So join me in Luke chapter 10
this morning as we're continuing our Bible study in the book of
Luke. And today we're going to be examining verses 11 through
16. And if you remember, the Lord,
In the beginning of this chapter, he sends out the 70. And he says,
I send you forth as lambs among wolves. And he says, don't take
anything with you. Don't take any script. Don't
take the same thing that he told the 12 back in the previous chapters
that we read about. And then he says, when you get to
a place, when you knock on the door, if there's a son of peace
there, He'll welcome the gospel. He'll be happy to hear the Word
of God, and he'll welcome you in, and your peace shall be upon
him. And if not, your peace shall return unto you. And so he gives them their marching
orders. Whatsoever city you enter into,
in verse 8, they shall, and they receive you, eat such things
that are set before you, heal the sick that are therein, and
say unto them, the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you. The
kingdom of God and the person of Christ is there among you. But into whatsoever city you
enter and they receive you not, 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
you sure of this that the kingdom of god has come nigh unto you
the last words that they would speak when they left they would
shake the dust off and said The kingdom of God is nigh unto you,
and then they would leave. He says, but I say unto you,
it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that
city, that city that Rejected the Word of God. Woe unto thee,
Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida! For
if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon, which
have been done in you, they had a great while ago repented, sitting
in sackcloth and ashes. But it shall be more tolerable
for Tyrant Sidon at the judgment than for you. And thou, Capernaum,
which art exalted to heaven, shalt be thrust down to hell.
He that heareth you heareth me, and he that despiseth you despiseth
me, and he that despiseth me despiseth him that sent me. So that was the instructions
that he gave them and the warning that he gave them. And here's
what to expect. And if you run into this circumstances,
here's what you do. And if you run into another circumstances,
then consequently, here's the correct response there. It was just interesting to me
as I was studying this that he mentions these three cities in
particular. Chorazin, the only time it's
found in the Bible is in here in Luke chapter 10 and then in
Matthew 11 where he repeats this same curse as it were, woe unto
you cores. And so when the Lord God Almighty
says, woe unto a place, what a picture that brings to our
mind. What awful circumstances that brings out. And for the
Lord, it was in the definition of that word, it's an exclamation
of grief, sorrow, or pity. And here it's coupled with a
sense of comparative judgment. He compares the judgment that
will fall on these cities compared to other notorious cities that
were found in the Bible. These cities are called out in
Matthew 11 because they wouldn't repent in spite of all the mighty
works which Jesus did among them. Matthew 11, 20 says, Then He
began to upbraid the cities wherein most of His mighty works were
done, because they repented not. He was right there among them
preaching the kingdom of God, healing the sick, raising the
dead, all the things that He did, the mighty miracles that
He performed. And He was right there among
them preaching the grace and sovereignty of God. And yet,
they were kind of stuck in their old religious, self-righteous
world of unbelief. And as I was studying
this out, I said, there must be something about Khorazin because
he mentions it specifically by name and it's really the only
time that it's really found. I said, well, there must be something
about Khorazin that valuable for us to know something
about, so I was kind of digging into the archaeological history
of it, and I found some interesting archaeological information regarding
that region. These three cities that are mentioned
here, Capernaum and Bethsaida and Chorazin, make up what's
known as an evangelical triangle, and they're found on the Can
everybody see that? This little blue thing here is
the Sea of Galilee, and up at the very tip of it, up at the
very north, you find Bethsaida and Capernaum kind of right on
the shore, and then about two and a half miles inward is Chorazin. And it made up this triangle
shape. region where the Lord did most
of his mighty works. And so this area is noted to
be rich in volcanic soil, dark, rich soil that was perfect for
growing grain, and it produced a great grain crop, and it produced
an early grain crop, and it was widely used in religious ceremonies
that they did at the synagogues and temples and stuff. So it
was known for this grain, and from what I can tell, the name
Corazon is a place of grain. And you know, the Lord and His
disciples have been all through this region. And He sent out
the Twelve, and He sent out the Seventy, and to all these cities. And they were to declare the
Gospel of the Kingdom of God liberally through all this area
and all the way to the south. And they kind of preached their
way down all the way to Jerusalem. They kind of zigzagged. Remember
in our previous lessons, they went across the Sea of Galilee
over to that maniac of Gader over there, kind
of on the south east shore of Galilee. Then they went back
across, then they went down into Nain, where he raised that dead
man off of that funeral pyre. And it's interesting that that
was in our study in Luke chapter 7 when they were in the city
of Nain. And that is directly adjacent to a place on your Bible
maps that's called the Plain of Ezdralon. And the translation
of that is God sows. And it was directly after that the Lord gave the parable of
the sower there in Luke chapter 8. So I think that's probably
just a coincidence, I guess. We'll call it that. Anyway, interesting fact. And then in the Old Testament,
that region, if you went back to Joshua chapter 12, you'd find
that that area was called Megiddo. And then there's a place in it
called the hill of Megiddo that's referred to in Revelation 16,
Armageddon. It's where they get that Armageddon
phrase there. So, interesting area. So, Corazon was also noted for something
that we're very familiar with here is basaltic rock. The whole
area is volcanic, and it's got a lot of basaltic rock. And all
of the architecture, all the buildings and everything are
primarily made out of carved basalt. And I have some pictures
here later if someone would like to look at them. But very, very
meticulously carved and sculpted into pretty nice looking arrangements. When they found the ruins of
Korazin in the early 1920s, they were doing some archaeological
digs there. And they discovered this city, and they found a synagogue
in there. And then a little bit later,
they discovered the original. The earlier synagogue was about
200 meters north of there. And this synagogue had been constructed. It was kind of a practice in
those days that when there was a destruction or war rubble or
something they would reutilize the components of the old building
to make the the new building and so it's likely that the new
this new newer synagogue was constructed the one that's they're
looking at in these pictures was from about third century
So the other one was quite a bit earlier. So among the things that they found
that was very interesting, they're digging around and uncovering
all this finery and sculptures and architecture and whatnot. Well they find a carving of a
Medusa head in the basalt there. And one of the people that were
reviewing this said, what was the picture of a Greek mythological
character doing carved into a synagogue of all places? A synagogue where
they prided themselves on the keeping of the law. And Medusa,
remember, that's a Greek mythological character that had the snakes
for the hair. And Perseus looked in the mirror
and cut off the head with not looking at it, because
apparently if you looked at it, you turned into stone. And so
a pagan character carved in relief right into a basalt rock in the
synagogue. And I thought, well, that's interesting.
And then another thing they found there was a rock that had been
carved into a chair, and it was called Moses' Seat. You might recall the Lord mentioning
these things in Matthew chapter 23. Turn over to Matthew 23 verse
1. It says, Then spake Jesus to
the multitude and to his disciples, saying, The scribes and the Pharisees
sit in Moses' seat. And it was an actual seat that
they sat on, and then read the Torah. Whoever was a member in
our previous lesson, they would select somebody each Sabbath
to read. And I remember the one time Jesus
stood up for a read, and he read from Isaiah and said, this day
is the Scripture fulfilled in your ears. Well, this rock is
where they This carved seat was where they did that. He says,
the scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat, and all therefore
whatsoever they bid you observe. He says, the law is righteous,
the law is good. That observe and do, but do not
you after their works, for they say and do not. That's typical
even today. They bind heavy burdens and grievous
to be born and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves
will not move them with one of their fingers. All their works
they do for to be seen of men, and they make broad their phylacteries
and enlarge the borders of their garments, and love the uppermost
room at the feast and the chief seats in the synagogues and greetings
in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi. Well, right
next to the seat of Moses, there was an inscription carved in
stone in Hebrew that said, May Udan, the son of Ishmael, who
contributed this colonnade and its stairs from his property,
be remembered for good, and may he have a portion with the righteous.
what a thing. Isn't that like what you might
find here. This wing was donat and people like to have t inscribed, and here's what I
did. And the prayer was, may he have
a portion with the righteous. Because he kind of bought a section
of this religious facility. Isn't that interesting that that
was happening back then? And meanwhile, Christ is around
there preaching the kingdom of God. And this kind of stuff is
going on. And you know, when I was looking
at that, similar discoveries found in
other synagogues of the region, all up and down that region along
the Sea of Galilee, where the Lord was preaching in Hamath
Tiberias, which is on the west coast of the Sea of Galilee,
about On my map, it's right there,
about two-thirds of the way down. And it was a city there, and
then one of the Roman guys in charge kind of built it up and
made a resort place out of it. It's mentioned in Joshua chapter
19, verse 35. in Joshua 19.35 says, the fence
cities are Ziddam, Zer, Hamath, Raketh, and Chinreth. So it's
mentioned there as Hamath, the name it had before Tiberius tacked
his Roman name onto it. And Joshua is the cities as they
were dividing up that country there. And in the floor of the
synagogue, that they found there, the ruins of, is a circular tile
mosaic made of little ceramic tiles that are all cut and shaped. You're all familiar with ceramic
tile mosaics. It was a zodiac, and in the middle
of the zodiac was a depiction of the Greek god Helios driving
a chariot of four horses. That hymn we just sang mentioned
the chariots of the Lord there. And it just struck me as interesting
that it's one of those things that you just kind of consistently
run into is that someone will take a truth of God and then
corrupt it. They'll take a truth of God and
make it into something else. And they'll incorporate some
unrighteousness into it that's... Paul said, beware the mutilation. Beware of that. Beware of the
concision, he called it, which means mutilation. But anyway,
they have this picture of the sun god Helios driving his four-horse
chariot. It was called a quadriga. some term that you might be more
familiar with in our days, a quad, a four. And right below the tile
zodiac with Helios in the middle was an inscription, again thanking
those who had contributed to the synagogue. They always made
sure to note that, thank you to so-and-so. Ishmael contributed
50 shekels for this, and so-and-so contributed this for that. Aren't
they wonderful? And they have their names written
down in history for that. And into this religious situation, And, you know, there's several
synagogues where they found similar. The synagogue at Sepphoris, which
is just inland a ways toward the Mediterranean Sea from Tiberius,
they had a similar tile mosaic. But they were more righteous.
And they actually, they took, they replaced the face of Helios
with a depiction of the sun with rays coming off of it. And that
takes us back to a corruption of things. Very similar to the
son of righteousness. They just take a thing that's
in the scripture and then kind of corrupt it with something
that's been corrupted by a pagan religion and just incorporate
it into their their ideology, and then it's legitimate then. So they incorporated most everything
they encountered to accommodate whatever obstacles that they
might run into. Most of these things were Greek
in nature, or Greek-Roman. And in Malachi 4 it chooses,
but to you that fear my name shall the son of righteousness
arise with healing in his wings and you shall grow up grow forth
and grow up as calves of the stall. So here's a big depiction
of a sun god in the middle of this zodiac tile mosaic, the
astrological deal. So I think that you can draw
that same conclusion with this Medusa, the woman with the head
of serpents, and takes you right back to Genesis 3.15. I'll put enmity between thee
and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed, and it shall
bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." And then Perseus
cuts the head off of that. So now it's a good luck charm,
you know. Oh yeah, I've got the cut off head of Medusa there
warding off evil stuff. So a depiction of a false god
in the midst of the house where the law declaring Christ was
read. They probably read from Exodus
23 all the time. Thou shalt have no other gods
before me except Helios, the Greek sun god. So it's interesting that in the
midst of all that you have the Lord God Almighty the person
of the true Lord God Almighty coming in the flesh to save His
people from their sins. And yet in Matthew 11 20 says, He upbraided them because they
repented not. Even though He was right in the
middle. The kingdom of God has come nigh unto you. But when
to whatsoever city you enter and they receive you not, go
your way out into the streets of the same and say, even the
very dust of your city which cleaveth on us, do we wipe off
against you." Boy, isn't that a strong words for us to say
about when we come across someone that's trying to get us to be
a part of some homogenized religious junk? that is no gospel, just
no. Shake off the dust of your feet
and leave. As I say unto you, it's
going to be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that
city. Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida! For
if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon, which
have been done in you, they had a great while repented, sitting
in sackcloth and ashes. But it shall be more tolerable
in Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you. And thou, Capernaum,
exalted to heaven, shalt be thrust down to hell. He that heareth
you, heareth me. And he that despiseth you, despiseth
me. And he that despiseth me, despiseth
him that sent me. So that brings us to the comparative
judgment part of this. We've had a little bit of archeological
history and we've seen what kind of what's going on. So now we
look at the kind of the comparative. He said, it's going to be worse
for you than for these other awful places because The King
of Glory was right there among you and you repented not. There's no excuse. You know,
in Romans it says, even the Gentiles, they're without excuse because
the very things of creation declare the glory of God. So, there's
none without excuse. But, you know, we can look to
the book of Ezekiel. It gives us a little information
on Tyre and Sidon. In Ezekiel chapter 28, Ezekiel 28, the word of the Lord
came again unto me, saying, Son of man, say unto the prince of
Tyrus, Thus saith the Lord God, and here's this interesting part
here, Because thine heart is lifted up, and thou sayest, I
am a God. I sit in the seat of God, in
the midst of the seas, yet thou art a man, and not God. though
thou set thine heart as the heart of God. Behold, thou art wiser
than Daniel, there is no secret they can hide from thee, but
thy wisdom and thine understanding thou hast gotten thee riches,
and hast gotten thee gold and silver into thy treasures. But
thy great wisdom, and by thy traffic hast thou increased thy
riches, and thine heart is lifted up because of thy riches. Therefore
thus saith the Lord God, because thou hast set thine heart as
the heart of God. Behold, therefore, I will bring
strangers upon thee, the terrible of the nations, and they shall
draw their swords against the beauty of thy wisdom, and they
shall defile thy brightness. They shall bring thee down to
the pit, and thou shalt die the deaths of them that are slain
in the midst of the seas. Wilt thou yet say before him
that slayeth thee?" When these guys come and they're whacking
you with a sword, are you going to say, I'm God? You can't do
this to me. But thou shalt be a man. and
no God in the hand of him that slayeth thee. Thou shalt die
the deaths of the uncircumcised by the hand of strangers, for
I have spoken it, saith the Lord God." And we'll skip down here
to verse 20 of the same chapter, Ezekiel 28, 20. Again, the word
of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, set thy face against
Zidon, and prophecy against it. And say, thus saith the Lord
God, behold, I am against thee, O Zidon, and I will be glorified
in the midst of thee, and they shall know that I am the Lord,
when I shall have executed judgments in her and shall be sanctified
in her. For I will send unto her pestilence
and blood in the streets, and the wounded shall be judged in
the midst of her by the sword upon her by every side, and they
shall know that I am the Lord. So he said, I'm against thee. What a terrible judgment, because
their hearts were lifted up against him. They were just like Adam
in the garden. Well, if you eat this fruit,
you'll be like God. You'll have the same knowledge as him. You'll
be just as smart as him. You'll be just like him. And
they had convinced themselves that they were that way. philosophers, no doubt, that
have explored the deep and intricate things of the universe and came
to the conclusions that we're the top of the heap and there's nothing that we can't
get by knowledge and by our craft and our wits and our riches. Capernaum, who was exalted to
heaven by the mighty works done there by the Lord God Almighty,
doomed to be cast down to hell, it says. Boy, just think of the
of the benefits of having the Lord God Almighty come to your
town and do mighty works there, declaring the gospel of the kingdom,
healing people, and raising the dead, and all the things that
identified Him as who He was. And yet, we've learned throughout
all of our studies in John, and Luke, and Mark, that really those
miracles had no effectual nature in them. It was the only thing
that caused them to be effectual was the moving of the Holy Spirit
on the hearts of the people. You know, if you go to a house
and the Spirit of God has been there before you and given a
person a new heart, a heart to want to know God and to serve
Him and love Him, He says, that person will be called a son of
peace and you'll be welcome there. And for those that that he's
not been there. It's like Hebrews chapter 4.
The gospel was preached unto them as well as unto you, but
it didn't profit them not being mixed with faith and them that
heard it. And we know that faith, by grace are you saved through
faith, and that not of yourselves, not something you can come up
with. It's a gift of God, but not of works lest any man should
boast. So he gives these important last
words to these 70 disciples before they departed to declare this
gospel in this region. He that heareth you is a son
of peace, elected of God, born again by the Spirit, saved by
the Son of God. You know, it says in Thessalonians
1, knowing, brethren, your beloved, your election of God. For or
because, here's how we know that. Our gospel came not unto you
in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in
much assurance, as you know what manner of men we were among you
for your sake. And you became followers of us
and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction with
joy of the Holy Ghost, so that you were in samples to all that
believe in Macedonia and Achaia, For from you sounded out the
word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also
in every place your faith to God were to spread abroad, so
that we need not speak anything. For they themselves show us what
manner of entering in we had unto you, and how you turn to
God from idols. He turned from that Helios in
the mosaic in the bottom here. He turned from that Medusa. He
turned from religious works. He turned from self-righteousness. The biggest idol that we have
is self. He turned to God from idols to
serve the living and true God. And you know, when we're true
in declaring the truth of the gospel, Then the next lesson
that we learn for the church here is found in verse 16. heareth me." If we're spouting
off our own philosophy, if we're spouting off traditions of men
and elders, if we're spouting off corruptions of the gospel,
entering into some kind of works type situation, well, if you
just do this, if you just say this, if you just pray this,
then voila, abracadabra, you're saved. And he said, He that heareth
you, heareth me. And he that despiseth you, despiseth
me. And if he despises me, he despises
him that sent me. So the valuable lesson for the
church there is, and Norm's mentioned this many times, As long as we're
faithful and true in the gospel and the word of God, if they
got a problem with it, the problem is not with you. They can maybe
try to kill the messenger a little bit, but the problem that they
have is really with God, not with us. So that's a valuable
thing to remember. But it only applies if you're
true to the gospel, if you're true to the word of God. Paul
said, I've not shunned to declare all the gospel. I'm not shunned to declare one
thing about God that I know. And he says, so therefore, I'm free
of the blood of all men that I talk to about it. He says,
I can't make it effectual in them, but I have told them the
whole truth of the gospel. And he mentions that in Acts
chapter 20, if you want to look that up. I'm pure from the blood
of all men, for I've not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel
of God. So that will conclude our lesson
today. We're going to close a little
earlier here, but valuable things that we learn from these few
words here in Luke. Beware of corruption. Beware
of incorporation of things not God into the realm of God. Be careful of corrupting the
gospel. the things that that leads, because
we make it ineffectual if we take something away from it or
we add something to it that's not there. So we'll stop there. And the next time we pick up
the 70, come back. And boy, are they full of themselves.
Look what I did. And you know, it's the important
thing to remember that the Lord tells us, Don't rejoice in all
that stuff. Rejoice that your names are written
in heaven. That's what you should be rejoicing
in. So we'll look at that next time, Lord willing. We'll be filling in for Norm the next
couple weeks, so hard to say where we'll be. So with that,
my friends, be free. Until next time.