Can you think of a time when you were given a task to accomplish and you weren’t given the specific do’s and don’ts of what and how? How did it make you feel? What kind of success did you have? Today we will learn just how true this statement is: “God never asks us to do anything He hasn’t prepared us or equipped us for.”
We begin with this phrase: “These Twelve Jesus sent out after instructing [commanding] them, saying…(verse 5)” Notice that Jesus commands them first, before He sends them out. The word used here is paranggello, which is actually the word for “give a command or charge to.” Jesus wasn’t giving suggestions – He never does. We easily see Him as the friendly carpenter-turned-evangelist, traveling the countryside preaching the good news of the kingdom of God, healing all those in need, feeding thousands from a lunch for one, and being kind and gentle with all He meets.
It is much more difficult for us to see Him as God-in-the-flesh, as the King of kings and the Lord of lords, stepping into our sphere yet still commanding the forces of nature and human existence. We are told numerous times that to believe is to obey – and obey implies that someone has given commands. It is Jesus Christ who commands.
So, what is the charge that He gives the Twelve? He begins by telling them where they are not to go. They are not to go to the Gentiles, and they are not to go to the Samaritans. Of all of the things that Jesus could have begun His instructions with, why do you think he began with prohibitions?
Look at the order this passage has followed already. Verses 1-3, Jesus calls the Twelve to Himself and gives them power and authority they have seen but never known for themselves – the very same power and authority they have seen Jesus employ. They now have authority over the forces of darkness, over every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. How pumped do you think they were? How pumped would you be? What would you want to do right away?
Jesus tells them, essentially, “Don’t go running off to all these people around us who are not Jews, and don’t even go to the half-breed Samaritans. Instead, your ministry is to be to the Chosen people of God alone.”
Does that seem biased and prejudiced? Doesn’t that seem like He’s demanding partiality on their part, even though James will later tell us that showing favoritism is wrong and out-and-out sin (James 2:9)? Why the exclusiveness, do you think?
The command of Jesus to stay away from outsiders in the beginning was not because He was trying to exclude others – not in the least. After all, it was Jesus Himself who first preached to the Samaritans, beginning with the woman at the well and then all those who lived in the area (John 4:4-42). Jesus even healed the servants and children of Gentiles (Matthew 8:5-13 – centurion’s servant; Matthew 15:21-28 – Canaanite woman’s daughter). To top it all off, in the Great Commission in Matthew 28:18-20, Jesus commanded them to make disciples “of all nations”, and He told them in Acts 1:7-8, that they would be His witnesses “in Jerusalem, and in all of Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”
Look at the little phrase “the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Who was it that had been awaiting the Messiah for their entire existence? Who was it that God had promised the Messiah to in the first place? It was the Children of Israel, of course. Jesus was well aware that, for the most part, the very people who had been chosen by God to receive the Messiah and the kingdom of God would reject both.
Yet, God in His perfect sense of honor and rightness was determined to give whoever of that people who would believe the first opportunity to do so.
Aside from that, at this point in time the disciples were absolutely unequipped and unprepared to preach to the Gentiles or the Samaritans. They were, for the most part, completely unfamiliar with both people groups and had nothing in common with them. They had everything in common with their fellow Israelites.
Jesus saw the children of Israel the same way a shepherd sees his sheep who have wandered off and are not only not being fed properly, but they are also in grave danger of being eaten by predators. As far as Jesus was concerned, it was already happening and it was time for those sheep who would return to the fold to be given the chance to do so.
As it was for the disciples in the beginning, so it is for us today. When we first become a child of God it is to our family, our friends, our neighbors and our coworkers that we go and tell the exciting news of what has happened to us. We get to “practice”, if you will, on those with whom we have relationships and with whom we are the most “safe” – the people who are most likely to at least listen to us without wanting our death right out of the gate.
Later on, once we have grown in our knowledge and understanding of the nature and character of God and in our knowledge and understanding of His Word, and once we have matured a bit in our relationship with Him and are more familiar with our gifting and the particular call God has placed on our life, then we are prepared to “go into all the world.”
So, to the lost sheep of Israel they are to go. What is it they are to do? Let’s underline in our Bibles, shall we? We are going to begin in verse 7 and finish in the first half of verse 8. The last half of that verse is a bridge to the instructions that begin in verse 9. Okay, let’s begin.
We are going to underline the verbs. As we have discussed in the past, the verbs in a passage tell us what is going on; what it is that is happening; they tell us what the “doing” is. And remember: we are to be doers of the Word, and not just hearers only (James 1:22).
The first verb we come to is go. This word literally means “to travel.” In other words, they are not supposed to sit still; they are not supposed to stay in one spot. This is a familiar theme. In the Great Commission that we mentioned before, Jesus says, “in your going, make disciples.” We are not supposed to sit in one spot, waiting for people to come to us – we are supposed to actively seek people to share the gospel with.
Let me use this illustration of Brian Archer’s to help you see what I mean. Some time ago an 18-year-old girl from Washington State attended a worship service. For the first time in her life she heard the gospel message. The following Tuesday the members of the church received a letter from her. It read:
“Dear Church members:
Last Sunday I attended your church, and I heard the preacher. In the sermon the preacher said that all men have sinned and rebelled against God. Because of their rebellion and disobedience they all face eternal damnation and separation from God.
But then he also said God loved men and sent his Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to redeem men from their sins and that all those who believe in Him would go to heaven and live with God eternally.
My parents recently died in rapid succession. I know they did not believe in Jesus Christ, whom you call the Savior of the world. If what you believe is true, they are damned.
You compel me to believe that either the message is true, that you yourself don’t believe this message, or that you don’t care. You see, we live only three blocks from your church, and no one ever told us.”
Jesus tells us first to go. The second thing He tells us is to preach or proclaim. We’re supposed to be vocal about it. We’re not supposed to keep it a secret. Romans 10:17 advises us, “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word concerning Christ.”
If we don’t proclaim it, who will hear it?
There was this soft-spoken man who was a commuter on the Long Island Railroad—on the five o’clock local. Every evening, after the train had left the station, he would begin a journey through the car from front to back. At each seat he would stop and say, “Excuse me. But if any of your friends are blind, tell them to consult Dr. Garl. He restored my sight.” We are to have that same courage and conviction and boldness. That’s what it means to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom.
Jesus even tells us what to say. What is it? “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” More literally, “the reign of God draws near.” In other words, the rebelliousness of the world is about to give way to the righteous rule of Almighty God. We are supposed to make sure that the people around us know that, even though sin is fun for a while, that there is hell to pay sooner or later. We need to let people know that there is a storm of righteousness coming that is going to sweep away everything that is unrighteous. They may think that life apart from God is a blast! And, it may well be just that – for a while. But, that is only for a while. Some will heed the warning; some will not. It is simply our responsibility to warn them. We are not responsible for their response, any more than Police Chief Jerry Peralta of Pass Christian, Mississippi was responsible on August 17th, 1969.
On that fateful day in 1969, in Pass Christian, Mississippi, a group of people were preparing to have a “hurricane party” in the face of a storm named Camille. They were not ignorant of the dangers; they were overconfident. They let their egos and their pride influence their decisions. What else they thought or felt, we’ll never know.
What we do know is that the wind was howling outside the posh Richelieu Apartments when Police Chief Jerry Peralta pulled up sometime after dark. Facing the Beach less than 250 feet from the surf, the apartments were directly in the line of the danger. A man with a drink in his hand came out to the second-floor balcony and waved. Peralta yelled up, “You all need to clear out of here as quickly as you can. The storm’s getting worse.” But as others joined the man on the balcony, they all just laughed at Peralta’s order to leave. “This is my land,” one of them yelled back. “If you want me off, you’ll have to arrest me.”
Peralta didn’t arrest anyone, but he wasn’t able to persuade them to leave either. He wrote down the names of the next of kin of the twenty or so people who gathered there to party through the storm. They laughed as he took their names. They had been warned, but they had no intention of leaving.
It was 10:15 p.m. when the front wall of the storm came ashore. Scientists clocked Camille’s wind speed at more than 205 miles-per-hour, the strongest on record. Raindrops hit with the force of bullets, and waves off the Gulf Coast crested between twenty-two and twenty-eight feet – almost three stories high!
News reports later showed that the worst damage came at the little settlement of motels, go-go bars, and gambling houses known as Pass Christian, Mississippi, where some twenty people were killed at a hurricane party in the Richelieu Apartments. Nothing was left of that three-story structure but the foundation and the swimming pool. The only survivor was a five-year-old boy found clinging to a mattress the following day.
Everyone is responsible for their own response to the warning – it is our responsibility to sound the warning. Many today talk about relating to where people are and what their interests are and what their felt needs are and a variety of other subjective, transient elements. Jesus was relevant, but relevance wasn’t His focus. Jesus related to people, but relativism was out of the question for Him. Personal interests? Jesus challenged those interests by using them as teaching points and object lessons and showing that the real interest should be in kingdom issues. Felt needs? He knew their real needs and met them there, dealing with those as readily as He did their real spiritual needs.
Jesus didn’t “earn” the right to be heard – He already had that. The point is; so do we – we already have the right to speak and to be heard. It is our commission. Yes, we are to care deeply about the situations we find people in but the focus is to be on proclaiming the gospel. How that person responds is not our concern. One of the best examples is Paul when he stands before Felix in Acts 24:24-27. Paul’s 3-point sermon as he faces the leading political figure in the area is about “righteousness, self-control and the judgment to come.”
See, Felix was an unscrupulous man who considered himself capable of committing any crime at all and getting away with it. He was a tyrant, and his “wife”, Drusilla, was actually married to a man named Azizus, king of Emesa (modern day Homs in Syria), but Felix stole her away from him. Paul spoke right into the life and heart of his audience without regard for their “felt need” or their personal interests or their perception of the world. He spoke the truth they needed to hear. They never got saved, but no one can say they never had the opportunity. Being irrelevant is pointless and irresponsible, but relevance cannot be the end in itself.
The next four verbs we find in our text are heal, raise, cleanse and cast out. Let’s look at each of these for a moment and then take them all together.
The word for heal is where we get out word for “therapy” from, and it means to do two things at the same time – to wait upon another and to adore God. Now, that to me is a remarkable combination…to wait upon someone who is sick while we are adoring God. They had power over the sicknesses of people and they were to introduce worship into the experience. They were to bring healing to bodies in the name of Jesus Christ and bring the healed into a worshipful relationship with the One who had given the power to heal.
The next one, raise, meant that they were to awaken the dead and gone and restore them to life. Now, I don’t know about you, but that seems to be the most difficult miracle of all to counterfeit. No matter what else can be phonied up, I think this one would be next to impossible given today’s technologies. What would it say to you if someone you loved and had lost was to be restored to you from the grave? What if you were the one brought back – would you be glad to be here? Perhaps if you had died in your sins, you might be. Dead people have no hope, have no drive, have no dreams. Only those who are truly alive in Christ have every spiritual blessing.
Next is cleanse. They were to cleanse the lepers. Remember that the lepers were the untouchable outcasts of society in every country, especially among the Jews. They were unclean and had to announce as they walked, “Unclean! Unclean!” The disciples were to purify and restore these lost ones to their families and to their fellowships. They were to be the vehicle God would use to drive out the decay and rot in a person’s life and replace it with purity and decency and righteousness.
The fourth verb here, cast out, is where we get our word “expel” from, and it means “to expel, to drive out, to send away.” Demon possession was very real in those days, as it is in some parts of the world today. But, there are other ways that demonic forces can have a firm grip on our lives and hearts without “possessing” us. They have possession of much of what is in the world today, and they are being given more and greater reign every day. What habits and attitudes and behaviors are in your life that smack of demons instead of heaven?
When we look at these four things together, we get a picture of the message of salvation itself. We see that Jesus came in obedience to the Father to be a servant to all of us who were suffering from the sickness of sin. Where we are weak and feeble in resisting the plots and ploys of the evil one, Jesus came to give us the strength to stand and fight. He came to heal. He sacrificed His holy place at the right hand of the Father to come to this unclean world and provide His holiness and purity to those of us who would believe. He came to cleanse us of our sin. We were dead in our trespasses and our sins, and He came to bring us life – eternal life with Him in heaven. We as believers have been raised with Him. And, He came to buy us out of the slave market of temptation and sin. He came to cast out the devil from our lives.
When we share the gospel with someone else, we are offering and extending these same heavenly gifts to them. God cares a great deal more about someone having the strength to resist temptation and live a life that is holy and pleasing to Him than He is about whether or not that person is suffering from a physical ailment. God cares more about whether or not we are giving sin a place to take root in our lives and that we are purging our lives of unclean practices and activities than He is about how popular we are with people or how successful we are at our job. If He has to isolate us from His people, if He has to make us unemployed, if He has to make us sick to get us to the place where we will acknowledge our need of and accept His cleansing, then He will do that.
God’s greatest desire is for us to be restored to the life eternal that He designed for us to have way back in the beginning when He first created the world.
When we surrender our all to Him, He is in the business of resurrecting dead things – dead souls, dead marriages, dead hearts, dead relationships, dead drive, and dead dreams. God demands that we do not allow ourselves to fit into the world’s mold and that we not get caught up in the things the world, the flesh and the devil provide for us to follow a path that is not holy and that is not 100% honoring to God. We are to cast out of our lives the tools and the toys that will cool our affections for God and for the things of God. He has given us everything we need to do that. He has warned us that “The cost for sin is death (Romans 6:23a).” He will do all He can to persuade us that His way is the way to life. The rest of that verse promises, “but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
This is the ministry Jesus gave to the disciples that day. This is the ministry that He has given to each of us to pursue in whatever walk of life we find ourselves. The physical miracles of healing and cleansing and raising from the dead and casting out of demons were simply an initial tangible demonstration on the physical level of the great and awesome power that He was making available to all those who would believe in Him and obey Him. Our bodies are but dust; one day, they will return to their natural state. What is inside of each of us, however, is what will last and live for eternity.
The question is: Where? Where are you going to spend eternity? Where are your loved ones going to spend eternity? How about your coworkers or your neighbors or the kid that skateboards past your house every day? Does it matter to you as much or more than physical comfort and well-being does? It should. It should be as important an issue as life or death – because it is more important.
Jesus Christ gave up everything He had in order to give it all to us – can we really justify doing less? What a great and glorious honor it is to have entrusted to us the same ministry of reconciliation between God and man that He initiated Himself and then passed on to His personal followers. What a marvelous legacy we are allowed to be a part of, all for the sake of His name.
May what we have read and discussed today really and truly change our view of what is of true worth and what is our greatest responsibility.
Let’s pray.
