called and ordained or appointed
in Mark chapter 3. And then we've had these three
extraordinary chapters of Jesus' miracles, of Jesus' opposition
from His family, from the Pharisees, from Satan and the world. And He has shown them, as we
read in that psalm, He's shown them mighty and wonderful deeds.
But now their education is not complete, but it's ready for
them to be sent out. Verse 7, the Lord said, And he
summoned the twelve, and he began to send them out in pairs, and
gave them authority over unclean spirits. And he instructed them
that they should take nothing for their journey except a mere
staff, no bread, no bag, no money in their belt, but to wear sandals. And he added, do not put on two
tunics. And he said to them, wherever
you enter a house, stay there until you leave town. Any place
that does not receive you or listen to you as you go out from
there, shake the dust off the soles of your feet for a testimony
against them. They went out and he preached
that men should repent. And they were casting out many
demons and anointing with oil many sick people and healing
them. Then the apostles gathered to Jesus, verse 30, and told
him all things, both what they had done and what they had taught. And he said to them, come away
by yourselves to a secluded place and rest a while. For there were
many people coming and going and they did not even have time
to eat. And so here in these verses we
have the great lessons about gospel preachers, witnesses to
the Lord Jesus. These men, as I said earlier,
have gone through a very necessary time of probation where the Lord
Jesus revealed more and more of who He is and at the same
time revealed more and more of who these men are. They have
been humbled. Their unbelief on the sea has
been rebuked. Their doubting the Lord Jesus'
knowledge has been challenged. They've been shown that in understanding
the parables, they need the Lord Jesus to explain things to them.
things of the mysteries of the Kingdom of God are revealed to
them. So in all points they are seen
to be similar to the people around them, except that they have been
recipients of grace. And humbling is necessary, isn't
it? As John the Baptist said, he must increase and I must decrease. And so this is the first and
fundamental lesson for all those who are to be faithful witnesses.
But in these verses we see that Gospel preachers are summoned
by the Lord. They were called to Him out of
a multitude of people who followed, just 12 of them. They were named
in chapter 3, and here they are summoned by Him. And as they
did in their calling earlier, when the Lord Jesus summons and
when the Lord Jesus speaks, people respond. but they are summoned
with a purpose. They are summoned that they might
be sent out by the Lord Jesus. They have received so much. but
they have received that they might give. They had learned
a lot, but they had learned that they might teach, and they had
witnessed much of the Lord Jesus, that they might proclaim Him."
And so, ready as they are, he sends them out, and he sends
them out with authority. Gospel preachers have God-given
authority. Their authority doesn't come
from men, from the learning of men, as Paul describes his call
in Galatians, for I neither received it from man nor was taught it,
but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ. And as he says
earlier, for if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant
of Christ, Gospel preachers have God-given authority. As Paul
describes himself in 2 Corinthians 5, we are ambassadors for Christ
as though God were pleading through us. We implore you on Christ's
behalf, be reconciled to God. So they have God's authority
and they speak on behalf of the Lord Jesus. And the Lord Jesus
takes responsibility for their message. He's the one that's
been teaching them and training them. He takes responsibility
for their message and he takes responsibility for any response
to their message. It will rest with Him, the response
of people, not with His servants. His servants are just to be faithful.
We just say what the Lord Jesus gives us to say and we have no
need to say any more. And gospel preachers are shown
in these verses not to be lone rangers. Jesus sent them out
two by two. And it's a sign that God's children
need each other for strength to carry on in difficult times,
for correction when we stumble, for encouragement to continue
with our eyes fixed on the Lord Jesus. Ephesians 6 talks about
the armour of God, but one thing that's incredibly important in
that is that all of the pronouns are plural pronouns. It's a collective
activity. God's people are to be mutually
supportive of each other. Ecclesiastes says in chapter
4 verse 9, 2 are better than one because they have a good
return for their labor. For if either of them falls,
the one will lift up his companion. But woe to the one who falls
when there is not another to lift him up. Furthermore, if
two lie down together, they keep warm. How can one be warm alone? And if one can overpower him
who is alone, two can resist him. A cord of three strands
is not quickly torn apart. It's interesting, isn't it, that
the writer of Ecclesiastes goes from 2 to 2, and all of a sudden
he says a chord of three strands. The extra one, of course, is
the Lord Jesus, and he promises in John 12 that where my servant
is, I will be there also." God's children and God's servants never
can be anything other than in the direct presence of their
God and under His care. But also these men were sent
out by twos because the testimony of two witnesses is needed to
establish any truth. And so they proclaim the truth
of what they have seen about the Lord Jesus, and it's established
because they verify it one with another. The gospel preachers
are sent by the Lord. They're sent with the power of
the Lord, with the Lord's promises, and with the Lord's message,
and they are accountable to the Lord Jesus and not to men. Then in verse 8, He instructed
them that they should take nothing for their journey except a mere
staff, no bread, no bag, no money in their belt. God's gospel preachers
are to travel light. Anything of the baggage of this
world is a hindrance to their work and gospel preachers are
called upon to rely on God's provision as God moves his people
to generosity. And when God sends people, He
also provides for them. Hudson Taylor said, When God's
work is done God's way, we'll never lack God's provision. One of the remarkable things
about the Brethren people in India is that Brethren Church
sent people to where we were in India and they built many,
many orphanages and churches and things throughout India.
And they never once, Brethren people in India never once asked
for money. They were not allowed to ask
for money. It was the responsibility of the people who sent them to
know their needs. And for our brethren friends
in India, it was just remarkable for them because they truly lived
by faith. And it was amazing the number
of times that just when they desperately needed something,
the provision had been made before people knew of their needs and
the money would arrive. So, God's work will never lack
God's provision. That's one of the things that
saddens me is that in our modern world, missionaries have to go
and parade themselves all over the place and go cap in hand,
begging to church after church after church to get people to
support them to go. I think it's really sad. I think it's sad for the people.
It's a sad reflection on the Gospel. Sad reflection on our
God who owns the cattle in a thousand hills and is able to provide. In verse 9, not only are they
to take nothing for their journey but wait on God to use, to move
his people to provide everything they need, but they are just
to wear sandals. And he added, do not put on two tunics. Gospel
preachers are to be men of simplicity in life. simple things. They don't need adornments, they
don't need extra things. Again, they need to reflect by
what they do and how they live that God is faithful. It's the
message they're proclaiming, God is faithful. I love the story
of George Whitfield as he travelled at the end of each day. George
Whitfield, when he was out preaching, would just gather all his belongings
together, just a few little things, and he would make sure at the
end of the day it was all just neat and tidy and packed away
because he thought the Lord might take him during the night and
he just didn't want to leave anything left behind. He just
had simple things but a powerful message. And he said to them,
Verse 10, wherever you enter a house, stay there until you
leave the town. And I think the message is clear,
isn't it? Gospel preachers have no need
to travel anxiously around nor operate like peddlers of the
Word. The Gospel is too precious to
be treated as if it is some merchandise to be offered for sale. They
are to stay where they are welcome, they are to wait on the Lord
for His provision, and they are to wait for the Lord's time for
men to move on. Because they have this powerful
message from an awesome God, And the Gospel is a seed that
creates its own soil and finds its own place of rest and peace. And the Gospel never goes out
without God's appointed direction and His determined response.
And so, Gospel preachers in their life and the things they carry
with them are to reflect the Gospel they preach. Their life and the things that
they have and the things that they do need to reflect the gospel
they preach. Paul says to his young friend
Timothy, pay close attention to your life and your doctrine,
to yourself and what you teach and persevere in these things
for as you do this you will ensure salvation both for yourself and
those who hear you. But as the Lord Jesus met with
great response of faith in the lives of the broken people, He
met with severe opposition. And again and again in the Gospels,
He says to the disciples that what will happen to the Master
and what you have seen happen to the Master will happen to
you. As the Master is treated, so
will the Master's servants be treated. And it's a heavy, heavy
warning, isn't it? Any place that does not receive
you or listen to you, as you go out from there, shake the
dust off the soles of your feet for a testimony against them. When gospel preaching is rejected,
it is really the Lord who is rejected. And then it is a warning
as God's people shake the dust off their feet of their perilous
state. We do well to remember that these
people that these were sent to were the natural children of
Abraham. They were told in Matthew's Gospel
not to go to the Gentile nations. They were not even allowed to
go to the Samaritan nation which was right there beside them.
They were to go to the lost people of Israel. And I think in the
scriptures we have three groups of people outlined before us. And I think we see them in the
Old Testament clearly and I think we see them in the New Testament
clearly. We have those who are outside of the covenant nation,
the pagans, the nation around Israel. And in today's world,
that's reflective of just the world out there, isn't it? There
are nearly a billion Hindus, nearly a billion Muslims. there
are several billion people who follow all sorts of other gods
in this world. And then there are those who
identify themselves as belonging to God's chosen ones. I would say that they are part
of the elect group. in the time of the scriptures,
it was nation Israel. They considered themselves to
be the ones who were chosen. In today's world, it's the professing
Christian world, a professing Christian world which probably
has something in the order of 1.5 billion people would claim
to be Christians, to be followers of Jesus. a billion Roman Catholics
alone, and I'm not sure how many others, but it's a huge, huge
number. And then out of that number,
out of that number are the real children of God, the true Israel
of God, Abraham's faith children. And so these individuals and
towns who rejected the Apostles' testimony were also rejecting
the Lord Jesus and His Father. At the same time, these people
would have claimed to be the ones who were on the inside track
with God. They would have claimed to be
the ones who would defend with passion and defend to the death
their claim to be God's chosen and particular people. They would
have defended the doctrine of election. They would have defended
the doctrine of particular redemption. The Messiah was coming for them
and them alone. They would have fought over the
doctrine of the sovereignty of God, the eternal punishment of
the wicked, the kingdom to come. and their place in the world
as the light to the world and their personal holiness and devotion
they would have fought for and defended, their progressive sanctification
they would have held up before people as a sign of God's blessing
on them. But sadly, the Gospels show us
again and again that it is these religious people who are the
most lost in Israel. And this is to be truly lost,
to be lost in the midst of salvation all around. Salvation walking
now in your streets, salvation teaching in your synagogue, salvation
the Lord Jesus healing the lost and the helpless, raising the
dead, And yet these people turned their back on the Lord Jesus
and turned their back on his apostles. So there is no greater
delusion in the world than a religious delusion, a delusion which leads
to ever increasing self-righteousness rather than humility. rather
than looking to the Lord Jesus and seeing who He is and seeing
your desperate need. Jesus again and again says, beware
of the leaven of the Pharisees, beware of their teaching, beware
of them. And so these Jews that these
apostles were sent to had received great blessings from God. They
had great privileges. They had a history that stretched
back thousands of years where they had seen God be faithful,
perfectly faithful to His promises, perfectly faithful again and
again in the midst of a pagan world that opposed His people,
in the midst of the wickedness of His own people. God had been
unbelievably faithful for thousands of years. So they had great privileges,
they had great responsibilities, and then this passage reminds
us that there is great wrath for those who hear the Gospel
and turn away. In 2 Thessalonians, Paul describes
the retribution of those who do not know God and to those
who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 2 Thessalonians
1.8. They do not obey the gospel,
they do not respond with repentance and faith, but they have actually
heard the gospel, these people. Otherwise, they wouldn't be charged
with not obeying it. So to turn, one of the things
the Lord Jesus is revealing by sending out his apostles is that
in our day and age our faith and our practice needs to rest
on God's Word and rest on the testimony of the apostles. to have doctrine, to have practice
which is not apostolic, is to not have fellowship with God.
1 John reminds us, as he says in 1 John 4, 6, we are of God,
talking about himself and the authoritative teachers, the apostles.
He who knows God, he is us. He who is not of God does not
hear us. By this we know the spirit of
truth and the spirit of error." And he writes his letter encouraging
people to stay with apostolic faith, just as all the letters
of Paul are saying, you stay with the apostles. Don't go following
after any wind of doctrine and change. You stay with apostolic
testimony about who the Lord Jesus is. And to turn away from
apostolic testimony is not just to turn away from a bunch of
fishermen from Galilee, it's to turn away from God himself. And that's what these men were
to do, weren't they? They were to shake the dust off
their feet. And it was a shocking thing to
be done in the presence of a Jewish community because when the Jews
returned from their travels into pagan lands, when they crossed
the boundary of nation Israel, they would take their sandals
off and they would shake the dust off them. They didn't want
anything of the idolatry of the pagan world to cling to them. They wanted nothing of it. It
was a sign that they were coming back to their own people. And
this is a testimony against them. The shaking of the dust saying
that the most worthless thing you have in your town, the most
worthless thing we have in our houses is the dust on the floor.
I don't even want to have anything to do with the most worthless
things of your town." And it's written as a testimony, isn't
it? It's a sign, a testimony against these towns. And the
Lord Jesus says in Matthew 10 that He sends these apostles
to towns that He has gone to and He will go to. And so they
were going to have a double testimony, these towns. So it would be forever
written in the history of that town that the Lord Jesus would
come and they have rejected him, they have rejected his people.
If you turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 10 or Matthew
chapter 11, in this same sending out of the
12, Jesus gives extraordinary warnings and he likens the wickedness
of these people in Israel 2,000 years ago and the wickedness
of people around us today, he likens their wickedness to that
of Sodom and Gomorrah. In verse 20 he talks about His
mighty works had been done but they did not repent. Then in
chapter 11 he says, Woe to you, Chorazin, Woe to you, best sider,
for if the mighty works which were done in you had been done
in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth
and ashes. But I say to you, it would be
more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon, pagan cities, in the day of judgment
than for you. and to you Capernaum," Capernaum
was Jesus' home base for his preaching ministry, "...who are
exalted to heaven will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty
works which were done in you had been done in Sodom, it would
have remained to this day." And then verse 24, But I say to you
that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the
Day of Judgment than for you." It's a very serious, serious
warning. God is not playing games. To hear the Gospel, to have apostolic
witness to who the Lord Jesus is and to turn away from Him
is to be worse off than those citizens in Sodom and Gomorrah.
And if you remember that story, they had righteous lot living
amongst them and troubled. And then angels came to Sodom. Two male angels came to Sodom
and the men of Sodom wanted to rape those angels. And yet he says that the sin
of hearing the gospel and turning away from apostolic testimony
is worse than the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah. And so if we have
received light, it comes with great responsibility to respond
to the light. And so they have promises from
the Lord Jesus, instructions about how they are to go. They
have warnings about the response. And now in verse 12, they went
out and they preached that men should repent. And so the first
activity of them going out is their preaching. The ministry
of the Word comes first. As it did with the Lord Jesus,
He came to preach. And gospel preaching is preaching
that brings people to know of their need to repent. Two sins,
Jeremiah says, Israel has committed. They have forsaken me, the fountain
of living water, and they have hewn for themselves cisterns,
cisterns that can hold no water. And so gospel preaching brings
people to know who they are. It brings them to understand
what happened in the garden. They are to repent of what they
have done, living as if God is not king. As Satan said in the
garden, did God really say? And then a promise from Satan,
you will be like God, knowing good and evil. I will decide
for myself what is right and wrong for me. I'll make the decisions
about my life, not God. Repent of what they thought about
God and his kingdom, as Satan tempted Eve in the garden, suggesting
that God was withholding some good from them. And I must then
take for myself rather than wait and receive from God. To repent
of the fact that sin is a heart matter, And sin causes people
to go and stitch together fig leaves to cover their own making
for their own righteousness sake. And so the Scriptures, and as
we saw earlier in Mark's Gospel, the Scriptures picture leprosy
as a picture of the nature of fallen man. It corrupts the whole
man. It is contagious and spreads
to everything that it touches. It's incurable and it renders
men outcasts and brings them to a horrible death unless the
Lord intervenes in grace. And so repentance in the scripture
is a gift from God. So often we know that God in
the scriptures has granted repentance to people. And it's a matter
of the heart. When Peter preached in Acts chapter
2, the people were cut to the heart and cried out, what must
we do to be saved? In Acts 7, Stephen preached to
them and they were cut to the heart. And yet the people who
were saved out of those multitudes who heard those things were only
a small number. It's remarkable that 3,000 were
converted on the day of Pentecost. But the thing that ought to give
us pause is how big was the crowd that was there. Jerusalem in
those days, those festival days, had hundreds of thousands of
people in it. Spurgeon preached in England
for 40 years, preaching in revival almost all the time, and yet
the number of people converted in London is still relatively
small, even though his congregation had 6,000 members. So repentance is a matter of
the heart and repentance is a gift from God. And repentance comes
when the true Lord Jesus is brought before men in His glory and men
are brought to know who they really are. And the Jews had
to repent of their religion. They had to turn their back on
their religion, which had been a corrupted religion, but it
still used the scriptures and still had the temple. They had
to turn their back. John describes the Jewish festivals
as Jewish festivals. It was God's Passover, but now
it was the Jews' Passover and the Jews' festival. And so now people have so much
to repent of. Repentance begins our Christian
life as we are humble before God, and repentance is how we
continue in Christian life. There is never a moment of our
lives when there aren't deep and serious things in all of
our lives to repent of. We have to repent of who we are,
not just the things that we do. We have to repent of who we are,
not just the things that we think. because our problem is a problem
in our hearts. And so the apostles go out proclaiming
the Lord Jesus. They proclaim what they have
seen Him do and they proclaim what they have heard Him say.
And now in verse 13, they were casting out many demons and were
anointing with oil many sick people and healing them. And
so the Gospel preachers continue the work of the Lord Jesus. The
work of the Lord Jesus is going to go on long after His leaving
this earth. And these apostles show by their
words and their deeds that the Lord Jesus' authority, the authority
that He had to command these things, rests on these apostles. And the Scriptures make it plain
that that authority and that miraculous power came upon the
apostles until this book was written and sealed. And then
there is no need for the apostles, for God's people to perform miracles,
to validate what they say, because now we just turn people back
and say, this is the Word of God. It is finished, it is written. We do not need any more. We do
not need God to prove himself again and again by the miraculous
and the supernatural. God has done everything he needs
to do in proving who he is in the Lord Jesus and the apostles
are faithful witnesses to who he is. And so their miracles,
just like the Lord Jesus' miracles, are validations of what He says. He says, Son, your sins are forgiven. And then to prove to that man
and that crowd there that the Son of Man really does have authority
on earth to forgive sins, He says to that man, Arise, take
up your mat and go home. The miracles are a validation.
of his proclamation of who he is. And they're a testimony too
of the fact that it is by faith that God's people live in this
world. He encourages faith, he grows faith, he nurtures faith,
and he rewards faith. And then they are anointed with
oil. Olive oil was a medicine in those days. People used it
internally and externally. But oil also was a sign and a
symbol of divine grace, to anoint with it the Holy Spirit. And
so the use of olive oil is probably, as much as it had a practical
use, it implied that God really was the healer. The apostles
had spoken and the miracles had happened, but really it was God
who had done the healing. And so faithful witnesses just
proclaim what they have seen and experienced. No more is ever
needed of us. We are to proclaim where God
gives us opportunity what we know of the Lord Jesus. We proclaim
what we have experienced of the Lord Jesus. We proclaim what
God has given us to say about the Lord Jesus. And our proclamation
needs to be backed up by what He has written about the Lord
Jesus, what is written in the Scriptures. And so they have
witnessed much, these apostles. They've heard John the Baptist
say, prepare the way of the Lord. They have heard God the Father
say, You are my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. They have heard the Lord Jesus
preach the Sermon on the Mount. They have heard the Lord Jesus
say, The time is fulfilled. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the Gospel. The Kingdom of God is here now
in our midst. They've heard the demons say,
I know who you are, the Holy One of God. They have seen the
Lord Jesus express extraordinary authority over men, follow me
and they all immediately leave, over the demons, He just commands
them and they do as He says, over disease where He just speaks
a word and the leprosy left the man. He knows people's thoughts. He has power to forgive sin.
He has authority over the law. He has authority over calling
people to come and serve Him. He has authority over the blindness
of the Pharisees. In sending these people out,
the Pharisees' blindness was going to just be made worse.
He has authority over the wind and the waves. He has authority
over death. So the apostles go out proclaiming
what they have seen. Marvellous things our God does.
He always does marvellous things. Everything the Lord Jesus does
was to validate His testimony about Himself and His testimony
about Himself. He said He is the Messiah. He
is the Christ of God. He is God Himself in flesh. And so they have God's authority
to proclaim who God is and what God says about Himself. And so
the same applies for us, isn't it? We just witness to what we
have experienced. We witness to what we have come
to know as we experience the Lord Jesus. I'm just a poor sinner
and nothing at all, but Jesus is my all in all." It's the testimony
of God's people. And so, after doing their work,
in verse 30, the apostles gathered together with Jesus and they
reported to Him all that they had done and taught. And so,
gospel preachers are sent by the Lord with the power of the
Lord, with the Lord's promises, with the Lord's... and they are
accountable to the Lord, not to men. And so every Gospel minister,
every Gospel preacher is accountable to God for what He says about
who the Lord Jesus is and what He has done. And then he said
to them, come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest
a while. And so gospel preachers at the
end of their labors report to the Lord and they receive his
commendation and they enter into his rest, rest with him, knowing
that their labor in the Lord is never in vain. Even if there
is severe opposition, even if they are killed, rejected by
men, their labour in the Lord is never in vain. And also this
verse shows us the great compassion and tenderness and care of the
Lord Jesus for his disciples. Come away, come away from the
crowds and rest with me. And so we have a great opportunity
to look into the lives of these early apostles and see what their
first proclamations were. They have received that they
might give. They have witnessed that they
might bear testimony. And God calls on us now, doesn't
he, as he did to the people in his day, to pray that the Lord
of the harvest would send out laborers into the fields. The
fields are ripe for harvest. God will gather His people. Not
one will be lost. Not one of the sheep who hear
His voice will ever be lost. And so God's people go out with
great confidence that God will do everything He's promised to
do. And He's promised that He'll never lose one of those that
the Father has given Him. They were His in eternity. They
were His as He walked through this earth and cared for them
and loved them and nurtured them. They were His when He went to
the cross and bore the wrath of God for every single one of
their sins, and so they are His when He says to them, It is finished. It is finished. God has done
everything that's needed for you to live in perfect peace
with an awesome and holy God. It is finished. He has done it
all and he's done it well. We might now have communion if
Graham might hand it out.