Wednesday, June 16, PM

Ahead and get started. Let me pray for us and then we're going to read from Luke chapter 10, okay? Father, I thank you for the time you've granted to us. Lord, we do just give you thanks for the blessing of being able to come together on a Wednesday night, share a meal together, rejoice in each other's fellowship.

What a blessing this is. Thank you for those who have labored to put this all together for us and those who helped to serve and clean and so on. And what a blessing it is to have this. Lord, we pray now that as we look at your Word, you give us clarity of the text, understand what you have to say, that we would rejoice in our Savior Jesus Christ, and it's in his name that we pray.

Amen. Okay, so Luke chapter 10 and we're going to read verses 1 through 16. After these things the Lord appointed 70 others also and sent them two by two before his face into every city and place where he himself was about to go.

Then he said to them, the harvest truly is great but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go your way, behold I send you out as lambs among wolves.

Carry neither money bag, knapsack, nor sandals, and greet no one along the road. But whatever house you enter, first say peace to this house. And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest on it.

If not, it will return to you. And remain in the same house, eating and drinking such things as they give. For the laborer is worthy of his wages. Do not go from house to house. Whatever city you enter and they receive you, eat such things as are set before you.

And heal the sick there. And say to them, the kingdom of God has come near to you. But whatever city you enter and they do not receive you, go out into its streets and say, the very dust of your city which clings to us, we wipe off against you.

Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near you. But I say to you that it will be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that city. Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida!

For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you.

And you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, will be brought down to Hades. He who hears you, hears me. He who rejects you, rejects me. And he who rejects me, rejects him who sent me. Well, I have a few questions for the young brilliant minds of the room over here.

A few questions for you. In verse 1, there's a phrase, and I want you to think very carefully where you've heard this phrase. Two by two. The only young brilliant mind. Yes, Ben? Noah's Ark? Oh wait, did you raise your hand?

Did you raise your hand? Did you hide it behind the pole so I couldn't see? Okay, two by two, the Ark. This is another two by two. This is not a gathering in, it's a sending out. But it is an interest of declaring the need for salvation, a need for hope.

Great disaster is looming and there is a need to find refuge in Christ. Christ himself will be the Ark. Christ himself, by his obedience, will be the place of refuge. And he sends out his followers, two by two, to declare the kingdom and do the work of the kingdom.

Now, when he sends out his followers, there are two things, basically, that they're supposed to do. They are to declare the truth of the kingdom. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. They are to declare the truth of who Jesus is.

So that is one part of their obedience, is their words. What's the other part? They're going to be doing some healing. They're going to do some works. There's the works of the kingdom as well. And Jesus wants these together, just like he does it.

Back in chapter 8, Jesus goes forth preaching the kingdom of heaven, the word of the kingdom. And he also does the works of the kingdom, restoring, healing, delivering, so on. Then he teaches his own disciples to do the same.

Then the twelve go out in chapter 9. So, Jesus does it in chapter 8, models it. Chapter 9, he sends the twelve out and they go two by two. And they give the word of the kingdom. They do the works of the kingdom.

Now, here in chapter 10, he sends out seventy. They go out and they do the works of the kingdom, but they also preach the word of the kingdom. And these are always together, never separate. And yet, there is a priority, because Jesus has already been begged to stay.

They've already come to him more than once and begged him to stay, to do more works of the kingdom, to deliver people from demon possession, to heal the sick, to give sight to the blind, and so on. And he says, no, I must go on to other villages, for I must preach the kingdom of heaven there, because that is why I've come.

So, while we see them always together, yet there is a priority. The preaching of the kingdom is always the priority. But, the word and the works, Jesus wants together. We observe this. Why is that? Well, that's how the kingdom is advanced.

That's how the kingdom is advanced, is by the word of the Lord and the works of the Lord. By this, all men will know that you are my disciples, by the love that you have for one another. Right? And that love has concrete action that backs it up.

And we're told again and again, our faith is proven by our works. Right? We are created in Christ Jesus for good works, which he has prepared beforehand, so that we will walk in them. Ephesians 2 verse 10 says.

So, these things are always together. The word of the kingdom and the works of the kingdom, always together in the servants that he sends forward. Do you notice, we talked about this a couple weeks ago, or three weeks ago, to pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.

So, there is the call to pray for the Lord to send out laborers. And then, later on, he says to them that you should remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever is given to you, for the laborer is worthy of his wages.

So, he tells them to pray for more laborers, but they're one of them. Right? So, he identifies them as such. So, the labor of the kingdom is by declaring the Word of the Lord and doing the works of the Lord.

Sharing, declaring, insisting on the truth of God's Word. But not just that, not just insisting that the right things be spoken and said and affirmed, but obedience, living it out, putting it into practice.

Both of those things have to be together. And that is Jesus' priority. Now, again, I will consult with the brain trust who have gone through TAG this last year. What did y 'all study last year in TAG?

Starts with the letter M. Yes, missionaries. And you see that Jesus sends out 70 of his followers, two by two, and you see that they go from place to place, from town to town, advancing the kingdom. They're doing the work that we would call mission work.

Now, what are some things that would be nice to have if you were a missionary? What do you think, Emeth? If you were a missionary, what do you need to have? Bible. All right, let's put a Bible. That would be nice to have a Bible.

Okay, what else? Somebody else, not Emeth again, because he'll answer everything. Yes, clothing, extra clothes. What else? Transportation. What else? Yes, someone to help you work. Okay, food, extra food.

How about some tactical bacon? I just learned about that today. Yes, faith in God. Yes, good ideas. Yes, soap and water. Brother Red made a good point earlier. Y 'all didn't hear him, but he said a credit card would be nice, because with that you could, you know, appropriation.

Witness to the lost joggers. Yeah, so the missionaries that Jesus sends out, the 70 that go out two by two, he did not take with them extra clothes. They did not have any extra shoes. They were not given a donkey to ride on.

They didn't have transportation. They didn't go to language school ahead of time. It was just two by two. They didn't get to go four by four. All right, they did not have extra food. They didn't bring a tent with them or anything.

Does that seem odd? This is not a very well-equipped missionary task force. It's interesting that we see in history, from time to time, genuine believers in Christ actually put this into practice. Many of the early inland Chinese churches that were planted were done by using a method similar like this.

Going out without hardly any supplies, praying, asking the Lord to help, and going forward and preaching the gospel, and depending on the hospitality of someone who is not even a Christian yet, to give them their first opportunity to settle in a city and preach the gospel until the Lord moved, people came to Christ, and a church was planted, and that community was changed.

But we see Jesus sending out these 70, but it seems they're very ill equipped. We note that Jesus recognizes their peril. It's even worse than simply you don't have a lot of equipment and you're gonna have to survive.

He says, you are lambs among wolves. So not only are you lambs among wolves, but you're ill equipped lambs among wolves. So that sounds like an unattainable goal. But notice how Jesus arranges things.

As you travel along the ancient roads, it was customary in Israel that when you came to a city and you were a stranger, although you were a stranger, someone in the city will offer you hospitality. That was the custom.

They didn't have, you know, a Best Western or a Motel 6 or whatever. Somebody would offer you to stay with them. It was an adder of honor in the city. And so Jesus makes it so that they can't bypass a poorer village.

They don't have the extra stuff they need to do it. They can't quickly bypass the lesser villages in the lesser places, the not-so-significant places. They have to stop at every single place because they don't have enough to make it to the next town.

You see how he does that? The gospel goes to every nook and cranny. The village of 20 families is as important to Christ as the up-and-coming town of a hundred families. So every place has to get the gospel.

And so they only have enough to go from one place to the next and they're not going to be skipping any destinations. When they get there, they hope to find a person of peace that they will stay there.

Someone of Shalom who will take care. We'll be at peace together and you can stay here until it's time for you to move on. And they will declare the gospel to them. And they will preach the gospel to this town.

And they will do the work of Christ in this town. And they will say, the kingdom of God has come near to you. They're declaring that not the kingdom of God is far away, inaccessible. Here's the map that you're going to have to go up to a very high mountain far away.

Or here's a shovel, start digging for the treasure of the kingdom far below the earth. No, the kingdom has come near to you. That is a message of grace. God has brought his salvation right to your doorstep, right here, right next to you.

And here are the words of Christ. As Jesus says in Mark 1 15, the time is fulfilled. The kingdom is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. What grace that the kingdom has come near. And so we see that Jesus says, first of all, you pray.

Pray that the Lord of the harvest, the one who controls and owns the harvest, pray that he'll send out laborers. And so after you pray, then you go. And the Lord of the harvest will reap the harvest through those who serve him.

He will reap the harvest through those who serve him. And you'll remember that at the end of chapter 9, there are all kinds of people who came up to him and said, we'll serve you, we'll follow you. And then Jesus made it awful hard on them, saying, are you willing to lay down your life to follow me?

Because then you see what he does when he sends them out. This is no easy thing. So after we see that he will reap through those who serve him, there is the distinct possibility that they will be rejected.

That the kingdom of heaven will be rejected. And then we see that the king of the kingdom will judge those who reject his servants. Lord of the harvest, Jesus Christ will reap through those who serve him.

But Jesus Christ, who is the king of the kingdom, will also judge those who reject his servants. Now he says that if they do not receive you, you go into a city, and they're like, get out of here, we don't want your kind here.

Then they have to wipe the dust of their feet off as a testimony against them. And then they say, nevertheless know this, and the kingdom of God has come near you. We are declaring to you the grace of God, and you are rejecting the grace of God, rejecting the hope of the gospel.

And this, the only outcome of this is judgment. Notice what Jesus says, but I say to you that it will be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that city. Anybody have any idea why? Why would it go easier for Sodom in the day of judgment than for a city to whom Jesus sent these disciples?

Yeah, Sodom did not receive as much information as this village did, or this town did. They are not as responsible as this town is. I mean, think about it. Here are the 70 being sent out from Christ himself, and Christ is just down the road.

In fact, he is sending them out two by two before his face into every city and place where he himself was about to go. Heralds of the King, heralds of the Messiah. He is here. He is just up the road. He will be coming through.

Prepare the way of the Lord. What light, what grace, what opportunity? And then to reject that compared to, well, the best preacher they had in Sodom was Lot. Not much. I mean, they did have something by God's grace.

And Lot was greatly pained by what went on around him, but Lot had made some choices and it wasn't the same level of revelation that we have here. And in fact, Jesus takes up this theme and moves on to say, woe to you, Chorazin.

Woe to you, Bethsaida. Woe to you, Capernaum. Tyre and Sidon would have repented long ago if they had witnessed the miracles done in you. Now we can sit back and ponder a little bit about a couple of things, and they're both meant to humble us.

One is that God does not judge everybody with some kind of broad brushstroke. Everybody gets the same judgment. God is righteous. God is precise. He doesn't see every sin the same. He does not punish everybody at the same degree, but exactly to what is deserved, because he is just and he is righteous.

And Jesus talks about different levels of judgment here. And so we're reminded how precise and just God is, and that should humble us, especially as we consider the grace of God in our lives. We should also consider, why didn't Sodom and Tyre and Sidon receive such revelation that they would have repented?

And as the other places receive great grace and revelation, and many of them did not repent. Now that all by itself should humble us. God is God. We are not. And he will reveal his word to those to whom he desires as a matter of his grace, and none of us ever deserve it.

And we humble ourselves before him in this regard. So what we see in this text is that the kingdom is advanced by the words and works of the Lord. We see that the Lord of the harvest will reap through those who serve him, and that the King of the kingdom will judge those who reject his servants.

And that Jesus Christ is, as he says, the one who was sent from the Father. There's no neutrality about Jesus Christ. There's no neutrality about Jesus Christ. When the kingdom is announced, you either find refuge in him, or you're left outside of Christ, and you have no refuge from the judgment to come.

Very familiar to that story of two by two, two by two. Kind of a little bit in reverse. You got to wonder, of course, you know, Noah was a preacher of righteousness, and it took him, you know, a hundred years to build the ark, and that in itself is a witness.

And then eventually, people begin seeing the animals going to Noah two by two. What in the world? The refuge was in the ark. There was no refuge outside the ark. You either believe the message and the witness of what was going on by God's faithful work in the world, you either believe the message and you find refuge in the ark, or you suffer the judgment outside the ark.

In this case, there's no neutrality. You couldn't pick a neutral position about the flood, and you can't have a neutral position about Christ. You find refuge in him, or you're left outside of him. And that is the way that Jesus trained these seventy.

He did not send them out in doubt. He did not send them out to be unclear. He sent them out to promise refuge and salvation and restoration and good and blessing in Christ, but to reject him meant disaster.

And that was just the most basic kind of discipleship and effort. So, we should pray for laborers, and as we labor, we should labor in both word and in deed. We should always go together, and we should warn others, but do so from our own trusting repentance.

That we trust in the Christ, and we are repenting from our sins, trusting in him. And that is the position from which we warn others. Okay, any questions or thoughts or observations about our passage tonight?

It's been rebuilt. How about that? All right, well let's take some prayer requests.