All Night


Luke 6:12-19
12In these days he went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God. 13And when day came, he called his disciples and chose from them twelve, whom he named apostles: 14Simon, whom he named Peter, and Andrew his brother, and James and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew, 15and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon who was called the Zealot, 16and Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. 17And he came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, 18who came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. And those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. 19And all the crowd sought to touch him, for power came out from him and healed them all.

It’s easy to overlook a little passage like this one. It could be viewed as simply a connector between the healing of the man with the shriveled hand and the Beatitudes that follow and subsequently passed over. But these 8 verses are jam packed. We start with a glimpse into Jesus’ private prayer life. “In these days” indicates that to me that this was not an isolated event but His regular practice. Have you ever had a friend with whom you spent the whole night talking? I’ve had that experience a few times, but let me tell you, I was worthless the next day. Apparently, Jesus didn’t struggle with that affliction. He spent the night speaking with His Father and then went to work the next day. And the work was important – thus the need to spend the night in conversation with the God the Father. Here is a time when those lines between Father and Son become a little too sharp for me for God is One. At this point, my mind is too small to grasp how that happened.

Anyway, Jesus emerges from that night of prayer prepared to name the Twelve who would serve as His Apostles. The text even calls them Apostles! There are a couple of things that cannot be lost here. First of all, there are Twelve. This is an important number in God’s economy. There were 12 Tribes of Israel and now there are 12 Apostles of the New Testament. These men (minus Judas Iscariot who is already named as “the traitor”) will go out into the world after Jesus resurrection and begin the most important movement in the history of the world. Twelve is the number of the The Church. We learn in the Revelation that The 12 Tribes and The 12 Apostles represent the entire Church on earth – the Bride of Christ. These 12 guys are important for so many reasons. No wonder Jesus prays all night before naming them.

After naming The Twelve He goes to work doing was He did – healing the people and casting out demons. Immediately following this text is His famous sermon known as the Beatitudes. Jesus is here to die for our sins, but He is also here to introduce what it means to live in the Kingdom of God. He is always about His Father’s business.

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