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In the name of Jesus, amen. Your saints have gone. Jesus sends the seventy-two ahead of Him to prepare the way as He Himself is traveling down to Jerusalem.
We’re going to look at this, the gospel lesson from Luke chapter 10. In fact, if you want to follow along in your bulletin, I just want to march along through it and rejoice in it, especially today as we consider and give thanks to God for Mark for your ordination. And think about how the Lord sends out preachers to gather up His people.
It says in Luke chapter 10, and just to get a bit of context, we’ll remember last week we had Luke chapter 9, and the text says that Jesus set His face to go to Jerusalem. In fact, He even went into a village of Samaria, and they didn’t receive Him because His face was fixed on Jerusalem. Jesus has His eyes now fixed on the cross.
And this portion of Luke, by the way, if you compare Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, you’ll see that beginning at the end of Luke chapter 9 all the way until the triumphal entry, it’s a really unique section in Luke where it’s called the journey or the travel narrative, where Luke is walking us with Jesus on his way to Jerusalem. So Jesus has his eye fixed on Jerusalem, fixed on the cross, fixed on the salvation that he’s going to win for us. Really, his eye is fixed on you.
And so he sends out the seventy-two to go ahead of him. Now, a couple of things to think about. One is that we normally think of the disciples of Jesus as the twelve, and we ask ourselves, where did these seventy-two guys come from? What are they doing there?
Well, remember that Jesus had oftentimes bigger crowds, much bigger crowds around him, that he had more people who were following him from the beginning. In fact, remember in the book of Acts when Judas died and they’re electing another to take His place. They were finding those men that were with them from the beginning. So there was a whole group of disciples broader than the twelve apostles that were following Jesus. Seventy-two of them, apparently here, and Jesus ordains them to go before Him and prepare the way.
It says, after this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of Him two by two into every town and place where He Himself was about to go. I think that two-by-two is very interesting, especially because we mostly in the ministry now in the Lutheran Church have soul pastors. Pastors are going one-by-one, and that’s fine also. That happens in the book of Acts, but normally we see two-by-two or groups of pastors traveling together.
And the reason I think this is the case is because there’s no such thing as really a good pastor. Nobody can be good at it on their own. There’s just too many things that the Lord requires. And it’s important that these pastors, they were two by two as they were going forth, so that what one was bad at, the other was good at, and so forth.
It’s important, I mean even if it’s just a soul pastor, for him to know that he does not have the resources to do the work that’s appointed. I mean, who could do it? I mean, who would even dare to stand up and to take up the Lord’s Word and to preach it and to teach it unless the Lord commanded it and the Lord promised to help.
So ministry happens not in our own strength but in the strength of the Lord by the power of His might. So these disciples go two by two into every town and then Jesus says to them why, verse two. This is a famous verse, beautiful verse, and really a challenging verse. Jesus says to them, “The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few.”
Now, Jesus looks out at the world and he sees the entire world like a wheat field ready to be harvested. I don’t know if that’s how we look at the world. I think we probably look out at the world like a hurricane about ready to destroy us, or like a flock of locusts ready to come and eat the crops, or like a tidal wave or something like this. In other words, we look out at the world and we see how opposed the world is to Jesus, how opposed the world is to the gospel, how opposed the world is to the truth of the Lord’s Word, and I suppose that we retreat or we’re afraid or something, but the eyes of Jesus look out at the world and He sees a field ready to be harvested.
We talked about this a couple of weeks ago, about how we all have friends, we have family, we have co-workers, we have neighbors who are not Christian, they don’t confess Christ, they don’t believe in Christ, they don’t even want to hear about Jesus, they want nothing to do with the church. And we think, ah, they’re just a lost cause. They’re out there gone. Jesus looks at them as a field ready for harvest.
Jesus converts people. Jesus rescues people. Jesus gathers us in. It’s the work of the Holy Spirit to gather the church to the Word of God. And we want to pray this morning that the Holy Spirit would give us the same eyes that Jesus has so that we would look out at the world wherever we are, from whatever perspective the Lord has given us, and we would see the world like a field ready for harvest.
And what do we do when we see it? There’s two things. First, we pray, and then we go. That’s what Jesus says. The harvest is plentiful, the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the harvest.
When I was reading this this week, I was repenting particularly of this sin that I have failed to keep this command of our Lord Jesus Christ, that I have not prayed earnestly to the Lord that He would send out workers and laborers into the harvest. But this is how we start. When we see that the Lord is ready to gather more and more people into His church, more and more people into His kingdom, we pray that the Lord would send more workers—that’s more pastors, more preachers, more teachers, more evangelists, and all of us too—that we would bear the light of the Lord and the light of His gospel out into the world, that we would pray.
And then, once the Lord has us praying, then He sends us. I think this is… I’ve heard a number of times from guys who ended up going to the seminary that they first started praying this prayer that the Lord would send more workers, and then after they prayed the prayer a few times, then the Lord said, “Okay, time for you to go. You’re going to be the answer to your own prayer.” So be careful, I suppose be careful, right?
But look at what it says in verse three. “Go your way. Behold, I am sending you.” And look how he sends us. This might be frightful at first, but look at what he says. “I am sending you out as lambs into the midst of wolves.” Thanks a lot.
Wolves, by the way, and we talked about this this morning, Mark too, is that wolves are… it’s not the… the Lord sends His pastors to shepherd His flock. The wolves are on the outside, not on the inside. The wolves are the unbelieving world, ravenous to destroy the gospel and the preaching of the Word. The devil himself prowls around like a lion, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, trying to devour the Lord’s people and the Lord’s gifts.
We are in the world as innocent lambs in the midst of wolves. The Lord does not call His people or His pastors to growl and to snarl and to devour, but to go gently as lambs. In fact, that is what it says next, and the directions that Jesus is going to give in verse four and verse five are going to be changed later on in the gospel, so this is descriptive not prescriptive here.
Later on Jesus is going to say take a money bag, take a staff, take an extra pair of sandals, but now on this particular mission it’s kind of a blitzkrieg and so Jesus says, you know, get after it, you don’t need any preparation. Carry no money bag, no knapsack, no sandals, greet no one on the road, just go. Whatever house you enter, first say— and here’s the point— that the messengers of Jesus first speak peace. Say, “Peace be to this house.”
This is really, it’s quite helpful for me to know that when I stand up here in the pulpit, the thing that I’m supposed to tell you is peace from Jesus. And this is also for you as you go and speak to your friends and neighbors and your family, you are ambassadors of peace. The peace that Jesus wins and brings, you are to bring peace—peace to the house. If a son of peace is there, your peace will rest on him, but if not, it will return to you.
Remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages. Don’t go from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is set before you, heal the sick, and say to them, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.”
Now, this is what these seventy-two are supposed to preach, and it’s what every preacher is supposed to preach. The kingdom of God has come near. This is amazing. Jesus came preaching the same message. Jesus, dear saints, Jesus is a king, not just a king, Jesus is the king and he has come to establish his kingdom of peace, the kingdom of his blood, his suffering, his cross, his death and resurrection, his kingdom of life that never ends, and we are his citizens.
This, remember, is what got all the martyrs in so much trouble early on in the church—that the Caesars wanted them to all say Caesar is Lord, and they refused and said Jesus is Lord. Jesus is King. We belong to him and to no other, and you could take our life and goods and fame and child and wife. Let these all be gone, you’ve nothing won. The kingdom remains ours, the kingdom of forgiveness, the kingdom of perpetual life, the kingdom that’s being prepared for us now, as Jesus says, at the right hand of the Father. This is the preaching that’s brought to the people. The kingdom of God has come near to you, and it’s beautiful.
Our citizenship, this is how Paul says it, our citizenship is in heaven. You belong to eternal life. Now, what’s amazing — and we were thinking about this this week— what’s amazing to me is that the good news of the gospel, which is so wonderful to the Christian, sounds so horrible to those who are not Christian. We would think, if we were just kind of sitting down and talking about it, we would say, well, you know, the unbelieving world probably hates most of all the law of God, the instructions of God, the commandments of God, but I don’t think that’s the case.
I don’t think the unbelieving world likes the law of God, but I know, we know that what the unbelieving world hates most of all is the gospel. The things that sound the sweetest to us sound the most bitter to those who do not have the Holy Spirit. And so it is with the preaching of the kingdom of God. So Jesus says, verse 10, “Whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you, go into its streets and say, even the dust of your town that clings to our feet we wipe off against you; nevertheless, know this, the kingdom of God has come near.”
So, the kingdom of God is good news for those who will receive it, and condemnation for those who will not. And then Jesus gets into His woeing and condemning. I tell you, it’ll be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town. Woe to you, Chorazin, woe to you, Bethsaida, for if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, who both got wiped out, they would have repented a long time ago sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it would be more bearable in the judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you, and the people from Capernaum are sitting there thinking, well, they’re going to get condemned, but not us.
And then Jesus says, “Hey, and you Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades.” So that these preachers are going to go out, the seventy-two are going to go out, and they’re going to preach the kingdom of God, and for some it will be life, and for others it will be judgment.
And then Jesus gives us the thesis statement, “The one who hears you, hears me. The one who rejects you, rejects me. And the one who rejects me, rejects the one who sent me.” Now this verse was the cause of some controversy in the time of the Reformation. And the fight went like this. The Catholic Church was saying to the Lutherans, hey, we have the authority to establish tradition, unwritten tradition, because Jesus says whoever hears you hears me. In other words, our tradition is not written down, but if you hear us talking about it, then you can know that Jesus is talking about it.
And Luther and the Lutherans said, now hold on guys, wait, wait, wait. Are you saying that this verse means that you can just say whatever you want and we have to believe it like God said it? That can’t possibly be what Jesus meant. What Jesus meant was that the preacher who goes out must preach in such a way that the people who hear him preaching are hearing what God thinks and not what he thinks. Woe to the preachers who fill the pulpit with their own opinions and fill the church with their own ideas. That’s not what Jesus is doing. He doesn’t send the seventy-two out to give good advice or to talk about whatever He wants them to talk about. He tells them.
He says, go and preach that the kingdom of God has come near. Go and preach the gospel. Go and forgive sins. Go bring the gentleness of the kingdom of God and preach eternal life. And when you preach those things, the people are not hearing you, they’re hearing me.
Now, this is wonderful. This means that whenever we hear the preaching of the gospel, whenever we hear the absolution, whenever we hear the Word of God preached, we’re not listening to the opinions of a man or a person, but we’re hearing the very voice of Jesus. That’s what He says. “Whoever hears me, whoever hears you, hears me.” The absolution, “I forgive you all your sins,” is spoken with the same breath that said from the cross, “It is finished.”
Here’s how, I’ll read just a couple of lines. This is Apology 12 on repentance. This is how the Lutherans talk about this. It says, “The power of the keys, the absolution, administers and offers the gospel through the absolution, which is the voice of the gospel. Thus we also include absolution when we talk about faith because faith comes from by what is heard,” Romans 10. “When the gospel is heard, when the absolution is heard, the conscience is uplifted and receives consolation and comfort because God truly makes us alive through the Word. The keys truly forgive sins before God according to Luke 10:16, ‘Whoever hears you hears me,’ therefore we must believe the voice of the one absolving no less than we would believe a voice from heaven.”
How many times have we wanted God to speak to us from heaven? Longed for it, prayed for it, hoped that the clouds would open up and the Lord would tell us what he thinks about us. That’s exactly what we hear when we come to the service and hear the words, “I forgive you all of your sins.”
So these seventy-two are sent out to preach. Now there’s a gap between verse 16 and 17, and now we’re getting to the end because the seventy-two go out and they go and they preach in all these different places, and Jesus kind of goes down south and He’s going through these towns as well, and then they’re all gathered back to Him, and they come back, these preachers all come back to Jesus amazed, astonished, surprised that it actually worked.
They come back and they say, “Jesus, you’re not going to believe it. The things that you said are true.” In fact, they come back so happy, ecstatic, because they were able to cast out demons and send the unclean spirits away. And they’re like these spiritual Jedis or something. They can’t believe that they have all this power and authority.
So they come back, verse 17, “The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, ‘Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name.'” And Jesus says, “Yes, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.”
Oh, if we had eyes to see the world as a harvest, would that the Lord would give us eyes to see this, that every time the absolution is spoken and every time the gospel is preached, we could see the devil just tumble out of the clouds and fall to the ground like lightning.
“Behold,” He says, “I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions,” that’s the demons, “and over all the power of the enemy. And look at this promise. This is an amazing promise. You wouldn’t believe it unless the Lord had spoken it and Luke had written it down for you. And nothing shall hurt you. The demons, the devil, cannot hurt you. They do not have the authority to do that. You can tread over them. You can reject them, and they will flee from you. You, dear Christians, this is an amazing thing. You have spiritual authority over the unclean spirits. You have spiritual authority, through the word of God, over the devil himself.
But Jesus says, don’t be happy about that. If you want to have something really to rejoice in, listen to this: “Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” There is, dear saints, a guest list for heaven, and you are on it. There’s a space reserved for you in eternal life. And amongst all the gifts that the Lord gives to you—spiritual authority in His Word and His Spirit and the forgiveness of sins and everything else— this is your chief and greatest joy that the Lord has made a place for you in heaven.
So may God grant it. May God grant us the Holy Spirit so that we would see the world as a harvest field. May God grant it that we would see the devil falling from heaven every time the gospel is preached and that we would know that we have authority even over the demons and that they can do us no harm. But may God grant us His Spirit so that most of all, we rejoice in this, that you rejoice in this, that your name is written with the blood of Jesus in heaven itself. May God grant it for Christ’s sake. Amen.
The peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
