Welcome to From the Pulpit in Classic Sermons.
Each week we bring you a different message
from some of history's greatest speakers and the
Christian faith, and powerful sermons from modern preachers
too.
This week we have Phil McLeod with his
message, Jesus Training the Twelve.
So I want to talk today, in the
power of God, about Jesus and the training
of the twelve.
You know, when God created the world in
Isaiah 45, 18, it says he did not
do this in vain.
He formed it to be inhabited.
And there's no other planet like it in
the whole universe.
The scientists say they're looking for one, they're
positive, they'll find many.
But these powerful telescopes they have, while they
look at thousands of stars and stuff they
couldn't see before, they haven't found one.
And they never will.
Somebody said that the earth is the theater
of the universe.
It's where it's all happening.
It's where Jesus came.
And we must keep this clearly in mind.
Now he had to train people.
He had to, well first of all, he
had to pick twelve men.
And he didn't pick the kind of men
we think he should have, perhaps, I don't
know, fishermen, farmers, tax collectors, nobodies.
There were probably many people he could have
chosen that would have been better in some
ways.
But they were not the kind of people
he wanted.
He hasn't chosen the mighty and the great
or the rich, but the poor and the
lowly.
And obviously he picked the right men.
Then he had to train them.
And he did it in a number of
ways.
I suppose the healing miracles, which they watched
for three years, they must have seen literally
thousands of people healed.
Because wherever Jesus went, there were great crowds
following him.
Because they knew he'd be working miracles and
healing others, and they wanted to see this.
But Jesus rebuked him one day.
He said, you seek me not because you
saw the miracles, but because you ate of
the loaves and were filled.
They didn't have a good motive in following
him around.
But when he reached the village, and word
would spread that Jesus of Nazareth was in
town, all the sick people in the area
were carried by their relatives and friends out
to where Jesus was and laid down at
his feet.
And he healed them.
It mentions every kind of sickness and disease
that was brought to Jesus.
He healed.
And the twelve saw this.
Then at one point he gave them the
power to heal and to cast out demons.
By the way, casting out demons three times
in the New Testament is called healing.
So when he healed them, when he cast
out demons, that was a form of healing
also.
Well, feeding the thousands, stilling storms, walking on
water, casting out demons, feeding thousands.
Did you know that he and the disciples
in a boat on the Sea of Galilee,
about six miles from land, when Jesus came
on board the boat, it moved from where
it was to the shore in a second.
It says immediately.
Now, that's a great miracle to move a
boat.
I don't know what the weight would be,
but to move with that distance in a
second was one of the mighty miracles Jesus
did that we don't hear much about.
He was aware of things going on all
around him.
He told the disciples one day, when you
go into the village, you'll meet a man
with a picture on his shoulder.
Follow him into the house, and that's where
you'll make your Passover.
Now, how did he know there was a
man walking down the street with a picture
on his shoulder?
He knew somehow.
He sometimes read people's minds.
When one man began to think certain things,
we're told in John 7 that Jesus answered
him.
Well, he hadn't said anything.
How did Jesus answer him?
Because he read his mind.
He knew he was able to do that.
He was different from us in many ways.
Then he raised the dead.
Lazarus, a widow named Son, but there are
others besides, because when the men came from
John the Baptist, wondering if Jesus was really
the one they were looking for, they were
told to go back and tell him that
he was healing the sick, he was raising
the dead.
So there were probably numbers of people raised
from the dead through his training.
So part of the training was healing people,
helping others, using your power to relieve other
people's sufferings.
This was all part of the training.
Then there was his teaching, which was, in
some cases, amazing.
For example, he taught that if you loan
somebody some money, don't expect to get anything
back.
Do we operate that way?
Not really.
We'd like to get back what we loaned,
at least, and maybe a little more, if
possible.
But that's what he said.
Then he said, you know, in those days,
a Roman soldier walking down the highway, he
could call on any person he saw and
ask them to walk a mile with him
and carry his pack.
And they had to do that.
So Jesus said, if you're asked to carry
a pack for a mile, carry it two
miles.
Does that sound right?
It's certainly different, but it was right.
That's one of the things he said.
So if they smite you on one cheek,
you'd offer them the other.
You're not to run away and be mad.
You offer the other cheek.
And then he told them to rejoice when
you're persecuted.
Leap for joy, he said, in one place.
Leap for joy when people are maybe throwing
stones at me?
Well, you know, Wesleyan and Whitfield had a
lot of that.
Not only stones, but rotten eggs and dead
cats and stuff were thrown at them while
they were preaching.
They just wiped off the blood and kept
on going.
They knew what Jesus had said.
So we're to rejoice when we are persecuted.
Then he told his disciples, you're light and
you're salt.
You're to be both the light of the
world.
As long as I'm in the world, I'm
the light of the world.
But he said to them, you are the
light of the world.
He was going back to heaven.
And he left 12 lights burning.
Now, these are things that Jesus had taught
them.
He said when you're fasting or when you're
giving, you do it very secretly.
You're not to parade it.
You're not to want to have people watch
what you do so you can brag over
it.
You're not to do that or be that.
You're to do it very secretly.
And your father in heaven, your father who
sees you in secret will reward you openly.
So there are things right.
Well, he told them to build on rock,
not on sand.
I mean, he gave them a lot of
good practical thoughts to work on as well.
It was a great help.
And it's a help to us, of course,
or should be today.
Then they found out very quickly that if
you're going to preach, you've got to preach
repentance.
John the Baptist began it.
Jesus in Mark 1, when he began to
preach, he said, repent.
I believe the gospel.
And then the disciples, when they were sent
out in the gospel of Mark, it says
they preached that men should repent.
I'm sure that wasn't all they said, but
the writers wanted us to understand this was
a major part of their preaching.
Everything else was based on this.
It's not going to help you unless you
have repented of your sin and turned with
your whole heart unto God.
So they learned many things through his miracles,
the healing miracles and the other miracles.
And then they learned just being ready with
him day by day, watching him, hearing him,
asking him questions.
I'm sure that all of the apostles apart
from Judas at times would have serious internal
questions that they would bring to Jesus and
have them answered.
That was something else, part of the training.
Then we notice another thing he did, which
is very unpopular today with preachers.
He strongly publicly condemned those who were teaching
false doctrine.
Now we've been told and taught you can't
do that because you'd be guilty of hurting
somebody's feelings.
But read Matthew 23 and others, not Christians
who read this, say this was not right.
He should never have said those things about
the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
But he did it and they heard it
and they knew it had to be part
of their ministry too.
Wesley and Whitefield, those two great preachers, if
they saw an unconverted preacher in the audience
and they knew his name, they'd call out
his name and rebuke him publicly for not
preaching the gospel.
And both Whitefield did that a lot more
even than Wesley, but both of them did
it.
And they felt constrained to publicly rebuke men
who are not preaching the truth.
And the minute they found out they did
something about it.
Nobody's doing that today.
You don't want to hurt anybody's feelings.
Did it never occur to the authorities that
when they preach false doctrine they're hurting my
feelings?
Don't my feelings count too?
Of course they do.
And so we should be publicly rebuking where
we can, where we have the facts, not
be guessing but sure.
Part of their training.
But you know, after those three years of
watching Jesus night and day, they were still
not ready.
You'd think, well man, the training they've had
is amazing.
Nobody else in the history of the world
has ever had this kind of training that
they have.
But he told them not to go.
He didn't send them out.
He sent them out on little journeys.
But it was not the big thing that
happened after Pentecost.
So they were not ready.
He knew that.
They didn't know it probably.
They probably thought they were ready to go.
But he wouldn't let them go.
Now in John 20, 22, after his resurrection,
he breathed on them and said, receive ye
the Holy Ghost.
Now this puzzles some Bible scholars.
They don't understand what happened there because that
was quite a bit before Pentecost.
I think perhaps what happened then, we might
say they received the indwelling spirit.
Not the baptism of the spirit, but the
indwelling of the spirit.
And others agree with that idea as well.
But that still did not make them ready
because he did not send them then.
We have to remember that when Jesus came,
well Isaiah, for example, said that darkness would
cover the earth and gross darkness would cover
the people.
The gross darkness he was talking about was
the darkness that was on Israel.
Because if the light is in you, his
darkness, how great is that darkness?
They thought they had it.
They didn't have it.
They'd lost it.
It wasn't there.
They were operating as if they had it,
but they never really had it.
And so he rebuked him the way that
he did.
And then gross darkness, yes.
There's a verse in Ephesians 6 that's a
very shocking verse to me.
It speaks about our enemies, Satan and the
hosts that follow him, the fallen angels.
And they're called the rulers of the darkness
of this world.
Don't be wondering why it's so dark spiritually
out there.
There are people keeping it dark.
They're the rulers of the darkness of this
age.
That's why Isaiah called it gross darkness.
It is.
They're leading people in thousands of wicked ways,
evil ways, and sometimes in religious ways that
are just as evil as the other.
And so they are our enemies.
And if they're the rulers of the darkness
and you're a light for God, watch out.
They won't like you.
Things will happen sometimes that you can't explain.
But don't be alarmed.
God is with us.
He's given us all the wisdom we need
to have.
And if you happen to lack wisdom, in
James it says if you lack wisdom, ask
of God.
That gives to all men liberally, greatly he
means.
But he said let him ask in faith,
nothing wavering.
Because if you waver, you'll be like a
wave of the sea, wind and toss.
You have to believe when you pray and
ask for wisdom from God.
You may pray and then walk away and
say, I wonder if he did anything.
Oh forget about it.
He didn't do anything.
He couldn't because you never believe.
So whatever situation you happen to be in,
believe God when you're asking for some help,
for guidance, or power, or whatever.
Believe.
All right.
Gross darkness.
The rulers of the darkness.
Well, that'll be all over when Jesus returns.
And the hosts that serve him will be
thrown into the fire.
And the devil himself will end up in
that lake of fire by the grace and
power of our God.
But then one day something happened and is
put this way in Acts.
That Jesus Christ, he's at the right hand
of God.
And having received of the Father the promise
of the Holy Spirit, he has shed forth
this, which you now see in here.
So Pentecost was something that Jesus did.
He was the one that authored that.
Remember it says now, he received the promise
of the Father, the Holy Spirit, Jesus did.
And having received this promise, then he shed
forth the Holy Spirit on the 12th.
That's how it happened.
Christ did it.
He sent the Spirit in power.
There have been many, you know, in Christian
work down through the years that have experienced
this kind of a baptism that he experienced
on the day of Pentecost.
You know, in one day after they were
baptized in the Spirit, 3,000 Jews were
converted.
Think of it.
In one day, 3,000.
More were converted in one day than had
been converted in the three years when they
were traveling around and preaching.
And then later, a week or two later,
Peter preached and 5,000 were converted at
the end of his sermon.
Nothing like that had happened before.
There were happy men like Dwight L.
Moody in Chicago.
He had a large Sunday school, but he
wasn't getting anywhere like in preaching.
He wasn't really a preacher.
He got very few invitations to preach.
He did some preaching, but nothing seemed to
happen.
And he spent six months crying to God
for the power of the Spirit in his
life.
And it happened one day while I was
walking down the street in Chicago.
He suddenly felt the power of God and
he ran to a friend's house and asked
for a room where he could be alone
for a couple of days.
And he found a place and went in
and he spent hours just talking to God
and was filled mightily with the Holy Spirit.
Now when he went out of there, he
began to preach the same sermons he said
that he preached before.
But before when he preached, nothing happened.
Now when he preached, hundreds were being converted,
and in some cases thousands.
Now Charles Finney, a lawyer, converted suddenly.
He received this baptism of the Spirit, whatever
you want to call it, an imbuement of
God's Spirit and power.
And everybody he talked to the following day
was converted.
Everybody.
He walked around the village talking to different
people.
Everybody found Christ.
And he had that great power and was
probably used of God.
And two and a half a million people
to Christ back when the population in the
States was much smaller.
Torrey, a helper of Moody's, had the same
experience.
J.B. Earl, a great evangelist, so fruitless
in his ministry.
And he got serious about it and spent
one night with God.
And he was trying to find out who
to blame.
And God said, well, I'm blaming you.
You're the fault.
You're your own trouble.
You have to deal with it.
And J.B. Earl says he did.
He honestly just let God search his heart,
show him every sin, make restitution and everything
else.
He was ready for it all.
And he said at two o'clock in
the morning, he was filled with the love
of God by the Holy Spirit.
And before he died, there were 200,000
people found Christ as their personal savior.
Before this happened that night in that room,
he preached 10 times in a crusade.
Not one soul was saved.
But that changed drastically.
And they called it a personal Pentecost.
We have to be very careful here as
to what we're thinking about, because it's not
something that comes easily, nor to everyone.
But if we're serious about our Christian life
and want to account for God and be
something useful to God and his kingdom, if
we want to glorify God, we have a
right to go to God in prayer.
Now, we have some godly examples like Jacob
in Genesis 32.
Remember, he had wronged his brother Esau.
And Esau was coming to meet him and
had 400 men with him.
And Jacob knew his brother intended to kill
him.
That's why he had 400 men with him.
So he had to get this thing straightened
out.
He tried three or four plans, and none
of them worked.
There's a little phrase there, it says, and
Jacob was left alone.
It's good to be left alone.
You have no more plans.
You got nothing left but God.
And that's what happened to him.
And he began wrestling with this angel.
And when the sun came up in the
morning, the angel said, let me go, for
the sun of the day is breaking.
And he said, I will not let you
go unless you bless me.
And that's when he was touched by the
angel, and his name was changed from supplanter
to Jacob.
And his ministry, his whole ministry became powerful,
much different than it had been before.
And when Esau met him the following day,
Esau ran to him, fell on his neck
and kissed him, and they rejoiced together.
And this happened because he persevered.
Now in Hosea, there's a verse that refers
to that and gives us some insight.
It says, therefore, after describing what happened to
Jacob, he says, therefore, wait on your God
continually.
He's saying, do the same thing.
Copy Jacob.
He didn't give up.
He didn't pray a pretty little prayer.
He saw God.
He got to the point he was willing
to die even.
I've heard of men getting to that point
where they tell God, give me power or
I'll die.
You know what John Knox prayed, that great
Scottish preacher?
He said, give me Scotland.
He prayed, give me Scotland or I'll die.
And God gave him Scotland.
He was a great, great preacher.
And wicked people were very much afraid of
him because of the power and the ministry
he had.
So there has to be humility.
There has to be perseverance.
That's mentioned in Ephesians 6, 18.
With all perseverance, it says, hanging in there,
believing God, trusting God, crying to God for
power so that we don't just sit around
being a nice Christian and having our picture
taken, whatnot.
That's not it.
It's standing up and being counted.
It's sharing Christ in difficult places.
It's doing things with our money that others
would think that were really crazy if they
knew.
One of the men in my church in
Transcona years ago, his brothers, there were three
of them, they were potato farmers.
And he became a Christian.
His brothers didn't.
And then one day, he was a heavy
giver, you know, and he had the receipt
from the church in his Bible, and one
of his brothers found it.
And they gave him an awful time.
They yacked at him for days on end,
you crazy fool, giving all this money away.
What are you doing?
Are you going crazy or something, you know?
Well, he didn't, he didn't quit giving.
He just made sure they never saw a
receipt again.
That was a little easier.
But he was changed dramatically.
His brothers couldn't understand it, and I don't
know, but as far as I've heard, his
brothers never did become believers in Christ.
I don't, I can't say that definitely, but
I believe that's how it was, so I
was told.
All right, humility and honesty with God and
with others, and then persevere.
And remember, whatever it is you're seeking, it
must be for the glory of God.
It must be for the glory of God.
Do you remember that group in Europe?
I'm trying to think of their name now.
But they, they did more for missions.
They did more for missions in one year
that most of all the churches in the
world in those days put together did.
They started a prayer meeting that never quit
day or night for a hundred years.
I met one of the workers in South
America years ago, and he still had the
fire, but he admitted that most of their
people had lost the fire.
It wasn't the way it had once been.
Is God willing?
They that wait on the Lord shall renew
their strength.
You'll get new power by waiting on God,
and He'll give each of us what we
need to know and have by way of
spiritual enablements and so on.
He'll do it right, but we need to
seek His face.
We need to get before God and confess
that what He said about you is true.
He said, you're but of nothing.
You know nothing.
You're but of yesterday and know nothing.
You're less than nothing, He said.
Have you ever confessed that to God?
Well, it's time you did that, you know.
Say, God, you said, I'm less than nothing.
I believe it.
I accept that.
Thank you for being so kind as to
tell me the truth.
And we have to start from there.
That's where we start.
We're nothing.
We're less than nothing.
We're not even a hole in the ground.
That's how God sees us.
And of course, He's speaking of us in
comparison to Himself.
God is not as we are or anything
like that.
The inhabitants of the earth, He said, are
grass in Isaiah 40.
And later on in Isaiah 40, He said,
we're grasshoppers.
That's not very flattering.
He just wants His people to understand we
don't have it.
We don't have it.
We have an intelligent mind, but we have
to seek God to get the best in
life.
I say the best in life for the
glory of God.
And it comes through prevailing prayer.
Don't give up.
Remember when the disciples said, they asked Jesus,
teach us to pray, as John taught his
disciples.
And he taught them to pray.
He gave them part of the Lord's prayer.
And then he went into that parable about
the fellow who needed some help.
He went to a friend at night, apparently,
asking for help because somebody had come in
a journey and he had no food in
the house.
Can you please give us some bread?
And his friend hollered back, shut up.
The kids are with me in bed.
I can't do this.
But then it says this, as Jesus said,
I say unto you, though he will not
rise and give him because he is his
friend, but because of his importunity, he will
rise and give him as many as he
needs.
So God is our friend.
We are friends to God.
It's got to be a little more than
that, in a sense.
His importunity has been called shameless asking or
asking that could not be denied.
It's that kind of praying, asking God, persevering.
But you know, you have to make sure
at the outset, it's for the glory of
God and for other people's good that you're
crying to God for power or whatever it
is you have in mind.
He's willing.
He gives liberally to all men.
He's a giver.
When you think of God, you think of
his gifts.
He's a giver and he's not a slow
giver.
You know, there were two things that caused
Jesus to be amazed.
One was he was amazed at their unbelief.
Another case, he was amazed at a certain
Gentile's faith.
He said, I haven't found faith like this
in the whole of Israel.
And he said, and he warned his disciples
and others that there was a time coming
when people would come from the east, the
west, the north and the south and sit
down in the kingdom of God.
He was referring to the conversion of thousands
of Gentiles.
That was a new thought also, something of
course that Jesus taught them.
Well, I don't have one particular text to
leave.
If I did have, I suppose it wouldn't
be Ephesians 618, praying always with all prayer
and supplication in the spirit and watching there
unto with all perseverance and it says, and
for all saints praying for one another, praying
for the lost, crying in the spirit's power.
It says, remember, for to pray in the
spirit.
We're told that twice in the New Testament
and I'm sure Jesus had taught them.
But you know, when you look at the
contrast, all the training of three years, a
little more than three years, all they had
seen, all they had heard, all that they
had done, they too had raised, I don't
know about raising the dead, but they certainly
had healed the sick and cast out demons
and all of that.
But none of it was sufficient.
And we have to keep this in mind
because it's something we've lost in the church.
We figure three or four years in a
Bible school or seminary, that'll be all they
need.
It isn't all they need.
It wasn't all they know.
They had more than anybody in seminary or
Bible college would ever see or ever hear
or ever be a part of.
And yet they weren't ready to go.
He said, tarry until, put those two words
together, tarry until you've been imbued with power.
The spirit will come and fill your life.
Then you'll have power to preach the gospel.
How is it that in the church of
God we've lost this?
Sometimes people say, well, the Pentecostals talk about
it.
Well, thank God they do.
And I'm sure there are some people among
them that receive a true baptism of the
spirit.
But this is open to all of God's
children everywhere.
I close then, honesty, humility, and perseverance.
Don't give up.
But wait until God comes in great power.
And he will.
We're praying for that in the church.
That means, of course, we have to pray
for it in our own life.
It has to start with someone, somewhere.
Let's pray.
Father above, thank you that you're here.
You said whom having not seen, you love.
In whom though now you see him not,
yet believe me, you rejoice with joy unspeakable
and full of glory.
And Father, we know you could open our
eyes in a second and show us this
room filled with angels here to watch the
work of God and your spirit's power, Lord,
everywhere.
It's hidden from us now and will be
till Jesus returns.
We know that, dear Father.
But, Lord, you know the burden that's on
many of our hearts here to see a
deep working of personal revival.
God grant it, we pray, for we pray
in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord
and Savior.
Hallelujah.
Amen.
You've been listening to the From the Pulpit
in Classic Sermons series.
This week, you heard Bill McLeod and his
message, Jesus Training the Twelve.
Tune in next week to hear K.P.
Yohannan speak about running the race like Abraham
on From the Pulpit in Classic Sermons.