Transcript
Luke chapter 6, and we want to begin reading at verse 12 of Luke chapter 6. Luke 6:12.
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. And when it was day, He called His disciples to Him. And from them He chose twelve, whom He also named apostles: Simon, whom He also named Peter, and Andrew his brother, James and John, Philip and Bartholomew, Matthew and Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon called the Zealot, Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who also became a traitor.
And He came down with them and stood on a level place with the crowd of His disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem, and from the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, who came to hear Him and be healed of their diseases, 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.
If I were gazing into my crystal ball this morning, I might make the following prediction about many of you. I might say, “I see a turkey in your immediate future.” And since this is the best week of the year to talk turkey, I thought I would begin this morning by giving you some very valuable information about that very wonderful and delicious creature.
Did you know that turkeys do not go gobble, gobble, gobble very much? What they mostly do are a bunch of unspellable clucks, squawks, yelps, clicks, purrs, and whistles, which are largely unpronounceable by ordinary human beings. But there are some very extraordinary people around, and some of them can come very close. I mean, they can come very, very close to sounding like a wild turkey.
And would you believe that one Friday just this past February, fifty of those people gathered at the Registry Hotel in North Dallas? And each of them wanted to become the Grand National Wild Turkey Calling Champion. Now this contest was a part of the annual convention of the Wild Turkey, the National Wild Turkey Federation, which has thirty-five thousand members. And on this Friday in February, one thousand of them converged on Dallas. And the Registry Hotel will probably never be the same again.
If you had dropped in on them, you would have seen display after display after display of all manner of things related to turkeys. There were camouflage suits. There were gun cases. There were turkey calls and turkey jewelry and turkey paintings and stuffed turkeys and turkey videos and turkey belt buckles and turkey feeders. And on and on it went.
And you would probably have heard turkey squawks and squeals and yelps coming from almost everywhere, as contestants sort of practiced their art or convention goers just had a good time. And on Friday morning the fifty contestants appeared on the La Liga Ballroom stage at the hotel. They were separated from the panel of judges by a curtain. And each of them did their thing. And then in the afternoon the fourteen high scorers appeared on the stage again, each of them hoping to gobble up the grand championship.
And just for the record, each contestant had to do five different turkey calls. They had to do the old hen call, which is an assembly gathering. They had to do the old gobbler yelp and the kiki run and the cluck and purr. And then they had to do that old favorite of the old hen fly-down yelp. Now please do not ask me who won the grand championship, because I do not have the slightest idea. But whoever it is has my profoundest respect.
Anybody who can not only distinguish between five different turkey calls but can imitate all of them successfully certainly deserves to be the king of the roost.
Now folks, I am going to be honest with you this morning. Imitating a wild turkey has never been a high priority with me. And I do not want anyone saying to me, “Turkey, see turkey do.” So I will stick to eating my turkeys, thank you.
But did you know that even though most of us could not make a convincing wild turkey call to save our lives, all of us are imitators? And all of us have been imitators since our earliest years. Is anybody in this audience who has never tried, and in fact frequently tried, to imitate members of your family or your friends or your teachers at school? Poor teachers. They are subject to all kinds of imitations. I ought to know. I was one.
And have you not tried to imitate some of the celebrities that you see on TV? And if I were to introduce one of the church’s great celebrities this morning by saying “his Hannah,” you do not know who I was imitating. And I might even start a trend here at Victor Street Bible Chapel.
You see, all of us are born imitators. But do you realize that imitation is one of the secrets of the Christian life? Are you aware that imitation is a key to effective Christian living? And that all successful Christian disciples are good imitators? They are good imitators.
And because that is true, the title of my message this morning is phrased in the form of an exhortation. And my title is this: Sharpen your imitation. Sharpen your imitation.
And believe me, there is not anybody in this audience who is a born-again Christian who has anything more important to do than that.
Have you ever had a hero? I mean somebody that you really looked up to and admired. One of the first heroes that I can remember having was a little boy in my second or third grade class. I do not even remember the kid’s name. And I can barely recall what he looked like. But I remember that he was very friendly and very self-confident. And I was sort of bashful and shy in those days. Hard to believe, is it not? But yeah, I was.
And this was the kind of boy that did not have to follow the other kids around. This was the kind of boy that the other kids followed around. And if he said to us, “Let’s play this or that or the other thing,” well, we were ready to play this or that or the other thing.
And if you ever stop and look at a bunch of kids who are playing together a lot, I mean they spend a lot of time together, if you watch them closely you are probably going to discover that one of them is the leader and that the others are kind of his followers and, in many cases, kind of imitators of him.
And there is a sense in which we can say that Christian disciples are a bunch of people who have found a hero. We have found a role model for our life and experience on earth. We have found a leader who deeply inspires us to be imitators of Him.
And I want you to come with me this morning and witness what I think is a very impressive and inspiring sight. We are walking up the gentle slope of one of the Palestinian mountains. And we get up on that slope and we stop at a respectful distance from a figure who is either sitting or kneeling on that mountainside.
And as we watch Him, we can see that He is praying. But pretty soon we are shifting our weight from one foot to the other, because He just prays and prays and prays and prays. And maybe once in a while He gets up and walks around and gets a little of the stiffness out of Him. But then He sits down and kneels down again and prays.
And when the shadows of nightfall come, He goes on praying. And when the moon rises to the peak of the nighttime sky, He goes on praying. And when our Father’s hour follows our Father’s hour, He goes right on praying. And the Bible says He continued all night in prayer to God. He continued all night in prayer to God.
Now do not worry. I am not going to send you on a guilt trip this morning. You know why? Because in fifty-five years of living on the earth I have never once, I have never once spent an entire night in prayer. And I do not mind telling you I am impressed by this sight that we are looking at.
I mean, this is the Son of God. This is the only perfect human being that has ever walked the face of this planet. If there ever lived a person who did not need to pray, who did not need to pray, Jesus was that person. And there He is, spending a whole night in prayer to God.
And why is He there? Well, the answer is obvious, is it not? Because you see, the very next day Jesus is going to make some of the most important choices that He ever made on earth. He is going to make some of the most significant decisions that He will ever make.
Because out of His large number of disciples He is going to choose twelve men who will be the foundation of His church and who will pick up where He leaves off after He dies and goes back to heaven. And on the very next day He is going to start pouring Himself into those twelve men in a special way.
And He will preach on the next day a message which is one of the greatest sermons that has ever been preached. And it was for their benefit particularly. And we call it the Sermon on the Plain.
And do you not see that before these critical decisions, before these significant events, Jesus spent all night in prayer to God? And do you not see it? This great Teacher, this role model for all of His followers, is a person who is profoundly dependent on God through prayer. He is profoundly dependent on God through prayer.
And did you know this? That the history of the Christian church is filled with the names of illustrious men and women who have been His imitators, who have likewise depended deeply on God through prayer.
In the early years of our nation a stranger was at Congress. And he asked someone how he would be able to recognize George Washington. And this is the answer that he got. He said, “You will be able to easily recognize George Washington when Congress goes to prayer. Washington is the gentleman who kneels.”
When King William IV of England died, there was a young girl spending the night in the palace. They awakened her to tell her that the king was dead and that she had now become the queen of England. As soon as this young girl heard these words, she dropped to her knees. And she prayed to her heavenly Father that He might guide and help her through all the years that lay ahead. And He did.
Because she reigned for sixty-four years over the land of England in one of the greatest periods of its history. And her name, of course, is Queen Victoria.
Fanny Crosby was blinded in infancy. But throughout her life she had the habit of greeting strangers and friends alike with a cheerful “God bless your soul.” By her own testimony she never wrote a hymn without first dropping to her knees and asking God for help. And she must have spent a lot of time on her knees, because Fanny Crosby wrote about eight thousand hymns.
Sometimes Miss Crosby was pressed by deadlines. And one time in 1869 she was trying very hard to write words for a tune that a composer had sent to her. And nothing seemed to come. And then she remembered that she had forgotten to pray. So she dropped to her knees and prayed to God. And when she got up she began to dictate as fast as her assistant could take her words down the words of one of her greatest hymns: “Jesus, keep me near the cross. There’s a precious fountain. Free to all the healing stream flows from Calvary’s mountain.”
On another occasion in 1874 Fanny Crosby needed money. She needed five dollars to be exact. And of course in those days five dollars was a lot more money than it is today. And she did not have time to draw on her publishers. And so she simply dropped to her knees to ask God to supply her need.
When she got up she began to pace back and forth in the room to get into the mood to write another hymn. And as she was doing this one of her admirers, a stranger, called on her. She greeted him with her typical “God bless your dear soul.” And they chatted for a while. But in the parting handshake this stranger pressed something into Fanny Crosby’s hand. And of course it was five dollars.
She dropped to her knees again to give thanks to God. And when she got up she wrote these lovely and unforgettable words: “All the way my Savior leads me. What have I to ask beside? Can I doubt His tender mercy who through life has been my guide? Heavenly peace, divine comfort, hereby faith in Him to dwell. For I know whatever befalls me Jesus doeth all things well. For I know whatever befalls me Jesus doeth all things well.”
And dear, dear Christian friends, that is what the imitators of Jesus Christ discover. They discover that when they depend on God through prayer, that God leads them, that God guides them, that God helps them, and that He doeth all things well.
But morning came. The night of prayer was over. And the day of decision had dawned. And I want you to understand that what Jesus is doing here is profoundly, profoundly important. He is preparing for the day that He will be gone. He is choosing the men who will be the foundation of His church and of the religion which He Himself has founded.
But now that morning has come He is ready. Ready. And He makes His decisions. And what is really surprising here is this. Not one of the men that He chose was a trained rabbi. Not one of them, as far as we know, had a formal religious education. Not one of them was a trained theologian.
There were four fishermen: Peter and Andrew and James and John. There was an ex-tax collector named Matthew. There was a man who apparently belonged to one of the Jewish independence movements, because he is called Simon the Zealot. And in the case of some of the others we do not even know what they did for a living. And then of course there was a man named Judas Iscariot, who became the most notorious traitor in all of human history.
What a motley crew this is. What an utterly unpromising collection of men to carry on a religion. And yet in the hindsight of nineteen hundred years these choices look better and better. For using these men the Christian faith spread all over the globe.
And mark it this morning. There are millions and millions of born-again members of this religion who are on this day of the week worshiping God from east to west and north to south. What a tremendous selection this was. And even Judas, even Judas played his role in the purposes of God. And his tragic career has been a lesson, and many lessons, to the church ever since that day.
Do you not see it? This great Teacher, this great role model for His followers, was not only profoundly dependent on God. He was profoundly discerning about men. He was profoundly discerning about men.
You know what I think happened? I think that during that night of prayer on the mountain He prayed particularly and individually about each and every one of these men. About Peter, about Bartholomew, about Matthew, yes, even about Judas. And I also think, because He had many, many other disciples, that He prayed individually about these men that He could have chosen. No wonder it took all night.
But in the morning He was ready to make discriminating, wise selections. Do you know why it is that you and I have so much trouble in our relationship with other people? One of the reasons. Do you know why there is so much friction and tension and frustration in our relationship with other people that does not even need to be there? It is because we do not pray very much about our relations with particular people.
We do not imitate our Lord’s dependence upon God. And therefore we cannot imitate His discrimination about men. Let me repeat that. We do not imitate our Lord’s dependence upon God. And therefore we cannot imitate His discrimination in our relationships with other people.
Many of you have heard me tell this story. I heard it years ago. Two missionary ladies out on the mission field, and they were getting along together very poorly. It happens even on the mission field. And one of these ladies apparently decided to bring this problem to God in prayer.
And after she did this God brought to her mind that lovely verse in the fourth chapter of Philippians that says, “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are noble, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, if there be anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things.”
And this missionary woman realized that one of the reasons she was not getting along with the other lady was that she was concentrating on all this lady’s faults. So she decided she had to look for something that she admired. And that was hard at first. And finally she decided that, everything else aside, this other missionary lady had beautiful red hair. She really did. She had beautiful red hair.
And so one day this missionary lady said to the other one, “You know,” she says, “you really have lovely red hair.” And you know that that was the beginning of a dramatic change in their relationship. And the time came when they worked side by side in harmony and in the service of God.
And there is not any such thing as a relationship that you have with anybody, however frustrating, however tension-filled it may be, that cannot be improved through the discernment and wisdom that can come by prayer.
Many years ago a British soldier was caught creeping back to his barracks from the woods. He was brought before his commanding officer. And he was accused of holding communication with the enemy. And he denied this. And he said that he had actually been out in the woods praying so he could have some time by himself in prayer. And that is the only defense he had.
The commanding officer growled at him. He said, “Do you have the habit of spending hours in prayer?” And the soldier said, “Yes, sir.” And the commanding officer roared, “Well, get down on your knees right now and start to pray, because you have never needed it more than you do right at this moment.”
And that was back in the days, by the way, when they could execute a British soldier. And the guy thought it was not impossible that the next step was that he would be shot. So he fell to his knees and he poured out a prayer that was simple and sincere and eloquent at the same time. It could only have come from the lips of a man who knew how to pray.
And when he was finished the commanding officer said, “You can go now. I believe your story. If you had not been often at drill you would not have been able to do so well at review.”
Now folks, let us face it. Probably very few people are going to be actually changed by listening to us pray. But know this, that prayer does affect all of your relationships as surely as the ground is affected by the rain that pours out from heaven upon it.
And through the discernment that can come to us in prayer we can choose friends and we can choose partners in marriage and we can choose associates in the Christian ministry. And we can make the crucial decisions about our relationships to people that we need to make.
And then we discover that the Bible is true when it says, “When a man’s ways please the Lord, He maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.”
Are you surprised then? Are you surprised that when Jesus came down from this mountain, accompanied by these twelve men, are you surprised at what happened next? Immediately when He gets down to the plain He is surrounded by a larger crowd of His disciples and by a multitude of people who have come from Jerusalem and Judea and the seacoast regions of Tyre and Sidon to hear His word and to be healed of their diseases and released from the torment of evil spirits.
And the power of God is working through Jesus Christ in a very spectacular way. And pretty soon the crowd is pushing and shoving and jostling their way just to get close enough to Him to touch Him. And the Bible says the whole multitude sought to touch Him, for power went out from Him and healed them all. For power went out from Him and healed them all.
Do you not see it? This great Teacher, this great role model for His followers, was not only dependent on God and He was not only discerning in His relationship with men, but He was dynamic in His service to others. He was dynamic in His service to others.
And this is what His imitators discover. That if they learn to depend on God, if they learn to deal with people in the way that God wants them to deal with people, God’s power can flow out through their lives and ministries. And that power can perform even greater healings than we read about here.
So that unsaved people are freed from their sin as they are led to trust Christ for eternal life. So that the dirt that clings to the feet of our fellow Christians can be cleansed away by Christians who humbly and lovingly are willing to wash it away with the water of the Word.
And is it any wonder that in the sermon that followed Jesus spoke these crucial words? He said, “A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained shall be like his teacher. Everyone who is thoroughly trained shall be like Me.” And if you let the Lord Jesus Christ train you, that will be the result. You will be His imitator.
Quite a few years ago the Old-Fashioned Revival Hour was about to go out over the air. It was originating on this particular day from a tin-roofed tabernacle in Waterloo, Ohio. Just before the broadcast was to begin a heavy, heavy rain started coming down. And you know how rain sounds on a tin roof. It made a racket in which you could hardly have heard anything.
Dr. Charles Fuller, that great preacher of the gospel, was standing on the platform in front of the microphone. And out of what was obviously a rich experience of prayer to God he prayed in front of everybody this prayer: “Lord, if You do not stop this rain the Old-Fashioned Revival Hour will not be able to go out. For Jesus’ sake please stop the rain.” That was his prayer.
Within three minutes the rain had stopped. The broadcast went out uninterrupted. And five minutes after the broadcast was over a torrential downpour began again on the roof of that tabernacle.
And that is the bottom line, is it not, folks? Prayer is not just a nice religious exercise that we engage in. Prayer expresses our dependence upon God, our need for His discernment as we relate to people, our urgent reliance upon His power to work in and through us.
Do you get the picture? Does it come to you a little bit clearer now? Well, if so, here is my advice. Sharpen your imitation. Sharpen your imitation of Jesus Christ.
Shall we pray?
Father, thank You for such an inspiring Teacher, Leader, Captain, role model. Grant us grace to be much more like Him than we are. We ask this in Christ’s name. Amen.