The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God, and the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
Luke 10:1 “Now after this the Lord appointed seventy others, and sent them two and two ahead of Him to every city and place where He Himself was going to come. 2 And He was saying to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest. 3 Go your ways; behold, I send you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. 4 Carry no purse, no bag, no shoes; and greet no one on the way. 5 And whatever house you enter, first say, “Peace be to this house.” 6 And if a man of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him; but if not, it will return to you. 7 And stay in that house, eating and drinking what they give you; for the laborer is worthy of his wages. Do not keep moving from house to house. 8 And whatever city you enter, and they receive you, eat what is set before you; 9 and heal those in it who are sick, and say to them, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.” 10 But whatever city you enter and they do not receive you, go out into its streets and say, 11 Even the dust of your city which clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you; yet be sure of this, that the kingdom of God has come near. 12 I say to you, it will be more tolerable in that day for Sodom, than for that city. 13 Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles had been performed in Tyre and Sidon which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. 14 But it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the judgment, than for you. 15 And you, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You will be brought down to Hades! 16 The one who listens to you listens to Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me; and he who rejects Me rejects the One who sent Me.’” (NASB)
In week 2 in the season after Pentecost, we learned that demons are real, powerful, but as powerful as they are they must obey Jesus when He speaks. Last week #3 we were reminded from whence we came and that we must be prepared to leave everything behind in service to the kingdom of God. This morning we have before us “The Sending of the 70” and another vital lesson.
“The Lord appointed seventy others, and sent them two and two ahead of Him to every city and place where He Himself was going to come . . . As Jesus set His face toward Jerusalem, He gave a large group of His disciples a job to do. They were to take up where John the Baptist had left off. They were being sent to prepare the way for the Lord. So Jesus commissions them and gives them instructions as to how they were to conduct themselves as they went about preaching in their assigned village.
Jesus said, 5 “whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace be to this house.’ and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’” There it is. Jesus sends 70 men and gives the some of the words they are to speak. Jesus sends 70 men to represent Him, to preach Him, and to give or withhold His peace depending on what kind of greeting each pair of preachers receive. But why men? Why these men?
Well you might think, “who else would Jesus send?” If Jesus needs someone to go ahead of Him to prepare the way by preaching the kingdom of God, sinful men are the only option. But then maybe it wasn’t the only option.
As the Son of Gon, Jesus had options. When the soldiers came to arrest Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, Peter drew his sword in an attempt to defend Jesus from arrest. We all know that Jesus stopped Peter, but do you remember what Jesus said to Peter? “Put your sword back into its place; for all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword. Or do you think that I cannot appeal to My Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matthew 26:52–53)
A Roman legion was some where between four and twelve thousand soldiers. That would put twelve legions of angels between 50,000 and 70,000. If Jesus asked God the Father would have sent 50,000 plus angels to protect Jesus. When the Assyrians attacked Jerusalem in the days of Hezekiah, the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 Assyrians (2 Kings 19:35). That was just one angel. One angel 185,000 dead Assyrians. What do you think 50,000 angels could do?
Jesus had at His disposal tens of thousands of angels and oh . . . 70 sinful men. Angels or 70 men? Jesus sends the 70 sinful men. They were the first group in a long line of sinful men, Jesus will send into the harvest to preach and teach the Gospel. He doesn’t send angels. He sends men. He came to save sinful humanity and He sent sinful men to preach His word so that sinful human beings would repent and be saved.
We are use to sinners preaching the Gospel. We are so used to the idea of sinners proclaiming the Word of God that we don’t even think it strange. But it is. The Holy One of God, the sinless Lamb Who became incarnate so that He would suffer, died, be judged a sinner’s at death, put His very person and His work (His entire existence as the Savior of mankind) into the mouths of sinners.
James and John were among the men Jesus sent out to preach the kingdom of God. These were to two men who wanted to use their tongues to call down fire on an unsuspecting Samaritan village, because they didn’t want Jesus to pass through their town on His way to Jerusalem. These are the same two disciples who asked Jesus to “grant [them that they would] sit, one on [His] right and one on [His] left, in glory.”
Peter was one of those 70. The same Peter who tried to keep Jesus from going to Jerusalem in the first place. Jesus rebuked Him with the strongest rebuke recorded in Scripture. “Get behind me, Satan!” This would be the same guy who denied Jesus three times. Thomas was one of those 70. He used his mouth to say, “Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” (John 20:25) Judas was one of the 70 too and we know what kind of sinner he turned out to be.
Each and every one of the disciples had failed Jesus multiple times. Not one of those 70 men was worthy of the task Jesus had entrusted to them. Angels would have done a better job. And is there any doubt that angels would have been able to build bigger congregations out of sheer fear and awe.
Even though all these men were sinners and even one an outright a traitor, Jesus still entrusted sinners with His person, work, words, doctrine, and even His body and blood.
Jesus even said “The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects Him who sent me.” (Luke 10:16) When a rightly called and ordained pastor speaks the Word of God, he is not speaking his own opinion. He is not speaking philosophically. His job is not to spread conventional wisdom. The pastor is called to perform a task unlike any other. He is to speak the Law and Gospel, to instruction Christians in the articles of faith, to forgive and retain sins, and to distribute the peace of God that surpasses all understanding. All this Christ does through means, including the means of sinners.
This use of sinners didn’t start with the disciples of the New Testament. Moses was a murder before he became the deliver and the vessel through with the Torah was given. King David, a sinner who took his neighbor’s wife then had his neighbor killed wrote most of the Psalms used in the worship services of the tabernacle, temple, and in contemporary congregations today. Isaiah stood in the present of God and holy angels he said of himself, “Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (Isaiah 6:5) yet, he was absolved and placed into service as the God’s mouth piece to an unrepentant people.
While there are occasional visits and announcements by angels, not one book in the Old Testament was written by an angel of the supernatural kind. From the very start, God employed sinners, sometimes some pretty grievous sinners at that, to speak His words and absolve their sins.
The pattern continued in the New Testament. St. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:8-9 “I am the least of the apostles, and not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain.”
Jesus promised that even though they were sinners, the disciples and apostles would become the vessels through which His words would be sent out into the world to accomplish the purpose for which He was sending His Word. When they proclaimed the words that Jesus gave to them, their hearers were hearing Jesus Himself speak through their mouths. Thus in our church services you often hear the spokesman for Christ say, In the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive you all your sins in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
As far at the people, the hearers were and are concerned, they are not to be distracted by the sins of the preachers. And the sins of the preachers do not negate that words, the judgments, and the promises of Christ.
As far as the preachers are concerned, that is why Jesus told the disciples when He sent them out to be content in whatever house they found themselves. They were not to be jumping from one house to another chasing a better set of circumstances because another house had more to offer them. They were to be about the mission and not about personal comfort.
It was all about the message, not the people. It was all about the mission, not the missionaries. It was all about the Good News, not the evangelists. So it is to be among us. It is not about what we do, or our ideas, or our ownership in the enterprise. It is about the words. It is about distributing peace to sinners. It is about being the sons and daughters of our heavenly Father and brothers and sisters to Jesus Christ.
Jesus said, “Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace be to this house!’” (Luke 10:5) The disciples were about distributing the peace of God that surpasses all understanding. They were to preach the peace that Jesus would earn when He finished His journey to Jerusalem and kept His appointment with the cross. Jesus sends sinners to preach the Gospel and tell the people that “the kingdom of God has come near to you [them].” (Luke 10:8–9)
But also take note that for the third week in a row Jesus reminds that there is natural and supernatural opposition to the preaching of the Gospel. Before giving the disciples all the instructions about what they are to preach and how they are to conduct themselves on their first preaching expedition, Jesus told them (and subsequently us), “Behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves.” (Luke 10:3)
You know, all this political correctness and these new and emerging rules barring offensive speech is really and ultimately about barring the public and private speaking of God’s Law and Christ’s Gospel. The modern day zealots are trying to silence God’s Word.
There are always be people who reject the Gospel, God’s peace, and His kingdom. There will always be those who hate God’s message and His messengers. Since the messengers are flesh and blood as well as sinners, they are be the ones are attacked and mistreated. John 15:20 “A slave is not greater than his master. If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also.”
In this place and among you His people, you have listened to Christ’s words. You have received the sinner who was sent to you. You have received the peace of God that has come to rest on this holy house. You have forgiven him when he has failed and you yourselves have been forgiven. Peace rests upon this house and yours for the kingdom of God has come near to you.
AMEN
May the Peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.