Good morning. So if there are any kiddos who
want to go to Sunday school, now is the time.
And I've heard that there are good things happening outside
today. So any big kids who want to go?
Also, I won't hold it against you.
Like, all good. My name is Grant, and while I
introduce myself, I'm going to roll this thing out.
Hello, You know I always worry about knocking the TV over.
Sorry, Brian. You might have your iPads might.
Oh, great. Hey.
So in a minute, we are gonna work our way through a passage
from book called Luke, Luke chapter 6.
That's going to help you get situated if you would like to
find it in a phone or tablet or on a Bible.
If you'd like to have like an actual Bible in your hands, we
have those at the back of the sanctuary toward these doors
here. There's a cart.
They might not be the same version that I'm reading from up
here. They might not be the same
version 1 to another, but that's all right.
If you just, if there's something about it that you want
to just have in your hands, I think that's also good.
But in a moment, as we work through it, we'll also have it
on the screens in front for, for us all.
What I want to do this morning is pray and then read it
straight through. We won't have it on the screens
for that encourage you maybe just to listen again, if you
want to follow along, you can. And then it'll be up on the
screens as we, as we work through it kind of line by line.
So let me, let me pray. Yeah.
Thanks for your love and for your grace.
Thanks that you're with us. Yeah.
We're grateful that you call us to gather here and to be in
community, to have meaningful friendships, relationships with
one another, and to also meet with an encounter you.
And so, God, I pray that this morning would hold all of what
you promise it to hold all of your presence with us, all of
the community that we find life giving, all of it that we find
encouraging, and all of it that we find challenging and even
convicting. So God thanks that you desire to
speak to us and so I would pray you'd do that this morning as we
read and as we work through this text in Jesus name, Amen.
So this is from Luke chapter 6. I'm starting in verse 12.
It says one of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to
pray and spent the night praying to God.
When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose 12 of
them, whom he also designated apostles.
Simon, whom he named Peter, his brother Andrew James, John
Philip Bartholomew, Matthew Thomas James, son of Alphaeus,
Simon, who was called the Zealot.
Judas, son of James and Judas Iscariot who became a traitor.
Look, we just pause there for a second and just like feel a
little bit of sympathy for Judas, who gets named the trader
by Luke. Luke wants to make no, we're
going to get we're going to come back around to that.
Luke wants it to be crystal clear that it was Judas
Iscariot, not Judas son of James.
Let's get them clear. So we continue in, 17 says he
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 coastal
region around Tyre and Sidon, who had come to hear him and to
be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by impure spirits
were cured and the people all tried to touch him because power
was coming from him and healing them all.
So when I drop my kids off at school, Two of them anyways,
there is, there's a, there's a process, there's a protocol, My
older of the two, the older of the two or oldest of the three
really, she gets to run and just go and play.
And then when the bell rings, she can enter into the school
and, you know, meets up with her classroom or friends or teacher
and away she goes. But the middle of my 3 is in
kindergarten still. And so she, she actually needs
to be dropped off. And so that means one of two
things. One, we either drop her off to
this fenced in area that I've heard referred to as the kinder
pen. I'm not sure that we're actually
allowed to refer to it that way. But however we dropped them off
there and they play or we can wait by the door and drop them
off there. When we pick them up though, all
of us, we have the every kinder parent or guardian grandparent,
whoever is picking up those kindergarten kids, we have to
gather around the door and wait for a kids to be released to us.
And it, I mean, I don't know if this is surprising or not, but
right beside the kinder door is the bell that rings and it's
loud. So if the kindercare, we have
all the parents waiting there and I still to this day, like
we're almost a year of this, I will still get surprised by that
bell and how loud it is. All of us gathered waiting for
our kids jump at the same time and collect ourselves before our
kids come out. It's a loud bell.
It's a little bit obnoxious and I'm sorry teachers hanging out
here like, but it gets the point across for all of us, especially
we feel that the kindergarten parents, right?
You can't mistake what it means. It's time for your kids to go
home. Like take them away, take them
whether we're done or you, you we also, neither of us, none of
us can hear out of our left ear. But like, we all know what it
means, alright? Nobody can mistake that bell.
It is shouting alarm bells. It's time to go home.
And this, this passage that we read, all of it is, is
functioning a little bit like that alarm bell.
It's shouting like it's time. There's a lot of different
alarms going off that people would have heard and seen.
And that the readers, Luke wants us who are reading to see and
go, ohhh, something is happening here.
Something's different. Sit up.
Like pay attention. Alarm bells are going off all
the way through. And today what I want to do is
just simply name some of those alarm bells for us because I
think it points us in a good direction.
And if you hear me for the first time, like I think it points us
as individuals in a good direction.
I think it also points us as a church in a good direction, as a
community in a good direction together.
So Luke writes this. He says one of those days Jesus
went out to a mountainside to pray.
And if you're prone to highlighting and underlining
this mountain, this is the alarm bell.
So he goes out to the mountain side and he spent the night
praying to God. When morning came, he called his
disciples too many chose 1212 of them, whom he also designated
apostles. We're going to get to that, but
I want to spend a little bit of time talking about the beginning
of this verse. So spent the night praying to
God in English just sounds like any other sentence.
Here's Jesus. He goes and he spends a night
praying to God. But this is a very specific
word, a single word in the Greek, and it is used to talk
about an all night prayer vigil. This is something that isn't
just, you know, I think I'm gonna go and spend some time in
prayer or I've been feeling things a little bit heavy.
I mean, maybe I should be praying.
Those are good things. That's a great prayer is always
a good thing to do, but it's not reactive.
It's not just OK pasional. It's not just because of what is
happening in Jesus's life. It's not just a simple I'm gonna
go pray before bed and then I'm gonna go and, and I'll sleep.
This is a an intentional move to go and to pray through the
night. It's actually linked to a Hebrew
term used to refer to the same thing and all night prayer
vigil. It's an intentional move that
Jesus makes not just to go up the mountain for a moment or a
minute or to say a few words and then return.
Jesus is intentionally seeking God's will.
He's intentionally seeking God's vision and God's direction for
what is to come. And in order to do that, he goes
and he prays intentionally through the night.
He goes to a mountainside to pray.
Now in the translations that we're dealing with, he does say
Luke says mountain side. Literally it just says he went
to the mountain to prey. The mountain in Luke's Gospel is
a place of prayer. It is designated.
It is an alarm bell signaling this is a move toward prayer.
Jesus goes up the mountain to pray, but the mountain in
Scripture is is not simply or just or only a place of prayer.
The mountain was perceived. It's not just geographically
either. It's it's perceived as a sign,
this symbol of heaven meeting earth, where heaven breaks into
earth where you can ascend and encounter God and encounter
heaven. The Bible project puts it like
this, which great resource if you've never checked them out.
Alright, the Bible project is, is a fantastic resource to help
you through and study, read all of scripture.
But they write about them, and they say in the Bible the
mountains are mentioned not merely as geographic settings,
but as sacred places where heaven and earth collide, where
the divine presence joins humanity to provide instruction,
direction, and hope for the day when all of heaven and earth are
finally won. And so when we see Jesus go up a
mountain, when we see these characters through Scripture,
these people go up mountains. It is always for a purpose, and
that purpose is always heaven breaking into earth.
And I love the language where heaven and earth collide in
Genesis and we're not going to read through all of the Old
Testament. I promise I BS and maybe one day
we will, but not today in Genesis, the very first book in
the Bible, opening sort of story narrative that we see God plants
a garden and we find out later in the Bible, I think it's in
Ezekiel, that that garden is actually perceived to have been
on a mountain. It was the place of God's
immediate and intimate presence with humanity, but it required
surrender to stay there, to stay in the garden.
And So what we see is, is Adam and Eve, they eat from a tree
and it's a whole thing, but they trust themselves over trusting
God. They begin questioning God and
his goodness and his intention toward them.
And what we see through that story is, is the reality of sin
and separation creeping into human existence.
We see shame and isolation begin to rear their ugly heads.
And ultimately, humanity's relationship with God is broken
in that garden up on that mountain.
And Adam and Eve are sent away. Later when God calls, we're
jumping a little bit when God calls Abraham to follow him.
Abraham's family, he says, listen, your family will become
a great nation. You will become a great nation.
And I'm gonna bless people through this nation.
And Abraham kind of laughs at God.
He said, listen, I don't know if you know this, but I don't have
any kids. I don't have any children.
And in order to confirm, establish this covenant between
God and Abraham, God calls Abraham up the mountain.
And it's there through a series of tests that that God
establishes this covenant with Abraham and with his family for
generations to come. After freeing that future
family. Are the Israelites from slavery
in Egypt? God would call Moses, the leader
at the time, up another mountain to deliver the law, including
the 10 commandments, laws that would set biblical Israel apart
from their surroundings, from surrounding nations, that would
make them wholly. And up on that mountain, God
calls them a nation of priests, again set apart for a purpose.
Upon that mountain, heaven breaks into earth and says this
is how things will unfold. Not for your own sake, for the
world's sake. Still later, This is why I said
we're not going to read through all of it.
One of Israel's kings, King David, who we talked about
briefly last week, would build a city on a hill.
Prophets like Elijah would ascend mountains to receive
instruction and revelation from God for humanity.
How things ought to be in this world because of how things are
in heaven. And so we're not just meant to
see Jesus go up a mountain to pray, because it's a quiet
place. And from there he can see all
his surroundings and he can maybe see the crowds gathering.
And it's not even that he goes up a mountain to be away from
the crowds, though that's, practically speaking, a good
move. We're meant to see the garden.
We're meant to see Abraham and Moses and Elijah were meant to
see David and all of the hopes and dreams for how things ought
to be in the world. We're meant to see all of
humanity's attempts to ascend the mountain and that ultimately
fail. And so instead we're meant to
see Jesus ascending on our behalf and God in the person of
Jesus descending the mountain to be with his people.
And you know, one of the things that convicts me the most and
convinces me the most and reminds me the most about the
character of God inside of our Christian understanding of who
he is and who we are. Is that reality that for
generation after generation after generation, human beings
have been ones who naturally attempt to ascend the mountain
and reach God and make it based on hard work and effort,
accomplishments, or who don't because of failure, what you're
not able to accomplish or what you do accomplish in negative
ways. And instead in in Christianity,
what we find is not God saying work harder to climb the
mountain. I'm waiting for you.
We see a God who descends and who literally in our passage,
we're gonna get there, descends to be with the people.
God's breaking into the world. He created heaven, breaking into
earth. One of those days Jesus went to
the mountain to pray. When morning came, he called his
disciples to him, and I want you to highlight this.
Called his disciples to him and shows 12 of them whom he also
designated apostles. There's a lot going on there,
but it is from this place of prayer that Jesus will call the
12 disciples and will name them apostles.
To be an apostle. Apostle, The word means that you
are a messenger, one who was sent out with a message, but not
only with a message to speak. You are sent out with authority.
You bear, you carry with you in your body the authority of the
one who sends you out. So to be an apostle is to be
sent OK. It is to have a message, and it
is to have authority. You bear the authority of the
one sending you. And so we continue reading
Simon, whom you named Peter, his brother Andrew, James, John,
Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus,
Simon who is called the Zealot, Judas son of James and Judas
Iscariot who became a traitor. 12 apostles sent out to bear the
message of Jesus, to live into that identity, that word of
apostle, one who is sent in the Greco-roman world.
This is from one of the commentaries this week.
The term apostolos was used to describe a messenger or envoy
sent with authority to represent someone else, one who was
commissioned by another to represent him in some way.
Authority to represent someone else.
These 12 Jesus sends out and Jesus continues to send out ones
with authority to represent his message.
Now one of the alarm bells here is in the fact that Jesus
chooses 1212 disciples whom he also calls apostles, who he says
you will live into this identity as apostle. 12 is not a common
number for rabbis to have as disciples.
It wasn't as though every single rabbi had 12 disciples.
And so Jesus is doing exactly what was expected of him.
Rabbis had hundreds of disciples, and so in naming 12,
Jesus is doing something very intentional.
Now, I'm gonna rely on a few of you who I know play certain
sports outside of our time together on Sunday morning.
That's as far as I'm going to go.
If I were to start gathering up, six of you say, hey, I we're
going to go after church. We're going to go outside and
we're going to play something. I need 6 of you.
I need 5 of you who are really going to run around with sticks
in your hands. And I need one of you who can
stick some pads on and not be afraid to get hit by stuff like
what? What are we doing?
What are we playing? We're playing hockey.
Thank you. OK, great.
I was looking at a few of you. I'm like, please don't miss
this. We're playing hockey.
This is how NT Wright talks about this passage, although he
uses, he uses football as an analogy and 11.
And so I had to Google that because he's not actually
talking about football. He's talking about what I
understand as soccer. And so that got lost in the
weeds and we didn't go there. So we stick to hockey.
Most of us know. Many of us know that if I go
around and start picking five players and one goalie, we're
going to go play hockey. Jesus walking around choosing 12
disciples is doing something very intentional that would
start to trigger alarm bells for those seeing and especially
those reading now Luke's passage 12.
I remember 12. I've heard of 12.
We have the 12 tribes of Israel. Is is Jesus creating a a new
Israel? Maybe I wonder what he is doing.
He's doing something intentional.
Is it good? Is it from God?
Is it blasphemy? I don't know.
Let's wait and see. Like these are the thoughts that
people are going to begin to think when they see Jesus very
intentionally stepping in and saying 1212 of you go out, bless
the world. I remember that Israel was
called to be blessed so that they could be a blessing.
Just carry my message with you. I remember that.
That's what Luke wants us to see.
Were meant to see 12 tribes of Israel.
Were meant to see Jesus saying the the way things are will be
new, but you know this language it'll be it'll be new it'll be
full of life. It'll be everything we've waited
for and hope for long for. But you know that this is the
fulfillment of what we've been waiting for.
And so we read 12, we see Jesus creating life, creating a
culture, creating a community that was meant to step into the
same mantle, the same task as biblical Israel.
Israel that existed to bless the nations around it, to be wholly,
to be set apart, not for their own sake entirely, but so that
they could change the way things operated in the world.
Jesus is stepping in and he's creating a new community.
He says, hey, this community will change the way things are
in the world, will influence culture, will step in, not
retreat from. But I also think we're meant to
see ourselves in these names, right?
Matthew, who's a tax collector before he was called to be a
disciple, some fishermen, Simon is called the zealot, one who
would pick up arms, one who would pick up a sword and
actually drive out occupying forces because he believes so
firmly and changed. Judah, son of James and Judas
Iscariot, who became a traitor. Why?
Why would Luke throw that in? Except in some sense, I do.
I do wonder if, from the very best of them to the very lost of
them, Jesus wants you to see yourself being pulled toward
this same identity. No matter how close you are or
far you feel away. Whether you've got the resume or
whether you feel like you've not got the resume, Whether you've
checked all the boxes in your mind or whether you've left all
of the boxes unchecked in your mind.
No matter what it is that God calls you out of, He says
there's a place to belong here. One of the most powerful images
is that Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor, is still going
to have his feet washed by Jesus.
I will get to it eventually. So there's nothing that you've
done that God can't call you out of, and every single one of you
is meant to be called toward this identity.
Disciple, one who follows relentlessly after God and
Apostle, one who is sent out with a message and with
authority to bear the person of Jesus into the world.
One of my friends. Theologian, pastor who
supervised my thesis in seminary, he wrote this.
He says we've learned to speak of God as a missionary God and
so we must learn to understand that the church as sent people.
You are one who is sent into the world.
Wrap up these last verses 17. We continue says he went down so
Jesus he went down with them. Those 12 and stood on a level
place. A large crowd of his disciples
was there and a great number of people from all over Judea.
This is interesting from all over Judea, Jerusalem, from the
coastal regions, tire siding. So we've got predominantly
Jewish cities and areas. We have predominantly Gentile
cities, non Jewish cities and areas.
And all of them had come to hear him and to be healed of their
diseases. Those troubled by impure spirits
were cured, and the people all tried to touch him because the
power was coming from him and healing them.
All This is if you're reading in your Bible, what likely begins
for you something called the Sermon on the Plane, and it's
Luke's version. We'll get into this in the Bible
study more. So not today, it's Luke's
version, or it's an account of a similar story to similar
teachings to the Sermon on the Mount.
Now I think one of those has a cooler name, but they both
accomplished something significant.
Again, what what Luke wants us to see is Jesus going down with
them and standing on a level place to where the large crowd
is. Remember, Lucas set up the
mountain as a place of prayer, and here he brings Jesus down
the mountain to be with the people.
He's making it very clear Jesus is one who is bringing God's
presence into the world. But if we were to continue with
the hockey analogy for a second, the very first thing that I'm
going to do, if I'm smart and so you know what, we'll see.
If I were to pull a hockey team together, I'm not sure.
Maybe I'd jump on the ice and just go for a skate.
However, the very first thing that I should do is call those
five, you know, people together, 6 including the goalie, and say
hey, this is how we are going to play.
This is how we are going to win. This is how we're going to
accomplish the task before us. This is what you need to know.
Who's gonna play what position, like who's better on defence,
who can skate backwards? Like that's not my, that's not
my skill. So who's going to play forward?
Who can skate forwards? Who's gonna go?
You bring everybody together to discuss the plan of attack.
And in some way, what Jesus is doing here is calling his
disciples, naming the 12, declaring them to be apostles,
and then gathering with everybody, the crowds, the
disciples, coming down the mountain with his message from
God, with his message about the Kingdom embodied in himself, and
saying this is how it's going to go.
This is what you need to know as you live out your life.
There's not going to be a long treaties.
It's not going to be the rest of the book fleshed out.
It's not going to be an entire Bible worth of manuscripts of
like how to and if this, then that.
But he's going to say, Hey, this is the basic.
This is what you need to know now that we live inside of this
new Kingdom. From here, we're going to move
on to the Beatitudes series of blessings and in Luke also woes.
Very quick in some ways. Simple things to remember.
This is how life is different inside of the Kingdom.
What do we need to know as we go out into the world?
That's where we're headed. I love this passage.
Leslie New Begin talks about how the Kingdom of God is new
precisely because it is embodied and demonstrated in the person
of Jesus. And that's what we see here,
that Jesus doesn't just proclaim, He doesn't just move
to teaching, He doesn't just stand and speak.
He embodies everything about this new life inside of the
Kingdom. He carries the Kingdom around in
his body. He lives it out for people to
not just hear about, but actually encounter, to bump
shoulders with, to feel, to experience.
And I think that's why it matters that there's a great
number of people who are also there and they gather and Jesus
doesn't rush into teaching. He doesn't say, hey, everybody,
sit down, here's what you need to, what you need to know.
He moves in and what happens? They've come to hear him, but
they've also come to be healed of their diseases, right?
Those troubled by impure spirits, they're cured.
The people are all trying to touch him because power was
coming from him and it's healing them all.
The miracles, the healing, the deliverance.
They aren't just signs that prove that Jesus is the Son of
God, or or the Messiah, or the new David or the new Moses.
They aren't signs that point to something else.
They are the Kingdom, and so Jesus is gonna get to the
teaching and he's gonna layout how to live inside of the
Kingdom of God. But even before he does that,
he's living out what it means to be inside the Kingdom of God and
to carry that message with you. Nubian then writes this.
He says when Jesus sends out the disciples, they are commissioned
to announce the presence of the Kingdom and to perform the works
that authenticate its presence. You carry the Kingdom around in
your body. You who call yourself a follower
of Jesus carry what it means to live inside the Kingdom in you,
not just for yourself. You are sent out with it, in
your DNA, in your bones, in the way you breathe, in the way you
interact with your friends and your colleagues and your
neighbors. Everything you are is designed
to be a messenger, one who bears witness to who Jesus is.
As you go, as you move from your home to your workplace, as you
live in that space, you carry the Kingdom.
You embody it, You breathe it in and out, interacting with those
around you. In Acts chapter 1, same author
Luke writes that Jesus, before he ascends looking around as his
disciples say this. He says You will receive power
when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my
witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the
ends of the earth. And as we shift toward
communion, what we do in communion is proclaim that
message. We speak those words.
We remember it. Jesus's death and his
resurrection. It's what I see in communion as
we eat the bread and drink from the cup's tangible reminders
that life inside the Kingdom is different.
And it's also what I see in the garden when a group of people,
plus a tractor will gather around a shoveled dirt and plant
gardens to get their hands dirty in order for food to go out into
our community. That's what I see every day in
the way you choose to live your lives together and toward the
world. Let me pray.
God, thanks for your love and for your grace.
Thanks that you're with us thinks that your design is for
us to come and to follow you, to leave everything like the
writers say and follow you to then embody your message, to
experience into the core of our our being, to know it in real,
tangible, personal ways and for it to form us together into a
community. Thanks to that, as a community,
we can gather and we can proclaim your death and your
resurrection, and we can remember.
We can live into again that experience.
So God, as we do, I pray that you would speak to us.
I pray that you would remind us of your love and your grace.
I pray for those of us who feel far and distant.
You would remind us of your presence, how near and close you
are. For some God, I pray you would
remind us of your forgiveness for the ways in which your your
death defeated death and sin and shame, how your life calls us
toward new life. The guy would you lead us to
repentance? I pray for some.
You would remind us of our scent Ness, how you send us into the
world not just to speak about these things but to live them
out. God, I pray that as all of us
together, as we leave, we would know that we go to proclaim your
death, your resurrection, until you come again.
I pray these things in the strong name of Jesus, Amen.