Luke 10.1-16

The Urgent Mission

This is going to be a strange message, because this is kind of a strange text.

Before we get started, let me say something to any unbelievers who may be here today. The most faithful way to read the Bible is to try and see what the author meant to communicate to the people he was writing to—and that includes trying to interpret what Jesus meant to say to the people who were listening to him at that moment. Then we take what that first meaning and we try to see how that meaning applies to us today. Cultures changes and times change, but God’s Word does not—so if he’s talking about something that is culturally conditioned, we need to try and see why he said that, and apply that Why to us, today, in our context.

I said that because in this text Jesus is talking to his disciples, and he gives them something to do—a mission to accomplish—and he’s going to tell them how to go about accomplishing that mission. And while the particular details of what it looks like to fulfill that mission might be a little different today (because we live in a different time), the mission itself is the same: the proclaim the kingdom of God. And that mission is given to all Christians, everywhere: everyone who is today a disciple of Jesus.

So if you are not a Christian, it might be easy for you to imagine that what Jesus is saying in this passage doesn’t really apply to you, because you aren’t a Christian and so he’s not giving you this mission. But that’s not true: this passage absolutely applies to you, because Jesus is going to tell his disciples how to deal with those who accept or reject the message of the gospel, and that choice—to accept or reject the gospel—is one you’re going to have to make. And as we’ll see, it’s a serious choice.

So don’t check out if you’re not a Christian: this passage is every bit as important to you as it is to us.

That being said, let’s get into it. We’ve just seen Jesus leave Galilee and begin to make his way toward Jerusalem, where he will soon be killed. But a lot of things will happen, and he will say a lot of things, in between now and then. He’s just told three people how much it will cost to follow him—namely, everything; so the tone of this passage is quite heavy.

And Luke gives us a bit of an introduction to what Jesus will say in v. 1:

:

Prologue

10 After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go.

There are twelve men who are in Jesus’s “inner circle”—the disciples who followed him during his ministry. But they were far from the only ones. There were apparently a good many other people who believed in him and who followed him, because we see him do something similar to what he did at the beginning of chapter 9, but with a lot more people.

In chapter 9, he sent out his twelve disciples to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. He’s going to do the same thing here, but this time he will send out seventy-two people to go ahead of him in pairs to different towns, to get those towns ready for his coming.

But before he sends them, he’s going to talk to them, to get them ready for what they’re about to do. So today we’re going to look at how he gets them ready. What he says can be roughly divided into two sections: one section which directly concerns the seventy-two he is sending out; and another section which concerns the people who will hear their message, and the way to deal with their various reactions to it.

I. CONCERNING THE ONES WHO PROCLAIM THE MESSAGE

Few laborers (even though he’s just sent out 72!)

Woe to Unrepentant Cities

2 And he said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.

Now this is a verse Christians know very well; it’s something we’ll often pray, that God will send out laborers for the harvest.

But the metaphor isn’t immediately clear for everyone. The idea of the harvest is an important one in Scripture. A farmer planting seeds in a field, won’t be useful for a while; but eventually the moment comes for the harvest, when he can collect all the fruit which has grown. All throughout Scripture you see God doing things that don’t seem to have immediate importance, but will pay off later. In a way the entire history of the Old Testament is that way—all of the Old Testament is God doing a series of things which would find their culmination in Jesus.

So what is “the harvest” that Jesus is talking about? It’s the moment when, after his death, resurrection and ascension, he would come again to renew the earth and gather all of his children from all of history to live with him on the New Heavens and the New Earth. That hasn’t happened yet: Jesus still hasn’t returned, and (in case you hadn’t noticed) this earth is still not perfect. So the laborers work to prepare the harvest: to tell as many people as possible about Jesus and to help more and more of them become his children.

But the crazy thing here is not the idea of the harvest—even though, if you think about it, Jesus’s return and renewal of the earth does sound insane. The crazy thing is that Jesus says that “the laborers are few.” There’s lots to be done, but not enough people to do it.

And that’s crazy because he is literally just about to send out seventy-two people into this relatively small region, to share the gospel and get people ready for Jesus. That’s a team most pastors would envy. But it’s still not enough. He says that from the beginning, his disciples are going to be fighting an uphill battle: there’s going to be a lot to do, and not enough people to do it.

So when he gathers these seventy-two together, he tells them, “I know it looks like there are a lot of you here, but the harvest is plentiful, and you can’t do it all alone.” So what is his solution? It’s not first to prepare and train and work to make more laborers, but to pray.

Which is significant. Because it suggests that ultimately, God is the one in charge of whether or not his harvest succeeds. God is the one who takes it upon himself to raise up laborers, and to make them ready, and to send them out. The laborers will have their part to play in all of that, but it is first and foremost his responsibility. So we should ask him to do it.

A dangerous mission

And his pep talk gets even crazier next.

3 Go your way; behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves.

So it’s going to be dangerous. You are going to have enemies, who will try and stop you and hurt you and devour you.

But these enemies, when they encounter you, will see that you are entirely different from what they will have imagined.

4 Carry no moneybag, no knapsack, no sandals, and greet no one on the road.

In other words, there are two things that will set you apart. First, you will trust God so completely for your provision and protection that you will take nothing with you. Nothing that would be considered basic human needs: no money, no bags, no extra clothes. You’ll waste no time greeting people on the road. You will depend on God for your provision, and you will depend on God to fulfill his mission right on time.

Luke 9.51-62

We’ve all had those conversations where someone begins by saying, “Okay—I’ve got some good news and I’ve got some bad news.” And one of two things happens: either you start with the good news, so that the bad news won’t seem so bad, or you start with the bad news, because the good news isn’t all that good, but in comparison with the bad news it sounds a lot better.

Despite all appearances, that’s not what happens in this text.

Jesus is going to say some pretty shocking things in these verses, but he’s not giving bad news to lead in to good news, or good news to soften the bad. When you first read this text, it seems that Jesus only gives bad news. But appearances are deceiving: that’s not what’s going on here.

So what is going on? To begin with, we have a kind of a prologue to the main section.

Read with me starting at v. 51.

51 When the days drew near for him to be taken up [taken back into heaven after his crucifixion and resurrection], he set his face to go to Jerusalem. 52 And he sent messengers ahead of him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make preparations for him. 53 But the people did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. 54 And when his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” 55 But he turned and rebuked them. 56 And they went on to another village.

So we saw before that Jesus, after coming down from the mountain, knows what’s coming. He spoke about it with Moses and Elijah on the mountain, and now he starts heading towards his fate—as Luke says (v. 51), he set his face to go to Jerusalem.

To get to Jerusalem, they have to travel, of course, and they plan on going into a Samaritan town, presumably to stay for a night or a few days. There was a lot of animosity between the Samaritans and the Jews, but Jesus isn’t worried about that: we see in John’s gospel that the first person to whom he revealed his identity was a Samaritan woman, and in this woman’s town many people believed that he was the Messiah. So this was no new thing.

But this time, in this Samaritan town, they will not let Jesus come in. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, but apparently it rubbed the disciples the wrong way, because here we see James and John (surprisingly, not Peter) offer to call fire down from heaven to burn up the village in retribution for their rudeness.

And in v. 55 we see Jesus’s response: But he turned and rebuked them.

I would have loved to hear what that rebuke contained. Just last week we saw Jesus telling his disciples what it looks like to be a follower of Christ: it is not about affirming superiority over others, but about humbly serving others—whoever they may be, and whether or not they can serve us back.

And we do that because that’s what Jesus did for us: the Son of Man came to the lowest place, suffered the confinement of a human body, suffered rejection and torture and death. And his followers should be willing do the same. There are ample promises in the Bible of God’s wrath against those who reject his Son; but we, his children, are never called to exercise that wrath ourselves.

It was wrong of the Samartians in this village to reject Jesus, certainly, and unless they repented, they were judged for that rejection—but it is God who exercises judgment, not his followers. The point is that being a follower of Christ will sometimes mean denying impulses that seem right at the time.

And that self-denial is the theme that continues through the rest of the passage.

In v. 56 we see that they move on to another village, and as they are traveling they meet three anonymous people who speak to Jesus. And in each case, the theme is the same—Jesus says, “If you want to follow me, it will cost you.”

Jesus is going to say some pretty shocking things in these verses. So we’re going to look at what he says first, and then take a step back and ask why he says them.

Following Jesus Will Cost You Comfort (v. 57-58)

57 As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” 58 And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

One of the most easily forgotten facts about Jesus is that for the three years of his ministry, he was homeless. He traveled from town to town, preaching the gospel and never stable. There were times when he was invited into people’s homes, sure; but oftentimes he had to sleep outside. At one point his bed was the bough of a boat in the middle of a huge storm.

Now there are some people who like that. I have a lot of friends in Colorado for whom a night in the woods under the stars, sleeping on the ground, is heaven. The point is not, If you follow me you’ll have to leave your favorite pillow at home.

The point is, If you follow me, you won’t have what you think you need.

Following Christ may mean giving up those things which you see as elementary—basic human needs. A roof over your head. Financial security. Entertainment. Proximity to loved ones. Access to easy medical care. I know a missionary in the Ivory Coast whose baby daughter caught yellow fever and malaria at the same time; it’s a miracle she’s still alive, because they are hours away from the nearest hospital, and that hospital wasn’t equipped to properly care for her. And they were only there, miles away from the care his little girl needed, because he had chosen to leave home and live among an unreached people group, so that they might hear the gospel.

It’s different for all of us, but each one of us has a list of things we think we need to survive. And Jesus says that whatever it is that we think we need to be comfortable and assure our well-being, it’s that very thing that we may need to give up. There will be times when we look around and we think that even animals have it better than we do. Jesus says, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

Jesus Christ, God himself, gave up the exquisite comfort of heaven to lay on the dirt night after night, in order to save us. How can we expect his followers to have it any better?

But that’s a fairly light example. After this, Jesus will speak with two more people. And these next two examples are a good deal more extreme than the first. Following Jesus will cost us our comfort; and next we’ll see that it will also cost us our priorities.

Following Jesus Will Cost You Your Priorities (v. 59-60)

59 To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” 60 And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

We often sweeten the gospel message to say that if you follow Christ, your life will be better. And that is absolutely, gloriously true…but it’s not always true in the way we think it is.

For some reason we’ve got this idea that when God promises “abundant life” in Christ (John 10.10), he means that our lives will be like the lives of everyone else around us, only better. We’ve somehow understood that the things that are important for everyone else will still be there for us, but even better.

But that’s just not the case. Not only does God never promise to give us everything we always wanted; he promises that many of the things we always wanted are things we’ll have to let go of.

Now that doesn’t shock us too much in theory; but when we’re faced with actually having to give up something like that, it’s a very different matter. No matter how far we think our sacrifice will go, it will have to go even farther. People often talk about the Bible as if it contains two different Gods: the cruel God of the Old Testament and the loving God of the New. They read stories—like, for example, God telling Abraham to sacrifice his only son—and they think, Well that’s the OLD Testament. JESUS would never say anything like that.

I’m sorry, but he does right here.

This man has just lost his father. Jesus calls him to follow him. And he says, “Absolutely, but I have to bury my dad first.” And Jesus says, essentially, “Why? He’s dead. Leave him. You have more important things to do.”

Different countries have different rituals for burial when someone dies. In France the immediate family of the deceased is given little metal caps to fit over the screws which hold the lid down on the coffin; visitors are given flowers to place on the coffin. (Or in America, people let a handful of dirt fall on the coffin that’s been lowered into the ground.) The ritual itself isn’t important; it’s the process that’s important. The process of burial is a sign of respect for the dead, and an emotional aid for the grieving, to help them come to grips with the finality of what has happened.

That is why what he says here seems so very extreme. This is something that nearly all people, from all cultures, see as a prioritary need after losing a loved one. But Jesus says that even in such a difficult moment, the priorities of his followers are not the same.

When we are in Christ, our priorities will undergo a shift that is far more radical than we may imagine. Don’t just think comfort and well-being: think of the things which are the most important for you. The rituals that help you cope. The things you value. The convictions you held before. All of these take second place in our priorities. That which matters most of all now is him. It is his kingdom. It is his gospel. It is his life.

So following Christ will cost us our comfort; it will cost us our priorities; and finally, it will cost us the people and things that we love.

Following Jesus Will Cost You What You Love (v. 61-62)

61 Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” 62 Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow [to go to work] and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

This last person wants to follow Jesus, but first wants to say goodbye to the people he loves—people who are still alive. These are people to whom he still has attachments, whom he will miss when he’s gone, and who will miss him.

And Jesus says, “No—leave now, and don’t look back.”

Again, this sounds absolutely brutal. But again, he’s making a point.

When we are in Christ, not only our comfort; not only our priorities; but even the people we love the most take second place.

I love my family more than anything in the world. I love my wife, and my son, and my unborn daughter, so much it hurts sometimes. But Jesus says if I am to love God, I have to love him more. That if he is not more important to me than they are, I’m not fit to belong to him.

Do you see how far removed the picture he paints here is from the way we often imagine the Christian life? How God’s intention for our lives is so different from “just like now, only better”? The Christian life is wholly different than it was before—it is characterized by an entirely new set of priorities and loves.

And there is no looking back.

That’s hard.

And if you’ll notice, in the case of these three potential disciples, there is no mention of any of them actually accepting Jesus’s call and following him. That’s how hard it is—although they felt absolutely ready to drop everything and follow him, when they saw just what that would mean to leave everything, it was presumably too much.

Many people who claim to be Christians give up after a certain amount of time, and prove they never really were Christians to begin with. And part of the problem, I’d wager, is that no one ever told them exactly what it would cost them—namely, everything.

Why? (A Lesser-to-Greater Scenario)

The second thing which will set you apart is your disposition: you are not going out as warriors, but as “lambs” in the midst of wolves. You will not convert people by coersion or intimidation or violence, but by meekness and service. You will be humble; you will strong-arm no one. I am sending you our as laborers, not soldiers.

Now that we’ve seen what Jesus said—these three shocking statements—we need to ask ourselves why he said them. Is he just that cruel? Is everything I heard about God being a God of love untrue? Would a God of love really give his children news which is this bad?

And the answer is surprising, as answers in the Bible often are. And it helps me to think of them in terms of music—major keys and minor keys. (I heard Florent Varak use these terms in relation to the Bible—he used them differently than I’m going to, but this idea, which I find really helpful, came from him.)

In music, we have major keys and minor keys. Major keys sound happy; minor keys sound sad. If you have nothing but minor keys, the song may be beautiful, but it will be depressing; if you have nothing but major keys, the song will sound happy, but it will probably be shallow and uninteresting.

The best songs know how to use both major keys and minor keys to make something better. The sad songs gain hopefulness; and the happy songs gain weight.

There are a lot of minor-key texts in the Bible: texts which are difficult and heavy and challenging. But “minor-key texts” are not bad texts. They rather help us to understand why the major-key texts, which give us what we immediately think of as “good news,” are as good as they are.

This is a minor-key text. It is heavy, and hard, and a bit unsettling…but it is vital. Because what Jesus says here, if we apply it, proves just how good the “good news” really is.

Let me put it another way. In everything Jesus has said here—that following him will cost us our comfort, our priorities, and everything we love—there is no bad news. And we have a clue that this is the case in v. 62:

Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow...and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

In other words, rather than looking back, we should be looking forward, because what we are looking forward to is far better.

Jesus’s description—of someone putting his hand to the plow and looking back—so accurately describes a lot of Christians! They are happy to be saved; they are happy at the idea that they are no longer under God’s wrath. But they still think back on their past lives, their lives before Jesus, with a bit of nostalgia. They think back on the pleasures of sin they have to give up, and they miss them.

Is it any wonder that we are tempted by the same things, over and over again? Is it any wonder that we tend to fall into the same sins, over and over again?

Of course it isn’t. Because we think back on those sins with longing rather than disgust. We look back on the things we have left behind.

And, far too often, we show that we never really left them behind at all. We just love them too much.

Or, to use a different example, we look back on things that aren’t sinful, but that we’ve still had to give up for Christ. We look back on the comfort we used to have. On the extra money in our bank account before we started giving. On the free time we had on Sundays. On the lack of responsibilities we had toward our brothers and sisters. On the time we didn’t have to spend reading our Bibles.

Same thing. We put our hand to the plow—we begin to work for the kingdom of God—and then we look back. We’re happy to be saved…but we still miss the life we had before.

Now, why would this make us “unfit” for the kingdom of God?

There is one simple answer: looking back on our past lives makes us unfit for God’s kingdom because the new life in his kingdom, which we should be looking forward to, is infinitely better.

One of the criticisms you often hear leveled toward Jesus in this passage—one of the things I thought about when I first read it—is that he seems to be discouraging these three men from following him, by telling them how impossibly hard it will be. And that has been the experience for a lot of Christians: they are told that Jesus will make everything better, then they start following him, and everything seems to get harder. They leave feeling deceived.

But that’s not what’s happening here. Jesus isn’t discouraging these guys from following him—and you’ll know that if you read the rest of the Bible, and see how God affirms the importance of family, and proper grief, and material provision.

No—Jesus is using these extreme circumstances—a life without a home, the burial of a father, proper goodbyes to loved ones—to show that as good and proper and important as these things are, the kingdom of God is infinitely more important.

That the kingdom of God is so much better than having a roof over your head, and a pillow under it.

That belonging to God is so much more healing than the process of burying your father.

That loving Christ is so much fuller than loving your wife or your kids.

This is a lesser-to-greater scenario: it’s not that these things aren’t important and good, but rather, as good and important as these things are, here is something infinitely greater.

Don’t Look Back.

So here’s the question: why have so many Christians not had this experience? Why do so many Christians like the idea of what they have in Christ, but really, empirically, they actually enjoy the same old pleasures and comforts of this life more than him?

I would submit that this has not been their experience of the Christian life because they haven’t poured as much effort and time and resource into knowing and delighting in God as they have poured into all these other things they love.

Now thankfully, God will call very few of us to do something as extreme as what Jesus calls these men to do. Most of us won’t have to leave our loved ones behind, or leave our dead parents unburied, or sleep on the ground, to do what God has called us to do. That’s not the point.

Jesus isn’t saying we’ll all have to do this. Jesus is saying that we should all know that the kingdom of God is better than the things we love the most, and we should know it so fully that if he ever called us to give them up, we wouldn’t hesitate for a moment.

So how do we do that? How do we get to that kind of profound, gut-level understanding of how good he is? Well, Jesus tells us how, as he told them. He says, “Follow me. Go and proclaim the kingdom of God. Put your hand to the plow, and don’t look back.”

At the time, following Jesus meant physically following him. But now, Jesus has given us something better. He lived the perfect life we should have lived, and he died the death that we deserved, and he rose again from the dead and gave us his perfect life and death; he gave us his Spirit, to actually live in all of his children; and he has given us his Word, which we can literally carry around in our pockets wherever we go—which we can memorize and meditate on and put into practice.

We must know that the kingdom of God is better than the things that we love, and know it so completely that when he calls us to give something up—whatever that may be—we won’t hesitate.

And we do that—we grow in that knowledge—by every day depending on his life and death and resurrection for us; by depending on his Spirit to reveal God to us; by reading and memorizing and studying the Word that he left us; and by putting the Word into practice. By doing what he tells us to do.

The letter to the Hebrews says a lot about rest, and this rest it speaks of is the culmination of our joy in Christ: it’s the picture of a life entirely satisfied in Jesus. And the author of this letter says in chapter 4, verse 11:

11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest [so that’s the goal], so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. [And how do we do that?] 12 FOR the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

The psalmist said it more succinctly when he said (Psalm 34.8):

Oh, TASTE and SEE that the Lord is good!

Many of us live our Christian lives like someone trying to live off of cooking tutorials on YouTube. They watch the food, it looks good, it makes them hungry…but they watch it from a distance. They can’t taste the food, because it’s on the screen. If you want to taste it, you have to go to the market, get the ingredients you need, follow the instructions, and EAT.

If you don’t taste—if you never actually do what he calls you to do—you’ll never see how good he really is.

And when the time comes for you to actually sacrifice something you feel you need, or something you love, you won’t do it, because you won’t be convinced the trade-off is worth it.

That may be safer, in the short term. But it is also the best way to never see that he is better than you imagined.

You’ll never give up anything you feel is essential…and find that God is enough to provide for you.

You’ll never lose anything you love…and find that God is enough to sustain you.

You’ll never sacrifice anything you feel you can’t live without…and find that what you have in Christ is actually better than what you sacrificed.

So here’s Jesus’s call to us in this text.

Think of what you love. Think of what you value the most. Hold it up in your mind, see it clearly, and feel why you love it.

If it is sin that you love, then the call is simple: throw it away with all the violence you can muster, repent of that sin, and ask God to show you how good he is for allowing you to escape it.

If it’s not sinful, it’s more of a challenge—but the call remains. Think of what you love. Hold it up in your mind, feel why you love it. Then, with that your love for this good thing still firm in your mind, turn to the Word, and learn it, and know it, and live it. Keep what you love in your mind all the while, and ask God to show you in his Word that, as much you love this thing, or this person, he is infinitely better. Ask him to show you, through your obedience, why as much as you love this thing, or this person, he is infinitely better. Ask him to help you feel, through the experience of following him, that as much as you love this thing, or this person, he is infinitely better.

“No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Follow him. Put your hand to the plow, and don’t look back.

Peace

And things only get crazier from there.

5 Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace be to this house!’ 6 And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him. But if not, it will return to you.

The idea of “peace” was much richer in that culture than it is in ours—it is not merely the absence of conflict, but saying “Peace be to this house!” meant that it is our wish that full well-being, as deep as it can possibly go, would come to you and your family. It was a very rich way of saying that we are for you; that we want your good; we are in your corner.

But what is crazy is not that Jesus’s followers would wish that kind of peace on others—that’s exactly why Jesus came. What is crazy is that depending on the way people responded to the gospel, whatever Jesus’s followers conveyed is what happened. The kind of peace he is talking about is something only God can give. And yet, Jesus says that if “a son of peace is there,” your peace will stay with him. The peace God gave you will be shared with him. But if not—if someone rejects the message you have come to give him—that peace will not go to them.

In other words, Jesus says, if they reject you, they reject me. To be able to be, in a sense, an ambassador for Jesus, is an insane responsibility—especially given how imperfect Jesus’s disciples were. But it is a responsibility he freely and gladly gives his followers.

The laborers should be cared for

And here, Jesus hits the absolute height of his craziness by suggesting that those who labor to share the gospel with others should be provided for by those whom he is serving.

7 And remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages. Do not go from house to house.

In other words, don’t go around, knocking on door after door, looking for money. If they take you in and let you serve them, then they should provide for you. Why? Because how will you serve them properly if you keep having to make additional trips to find a way to provide for yourself and your family?

I know that money is a taboo in France, and I know why—there have been a lot of abuses here. But Paul will quote this verse to Timothy in , to speak about the responsibility of each local church to give wages to the one who ministers to them.

I knew a pastor once who worked full-time during the week for a telecommunications company, so that his church would not have the burden of paying him. His heart was in the right place, but he was woefully misguided. It is not a burden for the church to pay their ministers; it is the most basic of obligations. If that church had paid their pastor, then he would have been free to devote himself full-time to the church, and they would have had the joy of knowing that they were doing right by this man who was serving them so tirelessly.

We would be disobedient if we suggested that it is okay for a pastor or a minister to live off of outside support when he is serving the church full-time. Whatever house he is serving, that house should provide for him.

Now those things directly concern the ones who are going out to spread the message of the kingdom: how to pray, how to prepare, how to minister, and how to survive while you are ministering.

Jesus will continue to speak to the seventy-two, but the emphasis of his statements is going to shift now: from those who are sharing the message to those who are receiving the message.

II. CONCERNING THE ONES WHO HEAR THE MESSAGE

The Kingdom Has Come Near: Two Responses

Receiving

Receiving will be met with reward.

8 Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is set before you. 9 Heal the sick in it and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’

Now this is the first time he’s said it this way, so let’s take a minute and define some things here. What does it mean in this context for someone to “receive” one of the seventy-two he is sending?

It was not just a matter of letting them into the town, or into one’s home; “receiving” the disciples meant receiving and accepting what they had come to bring—namely, the good news of the kingdom of God. When they “received” the disciples, what they were actually receiving was Christ and his gospel.

So the disciples would go from town to town, and some towns would “receive” them—they would be open to Jesus’s disciples and his message. The disciples would heal the sick in this town (again, proving that Jesus really was who he claimed to be).

But the most important thing the disciples brought was not healing, but this final proclamation: The kingdom of God has come near to you. This wouldn’t have been all they’d say, of course; J.C. Ryle described this as a kind of summary statement of their whole message.

But it was a very loaded summary statement, and it would have meant a lot more to first-century Jews than it does to us today. Talk of the kingdom of God would have immediately brought to mind the Old-Testament promises of the Messiah. When they heard, The kingdom of God has come near to you, they would have understood, The Messiah has come. The promises you’ve been waiting for are about to be fulfilled. God is not far off; he has come NEAR to you!

This was breathtaking news; and we are meant to leave this sentence with the understanding that receiving Christ will be met with reward. It seems like a simple thing—receiving Christ. And it is. But the reward that we get in exchange for receiving him is unthinkable: all the fulfillment of God’s most wonderful promises toward his people, summed up in the person of Jesus. To receive the disciples was to receive Christ; to receive Christ is to receive the kingdom of God; and to receive the kingdom of God is to see all of his promises fulfilled for you.

But some towns did not receive them.

2. Rejecting

10 But whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you, go into its streets and say, 11 ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet we wipe off against you.

This “wiping the dust of the ground off one’s feet” was a sign of judgment against the town they were leaving. The picture was that if you rejected Christ, you were utterly foreign to God, and you had no part in him.

And what he says next is absolutely chilling—v. 11b:

Here’s why (and I find this sentence absolutely chilling)—v. 11b:

‘Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near.’

In both cases—in the case of those receiving and of those rejecting—the same wonderful thing has happened. The kingdom of God has come near. The God you have been waiting for; the fulfillment of the deepest desires of your heart, those which aren’t conditioned by culture or upbringing but which are inherent to all humanity; eternal joy and happiness forever; finally being able to do what you were created to do… This is the kingdom of God, and it has come near.

And you cast it out. You wanted no part of God, or his kingdom. So the result will be swift and harsh (v. 12):

12 I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town. 13 “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. 14 But it will be more bearable in the judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. 15 And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades.

The Jews hearing this would have known what he meant. They would have remembered the story in , when God destroyed Sodom for its wickedness by raining sulfur and fire down on it. They would have remembered how the prophets so often condemned the cities of Tyre and Sidon for their idolatry and pride and materialism.

Can we be honest? That seems awfully harsh. And this is one of the problems people have with the God of the Bible. Why would a God of love execute judgment against someone for something that doesn’t seem all that bad (compared to some of the really evil things people have done)?

No one would be upset if you found a ball of dust or hair and threw it in the trash. It would be quite a different story if it wasn’t a ball of hair you found and threw away, but a newborn baby. The gravity of the

There’s a reason why, and although we may not realize it, it’s something that all of us inherently understand.

Not many people would be upset if they saw you slap a mosquito on your arm. (A few would, but generally most of us would understand—and even try to help get the mosquito if you missed it!) It would be quite a different story if it wasn’t a mosquito you slapped, but a newborn baby. We see those who abuse children as so vile, and so despicable, that they deserve the harshest appropriate punishment.

Not only do we not think of a life in prison as a harsh punishment for a person who would throw a newborn baby in the trash—we sort of feel it’s not quite enough. That such an act is so vile, and so despicable, that no punishment would be too harsh for such a person.

mwould be upset if you found a ball of dust or hair and threw it in the trash. It would be quite a different story if it wasn’t a ball of hair you found and threw away, but a newborn baby. Not only do we not think of a life in prison as a harsh punishment for a person who would throw a newborn baby in the trash—we sort of feel it’s not quite enough. That such an act is so vile, and so despicable, that no punishment would be too harsh for such a person.

Not only do we not think of a life in prison as a harsh punishment for a person who would throw a newborn baby in the trash—we sort of feel it’s not quite enough. That such an act is so vile, and so despicable, that no punishment would be too harsh for such a person.

Why are we more upset at someone hitting a baby than someone hitting a mosquito? Because the gravity of the sin increases in proportion to the value of the one sinned against. Because a baby is a human being, with its own worth and value and dignity. And not only is it a human being, it is a helpless, innocent human being, who has done nothing to deserve that abuse, and who should have been protected rather than mistreated.

The gravity of the sin increases in proportion to the value of the one sinned against.

This is why Jesus tells the seventy-two to tell those who reject them, ‘Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near.’ God is the most inherently worthy being in existence; and that is why rejecting God and his gospel is worthy of such judgment.

Sodom and Tyre and Sidon were judged harshly; but whatever they got was “more bearable,” Jesus says, than those who reject God in these cities, because to these cities, the kingdom of God has come near. And if the mighty works done in [your cities] had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago.

In both cases, the same thing is said: “The kingdom of God has come near.” The question is, “What did you do with it?”

Rejecting the Gospel is Worse than Outright Evil (explain Tyre and Sidon)

Jesus is the Gospel.

Jesus gives one final word before sending them out (v. 16):

16 “The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me.”

The seventy-two were ambassadors for Christ, representing him to the cities in which they entered. If these cities rejected the seventy-two, they rejected Christ. And if they rejected Christ, they rejected God himself, because Jesus was the incarnation of God—he was, and is, God made man.

Anon, 2016. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.

It’s a stunning affirmation—what he’s saying is that when people reject the gospel, it’s not an idea, or a philosophy, or a religion, that they are rejecting. When they reject the gospel, they are rejecting God himself, the most infinitely worthy being who exists. And because the gravity of the sin increases in proportion to the value of the one sinned against, those who reject the gospel are guilty of sin of infinite gravity.

What about us?

Now—what about us? We weren’t there when Jesus sent out these seventy-two disciples; we weren’t among their number. Why is this text so important to us today? This happened before Jesus died on the cross; surely things are different now. Surely his death, that ultimate act of love, made it so that such ministry is no longer necessary, or that the punishment of rejecting the gospel message is no longer so harsh.

I’m sorry, but that’s not the case. Turn with me to . Paul speaks in a very similar way to Christians in the church at Corinth—after Jesus’s death, after he sent out the apostles to plant churches. Paul speaks of all Christians as being “ambassadors for Christ,” bringing the same message to people who don’t know him.

, starting at v. 17:

17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

This is the good news—the kingdom of God has come near, and has made anyone in Christ into a new creation. We are no longer the sinners we once were, but through Christ’s work, God declares us righteous—he reconciles us to himself and declares us new. And he sends us out to share this same reconciliation with others.

Anon, 2016. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.

18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.

The same thing happens. He sends us out as ambassadors of his Son, and makes his appeal through us. And that appeal is summarized in two simple sentences:

We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

All the gospel can be summed up in that simple call: be reconciled to God. For you, God made Jesus, who never sinned, take our sins upon himself so completely that we can say he became sin for us. And he gave us his perfect, sinless life so completely that God calls us the righteousness of God.

This is the good news of the gospel: that the infinitely worthy God has offered a gift which is unthinkably good. So rejecting the good news of the gospel means rejecting the infinitely good God who offers this unthinkably wonderful gift.

This means two things for us today—one for Christians who are hearing this, and one for any unbelievers who are hearing this.

Christians, you are ambassadors for Christ. You must never think that your job is simply to spread good cheer and help others, like year-round Santa Clauses. You should share your joy, and you should help others, but that’s not all you are called to do.

You are ambassadors. You are on a mission of the highest good possible, and this mission is of the utmost urgency. You don’t know how many chances the people around you are going to have to hear the gospel. You don’t know whom God will place in their paths. The seventy-two were dead-set on their mission; they would not be distracted by useless conversations or entertainment on the road. They had a job to do, and they fixed their eyes with lazer-like sighting on the task at hand.

Don’t waste your time. Don’t waste your relationships. Don’t waste your conversations. This text calls us to feel the weight of this mission, and to get to work today. You don’t need a degree in theology to share the good news. All you need is faith that God can use any conversation about the gospel, even the most fumbling and incorrect, to change someone.

So don’t waste your time. Get to work.

Unbelievers, you have now heard the message. If you’re here today, and you have listened to this sermon, you know everything you need to know. You know that Jesus lived a perfect life for us, and died the death that we deserve, that we might be forgiven of our sins and reconciled to God.

That means I can say, with every bit as much certainty as the seventy-two were called to say, that the kingdom of God has come near to you. It’s up to you whether that fact is a sign of celebration for you, or a sign of judgment against you.

So you have a choice to make. Either receive it, or reject it. If you rejected the gospel in the past, the good news is that it’s never too late. Jesus will never turn away those who come to him in faith. But if you reject him today, there is no guarantee that you will have another opportunity to receive him tomorrow. You don’t know what’s going to happen after we leave here today. You don’t know if you’ll be alive tomorrow.

So I implore you, on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. Receive the gift of the gospel, receive the gift of Jesus Christ, and enjoy him forever with us. Anyone can come; and all are welcome.

The kingdom of God has come near to you.