WWUTT 2362 Jesus Sends Out His Disciples (Luke 9:1-9)

In Luke chapter 9, we have this interesting back and forth. Jesus telling his disciples to do something, and then revealing something about Jesus. And through this, we come to understand who Jesus is, and what we are supposed to do when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand The Text, a daily study in the word of Christ, for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness. Find all our videos and other ministry resources at www .utt .com.

Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Jesus Sends Out the Twelve in Luke 9

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the gospel according to Luke, we're jumping into chapter 9 today. And there's an interesting pattern to chapter 9, which I'll tell you about here in a moment. Let's begin by reading these first nine verses.

Hear the word of the Lord. And Jesus called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases. And he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal.

And he said to them, take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money, and do not have two tunics. And whatever house you enter, stay there, and from there depart. And wherever they do not receive you, when you leave that town, shake off the dust from your feet as a testimony against them.

And they departed and went through the villages, preaching the gospel and healing everywhere. Now Herod the Tetrarch heard about all that was happening, and he was perplexed because it was said by some that John had been raised from the dead, by some that Elijah had appeared, and by others that one of the prophets of old had risen.

Herod said, John, I beheaded, but who is this about whom I hear such things? And he sought to see him. Now this is an interesting opening to this chapter. It's almost like a cinematic bouncing back and forth between two scenes, right?

So first you have Jesus and the disciples and assigning to them what they're going to go out and do, and that's a few short verses. That would be, you know, a scene that would probably be less than a minute.

And then we go from that to Herod's palace as he's wandering and he's perplexed by what he hears concerning Jesus and the disciples. And this sets up the pattern for this particular chapter. We go back and forth between who Jesus is and what he has sent his disciples out to.

Do.

And really it's kind of in reverse order, because first of all, we start with Jesus telling his disciples what they're going to go out and do. And you're going to see that come up throughout chapter nine.

And then we shift the action to Herod, who is wondering about Jesus and his disciples. Who is Jesus? Who is this man? And hearing about what other people have said about him. So the first scene is kind of through the eyes of the disciples as Jesus is going to send them out to do these incredible things.

The second scene is through the eyes of those who don't believe in him. They do not know or do not accept that he is the son of God. They haven't made the connection between what the prophets have said about him and what they've actually seen him do.

And remember that back in chapter seven, John the Baptist had sent his disciples to Jesus to ask him, are you the one we're waiting for? Or is there another one that we should be looking for? And then Jesus tells them, go back and tell John what you have seen.

The lame walk, the blind see, the deaf hear, the mute speak, go back and tell him. And so telling John, know what the scriptures have said about me. And I am the one who is fulfilling those things that had been prophesied.

And so Herod and the others who don't understand that have not accepted this about Jesus. Either they don't know the scriptures or they just don't want to believe that he's the one who is in fulfillment of the scriptures, which would be the case with the scribes and the Pharisees especially.

So again, you have that through the eyes of those who don't believe. That's what's there in seven through nine. But this is the question that Herod wants to know, who is this Jesus? So again, bouncing back and forth in chapter nine between who is Jesus and what is he sending his disciples out to do?

So we begin with that assignment to the disciples. And we'll look at that first of all in verses one through six, Jesus called the 12 together. We had the 12 mentioned back at, well, it was at the start of chapter eight, when Jesus and his disciples were going throughout Galilee.

And it was said that there were several women who were with them as well. But the calling of the disciples themselves, that was back in chapter five. Here he has the 12 together. This first sentence of chapter nine opens up the action for us.

He calls the 12 together. He gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases and sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. So there's your first sentence. And then the rest of that in the verses that follow, kind of explain that out a little.

Bit more.

Here's what Jesus said to them specifically. He said, take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money, and do not have two tunics. This is going to be a fairly quick mission. And so they're not going to weigh themselves down with a bunch of stuff.

In fact, what they're going to do is put it on the people of the villages that they go to to care for them. So this is going to show who has truly accepted the message of this kingdom. Those that will receive the disciples who have been sent will have also received the message of the kingdom.

That's what that's going to indicate to the disciples. But those who reject the disciples when they come to a village, those are the people who have rejected the message of the kingdom, and that's relevant for later as well.

So Jesus is saying, you're going to travel light. You're not going to have a bunch of stuff to weigh you down. You don't need to take all this food to be able to survive the journey, because people who are receptive to the message of the kingdom are going to provide for you.

Whatever house you enter, stay there and from there depart. You don't have to bounce around to different houses. You're not staying in different places. You're not going to spend much time in those villages.

Stay at one place. And then once you've been there, go to the next village, whatever house you go to, wherever they do not receive you. When you leave that town, shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.

So, you know, they're kicking their feet and doing it in such a way that the people see that your blood is on your own head. This is similar to what the apostle Paul does when he goes and visits the city of Corinth.

And when he goes into Corinth, the first place that he goes is to the synagogue. And he teaches all things there in the synagogue, according to the Old Testament, showing that Jesus is the Christ. But the teachers there in the synagogue don't believe it.

They don't receive Paul. And what he does instead of kicking dust off of his feet, maybe the floor wasn't all that dusty anyway, could have been stone or marble or something like that. Instead, what he does is he shakes his garment and it's symbolic of shaking himself free of them.

And he says, your blood is on your own heads. I have given you the full counsel of God. From now on, I am going to the Gentiles. That's also similar to something that was said by Ezekiel, that when the watchman sounds the alarm, if the people don't listen to the warning of the watchman, then their blood is on their own heads.

And so that's kind of what Paul was saying to the Jewish teachers there in the synagogue, because they would not receive the message of Christ. If you don't receive Christ, you have rejected God. And so here, if they don't receive Jesus' disciples, then they are rejecting Jesus himself and the message of his kingdom, the message of the gospel.

Remember that Jesus said to his disciples in John 15 verses 18 and 19, if the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own, but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

Remember the word that I said to you, a servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.

So that's being played out here, even in Luke 9, that if the people do not receive the disciples, then they also do not receive the Christ. We also read of this in 1 John 2 verses 18 and 19, children, it is the last hour.

And as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us, for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us, but they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us, but you have been anointed by the holy one and you all have knowledge.

I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie is of the truth. Who is the liar, but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ. This is the antichrist, he who denies the father and the son.

So wherever the disciples go to preach the message of the kingdom and they are not received, that is a group of people that would not receive Christ. They do not receive the gospel and the disciples were to show this kicking of the dust off their feet as a testimony against them.

So once again, that is the opening scene here in chapter nine, seeing from the eyes of the disciples, Jesus, who is sending them out to do amazing things. And I don't want to just kind of brush past the miracles that he's telling them to go.

Do.

Let's not ignore that.

Right.

So coming back to verse one here, he called the 12 together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases. Now, let me be clear about this. This is specific to what Jesus is having the disciples go out and do right now.

This doesn't even have to do with the power that is going to come upon them at Pentecost. I wouldn't say it doesn't have anything to do with it, but that's different because the Holy Spirit comes upon them then and dwells within them.

And what they go into Jerusalem and do from that point is speak in tongues. So that's not happening here. This is Jesus sending them out on this particular mission with authority on this mission to do these things.

This isn't some power that they're always going to have, because then he will later tell them after he had risen from the dead to go back to Jerusalem and wait for the Holy Spirit to come to them. So it's not like he's now given them this power that they will always have.

It's a power that he's assigned to them for this mission specifically to have authority over demons and to cure diseases. And as we saw from the Gospel of Mark, there were occasions when the disciples couldn't even cast out the demons.

They didn't understand why they couldn't do it, but sometimes it was not in their ability to do so. So this isn't like a de facto ability to be able to do whatever it is that they want, casting out demons and healing whoever they wish.

So Jesus sends them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. And doing these miraculous healings shows the people that the message that they come with is something supernatural. The message itself is supernatural.

Just like the miracles and the healing that they do is something supernatural. And so, as said in verse six, they departed and went through the villages, preaching the gospel and healing everywhere. And once again, that word gospel means good news, Evangelion.

They were preaching the message of the kingdom of God. Verse two, proclaim the kingdom of God and heal. So proclaiming the kingdom is the preaching of the gospel. There you go. There's your first scene with Jesus and his disciples at the start of chapter nine there.

Then the second scene. Now we shift the action. Now we're going from wherever Jesus is at with his disciples, most likely in Galilee, on the western side of the Sea of Galilee, because the eastern side was when he was at the Gerasenes, the man who was possessed by legion.

He came back to the other side. So that's likely where he is with his disciples. But then we're shifting the action, you know, a hundred miles away or something. And we're going into Jerusalem and we're seeing Herod there, curious about all this stuff that he is hearing about going on.

So I'm hearing about all these miracles. How is it that Herod hears of this? He's hearing this from the people. What is it that the people are saying? So Herod the Tetrarch, and this is going to be Herod the Great's son, by the way.

This is not the same Herod that was talked about in Luke chapters one and two. This is this is the one who succeeded him after Herod the Great died in a very gruesome death that he died, in fact. But Herod the Tetrarch, also known as Herod Antipas, has been on the throne for a few decades now, and he's a little bit older than Jesus.

He would be, you know, probably about 20 years older or something like that. So here's a man who is about 50 years old at at this time that he is hearing about these incredible things going on. And he's perplexed because it was said by some.

Here's the word that he's hearing. It's going about through all the people. It was said by some that John had been raised from the dead. Now, Luke has not told us that John has died. There's some of that that's kind of assumed.

And it's because Luke, in the order of these gospels having been written, Luke is not the first gospel. Matthew is the first gospel. So the gospel message has already gone out. It's already been circulated.

There are things that Luke just doesn't feel like he has to detail there because people are going to know what was going on. Even with back in what was it, chapter seven, where John the Baptist sent his disciples to Jesus to ask him if he was the one that we were waiting for.

When I was teaching through that section, I said that that was going on while John the Baptist was in prison. But Luke actually doesn't say that. We know that from another gospel, that that was the scenario.

That was the situation. John the Baptist in prison sends his disciples to Jesus to ask if he's the one. I kind of filled that in there because it wasn't explicitly stated by Luke. And there has not been an occasion that's been said in this gospel yet that John the Baptist had been put to death.

This is where we get it. And we don't get it in some sort of narrative statement. It's a quote from Herod Antipas, from Herod the Tetrarch. So what had Herod been hearing? He heard it said by some that John had been raised from the dead.

He heard it said by others that Elijah had appeared. And there was this idea among the Jews that eventually Elijah is going to come back. He didn't die. He was carried up into heaven by a whirlwind. Elisha, who was with him, saw Elijah carried away.

And there were 50 other disciples of those two prophets, by the way, like the junior prophets who were on the other side of the Jordan River when all of that was happening. So they saw the chariots of fire that separated Elisha from Elijah.

By the way, Elijah wasn't taken up into heaven in a chariot of fire like the paintings often depict. He was taken up in a whirlwind. But the chariots of fire separated Elisha from Elijah. And then Elijah was taken up into the air.

It wasn't just Elisha who was a witness to that. It was even the other prophets who were with them. And when Elisha came back across the Jordan River, which he he parted the Jordan River and walked across, parted it with the cloak of Elijah.

It was the 50 junior prophets there on the other side. They were like, well, let us go and look for him. And Elisha was saying he's not going to be there. He's been carried away. So because Elijah had been carried up into heaven and did not experience death, but was carried away.

There's two people in the Bible that didn't have to die, but were carried up by the Lord. And that's Enoch and Elijah. So because of that, there was this idea among the Jews that eventually Elijah is going to.

Come back.

They were reading those Old Testament prophecies about the spirit of Elijah that would come and not realizing that John the Baptist was the fulfillment of that. They thought Elijah was literally going to return.

So when here's Jesus doing all these incredible miracles like Elijah had done. So now the people are saying that's him. Elijah's back. You know, they would not have known what he looked like. There was no photo record of the prophets.

You couldn't go like to a photo yearbook of the prophets and see what all of them throughout the Old Testament had looked like. So here's Jesus and the people are going, Elijah has returned. And that's what Herod hears.

Now he's really perplexed by this. And then going on, others saying that one of the other prophets of old had risen and actually come back from the dead. We know from other gospel accounts that the disciples had said to Jesus, some have said of you that you are Jeremiah or one of the other prophets that gets repeated again in verse 19 of this chapter.

So Herod, verse nine said, John, I beheaded. And now we have that statement that John the Baptist is dead. That's the first statement in which that's been said here in Luke's gospel. John, I beheaded.

But who is this about whom I hear such things? And he sought to see him. So Herod pondering about this and wondering about Jesus is the narrative portion that we have here in this chapter of exposing to us or dwelling upon who Jesus is.

Again, verses one through six about what Jesus was sending his disciples out to do. Verses seven through nine is about who Jesus is. And we're going to see that go back and forth throughout chapter nine.

The next portion, Jesus feeding the 5 ,000. This is actually an instruction that Jesus gives to his disciples to do something. So we'll see that that's the narrative that we'll come to tomorrow. And then the next portion is Peter confessing that Jesus is the Christ.

That's about who Jesus is. And then Jesus tells his disciples, take up your cross and follow me. There's an instruction again to his disciples as to what they are to do. And then in the next portion, we have the transfiguration where he's transfigured before.

Them.

We've read those accounts previously in Matthew and in Mark. So once again, we read something about who Jesus is and then Jesus healing a boy with an unclean spirit. And here's one of those occasions where the disciples didn't just always have this ability to cast out these spirits.

And so Jesus has to be the one to do it. So that's something about the disciples there versus 37 to 43. So that's just kind of to give you an example. And that's the pattern that we see as we go through chapter nine here, bouncing back and forth between who Jesus is and what he has sent his disciples to do.

And from this, we can also come to understand what Jesus sends us as his disciples to do. We likewise are to proclaim the message of the kingdom of God, and we might not have to go on mission like what's stated there in verses one through six.

But nonetheless, we are to go about preaching the gospel and where we can praying that God would heal, that he would do a miraculous work in the lives of the people that we might be ministering with and to.

And we will see God and his Holy Spirit work in mighty ways if we are faithful to him and to his calling. This is how God means to save his people. He saves his people through his people, that we having been entrusted with the message of the gospel would go out and proclaim it so that others may hear the truth, turn from their sin to the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.

Prayer and Application for Proclaiming the Gospel

Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we have read here so far as we start off chapter nine, and I pray that we would understand what is being asked of us, that we would go out and proclaim the gospel, that we would proclaim the message of the kingdom, that we would preach the gospel to others so that they may come to faith in Jesus Christ and showing having accepted us, they accept Christ as well.

May we be welcoming of one another, encouraging of each other, building one another up in the Lord as we wait for that day when our Lord Christ will return. It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Pastor Gabe keeps a regular blog, sharing personal thoughts, alerting readers to false teachers, and offering commentary on the church and social issues. You can find a link to the blog through our website, www .utt .com.

Thank you for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue our study in God's Word when we understand the text.