Sent Out So Let’s Go
Luke 10:1 ¶ 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.
Luke 10:2 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.
Luke 10:3 Go your way; behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves.
Luke 10:4 Carry no moneybag, no knapsack, no sandals, and greet no one on the road.
Luke 10:5 Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace be to this house!’
Luke 10:6 And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him. But if not, it will return to you.
Sure, the life of Jesus has been exciting as He has traveled around the Israeli countryside. Visits to Galilee, the Decapolis, and other cities have shown that He’s letting His message out to more and more people.
He sent out 12 earlier and told them to only go to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel” which meant the Jewish people. Now He sends out 72 (some translations say 70) and He doesn’t give that limit. Go everywhere. Every town we’re about to visit, fellas, go preach.
If you were a devout Jewish person in this day and you saw this happen, you’d see 2 secret signals. One is that the Jews considered that there were 72 nations in the world at this time. That means Jesus has chosen one evangelist for every nation to go out and preach the Gospel. Sure, it would only be symbolic since they didn’t have much time or jets, but still. They could at least encounter people from every nation on their trip.
The other symbol here is that when Moses needed help, God told him to get 70 elders of the people to work with him.
“Then the LORD said to Moses, ”Gather for me seventy men of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers over them, and bring them to the tent of meeting, and let them take their stand there with you.And I will come down and talk with you there. And I will take some of the Spirit that is on you and put it on them, and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, so that you may not bear it yourself alone.”
Numbers 11:16–17 ESV
These are Jesus’ 70! (It says later that God sent His Spirit onto Moses’ helpers and they all prophesied!)
So out they go, with the authority and message of Christ. As they go, they are praying that God would send workers into the harvest. They are the answer, of course, to their own prayers. But at the same time, they are praying for more people to join them in the work. That immediately hints to us that we never need to be proud of how essential we are. As we do God’s work, we can pray that someone else would take over what we’re doing and excel at it.
That’s the multiplication of the Gospel. That’s how the 72 become 216, the 216 become 648, and the 648 become 1944. It only takes each person to tell 2 others to grow a mass of believers like that.
That’s why we pray and go to everywhere Jesus wants to go.
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