AND SENT THEM ON AHEAD

I would like to have us look Luke Chapter 10 verses 1-12.

After this the Lord appointed seventy others, and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to come. And he said to them “The Harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; pray therefore the Lord of the Harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go your way; behold I send you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and salute no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say ‘Peace be to this house!’ And if a son of peace is there, your peace shall rest upon him; but if not, it shall return to you. And remain in the same house eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages; do not go from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is set before you; heal the sick in it and say to them ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ But whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you, go into the streets and say ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off against you; nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near you.’ I tell you, it shall be more tolerable on that day for Sodom than for that town.”

Now the first thing we have to learn, when we meet Jesus Christ, is how to receive. We have to be broken enough to admit we need some help. We need to be poor in spirit enough to see ourselves as that sick man who needs to be healed, that sinful woman who needs to be forgiven, that dead child that needs to be raised to life.

Nothing happens until we really come to the end of ourselves and admit our condition and cry out to the living God. Really cry. Then the cry of our heart is heard and the son of God comes and a miracle happens and we are touched by his hand.

But after we have begun to follow Jesus as his disciples, ever committed to Him, we are born again. There is another lesson that we need to learn, just as we needed to learn to stand in the place of the sick man, or the sinful woman or the dead child and receive that touch from the hand of the Son of God.

So now, as His disciples, we have to learn to stand in the place of Jesus and in His name to minister to those around us the same life that He ministered to us.

It is this lesson that many of us just are not learning. The reason we are not learning it is not because we don’t understand, but because we will not do it. We want to be on the receiving end, constantly on the receiving end. We give all kinds of excuses and remain stagnant in our growth and in our usefulness to the Lord.

Is it not true that we forever want to be ministered unto, and very, very rarely actually get down to the business of ministering the grace of the living God to somebody else. Our churches and our fellowships encourage this all too often. They subtly encourage us to come for our weekly blessing, it’s almost as if we get healed and saved again, and again and again and again. Nothing ever happens in our actual concrete life.

Now of course it’s true that there are places in our lives right now that need healing. And there are indeed situations, in all of our hearts, there are dead spots in our hearts that need to be raised to life. And whenever we get close to the throne of God certainly we need to be forgiven and we need to be reminded of that forgiveness again and again.

But if that is all that ever happens when we gather in our fellowships, all we ever do is get healed and saved, again and again and again. Then you can be sure that slowly the well of life will dry up and after a while there will be no healing left and there will be no salvation left. Our lives and our fellowship will be dry as a bone.

When are we going to learn that the reason we are gathered together in our fellowships by the Spirit of God, is that we might be sent forth by the Lord Himself, under the anointing of His Spirit to minister healing and salvation to somebody else?

Now many of us are afraid to believe, even though we say we know the Lord, that we are these God sent men and women, God anointed people. We just don’t feel capable. “What can I do?” we say.

The passage that we are looking at in Luke chapter 10 was addressed to 70 people who were no better equipped in themselves to minister the life of God to the world around them than you and I. They didn’t have clerical powers, they hadn’t been to seminary, they didn’t know all the answers. They were ordinary people and yet Jesus sends these people out with a fantastic command to heal the sick, proclaim the kingdom and where they are not received shake the dust off their feet. And you can be sure that these people went out in fear and trembling.

They didn’t go out and say “Oh, boy now we are really going to do things.” They were scared, they found it very difficult, you can be sure, to believe that they could be used in this way by God. But when they came back, they were all filled with joy.

“Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your Name.” and Jesus answered and said, “I saw Satan fall as lightening from heaven. Behold I have given you power over the enemy, over serpents and scorpions; nothing is going to hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice rather that your names are written in heaven."

Now this passage in Luke 10 is preserved for us not merely as a museum curiosity to show us how Jesus did it once upon a time, but in this passage are contained all of the basic things that you and I need to know and do as we carry out this gospel at this late hour into the world around us and call people into the kingdom. In this passage Jesus is speaking also to us. He is telling us how we are to regard ourselves, how we are to go out and what we are to do.

And the first thing he makes clear to us is that when we go out we do not go out alone. We don’t just go out two by two, but in addition to this we go out knowing that the Lord Himself is right behind us.

“After this the Lord appointed 70 others and sent them on ahead two by two to every town and place where he himself was about to come.”

We go out there knowing that we as try to get the words out of our mouths, the Spirit of the Living Christ will be right there to confirm them.

We don’t save anybody, we don’t convert people. Jesus does this. We go out with the message that Jesus is coming knowing that he is going to minister life and salvation and healing through us. Wherever that message is received we know it will be confirmed, the Lord will come.

We go out there knowing that the Word of God that goes forth from our mouths will not return to God void but it will accomplish what it was sent to do, it will prosper in the thing for which it was sent.

The next thing we notice here is that we go out as lambs among wolves.

“Behold I send you out as lambs in the midst of wolves.”

We are not lions, we are not spiritual tigers, we’re not Batman or Superfly. We are lambs, and we are to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. We are not going out there to argue with people or to talk them to death, or to out shout them, or to prove that they are wrong or to attract attention to ourselves. We are going out there as lambs of God, under the Lamb of God Himself, to invite them into the kingdom, we are lambs in the midst of wolves. And a lamb, if he is at all smart, does what he is sent to do and leaves it go at that. He doesn’t aggravate the wolf. He doesn’t go around pulling their tails.

The third thing we see here, and this is where we all get stuck.. We are to go out knowing that our security, as we go out, is not money, or clothes or friends, but only God. “Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals, salute no one on the road.” What happens is again, and again what we want to do is get ourselves really established before we begin to proclaim the gospel. We want to have the right connections, we are going to set up the right circumstances, we want to have the right image, we want to look good. If we are forever saluting people on the road, “Hi, there!” not because we care about them but we want them to have the right opinion of us, or because we might need them sometime. Jesus is telling us, “Look, you are already established with God, that is all you need. Don’t waste your time trying to establish yourselves with men, get on with your job. You don’t need a surplus of money, you don’t need to have the right clothes and you don’t to have those good connections. In fact, those things are going to get in your way. They will make you forget that the only thing you do need is Me.”

Now the fourth thing we see in here is that we go out as ambassadors of peace.

“Whatever house you enter, first say ‘Peace be with this house’. If the son of peace is there your peace shall rest upon him, but if not it shall return to you.”

Always the first thing we give is the peace of God. Always. The truth of the matter is that all too often that’s not what we bring.

And most of us are far too stingy with the peace of God. We are looking for an opportunity to climb into somebody’s face and that is not what he is telling us to do here. He is saying the first thing you do is bring peace. He doesn’t say, “Check them out and see if they will be receptive and then give them peace.” But he says, pray peace upon that place, first off, and if the son of peace is there it will rest upon that person and if not your blessing is not going to be wasted, it will come back to you.

So the first thing always we pray the peace of God to the person to any house we visit, whether it is a 40 room mansion in Birmingham, or a three room flat on Brush.

Then, the next thing he tells us is that when we are received we are to behave as guests. Not as snobs, not as self-righteous boars as we so often are, but as guests.

“Whatever house you enter first say peace be with this house, and if the son of peace is there your peace will rest upon it. Remain in the same house eating and drinking what they provide for the laborer deserves his wages. Do not go from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and they feed you, eat what is set before you.”

Now, obviously Jesus is telling these people that when they get to the village you stay with one family, you do not move around from family to family. That’s true. But the basic thrust of that teaching is that we are to behave as guests, as gracious, thoughtful guests. Whether we are working Main Street, skid row, or some family that sends a child to bible school or going to see our long lost cousin. And when we go there in the name of Jesus, we are always there as guests. We don’t say “I don’t eat that. All you have is white bread? I only eat brown bread. Don’t you have any shredded wheat? That’s all I eat for breakfast is shredded wheat.”

Eat what is set before you, don’t get into arguments. Treat those people with respect, maybe they don’t have as much money in the bank as you do, you are their guests. Maybe they have 50 thousand times as much and you feel more righteous. You are their guests. You cannot expect the blessings of God if we don’t think and act that way.

Now, after all this by way of preparation, and every one of these things is important, he gets us down to the basic thing we have to offer. We already have ministered peace to the house, but now He says to these people that receive us, we are to heal the sick and tell them that the kingdom of God has come into their midst.

“Whenever you enter a town and they receive you eat what is set before you, heal the sick in it and say to them ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’”

And we are not to be afraid to encourage these people who receive our message and us to expect healing from God. They have received us as ambassadors of the Christ, and they are going to be touched by the hand of Christ through us. So we pray for the sick there, and we pray for the needs of that house, we manifest the kingdom of God.

You don’t go in there proclaiming judgment, you go in there manifesting the kingdom of God, God’s grace, and God will confirm your words. Then you tell them “The kingdom of God has come into your midst.”

Now a lot of us have this all messed up. This is for the preachers, or this is for Oral Roberts or T.L. Osborn or somebody else. That’s junk. This is for every believer who follows Jesus Christ.

These signs shall follow them that believe, they are going to have big friends and have a lot of money.

NO! "These signs shall follow him that believe, in my Name shall they cast out devils, whoever they are they shall speak with new tongues. They shall lay their hands on the sick and they shall recover."

“He who believes in Me, the works that I do, shall he do also. Greater works than these shall they do because I go to the Father.”

Finally, always as the very last thing, if necessary, where the gospel is not received, we proclaim God’s judgment. We proclaim the kingdom of God as judgment. We don’t start out by coming on with the judgment of God, we come out first with peace, with the message of hope, with good news.

We come with healing, we offer blessings, but if it is not received then it is our duty to warn that the kingdom of God has come near and when they reject the kingdom of God they bring judgment on themselves.

“Whenever you enter a town, and they do not receive you, go into its streets and say 'even the dust in your town that clings to our feet we wipe off against you'. Nevertheless know this that the kingdom of God has come near. I tell you it shall be more tolerable on that day for Sodom than for that town.”

Now granted if they reject me because I’m a slob or if they reject me because I’m self-righteous, if they reject me because I’m a hypocrite or because I’m a freeloader, I can pronounce God’s judgment on them until doomsday comes and it doesn’t mean a thing.

This often happens. People come in acting like little babies, making all kinds of ridiculous demands and then when they are not treated like kings, they pronounce damnation on the whole place and everybody gets scared. But, if we go there as Jesus tells us to go, in his Spirit, and if we minister His life and we are ruled by His peace, and the gospel of the kingdom of God is rejected, then it is our responsibility, under God, as a sign of God’s judgment to wipe the dust from our feet and move on.

We must keep in mind that sowing and reaping take time and often one sows another reaps.

And although they may not seem receptive to you at the moment, give the e ternal word to act on its own before you proclaim judgment. Remember; "For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart."

Read again this scripture;

“After this the Lord appointed seventy others, and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to come. And he said to them ‘The Harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; pray therefore the Lord of the Harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go your way; behold I send you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and salute no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say ‘Peace be to this house!’ And if the son of peace is there, your peace shall rest upon him; but if not, it shall return to you. And remain in the same house eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages; do not go from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is set before you; heal the sick in it and say to them ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ But whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you, go into the streets and say ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off against you; nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near you.’

May God help us to apply these words of our Lord as we go into our day, today and each day of our lives.