believe in Christ will believe anything but the Christ, they’ll read anything or see anything but the Bible, God’s holy word.
So listen, when you’re under attack, when the Bible is under attack, when Jesus is under attack, does the Bible fold up and blow away?
No. Does Jesus run away? No, does the church implode? No.
When God, the Holy Spirit is at work, there is a resiliency that comes up against the forces of darkness and the forces of evil.
And this is what we see happening here.
Now it came to pass in those days, you can answer it in your bible margin off to the side in the days of opposition.
Whenever we’re opposed, we don’t have to be afraid of that.
We can just know that God knows how to handle that.
And by the way, while we’re at that, I would think that in the days that you and I live in personally, this is my conviction.
I could be wrong, but I doubt it.
I see more and more opposition to what you and I believe than ever before in my lifetime.
You guys, I grew up in Orange County where it was very cool to be a Christian.
I got saved in the seventies. It was very cool to be saved.
Everybody wore Jesus shirts and there was, remember K Y M K Y MS Radio one oh 6.3 K Y MS.
It was the Christian radio station.
Everybody had Christian cars with Christian stickers and Christian skateboards and Christian, everything was Christian.
And if you went to church, you were cool and uh that’s gone, those days are gone.
But that’s not the only thing I’m talking about.
I’m talking about now, if you take a stand for Jesus, you’re gonna get it, you’re going to be mocked, you’re going to be ridiculed.
You are one of those people and you believe this silly old book and what’s wrong with you anyway, and you’re going to come against a world of opposition and I don’t want to bum you out so early in the morning.
But I think we’re going to get more opposition before the Lord ever returns. It’s going to get tougher harder.
It’s going to be more difficult to be a Christian personally. I welcome that.
Here’s the reason why there are a lot of people that kind of just traffic around church because it’s a social thing when we start to get attacked for our faith.
When people begin to speak all manner of evil against us, for Jesus sake, the church is going to become more purified as persecution comes.
I am gonna say something that you that you might find surprising, but it is true.
Don’t think for a moment that Satan gets up in the morning and rubs his little claws together and says, oh boy, I gotta, I gotta start some persecution today.
I think if you look at history, Satan is not stupid.
Every time there’s an outbreak of persecution against God’s people. Does anybody know what happens to the church?
When persecution comes? Anybody, it grows wider and it grows deeper mainly deeper. It grows in depth.
Satan doesn’t wake up and say, man, I got to persecute the church because history shows that, that purifies the church and it makes it more attractive to a lost and lonely world.
If you’re gonna live for Christ, people are going to despise you.
They don’t even understand what you believe and they don’t want to hear it.
You’re just different and you represent God. And you know the name Jesus, people have a hard time with that.
So there’s going to be opposition.
The reason why I bring that up is because Jesus now is praying to his father in heaven and he’s gonna be listening to his father’s voice and his father is gonna speak to him 12 names.
And this is in the sovereign will of God, the Father above.
By the way, Jesus prayed, he always prayed in Luke 5 16.
The Bible said that Jesus himself often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed. If Jesus prayed, are you with me?
Everybody. If Jesus, the Son of God come from heaven and earth, the eternal God in human skin, Jesus Christ, the son.
If he thought it was important to pray all the time, then shouldn’t I pray all the time, shouldn’t you?
And I be praying. I think the reason why we don’t pray enough is because we’re not thinking in that realm enough if Jesus was God and flesh on earth and how much more of me?
A mere human. I need to be in prayer talking to my father.
Is this not the example that Jesus has set for us is to pray and to pray again.
I believe it’s the most single, most important thing I can tell you today in being a Christian is that you learn to pray and listen to God’s voice.
It is hard to do.
We’ve got our ipods and our ears blasting or we’ve got the radio on or there’s some glitz or spotlight or something going on that will distract us.
We need to listen, we need to learn to listen.
And I’m going to tell you right now it’s a very hard thing to do.
You know how hard I’m just talking to the guys.
Now, if you attended last yesterday’s marriage seminar, um, you probably got the right answer down now.
But one of the things that was discussed was this thing of communication, guys.
I’m just talking to the guys. Isn’t it hard for us to listen?
We try, I mean, we look at our wives and we’re going, what are we doing?
We’re trying to listen. There’s, it’s just hard. We’re more visually understanding things.
We’ve got to see that thing. Show me how you do that. Oh I got it.
But honey, I wanna tell you about this and I wanna show you how my day went and we’re like, we really want to, it’s just hard.
Take that times 10 when it comes to listening to God’s voice. OK. Here I am.
Lord, I’m listening to your voice. Turn everything off. I’m sitting OK, I’m Lord, I’m here. All right. OK.
Go, I’m right here any time now. God, it’s not like that.
It is a real relationship. He’s real. He speaks.
Some people might say, oh, I’ve never heard God speak well, you know what you, you have, you just didn’t recognize it.
Have you ever done something wrong? Oh, you’ve heard him speak, Professor Jack. Good. Everything good.
Speaking to me. You do something wrong. You’ll hear him speak. He’s faithful for that.
But you know what? He’s a little bit more patient when it comes to us getting along with him and learning to hear his voice.
Jesus shows us how and I want to know if you’re willing to do this.
It says right here in scripture that and note it with me that he went verse 12, he went up to the mountain to pray and continued how long?
All night in prayer to God, all night, all night.
I got to tell you at the first of this year, uh we got the pastors together and um we didn’t, we didn’t eat for at least 24 hours and we didn’t sleep for 24 hours.
We stayed up and we didn’t eat. We stayed together and we prayed all through the sanctuary.
We prayed, we sat in seats, we sat in all the sections and prayed for all of you who attend these sections.
We prayed throughout the courtyard. We walked around the property, then we prayed in front of our police stations, our fire stations, we drove around all of our schools, prayed in front of our schools.
We drove around to areas and prayed, you know, you can do a lot of praying on 24 hours without sleep.
And you know what the beautiful thing about it was when we got done.
Uh We were not only excited because we never once ran out of things to pray about.
That was an awesome thing because none of us guys went. Uh uh uh it was just happening.
God was in it and by the end of our time together, it was extremely rewarding. It’s awesome. Why?
Because you could feel the connect with God.
Now, pastor, do I have to stay up all night to do that? No.
But if you’re coming up on some big serious decisions, it ain’t a bad idea to seek after God with all your heart.
It may be an hour or it may be a day. It’s a wonderful thing.
God will reveal himself to you if you will choose or decide or determine to seek after Him with all of your heart.
You and I get into a lot of unnecessary trouble because we fail to seek after God.
Jesus is going to show us a great example and he prayed all night.
Now you are going to be amazed, get your pen ready, get it ready. This is amazing.
I’m so happy to tell you this. This is very cool in the Greek construction of this verse.
This is what it says that Jesus prayed all night in prayer. Are you ready for this?
Here’s the word because he the, the word means he didn’t want to waste one moment or one bit of effort.
What he prayed all night. So he wouldn’t waste any time. Yes, that’s what the word means. You mean?
He prayed all night. So he wouldn’t waste any effort.
Yes, that’s what he did when Jesus prayed, even though it took you.
And I, in our thinking all night long, Jesus said, my, my, my, my, I have got to make such an important decision about who these disciples who these apostles will be.
I’m gonna seek my father church. Are you listening? I’m gonna seek my father. I’m gonna pray.
I’m gonna get his mind, his heart on the matter.
I’m gonna get his decision and that’s what I’m gonna do.
And Jesus prayed all night long and you see Jesus calls you to follow him only if the father has spoken your name to Christ.
And that is what the Bible teaches. Jesus says. No man can come to me unless the father in heaven.
What draws him to me? Isn’t that interesting?
Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs here on real life radio with his message called people.
God can use part one. You know this message people God can use.
Part one is part of Pastor Jack’s series called The Gospel of Luke.
It’s a series on the book of Luke and the unveiling of Jesus Christ to this world.
And we’ll continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio. Everybody. Pastor Jack here.
And I want to encourage all of you to go on a journey with us, we do it every year and that’s going to the one year Bible together.
Here’s the reason why it literally spiritually knits us together like no other going through the one year Bible will cause us to be a family in the word of God and being knit together by the power of God’s word.
And know this, that when you read one chapter of a Bible verse for the day, there’s tens of thousands of people reading right along with you all around the world.
So you can pick up your copy of the one year Bible at Jack Hibbs dot com.
It’s our December book of the month and you can get it for a gift of any amount at Jack Hibbs dot com.
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Until next time, Pastor Jack Hibbs and all of us here at Real Life Radio.
Wish for you solid and steady growth in Christ and in his word, we’ll see you next time here on Real Life Radio.