Crash Course in Discipleship
Introduction: Today we return to the Book of Luke, where we will pick up in the tenth chapter. Ahead of us are some of Jesus’ most profound parables, discourses, miracles, warnings, and prophecies. For about seven months our focus will be upon the person and work of the Savior, Jesus Christ, culminating with the resurrection at Easter.
Today in Luke 10 we are confronted with a passage that I have called “Crash Course in Discipleship.” Let’s read our text for today, as found in the first 24 verses of Luke 10.
After 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. He 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. Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road.
“When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; if not, it will return to you. Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house.
“When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is set before you. Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God is near you.’ But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, ‘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.’ I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town.
“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. But it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted up to the skies? No, you will go down to the depths.
“He who listens to you listens to me; he who rejects you rejects me; but he who rejects me rejects him who sent me.”
The seventy-two returned with joy and said, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.”
He replied, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
At 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.
“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.”
Then he turned to his disciples and said privately, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For 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.”
Luke 10 is a series of sayings addressed to a new group of disciples whom we have not previously met. The common thread in these sayings is that Jesus is preparing his followers to carry on his ministry after he is gone. He has set his face resolutely toward Jerusalem, and he only has a couple of months of ministry left before the Cross. Are his disciples equipped to carry on his work? Are they aware of the pitfalls that will face them? Will they be able to remain as humble servants in view of the tremendous spiritual power he will delegate to them?
By the way, this is not merely an historical exercise we are engaged in today. The key for us is not just to discover how Jesus called, prepared, and sent disciples into the harvest field 2,000 years ago. Rather the key is to come to grips with the fact that he is still calling, preparing, and sending disciples today. The first thing that strikes me in this passage is that …
Jesus’ disciples were designed to be an ever-expanding circle.
You will recall from our previous studies that Jesus’ closest friend was John. He also had a special and unique relationship with Peter and James, and those three constituted his inner circle. Eventually he called twelve as Apostles, who were granted a unique status as his personal ambassadors and as communicators of God’s revelation through their writing of the New Testament. But the circle of Jesus’ disciples did not stop with the twelve. We learn today that he appointed 72 others, and that even they were instructed to pray for still other workers. Why 72 (or 70 as some manuscripts read)? Several answers have been suggested. There were 70 elders appointed by Moses in Numbers 11, and there were 70 members of the Jewish Sanhedrin. This was apparently viewed as the right number to oversee a major spiritual task.
Whatever the number, Jesus never called people to follow him without equipping them to do the job. This equipping involved knowledge, strategy, training, warnings, encouragement, and follow-up. In regard to these 72 disciples mentioned in Luke 10 he first makes clear to them …
Their source of authority. The first verse says they were “appointed and sent by Jesus.” We sometimes mistakenly give people the notion that God is desperately searching for volunteers who will give enough of their time and resources so he can keep his game plan together and defeat the evil that so often seems to have the upper hand. That is not a biblical perspective.
Our God has a plan which he is in the process of carrying out, and he has a church which he is in the process of building. He will do it with us or without us. We are not indispensable to his game plan. If we refuse to enlist in his service, he will find someone else to do it, but we will be the ultimate losers, not his plan. There is something fundamentally wrong when Christians have to be begged, threatened or coerced into serving the Lord. If the workers are not available, it must be for one of two reasons: either some whom he has called and sent are refusing to go, or we are trying to do more than God wants us to do and we need to adjust our plans to fit his.
My heart tells me it’s usually the former, because according to Jesus “the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.” He’s talking about a spiritual harvest here, and he’s simply saying that there are many out there who are ripe to believe if there were sufficient workers to share the truth with them. Well, what’s the solution to this problem? That is seen in the assignment he gives to these disciples – first to pray and then to go.
Their assignment. Prayer is not the first thing we tend to think of when we are short of workers. We think of refining our recruiting techniques, we think of better communications, we think of clarifying our vision or improving our marketing. But Jesus has a different approach. When there aren’t enough workers to handle the harvest he says, “Pray.” “Ask the Lord of the harvest to send out more workers into his harvest field.”
Now don’t misunderstand me. I don’t think this means that marketing or communicating or recruiting are wrong approaches. But they are clearly secondary to prayer. Next Lord’s Day evening we are having a concert of prayer to bring our church ministries before the Lord. This is one of the items that needs to be a focus of that prayer time—that the Lord will send forth more workers into his harvest field, whether it be Children’s Ministries here at First Free or group leaders at BSF or missionary service in Tatarstan. The reason prayer is so critical is that we don’t want just warm bodies to do the Lord’s work. We want workers who are appointed and sent by God.
But it’s not enough to just pray that the Lord will send out workers. The first word in verse 3 is “Go!” How valuable is a prayer that God would send forth workers if the one praying is able but unwilling to go himself? Now certainly not everyone can do every task that needs to be done. But everyone can do something. “Pray and then go” is the assignment Jesus gives to his ever-widening circle of disciples. The strategy Jesus’ disciples are to employ is fairly detailed.
Their strategy. They are to go out two by two. This teamwork approach to ministry is primarily for accountability, safety, and so they don’t get discouraged. They are to travel light—no purse, no bag, no sandals. Why? Because there is danger: He is sending them out like lambs among wolves. If they get bogged down with lots of material things, they will be unable to respond quickly to opposition or to changes in the harvest field. They are to be focused on the urgency of the task, even to the point of not greeting people on the road. I think the message here is not that they are to be rude, but that they must not get sidetracked by social relationships. Eastern salutations can be elaborate and time-consuming. They are to stay in one house, not greedily moving around searching for better accommodations or better food.
Now some of these instructions are probably unique to the circumstances. Jesus has very little time left with these 72 disciples and then they’ll be on their own. But some of the principles are timeless and apply to us today as much as then. Many potentially effective ministers of the gospel—clergy and laity alike—have been lost to the cause of Christ because they became lone rangers, because they got bogged down with material concerns, or because other relationships began to take precedence over their commitment to Christ. Many have watered down the message in order to gain favor or earn more money. In verse 9 Jesus reminds them of their message.
Their message: the Kingdom of God is at hand. This does not mean that everything associated with God’s kingdom had arrived, for there are aspects of God’s kingdom which will not be introduced until Jesus returns yet in the future. But the point is that the rule of God through Jesus has begun, and his power to deliver mankind from Satan’s power has already become evident in spiritual and physical healing. Their day of opportunity has arrived!
Unfortunately, not everyone will receive the message of Jesus’ disciples, so in verse 10 Jesus discusses the sanctions they are to use.
Their sanctions. “But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, ‘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.’” We are generally uncomfortable today with this kind of confrontational approach. If we are even brave enough to share our faith, it is often with the attitude, “Here’s what I believe. If you accept it, great; if you don’t, well, that’s OK, each person has to make up his own mind.” Many seem to view the choice among religious opinions as though they were choosing flavors at an ice cream store. Friends, that’s not at all in keeping with what Jesus says are the awful results of rejecting the message of the gospel. The church has a prophetic role to play in the world. We alone have God’s gracious words of salvation to offer to all people; but part of the gospel is warning of God’s coming judgment on all those not in Christ.
You see, the sanctions the disciples are to deliver by shaking the dust off their feet are only symbolic of the sanctions God has in store for those who reject his gracious offer of salvation. Look at the harsh judgment that is pronounced in verse 12: “I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town.” Then Jesus proceeds to pronounce judgment on three towns where Jesus performed miracles, but where his message was rejected. In all three cases, this important truth comes across: judgment is based upon knowledge. The greater one’s knowledge, the greater will be one’s judgment in eternity if he rejects that which he knew or should have known.
If you have come to church week after week and heard the good news that Jesus died to pay the penalty for your sin, but you have never repented of your sin or received him as your Lord and Savior, you are asking for a terrible judgment. God rained down fire from heaven to totally destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. But Jesus says judgment will be worse for those who knowingly reject him. Don’t put him off any longer. Today can be the day of your salvation.
There is one more thing Jesus wants to communicate to these ambassadors before he sends them out into the harvest field.
Their unbreakable link with Jesus and his Father. Look again at verse 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.” Ministry, whether by clergy or laity, can be a lonely occupation at times. There is a certain amount of rejection that goes with the territory. While many respond positively to the teaching of God’s Word, there are always those who turn a deaf ear or even oppose the message we are bringing. This should give us at the same time a spirit of humility and a spirit of courage. If when we are sharing the good news people listen to us, they are really listening to God, because we are merely channels of his truth. Therefore, we should remain humble. If they reject us, they are really rejecting him. We should not take it personally and we should continue on with courage.
As someone who has spent the last 25 years in full-time ministry, I have to say that this is a very important principle: I am only a conduit, I am only an instrument. If I am successful, I must not let it go to my head; if I am not, I must not get depressed.
Well, the 72 disciples have completed Discipleship 101 and they head out two by two into neighboring towns. We aren’t told how long they were gone, but I suppose it was between several days and several weeks. How did they do? In verse 17 they return, and from their initial comments it appears they did very well. It says they returned with joy and said, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.”
Apparently these disciples encountered many challenging situations—the lost who needed to hear the truth, the sick who needed to be healed, and the demon-possessed who needed to be delivered. The gospel triumphed over everything. But it was the fact that the demons submitted when they used the name of Jesus that impressed them the most. Jesus uses this situation to teach them a very important point.
Jesus’ disciples must keep their focus on the foundational, not the sensational.
First, he explains why they had such success against demons. He says in verse 18, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” Jesus is alluding to Isaiah 14:12, which is one of the key passages concerning Satan’s origin. From that and other texts we learn that Satan was once a very high and beautiful angel, perhaps an archangel. However, in a time probably before the creation of man he rebelled against God and God cast him out of heaven to the earth. Jesus saw this in his own pre-incarnate state, and he tells it to his disciples to assure them that God is more powerful that Satan.
Though Satan was demoted from his high place in heaven, his power and influence were not broken entirely at that time; in fact, he was allowed to be the prince of the power of the air (Ephesians 2:2) and to set up his own evil empire opposed to the Kingdom of God. But, Jesus told his followers, “Greater is he that is in you (i.e., the Holy Spirit) than he that is in the world (i.e., Satan)” (1 John 4:4). Whenever Jesus went up against Satan, Satan was always defeated. Even Jesus’ disciples are able to defeat him so long as they remain dependent upon God. Here’s how Jesus puts it here in verse 19: “I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you.”
That’s pretty heady stuff for fishermen and farmers and housewives. It’s pretty heady stuff for anybody! But then look at what Jesus says, “However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” American Christianity is enamored with sensationalism. The charismatic movement has swept through almost every denomination because people get excited when they hear about healings and speaking in tongues and visions and holy laughter.
And it’s not just in the charismatic movement that we have this emphasis on the sensational. I am constantly getting requests to attend a national Fasting and Prayer Conference in Dallas or a great Church Growth Conference in California or a million-man march in Washington, D.C. Don’t get me wrong, please. Some of these things are good; perhaps all of them are. I’m going to the Promise Keepers’ Stand in the Gap event in Washington the first weekend in October. I agree with its goals and I think it has the potential of waking up a sleeping giant.
But friends, listen to me carefully, the Christian life is not one great media event after another, and the gospel is not to be equated with the unusual gifts of the Spirit. Our joy and our focus must not be on the sensational, but rather on the foundational. Either your name is written in the Lamb’s book of life or it isn’t. If it is, then you’re a child of God and you have every reason in the world to rejoice even if you’ve never seen a demon. If it’s not, then I don’t care what events you have attended or what sensational gifts you’ve experienced, you are on your way to hell!
Let’s get back to the basics. Let’s quit covering up the shallowness of our relationship with God with events and enthusiasm and emotion and church activity. If we already have a growing relationship with him, then those things are fine; but they are not a meaningful substitute for a relationship.
One more issue wraps up our text today.
Jesus’ disciples must realize that they are his, not by intellect or status, but by God’s grace.
This is what I get out of the last four verses. “At 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.’” Jesus has welcomed these 72 disciples back. He hears their stories and sees their joy. It overwhelms him. These are spiritual babes. None of them has been a believer more than two years, perhaps no more than two months. Yet they are joyfully ministering to others and sharing the Good News that a solution has been found to man’s bondage to sin. And Jesus is filled with joy through the Holy Spirit.
But what is he so joyful about? Their success? No. Their excitement? No. He’s joyful that God in his wisdom did not do what we would have done—reach out to the rich and famous and beautiful and powerful. In fact, if anything God hid the truth from the world’s intelligentsia and VIP’s and revealed it to those who come to him like little children. And Jesus is joyful precisely for that reason. Does he mean that a brilliant person cannot be saved? Yes! A brilliant person cannot be saved if he comes to God as a brilliant person. But if he comes as a needy sinner he can be saved and will be saved. Sadly, few will.
The plan of salvation is amazing in that no one has any human advantage over anyone else. IQ doesn’t help, gender is not a factor, nor is race or status or power or influence or denomination. Everyone who comes to Christ must come the same way—as a little child, humble, repentant, and dependent.
This weekend the whole world’s attention has been focused on the People’s Princess. She obviously struck a chord in the hearts of millions of people. She was beautiful, courageous, sensitive, and a survivor. But one of the lessons of Diana Spencer’s tragic life, and even more tragic death, is that in spite of wealth, power, beauty and position, one can’t buy love or ensure happiness. Even more importantly, we need to understand that none of those things can buy salvation or ensure eternal life, either.
Another famous lady died on Friday. Mother Teresa was not beautiful or wealthy or powerful (except in a spiritual sense). The paparazzi didn’t bother her. The tabloids never featured her. She did not sponsor charities for the poor; she lived among them in the slums of Calcutta. When she traveled to Europe and the United States, it was not to hobnob with the rich and famous but rather to upbraid them for their support of abortion rights and to challenge them in behalf of the poor and needy. When needing guidance, she turned to prayer, not to astrologers. She had virtually nothing of this world’s goods, but she exhibited the spirit of Christ in a world almost overcome by moral and social evil.
My purpose is not to criticize Princess Diana. The product of a dysfunctional family, a broken home, a loveless marriage, a life under the microscope—she perhaps never had a chance at a normal life. I feel terribly sorry for her. My purpose rather is to get us to think about life, and about death.
If I were to have asked you last week, “Who would you rather be—Diana, Princess of Wales, or Mother Teresa?”, I suppose many would have had to stop and think about it, and many, if honest, would have opted for the palace instead of the slum. But if I ask you this morning, “Who would you rather be today—Diana, Princess of Wales or Mother Teresa?”, that’s really another matter, isn’t it? Though none of us knows for certain the actual spiritual condition of either the princess or the nun, based on external observations alone, Mother Teresa demonstrates a lot more clearly that she followed Jesus’ crash course in discipleship.
Our focus, of course, should not be on either one of these ladies, but on the Savior who points us to the Father. God saves those who in simplicity and humility abandon their own ego symbols and trust in his gracious provision on the cross. However, there is no way to independently “discover” the truth of the gospel, for it is what we call “revealed truth.” That is, God has to open our eyes to it. Here’s how Jesus puts it in verse 22, “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.” Salvation is of the Lord. If Jesus were not in the business of revealing the Father to us, not one of us would have a clue. If he were not first searching for us, not one of us would find him. It’s all of his grace.
Jesus concludes by turning to his disciples and saying privately to them, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For 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.” The disciples did not quite grasp the amazing privilege that was theirs to know Messiah Jesus personally, to see his miracles and to hear his discourses. Moses would have given his right arm to know the Messiah, as would David or Isaiah. Oh, they knew there would be a Messiah someday. They knew God would one day make a final provision for sin. But they knew it only by faith. They never saw the fulfillment. Jesus’ disciples have seen the fulfillment.
And in a very real sense so have we. We have the Word of God written. We have the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. We have the many evidences of the power of the risen Christ in the church and in our lives. But what are we doing with these great privileges?
Conclusion: Are you a disciple of Jesus? When I ask that, I mean two things. First, “Have you ever professed faith in Jesus? Have you acknowledged your sinfulness and turned to him for forgiveness? Have you trusted him as your personal Savior?” But I mean something additional as well. “Are you a faithful follower? Are you serving him in the ripe harvest field?” Service is not an option for disciples. Jesus has set an example for us in his giving of himself for the good of others. Those who would be followers of Jesus must follow in his pattern of living for others and being used by God for his purposes.
There are many who have been called, appointed, and sent, but they are absent without leave (AWOL) from the King’s service. Let me reiterate that your absence is not holding up the King’s work. He is not dependent upon you. But you are cheating yourself of the most satisfying thing in the world—the privilege of walking with God, serving him, and one day hearing him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” (Matthew 25:21)
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Discipleship
Grace
Mother Teresa