Luke chapter 10, and we'll read
from verse 1. After these things, the Lord
appointed other seventy also, and sent them two and two before
his face into every city and place, whither he himself would
come. Therefore said he unto them,
The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few. Pray ye
therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers
into his harvest. Go your ways, behold, I send
you forth as lambs among wolves. Carry neither purse nor script
nor shoes, and salute no man by the way. And into whatsoever
house ye enter, first say, Peace be to this house. And if the
Son of Peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it. If not, it
shall turn to you again. And in the same house remain,
eating and drinking such things as they give. For the labourer
is worthy of his hire. Go not from house to house. And
into whatsoever city ye enter, and they receive you, eat such
things as are set before you, and heal the sick that are therein,
and say unto them, The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you. But into whatsoever city ye enter,
and they receive you not, go your way, Go your ways out into
the streets of the same, and say, even the very dust of your
city, which cleaveth on us, we do wipe off against you. Notwithstanding,
be ye sure of this, that the kingdom of God is come nigh unto
you. But I say unto you that it shall
be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that city. Amen. May the Lord bless to us.
this reading from his word. Look Alone, amongst the Gospel
writers, records the appointment and the commission of these 70
individuals who were sent out by the Lord two by two into the
countryside around about They were instructed to go before
the Lord to preach and minister in the cities and the towns and
the villages into which the Lord himself intended to come. And the Seventy appear to have
been sent with the intention of preparing the way for the
Lord and causing there to be an anticipation of Christ's own
visit to these places. And in this sense, there's a
parallel between the ministry of these men and the ministry
of John the Baptist, for example. And it may be said, similarly,
that this is a pattern for all ministry. Preachers of truth,
preachers of the gospel, preachers of righteousness are sent first
to those whom the Lord plans to visit with saving grace and
to those whom he's pleased to visit with his spiritual blessings. Paul says in Romans chapter 10,
how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard?
And how shall they hear without a preacher? And then he goes
on to say, and how shall they preach except they be sent? Well,
here we find these things coming together. The Lord is sending
out his witnesses who would testify of him. And it's true that in
these verses that we've read together, there's no explicit
mention of the 70 preaching. But it seems clear that this
is what is meant by the reference to the need for labourers and
the size of the harvest. And these same phrases were used
when the Lord chose and commissioned and sent out the 12 earlier.
In Matthew chapter 10, we read about that. And there, preaching
is explicitly mentioned. So I take it that these 70 were
preachers of the gospel, sent forth by the Lord into these
communities in order to prepare the way for the Lord himself
coming to preach amongst the people. And the little phrase
that is used there about the coming of the kingdom of God
or the kingdom of God is nigh or near to them is a reference
to the coming of the gospel. The kingdom of God would be brought
by these preachers. to the very doors where these
men stood in the villages and preached in the communities of
these towns and villages. this is indicative perhaps of
the fact that no longer would men and women be required to
travel to Jerusalem in order to worship God or visit the temple
or go to some place because now the kingdom of God was nigh to
them. In the preaching of the gospel,
Christ was coming to them. However, This proximity, this
nearness of the gospel, we also learn, comes with a jeopardy,
it comes with a danger. And at the end of our verses,
the end of our passage today, we hear about the day of judgment,
the day, that day of judgment is mentioned. When the weight
of guilt of those who have been so close to the gospel and yet
rejected it, is stressed and emphasised by the Lord. And a
comparison is made to Sodom, which was destroyed for its wickedness. And I think the point there is
that men and women of our age, of this gospel age, have unparalleled
access to the hearing of the gospel. Gospel preachers and
gospel ministers have been nigh to them and with them, with ready
access to the truth, preachers of righteousness in their very
company, and yet these ministers and their message have been and
are being despised and rejected. The communities in which believers
dwell are blessed for our presence in them. And the withdrawing
of those believers is an aggravation of judgment. When a believer
dies in a street or in a city, a light goes out in that place
and the judgment of God upon it is an aggravation. One general
principle that I do think comes clear from this passage is that
the church has a duty to be declaring and preaching the gospel with
a view to gathering in a harvest of souls for the Lord Jesus. He is the Lord of the harvest. And the Lord uses this expression
of the harvest As I've mentioned, he did so with his 12 disciples
when he was sending them out, and at other times it's alluded
to. And now here he is sending an even greater number. Once
he sent out 12, now he sends out 70. He's sending a greater
number, but he sends them in a similar fashion. He sends them
with a similar task, and notably he sends them with a similar
prayer because they are to go out praying for yet more labourers
so that In the first instance, it was John the Baptist who came
and prepared the way for the Lord. Then it was the 12 who
went out and prepared the way of the Lord. Now it's the 70,
and each one, as it were, is praying for more to come after
them. The Church of Christ and its
appointed preachers is to be busy, it's to be diligent, it's
to be conscientious with an evangelistic fervour. for the harvesting of
souls. And that is something that in
our prayers and in our testimony and our witness and in our relationships
to those around about us ought to be foremost in our minds and
thinking. The Lord gives a number of warnings
and instructions to these men as he sends them out. He tells
them that they're lambs amongst wolves and gospel preachers,
gospel ministers cannot expect to be loved or valued in this
world. Despite the fact that the harvest
truly is great, every convert will be hard won and we may be
sure that the world and the devil will not easily give up the Lord's
little ones without a fight. However, What I think is interesting
is that we are lambs amongst wolves. And odd as it may appear,
we are to have the characteristics of lambs. Our service and our
witness ought to be gentle. It ought to be kind. It ought
to be innocent. It ought to be peaceable. We're
not crusaders riding into battle and making converts of unwilling
people. There are some today who espouse
a militant Christianity and an enforcement of so-called Christian
values by use of the law. Well, that kind of political
conformity might provide for superficial morality, but it
will also lead to widespread hypocrisy. We cannot legislate
Christian values. It is the hearts of men and women
that must be changed, not simply their conduct. And spiritual
conversion is required. When we go forth preaching the
gospel and witnessing for the Lord Jesus Christ, we are searching
for the Son of Peace. In verse six, that's a little
reference there. The Son of Peace that is hidden
amongst the pack of wolves. And our ministry is not to be
materialistic. It's not to be mercenary. We're not preaching for our own
wealth. We're not trying to promote our
own popularity here on earth. That's how cults and that's how
sects are begun. And certainly, gospel preachers
are to be enabled they are to be equipped, they are to be provided
for in order to do their job of preaching. But we're ministers,
that is we're servants of the Lord and we're servants to his
church. We're not empire builders or
entrepreneurs or managing directors of religious foundations and
associations. But the picture here of peace
being upon a house I think is quite delightful. There's a peace
that reigns in a believer's heart that affects the way that we
live. But there's also another sense
here of peace, I think, in the way in which preaching is to
be done. There's a sense of persistence. There is to be a persisting in
preaching where an entrance for the gospel is discovered. We often think of the Apostle
Paul as a missionary and an itinerant preacher, but he often stayed
for a long time in places where he found an opening for the gospel. And there he built up the new
converts and he served the local believers. When the gospel of peace is preached
to a son of peace, I think that's a lovely, you know, I make a
confession here. I hadn't noticed, or at least
I hadn't given proper note to the loveliness of that phrase,
a son of peace. But where a son of peace is discovered,
there's a connection created, there's a union forged between
the speaker, the preacher, and the hearer, the convert. The
one longs to be heard in his preaching, the other longs to
hear. so that fellowship in the gospel
grows and prospers between the two, those who have been sent
and the son of peace who hears the gospel of peace. And the
Lord has his people whom he is pleased to gather as part of
his harvest, and we cannot tell who they are or where they are,
so we preach promiscuously wherever and whenever we can Equally, the Lord sends his preachers. We don't know how he sends them,
we don't know to whom, but we believe that in the sovereign
will of God, he is matching preacher and hearer. He brings the preacher
and the hearer together. And Christ's sheep hear the voice
of the shepherd through the preaching and the ministry of the under-shepherds,
who are the shepherd's mouthpieces. In verses seven to nine, the
Lord instructs the 70 to remain and be content with the provision
supplied by those who benefit from their ministry. The labourer
is worthy of his hire. And the point is that the preacher
is to accept what he is given. He's not to despise the smallness
of a gift, or he's not to feel unworthy of the largeness of
a gift, because it's all the Lord's provision. The Lord says,
eat and drink such things as they give. Receive such things
as they give. Too many preachers are ambitious
in the wrong way. Not ambitious for Christ, but
ambitious for themselves. especially in the denominations,
there is a hierarchy of churches. There's little churches and there's
big churches and career paths are laid out for ministers and
preachers aspire to move onward and upward to ever larger congregations
and pulpits with greater influence and perhaps matching salaries.
That's not how it ought to be in the Christian church. That's
not how it ought to be for a faithful minister of the gospel. So that
verse eight and nine says, into whatsoever city ye enter, and
they receive you, eat such things as are set before you, and heal
the sick that are therein. And say unto them, the kingdom
of God is come nigh unto you. Preachers are healers of the
soul and they minister health-giving grace to their hearers. Like
the Good Samaritan. The Good Samaritan is coming
up in the verses following. We'll come to him in a few weeks.
But like the Good Samaritan, a preacher pours in oil and wine
to the wounds of a sinner. And these are fine pictures of
the mutual blessing and benefit that persists in the fellowship
of believers and in the company of saints. But just in closing, there's
a downside here as well. The Lord does not require a preacher
to remain where there is no son of peace in the home. If the
gospel is not received, then judgment is self-inflicted and
the curse of condemnation will come upon that home, will come
upon those individuals, will come upon that community, often
never to be removed. Wiping off the dust of a city,
I take to mean leaving it to its own devices and passing on
to a place where the gospel will be valued. What a blessing it
is to have an accessible gospel preacher, to have a gospel witness
that we can go to. What a judgment it is against
men and women of any city or any town where there is no gospel
preached, or to change the metaphor, where the candlestick has been
removed and the light of the gospel has been extinguished.
The Lord says it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom
than for that city. The Lord sent out these 70 ministers,
these preachers and witnesses, to prepare the way for his own
coming. And we all can take a personal
application from this, I think. We have, as the sons of peace,
the means granted to us in gospel preaching and in Bible ministry
of drawing near to the Lord and enjoying the visits from the
Lord. It's an incredible honour that
the Lord uses weak earthen vessels like us to convey his blessings
to one another. There is spiritual comfort, there
is encouragement, there is direction to be discovered under the sound
of God's gospel and in the mutual fellowship of the Lord's people
and the study of the word. The kingdom of God is come nigh
unto you. When the kingdom of God comes
nigh to us, the Lord brings blessings in spiritual ways. And these
may be for relief in times of pain, patience in times of trial,
comfort in times of sadness, or the very company of the Lord,
His presence in times of loneliness. Whenever and however it may be
that we experience the coming near to us of Christ, let us
endeavour to maintain that spiritual alertness for his visits, to
see them, to hear them, to recognise them. And may our experiences
of his intimacy with us, his closeness to us, be an encouragement
to our own souls and a blessing to those around about us. Amen. Amen.