Luke 10:1-12 [NLTse]
The Lord now chose seventy other disciples and sent them ahead in pairs to all the towns and places He planned to visit. 2 These were His instructions to them: “The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord Who is in charge of the harvest; ask Him to send more workers into His fields. 3 Now go, and remember that I am sending you out as lambs among wolves. 4 Don’t take any money with you, nor a traveler’s bag, nor an extra pair of sandals. And don’t stop to greet anyone on the road.
5 “Whenever you enter someone’s home, first say, ‘May God’s peace be on this house.’ 6 If those who live there are peaceful, the blessing will stand; if they are not, the blessing will return to you. 7 Don’t move around from home to home. Stay in one place, eating and drinking what they provide. Don’t hesitate to accept hospitality, because those who work deserve their pay.
8 “If you enter a town and it welcomes you, eat whatever is set before you. 9 Heal the sick, and tell them, ‘The Kingdom of God is near you now.’ 10 But if a town refuses to welcome you, go out into its streets and say, 11 ‘We wipe even the dust of your town from our feet to show that we have abandoned you to your fate. And know this—the Kingdom of God is near!’ 12 I assure you, even wicked Sodom will be better off than such a town on judgment day.
The word apostle is a Greek word meaning “one who is sent out”.
And we see in our reading this morning the Lord Jesus “sending out” seventy of His disciples to prepare towns and places for His coming. These “seventy” are not the Twelve Apostles – the Twelve “Sent Out Ones”. No. The Twelve were “sent out” in the “office of apostleship”: After Jesus’ sacrifice, and after they’d been anointed by the Holy Spirit, the Twelve would be those “sent out” to spread the good news of Christ’s Kingdom and establish church’s and Christian communities as they went.
But this group of seventy “sent out ones” Luke makes clear are just your average disciples. Jesus “sends them out”, but not to necessarily stir up a following or establish churches, they are “sent out” simply to prepare the people and communities they are going to for Jesus’ coming.
So there are two very different aspects to this idea of “apostle”, of being “sent out”. Yes, there’s the “office of the apostle”, but there is also the mindset of being apostolic: The recognition that each and every Christian has been “sent out” by Christ to prepare the people and communities around us for Jesus’ coming; no matter where we go and no matter what else we may be going to do there, that we’ve ultimately been sent there by God to prepare the way for Jesus’ coming.
Here are some examples: We go to school and complain because of the ways our teachers or classmates behave, or get down because of what the administration allows there… Your workplace is getting worse and worse: Growing in the Lord is helping you see more and more clearly how twisted their values have become and how mixed up their priorities. And it’s becoming harder and harder and more and more drudgery even just to get out of bed to go and be there each day… And we could describe the same kinds of feelings, struggles, and complaints about our home life, relationships with neighbors, and even our life together here at church…
But the Lord Jesus tells us that everything changes when we go to school or go to work or go home or go wherever it is we go realizing we go there “sent out by God”. If I go to the office hoping I can make it through the day, that’s very different than getting ready for work with the mindset, “I’m on a mission from God!” – knowing that God has sent us to bring Heaven to that place, to be Jesus to this specific group of people.
Without the sense of being “sent out”, well, we all know what it’s like: Our days are emotional roller coasters, happy one moment (depending on our circumstances), and miserable the next (as those circumstances change). We’ve all, perhaps, known or heard about priests and pastors who’ve left the ministry because of disappointment and hopelessness in the circumstances where they’ve been called. (I can think of one pastor I know whom this happened to recently who spent six or seven years – the entire time of her pastorate – complaining and frustrated because those who made up the church she served just wouldn’t be the way she wanted them to be or do the things she wanted them to do.
(I had the opportunity to counsel her as things were coming to a head and tried to share with her this mindset of apostleship: That sometimes our Father calls us to be Light among other Light-bearers. But other times He calls us to bring our Light into places that need more Light – places where there is darkness or negative, unpleasant, even demonic things happening. And having a sense of godly purpose – knowing we’ve been “sent out by God” into these dark, negative, unpleasant, and even (sometimes) demonic places changes everything!
So we ought not be surprised if and when we find that things aren’t the way we’d hoped they’d be at our new job or in our marriage or at our new school, in the Commissioner’s Office or at the Courthouse, etc… Having put His Spirit inside of us, the Bible is filled with accounts of the Lord God sending His sons and daughters into troubled situations to be a part of His solution there! He “sends us out” to share Jesus’ love and bring Heaven to Earth in these places.
Too often, however, we go to work hoping to get Life there; we hope to get Life from our husband or wife, we hope to find Life and fulfillment from our friends, or from this or that endeavor, and we are regularly disappointed because we don’t understand the nature of God’s calling on our lives as His “sent out ones”.
As Christians we are not called to seek Life or fulfillment from the people or activities of the world. We are called to get our fulfillment and Life from Christ, and then to bring Christ’s Light and Life to the places we go.
It can be a challenging mindset. It can be a difficult calling to remember and set our lips and hands to day by day, but it is His calling on our lives, and He promises it’s an integral part of our having abundant life here in the world, and, of course, integral to those around us coming to Christ and enjoying His Light and Life for themselves, as well.
Such a being “sent out” would have been just as strange and awkward to those first seventy. So let’s see what He told them to help them live in this Way.
First, the Lord Jesus told them not to take any money with them or any extra belongings. I hear two charges to us in this. First, let’s not think we have to have this or that saved up or to have attained this or that status or position to serve God in the world. Jesus tells us we’re ready to be “sent out” just the way we are!
Second, I hear Him calling us to travel light. Our plans to achieve and possess the good things of this world often get in the way of God’s giving us the best things of this world. Giving away and not getting bogged down in the acquiring and getting (and then the maintenance and care of those things we’ve acquired and gotten) keeps our hearts, minds, and souls light for God to “send us out” and fill up our lives with His best things.
Another charge Jesus gave concerning this apostolic mindset was to ask God’s blessing upon the people and places they went to. How would it change you and your school (or your workplace or home life or neighborhood, etc…) if, every time you entered its doors and entered your various classrooms or conference rooms you asked our Father in Heaven, “Grant Your peace to this house”? I think the truth is, we don’t know how it would change things because we don’t tend to do it! J
Jesus “sends us out” saying, “Heal the sick, and tell them, ‘The Kingdom of God is near you now.’” As we go about our daily lives, the awareness that Heaven has sent us to those places we’re going – Taco Bell, Radio Shack, gym class, that new prospect’s office, the doctor’s office, etc… – can make us ready to pray with and for those we sense have a need. Now, I know that many of you would feel uncomfortable initiating prayer with someone else. And, in the name of Jesus Christ I say to you today, “Get over it!” God has “sent you out” to be His representative: To bring Heaven to Earth; to bring Jesus to lost people. Pray for those He brings to you. Share with them what He’s done in your life.
You’re on a mission from God.
On Saturday afternoon, March 23rd – the day before Palm Sunday and the week before Easter – we are going to be breaking all of us up into teams and going out door-to-door and around the Wal-Mart and Kmart (and more) shopping centers to invite our neighbors and community to celebrate the wonders of Jesus’ death and the mind-blowing fact of His resurrection with us. We’ll be meeting a week earlier, Friday night, March 15th at 7pm downstairs in Fellowship Hall, for some training and preparation in this very special kind of “sending out”.
Let’s make plans now to be available and be a part of it all!
We are on a mission from God!
Traditional Worship: [“Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” (Hymn #354, vv. 1, 2, 3) (INTRODUCED BY PASTOR)]
Contemporary Worship: [Acknowledging the Body of Christ (PASTOR)]
, and across Luke, we see that Jesus had the habit of sending out different ones of His followers ahead of Him into the towns and places where He planned to visit. At the beginning of Luke 9 we see Him “sending out” the Twelve Apostles to preach, teach, and minister in Jesus’ name and Kingdom. Later in Luke 9 we see Him “sending out” messengers to a Samaritan village He was preparing to visit. As we’ve just read, Luke 10 records Jesus “sending out” seventy other disciples (that is, not from among the Twelve) to go ahead of Him to get ready those towns and places for His coming. And Luke 22 shows Jesus “sending out” Peter and John to get everything ready for their Passover celebrations in Jerusalem.
There are two distinct kinds of “sending out” going on in these passages: When “sending out” the Twelve Apostles the Lord is “sending them out” to train them for the “office” of Apostle, training them to be “sent out” to spread the good news of the Kingdom of God far and wide, and to establish communities of Christians as they go. The “office” of Apostleship.
But these other “sent out ones”, the so-called “messengers” and “the seventy”, are simply “other disciples,” Luke writes. And unlike those called to the “office” of Apostle, these others were “sent out”, but then they came back.