I invite you to turn back with
me, if you will, in your Bibles to the 10th chapter of the Gospel
of St. Luke. some of the disciples those that
were following after him and one of them had said that he
would follow the Lord wherever he would go and Jesus said to
him in verse 58 of the ninth chapter Foxes have holes and
birds of the air have nest but the son of man hath not where
to lay his head and He said unto another follow me, but he said
Lord you suffer me first to go and bury my father And Jesus
said unto him, Let the dead bear their dead, but go thou and preach
the kingdom of God. And another also said, Lord,
I will follow thee, but let me first go bid them farewell which
are at home at my house. And Jesus said unto him, No man,
having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for
the kingdom of God. After these things the Lord appointed
other seventy also, and sent them two and two before his face
into every city and place, whether he himself would come." So this
is a wave, if you please, of missionaries that our Lord sent
out before him. Our Lord was going to enter into
various cities and to minister during his earthly ministry. And there was much to be done
on earth, many, many things to be accomplished, much of the
Lord's purpose and program to be fulfilled. And so he would
appoint these 70, and they would go before him and preach the
kingdom of God. And in verse 2, therefore said
he unto them, before he sent them out, he said, I have some
instruction that I would give to you. He said, the harvest
truly is great. And it is. It's a tremendous
harvest. We believe that our Lord is going
to save a company more numerous than the sand of the seashore.
We believe, I believe personally, that there will be more people
in heaven than there will be in hell. I believe that the redeemed
of the Lord shall fill heaven and there will not be one empty
space in all of glory. God has a great harvest, and
this harvest needs to be brought in. And Jesus said, but the laborers
are few. The laborers are few. There are
not many who are bearing the Word, sowing the seed of the
Word of God. And therefore, I send you seventy
out. And Jesus said, you pray, therefore,
that the Lord of the harvest, because it is His harvest, The
people that are saved are the Lord's people. They're the sheep
of His pasture. It is the Lord's harvest. It's
not the harvest of a man or of a preacher, regardless of how
able he is and how well he's schooled. Regardless of that,
it is the Lord's harvest. He is the Lord of the harvest. Nobody ever gets saved without
the Lord saving them. Nobody slips up on the backside
of a sinner and slips him into the kingdom of God, God not knowing
anything about it. He is the Lord of the harvest. It's His harvest. And that He
would send forth laborers into His harvest. So the Lord tells
them, these 70, to be engaged in prayer that the Lord of the
harvest might send forth laborers into his harvest. The importance
of prayer and intercession our Lord would remind them of. And
this is the way the Lord opens this address unto these 70. Before
he tells them what to do, he first bids them to pray. He bids
them to pray. Pray ye the Lord of the harvest.
that he would send forth labors into the harvest. Prayer is the
best and most powerful means of helping forward the cause
of Jesus Christ in the world. I say it's the best and the most
powerful means. It is a means within the reach
of all who have the Holy Spirit of God abiding in their hearts. All who are the living children
of God make up the living temple of God and can offer up spiritual
sacrifices acceptable unto God. Yea, they can pray, they can
cry to God, they can lift up their hearts and petition to
God, praying the blessing of God upon His work and upon His
servants as they go out. All believers can pray for the
success of the gospel. And we need to remember that.
As we attempt to preach here and as we attempt to preach in
this city and other places, we need to recognize that all believers
have a part in that ministry. All believers here, all the believers
that gather here have a part in the ministry of this church,
bearing up the preacher in prayer. All believers can pray, and they
ought to pray for the ministry of the gospel and do it daily,
crying out to God. Many marvelous answers to prayer
are recorded for us in the Bible. And remember in James 5 and 16,
it says, the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth
much. Prayer is one of the principal
weapons which the minister of the gospel himself ought to use. He ought to pray. You remember
in the early church where they called together seven deacons
and gave them the menial task of the church that the preachers
might be able to give themselves to the ministry of the word,
but also to prayer, it is said. Now, the second thing that our
Lord mentions to them here that I want to call to your attention
is the perilous nature of the work in which they were about
to be engaged. Now we're told here that in verse
3 he said, Go your ways, behold I send you forth as lambs among
wolves. I send you forth as lambs among
wolves. So our Lord does not keep back
from them the dangers and the trials which are before them. He does not enlist them under
false pretenses or prophesy any smooth things to them. He does not promise them unvarying
success. He does not enlist them under
false pretenses. He tells them plainly what they
must expect, what they're going to expect in the world. He says,
I send you forth as lambs among wolves. Now, as we study further
in this chapter this morning, we're going to see how furious
and how very angry the Jews became at the ministry of the Seventy
and what they had to say to these Jews about God's dealings in
judgment with them and with the pagan and the heathen of the
world. And so you'll know a little bit
more as we get along why it is that the Lord Jesus said, I'm
sending you forth as lambs among wolves. And they must make up
their minds to be hated and to be persecuted and ill-treated
by those who have no real love in their hearts for God or His
truth. And beloved, this is a message to us also. It was a strong but
a true saying of Martin Luther that Cain will murder Abel if
he can to the very end of the world, and it is true. Those
who preach the gospel and those who are faithful in the declaration
of the message of free grace will suffer persecution. They
will receive much persecution from the world. Jesus said, marvel
not in the gospel of John if the world hates you. Marvel not. It's not something that's strange.
If they hated me, Jesus said, they'll hate you. And they did
hate him, and beloved, it was without cause that they hated
our master, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, on many occasions, the
people of God suffer the same thing. They that will live godly
in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. Now the third thing that I mentioned
briefly is that the disciples were to be, or these 70, were
to be, and they were disciples because they were followers of
the Lamb and they were listening to his instruction and obeying
him, but he mentions their thorough devotion to the work which he
had assigned to them. Their thorough devotion. They
must be devoted to this work entirely given over unto it. They were to abstain even from
the appearance of covetousness or the love of money or luxury.
He says to them, carry neither purse, in verse 4, nor shoes,
and salute no man by the way. And into whatsoever house you
enter, first say, Peace be to this house, and if the Son of
Peace, if a Son of Peace be there, if somebody's there who has the
peace of God in their soul, having been justified by faith in Me,
then the peace will rest upon that house. And if it's not,
if there's none there that has experienced the true grace of
God in salvation, then the peace will come back to you. And so
he's telling them here that they're to be devoted to the cause. They were to carry neither purse
nor sprit or shoes. They were to behave like men
who had no time to waste on the empty compliments and conventional
courtesies of the world. Salute no man on the way. This task is an urgent task,
and you don't have time, as the custom was in the East at that
time, to take two or three days to salute somebody. to sit down
and have a meal and to salute all of the relatives of this
individual. So he said, don't get tied up
fooling with anybody along the way. It's alright to be courteous,
it's alright to be mindful that you're in other people's homes
and so on, but you spend no time getting carried away from the
true ministry which I have assigned to you. Now, They teach us that
preachers and teachers of the gospel should beware of allowing
the world to eat up their time and thoughts and to hinder them
in their spiritual work. Because often we find that there
are many, many distractions when it comes to the study of the
Word of God or to preparation of a message to bring to the
souls of men and women. Much, much hindrance we have
experienced along the way. And they teach us that care about
money and excessive attention to what are called the niceties
of life are snares in the way of Christ's labors and snares
in which they must take heed that they do not fall. Now we
take note here that our Lord said unto them And in the same
house, if you enter a house and peace rests upon that house,
or if it does not, and in the same house, in verse 7, you remain
eating and drinking such things as they give, for the laborer
is worthy of his hire. The Bible teaches that those
who labor in the gospel should live in the gospel, And so therefore
the laborer is worthy of his hire. So you remain there, don't
have any guilt about remaining there and eating such things
and drinking such things as is set before you. And he says,
go not from house to house attempting to find better accommodations.
Don't go from house to house attempting to get a better living,
a better situation for yourself. Do not do that. You're on the
Lord's errand. He has enjoined you to go and
to preach the gospel of the kingdom. You go and whatever house you
enter in, whatever fare is awarded or given, you partake of that,
but go not from house to house trying to better yourself. I
know of a whole lot of preachers I've met back there in the 50-some
years that I've been in the ministry, who would move from place to
place, and the only criteria for moving was a better situation. A better situation. Whether the
Lord was in it or whether He wasn't, they wanted a better
situation. And there are some men who have
entered the ministry who have to have everything, they have
to have the niceties of life, the nicest place to live and
so on, and they cannot deal with the deprivations that come to
those who are in the ministry. And so we need a simple-minded
and contented spirit And we need to exhibit that spirit in the
world. And don't be hard to be satisfied
or pleased about your diet and where you stay. But eat and drink
such things, our Lord said, as were given them. They were not
to go from house to house. Now simplicity in food and household
arrangements and readiness to put up with any accommodations
so long as health can be preserved, uninjured, should always be the
mark of the man of God. Whatever be his situation, he's
to be content in all things. The Bible teaches that godliness
with contentment is great gain. We brought nothing into this
world and it's certain we can take nothing out, therefore with
food and rain that let us therewith be content. The Bible teaches
that we're not to be covetous seeing that the Lord has said
that he would never leave us nor forsake us and that we could
boldly say the Lord is our helper and that we should not be covetous
We should not be seeking a better situation than the providence
of God seemingly has been pleased to grant us to have. And when
we begin to preach about unseen things, sermons that we preach,
and we do preach that things eternal are unseen, and that
which is unseen is eternal, this will produce very little effect
when our life preaches the importance of the things that are seen. So let us be reminded of these
principles that our Lord lays out here before us this morning.
I began my message this morning by saying that there is a work
to be done on earth, and I believe that the Lord did divinely appoint
these 70. I know that this occasion is
not mentioned in the other Gospels, but our Lord did appoint these
seventy and he is still today sending out laborers into his
harvest. The Lord is still doing that.
He's still calling men and women to stand by and support faithfully
with their means in whatever way they can the message of the
gospel being gone out. But I thought about the great
privilege of being an ambassador of Jesus Christ in this world. What a great privilege it was.
Even though it entailed many stressful situations, I'm sure
for the 70, it was a great privilege that they had to be chosen by
our Lord to go before Him into all the cities to which He would
go and minister. And so, seeing that we are such
creatures as we are, what a glorious privilege it is that we have
this privilege of ministering the gospel of God's grace. And
we have a great message. We have the greatest message.
I was conversing the other day with Brother Bruce Crabtree,
and we were talking about the message of the gospel. And how
that there are preachers that can preach better than we can,
but none have a better gospel to preach than what we have. And this good news of the gospel
Good news. We have good news to proclaim. And that good news, what a message,
is forgiveness through the Lord Jesus Christ. It's pardon through
His shed blood. It is reconciliation to God through
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is peace through believing. It is peace through trust in
our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. But as we learn, as we follow
on down, we will study it here a little bit this morning, but
there's some bad news that also we must bear. Some bad news that
we must bear. We understand better the good
news I think if we understand the bad news that we must bear
as the servants of our Lord Jesus Christ. We're to tell men and
women the worst news that they ever heard. were to tell them
bad news, and the good news will not seem very good to them unless
they first hear of the bad news. Beloved, there is a hell for
those who repent not. Luke chapter 13 and verse 3 says
that except you repent, you shall all likewise perish. And that perish does not mean
that you'll not get to go to the Sunday afternoon picnic.
It does not mean that you'll just simply have to stand aside
for a week or two while those who are faithful and repented
go into the kingdom of God. It means that you will perish
eternally in the lake of fire. There is a hell for those who
repent not and believe not the record that God gave of His Son. And this is foundational news
to the good news. Men and women must be aware of
the fact that there is a judgment, that there is a hell to come.
It's not just the promise of heaven, brethren, that we're
to preach. We must also preach the threat
of eternal judgment, the threat of hell fire. This is not what
is being preached in our day. The warning of judgment to come,
the wrath of God, everlasting hell is hardly ever mentioned
in most pulpits in our country today. Nobody will preach these
things, this bad news that men and women must hear in order
for them to be able to rightly evaluate the good news of the
gospel. Now the Bible begins and ends
with warnings. All through the Word of God is
full of warnings about the judgment. Look with me quickly. In Genesis
chapter 2, I would like to read to you here a verse of Scripture
that shows you that at the very beginning of the creation, We
see God giving a warning to Adam and Eve in the garden. But of
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not
eat of it. For in the day thou eatest thereof
thou shalt surely die. And this was a warning. God warned
Adam and Eve. In the day you eat this fruit,
you're going to die. Surely, you will die. Dying,
you will die. And you will die physically.
And you will die spiritually. And you will die an eternal death. A death that never dies. You
do not repent. If you're not clothed upon with
the garments of salvation, if God does not bring you unto Himself,
then you will die eternally. And then over in the very last
chapter of the Bible, in Revelation chapter 22. Listen to verse 18
and verse 19. I'm talking about the warnings
of the Word of God and how at the very beginning, the very
end of the Bible, and all through the Bible, we have these warnings
of God about judgment. And here in verse 18, For I testify
unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this
book, if any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto
him the plagues that are written in this book. And if any man
shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy,
God shall take away his part out of the book of life and out
of the holy city and from the things which are written in this
book. My, what a warning! That is,
a terrible warning against manipulating and fooling around or trifling
with the Holy Scriptures. Well, God in the Bible says,
I kill and I make alive. And He says, I wound and I heal. And He said, now this is what
God said, He said, can deliver from My hand. None can deliver
from My hand. God not only blesses, beloved,
but He also curses. In Job 31 and 3, is it not destruction
for the wicked, Job said? The wicked shall be destroyed
with everlasting punishment. The wicked are reserved for the
day of doom, saith the Bible. Psalm 9 and verse 7 says the
Lord shall endure forever, forever. He has prepared His throne for
judgment. Psalm 96 and 13, He is coming,
He is coming, the psalmist said, to judge the earth. And Acts
17 and 31, Because he hath appointed a day in which he will judge
the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained,
whereby he hath given assurance unto all men in that that he
raised him from the dead. Hebrews 9 and 27, it is appointed
unto men once to die, but after this, after this, the judgment. There'll be a judgment. Romans
2 and 16, God shall judge the secrets of men's hearts. Paul
said, according to my gospel. Romans 2 and verse 5 says that
men treasure up unto themselves. wrath against the day of wrath,
and the revelation of the righteous judgment of God. The scripture
pictures Jesus as not only the Savior, but also as the Judge. Turn with me to John, hold your
finger here in the 10th of Luke, and turn with me to John 5, and
notice here as we read. In verse 22, we read just a few
verses here. Notice this. The Lord Jesus Christ
is pictured in the Bible not only as Savior, but also as Judge. In verse 22, For the Father judgeth
no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son, that all
men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. And
he that honoreth not the Son honoreth not the Father which
hath sent him. Verily, verily, I say unto you,
he that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me
hath everlasting life, and will not come into condemnation, but
is passed from death unto life. Verily, verily, I say unto you,
the hour is coming, and now is, When the dead shall hear the
voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live. For
as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to
have life in Himself, and hath given Him authority to execute
judgment also, because He is the Son of Man. And then turn,
if you would, and holding your fingers still in Luke 10, we're
not done there, to 2 Thessalonians chapter 1. And listen to what
this says in verse 7, 8, and 9. And to you who are troubled
rest with us when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven
with his mighty angels in flaming fire taking vengeance on them
that know not God. and that obey not the gospel
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall be punished with everlasting
destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory
of His power. Great verses on the judgment
of Almighty God, and how that the Lord Jesus Christ, He Himself
is pictured as not only Savior, but also Judge. Now, beloved
every unbeliever, of every age will be condemned by the righteous
judge of the ages. John 3 and 18 says, He that believeth
is not condemned. He that believeth not is condemned
already because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten
Son of God. Now the reason for this judgment
of God upon those that are in unbelief and rebellion, and who
are unrepentant, this judgment is sin and guilt before God.
Sin and guilt before God. All of sin comes short of the
glory of God, and men stand guilty before God, and the only way
that guilt can be removed is for it to be washed away in the
Savior's blood. for the Redeemer to have mercy
upon you and to cleanse you. The Bible says that the blood
of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us from all sin, cleanses away
all sin. And so this judgment, the wicked
shall be turned into hell, the Bible says, and all the nations
that forget God. And the only escape is that name
which is above every name, the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,
that name that means Savior, He is the only escape from sin. Now, I want you to notice this, and
I think the meaning of these verses, let's look again in Luke
chapter 10. There's a few verses here, I
just want to read just a few of them. Beginning here with
verse 10. He says, But into whatsoever
city you enter, and they received 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 ye sure of this, that the kingdom of God is come nigh you.
But I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable in that day
for Sodom, and for that city, woe unto thee Shiraz, and woe
unto thee Bethsaida. For the mighty works have been
done in Tar 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 Tar and Sidon at the judgment than
for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art
exalted to heaven, you think you're going to heaven, you feel
you're going to heaven, you're not going to heaven, you'll be
thrust down to hell, you'll be sent to hell. Now then, what
is the meaning of these verses? Let me try, if I can, to very
quickly give you the meaning of these verses, the best I understand
them. And I think these are very sobering
verses, and we need to take note of it. And the meaning is the
more of God's truth that you're exposed to, the more of the truth
of the gospel that you know, the more severe will be the eternal
punishment of our God. The greater the revelation of
the gospel of Christ, the more severe the judgment of the unbelieving. The more severe eternal judgment
belongs to those who have heard the most and rejected it. and turn from it. It does not
need to be said that this church believes in the responsibility
of all God's creatures to love Him, to respect Him, to honor
Him, to repent of their sin and their evil and to turn to Him. It's their responsibility to
do it. Even though the Bible teaches
clearly spiritual inability, it is the responsibility, it
remains the responsibility that everybody that draws God's breath
into their lungs repent and believe the gospel. Now then, there are
degrees of punishment in hell. And this we need to think about. The practical meaning, listen
to me now. I made the statement that the more severe judgment
belongs to those who heard the most and rejected it. Now, as
I said, there are degrees of punishment in hell which are
taught here. And the practical meaning, I
think, of this is this. If you are an unbeliever and
you hang around this church or any other church where the gospel
of redeeming grace is preached faithfully and severely, It is
high-risk behavior on your part. High-risk behavior on your part. Because you're going to be judged
for what you know, and what you've been exposed to, and what you
have heard, you're going to be judged, and that has great potential
for severe judgment. If you're an unbeliever, as we
said, you might as well jump out of an airplane with an umbrella
with a hole in it than to stay around the church and stay around
the gospel where the grace of God is preached. Because of the
potential, I say, of the judgment. And this is the point, I think,
of this text. Now the message here is very clear. The more
exposure you have to the glory, of Jesus Christ, the more potential
judgment you will receive if you reject it. Our Lord told
these 70, you go and tell them that the kingdom of God is nigh. Now all Jews would understand,
or most all Jews, adult Jews, would understand what that meant.
They would understand that the Old Testament preaches, there's
one coming! One coming! There's one coming! And that the Gospels say and
preach, he has come! He has come! And the Epistles
says, and he's coming again. He's coming again. And so these
Jews would understand that it meant that the Messiah had come. And that the kingdom of God had
come down. And that that sphere in which
God dwells and which He governs, that it was among them. And that
that kingdom could be entered by repentance and faith. It could be entered by a submission
to the authority of the King Himself. Now, as we look at this,
I want you to, if you can, to attempt to follow the cause of
the great importance of this. There are comparative judgments
in hell. Now let me invite you to hold
your finger here and turn over to Luke chapter 11 and listen
to these verses. Luke chapter 11 and verse 29. And when the people were gathered
thick together, He began to say, the crowd was thick. He says
they were gathered together and the crowd was thick. He said
this is an evil generation. They seek a sign and there shall
no sign be given them but the sign of Jonas the prophet. Now
you remember the story of Jonas and how that he was bid to go
down to Nineveh by God and he said I won't go, I'm going to
take a shortcut, I'm going somewhere else. For as Jonah, but God said
he's going to be a sign, the only sign you're ever going to
get. And that was that Jonah was in the whale's belly three
days and three nights and our Lord would be in the heart of
the earth. For as Jonah was a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall
also the Son of Man be to this generation. Now he mentions in
verse 31, the Queen of the South shall rise up in the judgment
with the men of this generation. Now the Queen of the South had
been dead many, many years when our Lord made this statement.
The Queen of the South, you remember she came to look over, to hear
the wisdom of Solomon, and to look over the glories of his
kingdom, and you remember she went away and said the half has
never been told. And she gave respect and great
honor unto Solomon. And she did that as she ought
to have done that, but she was an example and What the Lord
Jesus is saying here is, what the Queen of the South, this
pagan Queen, did in relation to Solomon, you ought to be doing
to Me, the Son of God, the Savior, the Messiah of God that has come
into this world, the King of the Kingdom. And He said the
Queen of the South is going to be resurrected. with the men
of this generation and she's going to be standing over there
and she's going to condemn you because she respected Solomon
and traveled a great distance to hear of his wisdom and this
generation will be condemned by her. Because you wouldn't
listen. Listen to this. For she came
down to most parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon.
Behold, a greater than Solomon is here. Behold, a greater than
Solomon is here. He's here now. And your attitude
is, we'd just like to have another sign. We need a sign. The King
is here. And the Lord Jesus, the Sovereign
Christ, is here in your midst. And you say, you say, you say,
well, we just need a sign. We can't go on that. Well, in
verse 32, the men of Nineveh, and that was a pagan nation,
shall rise up, enemies of the Jews, of Israel, rise up in the
judgment with this generation and shall condemn it. Oh, you
mean that Ninevites that Jonah finally got around to preaching
to after he went through the whale's belly and was spewed
out on dry land? Absolutely. He didn't preach
very forcefully, and he didn't want to do what he was doing,
but the Lord Jesus said that the Ninevites are going to rise
up in the judgment. They're going to be there too,
the Ninevites. You may not believe in the resurrection. The Bible
teaches the resurrection both of the wicked damned and also
of the saints and the righteous. The Bible teaches the resurrection.
And Jesus said, Ninevites are going to be right there and they're
going to condemn this generation because they repented at the
preaching of that old lopsided prophet that would rather be
somewhere else than to be there, and they repented. They got right
with God. And they cried out to God for
mercy. And here I am, and Jesus Christ,
you know never a man spake like He spake. And He was a preacher. He preached with authority, and
preached with power. And yet, they wouldn't repent. And listen to what it says, Behold,
a greater than Jonas is here. Do you believe that a greater
than Jonas was there? I believe there was. The Son
of Man, the Son of God, the King of Glory was there. And so then
we take these verses and couple them along with these other verses
back here in the 10th of Luke and we learn some things. Now,
Sodom, he is mentioned here. And I want you to see this. But
I'll say to you in verse 12 that it shall be more tolerable in
that day for Sodom than for that city that would not welcome these
brethren when they came to preach the gospel of the kingdom. And
they were to go and they were to shake the dust off of their
feet and tell them, be sure the kingdom of God is come nigh unto
you. But he says, I say unto you it
shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom. Now these were
Jewish cities. And you can imagine, now the
Jews knew, they knew Leviticus. They knew Leviticus 20. And where
the scripture says that if a man lies with mankind, that both
should be put to death. The Jews knew that The judgment
of God would come upon homosexuals and that they were worthy, worthy
of death, Romans 1 and 32. They were worthy of it. But the Lord Jesus now, and this
is what these 70 were to stand in the face of these Jews and
tell them. It's going to be more tolerable
for Sodom than it is going to be for you. Now just let me remind
you quickly so that you can understand what I'm talking about. I'll
remind you a little bit about Sodom and how important this
is that we see that gospel light. My friend, if it's rejected,
it's worse than many of the sins that we condemn every day. But we, you know, we always,
you know, we get done with witnessing to somebody or preaching a sermon
and we, what are we supposed to say when we get done? What
are we supposed to say? Well, are we supposed to say,
well, God bless you? Are we supposed to say, well,
we'll pray for you? Well, that'd be alright, but
Jesus said no. He said, you give them a warning.
You tell them about judgment. And you tell them about the wrath
of God. And you tell them about the fact
that it will be more tolerable for Sodom in the day of judgment
than for you. You wicked people that will not
repent and believe the message of the kingdom of God. And so,
what about these Sodomites? Now we know that the angel of
the Lord, two angels came down from heaven. And in the 18th
chapter in verse 20, and the Lord said, because the cry of
Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very
grievous. And the grievous sin of the Sodomites
was homosexuality. This was the grievous sin of
these people. Now these two angels, they came
to Sodom at evening in chapter 19. And Lot sat at the gate,
and Lot, seeing them, rose up to meet them. He bowed himself
with his face toward the ground. And he said, Behold now, my lords,
turn in, I pray you, into your servants' house, and tarry all
night. Wash your feet, you shall rise up early, and go on your
ways. And they said, Nay, no, but we will abide in the street
all night. We'll go into the courtyard in
the middle of the city, and there we'll stay all night. Oh my! And that raised a great anxiety
in Lot. And he pressed upon them greatly,
and they turned unto him, and entered into his house, and he
made them a feast, and did make unleavened bread, and they did
eat. He told them, said, you can't do that. No, no, no, no,
you must not do that. You cannot. You'd be in jeopardy. But before they lay down, the
men of the city, even the men of Sodom comes to the house round
about, both old and young, and all the people from every quarter.
Verse 4, And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where
are the men which came in to thee this night? Now these were
angels that had come down in the form of men and such beautiful
creatures these sodomites had never laid an eye on before.
And they must be carnal with these beautiful men that have
come into the city. They must. I mean they were full
of lust and desire toward these angels. And so they said, where
are they? Where are they? Bring them out
unto us, that we may know them. And Lot went out to them and
shut the door after him, went out and shut the door after him,
and said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly. Behold, now
I have two daughters. They've never known a man. Let
me, I pray you, bring them out unto you. You do to them as you
would, but do nothing therefore to these men that have come under
the shadow of my roof. And they said, stand back. And
they said again, this one fella came into sojourn and he needs
to be a judge now. And now we will deal worse with
thee than with them. And they pressed sore upon the
man, even a lot came near to break down the door. But the
men, that is the angels, put forth their hand and pulled out
into the house to them and shut to the door. And they, that is
the angels of the Lord, by the power of God that sent them,
smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness,
both small and great, so that they wearied themselves to find
the door. Now my friend, listen, I'm only
reading these verses to magnify the greatness of the sin of the
sodomites. Now I want you to understand,
I want you to get a picture of these fellows, they've been struck
blind by the power of God. Now you would think that if a
man, you know, in the pursuit of his passion and lust, were
to be struck blind Would you not feel that the lust and the
passions would surely abate? But they did not. They went ahead
and wore themselves out, wearied themselves, trying to find that
doorknob. Now that's how wicked those people
were. But the point that we're driving
at is that those who hear the gospel of Jesus Christ, Those
that hear the gospel of the kingdom, those that know about, that hear
of the Messiah, and that he came, and that he was crucified, that
he bore the son of his people to the cross of Calvary, and
that he was buried and rose from the dead, and have ascended on
high, those who hear the message of the gospel, it will be more
tolerable for that wicked city for them in the day of judgment.
than what it is for them. More tolerable. More tolerable.
Punishment for both, of course, but less punishment for the wicked
sodomites who were blind as bats and dead as doornails when it
come to any relationship with God. But these people, these
cities, these Jewish cities that thought they were favored of
God, but they rejected the gospel. And so the Lord says, What you
are supposed to do is to warn these people and tell them at
the end of your preaching that judgment is going to come. Taur
and Sidon, he mentions them here. And these were wicked cities.
They were wicked cities. And Taur and Sidon you can read
all about that in those cities in Ezekiel chapter 28 if you
are keeping notes and want to jot that down. But I say to you
it will be more tolerable. He said because If those works that have been
done in Chorazin and Bethsaida, miracles, had been done because
our Lord had been there and ministered the word, healing went on and
preaching went forth. He said if the mighty works had
been done in Tarnside, that wicked city whose king was likened unto
the devil himself, pagan city, Canaanite cities, which had been done in you, those
miracles and mighty works of the Lord, had been done in you,
they had a great wall of gold repented, setting in sackcloth
and ashes. They would have put on a garment
woven out of the camel's hair, which was a token of humility,
where they had humbled themselves, and ashes, which was a symbol
of death, would recognize and would be saying we're worthy
of death for our sin. He said this city would have
repented. Tarr and Sidon would have repented
if they had just got one glimpse of the miracles which you fellows
have seen. But it shall be more tolerable
for Tarr and Sidon. Now Tarr and Sidon, the Jews
hated them because they had sold the Jews, they had overcome They
had won victory over Jews, the Jews, and then sold them into
slavery. And so the Jews hated them. And
then here these 70 got to stand up in their face and say, it's
going to be more tolerable for them fellows over there, and
it's going to be for you, because you've rejected the gospel. You've
rejected the message of mercy. All right? So the parting word,
then, is that of judgment. So the news is very bad for those
who reject Christ and the gospel. We've tried to show you that.
Better that you never heard this. That you never heard the gospel.
That you never heard about that one who pleased God, satisfied
God on the behalf of his people and endured the wrath of God
Almighty in his own body on the tree in order that you'd be spared
from the everlasting judgment of God. Well, this has implications
for all eternity, better that you'd never heard it. Now, you say, Preacher, that's
what you say. But you know there's something
here, this is not your say, it is His say. It's not my say,
it's His say. I wanted to point that out, that's
verse 12, but I say unto you. You say, well, where'd you get
all that, Preacher? I say unto you, saith Christ. This is the
word of the Lord Jesus Christ himself, but I say unto you,
it is his say, he said, you pass it on, told those 70. It will be more tolerable for
people who never heard of Jesus in hell than for you, my friend,
after hearing this message this morning. Now we take note of
one other thing here and I am coming to a conclusion and I
do apologize for not being able to handle this subject as swiftly
as what maybe it could have been. But there
are a couple of other things that must be spoken of. Capernaum
was a city in verse 15 that never really was hostile toward Christ. They were indifferent toward
Christ. He had spent time there and But
they were indifferent and you may say this morning. Well, that's
the kind of way I am. I'm just indifferent I never took sides
one way or another against Jesus Christ. I don't I don't you know
Really, I don't get excited about it one way or another Well, they
were they had great confidence in themselves that they were
a peaceful city and Jesus said You're exalted to heaven. Meaning
this, I got this from another translation, that you say that
you're going to heaven. Don't you? That's what you're
saying. You're saying that it's all right between you and God,
and you're going to heaven. You've never gotten out of line,
and you've been just, maybe you've just been a little bit indifferent,
but that's all. You've never tried to kill Christ
or anything like that. And you say you're going to heaven.
And Jesus said, you tell them you're going to hell. That's
what you're telling them. You're going to hell. You're
going to be thrust down to hell because you've rejected the gospel. When the crisis came, the message
was presented, you rejected it.