Thought for Thursday
And it came to pass in those days that He went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God. Luke 6:12
How many times have you heard people – preachers, perhaps, or someone in their prayers – refer to the Lord Jesus often spending His nights alone in prayer? But that statement is actually not true. Or if it is true, it is not recorded in the Scriptures. There are other references to His going to solitary places to pray, but it is not said that in those cases that He remained in prayer for the entire night. Today’s text is the only reference in our Bible to the Lord Jesus spending all night in prayer. While we are at it, let’s clear up another misconception about this verse. The last phrase ‘prayer to God’ is actually ‘prayer of God’ in the original Greek text. This makes it plain that His night in prayer was a divine conversation between God the Father and God the Son. Therefore, this must have been an incredibly important prayer session. I can think of at least two reasons why it was so.
The first thing the Lord Jesus did the day after his all-night prayer was to select from his disciples those who He would call apostles. These twelve men would be the companions of the Lord Jesus for the remainder of His earthly ministry. They would accompany Him, assist Him, learn from Him, and seek to copy Him during those years. But more importantly, they would be preparing to carry out His commission in the years that would follow. The role of these men would be crucial to all of Christianity, because it was them who would lead and instruct the early Christians, teaching them what they had learned from the Lord Jesus, and guiding them into all truth. Ephesians 2:20 reminds us that we are build on the foundation of the apostles. Without the work of those great men, we would never have had the guidance and impetus to spread the Gospel throughout the world. We would also be missing all of the doctrinal direction for our lives, for the establishment and preservation of Assemblies, and for the work of God in this day of grace. How glad we should be that the Lord Jesus spent the night in prayer before making those selections of apostles.
But among those selections, we see the choice of Judas Iscariot to be one of the twelve. This was not a mistake; the Lord Jesus knew all about this man and about his upcoming role as the traitor. And yet, after a night of communion with His Father, the Lord Jesus called the name of Judas Iscariot among his appointees. From this we understand the deep, eternal commitment of the Son to do the Father’s bidding as the Lamb of God Who would take away the sin of the world. By choosing Judas, He would be setting in place the process that would lead to His betrayal, His sufferings, and His death. Is it any wonder that the prayer session lasted all night?
We owe so much to the devotion of the Lord Jesus to His Father’s will. That night in prayer is a wonderful display of that devotion. – Jim MacIntosh