[Morning Sermon] The Harvest is Plentiful (Luke 10:1-16)

Alright, if you've got a Bible, would you please open it to Luke chapter 10?

Luke 10 · chapter mention

That's right, we finally escaped Luke chapter 9 and made it into Luke chapter 10.

Luke 9 · chapter mention Luke 10 · chapter mention

And it's a bit of a long one.

There's a lot of ground to cover here, so I'm going to ask you to stand right now and I'm going to read our text and we're going to jump right in.

So again, this is Luke 10, verses 1 through 16.

Luke 10:1–16

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.

And he said to them, The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.

Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.

Go your way.

Behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves.

Carry no money bag, no knapsack, no sandals, and greet 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 will rest upon him, but if not, it will 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 its 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.

I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town.

Woe to you, Khoruson.

Woe to you, Bethsaida.

For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.

But it will be more bearable in the judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you.

And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven?

You shall be brought down to Hades.

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.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

Father, thank you for your word.

Help us to hear it this morning in the way it needs to be heard.

Send your Spirit to illumine our reading so that we can know how to apply your word rightly to our lives, so that we can live in a way that glorifies and enjoys you.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

So for the past several weeks, we have been walking through chapter 9, and you may remember how at the beginning of that chapter I said that all of its twists and turns were ordered toward one thing, preparing the twelve for their mission to proclaim the kingdom, especially after the rejection, the death, the crucifixion, the resurrection of Jesus.

Last week, though, that sh that emphasis began to shift from the twelve to the broader cycle of or circle of disciples that Jesus picked up along the way.

In verse 52, Jesus had sent messengers ahead of him on his way to Jerusalem, and when they entered a Samaritan village, the people there rejected them.

And that makes perfect sense in light of Jesus' own prediction concerning himself.

The Son of Man is heading to Jerusalem to be rejected.

And so his messengers ought to expect the same kind of treatment.

Hence, Jesus had much to say last week about the challenges of life as a disciple, that taking up your cross and following Jesus means you'll be rejected, you'll be uncomfortable.

People will challenge your priorities, and you will have to fight to keep your eyes on your heavenly prize.

Now, today we have something of a repeat or an echo of what happened at the beginning of chapter 9 when Jesus sent out the twelve with power and authority to heal diseases and to cast out demons and to proclaim the kingdom of God.

But now the scope isn't just the twelve, the scope is the broader circle of disciples.

And he's sending them with specific instructions in light of the rejection that they've already seen and that they can expect to see in the future.

These instructions read more like marching orders than a single narrative.

And so that means instead of our usual three points, today's sermon is going to have seven.

Seven points.

Sorry about your lunch plans.

Hunker down.

Oh, that's right, we didn't have any lunch plans.

I got you all afternoon.

You can thank my wife for reminding me that.

Alright, so to help us track with this, I worked up an app acronym, PREPARE.

And I don't usually do PowerPoints, but we're gonna do one today.

So we're gonna start with the P prayer or pray.

Verse one opens with Luke telling us that the Lord appointed 72 disciples to go ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go.

Now, Luke at this point is not at all bashful about calling Jesus the Lord.

That's who he is.

And because he is the Lord, he has the sovereign authority to send workers into the field.

And what he tells us about the field here is actually really important.

He tells us that the harvest is plentiful.

The harvest is plentiful.

So much so that we ought to consider that we don't have enough laborers.

The laborers are full.

There's more harvest than there are people to work it.

And therefore, we should pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest, that is, to Jesus Himself, that he would send out more and more laborers.

In other words, there are multitudes of people whom God has prepared to receive the gospel.

And so we should ask him to send more messengers alongside of us to proclaim that gospel.

Now, we're so used to hearing that verse and to praying that verse that we might miss how significant it is in this context.

Jesus is sending these messengers into circumstances where he knows that they'll be rejected.

They'll be mocked, they'll be denied food and shelter, they'll be cussed at, they'll be spit on, they'll be mistreated in all kinds of ways.

But the thing he wants them to pray for as they go is not that they would be spared the humiliation, but that God would send more laborers with them.

Why?

Because even though the haters on the edge of the field might make it seem like there's no fruit in the field, the truth is it is teeming.

The field is white for harvest.

So Jesus is saying, don't let a few bad ears or even a whole bad row of corn, you know, distort your per your perception.

There are more souls to be harvested than any single person could handle on their own, no matter how fierce it might seem, the rejection is.

Jesus does not send us into an empty field.

Yeah, you might have areas in your life, certain places where it seems like maybe there's not that much fruit to be picked.

And we'll hear about those kinds of places as we go through the passage.

But if we look at our lives overall, if we look at the world in general into which God sends us, there is way more opportunity than we realize.

We assume the people in our lives want nothing to do with the gospel.

The girl who cuts our hair, the guy who delivers our mail, the guy who drinks too many beers on Tuesday afternoon.

We assume that instead of risking failure, we guarantee it through our silence.

Only God knows how ready people are to hear.

And often people are more ready than you think they are.

So that's the P, that's prayer.

Let's talk about the R.

Recognize.

In verse 3, Jesus says, Go your way.

Behold, I am sending you as lambs in the midst of wolves.

Now, teachers of writing say that you are not supposed to mix metaphors, but Jesus is the author of everything.

So he gets a pass.

And the shift from the field to the pasture is apt.

Because he wants his disciples to know what they're up against.

As far as the world is concerned, we're just sheep.

As far as the world is concerned, we are foolish creatures.

And because the weapons of our warfare are physical and not spiritual, or sorry, they're not physical, they are spiritual, because of that, we are weak and vulnerable creatures.

We are susceptible to the attacks of predators.

Now, a wolf can be someone on the outside who attempts to prey on the people of God.

But scripture also speaks of wolves that come from the inside.

That's how prophets like Ezekiel describe the wicked rulers and priests who took advantage of God's people.

And in Acts 20, Paul warns the Ephesian elders about not just the wolves who will come from without, but the wolves who will arise from within.

This is particularly important because Jesus isn't sending his messengers into pagan lands right now.

He's sending them into primarily Jewish towns and villages.

The rejection they can expect to face will not come at the hands of those who profess themselves to be against God.

It'll come from those who profess to be for God and against Jesus.

Do you remember what the old man Simeon said back in the temple in Luke 2, 34?

He said this over the baby Jesus: Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel and for a sign that is opposed.

Jesus is going to provoke a division, is what he was saying.

And that's what Jesus is acknowledging here.

The unbelieving Jews who would reject the message of the Messiah, they're the wolves.

Okay, so how does that apply to us?

Am I saying all the unbelieving Jews are wolves?

That's not what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is we live in the buckle of the Bible belt, where the fashionable thing to do is to profess some kind of faith in God and to at least give a nod to Jesus.

That's what you're expected to do in polite southern company.

That's normal.

Yet only about 30% of our neighbors in Wilson County will go to church today.

And if you were to have a conversation with a significant chunk of that 70%, especially about the grittier parts of the Christian life, like sin and sanctification or taking up your cross and following Jesus, let's just say you might be rejected.

You might be written off as unreasonable, too much of a zealot, a Jesus freak, one of those Christians, one of those crazy evangelicals who actually believe everything the Bible says.

You might stop getting invites to certain parties.

You might get the cold shoulder at work.

Your friends might turn on you.

What Jesus is saying is that as we head into the field, we shouldn't be surprised when people start taking bites out of us, even when it's those who would otherwise be on our team.

So much for recognition.

Let's move on to the E, which is expedite.

So I have four kids and I have a minivan.

And I have found that one of the hardest things in life is getting those four kids into that minivan.

Especially when we have somewhere to be.

This one can't find their shoes, this one needs to get a book, this one needs to run across the street to talk to a friend and say hello.

There's just no sense of urgency, at least, not my sense of urgency.

Well, in verse 4, urgency is exactly what Jesus is after.

Carry no money bag, no knapsack, no scan and no sandals, and greet no one on the road.

Leave the shoes, forget the book, you'll see your friend later.

Get in the van, we've got to go.

The field isn't gonna pick itself.

You've got wolves on your tail.

Let's go.

These are basically the same instructions that Jesus gave to the twelve at the beginning of chapter 9.

Only now he's added a few things to the list.

He's added sandals and he said, don't greet anyone on the road.

Now, does that really mean that Jesus wanted them to tear their feet up on the rocky limestone roads or just look at the ground when people pass them?

No, what Jesus is talking about here is not carrying, there's a difference between carrying sandals and wearing sandals, right?

He's not talking about wearing them.

He's talking about carrying extra sandals, extra provisions.

And the greeting he has in mind isn't a quick, hey, how are you, but it's the elaborate greeting rituals that they would engage in in that culture.

There was lots of bowing, there were questions about each other's health, mutual blessings, hugging, kissing, all the things.

It was a whole rigor marole.

But the disciples didn't have any time for that.

They didn't have time to gather up extra provisions, they didn't have time to dawdle on the side of the road, they had a mission to go on.

And so do we.

And the question for us is whether we have that same sense of urgency that Jesus was cultivating in his disciples.

Are we expediting our mission?

Or are we sitting back and waiting for the mission to come to us?

Are we making a beeline for our unbelieving friends and neighbors?

Or are we endlessly getting our ducks in a row, waiting for the day when we might just happen to be in their path?

One place I see this come up a lot is in the way we think about apologetics in evangelism training.

And the thought that we can often have is that if I just watch a few more videos, if I just read a few more books and articles, if I just learn a few more articles, then I'll finally be ready to go and share my faith with this person or that person or those people.

Look, apologetics and evangelism training are great.

We've done those things here in the past, we'll do them again in the future.

By all means, get equipped.

It's good to get equipped.

But if you are waiting until you're ready to get out there and share, then you'll be like the soldier who cleans his rifle daily but never shoots it.

Expedite the mission.

Get on the road.

Have the conversations that need to be had, even if you don't feel ready.

And watch.

Watch in those moments, watch in those encounters when God shows up and gives you stuff to say, prepares you in ways, pulls things out of you that you didn't even know were in there.

He'll do it.

You just gotta do it yourself.

So we've prayed, we've recognized the spiritual danger, we've expedited the mission.

Now what do we do when we get there?

Next word.

We pronounce.

Whatever house you enter, Jesus says in verses 5 through 6.

First say, peace be to this house.

And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him, but if not, it will return to you.

In Luke, peace is often used as a token of salvation.

Think of the angels in the field on the night when Jesus was born, in 2.14 speaking to the shepherds.

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased.

Here Jesus tells his disciples to take that peace and to give it in the form of a greeting.

To the ancient Greeks and Romans, peace was a typical greeting.

And it was like a kind wish for the other person to experience prosperity in the absence of conflict.

They often signed their letters with it: grace and peace.

But to the Jewish mind, this was something more than a kind wish.

It was more like a prayer, asking God to bring deep wholeness to the person.

This peace, this shalom, was not just about material abundance and the cessation of conflict between man and man, it was about the restoration of cosmic order, both within and without, in our own souls and between us and other people, and with the very creation itself.

So the disciples were called to pronounce this peace, to pronounce this shalom upon their entry into a house.

And if there were people in that house whom God had prepared to receive that peace, the peace would rest upon them.

They'd receive the greeting by receiving the gospel.

They'd receive Jesus Himself by showing hospitality to his messengers.

But if they weren't a person of peace, then they would reject the message and the messenger.

And Jesus says that disciples' peace would return to them.

Okay, so how does that apply to us?

When we bring the gospel to people, we bring them a word of peace between them and God, an offer of peace, a greeting of peace, a prayer for peace.

The biblical reality is that our sin creates enmity between us and God.

It makes rebels out of us, enemies against the throne of heaven.

And God has the might and God has the right to put down that rebellion.

But what does he do?

Instead, he sends messengers, he sends ambassadors before his face to pronounce the terms of a peace treaty.

And if we have come to peace with God in Christ, then we are those ambassadors.

That's who we are, that's what we have to offer.

When we come to people with the gospel, we're not there to sell a product or to persuade someone to sign up for our club.

We're there to offer them peace with God through faith in Christ.

And because that peace is a gift that we ourselves have received already from God, we don't have to worry if they reject it.

We don't have to worry about them taking it away or disrupting our peace.

It returns to us.

It wasn't ours to begin with, it was never theirs.

It is the peace of God granted to his people.

So, so much for pronouncing peace.

Now, what do we do when our peace is well received?

Next word, we accept.

In verses 7 through 8, Jesus instructs the disciples to stay in whatever house received them and to accept their hospitality without going from house to house.

We discussed this back at the beginning of chapter 9 when Jesus said something similar to the twelve.

Jesus isn't saying that the disciples are only allowed to visit one house in a town.

He's saying don't go house hopping looking for the best accommodations.

See, in the ancient world, in this culture, in Greece and Rome, there were itinerant teachers of wisdom who would do precisely that.

They'd hop from house to house because they weren't looking to tell the truth, they were looking to sell the truth.

You can call them your first century version of social media influencers.

The disciples weren't selling a product, they were preaching the gospel.

And Jesus didn't want them to take advantage of people.

Jesus didn't want them to even appear to take advantage of people because that would undermine the very fact that they were there to offer the gift of peace.

Now, what does that look like for us?

It means it looks like us trusting Jesus to provide for us everything we need in order to carry out our mission.

He will feed us, he will clothe us, he will set us up with the right people in the right place, he'll put a roof over our heads, he'll take care of it.

So we can be like the little kid with our dad at the store or the restaurant, and we don't know how he does it, but somehow this powerful being is able to give us everything we need.

And more than that, we can be content with what God gives.

And so he puts us up in a Motel 6 instead of a Hayat.

Or we're fed a casserole instead of a stick, or a steak.

We can be thankful.

We can be content because every act of hospitality, no matter how meager or how lavish, every act is a trace of his kindness.

It's an artifact of the grace that he gives laborers as we go out into the field.

Listen, I, you know, I have been blessed by God's people in many in sundry ways.

Sometimes it's a fancy dinner.

One time it was me in a village, and while we were building the bathroom for the family, they went out back and killed their only chicken so that they could cook it up for us.

God will give you what you need.

God will provide for the mission to go forward.

And we can be content.

He will not fail.

We won't have to scratch and claw our way through the world.

We can simply step out and accept his provision with glad hearts.

That's acceptance.

And now we can talk about the R, which is to reveal.

In verse 9, Jesus says what to do once the disciples have found a place to stay.

They were to heal the sick and say to the people, The kingdom of God has come near to you.

As I've been saying these past weeks, the kingdom of God has drawn near in the person and power of Jesus.

And that kingdom is made known in its effects.

Jesus sends these pairs of disciples as heralds.

And just like he did with the twelve, he gives them the power and the authority to show the kingdom's presence in power.

So, how do you know the question for us is you know, how do how does that apply to us, right?

Do we have, are we called to heal diseases and cast out demons?

The power to heal was given to a particular people in a particular time in a particular place.

As the kingdom drew near, we see in the Gospels, God bore witness to it through signs and wonders.

We see it in Acts as well.

In the resurrection of Christ, we have the greatest sign and wonder to take place in all of history.

And while the early disciples in Acts were given the power to continue working wonders as the gospel broke out into brand new places, that power does not extend to us.

At least not in the same way.

Make no mistake, God continues to heal people today.

But we don't have the power to heal.

We have the duty to pray.

And it's through our prayers that God heals people according to his own plan, according to his own purpose.

And so we're not healers in the sense that we have the power, and I can whip you with my blazer right now, and you would be healed of all your diseases.

We are not healers.

But we are heralds.

And because we're heralds, we bring the kingdom with us wherever we go.

And it's our job to make that kingdom known, to reveal it through our works, to reveal it through our words.

And so even though we don't have that specific gift of healing, we do have a commission to speak words of healing that God will use to bring about the salvation of people's souls.

He will open people's eyes, he will open their ears, he will grant them everything they need to receive the revelation of his kingdom.

All we have to do is show them and tell them who the king is and what he's all about.

So that's revealing.

Now the seventh and final word, exit.

What were the disciples supposed to do in those towns where they could find no place to stay, in those places where they could find no audience for the gospel?

What were they supposed to do then?

Jesus tells them in verses 10 through 11, go out into the streets of the town and say these words, even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off against you.

When Jesus first sent out the twelve, he told them to shake the dust off their feet.

It was a symbolic act meant to represent God's judgment.

And here he gives them words to go at that symbol.

But notice what he says at the end of verse 11.

After they've said, We wipe our feet off against you.

Nevertheless, know this, and this is what the disciples were supposed to say to the town who had rejected the gospel.

Nevertheless, know this, that the kingdom of God has come near.

These are the same words that the disciples said to those who accepted their message.

They tell us that the kingdom has come, whether people like it or not, whether they accept it or not.

The kingdom is here.

The king has come, and hey, he's heading this way.

Everyone is invited.

Everyone is invited to receive him, to welcome him with glad and open arms.

Everyone is invited to be a part of his kingdom.

But if you reject that invitation, if you reject the gospel of the king, then that invitation becomes a warning.

And it's at this point in the passage where Jesus kind of goes off for a little while on what might sound like a tangent about judgment.

But really, this is all, he's not just having a, you know, a fit of anger.

He is encouraging his disciples.

They can wipe the dust off their feet.

They can move on without any sort of anger, any sort of resentment, any sort of feeling of failure, because God will ultimately judge those who reject him.

God will ultimately be the one to rain fire from heaven.

That judgment, Jesus says, will be worse for that town than what Sodom got.

Yes, that Sodom.

And you can read about that Sodom in Genesis 19.

A pair of angels, literally messengers of God, just like the pairs of messengers that Jesus is preparing to send out.

A pair of angels show up in Sodom.

They find a son of peace in the person of Lot, and they go into his house to receive his hospitality.

But then what happens?

A crowd of men from the city, representative of the state of the city itself, comes banging on Lot's door, not to extend their own hospitality to the messengers, but to violate them.

Their sin is horrendous.

And after God rescues Lot, he rains down fire and sulfur on that place.

And Sodom becomes the original sin city.

Sodom becomes a paradigm in the imagination of the Jews from then on, a cautionary tale about what happens when a whole city goes bad.

And Jesus is saying that on the day of his judgment, it will actually go worse for the city who rejects his messengers than it went for Sodom, and that it will go for Sodom in the end.

In verses 13 through 15, he mentions two more wicked cities from Israel's past, Tyre and Sidon.

These cities were part of the economic powerhouse that was ancient Phoenicia.

And Isaiah 23 talks about how they exploited Israel and how God would judge them for their pompous pride and their arrogant greed.

Again, Jesus compares these cities to those who had reject him, but here he names three cities or villages in particular: Khorazan, Bethsaida, and Capernaum.

Now the most striking thing about those cities is that they are not pagan cities, they're not Gentile cities, they're Jewish cities.

They're all places where Jesus visited to work signs and wonders.

But instead of receiving him as the Messiah, they ultimately took advantage of him as a worker of miracles.

They may have said nice things, they may have said things that approach the truth, but in the final analysis, the majority of the individuals in those cities rejected Jesus as their savior.

Now I've gone on a little bit longer about this than the other words, because that's what Jesus did.

And Jesus did it in order, again, to encourage his disciples, to keep them on track, to keep them on task.

Because what he's saying, what he's reassuring them with, is the fact that there will come a day for God to judge the wolves.

There will come a day when he rejects all of those who've rejected him.

But that day is not today.

And the work of judgment is not a part of the disciples' job description.

So when they find themselves talking to the wall, when the gospel goes over like a lead balloon and there's just no traction, nobody wants it, nobody wants to hear it, there's just no fruit to be picked in this particular place.

Jesus gives them, Jesus gives us permission to exit the scene with our peace intact and the confidence that God will take care of it.

Whether that means God will send other messengers in the future, or God will meet out his holy, just, and righteous consequences on those who reject him.

At the end of the day, it's not about us.

That's why Jesus says in verse 16, 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.

Our job isn't to give people eyes to see and ears to hear.

Our job is to reveal the kingdom through our words and works.

Our job is to show people Jesus in our walk and herald him in our talk.

That's it.

That's our job.

So when they reject you, know that they're not rejecting you.

They're rejecting him, and they're rejecting the one who sent him.

And how God deals with that rejection is his business.

It's not your business, it's not my business.

God's got it.

Jesus has sent us into the world.

What does he teach us here?

He teaches us to pray to the Lord that he would open our eyes to see how abundant the harvest is and to ask that he would send more laborers to help us.

He teaches us to recognize that when we go into the field, we will be like lambs among the wolves.

He teaches us to expedite our mission anyway, trusting that he'll provide for us.

Pronounce a blessing of peace on all you meet, accept the generosity of those who receive you.

Reveal the kingdom in your words and deeds.

And when people reject you, when people reject us, exit the scene gracefully, knowing that you've done what you can do and that the Lord will take it from there.

These are the instructions that Jesus gave his disciples.

These are the marching orders that he has given to his people so that we would be prepared to go forth as his messengers.

But the last word for today, the last word I want to say, is not for those who have taken up their cross and followed Jesus.

It's for those who have not yet signed up to be one of his disciples.

For those who have not yet joined him on this mission.

Because Jesus has some hard words.

Jesus says some hard things about judgment in this passage.

It's not our job to explain them away.

It's our job to hear them and respond.

On the final day, we will all stand before the throne of God's judgment.

And not a single human being in all of existence will be able to plead ignorance.

We've all sinned.

We've all fallen short of the glory of God, and we all stand condemned before Him as a result.

Scripture is abundantly clear on those facts.

But it's also clear that for those who reject the good news, for those who say no thanks to the God who loved the world, that he sent his only son to die for sinners, for that set, there will be an even greater accountability on the final day.

It will be worse for you than it was for Sodom.

That's not me scaring you, although it is scary.

That's not me trying to manipulate you into making some kind of a decision or to coming up and bowing before an altar.

That's me communicating the straight truth from the mouth of Jesus Christ Himself.

It's not Paul, it's not Peter, it's not James, it's Jesus Himself.

We will all be held accountable.

And for those who have heard the word of the gospel and have still said no, you will be held even more accountable.

I have pronounced the terms of the peace treaty here today.

Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.

Will you accept?

Or will you reject?

That's right.

Father, you have sent us on a great mission.

You have sent us before your face to proclaim the good news about what you have done in Christ.

Lord, we pray to you, the Lord of the harvest, that you would send us and send more of us into the field to do that.

Protect us, Lord, from the wolves that would distract and detract from our mission.

Protect us from ourselves and expedite our concern.

Ramp up our urgency.

Get us out of our comfort zone and help us to do these things and to speak.

As we meet people, Lord, help us to pronounce a blessing of peace.

Help us to accept your kind provision.

Help us to reveal your word.

Help us to show forth your kingdom.

And Father, if we're butting up against a wall, give us the wisdom to know when to take our peace and leave.

Lord, it is a beautiful and wonderful thing that you would use us to communicate your truth.

And I pray, Father, that you would help us to grab hold of that with joy and with determination.

And for those who have not yet heard the gospel in a compelling way, for those who have not yet said yes to Jesus, Lord, we pray that your Holy Spirit would do the work that only you can do.

That you would open eyes, that you would open hearts, that you would bring people from death to life.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.