What Is The Happiness You Seek?

What is the Happiness You Seek?

Series: Encountering Jesus (through the Gospel of Luke)

Brad Bailey – February 24, 2019

Text: Luke 6:12-26

Intro

I’m excited to be together tonight.

For those who know my own journey…I first heard of Jesus …about the same time I began to rebel against whatever seemed to conventional and vain to me. This made for a few interesting years… kicked out of one school…suspended from the next… but with a love for Jesus that I couldn’t reconcile… tried to run from God. Finally…I offered up one last prayer…a deal with God.

He won.

Not proud… it is a journey to realize there is one true rebel.

Looking back I began to realize that God has a place for rebels.

God values that part of each of us that says something is wrong with this world…but then he must call us into the revolution of change.

He set something new before my life… and it called me. And my whole life I felt the call…it grabbed my life and I my spirit said “yes.” I have never lost that calling. But like many of life’s big questions… it is still the question I have to answer.

What are you seeking to make you happy?

Are you ready to be different…to live for something different?

That question called out a lot of lives during the Jesus movement… that had been a part of the Vineyard’s early days.

And tonight, Jesus reminds us that this is the question for us all.

As we continue in this time of Encountering Jesus through the Gospel of Luke, The Gospel of Luke meets us at a timely moment this evening. It is the moment in which Jesus chooses and sets apart his core disciples and then gathers the crowds who are following.

Luke 6:12-16 (NIV) ?One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. 13  When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles: 14  Simon (whom he named Peter), his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, 15  Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called the Zealot, 16  Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

In these few words we have nothing less than the moment the ultimate cosmic revolution was coming into play.

The Son of God is preparing to start a revolution.

I want to note three phrases in particular that capture this moment.

• “spent the night praying to God” – a moment which God was initiating

• “….chose twelve of them” – a moment which inaugurated God’s new people

We are told how Jesus prayerfully choose the twelve who would be his core disciples… fully devoting their time to follow and be trained.

Many note that the choice for twelve was symbolic of Jesus creating the church as the “new Israel” or more ultimate “people of God” as the twelve paralleled the twelve tribes of Israel. So this becomes a time of launching the new work of God’s kingdom coming. He's saying that, “I am building the new people of God and I'm going to lead them into the Promised Land.”

• “…whom he also designated apostles” – a moment of commissioning

An apostle in its most literal sense, is an emissary… one who is sent on a mission (The Friberg Greek Lexicon)

One who carries something… bears a mission… and would impart that to others.

Those twelve would have the unique authority of initially being his chosen who could testify first hand. But it is a word that would also be used of anyone sent out to do the work of the Great Commission, and in that sense, all of us are given a new mission in life. So let’s continue with what Luke records…

Luke 6:17-19 (NIV) ?17  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 coast of Tyre and Sidon, 18  who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by evil spirits were cured, 19  and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all.

The power of heaven was breaking in…. bringing the signs of God’s will being manifest.

And now people were gathering to join him like never before… “a large crowd of his disciples”…referring to far more than the twelve…and crowds from different places and backgrounds. (A pictures so fitting of us gathered here this evening.)

And one thing we can presume…is that they didn’t really understand what was at hand.

They knew that God had to be at work. But they didn’t yet understand how the expected restoration of a righteous kingdom …was coming.