Tools Of The Trade
Luke 10:1-24 Aug 20, 2006
Intro:
As men and tools go, I am extremely lucky. You see, I have a wife who is a scientist and thus works with tools in her job – she uses Bunsen burners, centrifuges, microscopes, and pipettes. A pipette is the scientific equivalent of a turkey baster, you use it to pull solutions up to the desired measurement and then you squirt them into a test tube. In the real old days, scientists used to pipette by mouth; then they attached rubber balls to the end (like the turkey baster), and now they have special tools called pipette aids that go on the end and you push the button. So for me, when it comes time to do a job like sanding my deck, I have a wife who understands that well, yes I could use a sheet of sandpaper and a block of wood – but that would be the equivalent of pipetting by mouth. Or I could use my orbital palm sander, but that would be like the rubber ball method. The best tool is a belt sander, so I have to buy a belt sander, with my wife’s encouragement.
The last two Sundays, we’ve been talking together about the importance and urgency of all of us who are children of God sharing the incredibly good news – that Jesus has taken our place and offers us forgiveness and meaning and hope – with a world that desperately needs to know that there is a God who loves them and wants to have a relationship with them.
Last week we took a brief look at Paul’s logic in Romans 10:13-15: “Anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But how can they call on him to save them unless they believe in him? And how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them? And how will anyone go and tell them
without being sent?” We followed that up with Jesus’ words right at the end of the Gospel of John (20:21): “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”
So we have been sent. What tools are we sent with? This morning I want to study a passage of Scripture together, and see from there what tools Jesus gives to share that message. The passage is from Luke 10.
Luke 10:1-24
“1After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go.”
There are several things to notice in this one little verse:
• hand-picked by Jesus: “appointed” and “sent”. Today, that is you and me. You have not been randomly or haphazardly put in the situations you are in with people far from God; you have been appointed and sent.
• two by two: we are not sent alone, we are sent with the strength of relationship and companionship and shared labor. Jesus did not intend us to go all by ourselves!
• “ahead of him to every place where he was about to go.” There is great significance here, which applies to us: our job is just to prepare the way, to make the announcement as we’ll see in a moment, that Jesus is near! He’s coming!! His Kingdom is close by!!!
“2He told them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
• can you imagine, for a moment, if you had gone to all the work in the spring and summer of preparing the soil, planting the seeds, weeding, watering, and staking – and then, once the produce was ready, just leaving it to fall on the ground and rot? I think that is Jesus’ idea here – it’s like He is saying, “the harvest is ready! The people need the love and forgiveness and freedom I’m offering, they are prepared, now all I need are some people who will go and work in the harvest fields.”
• There is a note of urgency in this picture: harvest time does not last forever, one has to get out and get the produce when it is ready, not when it is convenient for you!
“3Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves.”
• whoa… that sounds a little dangerous! lambs among wolves? Jesus is taking a pretty big risk here, don’t you think? And with our lives! This kind of verse really makes us stop and think again about our obedience to Jesus. Is Jesus really our Lord? Will we really obey, even though we know we are lambs being sent among wolves?
“4Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road.”
• travel light: there are a couple of messages here: I think one is about possessions – they really don’t matter, they will slow us down and weigh us down. The second message is about faith – without a purse or bag or sandals, we really will have to put all of our trust in God to supply our every need, and we’ll have to let God do that through other people.
• “do not greet” – It would have been quite rude for an Israelite traveling to not greet another on the road, yet that is what Jesus commands: not for the sake of rudeness, but because of a sense of urgency in getting the message out. Perhaps we miss this, and place a higher value on societal politeness than the urgency of the message of the Kingdom of God.
What do you think of Jesus’ call so far, in the first 4 verses? He’s saying, “Go! Urgently, before the crop is spoiled and even though you’ll have to work really hard since there aren’t many other workers. Go into danger, like a lamb. Don’t take anything with you. Be rude as you travel because the message is urgent.”
Now Jesus gets a little more specific:
5"When you enter a house, first say, ’Peace to this house.’ 6If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; if not, it will return to you. 7Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house. 8"When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is set before you. 9Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ’The kingdom of God is near you.’ 10But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, 11’Even the dust of your town that sticks to our feet we wipe off against you. Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God is near.’ 12I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town.
In this section I just want to highlight one thing: what was the message? “The Kingdom of God is near you.” That is what Jesus told the 72 to tell people. Healing the sick was the evidence of the nearness of the Kingdom of God, it reinforced the message.
Now, our job is to proclaim the same message, but we have to put it into our context, into language that our culture will understand. I somehow doubt that an effective message would be for you to go back to work on Monday, corner a co-worker in the lunch room and whisper “hey! The Kingdom of God is near!” We have to put the message in context, and to do that, we have to dig a little deeper and remind ourselves of the context Jesus’ was speaking to. The Jews had been waiting for many, many years for the Messiah to arrive. They believed that when the Messiah arrived, he would start a revolution that would lead to the overthrow of the hated Romans and restore Israel to the glory they had known under King Solomon. So, when these 72 went out with the message “the Kingdom of God is near”, they were really announcing this: “Hey! You know what we have been waiting for, for freedom and beauty and strength and the glory of the best of times? Well, it is near! It is true, look at the healing miracles! The Kingdom of God is near!!” Now, as we know the Kingdom that Jesus brought was different from what they expected, but only because it was so much deeper and better.
Now, we have to do some work to translate that into our context. What are the people around you longing for? What are they struggling under, what is pushing them down? (invite responses).
Here is where it gets really fun – when we ask the question, What can Jesus do about that? You see, we don’t do it, we prepare the way, we announce the coming and the presence of Jesus, and HE does it. For those 72, they would have talked about what they had seen in Jesus and what Jesus had done in their lives; What has Jesus already done in you, which is part of your story, which you can share? THAT is the message – the Kingdom of God is near.
There is more to that, and to what it means if we recognize hurting people around us and do NOT share this message, but I’m going to leave that for the second half of Luke 10 and next week’s sermon.
Let’s read the rest of this passage:
13"Woe to you, Korazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. 14But it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you. 15And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted up to the skies? No, you will go down to the depths.
16"He who listens to you listens to me; he who rejects you rejects me; but he who rejects me rejects him who sent me."
17The seventy-two returned with joy and said, "Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name."
18He replied, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. 19I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. 20However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven."
21At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.
22"All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him."
23Then he turned to his disciples and said privately, "Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. 24For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it."
I know there is lots there, but let me draw out just two final things for this morning:
• note the proper perspective: the 72 obey and return rejoicing – but in the wrong thing. They felt the power, had this awesome experience of God moving in great ways, and were pumped. Jesus brings them back to the right perspective: “do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” In other words, it is not about how others respond and what miracles happen, we need to rejoice in our salvation and in our relationship with God. It is easy to get caught up in the hype, especially when things are going great, but that is not the point. The point, for each of us, is always that Jesus saved us, and brought us into His Kingdom where things really are different!
• The last thing is this: did you notice Jesus’ private words to His disciples in vs 23-24? Evangelism is not a chore, not a duty, not a requirement harshly imposed by an authoritarian church. Jesus, with the advantage of having seen all of human history to that point unfold, lets us see what an incredible privilege and blessing it is for us to be able to offer the hope, the answer, the solution, indeed the very truth of salvation for eternity. "Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. 24For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it."
Conclusion:
So that is how Jesus sent the 72. I believe the principles still stand for us today. I believe that all around us are people who desperately need to hear, in language they can understand, that “the Kingdom of God is near.” Now, Jesus selected, appointed, and instructed – but His disciples had to go. They had to obey, and when they did they were filled with awe and joy. Here is my closing question: will you obey? will you go? I’m going to close with a space for quite, with the simple prayer that you will obey, and that then the Spirit of God will guide you in one specific thing you can do this week in obedience and in joining that incredible blessing that many prophets and kings wanted to see, and of which we get to be a part..
