In the sermon "Jesus Chose Ordinary Men for an Extraordinary Work," Mike Bennett explores Luke 6:12-19, emphasizing Jesus' intentionality in selecting the twelve apostles. Before this pivotal decision, Jesus spends an entire night in prayer, highlighting the importance of communion with God. The apostles, chosen from a diverse group of disciples, are ordinary men with varied backgrounds, including fishermen, a tax collector, and a zealot. Despite their ordinary status, they are tasked with extraordinary work, spreading the gospel worldwide. Bennett underscores the humanity of Jesus, who, despite being fully divine, experienced human emotions and needs, reinforcing his role as our example. The sermon also highlights Jesus' compassion through his healing ministry, where he heals both physical ailments and unclean spirits, demonstrating his divine power and love. The apostles, though seemingly unqualified, are empowered by their association with Jesus, ultimately changing the world through their ministry.

Good morning. I'm excited about jumping into this text this morning. There's some fun stuff to talk about. So this morning we're going to cover Luke 6, 12 through 19 that was just read to us. We're going to look at Jesus choosing the 12, But it's more than that.

He chooses the 12, he prays all night before that. And then we're going to end with some powerful healing that he does. What we're going to see here is Jesus is really a man with a purpose. And he's moving his ministry to a point where he's headed to the cross and It's a ways off, but he's still headed in that direction and so before we get started this morning. Let's pray Dear Lord I ask That you enlighten our hearts and minds this morning as we discuss your Word.

Keep us mindful of your love for us. Help us to understand what you're saying through this text. In your name I pray, amen. So we're just going to walk through the text. We're going to start in verse 12 and just walk through the text and make some comments about it.

So verse 12, I'm going to reread verse 12. Luke 6 verse 12 says, Now it came to pass in those days that he went out to the mountain to pray and continued all night in prayer to God. So we see this phrase here that says, Now it came to pass in those days that he went out to the mountain to pray and continued all night in prayer to God. So we see this phrase here that says, Now it came to pass in those days. And the first question I have is, What are those days?

What is he talking about? What does he mean? And he's not talking about a specific time. He's not saying January the 3rd or July the 5th. There's not a specific day that he's referencing.

He's actually talking about the time immediately after what we have been reading and working through. So if you look back a little bit, I want us to just think about, and I'm just going to use chapters five and six, so the last few chapters that Jason has been preaching through and Connor, Jesus had made some pretty astonishing claims about himself and he had done some pretty miraculous things. And so if you think about this, he said in Luke 520 that he had the power to forgive sins. In Luke 535 he said he was the bridegroom. In Luke 6.5 he said he was the Lord of the Sabbath and you think about all these things happening in relationship to his interaction with the religious leaders of the day the Pharisees and the Sadducees and he has displayed amazing power to heal people And as Jason talked about last week, some of these leaders were even mad that he had done this because he had done it on a day they weren't happy about it being done.

So all of this brings us to what day, and we look back at chapter 6 verse 11, just right before 12, And it says, but they, the Pharisees, were filled with rage and disgust with one another, what they might do to Jesus. So this time we're talking about is a shift in Jesus' ministry. The Pharisees and the Sadducees are beginning to plot. They have a plan. They're putting together a plan and that plan is to eventually kill Jesus.

They're not there yet, but that is their plan. So that's where we are. Jesus, this time is Jesus, things are picking up. The pressure is picking up and it will continue more and more until there's finally a confrontation. So we go back to verse 12, we see here that Jesus prayed all night to God.

He said he went out to the mountain to pray and continued all night in prayer. So was this Jesus' custom to pray? And I think we know as we look through Scripture the answer is yes. Many times we see that Jesus would go away and pray. Sometimes he would pray for long periods of time.

Other, he would get up in the morning. Sometimes he did it at night. So we've seen through this that he's always done this. And we'll see at the end of Luke, it even says it was his custom to do this. He did this very, very often.

And many times we read this and we think since Jesus is God, why does He need to do this? Why is He spending time in prayer talking to Himself, we might say. But we wonder why is he doing this? And I've got to be the first to admit, and I'm not going to try to explain it today, I do not fully understand the fact that Jesus is fully man and fully God. That is a great mystery that we are not going to unravel this morning because I don't understand it all, but I know it to be true.

But I want us to do something this morning that may be a little different. I want us to think about Jesus the man for a little while. Okay, Jesus the man and what was he experiencing Jesus the man at this time? So I'm going to take us to Philippians. You can turn there if you like, but you don't have to.

It's just a few verses there. Philippians chapter 2. And I want us to kind of set the stage for who is Jesus the man. So in Philippians chapter 2 verse 5, and I'm going to read 5 through 8, we hear this, Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bond-servant, and coming in the likeness of man. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross." So what does this passage say about Jesus the man?

It says he did not see quality to God as something that he could grasp. It says that he took on flesh and he physically became man and he humbled himself and he became obedient. So how does this idea of Jesus the man play out in Scripture? How do we see that? What does it look like?

So I'm going to give us some examples of Jesus the man in Scripture. We read one of these earlier in the year or earlier in this study I should say. In Luke 2 52 we see these words about Jesus where he says he increased in wisdom and knowledge. As a young man, Jesus increased in wisdom. In Luke 4, 2, we see that Jesus was hungry.

Remember he was in the wilderness and he had fasted for a long time and he was hungry. In John chapter 4 we read the story about Jesus going on a journey and being physically tired. He said he was weary. And then in Hebrews we hear this. Hebrews chapter 4 verse 15 talks about Jesus the High Priest.

It says, For we do not have a High Priest who can not sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. So what do we get from this about Jesus the man? He experienced life just like you and I do. He got hungry, he got tired, he got sleepy, he learned as a child, he learned as a man, he grew. He was tempted, It says He was tempted in every way as we are.

I believe it means what it says. Jesus was tempted. Jesus was hungry. I believe He lived life just as we do. In Hebrews chapter 5 we read something amazing and I'm not going to read the text but it says he learned obedience.

Jesus learned obedience. So Jesus the man became obedient to God, even to death on the cross. Jesus the man can relate to you and I in every way because he experienced physical human life like you and I in every way. There's nothing unique that we're going through that he hasn't experienced. Sometimes we kind of look at this and I know I struggle with this.

We kind of think there was this cosmic wink, right? God says, I'm going to send Jesus there. You just live out, pretend to live an example for them but we know there's a separation here. The reality of it is he came as flesh and he lived in the experience of mankind. Don't ask me to explain all of this, okay?

I have no idea how to explain all this but I know what the text says and is true. So getting back to what I said earlier, is Jesus our example? Absolutely He is our example because He performed His assignment as Jesus the man perfectly. He did it perfectly. Because Jesus the man wanted and needed fellowship with God, he spent a night in prayer.

He was moving in his ministry to an area of confrontation. He was moving in his ministry in a place where he's going to get these twelve men to come alongside him to assist and help and preach. And he knew, I need to spend time with my Father. I need to become one with my Father. I need to commune with my Father.

So the example he sets for us in this prayer all night is an example to us. We too need to fellowship. We need wisdom. We need direction from our heavenly Father. And I see Jesus doing this.

Jesus the man, set before God all night and said, help me as I move forward. In John chapter 6 Jesus says this is Jesus tells us why he came he said for I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. It's impossible to know and do the will of God without spending time with God in His word and in prayer. And we see here Jesus the man setting a perfect example for us in doing this. And I'm excited to see that.

It's encouraging to see that. The religious leaders are about to come after him and things are about to change and he spends all night with God to prepare that. So there's a couple of Applications and I'll give us some applications as we go through this. But a couple of questions, when I say applications, just some questions to get our mind thinking. Do we understand our need for communion with God like Jesus did?

Do we desire to commune with God like Jesus did? Do we understand the importance of that? And I wrote down here for myself, what would motivate me to stay up all night and pray? I don't know that I could do it, but I know that I should be able to do it because I understand my need for that. Alright, let's keep going.

We're going to jump down to verse 13. He says, When it was day, he called his disciples to himself. And from them he chose twelve, who he also named apostles. So we have two terms used here. We have disciples and apostles.

And I want to spend a couple minutes just kind of distinguishing those two terms in this context. It was very common for religious leaders, teachers at that time, to have disciples. As a matter of fact, if you go look in Matthew 22 verse 16, the Pharisees had disciples and they sent them to Jesus to ask questions of Jesus. We read in many places about John and his disciples. And in the culture at that time, it was just very common for people to have disciples.

If you were any type of teacher, you would have disciples that would follow you. So basically the definition of a disciple here is anyone adhering to the beliefs of a particular teacher. And in Jesus' time, it was common for disciples to follow that teacher around. They would go from place to place, and if they were going to and from the synagogue, the disciples would follow them. So Jesus had a large group of disciples.

How many did he have? I don't know, but if you look down real quickly, we're going to come to that in a minute, but in verse 17 of this same passage, it says that he came down with them and stood on a level place with a crowd of his disciples. This was after he had already selected the twelve. So these people that are coming down with him are the twelve. It says a crowd of his disciples.

Other translations say large crowd. So we don't know exactly how many. We're going to get into numbers a little bit later on, but I want you to get an idea. This is a group of people. This is not a small crowd.

This is a pretty good crowd of people that are following Jesus around. So he calls this crowd together and he picks out the twelve and then He keeps going. But what is the difference? I'll just back up for a second. I don't want to talk about apostles.

So he used this word disciple. He used this word apostle. The Greek word for apostle literally means one who is sent. So in Mark, we have a parallel account of Jesus that we have here in Luke where he is selecting the apostles. But Mark gives us a little bit more insight.

So in Mark chapter 3 verses 14 and 15, I'm going to read those. Then he, Jesus, appointed twelve, that they might be with him, that he might send them out to preach, and have power to heal sickness and to cast out demons. So in Mark, we see a little more color of this in that Jesus is saying, I'm picking these twelve for a very specific purpose. They're not just for crowd control. They're there to do something specific.

They're going to be preachers, and He's going to give them power to heal and to cast out demons. But I don't want you to miss the first part of this. He says they will be with Him. So He's picking these twelve to be with Him for the remainder of His ministry so that he can teach them so that when he is gone they can continue on the mission. And I'm sure Jason will cover this in a few weeks, a few months, whenever we get to chapter nine of Luke.

But in Luke chapter nine, verses one and two, it says this, Then he called his twelve disciples together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases. He sent them to preach the kingdom of God and healed the sick. So we're going to see that right now he's just calling them. Later he's going to actually do what he says he's going to do. He's going to send them out to do this.

So as we go through this, not this morning, but as we continue through the Gospel of Luke and others, You kind of get this idea that you'll hear disciples and apostles and sometimes they're interchangeable. Sometimes they're not. Sometimes disciples are not the apostles. Sometimes the apostles are part of the disciples. Every apostle is a disciple, but not every disciple is an apostle.

Okay so we need as you're reading through this sometimes just remember so we don't get confused. Alright so let's look at this group of knuckleheads. Luke 14. Luke 14 we got a we start down the list. Simon who was also named Peter and Andrew his brother, James and John, Philip and Bartholomew.

So Simon Peter, man we know a lot about Simon Peter. I'm just going to give you a list of things here. We could spend a whole morning talking about Peter. But I want to tell you some things about Peter. He is the one listed the first.

In every account of the apostles being named, he's always listed first. Which would indicate he was the leader of the crowd. He was kind of the leader of the group. I mean we know Christ was the leader of the group, but he was kind of the second in command per se. He is the most prominent of all the Apostles as far as the literature and text of the scripture goes.

This part is being repeated and talked about and we're talking about these we're not talking about Paul we're talking about these 12. He was called why fishing here's some of the things that Peter did he walked on water he confessed Jesus at the Messiah he cut off the ear of a soldier he denied Jesus three times He was restored by Jesus and he was a key leader in the book of Acts. You guys remember Pentecost. I mean he was a key speaker there and a lot of people came to him. He was a very interesting guy.

He was somebody that many people say could not control his temper very well and his actions very well, but a really really interesting guy. We're gonna, I'm just gonna run through these, talk about them a little bit, then we'll come back and kind of wrap up with kind of where they ended life, but I'm just gonna keep going. Andrew. Andrew was Peter's brother. He was a fisherman.

And he is actually the one who brought Peter to Jesus. In John chapter 1 verse 40 it says this, one of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew Simon Peter's brothers. He was a disciple of John before. He said he first found his own brother Simon and said to Him, we have found the Messiah, which is translated to Christ, and He brought Him to Jesus. It's interesting when you think about who Peter is throughout scripture and the impact he had in the first church and the creation of the church.

And we see here that he was brought by his brother to meet Jesus. When I was going through this this week and maybe think about who is Jesus calling me to bring to him right now? Who is Jesus calling me to introduce him to? Andrew's also mentioned here is feeding the 5, 000. He asked about the end times with Peter, James, and John.

An interesting note, he shared a house with Peter and Capernaum. He always lived in the shadow of his brother. But he was one of the disciples. James, the son of Zebedee, he was also a fisherman. He was part of the inner circle.

He was part of the one with Jesus at the transfiguration. He raised Jairus' daughter. He was at Gethsemane with Christ. He was the first apostle martyred. He was killed by Herod Agrippa the first.

And he and his brother were called the sons of thunder. They got a nickname, the sons of thunder. And that term kind of goes with this idea of passionate and fiery. So you get this idea of James and John just being passionate, fiery people. So how do you get a name like that from Jesus?

The sons of thunder. So I want to tell you, we're going to look at this, I want to just a story and again we'll have to let Jason get to this later on. In Luke chapter 9, Jesus is going to Jerusalem and he's in his journey, he's going to pass through a Samaritan village. So he sends some people ahead and says, hey, would you go prepare a place that I can stay there? It's kind of a place to stay.

And the people in Samaritan village says, nah, you're not welcome here. Okay, basically, I'm paraphrasing, you can read it for yourself in chapter nine. So, when this happens, listen to what James and John say. In chapter nine, verse 54, and when the disciples, James and John, saw this, what'd they say? They saw that Jesus wasn't welcome there, the village was rejecting Him.

They said, Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them just as Elijah did? That's how you get the names, Sons of Thunder, right? Lord, you want me to just obliviate them? How do you want us to do this? And that's kind of the mindset they had, right?

Lord, just let's call down fire and just destroy these people. That's how you get a nickname Sons of Thunder, for sure, at least part of it. Let's move on to John. John was James' brother. He was a fisherman.

He was actually the younger brother of James. He's the human author of John, the Gospel of John, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John, and Revelation. He wrote more of the New Testament than any of the Apostles, of these twelve Apostles. I'm not talking about Paul here. Of these twelve, he wrote the most.

He was again part of the inner circle. Heber Klein connected Jesus at the Last Supper. He was at the cross when Jesus died. He ran to the tomb after the resurrection. He's identified many places in the book of John as a disciple who Jesus loved.

And he's the only one of the disciples that died an old man. The others were martyred and we'll get to that in a minute. Philip. Philip was a fisherman also. There's good evidence that Philip, Bartholomew, and Thomas were all fishermen.

It doesn't specifically say that in the scripture, but this is where I got this from. You remember when Peter, after the resurrection, went back to fish. He said, I'm gonna go back to fishing. Remember this? And he said he went back to fishing and he said he was going to take some people with him and Philip Bartholomew and Thomas were with him and they said we'll go with you.

And they spent all night fishing with Peter there. So from that I conclude they were fishermen too. I mean I guess it could have been the first time but I don't think so. I think they went back to what they naturally knew. Philip was called directly by Jesus in John 1.

He was brought by Bartholomew, so similar to what we heard earlier. He asked questions about feeding the 5, 000. He asked Jesus to show us the Father. And in John chapter 12 we see that Greeks were seeking him out to introduce them to Jesus. Bartholomew, likely, Bartholomew was brought by Philip.

Did I say it the other way? Who was brought by Philip? They were close friends. And you may remember him, or maybe you don't remember him, from an earlier sermon Jason gave when he was talking through Luke and he was talking about Jesus and he went to John and remember that Philip came to him and said, hey we have found the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth. And what did Bartholomew say?

Can anything good come from Nazareth? That's kind of his words in the Bible. Can you imagine those being your words that the Bible remembers you by? Can anything good come from Nazareth? That's kind of his words in the Bible.

Can you imagine those being your words that the Bible remembers you by? Can anything good come from Nazareth? So he brought some prejudice with him to this group, right? But he was also part of the Twelve. I hope we're starting to get a picture of these 12 guys.

These are just ordinary folks that had ordinary jobs and some of them brought some baggage with them into this crowd, right? There was a lot of things they brought here. So Verse 15, Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, Alphaeus, Alphaeus, I can't say that, and Simon called the zealot. So Matthew, we know a lot about Matthew and we heard a lot about him a couple weeks ago and I'm not going to re-preach a sermon on Matthew. We know that he was a tax collector.

He hosted this giant banquet in his house for his friends and Jesus and the Pharisees did not like it at all. He would have been hated by the Jews and seen as a traitor to Rome. He was not somebody that they would have liked. Think about bringing that guy into this crowd, in this group. Then we have Thomas.

Everybody knows him as Doubting Thomas, but he did a couple more things. He's referred to a lot as Thomas the twin, which would let us know that he apparently had a twin brother or twin sister there's nothing mentioned of him other than him being called Thomas the twin he was a doubter in John 20 he you see this encounter with him but I don't want to leave it there because he had this encounter with Christ or without Christ. He had this encounter. He's like, I want to see it. And then when he saw him, he said, My Lord, my God.

He made a claim. You are my Lord and my God. He also asked to know the way in John 14. James, not the other James, this is James the son of Alphaeus. There's little details about him.

Some of the places he's called James the less, and I think it's because there's less about him than anybody. Little there's nothing in scripture about him other than his name listed here. We don't know anything about him at all. I mean we could speculate and I'm not going to do that this morning but we don't really know much about him. Simon the Zealot.

Here's he called Simon in other counties called Simon the Zealot. He's believed to be part of a political movement that were called the Zealots. There was a group of militants who believed the Messiah was going to return and with political power take over the government. So there's a group of people out there and this is these zealots and Simon was part of them. They're waiting for the Messiah Because he's going to become the physical ruler of the earth and he is going to squash whatever political parties in power Whatever governments in power at that time in this case.

It was Rome these people were considered to be extreme and violent Other than that there's not much know about him Think about him. He's coming into this group. Then you got Judas the son of James and the traitor. Verse 16, Judas the son of James and Judas Iscariot, who was also a traitor. The only thing we know about Judas the son of James is that he asks in Scripture one question.

In John 14 22 it says this, Judas, not Iscariot, said to him, Lord how is it that you will Manifest yourself to us and not to the world. And then Jesus goes in to tell the story. And that's literally the only time he's mentioned in scripture outside of this list. Then we get to Judas Iscariot. John 12 tells us he was a thief who kept the money bag or the money box and stole from it as he would We all know that he betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver He hanged himself But I don't want us to lose fact of something here.

This is not an accident by Christ. Jesus didn't go, I got 12 right, 1, I'm not so sure about. In John chapter 6, verses 70 and 71, Jesus says this, Jesus answered them, did I not choose you the twelve and one of you is a dabble. He spoke of Judas Iscariot the son of Simon where it was he who would betray him being one of the twelve. This was not an accident it was on purpose he needed him to do this, to fulfill the plan.

You know, I do a lot of work with business leaders. And one of the most popular things you see in the business culture today is using personality profiles to determine which people work best together. You guys may have seen a lot there's all kind of models out there you can take these tests and fill out all these things and find out You know is this these two people going to work together? Which one should you pair up which one shouldn't how do you work? You know do all that I?

Think if in Jesus day of the consultant would have showed up Peter told him hey, there's no way You're gonna put these 12 people together in a group and it work out. Okay. Let's look at this for a second. You got Peter the fisherman who struggled to control himself in his mouth a lot of times in the group. You got Matthew who the Jews would have seen as a sellout tax collector.

You've got Simon the Zealot who's looking for a revolution. Then you throw in a couple of brothers of sons of thunder in there. And if you think this is not a group, do you think I'm going to bring these guys together and we're going to build something special. You would not put this crowd together. But it worked.

And it worked really well. Because it all works good when the Prince of Peace is the one in charge of the gathering. And he was doing that. So these twelve ordinary men did extraordinary work. And all twelve of them were important.

Eleven would preach and share the gospel all over the world, literally. And Judas was important too. He betrayed Christ to the cross, which is what we needed for him to become our Savior so how did these guys change the world I'm going to run through this real quick. We clearly don't have in Scripture anything about or very little about them after this time. We know that Peter was very involved in the creation of the church and many of them worked.

We even know that they were involved in the beginning of the church. When we look in Acts we can see that the 12 were there kind of help navigate that. But church history and other history tells us a lot about these men and so I'm just going to give you some things about them. Simon Peter led the early church in Jerusalem. He preached in Antioch and then Rome and he was martyred there.

Andrew, Peter's brother, he preached in the Black Sea, Greece, Asia Minor, and then was martyred. James the son of Zebedee preaching Jadiah. There's even some tradition that says he went to Spain and he was the first one that was martyred. John, he ministered in Asia Minor, Ephesus, he was exiled to Patmos, And as I said earlier, he was the only apostle that wasn't martyred. He died at an old age.

Philip, he preached in Asian minor. Many say North Africa, Syria. And he was martyred. I'm not going to read all of the speculation around this, but when you read this and about how these men were killed there's a lot of history this was not good how they died many were crucified beheaded some of them were literally skinned alive I mean it was pretty brutal what happened to these men Bartholomew peace priest in India Armenia Mesopotamia Thomas priest in modern-day Iran and in southern India. When I lived, we lived in India, we went to the city of Chennai in South India where Thomas was and they're still, I mean you can go there and they'll take you to a church and all kind of things, I don't know how much of it is modern and how much is not.

But what's really interesting is India is not a Christian nation by any means. But there is a disproportional amount of Christians in the Chennai area, even to this day, 2, 000 years later, the impact. Chennai is about 3, 000 miles from Jerusalem. You think about at this time going 3, 000 miles, That's a long way to go. Matthew preached in Persia and he was killed.

James, the son of Athias, preached in Jerusalem and Syria. Judas, the son of James, preached in Mesopotamia, Persia. Simon the Zealot preached in Egypt, Persia, and some say he made it to Britain. These men changed the world and their mission after Christ would die. All of these common men.

The reason we know this is because the people even at the time noticed that. In Acts chapter 4 verse 13 it says this. This is after Peter and John had been arrested and they're hauled before the leaders at the time. I want you to listen to what they say in Acts 13. Now when they saw the boldness of Peter, this is the religious leader, saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled.

So these men that changed the world, the world said, this is a bunch of losers. These people can't do anything. But the end of that verse tells it all. And they realized that they had been with Jesus. Jesus took these twelve ordinary, common, some would say outcast men and changed the world with them.

That should be an encouragement to us. He can do things with us that we cannot even imagine. So I thought about it. Are there specific tasks that Jesus is calling you to, calling us to? And how do we respond to that?

Are we willing to follow that call like these men? Or do we resist that? Are we thinking we've got to be more qualified? Jesus is our qualifications. He is our qualifications.

Alright, let's keep going. Verse 17, And he came down with them and stood on a level place with a crowd and his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and from the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon. So Jesus came down from the mountain with these twelve and he moves into this crowd. There's a crowd of his disciples. This is not the apostles.

These are a different group we talked about earlier. And so you wonder how many people were in this crowd. We don't know. But it's not probably what we think. You know, in our modern context, in our American context, we see crowds and we think, okay, this is, we think a small group.

We haven't even seen a movie or something. We see Jesus walking, you know, there's a few people following him. This is a crowd. There's probably, he may have two, three hundred disciples, people that are following him around. And then it says, the great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem, for the short sea coast of Tyre and Sidon.

So many people we're talking about here. Great multitude. Well, we have some context of some of this in Scripture. In Matthew 14, we see Jesus feeding 5, 000 men, not including women and children. So if you add women and children, you could be talking 10, 15, 20, 000 people that are there.

This is not a small group of people that have come out to see Jesus. This is going to be thousands of people that are following him coming out of these cities. I think we lose the context of what that's like. So we think about this, we think about just a few people, there was a lot. So why are they coming?

They're coming in verse 17. It says, we came to hear Him and be healed of their diseases. They want to hear Him and they want to be healed. There's nothing in this text about Jesus speaking. We see next week in verse 20 will start and Jason will carry from there.

He uses this as an opportunity to speak to these people, these hundreds or thousands of people that are there. But this week is focused on healing and his healing power in verses 17 and even in verse 18 it talks about as well as those who were tormented with unclean spirits and they were healed. You've got physical healing and you got people being healed from unclean spirits. We've seen this before. We've seen Jesus do this before.

So why is Luke repeating this? He's like, come on man, we heard this before. But what we see here is a little bit different, but I also think it's just a continuation. Luke is building his case for Jesus being the Messiah. In every opportunity he gets to show us the power of the Messiah, he's doing it.

And here we see the power of Jesus on display. And we'll just keep going in Luke 19. It says, the whole world and the whole multitude sought to touch him, for power went out of him and healed them. This is the first time that we see in Luke people wanting to touch Jesus this way. You're like, why?

What's going on? I'm assuming the word got out. Remember in Luke 5, 13, Jesus touched the leper and he was healed. So somebody said, hey, if he touches you, this is good stuff going to happen. So can you imagine all of these people coming at Jesus?

You guys know that we lived in India for a few years. And one of the most difficult things that I had to get used to, I don't know, you can ask Dolan, she may have a different opinion. One of the most difficult things I had to get used to is in a place like that there is literally no personal space. Okay? When you got 1.4 billion people in a relatively small area and we lived in the city of Delhi, there's 30 million people in that city and geographically it's not much bigger than Raleigh Durham.

Okay so you imagine shoving 30 million people in that spot there is no personal space and it's just culturally the way it works. I mean it was common you could walk into someone home or you know where and you would sit down at their couch and somebody would literally come sit and touch you. There's no space left. It was just hard to adjust to that when you lived there. Maybe you went out to any kind of public transportation or you wanted to stand in a line that didn't exist.

But if you wanted to stand and try to get somewhere it was just crowds so I want you to picture this Jesus he's coming down from this hill thousands of people coming to touch him can you imagine what that would be like can you imagine walking out right now and people just swarming thousands of people swarming around. I just want to touch you. I just want to touch you. Can you imagine what that's like? But we don't see anything in here of Jesus with any kind of panic or any kind of concern.

What we see is just compassion. We see Him allowing this to happen because He is healing people. There's no strings attached, there's no list that, okay, if you meet these four criteria you can touch me and I will do this. We see a loving, caring Savior, compassionately allowing this to happen. When I was thinking about this week, I get scared just thinking about it.

Standing there, all these people coming at you, and it's not like you know you got some crowd control to do something about it. So let's look at verse 19. We'll kind of wrap this up. At the end of verse 19, he healed them all. There's some power.

There's some power. He healed them all. No one left there without the healing touch of Jesus that wanted it. That's just amazing. What a great example for us.

Tired, claustrophobic, always people around, scared. Jesus took it all because He had compassion on the crowd. So how does your love for others manifest itself in your life? How does your love for others manifest itself? Jesus, we see what His love for others did.

Is your life such a reflection of Christ that others want to come hear you. They were coming to see Jesus because they knew it was different. Do people draw near to you because you project the love and compassion of Christ? That's for me. I don't know if anybody wants to get near me for that.

I should project a love and compassion for Christ that would attract people. And that's what He did. People, just think about this. The people that came to surround Him. Let's pray.

Dear Lord, we thank You so much for your love and your care for us. Thank you for these words and how you speak to us. Thank you for being our King. Amen.