The Bible Text (Luke 10:1)

"Now after this the Lord appointed seventy others, and sent them two and two ahead of Him to every city and place where He Himself was going to come" (Luke 10:1) (NASB).

An Introduction (Luke 10:1)

Chapter 10 is one of those erroneous chapter markers. It should not be there.
Luke records "Now after this" or "After these things" at the beginning of Luke 10:1. There is a deliberate connection between what happened at the end of Luke 9 and the beginning of chapter 10. It is a shame the chapter break separates the thought when Luke was deliberately uniting the two sections.

Jesus was calling people to follow Him. He was not particularly asking all of them to go out, though He did rebuke each one.

Jesus does ask some to go, however. Jesus' exhortation to the second disciple in Luke 9:60 was to proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God. Jesus wanted him to be a preacher.

The man knew it, but he fought this call by preserving his own preferences. You know, the commitment to give your children a college education, to make sure your car is not one of the oldest in the pack, etc. Some parents work against Jesus. I have heard parents say that they want their children to be professionally trained in a vocation before they would even consider their children going into the ministry. Parents sometimes are so tied down to the things of the world that they just can' t let go.

Unfortunately, there are preachers and evangelists-to-be who get caught up in the world and never can shake off their willingness to put off what they sense God wanting to do through their lives. They never get to the ministry God has for them. Praise God some will give up their secure engineering job for unknown fields when God calls.

Luke 10:1 is all about Jesus sending His disciples to far away places. At the end of chapter 9 we find Jesus calling His disciples to follow Him. This following means that they need to do whatever He wants. Chapter 10 then records what Jesus does with 70 of these disciples. I am not saying that by making yourself willing He will choose you and set you on some special mission. This I do not know. He might. I only can tell you if He does, it is because He made you for it. He has designed your life to be one of the proclaimers. Let us look at this text a bit more clearly.

From those that commit to follow Him, He will especially appoint some. This is what we read in Ephesians 4:11. "And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers" (Ephesians 4:11). I am not saying that they have to be full-time or not. We only must know that they allow His call to affect what they do in life.

Jesus uses two words to describe what He did here. The first is appoint. He installed them into a position. They one moment were not in this position but now after the appointment, they are. Their life has not changed from before the ceremony to after it. They are still the same person. They now however are promised extra grace to carry out a specific duty. This is the reason that all of us should ready ourselves by closely following Jesus. We want to ready ourselves for what God does have for our lives.

This decision on Jesus' part to send them out has many implications. We will look more into this. This is a remarkable action that we see Jesus doing. But first let us note the second verb used, to send.

He chose the significant number of seventy, such as the seventy elders that went up with Moses and feasted in the presence of God Almighty.

These disciples, though, would now follow Jesus by going ahead of Him. Jesus sent them out to go ahead of where He was going to go.

Good news euaggelion; Evangelist euaggelistes The word 'gospel' literally means 'good news.' The word for evangelist is one who proclaims the good news. In English the connection between the gospel and evangelist is not easily seen because the word 'gospel' does not reflect the original word like evangelist does.

The heart of missions is God's goodness. The gospel is so good that we can't be silent!

The gospel is the seed from which once bathed by the Holy Spirit grows into the church. Some people like to use DNA to describe it. Its life, zeal and love readily replicates itself.This word 'to send' is very significant. If we roughed up the English language a bit, we would say that Jesus 'apostolized' them, that is, He sent them out with a specific task. The word mission and missionary both come from Latin (Roman) word missio. This is equivalent to the word apostle, meaning sent with a purpose as a delegate. We unfortunately have so narrowed the meaning of apostle to only refer to the twelve apostles, but the word is used more generally.

Jesus sent 70 disciples out making them apostles. Jesus does not here state what their position was. Perhaps they would get prideful and so Jesus avoided official positions. He instead had them focus on their task at hand. They were more specifically told what they should do later in Luke 10:8 and the following verses. This will not be discussed here. We do, however, want to make a few observations.

The missionaries would be on their own for a little bit. They would not be in the shadow of Jesus. Before they were watching, but now they would be doing. As they went out, they would be able to do what before they could not. Their willingness to go where Jesus sent them was not easy. It was much easier to let Jesus do it. Now they were to do the miracles and preaching. Jesus would come, but in the meantime their faith had to grow. This transition of a baby faith (He can do it) to a mature faith (I can do it) is very important but never easy.

Notice that Jesus was not power hungry. He was willing to have others join in on the work. Jesus was not careless. He first trained others on how to do it and then gave them opportunity to do it. Jesus wanted to share the joy and reward of ministry with others. A fatal problem of leaders is that they get carried away with their own gifts and ministry and do not train others to join in. All of this is much more incomprehensible seeing that it is really Jesus who was so great and glorious and those around Him were only His disciples who wrestled over their own life commitments.

Remember, Jesus was the Master, they were the slaves. He was the Healer, they were the healed. He was the Professor, they were the students. We are talking about a wonderful thing that Jesus would ever entrust ministry into the hands of those who would make so many mistakes. This, however, was part of God' s great plan.

God was deliberately involving those that He rescues and adopts into His family to join Him in His work. The task as a whole is called 'The Mission.' Missions describes how the gospel is to expand out into the world, the methodology. People are sent. His disciples are still being sent right now while we sit here. I hope if you are one of them that you will not let anything hold you back. You were made for it.

We wish we had more details here but do not have them. The disciples would be cared for as they went out carrying out this task. They didn' t need to take food along. But what happened after Jesus got there? It doesn' t say. Would they come back home or go on? We do not know.

I was no doubt sent forth to Taiwan. I loved missions work. Once trained in language and church culture, we put ourselves to church planting.

After in Taiwan for eight years, Linda and my daughter's asthma got worse and worse. We decided to come home and see if their health improved. We are thankful that the asthma has gotten so much better. We are such fragile creatures. It is amazing that God would entrust us with His majestic word. The challenge for me and you is to go where He appoints and sends.

Some feel called but are waiting for release or direction. Stay close to Jesus and follow Him. He will train you well. And remember, that when you go on to where He has appointed you, He will go on after you. You need to go first. His truth must precede His work. We are not so important but the truth, the message of the kingdom of God is crucial.

Some of you might be asked to go within your occupation. You will not need to raise support to go (prayer support is still needed), but the Lord is sending you to reach out to a certain people within your occupation. I am not trying to minimize the appointment that Jesus gave to these disciples, but neither do I want to depreciate the great work that He can do through anyone that makes Himself available.

We must not tell the Lord how to use us. As His servants, we go without question. We trust Him for what is to come. But all that we do must be done in expectation of how He will bless the Word of God that is preached.

Application

God is calling many to go. He wants to send them out. They should be heart-ready. They should have been by Jesus' side to watch how He did things. They would need to stretch out their faith. That is always the challenge. He will bless your work. He will come and bless His Word that you proclaim in preaching or in discipling.

"And He (Jesus) said to another, 'Follow Me.'"  (Luke 9:60).

Next => Expanding your worldview

Other Biblical Foundations for Freedom reading:

Raising Godly Children
Thinking about full-time ministry? Check this out!
Overcoming Anxiety: Finding the peace of God - a series
Bible study on Abraham's growth in faith
Optimized for Growth (1 John 2:3-11)